RSS
In an amusing display of British pride and solipsism, the venerable Times of London once ran the headline “Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off.”
Overly arrogant individuals sometimes find it difficult to recognize that they are not the center of the universe, and that instead they might actually be considerably less large and powerful than those they intend to overawe, cut off, or isolate.
This sort of notion was also famously expressed in a Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoon I remember seeing during my childhood. One of the Looney Tunes characters—I forget which one—was perched on the branch of a tree and idiotically decided to destroy his adversary by sawing it off. Since cartoons may easily defy physical laws, his ridiculous plan actually succeeded and that branch remained suspended in mid-air while the rest of the tree suddenly plummeted to the ground. But real life is considerably different than what was portrayed by Warner Brothers cartoonists.
Some may disagree. I’ve sometimes wondered whether the surprising trade policies that President Donald Trump announced over the last couple of weeks might have been inspired by those Bugs Bunny cartoons of the 1950s. Perhaps he assumed that they accurately portrayed real life events and decided to apply that same strategy to America’s international trade problems.
Certainly the sudden, unilateral application of new tariffs against every other country in the world—ranging from a stiff minimum of 10% against the entire human race to a China rate that ultimately reached an absurd 145%—seemed more like something out of a cartoon than normal economic policy planning.
The initial tariff rates shown in the chart that Trump held up at his April 2nd announcement produced a jaw-dropping reaction by nearly all economic observers. I suspect that many of them may have wondered if he’d somehow gotten his dates confused and the whole exercise had actually been intended as an April Fools’ joke.
I was recently interviewed by a right-wing British podcaster named Mark Collett, and he suggested that Trump’s erratic and mercurial political decisions reminded him of the Roman Emperor Caligula, leading me to concur with his historical analogy.
Caligula is probably best known for announcing that he would appoint his horse Incitatus to the consulship, the highest political office of the Roman government, and also for declaring himself to be a living god. But I think that if Trump had given his favorite dog or cat a Cabinet post and even Tweeted out a few fanciful claims regarding his own divinity, the negative impact upon America’s position in the world might have been considerably less damaging than what was caused by his outrageously bizarre tariff proposal.
Tariffs are just a type of tax levied on imports, and America annually imports well over $3 trillion dollars worth of foreign goods, so tariff taxes obviously have a huge economic impact. But Trump suddenly raised those taxes by more than a factor of ten, taking them from around 2.5% to 29%, rates far, far beyond those of the notorious 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff and reaching the levels of more than 100 years ago. This certainly amounted to one of the largest tax increases in all of human history.
According to our Constitution, tariffs and other tax changes must be enacted by Congressional legislation. But Trump ignored those requirements, instead claiming that he had the power to unilaterally set tariff tax rates under the emergency provisions of a 1977 law that no one had ever previously believed could be used for that purpose.
Across our 235 year national history, all our past changes in tariff, trade, or tax policy—including Smoot-Hawley, NAFTA, the WTO, and Trump 45’s own USMCA—had always been the result of months or years of political negotiations, and then ultimately approved or rejected by Congress. But now these multi-trillion-dollar decisions were being made at the personal whim of someone who had seemingly proclaimed himself a reigning, empowered American autocrat.
As might be expected, Trump’s huge tax increase on $3 trillion of imports quickly led to a very sharp drop in stock prices, but Trump declared that he was unbending and would never waver. China had prepared for exactly such an economic attack, and when it soon retaliated with similar tariffs on American products, Trump counter-retaliated, with several days of those tit-for-tat exchanges eventually raising tariff rates against China to an astonishing 145%, essentially banning almost all Chinese goods. Many other countries and the EU also threatened similar retaliatory tariffs, but since their tax rates were governed by law rather than autocratic whim, their responses were necessarily much slower.
However, just a week after he announced those gigantic tariffs against the entire world and repeatedly promised to maintain or even further raise them, Trump suddenly changed his mind. Although he kept the Chinese rates at those ridiculous levels, he declared that tariffs on all other countries would suddenly be reduced to a very high but rational 10% rate for the next 90 days while he decided what to do.
Thus, during the course of a single week, Trump had raised American tariffs by more than a factor of ten, then dropped them by a factor of two, representing exactly the sort of tax policy we might expect to see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Trump’s totally unexpected reversal naturally produced a huge rebound in stock prices, which recovered much of the ground that they had previously lost, and Trump boasted about all the money that his friends had made from that unprecedented market rebound. This led to some dark suspicions that our unfortunate country had just witnessed one of the most outrageously blatant examples of insider trading in all of human history.
Across thousands of years, the world has seen many important countries ruled by absolute monarchs or all-powerful dictators, with some of these leaders even considered deranged. But I can’t recall any past example in which a major nation’s tax, tariff, or tribute policies have undergone such rapid and sudden changes, moving up and down by huge amounts apparently based upon personal whim. Certainly Caligula never did anything so peculiar, nor Louis XIV nor Genghis Khan nor anyone else who comes to mind. Lopping off the heads of a few random government officials was one thing, but drastic changes in national financial policies were generally taken much more seriously. I don’t think that Tamerlane ever suddenly raised the tribute he demanded from his terrified subjects by a factor of ten, then a few days later lowered it back down by a factor of two.
What will our tariff rates on $3 trillion of imports be like in a few months? I doubt that anyone can say, even including the current occupant of the Oval Office. For example, late Friday night the Trump Administration apparently exempted smartphones, computer equipment, and other electronics from his Chinese tariffs, hoping that the timing would help hide that further abject surrender from the American population.
Consider America’s major business corporations or even its small mom-and-pop operations. Nearly all of these have some substantial connection to international trade, even if they merely rely upon ordinary products that they buy at Costco or Walmart. On April 2nd, Trump announced his huge new tariffs that would greatly raise the price of those products or possibly lead to their disappearance, then on April 9th he changed his mind and suspended those tariffs for 90 days, but still proposed to afterward enact them, while essentially banning nearly all Chinese imported goods with a 145% tariff that may or may not continue.
Under those circumstances, how could any rational corporate planner—or even sensible small-businessman—formulate any long-term investment plans? For at least the next 90 days, virtually all business investment will surely remain frozen, except perhaps for a little panic-buying. It’s hardly surprising that consumer sentiment quickly reached the worst levels since record-keeping began.
The unexpected and unintended supply-chain disruptions of the early Covid epidemic of five years ago seem likely to now be repeated due to deliberate tax changes. As a result, public uncertainty over economic policy has reached levels even exceeding those caused by that unprecedented global disaster:
The reason for Trump’s sudden, dramatic U-turn after days of denying any such possibility was obviously terrible pressure from the bond market. Trump had remained sanguine despite the near 20% drop in stock prices, among the worst sudden routs in American financial history. But he and his advisors were surprised when Treasury bond prices also declined, causing a sudden sharp rise in rates.
On Thursday, one of the front-page articles in the Wall Street Journal reporting Trump’s stunning reversal explained:
Investors were jittery as Wednesday began because of alarming developments in the all-important U.S. Treasury market. Treasurys have been hit with a wave of selling in recent days, causing an increase in yields, which move inversely to their price. At one point during the overnight hours, the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield hit 5%—a huge jump from below 4.4% last week.
Such selling was unusual because normally investors flock to U.S. government bonds during times of market distress. It prompted speculation that foreign investors might be dumping their Treasurys—a Doomsday scenario that would cast doubt on the U.S.’s status as a global financial superpower.
Another column in the same edition also emphasized that concern:
At one point, the yield on the 10-year note rose as high as 4.47%. Yields rise when bond prices fall.
What made this even more concerning is that the U.S. dollar also headed lower, as the market switched to a “sell everything American” mode reminiscent of what sometimes happens to emerging economies.
On Friday, the Journal‘s print edition carried another column by the newspaper’s chief economics commentator with the ominous headline: “Markets’ Message: U.S. No Longer Safe.” Numerous other stories all across the financial press provided similar warnings to concerned international investors.
America has a gargantuan national debt of over $35 trillion, so every rise in Treasury yields forces us to divert more and more of our annual federal budget into debt-service. A substantial rise might lead us to the brink of national insolvency, a fate suffered by many other arrogant imperial powers over the centuries.
A couple of days after Trump made his initial tariff announcement, Tucker Carlson interviewed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge-fund manager, and I wasn’t terribly impressed by the latter’s efforts to justify that policy.
Even leaving everything else aside, a 145% tariff rate on Chinese goods amounts to banning their import into America, and this may have serious economic consequences, but probably much less so for China than for us.
As numerous journalists have pointed out, exports to America today only constitute about 3% of China’s GDP, and many of those same goods will just go elsewhere instead. So losing a portion of those sales would certainly be a stinging loss to some Chinese businesses, but hardly a serious blow to that country’s total economy, let alone a near-fatal one.
Meanwhile, many important American consumer and industrial products come from China, sometimes as nearly the sole source, with alternate suppliers difficult to locate. So either the prices of these products will see huge rises, or more likely they will simply disappear from our shelves.
It therefore seems obvious which of the two countries had the stronger position in the trade war and which had the weaker one.
I think the fundamental error that drove Trump to adopt his disastrous tariff proposal was that our ignorant president severely misperceived the relative size and strength of America’s economy compared to that of China, let alone China plus all the other countries that he targeted.
He seemed to assume that we bestrode the world like an economic colossus, but although that may have been true 80 years ago and even to some extent 30 years ago, it is no longer the case today. The rise of Asia and China in particular has completely transformed the global landscape.
As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, most recently a couple of months ago, any examination of the international economic statistics easily demonstrated this.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) represents the total value of all the goods and services produced in a country, and is a useful means of comparing the size of two economies, but it must be treated carefully.
First, it’s generally better to focus on GDPs that are adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). These are based upon local prices, rather than relying upon nominal exchange rates.
For example, if China and America each produced a ton of steel of similar quality, the contribution to their nominal GDPs might be very different, while under the PPP adjustment the impact would be similar. The use of PPP is sometimes called using “world prices” or “real prices” with the resulting PPP-adjusted GDP called “Real GDP.”
Another, somewhat less common approach is to focus on the “productive GDP,” namely the portion of the GDP that excludes the service sector.
Obviously, many service industries are absolutely necessary in a modern economy, and are just as legitimate and real as manufacturing, agriculture, construction, or mining. But unfortunately service sector economic statistics are also far more easily manipulated, especially those involving the non-tradeable service sector.
For example, as columnist Hua Bin pointed out in a post, our stated American GDP is significantly inflated by phantom economic activity called “imputations”:
1. Imputations: this refers to “economic output” that is NOT traded in the marketplace but assigned a value in GDP calculation. One example is the imputed rental of owner-occupied housing, which estimate how much rent you would have to pay if your own house was rented to you. This value is included in the reported GDP in the US. Another example is the treatment of employer-provided health insurance, which estimates how much health insurance you would pay yourself if it was not provided by employer. Again, this imputation is included in GDP calculation in the US.
As of 2023, such imputations account for $4 trillion in US GDP (round 14% of total).
In China, imputation to GDP is ZERO because China doesn’t recognize the concept of imputed/implied economic output in its statistics compilation. Too bad your house is not assigned an arbitrary “productive value” once you buy it in China.
In my subsequent analysis, I noted the advantages of focusing upon productive GDP excluding services, an approach that had been emphasized by Jacques Sapir, director of studies at EHESS, one of France’s leading academic institutions:
He argued that during periods of sharp international conflict, the productive sectors of GDP—industry, mining, agriculture, and construction—probably constitute a far better measure of relative economic power, and Russia was much stronger in that category. So although Russia’s nominal GDP was merely half that of France, its real productive economy was more than twice as large, representing nearly a five-fold shift in relative economic power. This helped explain why Russia so easily surmounted the Western sanctions that had been expected to cripple it. Similarly, as far back as 2019, China’s real productive economy was already three times larger than that of America.
These economic trends favoring Russia and China have continued over the last couple of years, and Russia’s real productive economy has now surpassed that of both Japan and Germany to become the fourth largest in the world. Meanwhile, China’s lead over the nations of the West has steadily grown during that same period. I recently noted that although the New York Times has run numerous wordy articles describing China’s alleged economic stagnation, an actual chart it displayed suggested something extremely different:
But automobiles are the world’s largest industrial sector, with manufacturing and sales together totaling nearly $10 trillion per year, almost twice that of any other. And the following month the Times published a chart showing the actual trajectory of China’s auto exports compared with that of other countries, and the former had now reached a level roughly six times greater than that of the U.S.
Coal mining is also one of the world’s largest industries, and China’s production is more than five times greater than our own, while Chinese steel production is almost thirteen times larger. The American agricultural sector is one of our main national strengths, but Chinese farmers grow three times as much wheat as we do. According to Pentagon estimates, China’s current ship-building capacity is a staggering 232 times greater than our own.
Obviously America still dominates some other important sectors of production, with our innovative fracking technology allowing us to produce several times as much oil and natural gas as does China. But if we consult the aggregate economic statistics provided by the CIA World Factbook or other international organizations, we find that the total size of China’s real productive economy—perhaps the most reliable measure of global economic power—is already more than three times larger than that of the U.S. and also growing much more rapidly. Indeed, according to that important economic metric, China now easily outweighs the combined total of the entire American-led bloc—the United States, the rest of the Anglosphere, the European Union, and Japan—an astonishing achievement, and something very different from what most casual readers of the Times might assume.
Last year I produced a table listing the size of the world’s largest two dozen economies, including their nominal, real, and real productive figures. All this data was drawn from the CIA World Factbook, which conveniently provided estimates of the 2023 real PPP-adjusted GDP for the countries of the world, as well as the most recent figures for the nominal GDPs, the economic sector composition, and the national populations. Since some of these estimates came from slightly different years, I’d rounded the values to emphasize that these statistics are merely approximations. Although I’d hoped that the 2024 economic statistics might now be out, they’re not yet available on either the CIA or World Bank websites.
| 2023 GDP | 2023 GDP ($Millions) | Per Capita Incomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | Nominal | Total PPP | Productive PPP | Nominal | PPP | Productive PPP |
| China | 17,795,000 | 31,227,000 | 15,114,000 | 12,600 | 22,100 | 10,700 |
| European Union | 18,349,000 | 25,399,000 | 6,782,000 | 40,800 | 56,500 | 15,100 |
| USA | 27,361,000 | 24,662,000 | 4,932,000 | 80,000 | 72,100 | 14,400 |
| India | 3,550,000 | 13,104,000 | 5,032,000 | 2,500 | 9,300 | 3,600 |
| Japan | 4,213,000 | 5,761,000 | 1,797,000 | 34,200 | 46,800 | 14,600 |
| Germany | 4,456,000 | 5,230,000 | 1,642,000 | 53,000 | 62,200 | 19,500 |
| Russia | 2,021,000 | 5,816,000 | 2,158,000 | 14,400 | 41,300 | 15,300 |
| Indonesia | 1,371,000 | 3,906,000 | 2,137,000 | 4,900 | 13,900 | 7,600 |
| Brazil | 2,174,000 | 4,016,000 | 1,096,000 | 9,900 | 18,300 | 5,000 |
| France | 3,031,000 | 3,764,000 | 798,000 | 44,300 | 55,000 | 11,700 |
| United Kingdom | 3,340,000 | 3,700,000 | 773,000 | 48,800 | 54,000 | 11,300 |
| Mexico | 1,789,000 | 2,873,000 | 1,020,000 | 13,700 | 22,000 | 7,800 |
| Italy | 2,255,000 | 3,097,000 | 805,000 | 37,000 | 50,800 | 13,200 |
| Turkey | 1,108,000 | 2,936,000 | 1,148,000 | 13,200 | 34,900 | 13,600 |
| South Korea | 1,713,000 | 2,615,000 | 1,085,000 | 32,900 | 50,200 | 20,800 |
| Spain | 1,581,000 | 2,242,000 | 578,000 | 33,400 | 47,400 | 12,200 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1,068,000 | 1,831,000 | 857,000 | 29,200 | 50,100 | 23,400 |
| Canada | 2,140,000 | 2,238,000 | 667,000 | 55,200 | 57,700 | 17,200 |
| Iran | 402,000 | 1,440,000 | 647,000 | 4,500 | 16,300 | 7,300 |
| Australia | 1,724,000 | 1,584,000 | 458,000 | 64,400 | 59,200 | 17,100 |
| Thailand | 515,000 | 1,516,000 | 673,000 | 7,400 | 21,700 | 9,600 |
| Egypt | 396,000 | 1,912,000 | 880,000 | 3,600 | 17,200 | 7,900 |
| Taiwan | 611,000 | 1,143,000 | 432,000 | 25,900 | 48,400 | 18,300 |
| Poland | 811,000 | 1,616,000 | 688,000 | 20,900 | 41,700 | 17,800 |
| Nigeria | 363,000 | 1,275,000 | 556,000 | 1,500 | 5,400 | 2,300 |
| Pakistan | 338,000 | 1,347,000 | 586,000 | 1,300 | 5,300 | 2,300 |
If we focus upon the interesting metric of Per Capita Real Productive Income, we see that although the people of the Western bloc—the U.S., the EU, and Japan—are still comfortably ahead of the Chinese, the difference of about 35% is probably much smaller than most naive Westerners might assume. This may provide an indication that the actual standard of living for ordinary citizens in those different countries is not so very different, and may be rapidly converging. Meanwhile, although the Western media often pairs China with India, the figure for that former country is nearly 200% larger.
We should also recognize that a very substantial fraction of China’s population is still rural, and their incomes are far below those of urban Chinese. This suggests that the actual standard of living for the latter may already be roughly comparable to that of Americans or Europeans, an absolutely astonishing development given China’s horrendous past poverty. The videos of Western YouTubers either living in China or visiting that country seem to support that surprising conclusion.
For example, a young South African woman named Lizzie moved to China a few years ago and then persuaded her mother to do the same. Over the last couple of years, she started a popular YouTube channel, producing many videos of her daily life in the city of Kunming. One of these from last month showed off the very nice, fully furnished three bedroom apartment of one of her friends, spacious, modern, and possibly better in many respects than the living arrangements of a large majority of ordinary Americans. She emphasized the amazingly low rent of only about $300 per month plus another $100 per year for utilities.
This constituted a perfect example of why PPP statistics are a much better measure of China’s actual economy and standard of living than estimates based upon nominal exchange rates.
So if under that plausible metric of international comparison, China’s economy is indeed already more than three times larger than America’s and growing much more rapidly, Trump’s belief that we would gain the upper hand by banning Chinese products from our market seemed a remarkably foolish notion. Attempting to bully and intimidate a country several times bigger than your own made no sense, let alone cutting us off from the rest of the world by simultaneously hitting them with huge tariffs.
After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the West imposed an unprecedented wave of economic sanctions aimed at drastically reducing Russia’s trade with the rest of the world. The intent was to destroy the Russian economy, thereby destabilizing and perhaps overthrowing the government of President Vladimir Putin.
A major reason those sanctions failed so completely was that they were generally ignored by a large majority of the world’s countries. Most importantly, as Russia’s large and friendly neighbor, China easily replaced all the consumer and industrial goods that Western countries had withdrawn.
But Trump’s new tariff proposal amounted to implementing exactly the same extreme economic sanctions against his own country, and doing so across the entire world with no exceptions. So if sanctioning Russia had been intended to severely damage its economy, self-sanctioning America to a far greater extent would surely have the same consequences.
In my younger years, I’d greatly enjoyed the science fiction and fantasy of L. Sprague de Camp, much of which had a satirical or allegorical theme, and this included The Fallible Fiend, published just over a half-century ago. In that amusing tale, the politically diverse city-states of Novaria were menaced by the looming invasion of a horde of cannibals, with efforts to mobilize them into organizing a united defense proving very difficult.
As an example of such problems, the polity of Solymbria annually selected its ruling archon by random lot. Unfortunately, that position happened to be currently filled by a professional wrestler named Gavindos, who was a particularly bone-headed fellow, unable to comprehend the desperate threat that his people faced.
For many years I’ve regarded Donald Trump as America’s own Gavindos.
Related Reading:
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Victor Gao is a Chinese lawyer, businessman and academic who is the vice president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization (CCG). He holds a BA from Soochow University, MA from Beijing Foreign Studies University and a MA and JD from Yale University. He bluntly explains in 4o seconds that China does not need to trade with the United States. It has existed for 5000 years and will prosper with the rest of the world.
Video Link
Trump went from 2024 campaign of getting along with Xi Jinping and negotiated trade deals, now to this insane protectionism.
Thank you for the mention of The Fallible Fiend, which is a very enjoyable tale.
I have no strong opinion on tariff policy but will note that while most economists are nominally against tariffs the large majority of countries nevertheless impose them. I.e., there’s a huge disconnect between theory and practice. That itself warrants investigation.
But the bigger issue is that Trump’s tariff policy distracts from the far more important issue which, is demographic policy and the dispossession of white Christians in America and, without whom, America will cease to be not only “American” (in all but name) but also First World. Immigration policy, “building the wall and mass deportations,” were the central issue on which Trump was elected in both terms, but which he’s reneged on fixing repeatedly – except to token degree.
China is capable of becoming a First World country and first-rate power principally because it’s (1) homogeneous and (2) filled with Chinese people who are generally bright. Similarly, America became the world’s greatest power due possessing an (almost) homogeneous population of North Western Europeans – the largest such population of any nation in the world – more than that of England and Germany put together – the other two great developed and industrial powers of the 20th century.
If history is any guide, America’s ability to remain a First World power will diminish as it loses its homogeneity and the European majority which founded and built it.
More on that:
https://www.unz.com/aanglin/hey-retard-there-is-no-cap-on-h-1b-in-2023-755020-people-were-brought-in-72-3-of-which-were-indians/#comment-6929520
China is doomed, just look at these statistics.
China has lost at least 7.4 million jobs in labor-intensive manufacturing industries between 2011 and 2023.
Total Cybertron victory!
February 2022
Video Link
China Just Triggered A FINANCIAL Earthquake! RMB Goes Global, Bypassing the Dollar & SWIFT
This video explains why it is doomed to fail. A new financial architecture is upon ‘US’.
Blockchain payments where everyone on the planet is equal. Bad faith actors AKA Trump are the proverbial dinosaur. He was advised by is frield Banon,Dump Ukraine, blame it on Biden, oh but no, Trump is different he can use his outsized power to stop the war in 24 hours, such hubris.
But this has nothing on what he will FUBAR with Iran. His Yemen adventure and his YES MEN ,peace through strenght studipty will finish of the UA if he attacks Iran.
This undated page of typed text defined various measures of intelligence used by clinical psychologists evaluating intelligence. It first table lists mental ages from 1 to 12 years, describes the “behavior potentialities” for each mental age, and gives the “diagnostic label” for each mental age, from idiot (least capable – mental age from 1 to 2 years) to imbecile (somewhat more capable – mental age 3 to 7 years) to moron (most capable of those listed – mental age from 8 to 12 years)
Trump is a Moron!
“That the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Depression of the 1930s is a New Deal myth in which America’s schoolchildren have been indoctrinated for decades.
The Depression began with the crash of the stock market in 1929, nine months before Smoot-Hawley became law. The real villain: The Federal Reserve, which failed to replenish that third of the money supply that had been wiped out by thousands of bank failures.”
“In 1930 total imports were only 4% of GNP. Smoot-Hawley applied to 1/3 of that, only 1.3% of GNP.”
Pat Buchanan
Well, maybe we should just take our ball back and go home. Oops, wrong analogy. We could sit back and just wait them out… No, we’ll have to quit and just give up. Maybe all of the above?
I’m guessing we’re gonna fight. Now or never.
Didn’t president Trump recently say ,” I am the law “? Couldn’t be illegal in any way, shape or form? …. Not if we’re “making” money.
36 Trillion dollars debt sure does create a lot of billionaires and million heirs,… and an entire culture of peace, … and experts who think they are really smart… And politicians who aren’t.
Trump is the dumbass bear from Song of the South.
Video Link
It is an essential part of Mr. Trump’s identity that he is a deal maker. Over his many years in the trenches of big business and high-risk deals, he has learned a lot of ways to bring his opponents or opposite numbers to the bargaining table. He has also learned how to use chaos – even the deliberately induced kind – to his advantage. How? By putting the opposition off-balance and getting them to show themselves as they are, instead of the carefully managed images so many leaders and institutions use these days.
Yeah, he’s crazy all right – but crazy like a fox.
Trump is widely considered in certain circles to be boorish, rude and disruptive, but the electorate intended him to be. For decades, we the people have stood by as politicians conducted the affairs of the country with “decorum” and “amity” – to use one Congressman’s words – whilst making a wreck of the country and its economy. Politeness didn’t work; now it is time to bring in the wrecking ball. The bull in the china shop, whatever image you prefer.
In international affairs and trade, the situation has been the same: We’ve been politely getting our clocks cleaned by everyone else, while the disloyal ruling class has plundered our wealth and shipping our factories and shops overseas. Other nations can’t be blamed for profiting from our foolishness and stupidity, but they certainly can for their protectionist trade policies, tariffs and other barriers they have in place.
Trump’s “punitive” tariffs are reciprocal, in other words they have been put into place to match tariffs on U.S. goods. In certain cases, such as the PRC, where the crimes and misdeeds have been especially egregious, the President has thrown in some punitive damages, too – and well he should. They’ve been getting rich cheating us for years.
A lot of what is happening is designed to get other nations to come to the negotiating table, and as we have seen, they will once prompted insistently-enough. The U.S. marketplace is our trump card, since it is still one of the most-desirable in the world. And the U.S. has a much stronger hand economically against the PRC than it does militarily. Better a trade war than a real one….
It is long past time that ordinary Americans have someone in the Oval Office who cares about them.
And Trump has one thing going for him which is inarguable from the point of view of the typical MAGA voter ~ he makes all of the right enemies.
Does China mine much gold? If they do, they’re going to benefit greatly from the decline of the U.S. dollar.
Trump didn’t need to put any tariffs on Russia, because Russia was already sanctioned by Biden. Trump is very different from Biden, but his loony trade policies continue the trend of declining U.S. financial power that began under Biden.
I was pro-Trump the first time. I thought he was a novelty, and against Hillary, was up for anything. Something new would have been nice.
… then he started making gun control deals with democrats, raising prices with militaristic tariffs on China, and doing his best to provoke Middle East war. Then COVID and Fauci happened.
Yet even now, America is full of clueless MAGAts who think this Jewish con artist is their savior, while he literally sells their country to the highest bidder and tanks the economy in a tariff pump-and-dump. It’s a religion at this point. MAGA is the latest evolution of the Jewish cult that destroyed Rome.
You will hate me for writing this, but Trump’s instincts are right – although he fails in the execution. But, of course, you seem to gloss over the possibility that Trump is performing his typical, characteristic New York Jewish (yes, yes I know) sweated tenement owner landlord intimidatory schtick and playing hardball for the sack of knocking down his adversary into a more congenial offer as negotiations proceed.
To put it bluntly, the USA’s cumulative external liabilities due to persistent, chronic and ever expanding trade deficits are enormous. Despite all the panglossian bullshit you might read from second rate putzes, plain old 2+2 = 4 tells us that, inevitably, the assets of the USA will be wholly owned by foreign creditors, and Americans will work in the interests of foreign rent seekers. Such is the inevitable trajectory of the neo liberal economic paradigm so lauded by the WSJ and The Economist – and which, basically, has had absolute monopoly power within western policy making circles this last half century. The second prong of this hellish spear is, of course, massive uncontrolled third world immigration into the west.
We had a foretaste of the ultimate denouement of this neo liberal mush back in 2008 with the George W. Bush minority mortgage disaster, which oddly enough has been more or less memory holed – as an aside the UK, the other big neo liberal exponent has grown one whit, economically speaking, since then. Here we had the scenario in which the USA’s burgeoning minority descended population – many arrived illegally, lowly productive in low paid work – ramped up the US economy in a short lived boom which was ultimately based on the recycling of American dollars held by foreign creditors finding a home in the USA, but going to an unproductive destination developed by unproductive people, rather than being used to sustain productive export earning industry. Doubtless neo liberals of the time said it was ‘all good’ and called people who questioned the logic of it all ‘ignorant fools’. But look where it ended up.
Recall that maxim – In a crash, all correlations go to 1 ?
Nothing an intellectual likes best than to smirk. I should now, because I was one. But what makes one intellectual evolve, is to learn when he should refrain from smirking. This is one of those times. Trump is doing what’s in principle right, although not by the right expedient means. To not see this difference is to throw the baby with the bathwater. One can do that when one has no interest in the well-being of the baby. Intellectuals are arrogant bystanders, a.k.a. kibitzs, a.k.a. of the kind who have ‘no skin in the game’ worth mentioning (Taleb). The proverb says that ‘the duty of the kibitz is to shut up and to have no stinking feet’. So, there may be some truth to it…
Not in the literal sense of ‘shuting up’, of course, but in the sense of perceiving that a veneer of piecemeal knowledge about this and that is no substitute for understanding. And the understanding here, since the aftermath of the financial crisis 2008 ff, is that markets have decoupled from the economy. In other words, markets are skinnerian adaptations to monetary policy, i.e. ‘funny money’, QE and all the acronyms, having forgone their function as correctives of bad policy. Casino markets, financialization, speculation replacing valuations – these are all notions capturing the same underlying phenomenon. See the work of Robert J. Shiller. To stare at the ticker tape hoping to understand something about the world is just as futile as divination, as even greenhorn traders know.
These are the ‘markets’ in action last week. Trump, Bessent, Lutnick were expecting the markets to reward their policy, as it should have been by right. It should have been a field day for America (the notion of ‘tariffs are taxes’ is nonsense, and I addressed it in a different comment). Contrary to that, the ‘easy money’, ‘always up’, inflationary markets freaked out like an addict put in therapy. Literally, as no normal retranching from risk (stocks) to safety (dollar, bonds) occurred.
We still have to understand in full the significance of this new phenomenon. My guess is that the ‘easy money’ is leaving US shores for the greener pastures of EU, where there is no end in sight to QEs: to the contrary, as Germany will remove it’s cap on debt, and the EU announced a trillion in new stimulus. As a matter of fact, these capital flows into EU were already noted in march, mostly by ‘dumb’ ETF flows. There you have it, the crowd of speculators moving where the going gets easy. Good riddance, I’d say…
Pushing out these bad, flammable, easy, funny money, call them as you wish, I think it is a very good thing. Markets would recuperate their valuation function, the dollar would regain real strenght (not as a carry trade vehicle) , inflation (always a monetary phenomenon) will reduce, a deflationary regimen will ensue (good for prices, for people, for savers, bad for debtors). What we should wish for is for the FED to stay out and for Trump to not call on them to intervene (as he always does, ‘lower the rates’!). The cleansing of monetary excesses has begun.
This is a time for the intellectual to be contrarian, to ditch the mainstream sources, prejudices, elitist biases, the vociferation of the ackmans (borrons of easy money). In effect, this means to understand what Trumps aims to accomplish. So, stay the tariff course! 🙂
Well Unz, and while this might be news to you, that’s a problem — and should be seen as a problem by reasonable Americans.
Of course you would never write an article describing the trade policy that led to the US being dependent on China for ‘many important consumer and industrial products’, with ‘alternate suppliers difficult to locate’, as ‘looney.’
And that’s not even considering the societal and human cost of that trade policy.
Too soon.
Obviously the Tariff proposals are being used to persuade goods mfgrs to invest/reshore production in the US for the US Market; and Team_Trump has claimed that they’ve been approached by several.
“Investing in the US for the US Market” is the key, here. Murica are amongst those Nation-States with higher costs of living; but Energy+Agricultural_Goods are aplenty. The Food_Goods+Services Group needs a good amount of cleaning up; but let’s save that for RFK.
It’s not very difficult to re-shore as whiners are making it out to be, IMO. Tech/Mfg R&D+HQ as well as the MIC (I used to be assigned as a Naval Officer on the DoD side of MIC Industrial_Production/Engineering_Mgmt with the usual exposure to Shipbuilding+Aviation MRO) have strong footprints.
Plenty of Universities and Vocational Schools. Plenty of Navy/Army_Air_Corps Vocational Tech Trng – with the Veterans and Reservists to boost the Labor Base. MRO/Refurbishment know-how are readily available.
For the Auto Industry, German and Japanese Automakers have been making several models here already. Cost differentials of Labor, Facility, Healthcare Ins, etc will be spread over the production volumes; but we’re already familiar with seeing such similar Operational Costs of Scale from Healthcare (Hospitals+Clinics), Construction, and Hydrocarbon Drilling.
Murica have been recruiting €URoGarten Mfgrs here with investment+tax incentives – more heavily since FUBAR’d Biden blew up the NordStreams. Trump is adding to that on a “very high volume/rudeness settings”.
Plenty of Real Estate. TSLA for one rcvd a portion their subsidies in the form of renovating an idle GM/Toyota Plant with Toyota’s permission and assistance getting started. Of course watching the ingrate Musk trash+discredit Toyota’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle deployment here in the US wasn’t amusing; but I think these are feasible BECAUSE Trump’s going to establish reasonable Tariffs and attractive Investment+IncomeTax+G&A Incentives.
US Treasury can print all the U$D to make it happen (avoiding issuing Bonds); but Team_Trump’s Bessent may come up with “MAGA Re-Shoring Bonds” that may share the advertising styles of War Bonds and special Tax Offset Incentives that would attract Individual+Corporate Buyers.
Completely Achievable – since Trump/Bessent/Lutnik should have various Incentive Schemes in the Works.
After all, Exporters to Murica have THEIR Sets of protective Tariffs and have blocked Counterpart Murican Mfgrs from setting up in certain industries.
Murica can simply reciprocate those roadblocks for concessions and deals.
Bonus? We’re probably going to automate/AI ourselves eventually to the point where we won’t require the personnel we need today; but we still would like to have those plants making goods here – at least for the US Market…
We’ve several years to see this unfold…
How accurate was that analogy intended to be? The Wikipedia entry linked to, within the quote above, also contains the following sentence:
“In early 41, Caligula was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers.”
There has been much speculation, though inconclusive, pertaining to which neurological disease caused Caligula’s reported madness. One of these is syphilis. During the Middle ages a common treatment for syphilis was mercury, which itself induces inconvenient side effects. As we know, there has also been speculation about the possible medical or pharmacological causes of Putin’s delusional perceptions, which compelled him to initiate and then unnecessarily perpetuate a very deadly war of aggression for over three years.
