plawolf
Lieutenant General
Thats a massive logical fallacy to use the full value of bilateral trade as if it was what is at stake. Or do you honestly think all US vassals are going to cut all trade with China to zero?
And China has not just been diversifying away from America, but also the EU and other ‘developed’ economies for its main export destinations, with exports to Asia and Africa worth more than Europe and the Americas. And that is overstating the share of America and the EU
Will a full blown trade war hurt? Of course. Which is why China doesn’t want one. But it is the only one who has actively and systematically been preparing for one. For the west to use trade to cause enough disruption to give China real headaches would collapse their own societies as their people’s already battered standards of living collapse without cheap Chinese imports helping to mitigate all the economic damage their own idiot leaders have inflicted upon them.
And that’s not even touching upon the more fundamental questions of just what it is the EU and the US makes that gives them so much value in today’s world economy. Is a handbag really worth as much as a car? What critical inputs does the EU and America sell to China that China literally could not do without that they themselves have not already weaponised and forced China to become self reliant on? Sure there is still much to do, and there will be massive damage and disruption for China, but the lights will stay on and the show will go on in China in the event of a total and immediate secession of trade between China and the west. How many weeks will western society last before they literally start eating each other in the streets?