Trade War with China
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Of course not. it's just an excuse for US companies to get a greater advantage in China. How else are they gonna keep printing money and not cause inflation domestically?
Maybe. But it's still a good read. It's basically informing the reader that not all trade deficit is bad, and that Trump's fixation on trade deficit is leading to a poorer outcome for US.
Don't forget the US has benefited from China's exports for over 30 years.
it kept Walmart stocked up, inflation down, and more money in the average American's pocket.
Nobody wants a trade war, In a trade war, China will be affected for sure. But the outcome for the US could be worse than Trump expected
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
The irony is that goes over the head of the people it's meant to explain. We're talking about people who think if Chinese are getting rich, it must because the Chinese are taking it from them. There's only a certain amount of money in the world and it all belongs to them. That's why they take credit for China's rise. It was their money that built China.
I do believe it's becoming more and more likely we will not see China becoming the most influential country in the world (to the same extent that US is influential today) within our lifetimes.
The incumbent power (US) is doing almost everything it can to slow down challenger's rise (China), and such moves were not calculated into various projections even just several years ago, when people simply extrapolated GDP growths, made projections and concluded sometime in 2030s Chinese nominal GDP would overshadow US. People also did not model for other smaller countries following suit, as the incument power always has some leverage on smaller countries. Of course, GDP is just one yardstick, and doesn't really convey full power or influence. Even if China manages to catch up with US in nominal GDP in 2040s, actual geopolitical power stemming from that economic strength would take a few more decades to shine. (Extra power stemming from cultural influence would take even longer, due to various deep rooted cultural/language differences) all this providing no one challenges China in the meantime. While US most probably will continue to do just that for decades to come.
US had it easy back in late 1800s when its GDP became world's top and in early 1900s, when Britain did not really do anything to contain them, as it wasn't in a position to do much. US is in a much stronger position than late 1800s Britain when it comes to world's hierarchy.
The incumbent power (US) is doing almost everything it can to slow down challenger's rise (China), and such moves were not calculated into various projections even just several years ago, when people simply extrapolated GDP growths, made projections and concluded sometime in 2030s Chinese nominal GDP would overshadow US. People also did not model for other smaller countries following suit, as the incument power always has some leverage on smaller countries. Of course, GDP is just one yardstick, and doesn't really convey full power or influence. Even if China manages to catch up with US in nominal GDP in 2040s, actual geopolitical power stemming from that economic strength would take a few more decades to shine. (Extra power stemming from cultural influence would take even longer, due to various deep rooted cultural/language differences) all this providing no one challenges China in the meantime. While US most probably will continue to do just that for decades to come.
US had it easy back in late 1800s when its GDP became world's top and in early 1900s, when Britain did not really do anything to contain them, as it wasn't in a position to do much. US is in a much stronger position than late 1800s Britain when it comes to world's hierarchy.
plawolf
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I am not sure which projections you are referring to, but the US playing spoiler to try and sabotage and delay Chinese advancement was always a possibility, hell, even an inevitability.
That is why the Chinese government has always stressed the importance of self reliance in all things. They know full well that to become dependent on western controlled resources would be to hand them unacceptable leverage over China.
The prospect that the US would be able to leaverage it’s smaller client states to follow suit would have also been predicted and explected.
Part of Chinese investment strategies into places like Poland was to try and offset entrenched American power. But that was always a low percentage and long game hedging move.
The primary Chinese counter was and is the belt and road initiative.
The goal isn’t to try and win over American client states half way around the world, but rather to cultivate and create brand in markets on China’s doorstep, and build those countries and economies into economic powerhouses that can rival and surpass those client states America has in its own pockets.
After all, the west won the Cold War not by investing in Soviet block countries, but rather by making its own allies and clients richer and more powerful to the point where Soviet allies wanted instead to become American allies.
Recent American moves have been actually defensive in nature, and does nothing to seriously challenge or obstruct the BaR, because America simply lack the means to do so. Instead America is looking to wall off their domestic markets and markets of clients to try and protect American companies from Chinese competitors as the Chinese start to simply produce superior products at competitive prices.
While these moves are no doubt a setback for China in the short run, it is actually far more damaging to American competitiveness in the long run.
Apple is actually the perfect encapsulation of this failing strategy.
Rather than investing in innovation like Huawei, the lion share of their R&D efforts are instead focused on diversification and differentiation.
They do not seek to develop new technologies, merely to take existing, established tech and make it different.
To protect themselves from competition and comparison, they built their own walled garden in which outside competitiors are forbidden to enter (funnily enough, better security was also a major selling point to justify those high walls). And for a time, all was well.
The problem however, is that in their walled garden safe from competition, Apple grew increasingly lazing, arrogant, and out of touch with what their customers cared about and wanted.
That, is a loosing strategy.
In terms of timeframe, well I am always sceptical of projecting too far into the future, as the further out you look, the greater the chance of unforeseen events.
Indeed, if we look back, the current American moves against China were expected when Bush II entered office, but 9/11 changed all the calculations overnight.
While I obviously do not want anything like 9/11 to ever happen again, it is still entirely possible that similar (but hopefully far less deadly) unique and unforeseen shocks could again vastly change the direction of travel of one or both superpowers and again fundamentally chance the future outlook.
In that respects, China has the advantage in that it is still only a regionally focused power. That means that only something truly pivotal happening in Asia would affect China.
America, OTOH, is a global power, and thus their exposure is much greater, and it is far more likely for them to have their focus and attention to be diverted by events than China.
I am at this time interested precisely in future projections. Sadly, those can't be done with any sort of certainty. One could perhaps only do an academic discussion barring any unforeseen events and using only past data and historical examples to project into the future. However useless those projections might be.
Projecting success is also difficult due to definition of success. GDP itself is fairly easy to define. But it's not the only measure of future power and influence. How to define power and influence in hard terms that can be quantified and thus compared between countries?
Projecting success is also difficult due to definition of success. GDP itself is fairly easy to define. But it's not the only measure of future power and influence. How to define power and influence in hard terms that can be quantified and thus compared between countries?
There is nothing the US can do to stop China from overtaking it in nominal GDP in the 2030s. Furthermore, geopolitical strength stems from PPP adjusted GDP at least as much as it does from nominal GDP, and China is now more than 25% larger than the US by that measure.
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