With regard to the embedded video of an apartment being rented by a female friend in China, who likes to wear jewelry and shows off no more than five books, fewer than numbers of horizontal bottles of wine in her collection:
I commented on this video clip just over three weeks ago. Various conspicuous cues give the impression that this apartment – which even includes a “western toilet“, wow – is being used to operate a private bordello to make money, for instance two extra rooms furnished with large double beds, and more. The big movable mirror is likely not made of glass but a simple reflective coating, as in modern car’s parabolic headlights. Readers who bother to watch the video and read my comments will likely reach the same conclusion.
https://www.unz.com/bhua/the-2024-nobel-economics-prize-is-a-farce/#comment-7046995
Isn’t the real problem the price gouging US companies are practicing?
China has figured out how to utilize AI in manufacturing to make products cheaper by using robotics and fewer humans.
Video Link
In response, the United States keeps putting tariffs to try to mask how much profit US manufacturers are making, how much they are marking-up the prices to sell the products.
Video Link
In 2024, Biden put:
a 100% tariff on Chinese-built EVs,
a 50% tariff on solar cells,
and 25% on steel, aluminum, EV batteries, and other critical minerals.
https://electrek.co/2024/09/13/us-100-tariffs-on-chinese-evs-will-begin-this-month/
And Diana Furchtgott-Roth wanted Biden to ban Chinese EVs, not tariff.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6352962541112
Why can’t the US accept the lower prices from AI manufacturing and pass on these lower price benefits to the consumers? Why do they want to keep inflating costs? Don’t the elites have enough super-yachts, and beach houses?
– The Roadrunner cartoon is said to have been created by a disgruntled
cartoonist who couldn´t get over how mind-numbingly stupid Tom & Jerry was,
so he set out to make one so screamingly idiotic even Americans would notice,
and it was instant cult (I liked it too 😁).
– When Hülagü Khan took Baghdad he reportedly sentenced the Sultan to starve
to death in a tower with his riches, “to contemplate what he should have spent
on his army” (more probably he was rolled in a carpet and trampled as was
custom then); in other words the Orange One has realized the US “economy”
is an extortion racket, a problem documented since at least Septimius Severus
(“Pay the soldiers – the rest don´t matter”); expect military spending to at least
double – it´s Little Britain all over again
(Bessent at least knows the absurdly overvalued dollar is the problem
but the (((donors))) have other plans).
Trump, Vance and the whole entourage epitomize The Ugly American! Tariffs are just another way to weaponize the dollar and degrade the Empire of Lies on the world stage.
It’s an apt comparison, much better than your earlier comparison of Trump with Mao.
FYI, Donald Trump is a WWE character, or rather he played himself at WrestleMania 23, aka “Battle of the Billionaires” (April 1, 2007). Trump’s wrestler won and so Trump got to shave bald Vince McMahon, the owner of WWE. In 2013, McMahon returned the favor by inducting Trump into the WWE Hall of Fame. How fake and gay is that?
Video Link
Fierce take down of China economy basher Michael Pettis:
Michael Pettis misleading the American zeitgeist on China
Public intellectual and avid tweeter’s views on China are mostly wrong and dangerously en vogue in tariff-crazed Washington
https://asiatimes.com/2025/04/michael-pettis-misleading-the-american-zeitgeist-on-china
Debunking the Pettis-Miran Hypotheses
And how did we get here?
https://policytensor.substack.com/p/debunking-the-pettis-miran-hypotheses
I was worried about the influence of Musk and Peter Thiel before Trump took office.
Unexpectedly, more than four years later, Trump is still using Navarro and Gordon Chang… And this time there was no steward to check his recklessness.
The future will be the era of smuggling.
It’s a mistake for Trump to elevate the concerns of current manufacturing workers above all other stakeholders.
Fixing industrial competitiveness is a tier 1 priority and while all stakeholders need to be at the table, they can’t have veto power.
Trump needs to separate the discussion of manufacturing employment and industrial competitiveness, nostalgia for manufacturing will make the US poorer.
China has made the right choice on this issue, pushing to the technology frontier needs to happen whether or not it leads to jobs, China understands this.
Has Mr. Unz studied the asset portfolio of the Chinese elite, who presumably hold enough dollars to wipe their asses till kingdom come and beyond? Do they care anymore to have acquired so many dollars over past decades as they now have enough nukes and other wmd’s, not to mention semiconductors etc. to reach parity with the U.S.? Their population, like the native U.S. population, is shrinking but is still several times the size of America’s, enough to sacrifice a substantial percentage in a prolonged conflict of any kind with the latter. This seems like a bunch of theater to me.
Let’s switch the logic to see where you err.
I think you will probably agree with me that something is seriously wrong with our economic system. You described this yourself in your earlier articles where you described the cheering of the guy who murdered the UnitedHealth CEO. You contrasted this with how China handled a case of Pharma fraud (execution). You argued that this shows how broken our system is.
So what is our system since WW2? Well, it is multi faceted, but one aspect of it is low tariffs. China does not operate like this. If you want to enter the Chinese market you have to enter a JV with a Chinese company. Could BMW just sell their card to China? No. They had to build in China and join a JV with the Chinese in order to gain access to the rapidly growing Chinese middle class.
So IF you agree with me, that our system is broken and that cities like Detroit prove this, then something has to change. Why not tariffs? Surely not in that comicbook way like on April 2nd but yes, why not increase tariffs and operate like we used to prior to WW2 and how a large number of countries, including China, still do? Some of them do not nsme their tactics tariffs but it is the same thing: adding barriers to entry the market.
Victor Gao is great. Here’s his response to one Yookay clown to a similar question.
Video Link
Aptly observed. If Netanyahu is cartoonishly evil, Trump is cartoonishly stupid. Wish I could change the channel.
I’ve heard similar numbers for India.
Now, if China would just switch to English as their national language…
Some counterpoints and extensions.
Law is not what it used to be. In the Soviet Union they had show trials, in the USA we have lawfare, used extensively against Trump.
The law is bent to be used to detain or attack notorious individuals under espionage charges (e.g. Snowden, Assange).
Soros has funded a campaign to weaken the force of law against true criminals.
Deterioration of the law is a given presently, so what Trump did with the law to enact tariffs was more of the same, not something new or exclusive of his domain.
Law in America is like the Media in America: corrupted to a large extent though it still works in the domain of the small things.
Lol! It is not law what slows down Europeans.
What slows down Europeans is the conflict between national sovereignty and the EC (i.e. Brussels) totalitarian vision. Presently here they are criticizing the Spanish PM for traveling to China to meet Xi Jinping. These eurokomissars are saying that any contact with China must be thru the EC. Europe is slow because of this conflict.
I’d wager some good money that the campaing to innoculate millions people with a substance that hasn’t passed Phase III Trials during the COVID epidemic in the West was insider trading of a larger magnitude.
Those plots you pulled out from U. of Michigan and Baker, Bloom and Davis and re-published by FT are not national data, they are surveys, and can easily be manipulated.
Yes, the policy reversal was due to the trend with treasuries.
This highlights a rather fundamental issue that you are not taking into account: macroecon theory lacks good models of international markets for out-of-equilibrium conditions.
Not that it matters much but it seems to me you are being unfair to Trump and his team.
What they have is not a policy. What they have is a vision and a method, the vision is a re-industrialized America and the method is ‘trial and error’.
You may say the method is blunt, stupid, cartoonish, this trial and error. But America is so large and well measured by open markets that it is possible to use trial and error without causing an immediate catastrophe. It’s like steering a 350-m container vessel fully loaded with plenty sensors in all key locations. Any undesirable outcome can be measured instantly and all moves can be reverted because the very large ship changes course slowly.
And recall, (1) America will collapse under the weight of her debt and dependence on the US$ being a reserve currency IF nothing is done, and (2) macroecon theory falls short by far, it’s not like there is a solid body of well tested theory of world markets which Trump and his team are ignoring, no, there is nothing of the sort. So, from (1) and (2) follows ‘trial and error’.
Misperceived? How can you perceive the impact of re-parameterizing some part of a very large mechanism without good mathematical models of cause and effect? Trump’s misperception was not his, it came from shortcomings of macroecon models.
I think Trump’s team have a sufficient degree of understanding of the current status of the American economy vis-á-vis China and the world BUT this degree of understanding only permits to have a vision and a method, yet it is not sufficient to develop well thought-out policies to achieve the vision, due to the poverty of macro-economy as a quantitative discipline, not because of Trumps arrogant personality or his perceived ignorance.
And thus, between the campaign and inauguration, somebody got to him.
Trump on the stump:
* Never mentioned Greenland
* Never mentioned Panama
* Never mentioned tariffs
* Never mentioned Canada
* Never was stupid enough to say “Gulf of America”
So who got to him? Who took a simple America-First campaign and trashed it into a satire of every bullshit trope the world assossiates with the stupidest people in the country and made it Policy?
The Trump 47 is the Reveal. The USA is under control, and it isn’t Trump, and it isn’t even being run for American interests.
Sure, we suspected as much years ago. Now it’s a proven fact.
Thanks for an intelligent response to theatrical incompetence Mr. Unz.
So surely the question is, ‘where is the US domestic resistance to such political incompetence’? So far the real resistance, the resistance that changed policy, came from outside the US, the selling of US treasury bonds and the tariff retaliation from China, both of which changed Trump’s policy.
Meanwhile, here in the US, where is the REAL resistance? It seems Big Business, Unions, the Democrats, the PEOPLE, MAGA dissidents, are offering at most tepid resistance to ONE MAN making, on his own or with his team of incompetent sycophants, decisions that economically affect everybody in the most powerful country on earth. Does Trump really have that much power, to make a decision, change that decision, day after day, and though it negatively affects the country, only resistance from outside the country changes his policy?
I don’t understand any of this.
USA adds tariffs, end of the world, how dare they, this is insane, cartoonish
Every other country adds tariffs, responsible, good trade practices, logical, worthy
All I know is that my entire industry was gutted and shipped to China so my income stopped growing in 2000, burn this shit to the ground I don’t care, I’ve nothing to lose.
The tarifs only apply to China. It is meant to cause a recession in China, and the closure of many factories in China.
And that’s not all, it’s also about taking control of energy supplies, as well as ensuring that Israel becomes the hegemon in the middle East. Iran stands in the way hence the threats against it.
Ritter is telling Iran like it is
Trump will do anything to restore US hegemony. And If he can bring in a sdefanged Iran and a co-operative Russia on board to thwart China, he will. If Iran and Russia do not cooperate Iran will be first bombed with conventional weapons probably by Israel. Iran will be warned that if it retaliate against Israel or Oil supplies in the Gulf, the US will use tactical nukes.
That’s why Iran is going to surrender as it did to Obama, but this time Iran will have to give a lot more to be spared.
In any case, China will be blackmailed soon with denial of energy supplies either through war, or by bringing Iran under US control.
The key to blackmailing China and perhaps Russia if it doesn’t cooperate is Iran, the weakest chain.
Like Syria, Iran will be abandoned by China ans Russia to buy time, but both will soon come to regret it.
Trump knows neither China or Russia will directly intervene in any war with Iran. That’s why his threats against Iran must be taken seriously.
Iran will surrender, I guarantee it. Just wait.
They will just pretend there is a win win deal with US, as they did with Obama, to save face, and even declare victory over Trump. And Trump will let them pretend they won.
Perhaps a function of his being surrounded by Zionist shills. They need to keep up this illusion, otherwise the Golem might start wondering whether he can afford all the financial and military support Israel needs.
Just as “it’s always 1938” in foreign policy, “it’s always 1970” in economic policy.
trump was told that sanctions would work, they didnt so now he is no doubt going to do more of what the insane fools that are neocons will tell him will work, even though biden as their puppet already proved them wrong with russia.
Donald Trump’s Looney Tunes Trade Policy
It’s really Howard Lutnick’s Looney Tunes Trade Policy
Everything about Zion Don really is Zion.
Trumps strategery can be traced to Stephen Miran, former Hudson Bay Capital ‘senior strategist’, and now Chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Miran argued in the Administration’s blueprint, A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, that China is the economic ‘enemy’ of the world, and US policy should counter it, by way of tariffs (plus an implied military presence). But China tariffs, in his opinion, are not enough. Instead, the US must enact tariffs on every country it trades with. Why? Otherwise, Chinese goods will flow through ‘third party’ countries, and China will still benefit.
Not only that, Miran argues that any country trading with China should be considered an ‘unreliable’ US partner, and that foreign policy must be ready to sanction those countries, especially Europe, for trading with China.
Mr. Unz’ argument is based on the assumption that the ‘natural’ economic order is universal ‘free trade.’ This view implies the naturalness and necessity of ‘one world government.’
This is thinking based on abstractions. It does not accord with the real world.
Wealth, the creation of wealth rests on three pillars: agriculture, extraction, manufacturing. What the US has suffered is the destruction of one of these pillars, manufacturing.
In a one world system this wouldn’t matter. There would be no nation states and therefore economic inequalities between regions wouldn’t matter. The entire world’s economic activity would be in one universal ‘pot.’ Mr. Unz’ view seems to be that that is the ‘natural order of things.’
I disagree. I think Darwin would disagree, too.
If there is to be a future for the US, for us, manufacturing must be restored. It’s that simple.
To my mind what is needed now is accountability. What is needed is justice. Certain individuals, politicians in particular, gave our manufacturing away. Many of them are dead now. Regardless, these individuals should be named and if alive punished.
The billionaire class instigated and benefitted from the betrayal of our nation. They should be named and punished as well.
When pigs fly, you say.
Yes.
We’re toast. Tariffs or no tariffs the US will never regain its manufacturing.
Look on the bright side of things. Trump’s antics are annoying the super rich. That’s an enjoyable spectacle. At least we have that.
First I’d point out that easily adjusted tariffs are nothing like sanctions, they are not the same thing practically or conceptually, their effects would not necessarily be so similar, even for high tariffs. Certainly the American President seems to be ALLOWED to reduce tariffs. The American President DOES NOT seem to have ability to remove sanctions from the enemies of the Jews, anymore than he has the ability to raise tariffs on the job-outsourcing Jews without their raising Cain.
That awful apartment being cheap in China means little about the size of the Chinese economy. The only thing missing from the video are all the bugs crawling on the walls. They let them crawl around that’s what it was like when I visited their apartments here. The price of real estate in the United States and much of the West is a banker’s bubble intended to extort as much money as possible from wage-earners, forcing them to compete with an endless stream of migrants who are literally given accommodations paid for by the government. The United States is a very corrupt Jewish controlled country, and that is why we have all these Chinese here, and throughout the Western world.
Remember the Democrats’ “Hug a Chinese” campaign of early 2020? I think we need to start understanding that a lot of politics is a SHOW.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/25/as-if-we-were-the-disease-coronavirus-brings-prejudice-for-italys-chinese-workers
Apparently Chinese coolies are brought to work in slave-like conditions in Europe and North and South America:
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/workers-found-slavery-like-conditions-byd-construction-site-brazil-2024-12-23/
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3306317/chinese-nationals-rescued-horrific-forced-labour-during-us-factory-raid
The white man is being told by the Jew they are inferior slaves to the oriental coolie, and therefore must give up their country and pay more for everything, and live by the black criminals or pay thousands a month to keep away from them.
Indeed, there might be white English teachers who go to China to avoid the oppressive Jewish culture of America. But I would not recommend it, especially today, since the Chinese indignation about white men seems to be growing to negro levels.
Trump’s actions, especially seeing as they are discretionary and easily reversed, are absurdly MODEST compared to this extreme, psychopathic plan of national destruction being carried out in every European-founded nation. A bit of market panic over such a thing can’t be avoided, or might be deliberately orchestrated.
The chauvinists on here may think I’m anti-Chinese, but believe me, compared to the average Westerner, and even more the average Asian, I’m not anti-Chinese at all. I try to speak freely about China and give my honest impressions, however “ignorant” (or mildly trolling) they may be.
“THAT’S ALL FOLKS”
Sorry, Mr. Unz, but there can be little cartoon inspiration for a Trump totally owned by and obsequious to, Israel. To Zionists his political fortunes depend on their largesse. He is beholden to his owners and must remain obedient to keep on playing president. Has there ever been a cabinet in any administration that is so thoroughly Kike as Trump’s is?
Consider this possibility. The US is far weaker than most Americans suppose. Some sort of drastic reforms are necessary, particularly to Medicaid and Medicare, if entitlements and the consequent federal government deficits are not to bring it low.
What reforms? Maybe Trump is casting about desperately hoping to stumble on policies that will ameliorate the situation, or at least defer the evil day.
The one thing he can’t afford to do is to be frank with the US electorate which is terribly keen on all those entitlements and equally keen on avoiding paying the tax bills required to fund them.
(In this the Americans are being true to the nation’s 18th century origins, the basis of the objection to King George being the idea that British and Irish taxpayers should continue to fund the costs of the colonies.)
I don’t think it will end well but, for all I know, The Donald is pretty much your last hope. You’ll just have to pray that he eventually happens upon better policies than tariffs. He’s a better bet than such do-nothings as President Obama or President Vegetable.
Meantime the rest of Western Civilisation is also going down the gurgler largely by importing wildly unsuitable immigrants in preposterously large numbers. There’s a terrible price to pay for a corrupt, decadent, ignorant, and foolish ruling class.
Thanks.
Here is an American dude living in China explaining the Chinese psyche/personality in 5 minutes.
If Trump were more intelligent, he would avail himself of advisors who really understand the Chinese, not the idiots he has advising him now.
I live in Singapore, a major crossroads between East and West. I see the cultural misunderstandings all the time.
Westerners deal with relationships like negotiations. No position is fixed until there is a pushing by both parties back and forth. Eventually and equilibrium is reached which both agree on.
The Chinese do not deal with relationships like this. They start off with a pre-set boundary. If the other party is/does not defend that line, they will not overstep. Conversely the Chinese expect that the other party also realises that there is such an invisible line and will not overstep. If that line is overstepped, the first reaction of the Chinese is to take a step back, expecting that his restraint is recognised and the other party refrains from pushing further. However Westerners do not know that the Chinese expectation and keep pushing, expecting there to be some pushback. Meanwhile the Chinese keeps stepping back, each time getting angrier and angrier until he reaches his limit. And when that happens, the reactions is swift and drastic, often surprising the Westerner.
This is a cultural tendency not just of the Chinese, but also of East Asia (Northeast and Southeast Asia.)
Now back to the video….
This is exactly what this American dude is explaining in the video.
If Trump knew what the is American dude is talking about, he would know that the Chinese are no longer in a mood to negotiate. If he keeps pushing, expect drastic action.
The Chinese lost 20 million in the last war, and kept on fighting. Incidentally the US lost 0.45 million including both the European and Pacific theatres.
Americans need to ask themselves now. Are they willing to lose 20 million in the next war? The Chinese sure are.
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.
An allegory of US importer’s and Trump Tariffs.
I forget if this is my handle or not, but all of these historical comparisions for Trump I have to throw in my two cents. I just read the John Flynn The Real Roosevelt, thanks Ron!
In Flynns estimate, trying to discover what philosophy or guiding principles were behind Roosevelts various plans and actions – pro this or anti that: in the end, the most likely was that Roosevelt did what would help him get reelected. He would surprise his own cabinet with some crazy plan and leave the details to them. He didn’t care about economics or strategy, what mattered were votes, and shiny new plans, and getting reelected.
I found his account turned my impression of Roosevelt the President on its head. Instead of the fireside chat great man who lead us through trying tines, despite my disagreement with his methods, he was more of an empty suit, a complete lightweight.
Much how I feel about Trump, as a complete idiot and clown, unable to think seriously about the great problems facing him, but chasing whatever shiny thing in front of him, only thinking about votes. He wants a legacy? He wanted to get reelected, and now that he has, he has no idea what to do, because he is not wired to think seriously and carefully – or he would not be who he is, where he is.
Then again, HL Mencken said that the theory of democracy is that the common man knows what is good for him and deserves to get it, good and hard.
One thing you can say about Donald Trump – He doesn’t like getting screwed, he doesn’t like Americans being screwed, and he doesn’t like America getting screwed. Greedy Globalist Big-Biz and political elites both here and abroad have been purposely screwing America for 35 years.
MAGA!. Don’t like it – fuck you.
Now, to go more high-brow on your asses, are you gonna spend your time watching preppy dudes knocking little balls into holes in the ground, or do you have 2 hours to watch this excellent HeroHedge-hosted debate on the tariff?
Makes you wonder about the sanctions on Russia then.
How do you have fair trade with a country, China, that has 4 times the population of the United States and because of their higher average I.Q., 60% of their population is above 100 I.Q While the United States due to its insane 1965 immigration law has a population now where 60% of the population is below a I.Q. of 100 and there for way cheaper labor costs? Also lets us not forget, due our 60-year-old insane trade policy gave them hundreds of years of know-how and technology!
With all due respect, turning this website into a MSDNC blog isn’t a wise business move. It’s your own fault if you were shocked and awed. Trump has been touting tariffs for decades; During his first term, he repeated ad nauseam his instance on reciprocal bilateral trade agreements; Throughout last years campaign and since winning, he declared “tariffs the most beautiful word to me.”; and he telegraphed that “liberation day” was coming on April 2nd.
Seriously, what have you been doing with yourself?
Every other conventional assertion in this article is post hoc disingenuousness. The most embarrassing is the repetition of the middle school taught break of the Time/Space Continuum with the Smoot Hawley tariffs causing a stock market crash which occurred before it passed.
Trump answers questions from reporters nearly every day. Commenting extensively, and with clear signals as to his objectives and his “flexibility” in furtherance thereof. You do yourself no good refusing to listen to what he says because he makes you feel bad about yourself.
An excellent article. We will have shortages and much higher prices, China won’t. An idiot from the Trump administration went on national TV yesterday and said the reduced tax rate on some of the Chinese imports was temporary, and they would impose a higher tax rate in a month or two. Trump could have imposed a 5% across the board tariff to help reduce the deficit, paired with spending cuts, but Trump is imposing a big budget combined with insane tariffs.
Biden’s Alzheimer’s moment was in 2020 when he angrily called a friendly woman “a dog faced pony soldier”. Trump’s Alzheimer’s moment was when he happily bragged “they are all kissing my ass”.
Trump is going to have very few deportations. He recently said we need illegals working farms, hospitality and a long list of other jobs. What we voted for and what we got are two different things.
Wanting to remove Arabs from Gaza so he can build a nice resort, is the thought of a demented man. People with dementia no longer think the same. They can have an angry outburst like Biden, where something that is non-threatening to a normal mind, is perceived to be threatening.
Really?
Trump’s tariffs are motivated by two things. (a) Wealth is ONLY produced by natural resources such as minerals, lumber, oil, etc; manufacturing/industry and farming. If you notice with Nancy Pelosi–we were being engineered into a retail society with her “we all need to be coders” agitprop. A retail economy is a SLAVE economy, a service/retail economy is POVERTY. That is the purpose of the economic reengineering of America by our Globalist enemies IN America such as the Bushes and the Clintons and the Jews. They know that Manufacturing and Tariffs made America GREAT!
(b) Second, notice that the history of America in War is not mentioned above. The Union won the Civil War BECAUSE of the Manufacturing base of the North!!! Which the South did NOT have!!! Same again with BOTH WWI and WWII—we WON those wars ONLY because of our manufacturing base. Trump knows this.
It is NATIONAL SECURITY necessity THAT Manufacturing BE RETURNED to America. The Wealth of America is in her Manufacturing Industrial Base. And we need to be SELF Sufficient. The Elites of America were about DAMAGING the war-fighting capability of America AND impoverishing America thru Free Trade. WE NEED TARIFFS—permanent Tariffs. Our Jewish Elites do NOT want us to be wealthy, self-sufficient, and have the ability to make war—because Globalization is the Goal.
I am surprised at learning that China’s exports into the US amount to only 3 percent of China’s GDP I thought it was a lot more.
A nomination!! Ron Unz for President of the United States and David Duke his Vice Presidential sidekick. Then after four years the switcheroo and then again after the four years a switcheroo and again until the 16 years have elapsed!!! No need for voting just have Jean Luc Picard sign the Ececutive Order MAKE IT SO!!
I LIKE Fallible Fiend! I read it too. The subtext of that scene is the Soviet Union and containment obviously. Fallible fiend is “drafted.” De camp seems to have been a Vietnam war hawk.
I read some comments by sprague de camp on Howard stories and was very impressed by how insightful he was. So I had him on my radar as very smart, in addition to his literary works. Turns out I read that he was in fact one of Terman’s Termites, one of the genius children selected by terman for his famous study. So was Anthony Boucher who founded magazine of fantasy and science fiction. So I was right about how smart he was.
Thank you for these articles! Mr Unz is like Terman’s termites!
Strangely, Trump is not getting much tangible, orchestrated push-back from the controllers of the narrative. Which leads me to believe TPTB are onboard with all of this.
I think I heard Alastair Crooke on The Duran say that he heard from his sources inside the Russian Duma that they see these U.S. moves as preliminary steps in a kinetic war with Iran and China.
In a desperate attempt to prove further that he has no understanding of economics in general or international trade, in particular, Mr. Unz bravely throws a bunch of unrelated, but opaque statistics at the wall, hoping that enough would stick that he is entirely forgotten.
Example:
Mr. Unz, following the erudite example of the “chief economic expert of the New York Times,” LOL, claims that increased interest rates at the beginning of the tariff announcements meant that the world was losing faith in the economic stability of the US. Wrong!
Interest rates increased because the bond market, always a very precise indicator of the marketability of US debt, saw that China would not be able to buy as much of the debt as it had been.
If Trump’s tariff regime is successful in balancing trade in manufactured products between China and the USA, which is his underlying goal, then China will not have the flood of surplus dollar currency it has experienced in recent decades. China has used those dollars to buy US treasuries, keeping our interest rates low. It’s been a great fiction our profligate leaders have used to expand US debt without interest rate consequences.
To repeat, rates in the bond market immediately rose in anticipation of the fewer dollars that will become available to China for bond purchases.
Go back to your self-expanding belief in the power of your 200 IQ, Mr. Unz, and try again.
Thank you for pointing out the distinction between gdp and productive gdp, a distinction that has been dear to my heart for years. Any chance you could provide historical and projected growth rates for productive ppp gdp per pop? Beyond the obvious importance of productive gdp to living standards and economic fragility, non- productive gdp elements are likely to melt quickly in a financial reset scenario like the one currently being set up by President Trump.
you really should have a picture of wile e. coyote, next to the glowering, boo boo lipped trump. yes, wile e. coyote super genius, so much smarter, better and more intelligent than his adversaries.
well trump has reinvented the character, as a mafia boss, now known as don coyote. he and his pack of panzas, are now tilting at windmills all over the world, figuring he’ll take those out, forcing germany and the e.u. to buy gas from his new pipelines he will buy, with his monopoly money, freshly printed by non-federal anti-reserve. this way he can protect them from these horrible windmill monsters and the terrible russian trap of low cost energy.
he is now planning his offensive, for an invasion of greenland, to battle the fearsome ice giants, that are oppressing the terrified natives, enslaved by these ice giants. oh well, a hero’s work is never done.
thanks for this post. only an idiot or traitor would hate someone for writing this. america needs to go a consumption diet, especially from cheap, shoddy, half ass, poorly designed, plastic made in china junk. it’s go on a diet now, or have a heart attack later.
thanks ron unz i don’t like your views on the US China relationship but still you’re one in a million.
China is the biggest producer by quite some stretch, and they have just
announced a very major discovery (as usual I do not vouch for the
latter until I see trusted sources, but that goes for everybody and his mama).
far beyond those of the notorious 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff and reaching the levels of more than 100 years ago
Well, American was substantially better more than 100 years ago. So…not sure what your point is.
Mencken also said:
Of course, that role was first filled by another.
Well we really shouldn’t be surprised after Ron has written so much on the covid bio-weapon attack from the previous Trump administration which killed how many Americans and others around the world. Its like a cartoon of a cowboy shooting from the hip saying ye-haw. What a sad state our country has befallen!
Economics is NOT just about Money there, Mr. Unz—-It is ABOUT Culture.
I’m an old farm hand, construction worker. I work with tools ALL the time. In the Old America—Tools, like shovels, were built for the American Psyche—Rugged Tough. You could use an Old American shovel for decades without breaking. The metal was thick—the hardwood handle. Because American Business men understood the American Male—Like Him—Rugged, Tough—His tools needed to be Rugged and Tough.
Then comes Free Trade and China. Chinese goods are CRAP in the real world. Even though American companies send them the design and the protocols—the Chinese think nothing about shaving here and there and increase profits. The Chinese motive in Economy is MONEY–nothing Else. They use bad steel, Instead of 2 ml of steel they will use 1.7, etc. THEY CUT CORNERS.
I want to Live IN ‘America with American Tools built by Americans for America. To hell with Globalization. Ever try on socks made in Pakistan—all weird sizes, no quality control.
I Live IN the Real World–not the world of financiers, money-lenders, Utopian fantasists.
PUT THAT on a graph!!!!!!
Has this policy been handled clumsily ? Probably. I have no economics degrees or anything like that, but I instantly guessed myself what would happen, and how Trump would probably backtrack when the rubber hit the road. Although now he’s talking things up again.
However the policy itself – the idea, the spirit, is not necessarily wrong or bad.
For those who want some kind of answer to China, to reliance on China, to globalization, to pure marketism and so on, they are going to have to accept some economic ups and downs.
You can make them gradual, spread them out, try to make the market not notice, but I’m not sure how you can have both things. Something has to give.
And certainly a world where the global market gets to decide policies is bad. That way is infinity immigration, globohomo and white genocide.
But I can’t help but notice every critic of the tariffs I come across are Jews.
Jews seem very sensitive to this. It seems to bother them a great deal. And some of their arguments are not wrong. I thought Sachs’ piece that was posted here, made some important observations about the wealth gap and elite incomes.
But it’s easy to scoff at Trump’s clumsiness, yet I wonder if that’s the real issue and it’s the economic nationalism that bothers Jews.
Does the US produce a single product not available from China (of equal quality) at 1/3rd the retail price?
Actually Trump’s tariffs are having the opposite effect. Winning bigly.
https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/novartis-23-billion-us-manufacturing-new-drug-plants/745113/
Holy shit, you deluded retard.
Drumpf doesn’t give a shit about ordinary Americans, and never did. His entire 2016 campaign was a marketing stunt. He never thought he had a chance to win, and didn’t actually want to win. The whole point was to be the center of attention, and to increase visibility of the Drumpf ‘brand’.
Your president is an orange-tinged imbecile, and is the laughing stock of the entire world. In fact, when you think about it, he’s actually the embodiment of the ‘ugly American’.
Loud. Rude. Ignorant. Obnoxious. Arrogant. Obese. No class. No style. Clothes don’t fit.
He’s the personification of American decline and the perfect encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with the US.
The only good news is that everyone now–finally– sees what a moron he is, and this MAGA bullshit might die sooner rather than later.
I have generally respected Ron Unz when he posts an article. Then, as it seems always unfolds, he does just like Hollywood stars – he thinks he is an expert on anything he wants to comment on.
He appears to not know much about how markets work.
Will Donald Trump’s plan work out well for us? No one knows yet. This is The Big Game being played at the highest levels. But, without Trump’s plan, don’t we know where the road we were put on over the last forty years will lead us? How much longer can we send our wealth overseas to buy everything we need – and pay people here to do nothing?
Maybe it is too late in the cycle. I think that case can, indeed, be made. But should we simply give up?
As far as the tariffs, why is it that no one who scoffs at them bothers to post an alternative? Why do they always point at the Smoot-Hawley tariffs as the cause of the depression? No mention of the fact that there was a bond market collapse? No mention of the sovereign debt defaults? No mention of the fact that the newly elected president and the defeated president at the time would not even talk to each other to avert the banking crisis – when, according to an interview with Peter Drucker – all they had to do was to tell the president of the Federal Reserve to provide the necessary liquidity while things settled down? The statement from the president of the FED, according to Drucker, who dined with his family at the time, was that the depression did not have to happen.
Again, why is it that someone who has no knowledge of how markets work feels the need to write a long article mostly quoting others who think like he does? Why is it that there is a need to always oversimplify a problem?
The answer, of course – human nature never changes.
Now it makes me wonder about everything else Ron Unz has written about over the years.
Way too soon to attack the Trump tariffs. This is a policy designed to return manufacturing to America and to stop feeding the Chinese monster. I support both of those. We also need to start deporting the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students/agents now operating freely within our border.
Organized jewry operating as news media, corporate America, and entertainment that have protected and fed China are of course going to cry loud and hard but that is fine.
Anyone claiming to understand the MO on Trump’s tariffs and the outcome, especially with China, is play acting as the seer. Even Trump has no clue of the result which is generally a no no in foreign policy.
Christ, the irony…
People who are obsessed with ‘getting screwed’ are inevitably the people trying to ‘screw over’ everyone else.
This is the twisted way Drumpf looks at business deals. He thinks there has to be a winner and a loser in every transaction, and that someone’s necessarily getting screwed.
This is a childish, fucked-up and frankly pathological view of the world, which comes from his asshole father and the psychopath Roy Cohn.
Thank you for your candour.
Yes, many people in the West have the same impression. Western MSM is clearly to blame.
Other facts:
1. China trades more with ASEAN (Southeast Asia…Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand etc) than it does with EU. China trades with EU more than it does with USA.
i.e. USA comes in third.
2. When China opened up in the 80s, it was the other Asians who first opened factories there. Taiwan, Hongkong, Southeast Asians. It was only after they proved that a nice profit could be made from making stuff in China, did US companies follow suit. Saying that it was the USA that made China what it is today is wrong on so many levels.
3. Nixon did not go to China out of kind hearted benevolence to the Chinese. He went there in order to isolate the USSR which was the US’s major foe at the time. China was on bad terms with the USSR and even had military clashes. To now portray Nixon’s or the US’s motives towards China then as being altruistic is to be dishonest.
Excellent essay about “America’s own Gavindos”!
I used to like Trump and voted for him in 16 and 20. I didn’t vote for anyone in 24, disappointed in Trump campaigning with neocons and thoroughly disgusted with Biden, who I thought was the worst, most reckless prez in US history. I’ve now reached a point where I almost detest Trump more than I detested Biden. Trump has proven himself to be much more ignorant and delusional than I ever thought, both with foreign and domestic policy. Endless wars continue and expand. Single-handedly screwing up economy. Arresting and deporting protestors….
Biden had dementia. Trump is probably criminally insane. Severe brain damage is now apparently required to be US prez. Next prez will probably be Fetterman.
America is fucked until someone finally just puts it out of its misery.
Trump wants simple-minded solutions to vast, complex problems like America’s economic – indeed cultural – decline, the war in Ukraine and the Middle East. Of course none of it works because it is not much more than wishful thinking. People may be drawn to the sentiments, but the ‘solutions’ are not properly considered or worked out. They are empty.
Trump doesn’t realise this because he is just a privileged thug who has bought his way into politics, exactly the same way he bought his way into TV and real estate: through crooked deals, collusion and conspiracy. His backers see this as a legitimate course in public life because deep down they do not really believe in democracy.
Jesus Christ, another dunce who thinks manufacturing is coming back to the US.
Guess what, retard? Americans don’t want to screw together iPhones, or make Barbie dolls, or whatever the fuck those Chinese workers are doing for $100/week.
And the delicious irony, when it comes to retards like you, is that the only people in the US willing to do that kind of work are immigrants.
The only manufacturing that could possibly return to the US is high-tech, involving robots, automation, AI, etc. In which case the poorly-educated American worker is simply not up to the task.
The sub-standard US education system is not aligned with the demands of high-tech manufacturing.
Good for you!
Now is time for action and no more yapping. Buy only American from now on.
Let us know in a year if you succeed. We will drink a toast to you then.
Ron talking out his ass again. How can anyone be as ignorant as you.
Tada!!!! Trump has appeared.
Perhaps, but they foolishly expected the “boorish, rude and disruptive” moron to act against the “deep state” and its destructive agenda – not against them and their best interests, the U.S. constitution, the economy, Canada, Panama, Greenland, Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Yemen, etc.
It is; too bad they obviously still don’t. Unfortunately the mentally ill fat orange bastard holed up in the white house doesn’t give the slightest damn about “ordinary Americans” – something he proves on an almost daily basis.
On the contrary, the fat orange bastard is generally concerned with only two things: (1) ingratiating himself to organized jewry (at any cost) in return for financial and political empowerment; and (2) using that power in a hopeless attempt to try to sate his pathological ego (also at any cost).
As we see, the mentally ill fat orange bastard holed up in the white house uses his illegitimate power to create conflict and chaos, whereupon he becomes the center of attention. Everything is about him and nothing else.
Apr 4, 2025 Victor Davis Hanson explains Trump’s tariffs like no one else can.
https://twitter.com/FreyjaTarte/status/1908281098141892883
Apr 7, 2025 The United States can no longer continue with the policy of unilateral economic surrender.
“The United States can no longer continue with the policy of unilateral economic surrender.
If the Trump Administration manages to bring back manufacturing to the United States, what will the demographic profile of these reshored factories be?
The business class will ensure that reshored industries like textile manufacturing and electronic assembly will be relatively low paid, like meat packing, fast food service etc.
Is this an attempt by the American Caudillo to gain support amongst Latino voters?
The Latino demographic would want/benefit from these jobs, but who else?
If the Trump adminstration could bring tangible benefits for Hispanics, their descendants would be more likely to vote Republican, there by helping to solve the GOP’s demographic dilemma. Karl Rove endlessly pointed to 40 percent as the necessary GOP level of future Hispanic support, score above that number and political victory was likely, score much below it and defeat was nearly assured.
Will Trump be able to mastermind the a great Latino migration to the factory floor?
There are tens of thousands of “operatives” in the United States, having entered over the past decades with a porous border. They can be activated anytime, or they can contract out terrorism from ordinary, illiterate indigenous types for small money, given directions, facility, and shelter.
It’s so obvious. The easiest targets are transformer distribution centers, of various sizes. These are usually right next to a sidewalk and surrounded by a chain fence. Two or three grenades will destroy the transformers and controllers. In many cases, heavy equipment like transformers is a made-to-order item, and could take weeks or months to replace. Next are high tension wires. Its easy to plant bombs at the base of these towers that traverse remote and rural areas. And they will take time to rebuild. The result: widespread outages, even involving large parts of states and cities.
Then there are tunnels. A car packed with TNT exploding in the Holland Tunnel of New Joisey and New Yawk will send a message. The losses with rapidly accelerate to hundreds of billions, and terrify a fat, ignorant, complacent Boobus Americanus into sheer unmitigated panic an apoplexy and projectile diarrhea.
The JUSA has never suffered the suffering it has visited upon other countries: the complete breakdown of society, mass murder, infrastructure collapse, domination/humiliation. Two oceans will not be enough.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=ccd2c1cf7e06f38b&q=transformer+stations&udm=2&fbs=ABzOT_CWdhQLP1FcmU5B0fn3xuWpA-dk4wpBWOGsoR7DG5zJBtmuEdhfywyzhendkLDnhcoz2MIB1dVLatL09WpR-ccv3bY0xN1JhbWJrz4pfQGYam0dCgKgkPdvBbjRlU7rD7rQy6nQhynwUckRkRieOffqtY72B4seq1poGMoDPZyl2OG6AI-Bi9uk3oASDmdKizOV67pxBanx6ivKIHIiyLaAw9LNXA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwix88bl3NeMAxWRSzABHT4kF3EQtKgLegQIJBAB&biw=1909&bih=939&dpr=1
… with China as the Roadrunner; meep meep 😝
Sounds like Ron lost millions in the
stawk marketcasino 🎰 this past couple weeks. Hopefully you BTFD, Ron, and got rich like our President’s buddies.“Yuge tariffs”, eh? Funny pronunciation, Ron. I noticed.
This is why the Democrats skipped the 3am fortification on election night: they knew Trump was/is senile.
And ‘covid’ is like ghosts: it only exists if you believe it exists.
Anyone bloviating on tariffs/taxes/stonks assists his readers by disclosing if he was harmed by said. What say you, Ron?
@interesting, in a general sense I’m with you. While my industry (software and systems engineering) was not completely gutted, enough of it was and our “winning economy” also stopped my income growth about the same time.
Besides the irony of tariffs “bad if US imposed, good if any other nation imposed” there are others. The continual reference or deference to economists includes the assumption that economics is some sort of hard science. It is nothing of the sort, especially at the macroeconomics level. The idea that highly paid PhD’s in economics can tweak multiple switches and levers to “balance” the economy has been proven false by the numerous, large scale economic disasters in the 20th and 21st centuries with such people at the helm. And I certainly wouldn’t trust any article in The Wall Street Journal, the main readership of which is the very class of people who most profited by outsourcing and who sit at the top of the wealth inequality pyramid and who were immediately harmed by the recent drop in the stock market.
The time for calm and reasoned discussion by Congress,
I find it impossible to separate fact from the propaganda when it comes to China. Certainly, the lot of the average Chinese man or woman has improved immensely. YouTube videos are meaningless because I can dig up videos of Chinese people complaining about canceled orders, factories shutting down, etc. The claim is also made that automated factories or even dark factories would result in little new employment in the US should manufacturing come back here. Well, what of China? How many Chinese worker are/will be jobless as the automation continues to be rolled out? What of the skewed population balance of males vs. females in favor of males combined with increasing unemployment? I find it hard to believe that all is rosier in China and that the US tariffs will have minimal impact.
Does Donald Trump care about the American nation and the American working man? Is he a Zionist or Jewish stooge? Does he only care about his billionaire class? I really don’t know. I do suspect, however, that some parts of the government and business alike realize the jig is up, the music for musical chairs is stopping very soon and if something is not done, the entire economy along with national cohesiveness will implode. See the many articles about billionaire bunkers and safe haven islands. Implosion might result in some of the upper class being imprisoned or worse. I also suspect that these aware pockets are very small indeed and it will be nearly impossible to excise the control of the much larger group of sociopaths who run the US and Europe.
Here is more information from another source in China. Thanks for your share.
Apr 13, 2025 80M Chinese Workers Are the First Cannon Fodder in the Tariff War, China-U.S. Decoupling Accelerates
Speaking of China’s major foreign trade provinces, people first think of the coastal areas. Due to convenient port logistics, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang together account for half of China’s foreign trade exports. Tens of thousands of small and medium-sized factories are going bankrupt, and for the 81 million workers involved in exports, there’s no work left.
The retired colonels and high intelligence officials, e.g., Johnson, Wilkerson, McGovern, etc. et al., are constantly reporting the voluminous lies and fabrications made not out of whole cloth, but used toilet paper. How can military men play cartoon characters and generate ultra and phantasmagoria fantasy regarding Ukraine and the Middle East?
As retire Col. D. Macgregor says you accumulate stars on your lapel for your propensity to lie, deceive, propagandize for your master, the Jew Knotted Stasis of Amurka. They are all sycophants.
Got a question for the Jews.
—How is importing Third Worlders, Second Worlders, i.e. the Hispanic, going to go for the warfighting capability of America. I mean YOU want America to be the spearhead, the storm-troopers, in Globalization—in the Police Force for Jew Globo-Homo–and the Jewish New World Order.
How is that going to work with No manufacturing base — and Low IQ Hispanics, Africans, Somalis, Afghans. How is YOUR Tower of Babel going to compete with Homogeneous HIGH-IQ countries of Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan???????????????????????????
If America kept her Northern European character, her Germanic character–we would have a chance—But Noooooooooooo…
Another thing that the Jews don’t figure in—is that one needs a Manufacturing Industrial Base —-FOR THE BRAIN CAPITAL. One also needs Flex–the ability to change Peace-time manufacturing into a War manufacturing powerhouse. —And For that—One doesn’t Need “””college””” educated engineers. Every factory has Machinists. Machinists do NOT have college degree—but HUGE amounts of Common Sense—and Technical knowhow–to change over metal systems from one thing to another. NO technology can exist—-Without the Machinists. And when one has a HUGE manufacturing Base–one has a ton of two tier experts called Machinists. It is the Machinists, the Construction Worker–that POWER industry and War Fighting. NO Machinists—-NO War Fighting.
And who in the field is great in Machinist know–how—The Germanic Races. How many Jews are Construction Workers????? How Many Jews serve as Machinists???????????????? How many Jews are found IN the factory??????????????
You want America to be your Storm Troopers in building your Globo-Homo—But NEVER figured out on the FOUNDATION for it!!!! The Machinist is the BACKBONE of War-fighting. NO Machinist—NO war.
PUT THAT on a graph!!!!
Some disagree about the tariffs:
Trade Deficit = Whip Hand
While the US may not account for the lion’s share of Chinese exports, at the margins there is the possibility for a big impact if that goes away.
The play goes on. As an audience member with no control over the script or direction I remain calm. No use cringing in terror as the heroine goes down the basement stairs after the electricity goes out.
America, with its growing Black population will become the basketball capital of the World. The problem is that Africa is developing its own basketball “wizards”. The net result will be that the NBA will soon have a lot of players now making $120/ week.
It is not a looney toon trade policy. He is using tarrifs to break the power of the globalist and it is working.
Ron Unz writes:
These imputations (representing about one seventh of U.S GDP by Ron’s reckoning) are indeed important in considering the smoke and mirrors nature of U.S GDP calculations.
But GDP calculation itself, as judged by another metric, is completely bogus.
And that relates to the official phony rate of inflation calculated by the U.S Gubmint.
Now, for obvious reasons, the Gubmint understates inflation year after year.
One reason for that is to not alarm the masses and diminish the electoral prospects of an incumbent administration.
Also, seeing as many Gubmint welfare benefits are linked to the declared rate of inflation, it’s in the interests of the Gubmint to provide a lower figure, so as to minimise expenditure.
Now, let’s just suppose we had a nation where the rate of inflation was 10%. And for the sake or argument, let’s assume this 10% flowed across the board, as wages increased by 10% and the nation’s output (as measure by GDP) also went up by 10%.
Of course that’s a 10% rise in NOMINAL TERMS.
If we subtract the rate of inflation, then the REAL GDP GROWTH was zero.
Similarly, to calculate the REAL GDP growth, the Gubmint subtracts the GDP Deflator*.
(*Whilst not precisely defined as being identical to the rate of inflation, to all intents and purposes it is pretty much the same thing).
Anyway, John Williams (at ShadowStats.com) has been saying for years that the REAL rate of inflation is double what the U.S Gubmint announces.
So, let’s pick a typical year pre the Covid Psyop.
The nominal increase in U.S GDP may have been (for example) 5.4%.
Then, the Gubmint announces the rate inflation was 3% that year, yielding a REAL GDP of 2.4% .
(ie: 5.4-3=2.4%).
BUT, had we applied the TRUE rate of inflation of 6%, we would’ve gotten:
5.4-6= -0.6% real GDP. ie: NEGATIVE GROWTH.
(*Of course in reality, it will be EVEN LESS. That’s because the $15 trillion figure for U.S GDP in 2008 was itself phony – because it had been calculated in a cumulative way based on FRAUDULENT INFLATION DATA for the 20 years that preceded it).
In other words, it is my contention that:
The reality is that U.S GDP is no different to a typical Steve Sailer article in this webzine – in that it’s just about FLUFF. There’s nothing substantive about it.
The U.S economy/stock and bond markets are a House of Cards waiting to be toppled over.
All moral people of the world hope that day comes soon.
The good news is that Donald J Chump (aka The Chimp/Orang-U-tan/Orange Baboon), is exacerbating the decline of America and fast tracking the process.
The sooner the Great Satan gets its well deserved comeuppance, the better.
What he doesn’t say is all those Chinese exports are the result of the capitalization of China from American companies who moved their factories to China. Once those come back home maybe China can start exporting those little paper umbrellas again that you put on drinks and the like. The Chinese slave labor is going to be starving again soon and not very happy with their leaders,
& @Ron Unz
The cause of the Great Depression was neither the Smoot-Hawley tariff nor the 1929 stock market crash, but rather the fact that the parity purchasing power of the raw material economy, particularly agriculture, was not being paid sufficiently at the first point of sale relative to manufacturing and service sector purchasing power.
This collapse in purchasing power was due to agricultural imports that had an impact upon domestic prices, and as happened in the depression that hit agricultural after World War I and the the policy of allowing imports to be used towards war debts contributed to the collapse in prices for agriculture.
As agriculture was once the larger purchaser of capital goods in the nation, the drop in Agriculture’s purchasing power placed a damper factory orders and literally shut factories.
What ultimately stopped the Great Depression was not war spending, but the implementation of forced Parity for farmers as implemented from 1942-1952 relative to the war effort. FDR’s earlier supply side destruction of agricultural produce to raise prices (deemed unconstitutional) did not work, but what the war crisis help put into implementation did work and was the foundation for
the post war boom.
Via Vision Times via Falun Gong via CIA?
Highly skeptical of this.
Not American, not native English speaker. Though he speaks English very well there is a slight accent. Dutch?
These facts are good but the bottom line is China has 30K tons of gold and counting. Game over.
The rates in the bond market didn’t go up, the yields went up, because overseas holders of us treasury bonds were selling and there is no evidence it was the Chinese.
The equilibrium we’re headed toward is the USA as remote primitive backwater. Occasionally the natives get restless and shoot their blowdarts and flaming arrows from a distance. The civilized world puts out the little fires and gets on with their lives. The cro magnons of CONUS build their BF Easter Island heads until they go extinct.
You sound like a deranged jew. Basically you’re just making excuses trying to “justify” the stupid and self-destructive acts of your evil orange messiah.
Here are a few major problem with your absurd apologia: First, unless stopped, the fat orange bastard is setting precedents that will de facto further aggrandize the already unconstitutional and dangerous consolidation of power in the executive branch. If by some miracle a recognizable America survives the second term of the fat orange bastard, will it survive the next scumbag who will inherit and no doubt also misuse even greater illegitimate presidential power?
Second, for most our 249 year national history, there weren’t thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at us, wielded by countries that we have unjustifiably vilified, threatened and openly declared to be our “enemies” in some ridiculous sense. So unlike 100 years ago, for example, presidential lawlessness today risks nuclear war and the end of the world as we know it.
And the same can be said of modern economic risks. Today we have made ourselves dependent on other countries for many critically important raw materials and products, the supply of which is jeopardized by presidents conducting foolish provocations and unconstitutional trade wars. For example, the fat orange bastard in the white house could get up on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow, take some further illegitimate, utterly stupid and completely unjustified action against China, whereupon China could retaliate by cutting off the supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients, which would be catastrophic. (There was talk of doing this in China during the fat orange bastard’s first term trade war when he cut off the supply of high end IC chips to Huawei).
On the contrary you’re obviously not thinking at all.
That’s probably one reason why the power to make international trade policy is constitutionally delegated to congress; it’s not the kind of thing that one man should be able to dictate on a whim, right?
ROTFL! His “arrogant personality or his perceived ignorance”? Seriously? What about his psychosis and psychopathy? You don’t see a problem with a psychotic psychopath like the fat orange bastard holding the highest political office in the land?
Yeah, because the dirty Jews are the only ones who don’t want to spend $50 on a pair of underwear.
Americans DO NOT want to work in factories making iPhones, cheap toys or undergarments. And they also don’t want to the cost of everyday items, most of which are made in China, to quadruple in price, which is exactly what will happen if we try to ‘onshore’ manufacturing.
This idea that we can return the 1950s is childish and delusional, and all the economic theories in the world won’t change that.
I have what I would describe as a fraternal affection for Ron Unz. For years, I have been reading his articles and sending him occasional emails in response. I have avoided these message boards because some of the articles and many of the commenters are too extreme for my tastes. But in recent days, I have decided to join the message boards because I want to support Mr. Unz; and because I am genuinely afraid of what the Trump administration might do to him.
On a recent trip to the Army War College, I picked up a used copy of “Ten Days That Shook the World” by John Reed. Reed was a target of Wilson era prosecutions of American journalists under the Espionage Act. Reed’s freethinking and Communist leanings ran a foul of America’s World War I policies.
When one considers President Trump’s suggestions that CBS —- CBS!!!!—– should lose its FCC license, one should be aware that restrictions of free speech will not be limited to foreign graduate students. In the current context, Mr. Unz’s criticisms of the President are not only timely and accurate: they are brave.
I curtailed my blogging about America’s excessive, violent, and one-sided Zionism several months ago because I anticipated that Trump II would be working with the military to ‘prepare the environment’ for two theaters of action: one overseas against Iran; and a second domestically, against all of Trump’s ‘enemies.’. Since Trump’s enemies are all, Right or Left, who take truth as their standard for public expression, this is going to be a big fight. We are blessed to have a man of the intellectual and moral caliber of Ron Unz as one of our warriors!
How much longer can we send our wealth overseas to buy everything we need
We are not sending our wealth overseas, we are sending our debt, our US Treasury Bonds, overseas. The other countries send us real stuff, iphones for example, and we give them some green paper, or actually digital entries in an accounting ledger representing an IOU.
Labor + raw materials + energy = modern finished products = REAL WEALTH, and that is what ‘those folks overseas’ are sending us.
Aww, Gee… I thought that he was doing this for a public relations stunt, and to enrich himself and his mostly Jewish financiers of Wall Street and City of London, by alerting them to place their money ahead of developments and the highway being built through land they could purchase.
There was a short clip on X where Trump and his billionaire friends are bragging about how much money they made [“a killing”], with Trump pointing to one oligarch and bragging, “he made 900 million, right _____?”
Solvency Crisis ?
In FY2026, at a 10 year yield above 4%…..more than 30% of Federal Revenue will be consumed by interest payments on Federal Debt.
Unless something changes significantly – expect a solvency crisis in 2027
Thanks for your time and comments. The CIA is the global media since Eisenhower and the global MIC. I take everything with a grain of salt with my own global knowledge and efforts for decades since 1991.
Smoot-Hawley may not have caused the Depression, but it certainly exacerbated it.
And no, the assertion you cite below is NOT the reason either (even though the Monetarists like Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke thought so):
The real reason is GUBMINT MEDDLING THAT PREVENTED THE FREE MARKET FROM RESTRUCTURING THE ECONOMY.
Instead, Big Spending Keynesians Herbert Hoover (followed up by ZOG sock puppet FDR), massively intervened with bogus ‘make-work’ programmes and each spent like a drunken sailor.
The correct thing to do was to CUT GUBMINT SPENDING (like Warren Harding did for the 1921 ‘Depression’ (the Depression that no one had ever heard of – because market forces nipped it in the bud)
The fact is that in 1920/21 the U.S economy turned down FAR MORE, based on every metric (reduction in GDP/increase in unemployment etc) than it did in the 1929/30 period.
But due to Harding’s correct response (ie: REDUCE GUBMINT expenditure, lower taxes and thus LIGHTEN THE LOAD ON THE wealth creating private sector), the U.S had a short/sharp recession (a recession that came about in the first place from the profligacy of Woodrow Wilson and the U.S entry into WWI – with accompanying debt/inflation).
The following 6 min video explains that Hoover was a RINO (a Republican in name only), and that what FDR did was just a repeat of Hoover’s failed policies – only on steroids.
FDR’s disastrous New Deal turned what would’ve been short recession into the prolonged Great Depression:
Yes, the money supply may well have contracted by around one-third (as loans defaulted, borrowings to invest in the stock market on margin defaulted etc).
A myth that’s propagated by Socialist ne’er-do-wells is that when 1000’s of banks failed during the Great Depression, that most peoples savings were lost with them.
THIS IS FALSE.
The fact is that the U.S had lots of banking MINNOWS (many of whom weren’t as prudent with their lending as they should’ve been), and when recession dug deep, they folded.
But the reality is that, in dollar terms, ONLY ABOUT FOUR (4) % OF DEPOSITORS MONEY WAS LOST.
If you had your money in the larger better capitalised banks, you walked away with 100% of your money – and most people did.
Also every importantly, if you had money in one of those 1000’s of banks that went belly up, it does not mean you lost 100% of your money.
Yes, some people lost most or all of their money. But some banks that failed were run pretty well and would never have come close to failing even during a sharp recession.
It was only the extraordinary set of circumstances of the Great Depression (eg: Dow Jones index fell by 89%, property price collapse etc) that caused what was a soundly run bank to fail.
So, after the liquidators were called in, banks such as these still had plenty of sound assets which were sold off, in an attempt to make depositors whole.
THEN, when the proceeds were divided among the depositors, those that saved in that bank got (for example) 80% of their money back.
In less well run banks, savers may have only gotten 50-60% of their money back.
At the end of the day, Big GUBMINT and PROFLIGATE SPENDING (leading to crippling debt), is ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE THE REASON FOR ECONOMIC MALAISE.
Don’t listen to economically illiterate Keynesians and advocates of MMT (like that charlatan and Marxist Michael Hudson).
They lead you astray with their claptrap about the need for even Bigger and more Bloated Centralised Gubmint barking out Stalinist style 5 year plans.
It’s never worked in all of recorded history.
Unfettered Free Market Capitalism is always the answer.
The USSA abandoned Capitalism decades ago,. That’s why America today a Socialist shit-hole.
All these words by Ron, and all these comments, but not a single word about getting America back on the gold standard – the only real solution.
Ron you should watch Nick Fuentes’ stream that he recorded on the day of the tariff announcement. He was ecstatic.
And what do you think happens on the day when no one agrees to buy our debt?
Remember the days of Sovereign Default?
You should buy a Cybertruck. I heard it has great build quality. Not like those shitty Chinese cars.
Comparing Trump’s tariffs to US sanctions on Russia:
This is a good point. But haven’t the sanctions worked out well for Russia? Sanctions forced the Russians to develop their own industries, right?
And isn’t that the point of tariffs, for the US to (re)develop its own industrial base?
Trump’s sudden and mercurial implementation may be stupid, but long-term why not have tariffs? We could abolish the income tax while we’re at it.
And as for Trump’s sudden stupid implementation, what choice does he have? The American elite are against all of his policies. The Deep State will not allow an orderly, rational implementation of any popular policies. Only the American voters support him. He has to rule like an autocrat to enforce the will of the people, i.e. democracy.
Wide-body commercial airliners. The Chinese ones are not in production yet.
Case in point…
Telegram comment posted by Warren Balogh:
RonUnzFan:
You think that the kikes at CBS should have an FCC license? And you supposedly read TUR regularly? What are you fucking retarded or something? All of the kike media oligarchs should have their licenses revoked and, preferably, have their assets nationalized and then repatriated into the hands of good American patriots like Jared Taylor or, better yet, David Duke.
Get your head out of your ass, man.
Shari Redstone and the rest of the kike media oligarchs should have all of their wealth confiscated and then get their asses kicked to Israel or, preferably, Antarctica. Good riddance.
Can we get sanctions against Chinese restaurants IN THE WEST?
One in Spain recently caught serving pigeon meat.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14586871/Chinese-restaurant-shut-roast-duck-dead-street-pigeons.html
Fox News and CIA propaganda strikes again!
I believe Celente nailed it when he said “Trump was born on third base and thought he hit a home run”. Trump displays serious symptoms of mental illness in his quest for attention. If you’ll examine his business practices from pre-2016, you’ll encounter stories from vendors getting ripped off and stories of people who bought Trump’s “training courses” suing.
Surprise, surprise? Not. Just like “Build a wall” and “Lock her up”, Trump is just an empty suit. Hollow with no integrity.
I don’t believe Trump has dementia. He’s simply a mentally ill man that currently has political cover for his crimes. He is waking up significant numbers of folks to the malevolent regimes running our countries. Now, Trump is a full co-belligerent with Israel in genocide and crimes against humanity. All the while he is spouting religious crap this week. Unfreakinbelieveable.
Jim Jones would be positively proud of these little demons in the uniparty.
Maybe I’m stupid, but I can not figure out WHY the World’s Largest Importer would want to impose Tariffs. I’ve heard the line that Tariffs are Trump’s way to decouple with China. Well what does that mean? The USA is also the World’s Biggest Debtor Nation. It’s like a Nation with a starving Nation banning the importation of food. Tariffs look like an act of desperation. Kind of like a American football team trailing the opponent by 4 points trying the “Hail Mary” pass. A very low percentage chance of being successful but you have to do it because you have no other option.
(interest) rates in the bond market immediately rose in anticipation of the fewer dollars that will become available to China for bond purchases.
What would happen to all those dollars that do not go to China?
How do you explain the depreciation of U.S. $ with respect to other major currencies?
Dollar hits 10-year low against Swiss franc as markets digest trade war drama
https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/safe-havens-rebound-sino-us-trade-war-anxiety-overshadows-tariff-u-turn-2025-04-10/
US dollar index sinks to 3-year low amid tariff crisis, gold hits record high
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-dollar-index-sinks-to-3-year-low-amid-tariff-crisis-gold-hits-record-high/3535590
The dollar under pressure: Why Trump’s trade war is also a currency war
Trump’s desire for a weak dollar to reindustrialize the US has alarmed markets due to the potential consequences of the dollar losing its status as the world’s reserve currency
https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2025-04-07/the-dollar-under-pressure-why-trumps-trade-war-is-also-a-currency-war.html
Apart from the USA, the other leading nation to go fully on board with the full blown hardcore neo liberal, Friedmanite, globalization schtick is the UK after the Thatcher era, where this has become the political and governmental dogma and orthodoxy even under, apparently, purportedly ‘socialist’ political parties. In short, so committed is the UK to this path that there is no effective political opposition to it, to all intents and purposes it is embedded in the very fabric of the UK political system.
As it happens, this very day the UK’s very last remaining primary – that is smelting ore rather than merely melting scrap – is slated for closure. It has been under Chinese ownership for many a year, yet another example of the requirement of the UK to sell off assets to foreigners in order to finance its persistent trade deficits with hard cash, or to be more honest, to recycle the money spent on consumer products with creditor nations.
As we all know, the modern steel industry, using coal to smelt iron, the breakthrough that allowed steel to be a common place and ubiquitous commodity rather than a scarce substance sparingly used in workman’s tools, was a British gift to the world, along with railroads. This post industrial Britain will claim a seat at ‘top table’ with no steelmaking capacity – and this no industrial and military capacity.
And it gets even worse. For sure, the island of Great Britain has lost any real significant capability to smelt iron on any appreciable scale save for a classroom demonstration. Assuredly this has not happened since the dawn of the Iron Age itself, some 5000 years ago!
And people laughed at the indigenous Tasmanians for ‘forgetting’ how to ‘make fire’.
*THIS*, ladies and gentlemen is the ultimate end of Thatcherite Economist magazine neo liberal ‘economics’. And it’s happened for real, in real time, as they say.
The true bone of contention in the American Revolution was the destiny of the continent. The Whig sentiments about taxes and the role of smugglers and freemasons in the war were understandable pretexts for the instigation of the war, but it was really the fear that the spoils in the West would be lost that motivated the conflict.
Part of the problem Americans have is too much emphasis is placed on Boston and figures whose role in the war are hugely exaggerated (eg Thomas Jefferson).
Washington, the Lees (Richard Henry Lee) and the Carrolls (Charles Carrol of Carrollton) receive considerably less coverage and interest than they should, because of the myth that the Revolution was chiefly about a radical conception of the rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence (probably written mainly by Thomas Paine) and the Gettysburg address notion of the Declaration of Independence.
‘the Americans are being true to the nation’s 18th century origins, the basis of the objection to King George being the idea that British and Irish taxpayers should continue to fund the costs of the colonies.’ — dearieme
Funny how ‘British and Irish taxpayers funding the colonies’ is NEVER taught in US public schools. Indeed, I had never heard of this aspect until you brought it up.
The victor’s history on this side of the pond thumps the table about taxation without representation — which, while true, is but one component of the economic relations between Britain and its colonies, including both taxes and subsidies.
The sad reality about the Great Depression is that the United States has never truly recovered from it.
The evidence of the tremendous prosperity and optimism that existed before the Great Depression can be found on every small town Main Street, in every old suburb in Midwestern cities and in the pre-war Skylines.
St. Joseph, Missouri is the perfect example of the hollowing out of America.
in 1900 it had the same population as Los Angeles.
‘Why do they always point at the Smoot-Hawley tariffs as the cause of the depression? No mention of the fact that there was a bond market collapse?’ — Kermit
What bond market market collapse? Treasuries barely budged during the 1930s. Long-term yields hovered around 3 percent. Treasuries were a safe harbor for capital preservation. During 1930-32, when 10 percent deflation prevailed, the real return on long Treasuries was in the low teens.
Many corporate and municipal bonds defaulted in the 1930s. And that’s likely to become an issue again soon. But for now, it’s the anomalously high 4.40% yield on the 10-year Treasury, coupled with a lack of liquidity, that’s sending warning signals. Chart:
https://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=BX%3ATMUBMUSD10Y&insttype=Bond
Ron Unz’s economic commentary is informed and accurate. Your escalation of a minor nit-pick to ‘it makes me wonder about everything else Ron Unz has written‘ is absurdly over the top.
Both Peter Schiff (obviously) and Spencer Morrison would agree with us on this. They really don’t have much disagreement on what the basic HUGE financial problems are. Peter Schiff just thinks, besides his ideological stance on “free trade”, that Trump has opened up a can of worms, shedding light on what these problems are.
ZeroHedge folks used to write a dozen years ago that this is a game of musical chairs. I don’t think Trump will have a chair to sit back down in.
Georgy Porgy, you have it arse backwards.
The U.S is a DEADBEAT customer – in that it pays for its imports with soon to be greatly depreciated greenbacks.
To the extent that the U.S produces anything at all that China needs (mostly soy beans, Ag produce and a few commodities), these are things China can source from numerous other countries.
But it has chosen in the past to buy U.S produce, so as the trade imbalance doesn’t blow out too much and Americans start sulking over it.
If GAAP standards had been applied to the U.S, it would’ve been declared insolvent long ago.
The U.S has NO HAND economically.
And judging by the debacles in Afghanistan and now in the Ukraine proxy war (where mighty Russia has turned all the high tech U.S weapons of death given to Ukraine into scrap iron – with minimal losses on the Russian side), the U.S is punching well below its massive lard laden girth on that metric as well.
Lastly, you write:
The fact is that there is no greater enemy, no more depraved rodents on planet earth than those yids residing in The Apartheid Israeli state.
If you’re going to make an enemy of anyone, that is the ‘RIGHT’ one screaming out at you.
Yet we find Donald Chump on all fours fellating Bibi at every opportunity.
Georgy, you are absolutely clueless as to who the Evil Orange Clown really is (apologies to Harold Smith for plagiarising the moniker he invented).
Best tariff comment yet. Short and to the point. TY
I don’t have enough [Agree]s for this one, HT. Thanks. Don’t mind the 90% China booster “ten-centers” on here making comments. It’s usually that way – just part of the CCP way of doing things.
Perhaps Ron Unz would learn more about the place if he went there. I told him to back in ’19 sometime, well before the Flu Manchu stupidity. He’d have a different view, as I do from having been there either 11 or a dozen times AND knowing Chinese people I can trust to get the real scoop from.
If exports to the United States were such an insignificant part of China’s economy then what objection would they have to tariffs? Maybe they don’t actually care and are making a stink for public consumption, but I would guess the Chinese are angry about tariffs potentially upsetting their plans of eventually rendering the USA completely helpless.
(That is what is really at stake. Do you want to live in an economically helpless country, with nothing but Zogbux-Federal-Reverse dollars propping it up?)
They’re supplying parts for the whole world ($3,500,000,000,000 total exports) so most goods we import from other countries are made with Chinese goods. The imports of the United States are a crucial part of the Chinese economy, make no mistake. The US imports a vast a amount of goods and the Chinese export trillions every year, they don’t have to make a lot of money on what they dump in the USA. The “actual value” (some sort of PPP type measure), not the nominal price, of the goods they dump in the USA should be measured.
As for GDP stats (do you trust them?)You can be sure that at least three percent of “China’s GDP” (don’t confuse statistics with reality) goes into building useless or redundant buildings.
The goal is to have more companies elect to manufacture in the US again rather than abroad and subject to tariffs.
There’s just ONE big problem. We do not have the manufacturing potential that we had prior to WW2, when we produced practically EVERYTHING ourselves.
Since China hasn’t invested a dime in Iran while investing 100’s of billion in US and NATO allies in the mideast, and has not signed a defence pact with Iran, it would be foolish for Iran not to cooperate with Trump.
The Chink chimps in Unz keep saying Iran is unreliable and China doesn’t care about Iran, except to keep it alive to fight US dominance in mideast. Why is Iran giving a free lunch to China?
It’s time to give these chimps a taste of own medicines. Don’t care about China, go dide with China’s enemies so they realize what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the medicines of these mercantulist unprincipled eunuchs.
Trump’s erratic tariff warfare reveals more than Looney Tunes incompetence: it’s a desperate attempt of an empire in decline to reassert U.S. dominance by dismantling the very global order it once built through Bretton Woods. Far from protecting “Main Street,” these moves expose a collapsing system where Wall Street gorges while nations like Brazil are kept in permanent debt servitude, exporting raw goods and importing misery. The true danger is not Trump’s madness, but the system’s logic: as the dollar’s reign falters, the empire tightens its grip through chaos, ensuring that its collapse devastates the periphery first.
TRUMP, TARIFFS, AND THE FUNERAL OF BRETTON WOODS: THE EMPIRE IN ITS COSMIC TWILIGHT
If historical justice existed, the recent pantomime starring Donald Trump would not be treated as economic policy but as a cocktail party joke. It’s the kind the international financial oligarchy cracks over cognac in Geneva while the real world burns in the flames of unemployment, debt, and deliberately programmed misery.
However, what we’re up against is more than a harmless farce. We’re facing the continuation, under a new costume, of the same imperial project as always: global domination through financial violence, diplomatic blackmail, and now, tariff-driven mayhem.
Trump’s Looney Tunes and the Geopolitics of Chaos
Trump acts like Wile E. Coyote planting dynamite on his own path while chasing the Chinese Road Runner. In a move that would be comical were it not so tragic, he slaps 145% tariffs on Chinese goods — then reverses, then advances again, then backs off once more. An economic strategy out of a cartoon? Perhaps. But beneath the madness lies something deeper: the desperate attempt to redraw the global board in the image of a decaying empire.
The Jewish-controlled Anglo-American empire only plays by the rules when it writes them. The WTO, once its favorite tool for subjugating the periphery, is now discarded like a used napkin. In its place, a neo-colonial logic of bilateral blackmail rises, under the classic threat: “You’re either with us or against us.” This is a return to naked Monroe Doctrine imperialism.
The End of the Bretton Woods Illusion
The name “Bretton Woods,” once a symbol of monetary stability, now echoes like a tombstone. The architecture built in 1944 to consolidate American hegemony under a multilateral façade collapsed with Nixon in 1971, and is now mocked by its own heirs. Trump, in his strategic dementia, is digging the dollar’s grave with his own hands. What was once done with velvet gloves — global plunder — is now carried out with a tariff chainsaw.
The Treasury Secretary spouts that now it’s “Main Street’s” turn and all the parrots in the media repeat the lie. And a lie it is, because Wall Street still dictates the rules. The American people, like Brazilians, remain meat for the grinder of perpetual debt and the toxic derivatives pumped through the global bloodstream by their banks.
China: The New Sphinx of the 21st Century
The empire believes it can suffocate China with tariffs. It fails to see that China is already preparing for a post-dollar world, building Eurasian alliances, investing in gold and technology. The dragon now breathes financial and ideological fire against petrodollar supremacy.
Headlines confirm it: we are in a Bretton Woods 2.0 moment — but this time, there’s no Roosevelt, no Keynes, no idealism. Only Trump and his financial henchmen executing a global necro-project where the dollar slowly bleeds out, undone by its own policies.
Brazil: The Eternal Sacrificial Lamb
Meanwhile, Brazil clings to the illusion of “benefiting” from this trade war by selling more soybeans and beef to China. As always, our elite sells lunch to buy dinner — and that’s on a good day. Export profits vanish into tax havens, banks report record profits, and the people go into debt to buy imported biscuits.
We remain trapped in a model where the national state is dismantled to please international rentiers, and the media trains the people to believe that being a colony is modern, that we should be thankful to multinational corporations for allowing us to continue existing.
Conclusion: The Collapse is Programmed and Global
What is happening is more than random Looney Tunes madness. It is the expression of a system in terminal decline, one that can only survive by intensifying plunder. Globalization was just the new name for old colonialism — and now, it implodes.
But beware: the empire’s collapse will not be gentle. This is when empires resort to war, internal repression, and the escalation of totalitarianism disguised as “market freedom.”
If we wish to escape the spiral of death driven by the dollar and debt, we must reclaim the essentials: a strong state, sovereign currency, autonomous development, and rupture with the dependent model.
Otherwise, we will be mere statistics in the obituary of the century. And the world’s bankers will continue to toast the new global looting, now wrapped in the shroud of “Bretton Woods III.”
Not so much Caligula, more like ‘Albert Spica’ – the historical or fictitious character most closely resembling the personage of Donald Trump.
Albert Spica was, of course, the main protagonist in the celebrated and distinguished British film director’s classic and iconic 1989 gem ‘The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover’, which if you haven’t seen or even heard of yet I strongly recommend.
Albert Spica was played superbly and with panache by the late, great Michael Gambon.
Yes, money flowed to the US.
Screenshot 2025-04-14 at 12.07.13 PM.png
“Total listed bonds at par listed on the NYSE”
Countries defaulting at that time:
Germany
Austria
Greece
Hungary
Poland
Romania
Yugoslavia
The UK (restructured – technical default)
Also nearly every country in Latin America, and China, Turkey, and Egypt.
I can only assume that you are a believer in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). I’ve said for quite some time that you believers will go back to that Magic Money Tree until you kill it. Donald Trump is actually trying to do something about this. I have to smile at your calling this a “minor nit-pick.” It remains to be seen if he will be successful or not. There are a lot of very powerful people who are doing everything they can to make sure he is not successful.
And there are a lot of people like you who are ignorant about how markets work.
I do have to admit that there is a great deal of value here at TUR. This, however, is probably not where a person should go for opinions about this subject.
Sure, but I think the Russian situation was very different.
As I emphasized in my article, I think the Russians mostly replaced the Western consumer and industrial goods they’d been importing with goods from China. Meanwhile, the heavy sanctions raised the price of oil, which was one of Russia’s most important exports, boosting the government’s budget.
I’m not sure if local Russian manufacturers replaced the Western products in too many cases.
I think the biggest benefit the Russians got was when Western corporations immediately pulled out, liquidating their holdings at fire-sale prices. They’d acquired a substantial share of Russia’s economy during the 1990s, and that was now eliminated, with the Russians buying everything back at low prices.
My impression was that the biggest examples of Russian substitution came in retailing, when McDonalds and similar companies pulled out, and Russian businessmen just established their own copy-cat franchises to take their places.
Suppose Chinese corporations owned half the retailers and restaurants in America, and the Chinese government suddenly ordered them to pull out, allowing Americans to buy those enterprises for a song. That would clearly benefit Americans, but that’s not what Trump did.
Even though the Chinese do not view Brits as either a rival, a competitor, an enemy, an adversary or a threat, the Brits or the WASP view China as the sole threat to their Brahmin’s position in the global caste system they established.
Wow, Jews are working overdrive to isolate Iran, they are inciting hatred with whatever stories they can fancy.
If that were the case it would be the result of carefully planned industrial policy implemented by congress (after study and consultation with industry representatives), not by way of the psychotic impulses and narcissistic rage of a madman who has no plan and no legal authority to set trade policy in the first place.
Sec Treas Bessent has a BA degree in Poli Sci. He is unqualified for this job. The Senate Approved him for DEI reasons, he is married to a man.
what objection would they have to tariffs?
Their objection has been fairly mild – calling the tariffs as violation of WTO rules. They have been remarkably muted and low keyed on the whole trade war beyond bare minimum response in disagreement and retaliatory tariffs. I have a feeling that it is Trump who has the problem of dog that caught the fire engine. What to do if China doesn’t respond?
At China’s Wholesale Hub, U.S. Orders Have Suddenly Halted. One Example: Socks.
Chinese sellers remain confident despite higher tariffs, saying it no longer makes sense to sell everyday goods to Americans
https://www.wsj.com/business/at-chinas-wholesale-hub-u-s-orders-have-suddenly-halted-one-example-socks-4df97704
China can make and sell socks to 7 billion humans. Will Americans pay $10 per pair for U.S. made socks?
It’s amazing that Ron Unz of all people doesn’t understand that this is not, per se, an economic issue. Nor is it, per se, directly related to China.
The new president of the EU, Estonian PM Kaja Kallas (former Prime Minister of Estonia from 2021–2024) all but tipped off the reason for targeting China.
In November of last year, prior to her EU appointment, Kallas said that without China’s support, “Russia cannot maintain the war with the same intensity. China should face ‘a higher cost’ for supporting Russia in the war against Ukraine.”
Now, right on schedule, the accompanying and predictable anti-China narrative is pushed (always a sign of a bogus propaganda psyop):
Pulling out all stops in global finance and Western arming and backing and guiding missiles into Russian territory didn’t work to destroy Russia. The U.S. government spending tens of billions on moving foreign mercs from places like Colombia and Brazil into Ukraine didn’t work. So now they must hurt and/or destroy China to destroy Russia. Now that’ll work! Or so the neo-Kahns believe.
Whoever doesn’t see this has child-like naivety.
Trump’s tariffs will soon be greatly reduced. The rich Oligarch’s of the GOP will talk to Trump. MAGNA folks will desert him when they go to the stores and see the high prices and they can’t afford the goods. Some GOP Congressmen will revolt and throw Johnson out and then Trump’s programs will stop. Same goes for the Senate. Unless the GOP Congressmen and Senators revolt, they will lose enough seats in 18 months, 2026 elections.
iPhone Made In USA
Make America Strong Again !
Those holding this view need very much to read the following, written by a consumer goods manufacturing company CEO with years of experience in both China and America:
The 14 Reasons Why these Tariffs Will Not Bring Manufacturing Back
https://twitter.com/molson_hart/status/1908940952908996984
Trump apologists in this thread keep falling back on the ‘too soon’ argument, which just ladles weak sauce over very real concerns.
Do yourself a favor and read Hart’s article. Rather than merely criticize Trump, he’s got some practical alternative approaches.
Going back to textiles again. Textiles are made in every poor country and are basically irrelevant to the discussion. The problem with textiles is that it was ideal for outsourcing, seeing as consumers buy Jew marketed brands. Americans already pay too much and too little for textiles. Too much for low quality junk with a label and too little for the material and production value of the goods. Almost all of our economic problems in America involve the Jew middle man and the Jew controlled bank. This is why there is so much loud opposition to tariffs. Misgivings, concerns about tariffs, debates about what sort of tariffs are needed to restore the US economy would be one thing.
Instead, the Left pretends that the economy was fine when Biden was in office, things are going well, and the solution to the future economy is “GREEN NEW DEAL” “NET ZERO” “DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION” (and you could throw in child sex slaves, organ trafficking and deadly “vaccines” as additional “essential components” to their economic plans)
If the Chinese don’t care about the tariffs, more power to them.
We need to understand the Chinese and the Jews have had a long term arrangement, at the expense of white gentiles. Remember the Protocols, whether you believe they’re real or not, they were very insightful. China is part of the Jews world domination plans, no matter how difficult that may be too understand, we must recognize it is a fixed idea with them.
Oh my. Well, this is why I have not contributed to these message boards. I can appreciate your frustration with MSM. One of the writers whom Ron Unz does not particularly favor, David Hoggan, in his Das blinde Jahrhundert says that the ruling class of the United States is neither Jewish nor non-Jewish. It is a fusion of Jews and non-Jews. A threat to the free speech of the people whom you dislike— and who really LOVES CBS? I’ll give you that— also threatens your free speech.
In my personal rank ordering of villains and arch-criminals, I do not rank “foreign graduate students” or “60 Minutes” very high. I love envelope pushing subversive journalists, like Jack Reed, IF Stone, Seymour Hersh, Ron Unz, et alia; and scholars like Alfred McCoy, John Mearsheimer, and Jeffrey Sachs.
I am, as I intuit you are, tired of conventional narratives; exhausted by the last 50 years of American life; I hate the wars, the constant advertising, the ridiculous unaffordable American lifestyle, the lack of jobs, the ruin of our cities, our culture’s dive into ruinous excess and Orwellian doublethink.
But the political extremism of the 1920s and 1930s was the damnation, not the salvation, of the 1920s and 1930s. So that can’t be the answer.
And I admit to you, that there may not be an answer. Modernity may be a shipwreck from which we all have to swim for safety, one at a time. But even if it feels good to you, please don’t blame any particular group. Just grab a piece of flotsam for your flotation device and start swimming. Because my strong intuition is that this is all going to get so much worse, with economic ruin and social stress taking place in a context of constant digital surveillance and increasing social sanctions for non-normative political opinion. Cancel your email, shut off your phone, learn a bit about subsistence farming and forest fire prevention. And pray, however you can, above all for those Jews whom you profess to despise. They may, after not too long, need more help than you do. Sincerely yours, Christian man, 50 y/o, unemployed 7 years with 7 kids
I’m not sure how much you follow Canadian politics Mr. Unz but I can tell you the national mood has shifted significantly up here since Trump started his term.
The primary election issue is now which party has a more credible plan to divest and diversify the Canadian economy and Canadian society away from the United States. Canada is increasingly regarding the US as an antagonistic country which has to be placated rather than a trusted ally.
Same thing.
They don’t get printed and inflation, which is the term for an expansion of the amount of a currency in relation to available goods and services, doesn’t occur.
Currency rates are affected by many things, but a strong dollar isn’t necessarily a good thing, regardless of what it sounds like.
Besides, what does that have to do with China’s ability to buy treasury bonds?
He want from mass deportation of illegals to a few targeted deportations of legal residents for criticism of Israel. From ending the Ukraine war within 24 hours and in general anti-war to escalation in the Mideast. He seems like a typical politician.
The objective of the the Trump faction is to make America independent, and if possible the world’s technological leader, in key sectors – chips, AI, energy, rare materials, pharmaceuticals. It doesn’t care about jobs for hillbillies, cholos, ghetto rats. That’s populist slop for the MAGA voter base, just as was mass deportations of illegals.
Like China, America is fully prepared to go robotic, to obsolete humans, and let the chips fall where they may.
The comparison to Gavindos is really, really funny.
But in truth, when you compare the Chinese Communist Party and the officials of the PRC to a form of government in which the Chief Executive hires people who live in his condo and golf with him, you can see the big Gulf in intelligence that separates democracy from the regimes of the East, including Russia and China. The real reason we are going to lose the contest with China is that we have Gavindos and the Chinese have philosopher kings. Democracy is not a superior form of government; it is an inferior one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fallible_Fiend
DJT hosting the FMLN at the WH, gotta laugh, the GWP shills are applauding DJT’s bullying of a a female journalist and her concerns over legality, and missing the point of DJT doing a Brandon over the FMLN.
Thanks. I haven’t laughed so hard in months.
Could be, though the Easter Islanders didn’t go extinct, there are still a fair few. What did happen, they were transported as slaves to work in the mines in Peru, that’s the reason for the severe population decline.
I don’t think Americans own many factories in China. It’s Chinese companies filling orders sent from the US. Factories moving to the US under Trump? Easier said than done. You want to put faith in the consistency of any policy announced by a guy like that? China holds the cards on export manufacturing because no factory owner trusts Trump’s word.
Yes the sad fact of the destruction of places like St. Joseph, Missouri are found in the fact that in 1952 Congress stopped the legislation from World War II that instituted Parity Prices for Agriculture, such that the farmer was paid a 100 cent dollar rather than the 32 cent dollar of today.
Parity did stop the Great Depression and funded the post war boom: Because populations closest to the Agricultural sector received the benefits of prices that allowed commerce to flourish due to the fact that the raw material producers, farmers and miners, were paid such that a higher balance of earned income was injected into the economy without added debt burden of interest.
President Trump has the power, and obligation under 7 U.S.C. 601 & 602 to revive parity for agriculture which should be done relative to the leading bulk storable grain and fiber production, which could be implemented relative to the potential of a MAHA movement, Secretary Kennedy, such that non GMO/non Glycosphate corn, wheat, rice, oats, etc are allowed access to non recourse loans that guarantee Parity re (1910-1914 base period) at full production and with incentives for processors to use the non-GMO/no Glycosphate grains.
A cheap food and subsidized food policy has deeply hurt America.
I did myself a bigger favor and stopped reading after a couple of paragraphs of his static economic analysis and then just lightly skimmed the rest. That isn’t how this works. As American industry retools many of the issues he brought up will be addressed as part of the process.
Jews are the main importers in the USA. Its no surprise Ron Unz the jew is against tariffs.
The USA should tariff ALL manufactured products so they are 10% more to import than to make in the USA. The importers are parasites who do not care about anything but their profit.
Unz is a jew who ALWAYS comes down on the side good for jews on every issue that really matters. Its amazing how many of you cannot figure this out.
Emslander says:
Makes no sense cause China’s holdings of US treasuries peaked in 2013. From 2013 to 2024 they went from holding 1.32T to 0.76T – they’ve been rapidly selling treasuries, not buying them.
In my view, the Trump team expected the stock market crash. They were counting on compensation from a decrease in yields and the strengthening of the American dollar.
. Since stock crashes would be global, America would not be *relatively* worse off.
. Lower yields would ameliorate the looming debt service crisis.
. A stronger dollar would shore up reserve currency.
Instead America’s entire economy was dumped – stocks, treasuries, and the dollar. This demonstrates that now investors have alternative safe asset options, that America’s potential economic leverage and overall position is much weaker than had been thought.
You say:
I think the Trump faction expected the dollar to appreciate. They were not seriously trying to devalue the dollar to make American exports more competitive. They wanted to keep it strong cause they are prioritizing maintaining the reserve currency.
The trade deficits started in the mid 1970s. Did foreign governments start imposing tariffs on US sourced imports then? It was the Arab oil embargo and the US response leading to the petro-dollar scheme to keep the value of the USD high along with stagflation which pushed American wages much higher than the third world’s which is more relevant than tariffs. The traditional response by government to trade deficits with many countries rather than a few is to devalue their currency to make imports into their country more expensive and encourage exports.
If we killed a billion Chinese, they’d still be the second largest country in the world. Let’s see if they’re willing to lose that many in a nuclear holocaust. It’s high time their threat to whites gets neutered.
Yeah, it sure is insane to have national sovereignty and an objective material standard for the quality of goods and services! That silly Drumpf! How dare he not worship chinks like you!
Ron, I agree that China is doing better than many in the west believe, but what do you think about their low birth rates. I think you’ve failed to consider the effect that will have. I also think you should investigate the decline of birth rates, especially after covid more broadly, and why one developed nation seemingly doesn’t suffer from this problem.
How is China going to exist for another 5,000 years when their birthrate is just one offspring per female? That Han person in the video is “full of sh*t” and he knows it. I speculate that his purpose is just to create a public false sense of Chinese strength. Yes, to be scientific, I fully agree with Unz that for the time being, China can definitely survive as a “wealthy” nation. But absolutely not for another 5,000 years with a birthrate as low as Japan and South Korea. The Chinese are diametrically the opposite of the Israelites when it comes to this type of long-term thinking. Chinese seem to live “just for the moment,” their moment simply being one’s personal lifespan. Each Chinese person thinks that once they die, then nothing else matters, that China and future Chinese generations don’t matter. So this is why they never factor in their extremely low birthrates. On the other hand, the Israelites are planning for thousands of years into the future, making sure that they have a high enough fertility to be able to adequately populate all of Earth and perhaps even beyond. But in any case, the Chinese will be “living pretty” for at least the next fifty years.
‘As the dollar’s reign falters, the empire tightens its grip through chaos, ensuring that its collapse devastates the periphery first.’ — Fin of a cobra
Michael Pettis, an American professor at Beijing University, wrote about this process in The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse (2001)
US tariffs predictably will reduce the supply of dollars to foreign exporters. Those who have dollar-denominated debt quickly will struggle to service it, starting with the lower and middle income peripheral countries.
In turn, crises in the periphery telegraph back to the rich core countries in the form of sovereign defaults, soaring credit spreads, and economic recession.
Donnie Fubar’s simplistic notion that trade deficits are bad fails to account for Triffin’s paradox, which points out that the issuer of the global reserve currency must run trade deficits to supply its currency to the rest of world. Otherwise, it won’t be the reserve currency anymore.
And if Donnie Fubar thinks the US is being victimized now, just wait till we have to pay for imports with hard goods, instead of greenback scrip. America’s eighty-year run as supplier of the global reserve currency will look like a golden era in the rearview mirror, when we have to earn our living by the sweat of our brow rather than by the exorbitant privilege of issuing scrip.
‘I can only assume that you are a believer in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).’ — Kermit
Nice attempt to change the subject. But you couldn’t be more off-base. I’m banned at one MMT-friendly website, for demolishing every tenet of their absurd, infantile mythology.
That said, MMT is irrelevant to our discussion. And the foreign bond defaults to which you now pivot were caused or exacerbated by the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.
About those bonds and the potential crash of the global bond market. Beth Hammack is the new head of the Cleveland Fed as of August 2024. On Feb 27 she published a very interesting piece outlining her three top financial concerns to watch. What was #2? Why, the over-leverage condition of hedge funds in the treasuries basis trade. She basically called the market a month an a half early. It’s not China and other sovereigns that were selling. An interesting read, scroll to the second subhead, Hedge Fund Leverage. Perhaps our Orange guy got a call from someone telling him to stop immediately or else. Reminds me of when Clinton and Carville “discovered” the bond market, most likely with guns to their heads.
https://www.clevelandfed.org/collections/speeches/2025/sp-20250227-trading-places-my-new-view-from-inside-the-federal-reserve
“A second area I am keeping an eye on is the surge in hedge fund leverage, particularly in US Treasury markets. Hedge funds are well known for using leverage to increase their returns on investors’ capital. According to the Fed’s most recent Financial Stability Report, average gross hedge fund leverage has reached historically high levels since the data first became available in 2013 and is highly concentrated. The top 10 hedge funds account for 40 percent of total repo borrowing and have leverage ratios of 18 to 1 as of the third quarter of 2024.1819
“A body of research points to post-financial-crisis capital requirements as possibly influencing the growth of leverage outside the banking system. Some studies have suggested that capital requirements led banks to reduce basis trading because of limits on their ability to lever up, a situation which might have encouraged hedge funds to pick up the slack.
“Leverage growth in and of itself would be of interest to financial stability regulators given the size of hedge funds relative to the whole financial sector.20 Total assets of hedge funds that file with the SEC are about 8 percent of all assets in the US financial sector as of the third-quarter of 2024. These assets have grown 13 percent year over year since 2013, more than twice the growth of the domestic financial sector.
“What makes hedge funds of keen interest to financial stability policymakers is the important role they play in US Treasury market functioning. Hedge funds, through their arbitrage activities, support an efficient yield curve through US Treasury cash futures basis trades, asset swaps, and relative value trading. However, recent research has highlighted hedge funds’ basis trades as an emerging area of concern….
It isn’t about feeling good. The people who are employing the “Norman Vincent Peale” approach of trying to think positively are the ones who will never admit that they have enemies. People have enemies, that is part of the human condition, and while THE 1940s were a total disaster for humanity, a disaster brought about by the Jews and their fools (the Anglo-liberals who imagine they’re the ones making the real decisions), partial solutions in certain non-Communist countries being implemented in the 1920s and 30s, and those solutions were deemed a threat to the same people who are refusing any solution to the problems of ordinary Americans today.
When were American wages (before the 1970s) not radically higher than other countries? American wages were higher but the expansion of the money supply since the 1970s has made much of America unaffordable, cheap foreign goods have been dumped in the US as a palliative for the ever higher cost of living.
“According to our Constitution, tariffs and other tax changes must be enacted by Congressional legislation.”
So, Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional.Big deal. So what?
So is the deportation of individuals without due process, so is the funding of Israel or any other nation, so is funding of any/all domestic education ( e.g. universities), so is the Federal Reserve, the Pentagon, social security, welfare, medicare, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, the FDA, the EPA, and 1000’s of other federal agencies, all of which, I suspect, you heartily endorse.
Regards, onebornfree
In fact, it is how it works.
Too bad you lost patience before you gave it its proper due. I think it more likely you and the other ‘true believers’ are simply in denial.
If your advantage over an opponent was sheer numbers, why would you goto a nuclear option? You wouldn’t. You’d send wave after wave of cannon fodder until the opponent exhausted their ammo and their esprit de corps, then you’d overwhelm them and kill them.
Someone remind me how many Chinese/Russian troops are in the US and Mexico ……
what you’re saying isn’t true. the US gov’t does not force anyone to accept treasury bills or bonds as payment for goods or services rendered. if someone gets paid in USD, then you have to put it someplace. if you want to collect interest on your USD, you can buy t bills and earn interest on your funds. if you’re a foreigner doing business in the US, why not give your funds to the US treasury for 30 days and (currently) get 4.25%? if you’re making deals you can sign agreements with a closing date, when your bill matures the funds will be deposited into your account by the US treasury, and you take care of bidness. while you wait you get 4.25%. ask warren buffett. investors buy US treasury bonds to earn a safe return. the problem starts when too many foriegners own too many US treasury bonds. hostile gov’ts can use that as leverage against the US economy. that’s what kermit is talking about.
And that’s why it’s time for stupid fuck americans to stop buying plastic junk at walmart and only buy what they absolutely need. otherwise china is going to end up owning the country.
Funny how that works.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-09/billionaires-score-best-ever-day-as-tariff-pause-jolts-market
wow, such a huge pile of bullshit. where to begin…..
Well maybe you could stop looking at your mirror for a few minutes and check this out:
https://apnews.com/article/biden-science-technology-united-states-economy-2fa651c540c9869890dfe670bcdcb7ea
This is an example of the kind of thing that needs to happen if “[t]he goal is to have more companies elect to manufacture in the US again.” Sorry but just having an ignorant, arrogant, psychotic psychopath like the fat orange bastard unconstitutionally slapping tariffs on Chinese products isn’t going to accomplish anything good. It’s just going to hurt people and accelerate the collapse of the U.S.
BTW what company is going to risk spending money building factories here being that the fat orange bastard’s tariffs are unconstitutional and therefore subject to lawsuits or congressional action?
The hanging participle “partial solutions in certain non-Communist countries being implemented in the 1920s and 30s” has a syntactical resemblance to certain classical authors. The underlying reasoning does not. St. Augustine thought that the Jews’ rejection of Christ implied, among other things, that God himself intended a natural variety of religious beliefs in society. The tension between Jew and Greek is dialectical. Even Jewish religious thought has a high degree of classical dialectic, far more than the static dogmas of Roman or Byzantine theology.
If the 1940s were a total disaster, and I probably agree with that, then wasn’t the attempt to machine gun or fire bomb or gas human beings a part of this? However you look at it, whether you’d rather lame the destruction of European Jewry or 4 million Germans. You know, the attempt to collapse dialectical tension and natural variety by brute mechanical force— this is the triumph of the Inhuman over the Human. I hate it. I hate ALL of it. I hate hatred and war
Let’s let each other breathe! Can we agree on that?
Thank you very good information and scary at the same time
I have to imagine these tariff supporters must have some kind of escape plan, maybe a lot of money and protected assets offshore.
No way any reasonable individual who understands the logistics of this whole affair would look at what’s needed and think every thing will resolve itself in 2-3 years time.
The only other possibility is that they’re Trump cultists who festoon their faith with a wreath of cherry picked data.
Apr 13, 2025 80M Chinese Workers Are the First Cannon Fodder in the Tariff War, China-U.S. Decoupling Accelerates
Speaking of China’s major foreign trade provinces, people first think of the coastal areas. Due to convenient port logistics, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang together account for half of China’s foreign trade exports. Tens of thousands of small and medium-sized factories are going bankrupt, and for the 81 million workers involved in exports, there’s no work left.
Took a look at Miles “Mossad” Mathis, for shits & grins. They’re evidently trying to restore their torched cred with a clever ruse: outing Jew CIA agents. Christine Lagarde, for example. Exactly the kind of tool you need to make the most of crackpot economics. Six million fake degrees got her jobs topping up the CIA slush fund with Bernard Tapie, and helping Goldman Sachs asset-strip Greece. When it’s time for Europe to blow up what remains of its economy, she’s exactly the kind of spokesmodel Langley needs. So pay attention when they trot her out.
Agree.
Why is a powerful manufacturing base driven export machine good for China but bad for the USA?
Tariffs announced. Stockmarket plunges. Wall Street traders and hedge fund managers (predominantly Jewish) find themselves on the wrong side of bets, cry “FOUL!”. 401K retirees in a panic. Trump is taken aside and “advised” to temper his radical policies a bit. Backs off on tariff rates. Markets regain some “lost wealth”. Over leveraged “wealth” threatened to drag down the system once again. Must make them good before all else, a message backed up by stock-market dependent retirees (junkies).
I think many people are confused about the intentions of Team Trump. It is too early to know, but a lot of the criticism seems misplaced. The tariffs are not directed at keeping Chinese goods out, they are geared toward bringing American productive industries back to the USA. The purpose is not to hurt China or save any money, but to re-establish a full spectrum productive economy in the USA. Based on the economist’s idea of comparative advantage this may not make sense, but seen in the broader real-world context of mixed economies and dueling empires it is not so difficult to understand. The tariffs are directed against multinational companies who want to sell in the American market.
People widely believe the true debt of the US government is an inevitable financial and social time bomb which might even wreck civilization when it goes off. Unfortunately, any measured attempts to address this problem are easily subverted by lobbyists and politicians. Much of this lobbying is now multinational and has little to do with the interests of US citizens. Trump’s approach gets around this organizational trap. He has put people on notice. The message so far is that Team Trump plans to restore some balance to the US economy by drastic measures including tariffs, forced reshoring and reduced government spending. They have demonstrated the will to swing the market wildly at the drop of the hat which cannot be accidental. So much for cautious Greenspan-style speaking in tongues. They want people to be concerned and a bit alarmed to establish some political maneuvering room to avoid being trapped by lobbyists and foreign agents.
Unfortunately, government regulations and bureaucracy were a major reason these lower value-added industries left the USA in the first place. On the one hand regulations need to be rationalized to improve this situation, but the temptation will be to go for simple cronyism which is unlikely to be very productive.
Why reshore US industries? Most people need to do something, at least until AI-driven robots take over in 2030.
Bretton Woods, the agreement that made the US $ the world’s Reserve Currency, was in 1944. Yet, significant trade deficits for the US only started in the early 1980s, with a drop for a couple of years in the early ’90s, and then the sky was the limit.
Ipso facto, the Triffin fellow is very obviously full of shit. Economists often are.
I think you misunderstand. They’re not the ones going for the nuclear option in this scenario.
Well-written and accurate comment, MLK! Thank you. I replied to the Gettysburg Partisan that you’d see 90% ten-centers on here. I’ve been wrong so far. Other than the reddot guy, I’ve seen generally good discussion with only a few Middle Kingdom hacks. They’ll be on here in a couple of days… too busy lying flat right now to lie sitting up.
Whoever thinks that a grenade has a “splint” instead of a pin to pull …
You know nothing. Even an American under 40 y/o, much less a foreigner, would not remember the time of high-quality American-made products, along with that time – only 35 years back will do – where almost every product on the store shelves was American made. (Exceptions: The Japs had made big inroads with cameras by the early 1970s and cars by the middle of that decade, oh, and motorcycles. Small toys often had “Made in R.O.C.” on them. “Republic of China”, meaning Taiwan.)
See, Trump remembers this, as do I.
Today, it was time to mow the grass, first time this year. I started up my 1992-purchased Murray mower with the 3.5 Hp Briggs & Stratton motor on top. I thought I’d write a blog post, but I see I already have, back 7 1/2 years ago. From Cheap China-made crap in a throw-away country:
Oh, the mower did fine today. The Ruud water heater was made in 1988. (I’ve flushed it and changed the anode rod twice. You should do that.) The York A/C unit was made in 1986 and finally failed last summer. The gas pack, installed along with it, is doing fine.
That post of mine also got into my repair of a 30-odd y/o American made desk lamp. I took an hour to repair it because anything new would be a piece of shit. I’m using said lamp as I write you this minute.
Chinese people couldn’t even wrap their minds around such a concept of being proud to build things to last.
If West wants to sink China, they can just block all future sales of commercial passenger planes to China. China can’t make commercial planes – they have to import Airbus from France and Boeing from USA. If West blocks both jet planes and parts, then China would collapse, no? So, no more planes for China, and no more electronic processors smaller than 8nm for China. Checkmate, no? Will China be willing to “go out” with ethnic “honor” and just destroy the biosphere by launching all their nukes, taking the entire human species to the After-Life to face Judgement by G-d? No, Chinese are not Israelites, they have no innate subjective sense of collective ethno-religious “honor.” They will not destroy Earth and take everyone down with them. Rather, China will just quietly disappear, quietly go extinct, and the Israelites know this.
Some of the largest companies in the world have already announced massive expansion plans in the United States.
I agree with everything you said.
Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.
American workers don’t want those jobs, and American consumers aren’t willing to pay the price even if they did.
You seem to be unaware of the COMAC C919, C929 and C939 series.
YET another PIG IGNORANT racist moron. The PRC has already commenced building its own commercial jets, you brainwashed cretin. A TRULY deranged pile of shite, and what is this G d Judaic bull-dust, Moshe?It reads in part like a parody, but in others like crazed disinfo.
You ruin an interesting piece in the last sentence with your habitual VICIOUS Sinophobic racial abuse. Who are YOU to accuse ‘Chinese people’ of anything, you vile pustule of hatred.
The previous Mar-a-Lago deal was rumored to have called for low tariffs in exchange for the rest of the world buying 100-year interest-free U.S. Treasury bonds.
I think Trump wants to use tariffs to bully other countries into sharing the US debt. That way, they can use the new debt to offset the old debt when it matures in June.
The reality, however, is that no one wants to buy US debt for the long term.
In a maneuver that defied the laws of economics, he was done.
Do you REALLY believe that shite? Are you that stupid and pig ignorant, or just another hate-crazed Sinophobe racist and wishful thinker?
What’s the point in manufacturing products in the US that will be so expensive until the average American won’t be able to afford them?
During the Covid scare, I read about the Toilet Paper Hoarding phenomenon. Apparently Americans consider toilet paper an essential. I really had a good laugh about that one.
This contrasts to a people who within living memory used latrines where one flushed his own poop down an open drain with a bucket of water. Water was used to clean the butt also…very basic.
The winner of the next war will the people who are able and willing to suffer the most pain.
And no, it ain’t gonna be the folks who panicked because there wasn’t enough toilet paper.
Marry a Chinese girl from a modest family, with a big heart and a big brain.
American workers would have a better chance of being able to afford the higher prices if they had better jobs. A service economy does not offer that.
Whether they want the jobs, good point.
You really ought to watch that ZeroHedge debate. It’s a full 2 hours long, but something tells me you’ll enjoy it.
…. and the Chinese man in Australia who China doesn’t want back chimes in with his ten cents’ worth.
You’re late again.
PS: I’m an American who’s sick of having to live with Cheap China-made Crap, that’s who.
That is a good point.
It is supported by the threats that Trump made some months back that he would sanction the BRICS attempt to dedollarize.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trump-repeats-tariffs-threat-dissuade-brics-nations-replacing-us-dollar-2025-01-31/
If so, his policies are all muddled up. For the USD to retain its status, the US has to be seen as stable and reliable. Imposing unilateral tariffs on the rest of the world with dubious calculations/justification causes the opposite effect.
I can undestand the MAGA folk’s wish to reindustrialise etc….but they have put their hopes on the wrong man / conman.
Bring it on. Talk is cheap.
‘Bretton Woods, the agreement that made the US $ the world’s Reserve Currency, was in 1944. Yet, significant trade deficits for the US only started in the early 1980s, with a drop for a couple of years in the early ’90s, and then the sky was the limit.’ — Achmed E Newman
It is not merely the trade deficit, but the broader balance of payments which affected currencies under the former Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system:
Triffin announced his thesis in November 1960, in testimony to Congress. In August 1971, president Richard Nixon abjectly defaulted on the US obligation to redeem dollars for gold, precisely as Triffin foreshadowed.
I’d say Triffin frickin’ nailed it. What have you ever nailed?
If you want “an objective material standard for the quality of goods and services” you can pay for that now. The fact is, China makes products of higher quality for cheaper than American products. Tariffs only ensure finance flight from the US. If a factory is built in the US, it will be built to serve Americans only, because tariffs only make a county’s exports less competitive in the world market.
Maybe we need an objective standard for leadership.
Americans do not want to work the jobs the Chinese do for the pay and treatment the Chinese will accept. What’s your plan to change that? Why do you think that is an improvement?
I am not Carlton, but I will give my 2 cents.
China has repeatedly demonstrated that when it is a matter of national priority, they can alter their population up or down drastically.
We all know of the One Child Policy under Deng where China reduced the birthrate.
Few know of the preceding era under Mao where births were encouraged, and China almost doubled from 500+ to 900+ million.
Their current population is 1.4 billion, but there are voices in China who state that the ideal population is 1 billion or even down to 700 million.
They are clearly in no hurry to stop the population decline but are already preparing soft mechanisms to reverse the trend when they choose to. Pilot schemes are being trialed in some cities. When the time comes, expect it to be rolled out in 1000 cities.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3294779/chinese-city-bucks-birth-rate-decline-cash-incentives-bear-fruit
How do tariffs reshore industry?
Industry left the US because the US is not competitive. US labor is more expensive and inferior. US bureaucracy raises operating costs. The US has poorly developed or depleted natural resources. The US lacks a developmental mindset; it’s all about the hustle.
How does raising the price of raw materials and labor even further, which is all that Trump’s tariffs do, fix any of these problems? It’s far more likely that US industry will be shuttered thanks to the bite of raw material tariffs, reciprocal tariffs on production, and cost of living increases inflating wages.
Addressing the actual problems that led to America’s industrial decline would require a long-term, nuanced approach; not an orange toddler declaring trade war on the entire planet. The only result of Trump’s behavior is skyrocketing prices, loss of supply, and the decline of the dollar.
Besides, if you really think AI will take over in 2030, what’s the point of blowing up our economy and economic credibility in 2025? Wouldn’t it make more sense to institute policies favorable to AI-automation than rehash discredited 19th century economic policies?
It’s not 4D chess. You voted for an idiot.
Actually there is nothing to fear from the Chinese. They are not prone to violence unless repeatedly provoked. I live in a region that has traded with China for 2000 years, yet has never been conquered or colonised by them.
As a nation, their modus operandi when displeased is not to attack militarily, but simply to ignore and stop trade with the perceived transgressor. On the other hand, if they regard another party as a friend, then they can be extremely generous, even excessively so. This aspect of their international relations is evidenced by at least 600 years of their recent history (Ming dynasty circa 1400s onwards).
Trumps mistake was to treat the Chinese as an enemy, and even worse, to disrespect them.
Had he had spoken to them respectfully and as equals, especially in his first term, they would have bent over backwards to accommodate him.
In response to the question: ‘What would happen to all those dollars that do not go to China?’, you responded with:
INCORRECT.
The Fed is rapidly increasing the money supply – and that rate of increase it going to accelerate.
You see, due to Donald Chump’s profligacy the U.S is currently running a budget deficit of around $2 trillion – a deficit that will increase in the next few years to over $3 trillion per year.
In the past foreigners would fund this deficit by buying U.S treasuries.
But, for the most part, they’re not doing it now. So the ZOG owned Federal Reserve steps in and prints/digitally conjures trillions into existence to purchase those U.S treasuries which no one wants to touch with a barge pole.
Additionally, not only are countries like China not buying U.S treasuries, but they’re DUMPING their previously accumulated holdings at a fast clip (in fact the Japanese starting doing likewise in recent times as well – something they had not previously been doing):
The following article is titled ‘Japan Dumps $63 billion of U.S Bonds:
https://brutalproof.net/2024/06/japan-dumps-63-billion-of-u-s-bonds/
In a nutshell, there is already a tsunami of USD in the world sloshing around.
Well, tariffs or not, there is going to an exponential increase of them in the next 2-3 years which will GUARANTEE some chronic inflation on the near horizon.
If Donald Chump is stupid enough to follow through with tariffs on China and thus price Chinese products out of the market, this will result in a deluge of USD chasing a limited supply of domestically produced goods. ie: some 1920’s Weimar Germany style inflation is heading your way all you MAGAts out there.
Femmelander, you are absolutely clueless about what’s coming down the turnpike under your beloved Orang-U-tan. You’re in for a world of hurt.
Oh, the MAGAites find it perfectly logical that the US has gotten carpal tunnel
syndrome from robbing the World blind therefore the World owes them
emotional damages can´t you see?!
It´s defaultism at its finest 🙄
The biggest ‘threat to whites’ are the dark forces which run the EU and the USA.
they are prioritizing maintaining the reserve currency.
Considering all the gyrations our economy i.e. people’s livelihoods, savings, retirements etc., will have to go through because of the trade and tariff wars, isn’t the ‘reserve currency’ privilege a white elephant? Many countries without reserve currency seem to be doing well. Our ‘Exorbitant privilege’ may be an albatross around our neck.
Abdul All-Hazard writes:
Mr Hazard, you are clueless as to why the Great Depression ended.
It had nothing to do with ‘Parity Prices’ as the rabid Socialists claim, and everything to do with a MASSIVE SHRINKAGE OF BIG GUBMINT as the troops came home in 1946.
Unburdened by having to fund the rapid expansion of Gubmint, the Private Sector got on with what it does best. ie: generating wealth for the nation.
Contrary to what the FDR apologists claim, the U.S did NOT get out of recession during WWII.
The Socialists equate the massive increases in GDP during WWII with prosperity.
The fact is that manufacturing of thousands of P-51 Mustangs and B-17’s generated a ton of GDP (not to mention the building of a single USS Missouri battleship).
But these weapons of death did precious little in terms of improving the lives and material well being of the citizenry, as war time rationing on petrol, meat and other necessities (the manufacture of private automobiles was banned), entailed that Americans had fewer material comforts than during the 1930’s, even though many of those previously unemployed now had a job and some income.
How can Caligula have had syphilis? Surely this was brought to Europe from the New World?
Good. Let’s try to make $500 a loaf a reality.
It doesn’t matter.
You might have to spend $500 on a loaf of bread later.
We don’t have to discuss merchandise with a dying man like you.
Many Chinese did not like Victor Gao because of his zero-COVID policy.
Achmed, I’m so pleased your Briggs and Streisand mower and your Aladdin’s lamp is up and running.
Meanwhile, you’re yet to respond to this message I posted two weeks ago:
https://www.unz.com/rpaul/tariffs-are-theft/#comment-7060472
BTW, I watched that tariff debate between Peter Schiff and that clueless Keynesian called Morrison, a couple of days before you posted it again in an earlier comment.
To the economically illiterate it may have appeared that the latter was able to ‘counter’ most things that Schiff said.
But the reality is that this fool Morrison demonstrated that he’s nothing more than a slick talking lawyer and dyed-in-the-wool Chump cultist, incapable of grasping the fundamentals of economics or making an objective analysis of the circumstances the USSA faces.
I think China likes the NBA and the NBA likes China. Maybe they should move the NBA to China…or Africa.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33938932/nba-owners-mum-china-relationship-more-10-billion-invested-there
china’s steadily increasing carbon footprint is very unsettling.
lol you think all americans are pussies that have never used an outhouse or had to split wood and carry water. lol lol lol
I think you know they’re not the same thing, but yes they tend to go in the same direction, but also depends on if one talks about the Fed rate or rates on corporate bonds, and the time frame. The Fed, oddly enough, has been quite silent on the sidelines during all this drama. Anyway….
I do appreciate your comment about market expectations concerning future Chinese willingness to buy US bonds if their haul of US dollars via export goes down because of Trump’s policies. I hadn’t thought of that and I haven’t seen other analyses based on that, so thanks, though I don’t agree with you, I think the market was thinking short term, yields spiked because of an foreign sell off connected immediate fears, maybe margin calls, market reacted, but your analysis certain deserves consideration.
Why is it OK for everyone else to have tariffs except USA?
I agree Chinese made crap used to be the norm but haven’t they improved? Their phones seem to be as good as any. Quality elsewhere seems to have been dropping over time and they don’t make things to last like they used to. Inbuilt obsolescence seems to be the norm now in the West while in China it used to be incompetence and poor quality control that was responsible for crap products.
It is interesting that when communism fell, US and the West did not outsource its manufacturing to Russia and Eastern Europe but to communist China instead. The US and the West seemed to just want to exploit Russia for cheap resources and did nothing to help develop the Russian economy like it has done with China. Surely Russians and East Europeans could have produced all those goods needed by the West just as well as China. Was it because they considered communist China to be more stable that Russia and Eastern Europe that are prone to political upheavals and wars?
Great post, JPS!
Thanks.
By ‘societal and human cost’ I mean job loss, destruction of livelihoods and communities, urban decay, opioid abuse, etc — everything one associates with the Rust Belt and what elites derisively refer to as ‘flyover country.’
X/Peter Ryan
I think his point would be better expressed as ‘Now the neoliberal rebuttal to populism is more of the original failures of neoliberalism’ — I don’t think modern-day ‘populism’ (perhaps nationalism or nationalist backlash would be better terms) can be deemed a ‘failure’ yet.
Anyway, to make his point he attaches four graphics to his post: Productivity/hourly wages 1948 – 1973 vs 1973 – 2013 — American paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but their purchasing power has hardly budged — Share of total assets held by wealth percentiles — Drug overdose deaths 1999 – 2021
To see these graphics, click this link.
Yes, you see things clearly.
The other major reason for trying to uphold or raise US$ vaulation at this time is the dependency on imports to keep the economy chugging along.
Imports of goods into the USA is about 12% of American GDP and the USA is the largest importer of goods in the world. A high value of the US$ is crucial for the ability of the American economy to buy all those imports while keeping nominal inflation under control.
But yes, the stocks and bonds markets unexpectedly reacted in the same direction and the US$ fell wrt euro and raised very little wrt to offshore yuan.
Good comment.
Just one possible disagreement. An AI-driven robot economy needs to produce a large number of middle-class jobs or it will go out of business for lack of demand. Government and business leaders need large populations of solvent taxpayers and consumers.
To conclude, –one needs a High IQ, anal retentive, racial society with a huge manufacturing base that has the needed skills ON STANDBY in case of war. —It’s not about Stock portfolios–its about know-how on Stand-by.
What do economists know about Warfare????
Absolutely jack-shit-nothing.
And then what does a Democracy know?????????? Jack-shit-nothing.
And why did the US Military let the Politicians denude this country of its manufacturing base thus harming National Security????? Does the Hoi Poi know anything about warfare?
Does the Jewish Right-hand—Know what the Jewish Left-Hand is doing?????????? The Jews want Globalization, Free Trade—but then want America to fight its dirty wars and Color revolutions to secure that Jewish Power——How is America going to do that with the Low IQ, sloppy, un-creative Third World who don’t want to work? Where are all those Black machinists????
America is a Failed State. It’s a Garbage can of slop. We are 37 TRILLION in Debt–How’s that Building Jew Republic going???? It looks like its failed. The Ms Nuland’s War in Ukraine is just the canary in the coal mine.
Hello, Mike.
Phones and perhaps cars (at some point) may have, but I’m talking more about other consumer goods, clothing, toys, bicycles, furniture, you name it, most of which we have NO CHOICE to buy other than Chinese at this point.
My memory, especially with clothing, is that quality has gone DOWN, not UP. I used to buy shirts from Wal-Mart back 25 years ago that would actually last a long time. That’s most certainly not the case now. As to the why on this, there are a number of posts on Peak Stupidity to explain – here.
Just for starters though, and the big picture, I see it like this: American Big Biz increased their bottom lines steadily from the mid-1990s on through ’05 or so just by continually sending manufacturing to China for the much cheaper labor. Much of that was done within 10, at least 15 years. After that, to keep those bottom lines going up, they specified lower quality.
However, the Chinese people and companies are also responsible for the crap. They’ll cheat and substituted junkier parts. They’re corrupt to the core. See this review of an ’09 book called Poorly Made in China. It’s frustration city over there.
Very good question, Mike – on that I hadn’t thought about before.
I would guess that that Big Business considered the Chinese people more diligent and hard working. Yes, both of these regions experienced hard-core Communism for many decades (Russia itself for 3 decades more than the others), but was this quality of the people something inherent? The Chinese seem to have gotten past the hard-core Communism much better.
Maybe the stability question was a factor too.
Anyway, this ought to be the start of a great interesting thread, but instead, I don’t know, it’s all anti-American everything, generally, from the O/P and the writers on this site (with exceptions).
I also agree with the 1st of your 3-in-a-row comments too, Mike. Thanks.
I believe, based on my experience, that Russian and Chinese people have a higher tolerance for pain, and are more able to maintain order and understand the necessities of certain actions to reduce same. This is a statistical statement.
According to previous rumors, Trump intends to use high tariffs as a condition for other countries to buy Treasury bonds.
If the dollar strengthens as a result of the Fed’s policy, that means other countries need to spend more of their own money to buy Treasuries.
In this way, Trump’s intention is to treat everyone in the world as stupid.
In this case, Trump is making all the countries of the world an offer they will surely refuse.
So in reality, most countries will not be willing to make a deal with the United States, and their stupid plan will achieve exactly the opposite effect.
Everyone saw the American cards clearly.
The debt is coming due, no one wants to be the stupid catcher, the big crisis is going to happen in June-July, and no one can stop it.
It’s okay. As long as you keep this attitude up, we’ll definitely raise the price beyond your reach.
I agree but consider. People with Alzheimer’s think differently than when they were healthy. From Grok:
Yes, Alzheimer’s disease significantly alters how a person thinks compared to when they were healthy. It’s a progressive brain disorder that damages areas responsible for memory, reasoning, and executive function, leading to distinct changes in cognitive processes. Here’s a breakdown:
Memory Impairment: Early on, short-term memory falters. People struggle to recall recent events or conversations but may vividly remember distant past experiences. Over time, even long-term memories fade, leaving fragmented or distorted recollections. Unlike healthy aging, where minor forgetfulness doesn’t disrupt daily life, Alzheimer’s memory loss is severe and worsens progressively.
Reasoning and Problem-Solving: Healthy individuals can weigh options, plan, and solve problems with relative ease. Alzheimer’s erodes this. Simple tasks—like balancing a checkbook or following a recipe—become confusing or impossible. Abstract thinking, like understanding metaphors or making judgments, also declines, leading to poor decision-making.
Language and Communication: A healthy person communicates fluently, with occasional word-finding hiccups. In Alzheimer’s, language deteriorates. People may struggle to find words, misuse them (e.g., calling a “spoon” a “stick”), or lose track mid-sentence. Comprehension also suffers, making conversations disjointed or repetitive.
Emotional and Behavioral Shifts: While not purely “thinking,” emotions influence cognition. Alzheimer’s can cause mood swings, paranoia, or apathy, which color how someone interprets the world. A once-rational person might become suspicious or agitated, reacting to situations in ways that seem illogical compared to their former self.
Awareness and Insight: Healthy people can usually recognize their mistakes or limitations. In Alzheimer’s, self-awareness often fades (a condition called anosognosia). Someone might insist they’re fine despite clear cognitive struggles, which complicates their ability to adapt or seek help.
These changes stem from physical brain damage—plaques and tangles disrupt neural connections, particularly in the hippocampus and cortex. By the moderate stage, about 80% of patients show noticeable cognitive decline across multiple domains, per studies like those from the Alzheimer’s Association. Yet, the disease’s progression varies; some retain emotional intelligence or procedural skills (like playing an instrument) longer than others.
Importantly, moments of clarity can still occur, especially early on, where someone might seem “normal” briefly. But overall, their thought patterns—once coherent, nuanced, and adaptable—become fragmented, rigid, and increasingly detached from reality. This contrasts sharply with healthy aging, where cognitive slowdowns are milder and don’t typically impair independence.
I stocked up on toilet paper the other day.
Other than that, I am following the tariff wars with little more than amusement.
We are post-Reason now in any case. Charles Manson was right. No sense makes sense. And so there’s little point in trying to reconcile the madness and chaos. Total solipsism is in and anything goes. That is anything goes that you can get away with.
And so I’m just trying to be free, to stay loaded and have a good time.
Six years ago I made the mistake of buying a cheap Chinese e-bike on Amazon. It lasted about 6 months before it took a crap. The battery was shit and when I took the bike into a repair shop to look at the terrible brakes which tended to “stop” as if stopping was an unimaginable luxury, the tech couldn’t believe a bike company would put out such a dangerous product. A year later, I bought an American e-bike more than twice the cost of the Chinese one and 5 years later it’s doing fine. But we’ve been conditioned to accept Chinese crap as the norm, and to almost embrace it as our civic duty. Fuck that, and fuck the Chinese dick-riders on this forum who defend them.
One good thing about the Chinese bike, it had the most unintentionally hilarious broken Engrish instructions ever. It translated “proper angle” to “property angel.” Me and a friend got months of jokes out of that.
I don’t think you want to live in the real world, you want to live in the 1950s. Gun analogy: M14 = steel, anything later = plastic. You can’t go back, although perhaps if you have been a good boy you might get reincarnated backwards.
What is it with this Fatmerican obsession with the national security/warfare thing?? Nobody wants to invade Fatmerica at all, you have to get on a boat or fly a long way to even get there. The Fatmerican warfare obsession seems to be your sort of normal teenage obsession with guns blown up and warped into a megatronic power cult. Obey or die you underequipped Russians!
They won’t be as American wages rise. The problem in the future is going to be inflation from government debt not the fact we will be manufacturing more in America.
It could have been a tremendous advantage if it were handled responsibly.
I think of it this way:
If a bank raises a certain factory worker’s credit limit from $10,000 to $10 million, it becomes a potentially great benefit to him. He can take courses to further his skills, start his own business, hire workers and use the credit line in a productive way etc etc.
Or if he has no discipline, he can squander it all away.
———————–
The reserve currency status is like a ginormous credit limit given by the world.
This was why the USA was eager to have the USD inherit this position from the British Pound at the closing of WW2. The bargain made with the rest of world at Bretton Woods in 1944 was that USD would become the new trade currency, and that it would be exchangeable (linked) to gold.
As we all know, the US soon printed more USD than it had gold in its vaults. As a result it delinked the USD from gold in 1971…in effect swindling the rest of the world.
The resulting plunging value of the USD was saved by Kissinger the Jew in 1973 when he created the Petrodollar which exists till this day. The Petrodollar functions effectively as a Tax On The World, and its use is enforced by the US military.
This week is the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, a subject you once discussed in a fascinating piece about mysteries of the 1990s. Would you ever consider doing a deeper dive on this topic? Last year I attended a presentation by Charles Key (https://www.charleskey.com/blog/oklahomabombing), who was a member of the Oklahoma legislature at the time. In his lecture, Mr. Key did not indulge in theorizing about the event. Rather, he merely pointed out numerous important questions that government investigators either completely ignored or failed to provide plausible answers to. Mr. Key led his own investigation, cataloging the known facts, raising many of the important questions, and highlighting what appear to be critical gaps in our knowledge. Mr. Key published a final report of his work that might be a logical starting point for anyone, including yourself, who might be inclined to delve into the matter (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CX97T14C).
Before China started ripping off US and Western products they had already been ripping off and copying Soviet military technologies for ages, and I doubt they were respecting any IP or paying for patent rights. (If I am wrong and if the Chinese paid the Soviets to produce all those weapons under licence then my apologies for misinforming). Even when relations between China and the USSR weren’t any good, the Chinese were churning out all those copies of Kalashnikovs, tanks and whatever else and re-selling them to Third World countries. Even China’s space programme seems to have been a copy of the Soviet/Russian one. So it’s nothing new what they’ve done with Western technologies and is no surprise. (I am not familiar with weapons so I don’t know how Chinese copies of Soviet/Russian weapons perform, as good as the originals or worse?) At least with Indians, Russians have joint weapons development projects which seems a fairer relationship.
The Chinese paid our politicians and lobbyists much better. Feinstein’s husband made probably a billion from China. No connection to her being a Senator, of course.
I think the Chinese told them to fuck off. They remember who financed the Opium Wars:
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Wye
One in a thousand MAY have.
Otherwise, your comment is SARC-ON.
The invasion already took place. We have anywhere from 35 to 40 million illegals here who got here by invading our country because of not protecting our border. The great irony is we have a trillion dollar military budget and not a single penny was spent protecting our border and Americans. In a sane sober country, there would have been a large number of politicians hanging from trees for what they did to this country.
Still much less than the average american.
…………………tons per capita
US……………. 13.83
China …………..9.24
The Chinese figure is because China is the factory of the world.
What is the US’s excuse?
If your idea of a hard life is splitting wood for your fireplace and carrying water on a camping trip, then yeah, that would qualify you to be a pussy.
this is one of the best things i’ve ever bought. made in china i’m sure lol. once you get one you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. i got mine brand new in the box off of craigslist for half price, someone ordered it off amazon and got two shipped by mistake or so the story goes. save on TP and be clean.
https://hellotushy.com/products/tushy-cloud-plus-bidet-seat
go to harbor freight and check out the hand tools like socket sets. even with no moving parts it’s literlly a waste of money. they are junk!!! if you can’t afford snap on mac or matco then get something from taiwan.
I personally agree with you.
I look at the Russian death toll in WW2. Something like 1 in 5 Russians lost their lives in the war, an they still kept on fighting. There is something to be said about the tenacity of the Russians.
My cousin is an obstetrician and works at a large maternity hospital here in Singapore. She sees delivers babies from all races. She will tell you that the Chinese are the most stoic. They grit their teeth and take the pain without much noise. On the other end of the spectrum are the Indians. With them, there will be loud wailing “ah ma, ah maaaaaaa!!!!!”….LOL
She didn’t describe white folks, so I don’t know where they are on the scale.
Are you aware that the Chinese buy a lot of oil from Iran?
Why would they do that if they were in league with the Jews?
Maybe the Chinese are just looking after the Chinese.
It’s entirely possible you’re 100% right – but – how do these symptoms stack up against the terms “psychopath” or “sociopath”?
I dunno. Of course you are totally correct that normal people do not behave like this. Just when I think I’ve figured out a few of the puzzle pieces, along comes some event that makes the facts fit the science-fiction explanation of “pod people” look better than ever.
I will never understand how the entire world is doing nothing in the face of an obvious genocide of non-combatant men, women and children.
Your mother.
OK, that was uncalled for, yet too funny to pass up, Jim. Sorry.
What I’ve nailed financially from both my reading on financial matters since the housing bubble almost 2 decades back and my writing about it, is the crash that’s been inevitable, China notwithstanding.
It might sound too simple, but simply looking at the very basic income/expenditures pie charts in the back of the IRS 1040 Instruction .pdf’s has shown how there’s not getting out of this hole easily. I’ve written too many posts to link to here, most under the Economics topic key, noting what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is happening. The Regime’s budgeting is between a rock and a hard place. Don’t let interest rates rise to natural – price of money – levels, and inflation will get much worse. You can’t print $2,000,000,000,000 yearly and expect that not to happen.
Yet, if the FED (illegal in the 1st place per US Constitution Article 1, Sec. 10) were to let interest rates rise, that still small (at 2%) net interest piece of pie, having gone from 5-7% over the last decade up to 11% – that’s back for the ’23 FY – will end up as 30-40% of expenditures, nearly half the pie, but that means over 50% of tax income.
See the latest of this yearly/bi-yearly discussion on Peak Stupidity in The new pie charts are out! I do get kind of excited, but today I have to actually DO the taxes. (My at-the-time 11 y/o kid did them 2 years back, but he refuses to deal with it now. The wife wants nothing to do with it.)
.
Re Mr. Triffin, I see what he wrote, but that doesn’t change the error of his thesis as you described it. America has not had any significant trade deficits until 40 years back, and really serious ones since that “giant sucking sound” – as predicted by proto-but-smarter- Trump Ross Perot – starting 30 years ago. Going off the gold standard a half century was sure to cause long-term inflation, minus the effect of Carter-appointed Paul Volcker’s pushing interest rates to the sky in the early ’80’s. It worked, but there will and CAN be no Volcker 2.0, as that rock/hard place thing I described precludes. All that has squat all to do with tariffs anyway.
More proof…
Substack comment posted by Good Citizen (click on the link below to watch a short video clip):
LOL. I believe, like throwing paint on the wall, that there responses will be “all over the place”. This speaks to “Whites” in general, in all fields. Like kindergarten kids.
ABF, I’ve seriously considered that the exporting to America of crap goods by China is a PLAN. The following post from years ago is mostly humorous but has a tinge of real suspicion: Brilliant plan by Chinese Communist Party Cadres pans out well.
Because you mentioned Harbor Freight, you’ll probably enjoy this real anecdote: DIY Tire Repair with Cheap China-made Crap.
This one was prophetic …
That’s perfectly OK with me, Squiggles. I don’t care for any more Chinese-made Crap, and, as a prepper, I’m prepared for a lot more than hyperinflation.
It’s likely coming, as history rhymes from a century ago, Chinese policies notwithstanding. See The Great German Hyperinflation of one century ago. I wrote that post right at one century after the very week of the extreme worst of it. Then, my kid had to write a paper on it, based on a very good John Birch Society article.
(BTW, the JBS takes its name from a young American soldier and missionary who was murdered by Chinese Communists 80 years ago this August.)
Canada does not include food sovereignty as part of the divestment scheme, if there really is any.(Heck, Canada isn’t a sovereign country – Zio-occuppied)
If Canada cannot produce enough food for it’s population then where will it get its missing food requitrements?
Mexico? The U$A under an “attack” from its ally would shut down the borders.
What’s missing is investment in food sovereignty, which is a greater god than food security. Where are the many greenhouses growing the produce that we would usually get from California/Mexico? I’ve seen some statistics that say <10%.
Russia avoided much of the food issues after sanctions were imposed in 2014 by import substitution and increased greenhouse-grown produce.
The last five years have created the inadvertent Death Cult amongst our malevolent politicos, due to the fraud of the CoronaPrank..
Too many Canadians cashed out rather than uphold their rights and now are inadvertently supporting the corrupt process, even to the point of trashing the Truckers for upholding citizen rights, even quietly supporting Israel and their Genocide of Palestinians.
Anyone who uses the words ‘carbon footprint’ is suspect in my books.
It conjures up images of emissions of ‘carbon’. ie: the black soot in the skies of Dickensian England, the sooty deposits left in the aftermath of a campfire or the sooty residue in chimneys of yesteryear.
This is PURPOSELY done by the Climate Alarmists, who are known to use terms like ‘dirty coal’ to elicit a negative view of coal fired power plants and smear them at every opportunity.
These Climate propagandists are very dishonest and play on the vulnerabilities of the gullible.
And, unlike the coal burnt in the past, where particulates escaped and blackened the skies, something of the order of 99.99% or more of those particulates are captured by modern Scrubbers. Thus there are no environmental downsides to Coal Fired Electricity generation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubber
More importantly, CO2 concentrations have negligible (if any) bearing on average Earth temps.
We KNOW this, because (to name just one among countless other examples), some hundreds of millions of years ago when CO2 levels were between 2000 and 3000 ppm (ie: five to seven times higher than the low historical levels we’re experiencing now), the planet was gripped by an Ice Age.
In any event, we also know FOR CERTAIN that, in relation to the increase in CO2 levels we’ve had in the last 150 years, Mother Nature is responsible for around 96% of it.
That’s right – HUMANS HAVE A NEGLIGIBLE IMPACT ON THE RATE OF INCREASE OF CO2 LEVELS IN THE ATMOSPHERE.
In any case, fingers crossed that Mother Nature can bump up CO2 levels to the sweet spot of between 1200 and 1500 ppm. If we can get there the planet will be a lush forested paradise with a temperate* climate for the near entirety of its land mass.
(*No it will not heat up and be intolerable – that is a bald face lie that the Net Zero Nitwits are propagating. Only idiots believe that).
Few people believe that reshoring 100% of US industry is possible or helpful. Bringing back 10-20% might be a useful improvement. Reducing government subsidies (foreign countries) and making reciprocal tariffs seems OK. Taken alone all of these moves make the costs of goods increase in the short term. In the long term prices involve other factors.
I think the tariffs are part of a large set of efforts to make the US debt and trade deficit LOOK manageable instead of hopeless. It is difficult to tackle this without having a bunch of high profile moves to focus attention on the big issues to prevent special interests from subverting any progress.
I don’t know what is possible. The Team Trump moves do not seem amateurish, more like desperate and intentionally flamboyant for crucial effect.
Ron, despite being an excellent writer, is a well known China shill and has been caught multiple times not only whitewashing the history of the sleeping yellow giant, but also viewing the current economic and political situation in that country through rose-tinted spectacles. I await with anticipation his forthcoming articles on the reckless, loony tunes tariffs which the EU has placed on Chinese goods.
Thank you for the link, geokat!
“I will never understand how the entire world is doing nothing in the face of an obvious genocide of non-combatant men, women and children.”
Like starving a half million Iraqi children to death. From Madeleine Albright – “it was worth it”.
My wife has certain siblings that are of the evangelical type. To them Israel is never wrong. When I point out to them Netanyahu is evil and a war criminal, all I get is a blank stare.
We are seeing a deep flaw in humanity- the ability to look away and ignore mass murder.
Whether this is a longer-term trend or something to worry about remains to be seen:
China’s sea cargo flow slows after Trump’s reciprocal tariffs take effect
i am not worried about climate change and i do not support any government programs, incentives, mandates, etc. etc. etc. that try to reduce human created emissions. i do find it somewhat hypocritical that mulgamoron goes ballistic every so often about an impending mass extinction then goes and praises the PRC for being the industrial powerhouse of the world that’s going to bury the US. that’s all that was about.
Squiggles… lol. i have to laff, but having said that i think it’s awesome that ron unz has provided us this most excellent forum. i know of no other place where one can interact uncensored with people from all over the world. it really is a treat, even if most of the chinese here want to make fertilizer out of our white asses.
Related?
The Empire Never Ended
Yes, the American military exists to defend Israel and not US borders. It wasn’t like that before Israel was created and it may one day revert to defending the US.
Riiiiiiiight, that’s why he completely exempted electronics from his tariffs on China, right?
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-electronic-tech-exemption-12a8c11485c810a61cbd6e1c63ae8801
I fucking swear, for a bunch of troglodytes who believe that white people are superior and genetically more intelligent than those icky, icky Black people, you all really exemplify just how low the intelligence among white people can get.
Ha ha….they will watch the little white balls getting hot into holes and you know it. Most Americans deserve what is coming down the tracks towards them.
Sounds to me like quite a bit of Fairy Dust has evaporated from Uncle Ronny’s “portfolio”.
When the Jews are squealing, you’re definitely doing something right.
lol
You’re welcome.
Hmm, the “zero COVID policy” kinda sounds like the “one child policy”–my Jewdar always flash red lights whenever I see numbers associated with big news events and government dictates, like 9/11 and COVID 19.
I know Victor Gao was the translator for Deng Xiaoping back in the 1980s, but I didn’t know until I did a quick search that Gao was a Henry Kissinger protege. According to Wikipedia, “After leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1988, Gao was recommended by Henry Kissinger to study at Yale University, where he earned a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1993.” This connects the Kosher dots for me and tells me why China implemented the idiotic and self-harming policies.
What I’m about to say will upset a lot of pro-China commentators here as Unz Review, but Deng was the Jews’ favorite stooge and running dog. In fact–but it is never mentioned–Deng was purged twice by Mao during the Cultural Revolution and had the official title as the “number two capitalist roader” after Liu Shaoqi, who died in exile in 1969.
In any event, all is forgiven and Deng came up on top after the Cultural Revolution and China loves Kissinger and today is 100% onboard with (((Capitalism))).
Cf. Henry Kissinger’s NSC Memorandum 200, which I have argued was the blueprint for Deng’s “one child policy.”
According to Zero Hedge today, the Chines and Japanese were doing a lot of selling of their bonds. Tyler Durden thinks that they needed the dollars to prop up their stock market.
Whatever the reason, it seems to be the accepted fact that it wasn’t a loss of confidence in the trustworthiness of US debt, but their need to obtain dollars that most recently increased yield or interest rates.
In other words, Unz doesn’t know shit!
So
1) You could ignore the basic flaws of the US economy as Biden and Obama did and keep going in the wrong direction.
Or
2) You try to do something about the unpleasant economic situation and: Enter uncharted weaters and – take risks.
> Remember the Protocols,
Where do the Protocols contain any mention of China? I can recall forecasts of a Russo-Japanese War and a Russian Revolution from the Protocols. But nothing about China springs to memory.
You had me until you said that tariffs (of the type Trump announced) aren’t taxes on the average person (and you mentioned another comment in which you said the same).
If the price of lumber from Canada goes up due to tariffs, American builders can just shift to American lumber, right? Sure, but the American lumber sellers will see that the market now bears a slight, or even not so slight price rise, and thus will raise the price on American lumber accordingly. Who pays?
Does it ultimately matter what Trump’s objectives might be? The U.S. federal government debt is on a path of exponential growth. The Congress is physically incapable of running a balanced budget because it’s run by a few hundred clowns who have no idea what they’re doing. It can only be inflated away, which would end the dollar’s role as world reserve currency and America’s globe-spanning empire. At that point it will have bigger problems to worry about than independence in chips and AI. It will have to worry about feeding dozens upon dozens of millions of unproductive Fatmerican land whales who require 5,000 calories a day to survive. It will be worse than the collapse of the USSR, given the low human capital of fat, lazy, stupid, unhealthy American masses. All the smart ones will flee to Europe and Asia, leaving the useless ones behind to sort out the mess.
I don’t think you want to live in the real world, you want to live in the 1950s. Gun analogy: M14 = steel, anything later = plastic. You can’t go back, although perhaps if you have been a good boy you might get reincarnated backwards.
The move to plastic furniture was a design decision. It significantly reduces the weight of the gun. The part that goes boom is still made of steel or aluminum.
Steel is not always better than plastic.
The Chinese sell drones to both Russia and Ukraine. Amusingly we have bloggers that think of them as pals with Russia. They are pals with money and that is about it.
The idea of the Chinese being on anyone’s side is White projection. It in fact shows White race denial as with other groups. Whites watch too much television and buy into the idea that other races are White but with different superficial features.
The Chinese will smile, shake your hand and sell fentanyl to your neighbor.
They have historical resentment towards all European nations and like our liberals dislike history for being too White.
Their women are born to nag and they live in a totalitarian state where criticizing the government can lead to a labor camp.
Such conditions create angry little Chinese men that just want to make more money than their neighbors. They’re really not a threat but they also shouldn’t be ignored.
Trump is right to pass tariffs on them as they don’t play fair. They’ve been fixing their currency for years which works against US manufacturers. Our dopey libertarians think we should look the other way as they play by their own rules. In fact Chinese success by ignoring “fair trade” principles makes a mockery of libertarian theorists. The Chinese also have all kinds of state managed businesses that have been a success. There goes the big dumb conservative theory that govment always makes things worse. Well they have highly successful industries that are backed by Big Government.
But a trade war is not the answer. Tariffs don’t bring in much revenue if you sink your own exports.
I agree completely. I’ve written a number of times before that Ron Unz is a stand-up guy for free-speech like you won’t see often, and his website is the best in functionality (best commenting system on the web!). He has even made the effort to provide a forum on said well-working platform for iSteve Sailer commenters after Mr. Sailer left the building.
Mr. Unz, deserves a hearty thanks from all of us, even those who sign their names in squiggles. That doesn’t mean this Random Right-wing Ranter has to agree with him all, or even much, of the time.
Does it ultimately matter what Trump’s objectives might be?
Yes it does because we have this thing called the constitution which he is actually sworn to uphold. He is a president and not a king.
The U.S. federal government debt is on a path of exponential growth. The Congress is physically incapable of running a balanced budget because it’s run by a few hundred clowns who have no idea what they’re doing.
How is that a justification for Trump’s idiotic tariffs?
If he kills off exports to China then that means less revenue from taxes and more unemployment checks. China just said that they are no longer taking Boeing planes. Well this is going bigley.
Trump Team is already talking about bailing out farmers.
It isn’t a well thought out tariff if you are having to spend money to save an industry from your own policy.
Trump doesn’t know what he is doing and his red hat cult needs to stop defending him like some type of god.
He isn’t a god and was never a great businessman. Someone did the math and showed that he would be richer if he had put his daddy dollars in a safe mutual fund. He has declared bankruptcy 5 times.
you’re talking about china right?
My decision to stop viewing bar rabbit was not only premature but troubling.
Apparently, American economists are kicking themselves for not having transitioned into 50, 100 year treasuries when their position was stronger, when demand for UST was inelastic.
What I am saying is that Chinese and Jews have cooperated on a lot of issues. It does not mean the Chinese are Zionist dominated like the USA. They have a common racial adversary/enemy.
The Soviet Union was blasted for “antisemitism” and there was antagonism between Soviet clients and the Zionist entity. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union voted for the creation of Israel. Weapons were sent from the Soviet sphere of influence to Israel.
The UN General Assembly vote on 29 November 1947 in favour of the partition of Palestine, which led to the creation of the state of Israel, would have never happened without strong Soviet advocacy.
https://mondediplo.com/2016/02/11sovietisrael
Jonathan Pollard
According to another retired station chief, in 1985, a month after Pollard’s arrest, the CIA director William Casey complained: ‘The Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the USSR – all of it. The co-ordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets.’ The magazine also reported that intelligence officers claimed that Pollard had also handed over reams of reports sent by US military attaches in the Middle East, identifying informers, and a 10-volume surveillance manual, which was known as ‘the Bible’ because it held detailed information on the radio frequencies being tapped by the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/12/julianborger1
I did not say the Chinese are agents of the Jews the way the United States, France, Great Britain, etc, are almost openly controlled by Jews.
The Jews have taken a great interest in China for a very long time, you should not presume they do not intend to use the Chinese for their own ends. Whether or not the Chinese state intends to cooperate with them or not, you should be understand the Jewish agenda is an Anti-Christian anti-white agenda. In the minds of the Jews the Chinese are still like the mercenaries they used during the Russian Civil War.
His economist team thought they had come up with one weird trick to solve the quandary.
Problem is that the global economy is so complex that nobody understands it. This paper was supposed to be the blueprint. I muddled through half of it before realizing it was uncertainty multiplied by uncertainty by uncertainty with all kinds expanding secondary effects and loops.
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf
The second problem is that here’s no free lunch.
Third problem is that probably none of these shenanigans matter compared to the Chinese capacity to outproduce Americans.
I agree, Dieter. That means I agree whole heartedly too with Levtraro’s post up top – sorry, Levtraro, I was out of Agrees when I first read it, and then bypassed it later.
It would take you about ten seconds to look it up, since search engines still bring up the archive.org link. It’s near the beginning:
It could be that it’s like black magic in that Simbad story. It gives you the power to do useful things in the short-term but saps your overall long term health.
But who knows? I guessed that it allowed American to borrow at a 1.5% discount but this guy says it’s only 0.5%. Good thing economists can debate this stuff forever.
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf
How valuable is the coercive property of having the reserve currency? Maybe it’s a wash, maybe America is just decadent, maybe China is just fundamentally better at capitalism.
This was basically the argument of one of the entrepreneurs close to Trump’s faction. That nobody really knows so they will just try stuff out. They tried something unorthodox and got punched in the face.
And if they bail out the farmers, what happens? More food in America. Just had a decent tasting beef roast the other day that was on sale. (they’re seldom on sale these days) Food is a strategic resource and the United States should be involved in buying surpluses. We don’t need to “feed the world” if most of the apple juice concentrate in the US comes from CHINA. The US farmer should not be at the mercy of foreign governments.
Yep, there are all kinds of ways the green-eyeshade boys (more like D.I.E. fat-asses now probably) mess with the proverbial “basket of goods” to get accurate – or not! – CPI numbers, as people’s wants and needs change over time. I’d say some of this is necessary, but other parts may be designed to make inflation look lower than it’s been.
The point you bring up is a good one. I’ve said it myself. I had the same bicycle from 4 1/2 years old till 9th grade. (Yes, the seat was way on up there.) That was a high-quality Schwinn, made in America. With Chinese junk, you’d buy 3 or 4 bikes over that time, as they’d break beyond economic repair. Yet the Chinese bikes may only be twice the price of that Schwinn bought years ago. Do the inflation numbers take this into account? I don’t think they do.
Even that basket to hold the goods is made in China and will fall apart before next year’s numbers are due!
When it comes to the English on signs and instructions, I’ve seen some doozies. “Please watch to avoid bumping the head carefully.” From the PS post Chinese low-budget translation services:
Does this mean the CCP has a problem with The Doobie Brothers?
Seriously, I wonder why Chinese manufacturers can’t pay a reliable Western source, what $1,000, tops? to do a good job translating instructions for a product, as the fee may be split over a million units.
OK, now the Doobie Brothers reference is revealed:
Stampede is a great album from the 1970s.
Preach it, brother.
Miran is a crétin (I actually read the thing – it was a mistake; he banks on his
ability to talk you drunk, but all you get is a headache); in essence he argues
there are no tradeoffs because “elasticity” read: The World will swallow the
losses; they always swallow.
I wonder why the Orange One loves him?
– Tariffs mean no imports – so far, so good.
– No imports mean no exports IOW selectively laying waste to the few US
sectors that are competitive (IIRC that´s how the War of Northern
Aggression started).
– No imports mean no one can buy the debt; allow me to elaborate:
The muchbespoke $37T are only the funded debt – the part you are paying
interest on; the “unfunded liabilities” (costs already incurred but not yet budgeted,
like veterans and pensions) are – a lowball – $220T, and most of that cannot be
inflated away.
– It is easy to shave $1T off spending – it will slow down the “economy” some but
not much otherwise; afterwards, things become sticky.
This same $1T will not cover the interest on funded debt, at artificially suppressed rates.
It is not the Orange One´s fault the US is underwater, he inherited it.
Far from being the “problem”, it is the trade “deficit” that keeps the show running –
the income from the reserve currency racket is not anywhere near enough.
FDR started a world war over a less fucked-up situation (that Keynes predicted
just like the present one) so the best we can hope for is a creative default
(Hudson thinks the robber barons have returned but these are asset strippers –
an indicator of the condition of the body in question).
I think the tariffs are part of a large set of efforts to make the US debt and trade deficit LOOK manageable instead of hopeless. It is difficult to tackle this without having a bunch of high profile moves to focus attention on the big issues to prevent special interests from subverting any progress.
US debt is manageable. Cut the military budget in half and apply the SS tax to all forms of income. Return corporate taxes to 1990s levels. Return taxes on the wealthy to 1980s levels and that includes capital gains. There you go.
A trade war with China will not reduce the deficit. If Trump puts the US in a recession then we will be back to increasing the debt ceiling……but just this time……..cause economy.
So same old two parties kicking the can down the road. Yea f-cking great. Oh and of course aid to Israel and tax cuts for the wealthy. Same old Republicans but with a loudmouth ex-Democrat in charge. SO much better.
Trump should build his wall and leave the economy alone. He doesn’t know what he is doing and his lackeys in the background of his interviews look like they have a bad case of constipation. A bunch of ass kissing conservatives that are clearly worried that they may have put a monkey in charge of a machine that they also don’t understand.
I don’t know what is possible. The Team Trump moves do not seem amateurish, more like desperate and intentionally flamboyant for crucial effect.
It doesn’t appear amateurish to you? Even after Trump “paused” most of the tariffs?
I thought that was medicine? Or do we just forget about all the Trump defenders that told us to ride it out? Some Trump licking TV host actually said that losing money isn’t a big deal. It was parodied on the daily show. Wow and to think I was skeptical of putting a felon and former Hillary fundraiser in office.
Another one with a MA and JD from Yale! What an institution…
Hopefully most killed will be jews since they are so eager to fight China. So let the kike do the fighting. I know they will get annihilated and so call on the White European man to do their fighting for them while they murder innocent Palestinian women and children. That’s what the kike is good at…Also let the international banker boy scum (like the rothschild filth) do the fighting since they like starting wars so much.
Probably. I don’t know if I’d say “most” deserve it though. Even if so, there are always people who don’t deserve it that get dragged down in it all.
This sarcasm would hit harder if it were 100-200 years in the future and we were all just debating history.
As it happens, say what you will about Trump and call this comment cope or whatever, but maybe we’re only a week or two into this and let’s see what happens?
Maybe electronics stay exempted forever. Maybe no deal and it just fades away into another news cycle. Maybe Trump blinked and, like the wall, we’ll never get complete well thought out tariff protectionism.
Or maybe it’s like Chesterton’s line, ‘if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.’
Good.
This shows that CPC is right, preaching in our country is illegal, and this JBS is acting as a spy, we should cut off his head and show it to you.
By the way, have you ever thought about that? Would someone else target your home if they were hungry?
It seems that you need to have plenty of guns and ammunition to guard your home against hungry ghouls invading your home.
I heard that this forum came from the speech of the well-known neuroscientist Rao Yi.
When I discovered this forum, I did discover a treasure trove of viewing white inferior creatures, like you.
I realize that there is such a serious information gap that you are completely wrong about us.
So I will continue to enjoy this clown show.
Quite to the contrary, 200 lb. of extra body mass can keep someone alive for a long time. Fatmericans are the ultimate preppers!
I think you are quite right.
Trump et al all think they know everything.
Have you read Shaun Rein’s post about Scott Bessant? It explains alot.
It just hit me. I advised Scott Bessent, now Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury who is leading the tariff war, in 2013 when he was still with Soros. An investment bank engaged me to advise Bessent on China’s economy and consumer trends and go over my book The End of Cheap China
I took an instant disliking – Bessent was one of the most arrogant and ignorant on China people I had ever met. He was uber bearish on China and was largely ideologically driven in his analysis. Communist countries couldn’t succeed was basically the jist of his views
Data and rational analysis did not reign supreme
I just looked up my correspondence with Scott after the meeting where I underscored that China’s economy wasn’t as weak as he thought
He thinks America has the upper hand with China right now. I worry for America. We have one of the most ignorant on China yet arrogant people I’ve ever met running a trade war against China
Scott underestimated China in 2013 and is underestimating it now
This is what Google Books says about Shaun Rein, so he has some familiarity with China. Also from his looks, his mother is probably Chinese:
Shaun Rein is the Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group, the world’s leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China.
Rein works with CEOs and senior executives of Fortune 500 and leading Chinese companies, private equity firms, SMEs and investors to develop their China growth, political and investment strategies.
Rein graduated from Harvard University with a master’s degree focused on China’s Economy. He sits on the Asia Council of St. Paul’s School and has taught executive education at London Business School.
He frequently appears on the CBS Sunday Morning Show, NBC’s Morning Show, as well as various programs on CNN, BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, PBS and MSNBC and is regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.
He has lived in China for over 25 years.
First you buy a product because it was cheaper, then you complain that it doesn’t last as long….WTF???
With thought processes like that, it is no wonder the Jews have been able to take over your country so easily.
Mao used to boast about this back in the day.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1964/10/17/Maos-theory-on-atomic-bomb-They-cant-kill-us-all/1653831424805/
Tools are crap now because Americans buy cheap crap tools at Walmart.
People generally will not pay for quality.
You can also blame inflation.
We have had quite a bit of inflation since yea ole’ times thanks to the borrowing to pay for the Great Society welfare state, expansion of the Great Society warfare, Vietnam War, GWOT, DoD and so forth.
Chinese junk has for about 30 years been used to make people think prices are lower than the truly are and hide inflation.
The John Birch Society is not one guy, Squiggles, but an organization that’s been around for 70 years. My Dad mentioned it, but we had no extra money for joining things back then. The opinions of the JBS in their New American magazine are aligned with mine very closely.
Are you THAT retarded and out of touch? Yes, we’ve got guns here, lots of them. My 13 y/o has been shooting the .22’s (still 7 cents a shot – 0.5 yuan, but never mind), the shotguns, and the .38 revolver. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize .38 hollow-points are now a buck a round when we shot a (50 rd.) box and a half, of them, but we catch up at the gun shows.
All this might sound very foreign to a guy who writes his names in squiggles, because, THAT’S RIGHT, without some wise Founders who could foresee a LOT, you don’t have those rights in the Middle Kingdom. During the ’22 Flu Manchu re-panic over there, if they locked the apartment complex and the Big Whites had knocked down your door, you’d just have to take it like a peon, the Chinese way for many Millennia…
What did Confucius have to say about THAT shit?
That is what I meant by scary they have every reason to be angry. In every turn from Taiwan to trade Washington does it’s best to hurt the Chinese people. It’s scary for the little people of America that have no control when Washington starts a fight.
Many consumer goods (think about computers) are improved and less expensive as well, but beyond the psychological motive of stocking the store with cheap goods that common people believe they buy to be more self-reliant (Harbor Freight is a great example) is the necessity of finding ways to fudge the inflation figures so as to avoid adjusting pension payments for inflation.
A good rule of thumb for the rise in the price of simple goods (as opposed to assigned University text books, that you are loaded like a pack mule if you try to carry them all!) is to look at the prices of old reprinted math textbooks.
I’m not certain if this is the same as Dover
$34.72 – I suppose if Dover still sold it (though I haven’t bought any of those recently), it might be somewhat cheaper than “Forgotten Books.” – but not much.
https://www.amazon.com/Course-Mathematical-Analysis-Vol-Differentials/
The old 1950s suggested retail price was right on the front cover $2.25
Hard bound graduate math texts in late 50s were typically under $10.
Anyway, getting back to the point about inflation and the cost of living. Rents (including exorbitant taxes!), Surgeries and medicines, and higher education have simply gotten out of control, and surprise surprise, those are fields the Jews control. To return to a higher standard of living immigration must be stopped and manufacturing related jobs must return, no matter the temporary dislocation. Before it’s too late. Eventually it will be too late and the process of disintegration will become IMPOSSIBLE to arrest.
Chinese aren’t going to waste money on AR-15 with lots of high capacity magazines when they can just use rat poison in the buffet.
Perhaps they remember the US Marines and troops from other nations looting the Summer Palace.
WRT tariffs, there seems to have been some effect. Too soon to tell how much impact it will have:
China’s sea cargo flow starts to slow after tariffs take effect
Friends of convenience, perhaps.
However, I think the Chinese well remember who was the first to ship Opium into China and who financed it.
I also find it strange that China imports lots of oil from Iran. Perhaps they value their friendship with the Jews so little that the would piss down their legs and tell them it’s raining. (They might also have provided technical info to Iran. However, ultimately, their intent might be to give the US a black eye.)
Good point, JPS. Or, just not use rat poison in the buffet.
Man, JPS, this comment is right in my wheelhouse! I’ve written a lot under the Inflation topic key, with lots of comparisons like this. As a matter of fact I DID compare textbooks, as discussed in The great University textbook scam.
.
In that post, I also discussed the way that certain codes are used to keep people from being able to use used textbooks now, as in the past.
And if they bail out the farmers, what happens? More food in America. Just had a decent tasting beef roast the other day that was on sale.
No it isn’t that simple. We are talking about soy and grain exports.
Americans don’t eat enough soy for it to be sold nationally.
Food is a strategic resource and the United States should be involved in buying surpluses. We don’t need to “feed the world” if most of the apple juice concentrate in the US comes from CHINA. The US farmer should not be at the mercy of foreign governments.
Food exports are a business and not a charity.
Apple juice concentrate comes from China because they don’t consume it nationally. It is just a business for them.
Trump should have looked at our exports to China before starting his trade war. He watches too much Fox and just imagines Americans buying Chinese crap at Walmart.
Perhaps they remember the US Marines and troops from other nations looting the Summer Palace.
Perhaps they can also remember when the US saved them in WW2 from the Japanese.
Japan in fact was willing to give up most of their empire for Manchurian China in exchange for oil. It was the Americans that turned down that offer.
America would be much richer if they had let Japan take a chunk of China.
WRT tariffs, there seems to have been some effect. Too soon to tell how much impact it will have
Well for agriculture it is quite predictable. Soy farmers are hosed.
China Wins As Trump Torches U.S. Treasuries In Real Time
Year after year, decade after decade, officials in Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul and beyond dutifully bought U.S. Treasury securities. That’s now changing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2025/04/15/china-wins-as-trump-torches-us-treasuries-in-real-time/
I don’t think it is easy. The US has to refinance $9 trillion of debt this year and borrow another $2 trillion to cover its expenses for 2025. The amount it spends on servicing debt could go up by a few hundred billion. If there’s a recession or stagflation this or next year, there’ll be another government ‘stimulus’. During COVID that amounted to something like $4.5 trillion of new debt, which today would mean another couple of hundred billion spent on servicing it. What political force in the US is going to put their foot down and say “That’s it, we’re doing austerity now”? Trump attacked Thomas Massie recently for voting against the Continuing Resolution, so I don’t think Trump will be that political force. The deficit for 2025 is forecast to be around $2 trillion without any emergency stimulus. Trump said he wants to reduce military spending, then he increased it to $1 trillion. Who else if not Trump? The Congress? There’re a bunch of grifters and clowns, they don’t care. The can will be kicked down the road until it all starts crashing one day. The US federal government is spending money like they’re fighting WWII, running deficits of 7% of GDP (or much more if you remove $4 trillion of fake “imputations” from the GDP figure) in peace time, and the consensus impulse among those in a position to affect this in anyway is to keep kicking the can down the road.
Things went sideways after 9/11, then got worse after 2008, then worse still after COVID. I don’t see any way out of this mess, given what kind of people are in power in America. How many times did Rep. David Schweikert bring the debt problem to everyone’s attention? Nobody gives a shit. Revenues $5 trillion, expenses $7 trillion while debt held by the public is already at $29 trillion? It’s fiiiine, just keep spending like there’s no tomorrow. The empire is at the “looting the treasury” stage. Collapse is sure to follow sooner or later. Trump’s tariffs, even if they were not as retarded as they ended up being, would not have saved the sinking ship.
I reckon it too, but does it make Iran a loser?
Any sane stateman has to put in mind, to avoid mass casualty as an all time prime
Those who don’t?
Either they are insane,
or, they got lackeys to do the bloody jobs for them a.k.a Zog
From China-Russia-Iran’s point, it’s extremely difficult to maintain any faux dialogues while an insane sky-deity driven lunatic who saber rattling at their doorstep,
it requires patience, channel buildings, time to decouple with Jewsa and its minions, I don’t see it as a sign of cowardice
Some pro-West Iranian elites having delusions and wishful thoughts, I’m not sure they still hold any influence after the assassinations of Sulewmani
So what are you trying to say?
What’s the point of turning your family into a fortress?
I feel like you’re a caveman over there growling about swinging an iron bar.
Hungry ghosts don’t just have to be nigs breaking into your house, you could face the police.
When you can’t pay your mortgage because you can’t pay your living expenses, and the IRS wants to confiscate your home to pay the debt, you’re still powerless in the face of heavily armed police officers.
I’ve seen a lot of people defend their homes with a lot of weapons, and then get killed by sniper fire.
It’s from American police law enforcement records.
Racists are invariably pig ignorant morons, but this porker excels. Few if any people have revolted against their rulers as often as the Chinese, you poisonous hate-crazed cretin.
But China built HUGE fall-out shelters for its people, under Mao.
Judaism is contagious Evil.
Jewish John’s Johnson (JJJ) writes:
JJJ once again proves his economic illiteracy by that statement.
The fact is that the Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) are almost all HAEMORRAGING RED INK. (And to the extent that some aren’t, they are just barely holding their heads above water).
Recognising that the SOE’s are a retardant on growth, the Chinese are CULLING THESE SOE’s AT THE RATE OF 1000’s PER YEAR:
https://english.ckgsb.edu.cn/knowledge/article/piece-by-piece-soe-reform-is-among-chinas-biggest-challenges/
From that article above:
(*Admittedly, no country has practised absolutely pure unfettered Free Market Capitalism in all of history – but the U.S came closest in the 130 or so years leading up to the creation of the ZOG owned Federal Reserve in 1913, explaining why they became the richest nation on Earth).
But China today, for all its shortcomings, is closest to being the Capitalist/Libertarian Free Market utopia among the major economies of the world – hence the reason it is the economic Colossus we’ve observed.
And ONCE AGAIN, Jewish John’s Johnson proves, on yet another topic, that he’s a Know-Nothing ignorant clown. He is in fact the resident Contrarian Indicator here in UR (in that the truth is almost always the opposite of what he claims).
The US farmer is at the mercy of his own government, big banks, big agro, techbros and homies like you who blocks them from buying the cheapest and best fertilizer and machinery.
Why are you boasting about that Achmed?
That’s something that’s worthy of hanging one’s head in shame.
After all, Steve Sailer is a KNOWN APOLOGIST for ZOG malfeasance.
His articles almost always deal with FRIVOLOUS FLUFF.
The people that participate in/read his articles are typically MINDLESS MORONS (with a disproportionate number of foaming-at-the-mouth malignant Jews in attendance).
It is well known that Sailer censors/purges/moderates into oblivion all comments that offend his Jewish benefactors.
Sailer is as thick as thieves with the Talmudic degenerates and bends over backwards to ingratiate himself with them, hoping they’ll throw a few shekels his way (or give him a syndicated column in one of their publications).
Only IDIOTS have a single positive word to say about Steve ‘Shlomo’ Sailer.
” ….Ron Unz is a stand-up guy for free-speech like you won’t see often, and his website is the best in functionality (best commenting system on the web!).
You nailed it, Mr.Achmed E.Newman!
According to the little moi, Ron Unz is such a “rarity” nowadays as a man of great integrity.
Well, you have to give Bessent credit there. When China was actually Communist it was an impoverished hell-hole, whose citizens lived in grinding poverty.
Meanwhile, the China of the post Mao period (an overwhelmingly Capitalist country) was spectacularly successful in the 30 year period commencing with Deng Xiaoping’s ascendancy (although Big Gubmint intervention in the post 2008 GFC period, threatens to derail the Chinese economic miracle).
Meanwhile, the USSA – a known Socialist shit-hole – is faring very badly.
Because, as far as the big end of town is concerned, it abandoned Free Market Capitalism long ago and instead is plagued by Crony Corporatism.
Lastly, for the edification of the many Maoists here in UR (that admire the Chairman for his humility and hygiene habits – habits which they too have emulated), here is a 2 min animated video that reveals the true Chairman Mao:
Ahhhh yes, the dashing and debonair Mao, who though himself to be God’s gift to women and believed he was an outstanding physical specimen.
You gotta give it to those Chinese. they’re sooooo humble.
Great points, Smyth.
The other problem is Unions. Henry Ford offered $5 an hour to his workers to thwart the unionization of his company. That didn’t stop the unionization.
Unions are Jewish constructs. Every Union, Labor union, the workingman’s association—is Marxist.
What do unions do—Drive up labor costs.
What does rising labor rates do?
Cause Inflation.
Do you know what the cost of an actual union worker is today ?????
$75 AN HOUR!!!! With all the benefits, sick day, vacation days, holiday pay, etc.
WHY WAS OUR MANFACTURING BASED MOVED OUT of America????????????????????????
Labor costs.
It is the ol’ Jewish tactic of the Hegelian dialectic.
The Jew wants Globo-Homo so he creates unions to drive labor costs up–so capitalists ARE forced to move factories to where there is cheap labor—ahhhh, Free Trade, Globalization.
See, the Jew creates the problem—and then offers HIS solution—-Free trade—move companies OVERSEAS. And that is why we do not have manufacturing here in America—but Israel wants us to bomb Iran!!!! And give them 2000Lbs bombs to take out civilians!!!! —with what??? The American storehouse is NOW empty!!! The Houthis are wasting American munitions by the billions!!!!
And then you have the Jew Federal Reserve (the plank in the Communist Manifesto calling for a Central Bank) which causes inflation!!! Inflation is Warfare. Inflation is Jew Warfare to bring about a Marxist takeover. (Hilter was right in ending unions in Germany. Unions need to be quashed, disbanded as Jew units.) $5 an hour–and they still unionized! Yep. Jew Plan.
So this whole “Tariff” brouhaha is a big Jew Problem. Tariffs undercut Jew Free Trade, that is why they scream—but then the conundrum–how is America going to fight Jew Wars without a Manufacturing base and Machinists????????????????????????????????? Quite the pickle isn’t it!!!!!!!
You’re obviously not a prepper. There are lots of websites out there.
Wow! Thank you.
That would be one Daffy Duck in the 1956 classic, A Star is Bored.
I wish I could find a fiche of the Times front page. I’m surprised Mr. Unz hasn’t actually archived it.
So you’re the legendary eschatological survivalist?
Pretty good. Treasure the inferior biological samples.
Say something more to please me.
I’ll be happy.
Which is why I use my neighbour’s wifi when shit-posting, Mr. Lù.
☯️
Any product Amazon sells should last longer than 6 months. I actually blame Amazon more than the gutterslugs who designed the bike. It was a lesson learned, Mao fanboy, don’t buy Chinese crap.
As A123 pointed out, it is not possible to implement all the tariff details quickly enough, so announcing them as brashly as possible is a move which puts people on notice and also puts hostile actors off balance (lobbyists). It also gets the low hanging fruit of countries who will voluntarily align with the new trade paradigm. If there are enough of these countries implementing the tariffs may become a moot point. If there is enough “Buy America” sentiment in the USA as a result of all this commotion, then tariffs are not even necessary.
The USG debt might be manageable but is silly and destructive. Unfortunately, as the interest payments go up, then it cannot really be managed. The actions you suggest make sense but more is needed.
The US economy and the underlying mindset is very financialized and is a house of cards. If you cut the size of the US government (which means cutting payouts to contractors), then these newly jobless people either go on welfare or get real jobs. Going on welfare is a zero sum game since the government still pays them, so they need real private sector jobs. So the illegals have to be chased out to free up some jobs and also new productive enterprises need to start up to create other real jobs. Real jobs are not FIRE, not government, not bubble sectors.
So the talk of shrinking the government, deporting illegal aliens and correcting trade relationships leads to a very consistent message. I am not a mind reader so I don’t know if this is what they are thinking. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know if it will work. But it does look like a systematic and integrated response based on various moves which have been widely discussed for decades.
Surely they expected China to push back including with Treasuries. Possibly this response was desired.
My other favorite Far Side airplane cartoon has the pilot seeing a goat through a gap in the clouds. He says, “Hey what is that goat doing up here in a cloud?” just before the plane crashes into the cloud shrouded mountain.
If you call a country plagued with 1926’s famine(actually happened during Republic of China reign), brutal murder and rape by the japs in 1930,
then a bloody war Mao/Chinese communists always tried to avoid with Chi. nationalists (They co-oped. twice in 1923 and 1937, check ‘2nd United Front), after the defeat and expel of japs it was the Chi. nationalists betrayed the promise of ‘forming a coalition government and started the Civil War in 1946.
After that Mao and his comrades took the reign but it was piles of ruins and millions of mouth to feed, that is a definition of a war torn country WTC, impoverished?
Yes at that time, perhaps
Hell-hole?
I never met any Chinese with jewry’s negativity to ‘Tikkun Olam’ the world at their order, nor so hell-bent on subverting goyim’s country from within, destroying their homeland and gut them insideout,
The way you described a hellhole is merely just based on living standards and conditions, given that those 2 can drastically improve or perish over a certain time, what you seemingly ignored are people’s good will and conscience.
Let me tell ya straight even int. jewry had their way to the top, with all their Golden Calf in Sinai and Jewusalem all that, green bills splashing over the hill, Tel Aviv PrickPrade in broad daylight, all the nations indeed subjugated to Yahweh,
It’s still a pitless hell hole without any merit and grace.
It’s not just Trump who is ignorant.
The AngloWest has a financialized economy, and those who prosper within it, and its lies, such as the imputed factor of GDP, live within a bubble that leaves them unable to grasp reality.
The reality they cannot grasp is that which you highlighted here: America is broke and no longer leads the world in anything, militarily or economically.
It does, however, lead the world in being the largest Jewish-run colony.
That video is based on a book by Mao’s supposed personal physician Li which is full of lies. Many people who knew Mao personally have confirmed this.
Name one ethnic group of women who don’t nag??
Yeah yeah again,
the usual JJ nonsense Chinese are living in a xxxxx state/society,
does any REAL Chinese reckon this description of his country?
Did you pull any of this words from known Chinese or your own rear end?
Yeah Chinese look after themselves and making money for THEMSELVES, that’s a double-headed snake, while Jewusa/Jewk shed young whites soldier’s blo-od or middleclass’s tax money for Zog that is a real patriot, who loves Israel.
No, Whites simply thought no other ethnics/races have critic thinking or self-examination, while quite often it was themselves living in misery, deception, propaganda and downright devouring their own sons/daughters for the Golden Calf occultists.
Unlike other users came here to diss for the sake of bashing, I had some talks with a former CSoE(State Owned Enterprise)employee from construction, according to him CSoE had a mixture of success and failures. Their steel factories such as AnGang (AnHui Steel Co.) and BaoGang (BaoTou Steel Co.) had a long list of corruptions and lack of competitive due to bad management, overcapacity and short sighted vision, while BaoGang (ShangHai BaoShan Steel Co.) were running in good shape and serving Chinese local companies with their patented steels for 2 decades, at a fraction of mitsubishi’s overpriced carbon steels.
All in all they want to see more CSoE restructured and their employees picked based on merit not nepotism, back in 90s those factory headmasters would put his cronies and lovers in key positions, even now people with a mediocre Public Servant Certification would run an edge over a graduate fresh off college but with a much deep understanding in the field（in theory）, that is the result of mediocracy truimphs quality at any country, over any time.
So all said SoE should be strictly limited, structured and overseen by inspector and their outcome, their salary should match the average but not in any meaning higher, otherwise it’d become a hotbed for both the talentless mass to find a comfort den, and those with talent wasting their life livng in misery.
Agreed with all, but especially that 3rd paragraph, QCIC. Socialism has a bug, though, most Socialists would call it a feature – there’s no easy way to reverse it. Yes, indeed, all those employees, whether they were useful or not, will now need taxpayer money anyway, until the economy gets more privatized, but all that takes lots of time.
There is no painless way out of the financial hole that has been created over the last half century.
Thanks for the great comment!
.
Oh, and re that Far Side cartoon, it was one of my favorites. Kinda been there, done that …
Ha, you just brought back a memory from 16 years ago, Alarmist. Until that trip to China, one could buy a SIM card for cash off the street* and use it in one’s phone, no ID required. One could pay the equivalent of 40 cents/hr to get on-line at internet cafes, again, cash, no ID.
Well, it wasn’t the money (probably about the same), but this time the girl at the counter needed to see an ID and photocopy it. I said “see ya’” and didn’t go back to any of these places. We weren’t going to be there quite long enough to hook up internet, so I had to get on-line via some nearby network in the building complex – wish I could remember the network name – probably just the name of the router…
The signal sucked sometimes, and I couldn’t get on-line for hours or most of some days – all the better for rest and relaxation time.
During this time, I got into a month-long not-too-unfriendly argument/discussion with an American guy about the Climate Calamity™ under one of Vin Suprynowitz’s (sp?) Las Vegas Review Journal columns. I could read gunowners.com fine – I don’t think the CCP has any problem with the Chinese learning about America. They have more of a problem with the Chinese learning about China.
Hence, UNZ.COM!!
.
* Cards with lots of 4’s in the number were much cheaper than those with lots of 8’s – I’m caught in a trap, I can’t go back …… errr, Superstitious Minds?
Also, nice job reading Chinese! (or something)
The truth is that China practices the damned nearest closest economic system to classical Hitlerian National Socialism that has been tried these past 80 years.
Canton Chinese, or at least the older characters.
Surely they expected China to push back including with Treasuries. Possibly this response was desired.
There is no ‘they’ in this trainwreck. Trump is the Commander-in-chief of the trade war, and he plans like a child in a candy store.
I get a feeling that Trump has carefully selected his cabinet to be filled with incompetent people. Rubio, Hegseth, Bessant, Kennedy, Lutnick, Bondi (along with J.D. Vance) all radiate ignorance and arrogance. Rubio and Bondi have Juris Doctor degrees and openly say that courts have no say on Trump’s decisions (on foreign policy) while sitting in Oval Office answering press conference!
Beans, bullets, and band-aids, Bitchez!
God, guns, and gold!
Community, community, community!
Let me see if AI can come up with appropriate matching mantras for China:
Small dogs, big dogs, and band-aids, Bitchez!
N/A, N/A, and gold!
Ditto!
I think the 3rd one is most important – it’s one that the most difficult to follow for me.
No, I’m not that guy you mentioned.
Soy is practically an industrial product, the way sugar beets were in pre-WWI Germany. It can be stored for long periods, and it can even be used for fuel. Overproduction of Soy is easy to remedy. If a massive surplus is on hand, it should be carefully stored, and next year, other crops should be planted. The USA should grow more rye. The US grows a pitiful amount of rye flour, and raises a pitiful number of sheep. If overproduction isn’t a problem for corn, it shouldn’t be a problem for other grains.
https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/production/commodity/0451000
Thanks for bringing up this point because I have this game I play called “connecting the Kosher dots” …
Question: Who financed and built up Japan to be a military power and why were they in Manchuria?
Any guesses?
Here’s a clue:
The Japs wanted Manchuria to grow opium.
Now guess who the colonizers were?
No, they weren’t fellow Japs. Guess again.
If you said Jews, you are right.
Here’s a Kosher summary from AI ,which, of course, leaves out the part about opium growing.
I vaguely remember reading that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was born there, but a quick search on Google reveals he was not; but his parents were certainly there (Harbin) in the late 1930s. There is no evidence that Olmert’s parents were growing or manufacturing opium for the Japs, but it is very suspicious that they were there.
Mea culpa, I am guilty of racial profiling and antisemitism.
Mr Cloud, I’d accept your explanation if, once Mao inherited the reins of power, he stabilised the country and, after a period of consolidation, started improving things for the citizenry.
But, as bad as poverty was when Mao cam to power, and as infinitesimal as GDP per capita was, SOMEHOW (don’t ask me how), Mao managed to impoverish the citizenry EVEN MORE – no mean feat.
Meanwhile, we have that clown LittleRedBot, who boasted in previous UR threads how Mao managed to get GDP growth up to 6% per year – and how the west was [allegedly] envious of that.
(I got one hell of a good belly laugh when I heard that from the RedBot man).
I don’t know what the average Chinese unskilled labourer was earning exactly when Mao took over in 1949, but it was of the order of 6-8 cents per day.
And, within a few years Mao brought it down to around 3-4 cents per day.
(WHAT A MAN OF THE PEOPLE HE WAS).
Well UR readers, if Mao managed to get 6% growth for EVERY YEAR of the next 24 years* after that (Hint: He most assuredly did not), that 4 cents/day a Chinese unskilled worker was getting in the early 1950’s would have compounded to ….. wait for it …… 16 cents/day wages by the mid 1970’s (when the gangrene in Mao’s mouth set in and likely killed him).
(*UR readers may already be familiar with the Rule of 72. Basically, you use the number 72 and divide it by the rate of growth and you get the number of years to double your money.
So, if the rate of growth/interest you earn in a bank account is 6%, then 72 divided by 6=12 years to double your principal).
If you have 10% growth, then 72 divided by 10=7.2 years to double your money.
Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar – or so much of a dolt that they’d likely also swallow the easily disprovable Anthropogenic Global Warming hoax.
In other words, a neurologically impaired simpleton.
You don’t have to rely on the testimony of one person.
Everyone who met* Mao saw those hideously discoloured algae infested pus oozing teeth of his, accompanied by that stench of death about him.
Look into it yourself – and stop making excuses for this mass murdering wretch of a man.
(It’s unbecoming of you Mikey).
(*Track down some video footage of the 1972 meeting of Nixon and Mao, and you’ll see the latter’s smile. It’ll make you puke).
Name one ethnic group of women who don’t nag??
It’s a sliding scale but polynesian women I would definitely place on the low end. Icelandic women are known to be supportive of their men but I have never been around them.
Yeah yeah again, the usual JJ nonsense Chinese are living in a xxxxx state/society,does any REAL Chinese reckon this description of his country?
What are you claiming exactly? That they aren’t totalitarian? Can you not use the word?
A poet who criticized Xi Jinping has been sentenced to six years in prison.
https://lithub.com/a-poet-who-criticized-xi-jinping-has-been-sentenced-to-six-years-in-prison/
What exactly are they missing from a totalitarian society?
totalitarianism: totalitarianism, form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/totalitarianism
Chinese people do not have individual freedoms. Getting a prison sentence over a poem shows a complete lack of freedom and individual subordination to the state.
Yeah Chinese look after themselves and making money for THEMSELVES, t
I don’t care if the Chinese are profit seeking. That doesn’t bother me at all. I was just pointing out that they are only pals with money as seen by the fact they happily sell drones to both sides in the Russian invasion. We have quite a few posters that want to view China as a reliable ally to Russia. China really isn’t friends with anyone.
hat’s a double-headed snake, while Jewusa/Jewk shed young whites soldier’s blo-od or middleclass’s tax money for Zog that is a real patriot, who loves Israel.
I don’t support subsidizing Israel and by all means write your local Trump kissing Republican rep and ask why military aid to Israel isn’t being questioned by DOGE.
I agree. There are huge vested interests woven all through the existing system. Collapse seems more likely than correction. On the other hand, people have a lot to lose and a lot to gain by sorting things out. It is too early to tell what will come of it, but Team Trump’s broad push has given me a little optimism that some pivotal improvements can be implemented. I don’t think I ever believed that previously.
This all looks scary and dangerous because it is. If someone thinks the system is going to collapse soon they have little incentive to be cautious, especially if bold moves may be able to spur important positive achievements.
Interesting times.
Plenty of Jews and White Russians found sanctuary in Harbin, China, into the 1950s.
Funny you wrote that just now! A Chinese lady recently gave me a cookie with a note in it that said something, something, anyone? Anyone? “May you live … Anyone? … “… in interesting times.”
What’s interesting to me is that this young lady, and at least half a million other Chinese ladies and men who work in America at Chinese restaurants, are illegal aliens. For some reason, many of them come from Fujian province (across the straits from Taiwan).
Now, with all the pro-China talk all over The Unz Review, did anyone bring up the question of why IN THE HELL do all these people want to keep moving to America, even NOW?
Why yes, of course the Peak Stupidity blog covered this story – that was 7 years ago, in The China to King Buffet pipeline.
The cookie was pretty good.
lol what is the looney tunes episode that had this master of ceremonies guy wearing a plaid dinner jacket that had the plaid pattern fixed on the screen… he moved and the pattern didn’t?? LOL does anyone remember that one?
Fear grows among US’s 390,000 undocumented Chinese immigrants: ‘So many policies have changed’
Those newly arrived and those who have lived in the US for decades worry as Trump vows to deport Chinese nationals
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/chinese-undocumented-immigrants-trump-policies
390,000? They have no number that precise. That’s the whole point of being an
undocu ..come on, illegal alien. Nationals are a different story. I think he refers to people who have Green Cards or are on some originally-legal visa.One thing about the Chinese, ePebble, as compared to Latin America illegal aliens – you’d figure they’d be more organized, and they are. My post linked-to above described a system of Greyhound-sized charter buses, many coming from Newark, N. Jersey. Why Newark? I’m guessing that the immigration officers at the airport/international port-of-entry there weren’t all on the up-and-up. In fact, some might be Chinese, with not any more loyalty to America than Ally hondro Mayorkas and Zhou Bai Dien have.
Yeah, crank up the fear level… to 11!
A lot of people think Trump is still their savior, lol.. Its hard to wake these people up, they are invested in a rigged system.
One explanation is the PLA ‘wants’ these people to come over here. Hmmm.
Another fun theory is that most of the Chinese students studying at US universities are the dumb ones who were not accepted into Chinese schools. The mind reels.
That’s true nowadays. A Chinese contact knows a lady who spent big bucks – full tuition – to send her kid to the U. of North Dakota for 5 years (his English sucked, so he had to do 5) to get some degree in nothing special. However, the important point is that most of these people do their damndest to get some kind of visa, another student one, work visa, whatever, to stay… forever, if they can.
Going in reverse order, as for the CCP’s influence, that is most certainly the case with their “Confucius Centers”. They purport to teach Chinese to American-born Chinese kids and spread culture, but they are a CCP outfit. Trump-45, and hopefully Trump-47, want them OUT. You can tell a CCP stooge when he calls someone against all this foreign influence a Sinophobe or whatever.
So why didn’t you get the bike refunded or repaired since it is under warranty?
Or are you in the habit of buying suspiciously cheap stuff without checking out the warranty?
Anyways
I have stopped buying US goods and services for a number of years now. So have an increasing number of people in my region. We do not want to feed the monster. The last US product I purchased was an iPhone 3.
Btw, please don’t buy Chinese stuff. That would leave more for us.
Yes, thanks.
It is also suspicious to me. It seems to be that Trump is either a total idiot or a super genius… Nothing in between.
He may be so smart that he is trying to crash the thoroughly rotten USA so badly that a new country can emerge from that. But that would entail at least 20 years of turmoil, suffering and rebuilding.
Either way it is bad news for the MAGA folks
Britannica Huh? Now close the tab Jonny, tell me what’s the underscore in those 3, metaphysically?
Kingdom, Selfdom, Freedom
They all have boundary
China and other countries are turning the tide by whacking down those moles and rats, to what they really are : Individuals who never worked honestly and never would（They don’t possess the skills）, hoping a color revo. would put their lazy ass on top of the hierarchy.
A poet? Sitting on his lazy ass, poeting in 2025??
I can’t be bothered to open the link and find out he is a 4th-tierish clown, but those anti-China ‘intellectuals’ did remind me of one guy, in all striking fashion :
Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo called upon another 300 yrs of colonialism, and,
China toss this sore loser off in jail, according to local Chinese law
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-defend-Nobel-Peace-Laureate-Liu-Xiaobo-in-his-claim-that-China-needs-another-300-years-of-colonialism
Although such individuals always devoured by western media as ‘freedumb fighters’, you need to peel off the thin layer of ‘liberation call’ to understand the subtle context,
they were used, and they are still being used as propaganda fearmongering templates, to frame China as ‘a lawless totalitarian state which does not allow personal freedom or freedom of thoughts’
When often it is Chinese traitors being caught on agitating color revo. or 5th column infiltration, which broke the boundaries of ‘Personal Freedom’ and could lead to unrest and chaos in large scale, that alone, is nothing ‘Personal’ nor ‘Freedom’
Such individual should hung in front of TianAnMen, put a red ‘Public Enemy’ tag on it and airdrop at the middle of YangZe River.
Here’s a curious article from 2010.
It made some other good predictions too.
“Btw, please don’t eat at that human poop buffet. It would leave more for us.”
America’s National Security Wonderland
Perhaps the most interesting part:
LOL!
Let me add seriously that even if 10-center Red Dot were serious, he’d be stupid to want that. 25 years ago, the crappy stuff went to the Chinese market and the good stuff to the USA. This has flipped around since that time.
I don’t think Mr. Dot would appreciate getting products from American-rejected shipping containers.
Britannica Huh? Now close the tab Jonny, tell me what’s the underscore in those 3, metaphysically? Kingdom, Selfdom, Freedom
Would you like a political science definition?
https://polsci.institute/comparative-politics/comparing-political-regimes-democratic-totalitarian-authoritarian/
Totalitarian regimes maintain tight control over all aspects of society, from the economy to the media. Decision-making is centralized, often concentrated in the hands of a single leader or a ruling party. This centralization allows for swift implementation of policies, but it also stifles dissent and individual freedoms.
That is China. Centralized control, authoritarian media, swift implementation of policies, suppression of dissent and individual freedom.
They don’t have freedom. You don’t have freedom when you can’t even write a poem about the government. That is zero freedom.
If you want to defend China then find another aspect worth highlighting. Wiser China defenders don’t even bother with conversations about freedom. They focus on economic development.
Warranty? How about I just go back to Sears and take the exercise bike back the 2nd time. In Peak Stupidity‘s post The
SofterNoisier Side of Sears of 6 years back I related that story.I got very good at assembling the bikes by that 3rd time. The unusual thing was, that the 3rd bike WAS different inside. Instead of the bottom bracket (biker term for crank bearing set) having the cheap-ass bearings with a thin sheet-metal cage, no dust seals and no built-in races, the 3rd one had 2 nice real bearings with their own integral races. That’s why this bike still works, instead of grinding after 2 weeks.
So, they had to sell 3 bikes to make 1 bike’s worth of profit. What exactly IS the profit in THAT, if any? However, for small stuff that we just give up on and throw out, you all come out ahead. Happy? We’re not.
Keep on raising hell, President Trump, even if you gotta be the Wile Coyote to the Chinese roadrunner. Remember, they always have good deals on dynamite at Acme.com. (Not sure it’ll all work, cause it comes from … you got it!)
Even human poop is better and more safe than what the Americans are fed by their food industry.
What “rational planners”? I’ve a PhD in rational planning (seriously) and I’ve yet to see a rational planner in corporations. The thesis is reasonably explained by David Gelles; The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy , Simon & Schuster, 2023.
Financialization is about planning to loot a corporation by destroying its future. Intel is a good example, so (of course) is what’s left of GE. That is not rational in the Enlightenment sense of the word “rational”. It’s sort of like selling your house and blowing it all on weekends at Vegas (I know somebody who did that, and the mess is larger than I can clean up).
When a system is so deeply in trouble, small measures won’t “save what you can” after the current debacle.
Trump is disengaging from the rest of the world, trying to make an autarkic region out of the Northern part of the Western hemisphere.
Trump might not succeed, as he Mexican government is now a regional service to the regional Mexican drug cartels, and the Biden migrations may have introduce d enough Latin American organized crime to infiltrate the US government and make it as nonfunctional as the Mexican or Venezuelan government. The inability of US government to prevent such an outcome is illustrated Puerto Rico (more aptly named Puerto Pobre) is now losing its power grid, same as Cuba: US government has no more power in Puerto Pobre than it does in Cuba. And please don’t tell me that the International Jewish Conspiracy (IJC) runs both – might as well say that IJC is headed by Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (“red nose”, hence Communist, hence Jewish).
As for “what happened”, it looks like the end of the world war era left no tomorrow to believe in, hence nothing to do except seduction, as in the song:
And so the entire damned industrialized world forgot tomorrow, and was as infertile as seduction always is. And we are on the verge of a population crash with no jobs to offer Gen Z (hence with no trained personnel in 20 years).
In such a situation, it’s save what you can, and Trump is cutting away what can’t be saved. What he is doing makes no sense in the financialization context, you are right about that, but the financialization context is dead.
Even human poop is better and more safe than what the Americans are fed by their food industry.
Libertarians actually want to eliminate what minimal regulation exists.
They libertarian party platform would actually allow soylent green as long as the source of the human flesh is from outside the country.
Ayn Rand taught us that peons have no right to ask what is in their food. Profits are everything.
I have no idea what you mean by that lunatic comment. Does “their food industry” include the mom and pop farms where I source my meat and eggs? Moron. You must be from Arsestralia or Pedophisland.
In such a situation, it’s save what you can, and Trump is cutting away what can’t be saved. What he is doing makes no sense in the financialization context, you are right about that, but the financialization context is dead.
How does it make sense to kill agricultural exports to China.
In 2022 we had 36 billion dollars worth of exports.
Please explain how that can’t be saved when our soy exports were just fine before Trump started monkeying with the machine.
This seems like it was written by AI.
I’m sure that ~85% of America’s urban population sources most of their food from mom-and-pop eco-farms and not from large-scale retail chains peddling chemically enhanced goyslop.
Traditional manufacturing was long gone. Do you want to work as a seamstress?
Advanced manufacturing is thriving, running 24/7. CAD/CAM, Laser machining, precision investment casting /forging, additive manufacturing, direct energy deposition, CNC programming, Rapid prototype, fixed and programmable robotic automation, etc.
Black machinists? They do rough machining. The high IQ ones get to do CNC programming.
Learn the trade at community college or trade school then your life will be good.
In WW3, it won’t be a conventional war. Nukes will be flying and not a single living being left.
JJJ once again proves his economic illiteracy by that statement.
The fact is that the Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) are almost all HAEMORRAGING RED INK. (And to the extent that some aren’t, they are just barely holding their heads above water).
Our desperate Aussie libertarian is again drunk on Foster’s and making up facts to defend his precious Rand cult.
Well here are the largest Chinese state owned companies.
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/5-biggest-chinese-state-owned-companies-1106821/2/
They’re all profitable. So you are wrong as usual and didn’t seem to think I would actually fact check you.
Kind of funny how Rand referred to her cult members as “rationalists” and yet I’ve never come across a political group other than the Marxists that are as full of shit.
I am pretty critical of China’s totalitarian state but I will give them credit for doing their part do help bury the Rand cult and its core belief that the White man should abandon the government he created. Oh but not Israel as Rand gave them a special pass to break her own collectivist rules. Isn’t that right? White countries must open the doors to the third world but not Israel. That’s different said Rand. It’s amazing as to how many White men still follow this retarded cult.
But China today, for all its shortcomings, is closest to being the Capitalist/Libertarian Free Market utopia among the major economies of the world – hence the reason it is the economic Colossus we’ve observed.
That’s incorrect and worldwide market freedom indexes like Freedom House rank them low:
https://kleanindustries.com/insights/market-analysis-reports/china-2025-world-freedom-report-score/
They don’t have business rights as the government can take your business at any time without due process. Criticizing the government over regulation of your business can lead to a labor camp. How is that a libertarian utopia? Do explain.
I’ll accept your figure of 36 billion in total agricultural trade with PRC (to 2 places), or $40 billion to 1 place.
The US has a total trade deficit with PRC of $295.4 billion, or ~$300 billion to one place.
It could be that Trump thinks that 300 billion is a larger number than 40 billion. If he does, he is correct. Continuing to lose $300 billion to get $40 billion does not sound like a winning business proposition to me, and I’d imagine that Trump would agree.
So why not just put tariffs non-agricultural goods?
That has to do with the nature of negotiations. If you separated out agricultural goods, then PRC would say something like “Let’s discuss this separation, and until we reach agreement we continue to use tariffs from, say, a year ago (2024)”. Trump says “No”, PRC says “Yes”, and you spend forever in worthless talk and end up discussing the discussion while PRC enjoys 2024 level tariffs. You have to keep negotiations simple.
China is in very serious trouble right now, see:
and it has been “appropriating” the business of any successful firm manufacturing in PRC, see:
. Those appropriations are, I suspect, of greater value than the $400 billion above.
And of course the US is in very serious trouble also. It is all very well to say “US will take an entire global quadrant and re-build old US industries and start some new ones, too.”, but that sort of thing takes money, and the US is in no position to borrow that money (owing over 100% of its GDP already). Bootstrap operations like that take decades of time and work that is nearly impossible, and politics that involve “defunding” of very powerful constituencies. Trump might succeed there, since the Gilded Age and the Progressives of the Gilded Age succeeded, but it’s by no means a sure thing. It will be impossible if Trump can’t get Canada and Greenland as US territory and thus get access to the needed raw materials.
So: While I sympathize if it is your sector that gets “defunded”, but think of it this way: If Trump fails, then everything gets defunded and the US probably fragments, some parts being ruled by the drug cartels (as is today’s Mexico), and other parts being not so bad but also subsidizing nothing ’cause they have nothing. I think it’s better to at least try for a better future than that, even though you and I get defunded together in the attempt.
Just for a reference point. getting the money to do the above may require that DOGE and Trump fire almost all the Black middle class: https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/nbc-news-admits-the-black-middle-class-was-created-with-non-essential-federal-jobs-elon-musks-doge-threatens-to-end-the-scam . That’s how much trouble the US is in.
Behold the self-styled “edgy” commenter who uses left-wing euphemisms like “urban population.”
I’ll accept your figure of 36 billion in total agricultural trade with PRC (to 2 places), or $40 billion to 1 place.
It isn’t my figure. It comes from the government.
The US has a total trade deficit with PRC of $295.4 billion, or ~$300 billion to one place.
It could be that Trump thinks that 300 billion is a larger number than 40 billion
Continuing to lose $300 billion to get $40 billion does not sound like a winning business proposition to me, and I’d imagine that Trump would agree.
It isn’t spending 300 billion to get 40 billion. That isn’t how trade deficits work and we export more than 40 billion. The 36 billion represents agriculture.
If I sell eggs to Sam and then buy corn from Susie that doesn’t mean I lost anything. It just means I sold to one party and bought from another.
Trade deficits are worth discussing but they aren’t the same as a loss.
I support tariffs on China for the simple fact that they fix their currency. They play dirty with state subsidized businesses and certainly deserve a 20% tariff. I disagree with libertarians that believe the US shouldn’t have any tariffs on China and that the US should just be a free market sucker. Unfortunately Trump going too far on tariffs will make future politicians assume that the libertarians like Friedman are correct.
But what Trump is doing is completely stupid. He has started a trade war and our farmers will suffer.
Tariffs work best when they don’t disrupt trade and bring in net revenue for the government compared to no tarrifs with taxes. Remember that the Feds get a cut of the profit from something like soybeans. So if you kill off trade then your tariffs will be a net loss.
While I sympathize if it is your sector that gets “defunded”, but think of it this way: If Trump fails, then everything gets defunded
It isn’t my sector but I live in rural America and I’m about 30 seconds from a major farm.
As I said many times I don’t think Trump is looking at our exports and just imagines Americans buying Chinese crap from the dollar store. He imagines someone paying $2 for a doll instead of $1. I wish it was that simple. The Chinese buy a lot of soy and oil from the US. They also buy electronics and planes. In recent news they announced that they would no longer be taking Boeing jets. So it isn’t a single sector but historically it’s a very bad idea to dump on agriculture. Farmers are very vocal and politically active.
You don’t understand how international trade, offshore manufacturing, cost management, design schedule works at all, none of it
Think a little harder, how did you get your crappy ‘Chinese’ bike?
Have you bought it from a Chinese bicycle brand direct store?
Guess not, then it’s a American brand OEM product, SHIPPED from China, but SOLD to you by American corps.
Chinese factories took the order, with a detailed designs dictating which grade of wire, cranks, paddles, linking up to which supplier, specifically.
If American cops. nodded, Chinese factories could make a bicycle passed to your grandson, lots of Chinese own brands such as Phoneix, Pigeon are build as sturdy as a Brit. made Raleigh in the 50s.
it’s those greedy corporations gave Chinese maker the nod to decrease the products life span, and INCREASE the consumption circle a.k.a broke faster, buy more.
Any one with marginal knows in manufacturing, (Not some hasbara troll with no real skills like MeJewJew) would know the initials, draft, design, cost sheet, sampling all REQUIRE proof from corporation, Every single thread, rubber foot, cooper wire’s cost is there on the sheet with other budget variations, however Chinese makers have NO right whatsoever to decide which grade of rubber and aluminum to choose.
They’ve been scapegoated by American’s greedy corporations.
Not quite, and not according to Wikipedia.
Olmert’s father, Mordechai, was the head of the Beitar Movement in Harbin, China, of all places? He would later be associated with Irgun, which is the more bloody and notorious terrorist organization.
So, no, Olmert’s parents (father) weren’t in Harbin, China, for sanctuary, unless by “sanctuary” you mean “safe-house” (a secure and hidden location, often used by crooks who need to stay out of sight or avoid being caught).
But they weren’t ordinary crooks, they were Jewish terrorists, which makes my conjecture that they were probably dope peddlers more plausible, as opium and drug smuggling is how terrorists and black ops are still funded to this very day.
No nukes-bio-warfare. It leaves property undamaged.
Newman doesn’t deal in facts! He’s driven by raw race hatred and demented racist supremacism, to hate China for being BETTER than the ‘Shining Shit-house on the Hill’.
The Chinese will simply sit a home, safe in their fortress. They will not attack the US or any of its puppets, like Flipistan or Arsetralia (thank-you, Brag) and simply wait for the US to collapse from its internal rottenness eg Trump, and Jewintern misrule. As Sun Zi noted, the best victories are those gained WITHOUT fighting.
The policy of protectionism begs the question, why does an economy need to be protected?
What has made Western economies so weak is the toxin of Keynesianism.
The big lie that setting men to dig holes and then fill them up again is just as good for the economy as actually producing things.
A result of this mentality is that we produce an order of magnitude fewer engineers per capita than our international competition.
Supposedly, we can all just keep providing services to each other to keep the economy afloat.
In fact, we’re selling ourselves out. If you produce less than you consume, you borrow from your vendor to buy his stuff. Eventually, he owns you.
We must put aside the illusion that by being a consumer, you’re actually making a productive contribution.
If I remember from world history class, the British empire was built largely on England’s technological head start, and its resulting manufacturing prowess. In the 19th century, textiles from British mills flooded the world‘s markets.
It was the age of mercantilism, of competition for resources and the know-how to add value to them, and then sell the product, so you can earn your way.
That age is still with us. It isn’t going away.
We have lost our independence.
The American empire is reverting to be the American colonies. Not of Britain, but of today’s manufacturing nations
That said, the United States did protect its infant industries during the 19th century. That is a legitimate use for them, but it needs to be coupled with policies fostering development of our productive capacity and competitiveness.
We should encourage our young people to seek out education and careers that build our supply side, rather than simply catering to consumer demands.
The USA is crumbling because its system, that preferences greedy, atomised, individualism over collective welfare, is inherently self-destructive. The average Yank is brainwashed by the indoctrination systems owned by the ruling plutocrats to hate collective enterprises, despite collectives being nothing but the mass of individuals.
It’s a ‘dog-eat-dog’ situation, the ‘bellum omnium contra omnes’ and the ‘Devil Market takes the hindmost’. It’s fine while there are massive forests to fell, the deepest, richest, soils to till, minerals and fossil fuels aplenty, neighbours to attack and plunder, the rest of the advanced world lying in ruins as after WWII, but now that those ‘exorbitant privileges’ have worn off, all the USA has left is military thuggery and pathetic, self-deluding, bluster. And, when the ship is sinking, the rats commence fighting among themselves. Trump is King Rat, now, for a while, as long as Bibi finds him useful.
Jewish John’s Johnson (JJJ) writes:
What exists now in the U.S and elsewhere is ‘minimal’ regulation?
What an eff’n joke. Only a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of tyrannical authoritarianism would utter such an untruth.
The U.S private sector and its citizenry is throttled to death by a regulatory maze (with its concomitant compliance costs), that prevents U.S industry from competing in the world markets.
Libertarians have NEVER advocated for removal of all regulations.
Obviously those that related to law and order and protection of the rights of the citizenry (ie: laws that existed more or less in the era of the Founding Fathers), are sufficient for the most part (with perhaps some minor amendments to factor in for technological progress that’s occurred in the interim).
And as usual, the resident disinformer JJJ mentions the NON-libertarian Ayn Rand and tries to conflate her with a movement that despises her and which she had countless heated confrontations with. Your deceit never ends Jewish JJ – it’s all you know.
It seems JJJ, that the thought of personal liberty (which is what libertarianism is all about), really gets under your skin.
In your ideal world, a One World Gubmint of Jewish intelligentsia will bark out Stalinist-like Five year plans, where the lives of the citizenry will be micromanaged to death as the Jewish Politburo decides what kind of work will be allocated to you, what cramped dog box apartment in a 15 min city you’ll be living in, what your CO2 footprint will be (for certain there will be energy insecurity for all the goyim) etc.
To that end the U.S is today being turned into a Socialist shit-hole (it’s already four-fifths of the way there), as Americans are crushed by the heavy handedness of the ZOG controlled MISSS (Military Industrial Security Surveillance State).
Bullshit. I’m an engineer. I get how things are specified. I already got done writing that American companies are partly responsible for the cheap crap, but also that I’ve got both personal experience and reading (the book I linked to) to see how much the Chinese cheat. Whatever is specified is NOT necessarily what gets shipped.
I also know about corrupt and lazy Chinese Q/A.
It’s Cheap China-made Crap, and a whole lot of people are responsible. Most of them are in China now, because the design phase goes on there nowadays most of the time. How do you not know this?
PS: They lost money on those 3 bikes due to the stupidity of either the American company (this was 15 years ago) or corrupt people at the Chinese factory – I don’t care on that one. Someone got the bearings right finally.
This is probably the 3rd time I’ve told you, but “racism” is not a bad word anymore – it’s like calling some American “you person!” We’re all racists, but Chinese people take the cake. If they can’t be racist because they’re among other Han people only, they will disparage people based on geography (within China!). Shanghai people beat 2nd-tier city people who beat 3rd-tier people who beat the Village People, with their wet noodles.*
.
* A Chinese “village” may have half a million people.
And you’re the Chinaman writing from Arsetralia, right? What are you doing there? Could you explain why China wouldn’t let you in and why you are such an ungrateful wretch?
Thanks for pointing out the canard that Smoot Hawley tarriffs significantly contributed to the Great Depression. Tariffs established in 1922 were greater than Smoot H. The following years of the 1920s were the greatest boom in American history, despite tariffs. Indoor plumbing became widespread. People had radios, washing machines and automobiles.
Economics is war but without the bullets and bombs. Free trade never existed on this planet. It is normal for governments to try to advance the prospects of their farmers, or manufacturers. Even authoritarian governments use tariffs to protect their citizens’ interests.
The purpose of the high tariffs on China is to put an end to Chinese imports, and to reestablish American manufacturing. For many decades America has subsidized most of the world. How many American made cars are found in Germany or Japan? Tariffs and other obstacles ensure protection of their markets. Trump wants to balance tariffs and other impediments to trade. Trump is the only real free trader.
I grew up in a nation where most goods were manufactured in this country. People working at GE and other manufacturing giants were able to buy homes, cars, and they could send their children to universities. Almost every family could afford a refrigerator and washing machine. Food was cheap and widely available.
Let the Chinese prosper selling their products to the third world. We can do very well without the Chinese.
Here’s TASS most recent report on UKR materiel losses so far:
So, Ohhh, gifted one—how is “CAD/CAM, Laser machining, precision investment casting /forging, additive manufacturing, direct energy deposition, CNC programming, Rapid prototype, fixed and programmable robotic automation” going to replace TANKS and 23,718 field artillery pieces. How does that “Laser machining” going to do that?
This is what war does—It DESTROYS Massive amounts of material both in Ships, Airplanes, tanks and artillery. How is that going to be replaced—With Coders?????????? Your 7-Eleven retail clerk???? Your DEI Hispanic Ethnic Studies graduate student????????????? Yeah, like the Marxists are going to do that!!!!
America is just a piece of shit, now. It’s a garbage dump. A Garbage Dump of Idiots and retards.
That’s why education and rational debate is the key,
while China, Chinese collectively is the least confrontational or subverting forces since the founding of U.S.
most Chinese don’t even know the existence of America let alone holding a grudge feeling in 1800s,
There were no major conflict between the two in 200 yrs or so, if not int. jewry shxt stirring
American Whites could have a MUCH better position by co-op with Chinese, than pig backed by all those conman gathered around the world
Ok. How can I refuse such a politely made request? May you never be hungry again.
The Chinese make products in a wide range of quality depending on who is the importer.
For example, if Apple is the importer, they are willing to pay the Chinese manufacturer for a better product. This is why your Apple phones are of good quality and costly.
The fact that you consistently purchase Chinese goods of the poorer quality range speaks more of you and your and inability to afford the higher quality range products, than it does about Chinese maufacturing.
LOL, thank you for teaching me a new Strine word today!
There is a simple reason why China is in the stronger position compared to the US in this trade war. It is much easier to create demand domestically in the short run, than it is to rebuild the workshop of the world.
DC Drano on X brings up some more facts. https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1912244183282090007
In Trump’s term, it was discovered that a massive transformer built in China had a backdoor.
Trump wrote an EO to stop this—Biden reversed this, so now we have 492 of these Chinese transformers in America running our electrical grid.
If anything smacks of stupidity on several levels it is this.
What happens if we had a war with China, they used nukes, or an EMP, and destroyed our Electrical grid??? Can you do war-fighting without an electrical grid???? Can you go to your enemy and pay them for replacements????????????? Yeah, NONSENSE. And then, why can’t we build them here??? Because American Labor is $75 an hour?????
But this is EXACTLY the reason for Free Trade—-and Unions—to create an impossible situation that prevents war. This is ALL Sabotage by the Elites of Harvard, Yale, and the Jews (and their European Cucks) that control this country. Not only do we need factories on Stand-by but a SECURE Electrical grid. And with the Israeli Pager Attack, years in the making, What makes ANY ONE THINK, we have security or trust Free Trade??????????????????
This is the idiocy of America—It is a Masonic construct; it’s ideology is Jewish Messianism; it’s controlled by mad Utopianist Amalek hating Jews; on the Chinese trasformers, Trump does the right thing–the Next president overturns this; the Keystone pipeline is closed—Restarts—Closed again; a 17 year old kills his parents to fund an assassination attempt on Trump; a trans-shooter shoots up a Christian school because it didn’t want to go down as a racist; school shootings out the wazooo; the Democrat Party defrauding the US Taxpayer for the Marxist Agenda and enriching themselves by the TRILLIONS; our own government in cahoots with Israel attempts to sink its own warship, i.e. the USS Liberty; and the WASP that built this country is BEING GENOCIDED by its own government.
Free Trade comes along with Open Borders. This Jewish Open Society stuff is just pure evil. Free Trade is the Devil’s design. We need to close it all down.
You might enjoy this: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/barbarians-and-mandarins
It’s rather pointless, but entertaining.
Protectionism means protecting your industries from foreign competition. If you’ve lost significant chunks of your industrial base, how can tariffs be termed “protectionist?”
Below is a commercial that ran on TV 47 years ago.
That argument was lost decades ago. Just about all clothing and shoes for sale in US stores are foreign made.
What exists now in the U.S and elsewhere is ‘minimal’ regulation?
I was responding to anon in reference to the food industry.
Our food industry has minimal regulation.
Red 40 has been known for years to cause problems in some children and it still isn’t banned.
It’s a food coloring that has plenty of natural alternatives.
That would be minimal regulation. Allowing a completely superficial dye that causes problems just so a kid’s cereal company can save a few pennies.
Cattle are also allowed to be injected with experimental hormones. What exactly are you injecting them with? Libertarians say that is not our business. Thus is the word of Rand.
Libertarians have NEVER advocated for removal of all regulations.
That’s incorrect. They don’t believe that market regulation is within the role of the government and that is stated in their platform:
The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.
https://lp.org/platform-page/
This libertarian website further explains why environmental regulations should be completely rejected:
https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/environment
So you’re wrong and you don’t even know your own cult.
I like to keep bringing up Truth Defender’s snark.
FIRST: In WHAT Building is this “Advanced manufacturing thriving” in when we have No factories on a grand scale? What 5 buildings maybe in the whole US? How many Factories are needed TO REPLACE:
SECOND. How does one operate “CAD/CAM, Laser machining, precision investment casting /forging, additive manufacturing, direct energy deposition, CNC programming, Rapid prototype, fixed and programmable robotic automation” with Cannabis everywhere???? I live in Battle Creek MI, which was home to a huge industrial base, home now to several factories—but with probably 30 Cannabis shops????? I worked construction; I worked factory. BOTH require attention to detail, quickness, and on-time performance—How is that done with Cannabis users????????????????
I’ve worked with Cannabis users, drunks—ALL incapable of doing fine precision work. My experience. How many of these Cannabis users are physically fit?
THIRD. Many school districts are reporting that there is hardly ANY reading/math sufficiency in the inner schools which is the Majority of America. How are we going to do “…CAD/CAM, Laser machining, precision investment casting /forging, additive manufacturing, direct energy deposition, CNC programming, Rapid prototype, fixed and programmable robotic automation,…” with Minorities?????????????????????????? …. with Cannabis Users????????? ….with party animals????
America doesn’t have any parameters anymore for warfighting. ZERO. And Democracy and Freedom are the causes of this dystopian hell-hole, not its answer.
War fighting REQUIRES ALL Sorts of things, coordination between education, morals, economy, sociology, goals, politics; in a sense, there is NO unifying fabric whatsoever. America is now UNFIT to carry on any wars.
Patricia, you are a silly girl.
There will be no end to Chinese products pouring into the USSA.
The Chinese will relocate factories to low cost jurisdictions like Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia etc, and ship their ‘Chinese’ products to the U.S with a ‘Made in Vietnam’ sticker attached to it.
There will be NO RESURRECTION OF U.S MANUFACTURING happening.
And what’s with this hysterical (girlie-like) assertion that America has been subsidising the world?
Patricia, is it that time of the month? Is that why you’re prone to making these irrational remarks?
The rest of the world has, through the sweat of their brows (and utilising real resources like land, labour and capital), been supplying tangible products for the benefit of fat Americans for many decades.
Meanwhile, the U.S in return pays for them with freshly printed/digitally conjured greenbacks.
As for American cars in Germany or Japan, do you have any idea what the price of petrol is in Germany and western Europe? It’s more than double what it is in the U.S.
Do you seriously think many Europeans would be buying many 3 ton Dodge Ram trucks with the 6.4 Hemi engine even if there were zero tariffs?
(Not to mention the poor quality control/reliability of U.S manufactured vehicles).
Now Patricia, you be a good girl and bake a nice apple pie for your man.
Leave the serious economic discussions for the sensible men in the room.
(ie: not card carrying MAGAts who are just as clueless on economic matters as Donald Chump and his Judaic advisors – esp. that 9/11 criminal Howard Lutnick).
Girl girl, and those are supposed your ‘allies’, ‘buddies’
They put a THICK, IRONCLAD tariff wall against u.s. car makers, make sure u.s. cars cost almost 1.5~twice as local brands
You know where ya can see GM/Ford/Cherokee cars roam free and wild abroad??
Guess who, you could never pin it,
China
Yep, that ‘eval, totalitarian, oppressing society with no personal freedom and a collapsing economy’
That is why I always encourage those on Unz to go protest in front of WH, D.C,
call for a completed ‘Cut of all ties with eval Chyna, because they are ripping us, by importing tons of our food and cars, and American products which we can DEF. do without China’
‘Fxk the farmers, fxk the workers, the first thing we need now is to decouple with China’
Food and trip, whole expense provided, but Nobody comes to claim it,,,
wonder why,, sigh
We have so many ‘allies’ ‘buddies’, why not tell japs and germans to fill the void once China left?
Why don’t we use our Nei-vy to force those small countries purchasing our cars??
FIRST: In WHAT Building is this “Advanced manufacturing thriving” in when we have No factories on a grand scale? What 5 buildings maybe in the whole US? How many Factories are needed TO REPLACE:
Maybe look at data and turn off the TV
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufacturing-by-country
The US is still #2 for manufacturing.
THIRD. Many school districts are reporting that there is hardly ANY reading/math sufficiency in the inner schools which is the Majority of America.
Well both conservatives and liberals have decreed that any inequality in the schools must be environmental.
Rush Limbaugh convinced millions of White conservatives that “teacher’s unions” and Big Gubmint were the cause.
Funny how the teacher’s unions are never decried in all White schools that have high test scores. Why aren’t those same students suffering under Big Gumbint? Do they need to be saved by charter schools?
Rush never explained that and like our Fox News talking heads would never allow the question to be asked. Con Inc supports lying to White people.
America doesn’t have any parameters anymore for warfighting. ZERO. And Democracy and Freedom are the causes of this dystopian hell-hole, not its answer.
Russia is currently using donkeys and Chinese 4x4s in combat so totalitarian government may not be the answer either.
That’s a very sexist but also very funny post.
Speaking of Howard Lutnik… who miraculously “survived” 9/11, like so many of his (((coreligionists))) who miraculously “survived” the Holocaust (lol)… I just figured out why Trump “lost” to Biden and why he didn’t get a consecutive 2nd term.
As you know, all the elections in ZOG are rigged and the big Jews are absolutely mad as a hatter when it comes to gematria and their number games.
Well, Donald J. Trump was selected a long time ago to be the 45th and 47th POTUS–as far back as 1985 and in the most predictive and neuro-linguistic programming 9/11 movie and franchise “Back to the Future”. Robert Zemeckis, the director of the movies, has confirmed that the character of Biff Tannen was based on Donald Trump
Astrology is also very important if not more important than gematria to them. Trump’s astrological sign is Gemini, known as the “Twins”, a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. So astrologically, Trump represents the Twin Towers that came tumbling down on September 11, 2001.
And as the 45th and 47th POTUS, Trump has the perfect gematria or numbers for 9/11. Here’s how:
numerology of 45 (4+5) = 9
numerology of 47 (4+7) = 11
Your “‘Murican e=bike” was made in China.
About 90+ % of the bike industry comes from China.
The Chinese understand well the hubris that makes the Fatmerican world go round as all the e-bikes are for are to add more levels of entitlement: the better ones are way overpriced and the shitty ones are for the proles.
I run a service/repair bike shop, and 7 years ago I dropped e-bike service (any electrical service) because of the lack of expertise of the domestic suppliers of the on-line cheep products. The Industry shops have done some due diligence in better service of their products, hence your satisfaction.
Sometimes I shake my head at how the average bloke developed such an addiction to electric motors!
It’s like they are happy imitating the disabled.
Off-topic, but has Ron Unz seen the new official White House covid webpage?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/
They’re going with the Wuhan lab leak theory:
I see the problem now with India: the were miseducated by Perfidious Albion.
Brag done it first! I LOVE it!
The Chinese believe in harmony within and between societies. They’ve failed in the effort many times, but understand that it is the ideal situation. The West, deriving from Judaic xenophobia and supremacism only understand ‘dominance’, ‘Full Spectrum’ at best. Other societies and cultures MUST bow down before the ‘Gods Upon the Earth’, or else.
The economic looting of humanity, outlined by the studies of the Bretton Woods ‘economic hit-men’ of the World Bank, IMF, WTIO WIPO and the private banks, amounting to trillions, is ‘subsidization’ according to this aggressive troll. No wonder the world HATES you so very much. You’ve been ripped off by your own oligarchic elites, you buffoon!
Truth hurts, eh?
A534 is 100 % correct.
Europe will not import much of North America’s products because of chemical contamination: pesticde residues, growth hormones, human-targeted vaccines via livestock, GMO simulacra of commodity grains.
You are what you eat.
littlereddot: You might be interested in Zeihan’s The End of the World Is Just The Beginning, 2022. Zeihan has thought things through further than I have, but his facts seen to be OK. OTH, he is definitely a salesman, at least in part. I might add that his projection, even if it has only moderate fidelity to the unfolding future, should be of considerable salience to you and Singapore.
More, Trump’s actions since 2025/01/01 are a reasonable reaction to future events predicted by Zeihan’s model.
And I might add that Zeihan does not blame you, Singapore, or the PRC, for any of this (in fact, he doesn’t blame anybody at all). He merely points out the consequences of certain political consequences of the World War era and the consequences of lower shipping costs
And Zeihan is right to avoid blame. Each of the decisions he describes are local optima, and the bad consequences were disregarded by all participants when the decisions were made [1]. Life, as they say, is for the living, and Trump seems to be playing things to save what he can. Zeihan’s work just might help you do the same sort of thing.
****************************************************************
1] There is a story I once heard about a cowboy c.a. 1870, arid US Southwest, who stripped off his clothes and jumped into a patch of prickly pear cactus.
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=9c1c9aabc2f385c7298f1290a222920539e30b7a33ab031859d64de252c4bb63JmltdHM9MTc0NDkzNDQwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=004a332f-d62c-65e5-0aa5-2387d763641f&u=a1L2ltYWdlcy9zZWFyY2g_cT1wcmlja2xleSUyMHBlYXIlMjBjYWN0dXMlMjBpbWFnZSZGT1JNPUlRRlJCQSZpZD04MzBERDhDOUZBMTY1RkNDNTg4OTU1MzI2RTJBRjYxQzNGRTlGM0E3&ntb=1
Cowboys were noted for their independence. When asked why later, the cowboy said “It seemed like a good idea at the time”.
Thanks, I had a quick glance at it. The little that I read is excellent. I will have to read the rest of it when I am able. Thanks for contributing it 🙂
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, I appreciate it.
Unfortunately I have seen enough of Zeihan’s material for me to not regard him as a good source of info.
Many of his “insights” are plain wrong. In particular his views on China are patently false. To find proof of this, just look at his predictions that China would collapse in 2005. Since that date, China has gone much stronger. The whole picture he paints of China can be proven false within 3 hours of arriving there.
He may pull out a fact or two, but his bias makes him explain and see things in a totally erroneous way. Perhaps it is because I have had the opportunity to visit China many times myself, that I it is easy for me to see how wrong Zeihan is.
I don’t know how right Zeihan is on other matters. But China is my canary in the Zeihan underground mine/mind. And the canary died of asphyxiation a long time ago.
Mr UNZ,
This paragraph is in the front page of The Truth Seeker warning others about the poster that goes by the name of Nico X:
According to Wikipedia, the 77th Brigade is a hybrid unit of the British Army specializing in information operations and psychological warfare. We believe that Nico X is part of this unit. Consequently, from now on his posts will be blocked as will his supporters. Ed.
Thankyou
As someone pointed out somewhere else, those who control things figured out regulatory capture and how to bribe the regulators and most in Congress, and the rest is history, as they say.
You are a really shallow thinker.
The US is or likely soon will be in the same position with China as Japan was with the US in the lead up to 1941.
No doubt, some idiots in the US MiC will believe this nonsense about secret weapons:
White House Says It Has Tech That Can ‘Manipulate Time and Space’
Mr. Dot, did you not read what Bragadocious and I have been trying to get across? There ARE NO American-made products to buy!
I’m going to go way back from memory, and someone can look it up if he wants to. Wal-Mart had a big campaign, sometime in the late-1990s, IIRC, of “Buy American”. They sold American-made stuff, but by some point, I supposed some corporate guys nixed the whole thing. I’m not referring solely to Wal-Mart now, but I’d say from 1995 through ’05, maybe even a couple of years later on, one could still find some American-made retail products.
By ’10 for sure, that was pretty hard to do. Now, going back again to the 1990s, I DO blame Americans for trying to save a couple bucks by buying Chinese when they did have a choice. I’m pretty patriotic, but I’m sure there were times I did this too without thinking. Again, by some point, there was no choice.
Yes, Apple specifies good quality for their phones from the labor camps in GuangDong. If someone were to cheat on quality with this mass production, it’d be known and it’d be stopped. That’s not the same story for all the crap that has broken so quickly over the last 20 years. Garbage!
Quality products? I’ve got an American muscle car from the 1980s – still running on the original engine and original (automatic – not my choice) tranny. I just bought a 1990s Jeep, because those straight-6’s are said to be bulletproof motors. I already wrote about my appliances and mower above. We made good stuff here. Could we again? (I’m not so sure myself.)
The Chinese will not invade North America though.
It’s not in their DNA.
Every dynasty repairs their walls.
The CPC/CCP is simply the latest dynasty.
I don’t you have been reading what he has been writing. He says his US made ebike lasted much longer than the Chinese one he purchased.
This displays brilliantly why the US is in their current predicament with China. Rather than studying their rival honestly and RESPECTFULLY, they dismiss and denigrate. Now they are surprised at China’s rapid rise. LOL.
There is a well known concept of Caveat Emptor.
It is the duty of the buyer to be discerning about what he buys. If he is really concerned about quality, then he should be prepared to pay more for said quality.
If he chooses to buy a cheaper product, then the onus on him to make sure he is getting his money’s worth.
For example I buy lots of cheap diy tools from China. I use them infrequently and for the light usage I put them to, it doesn’t make sense for me to buy industrial grade stuff. My rationale is that if I pay 1/5 of the price, but the product last 1/2 of the lifespan of the expensive stuff, it is already worthwhile for me.
If however I were a professional builder using them everyday, then I would either pay 3X more for a quality Chinese equivalent with no known brand reputation, or a 6X more for a German or Japanese equivalent which have 50 year known brand reputation.
I would never choose an American product because they are about the same price as a German or Japanese tool, but of a lower perceived quality.
As an engineer, you should already know that when making a product, there are trade offs in everything. One can have either cheap OR quality. One can seldom have both.
To buy a Chinese product because they are cheap, then laugh at their quality is just being silly.
The way that authoritarians and advocates of a One World Gubmint portray it, you make it out like there would be No Regulations whatsoever in a libertarian society – as in no road rules, no traffic lights, no police force etc.
As my pal Roatan Bill says, in an ideal situation there will be: RULES, but no RULERS.
In an ideal libertarian society everything would be DECENTRALISED.
As such, local communities would get together and decide for themselves what environmental regulations would be applicable (obviously they would not pollute a river upstream that would have downstream consequences for another jurisdiction.
Very likely adjacent regions would decide on a collective course of action needed to be followed for the benefit of all.
Now, the purest strand of Libertarianism is of course Ron Paul libertarianism.
I say that because the Libertarian party itself has long ago been infiltrated by ZOG affiliated rodents like yourself Mr Jewish John’s Johnson (JJJ).
For example, the guy that was chosen to represent the LP (after Dave Smith pulled out of the race), in the 2024 election, was some woke imbecile that was all for the Covid tyranny/mandated clot shots for all, and a range of other hare brained policy platforms.
So no one gives a rat’s arse what the ‘official LP policy’ is on any matter since it does not represent Ron Paul Libertarianism.
If I can make an analogy, during Dr Ron Paul’s terms in Congress (and likewise with Thomas Massie today), both these mean were nominally in the Republican Party.
Did they toe the official GOP line (more wars, more reckless spending and concomitant larger budget deficits, more financial support for the Apartheid Israel state and the poisonous dwarf Zelensky in his proxy war with the noble Russians etc)?
Of course not. They were/are Free Thinking libertarians who ran their own race, passing judgement on each issue on a case by case basis after careful analysis.
That’s something you’ll never understand Mr JJJ.
Your ideal system us all about heavy handed All Powerful Gubmint tyranny, as the citizenry are forced to do this or that, OR mandated to get jabbed in their eyeballs with some toxic mRNA injections.
That’s all you know – just more and more Stalinist type Five year plans, and to hell with what the citizenry think about it or their ultimate welfare.
Thanks for your comment Mao.
I appreciate all the great posts you’ve made in the past and hope to see more of you in the future.
And, in relation to the gematria employed by Malignant International Jewry, there is no one I’ve observed in this webzine that has a better understanding of it than you do.
UR readers would be well advised to take note of everything you say on this matter.
Their understanding of many Jewish orchestrated heinous crimes will increase ten fold after exposure to what you’ve posted Mao.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Generally speaking, I agree with it. Zeihan is a “big picture” man, and is often wrong on “details”. For example, I’m not in total agreement about fixed reference assets (gold, for example) being incompatible with increased production and use of goods. Counterexample: The US retained a gold standard all through the Progressive era, ~1865 through ~1932. Granted, the US did issue “greenbacks” during the Civil War part of that era, but it then “redeemed” them after the war.
Zeihan does, however, have some interesting speculations as of his 2022 book about the actual events of 2025, and he does have a pretty good account of containerization’s effect on manufacturing and cities (Singapore adapted and prospered, but US/European did not adapt and died). Zeihan’s speculations have to do with effects of the American withdrawal from its own post-WW II international order. Trump is doing that, you know, and as quickly as he can. US protection of the sea lanes has been effectively over since the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions. The US is throwing Europe to whoever wants Europe (probably RF). US war suppression is over, along with attempts to bring the Middle East into the world system through conquest by Western armed force. Trump’s current position (as of my “right now”) is that either the RF / Ukrainian negotiators come end the war OR ELSE the US will pack up its bags and go home, so there! Quite a difference from Desert Storm.
Apparently Trump has jettisoned the “End of History / liberal triumph” concept and is looking more toward a reversion, complete with Zeihan’s idea of a sea borne supply chain breakdown that cannot be remedied for several decades, perhaps a century or two. From what I know about manufacturing systems and manufacturing managers and government managers (which is quite a bit, sad to say), Zeihan’s projection are quite possible. Apparently Trump thinks so also, as there is no other justification I can see for Trump’s policy of trying to establish an autarkic US, to include annexing Canada and Greenland.
To answer (inadequately) Ron Unz’s critique of Trump’s policies, these policies make no sense if you assume that the current international network of cheap and reliable “just in time” ocean borne shipments continues. Ron assumes that it will, Trump apparently assumes that they will not. If they will not, then Trump’s policies make sense.
In other words, Zeihan’s speculations are worth considering if only as an intellectual exercise, realizing that they are speculation (as is every guess about the future). The possible advantage is that if the world continues to follow Zeihan’s/Trump’s projections, you won’t be surprised and might have a few effective contingency plans.
There is an American song, “Tell old Bill”, that fits this situation. Here are some verses:
Old Sal was a baking bead this morning.
Old Sal was a baking bead this evening.
Old Sal was a baking bread
When she got word that Bill was dead.
This morning, this evening, so soon.
Oh, no, it can’t be so this morning.
Oh, no, it can’t be so this evening.
Oh, no, it can’t be so.
My Bill left home about an hour ago.
This morning, this evening, so soon.
Anyway, please treat this post as just a mention of an interesting but speculative book.
Do you have a problem with understanding what you read?
I did not say anything about China invading North America. That is impractical in the extreme and it would be sufficient to remove an adversary from the board with economic means, or even kinetic means limited to sinking naval vessels in the Pacific or elsewhere.
In any event, it seems that China has already purchased enough politicians and power players in the US already (Democrats) to neutralize the US.
Ahhha, geeze, for consumer products, shoes, toys, bikes, etc., there is usually NO CHOICE. You’re basically correct in that assessment on product quality – the Chinese stuff sucks, and for SOME things, one can make a choice.
What I HAVE been doing is buying old American tools – I meant to mention this before – such as a couple of Ryobi saws that were made in America, at estate sales and such. I looked at the instruction sheets in READABLE ENGLISH – ONE LANGUAGE, yea!!!, and saw they were made in USA.
They will keep running, but if I did need a part, I dunno, and as with Americans in this service economy selling each other gourmet hamburgers and craft beer, the salvaging of old estate sale equipment to provide all of us with quality goods is, or course, unsustainable.
Its strangely sad when people try to analyze kayfabe wrassling procedures.
You publish half the anti-China clique yourself. You knew this was inevitable and champion it.
Then perhaps you should pick better analogies.
In your analogy, in the lead up to WW2 the USA also tried to cripple Japan through economic means, provoking a Japanese pre-emptive military strike on Pearl Harbour.
So by using that analogy, what you are saying is that in the current era, Chinese “economic warfare” will provoke a US pre-emptive strike on China?
My answer: Maybe so. But China won’t bother with invading North America, the same way USA did to Japan.
This is just lazy thinking.
Whenever things don’t turn out the way Americans expect, they blame it on their politician being bought by someone else.
The simple fact is that your politicians are inept. If they have been bought by anyone, it is your own MIC. And the mechanisms used to buy them is clear as day. It is the Revolving Door system of hiring retired generals into cushy high paying consultant jobs in the MIC. Similarly for your politicians. China does not have the same mechanism to buy your generals / politicians.
You have a system that allows the incompetent + corrupt to rise to power.
Instead of facing the ugly truth in the mirror, you blame it on others. And the “buying of politicians by China” is simply one of them.
He prbly. referring to Zog. set a hook event and see if China would bait,
Just like japan did so in the 40s with a full scale embargo against them,
if they sit idle they are done by the Rus and Chinese, however they figured by destroying entire Pacific Fleets would gain them a window for negotiation with the U.S.
China ain’t japs, they will sit out the game and watch the clown show with a bowl of mooncakes
Here are a few other things about the fat orange bastard in the white house:
And by its words and actions the fat orange bastard apparently “thinks” it does rule the world.
Also, on the evening of Jan 20, 2017, while the fat orange bastard was at one of the inaugural balls in washington d.c., the evening “win 4” lottery number in its then home state of NY came up 6666 inches (555.5 feet); which is apparently the design height of the washington monument. (It presently measures less than that partly because it settled a little bit but mostly because of landscaping around it).
As I understand it, at the time it was completed, the washington monument was the tallest man made structure in the world, a fact which (in conjunction with the other art and architecture of washington d.c.) was apparently supposed to convey a message that America – and by extension, the all-powerful office of president and the man who held the office – would some day rule the whole world.
Define “made.” If an American company gets various components from China and assembles them here then it isn’t “made in China.” The bike is assembled to the specs of that company, which has its name on the bikes and physical stores where customers can go complain if the bike fails.
And tell me more about fatness, Canadian waste of oxygen. I’ve been to your shithole plenty of times and the obesity is through the roof, eh. Take a good look at fatcanadian Doug Ford, brother of another fatcanadian drug addict. The good news is you were all triple and quadruple vaxxed on orders from the PM and Privy Council so the end should come sooner for you and the world’s IQ can be raised a few points.
As I’ve said to halfwits like you, I don’t care if the Brits don’t want our “chlorinated chickens.” Whereas the Brits and French seem to get very pissy if we don’t buy their shit, like when we banned Britain’s Mad Cow beef and they threw a jingoistic fit. We had to ban Irish beef too because they mimic British animal husbandry techniques including feeding brains to cattle. They’re still complaining about that even though BSE still remains a problem.
“Donald” the name or its etymology (“world ruler”) fits what is going on right now, though when I look at images and videos of Trump as a young man, he looks rather feminine, too feminine. Hmm…. but I digress.
In 2018, the Mikdash Educational Center minted 1,000 biblical half- shekel coins in honor of Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. Trump’s profile appears next to the profile of King Cyrus and on the flip side of the coin is the image of the Third Temple.
Who was King Cyrus and what is he most famous for? Here’s the answer from AI:
In short, Donald Trump has been anointed by the Zionists as the new King Cyrus who will usher in Pax Judaica. But Pax Judaica cannot start until Pax Americana ends. Trumps’ global trade war with the world is the proverbial “nail in the coffin” for America.
Remember, Trump is an actor reading a Zionist New World Order script. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, as I have argued in the past, was above all, symbolic: it was a Tisha B’Av for the goyim: it was an occult ritual to mark the end of Pax Americana and the rise of Pax Judaica.
Quality products? I’ve got an American muscle car from the 1980s – still running on the original engine and original (automatic – not my choice) tranny.
Sure but what year?
American car quality is a donut hole.
You are better off working on a car from the 70s or the 2010s than the 90s.
We made good stuff here. Could we again? (I’m not so sure myself.)
American cars have been better than German cars for years. You are better off with a Ford than an Audi even if it seem counter-intuitive. US cars have the bad reputation but their reliability massively improved years ago. They made too many junk econoboxes when they were focused on trucks and SUVs.
In your analogy, in the lead up to WW2 the USA also tried to cripple Japan through economic means, provoking a Japanese pre-emptive military strike on Pearl Harbour.
Yes the USA did not want to sell oil to the Japanese as they were actively trying to kill and enslave their neighbors.
But Japan was never forced to attack the US.
They could have attacked the USSR and scaled back their Asian empire goals until Hitler had secured the Caucasian oil fields.
Both Hitler and Japan started thinking about oil too late in the war.
If they both attacked the USSR first then it would have collapsed within months. The USSR would not have been able to withstand the Germany military of 1939 in a normal winter along with a massive Japanese front on their Eastern flank.
Both empires played their hands and lost. That’s just the way it goes.
Newman is a lying racist Sinophobe cretin. He ‘believes’ any filthy lie directed at China out of hatred, rage and envy. He is the perfect Homo americanus as it nears its long overdue end.
‘Shallow’? How so, wandering wanker?
Not sure what to make of recent developments. I just hope that Trump knows what he’s doing.
A very good and balanced comment.
I’m sorry but listening to the Chinese talking about how the tariffs imposed by Trump will hurt the US more and how China is 5000 years old(when you look into their history this mantra becomes much more murky. Which China is 5k years old, exactly?) and the US 200 years old, tells us exactly nothing.
I can admit when I’m ignorant and on the topic of tariffs I’m partly ignorant and thus hold a noncommittal opinion. Unfortunately the majority of commenters and article writers are ALSO ignorant but somehow hold very strong opinions.
The truth is that nobody understands fully, the tarrif debacle and its consequences simply because they haven’t been implemented in this exact manner, ever.
1930’s US and today’s US are like different countries and this the economic 1:1 comparison makes no sense.
In short: I would love fir a long, balanced article to be published so I can actually learn something.
Sound like one of the many secret admirers of CCP talking.
Some people somehow think members of the CCP are miracle workers such that the CCP could simply order China into the world number one economic power without Constant Bi-directional communication between the Chinese government and the Chinese people.
Nah, it’s not that. Peak Stupidity and I attempt to set the record straight among Chinese propagandists. We’re pretty fair in our daily documentation of stupidity. In fact, when it comes to China, within over 200 posts with the China topic key, we’ve got a lot of good to say. There are a couple of dozen posts written after my trip to the Middle Kingdom in Summer of ’23 – much about the impressive infrastructure is described in the numerous posts in the series Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Long ago, in A Peak Stupidity apology to our Chinese readers we noted that most of our posts are about stupidity in America, because that’s, after all, we we live. It’s not the only place headed toward a peak though. Anyway, that post that was written in ’18. Since then, a lot of things in China have changed for the worse. Because we value the whole truth, much of this is duly and fairly documented on Peak Stupidity.
The most shocking thing was the Kung Flu PanicFest redux implemented from late Winter to late Fall of ’22. You’ll see a dozen or more posts on that stupidity. Face it, as much as the stupidity of the West and America in particular is known to Americans, we must remind ourselves occasionally that Stupidity does not stop at the California coastline. (That’s westbound, of course, from my location.)
Why can’t we all just get along?!
(Yes, it’s a real car and a real brand. We happened to see a dealer in Peking from the highway too.)
An excerpt from the “apology” post appears below – links are only in the original:
BTW, you have served as an excellent example of how I know who the “ten-center” China propagandists are. It’s one thing to be “rah, rah rah, China, kick-ass!”, but another to deny that there’s anything bad one could ever say about the place. (You’re the interview candidate who responds to the usual silly HR question with “My only fault is that I have no faults.”)
I’ve had plenty of bad to say about America. My whole site is mostly about American stupidity – that’s what I see the most easily. However, I’ve yet to see you China Propagandists admit to anything, even some stupid little thing like the eating of dogs at dog restaurants, that is not completely a claim to China’s being THE BEST and nothing wrong happening over there.
I guess you wouldn’t get paid for writing something negative, and if it’s not about pay, then you would consider it wasting your time. Your time spent here is not for the purposes of getting at the truth.
You, reddot, d. dan, and that D. B. Cooper are pretty obvious. In fact, I twice asked D.B. Cooper about that hijacking, and he had no idea what I was talking about. To me it was the “Who won the 1935 World Series?” thing from WWII movies, to see who is real or not. D.B.Cooper uses that name, as others do, to pretend to be Americans. I’m not fooled. It’s like the cheaply made hand tools from Harbor Freight that use the brand name Pittsburgh to get Americans to think it’s American made quality stuff. Clever, you people are!
As I conspicuously & loudly inform protesters at local anti-Trump rallies…
“Trump is a puppet of the Israel lobby — go after the source!!”
No-makey-sensey.
I’m talking about teaching of history and politics.
On teaching of history and politics, the US has a, relaltively speaking, short history. How many American students are taught history and politics to what extent? And of course, whose version of history and politics?
In contrast, China has a long history. And a lot more lessons from history. Besides dedicated historians, no Chinese really learn much of its history from classroom. Luckily, people do not limit their historical and political knowledge from class room alone. They just need to talk to each other.
From Confucius onward, history is often invoked in political discussions. And Chinese people inevitably judge their leaders with an eye to history.
Anyway, your original words are “I don’t think CCP has any problem with the Chinese learning about America. They have more of a problem with the Chinese learning about China. ”
If one thinks Chinese government and the Chinese people are living in different worlds or having different realities. He or she is likely to be a secret admirer of the CCP. Who would not wish American presidents could simply order re-shoring and blooming manufacturing including ship-building into existence?
PS
The free fall collapse (controlled demolition) of the Twin Towers on 9/11–and building 7 aka Salomon Brothers’ Building (a homophone and stand-in for King’s Solomon’s Temple in this Tisha B’Av ritual)–happened at the World Trade Center. Of course it did: 9/11 had to happen there and nowhere else.
Get the insider joke?
Trump’s world trade war is the joke’s punchline if not the final act of this Jewish tragicomedy. The coming economic collapse is intentional; it is a continuation by another name and means of the COVID-19 lock downs which annihilated millions of small business owners all over the world. Now they are going after the few remaining family-owned farms still in business and the SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises).
It’s all Kosher. This is their “Great Reset” or “Tikkun Olam”. Thanks, Jews.
I think that China is the best governed State on Earth. I think that a lot goes wrong there, as it does everywhere, but the Chinese system works to remedy deficiencies as soon as identified. China is a democracy because the governors rule FOR the people, not, as in the West, for the rich owners of the economy, virtually only. The West is, therefore, an oligarchy, decayed into a kakistocracy. As for dog restaurants, I take it that you are a vegetarian. In terms of cruelty, what difference is there between eating a dog and a pig?
Your Sinophobia is of the crudest type. The SARS CoV2 bio-warfare attack was launched by the USA, and China had no idea how bad it would be, hence the strict measures. China has NOT used modified mRNA gene shots, as well, thereby saving its population from much damage.
Nearly all your criticisms are crude racist and cultural arrogance in action, as I’ve noted before. You’re plainly one of those Yanks who cannot abide others outdoing you, by an ever increasing margin, as Trump, that archetypal Yankee huckster cum con-man, fucks over the place but good.
You’re explaining the situation quite well, but this is the result of our free trade policies. The only solution is obviously tariffs. That’s what made us strong and powerful, and precisely why every other country uses them against us. We can’t sit back and watch anymore as we rack up more trillion dollar deficits.
Well …. no … actually. The U.S became strong and powerful DESPITE tariffs.
Absent tariffs the U.S would’ve done better still.
In the 130 or so years from the beginning of the republic until the creation of the ZOG owned Federal Reserve in 1913, the U.S became strong chiefly for these reasons:
1) It had LIMITED Gubmint as a % of GDP
2) It was the most free nation on Earth – seeing as a Gubmint with limited revenue and very few unproductive Gubmint employed parasites to micromanage/impose regulatory burdens on the lives of the citizenry, allowed the dynamic private sector to build tangible wealth for the nation.
3) The U.S had NO income or corporate taxes levied.
4) The U.S had Sound Money (seeing as it was on the Classical Gold Standard).
5) Other than the War of Northern Aggression (1861-65), and the relatively minor Wars of 1812/Mexican-American wars, for the most part the U.S avoided participation in costly wars.
The ONLY reason tariffs were put in place was because they were EASY TO COLLECT.
In other words, there were no mega corporations on which to place an excise tax.
And sales taxes at point of purchase were impractical to collect.
However, there were just a few ports of entry. And by placing tax collectors at those ports as foreign vessels docked, it was EASY to collect revenue in that manner.
Meanwhile, for the ignorant among you that believe the U.S needs to impose tariffs on China, you need only watch/listen to the minute or so from 7:30-8:50 in the clip below taken from The Tom Woods show (a podcast that Ron Unz has appeared on in the past):
The fact is that China did indeed have an average tariff rate of around 30% in the 1990’s.
But in recent years (just prior to the recent tit-for-tat between Donald Chump and the Chinese), THEIR AVERAGE TARIFF RATE WAS DOWN TO AROUND 3%,
Kewl. So, Trump raised tariffs to half of the tariffs that other countries put on US goods. That’s Trump’s trade war, and according to the author, comical.
The USA is $36 Trillion in debt, runs $2 trillion in deficits every year now, the last balanced budget was way back under President Clinton, but Trump raising taxes and cutting government is bad. People can’t get jobs, can’t afford to eat, can’t afford a home, but Trump trying to bring industry back to the USA is insane and comical.
When did the Unz review start to parrot CNN?
Kewl. So, Trump raised tariffs to half of the tariffs that other countries put on US goods.
US and China tariffs were already matched:
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart
That’s Trump’s trade war, and according to the author, comical.
Maybe read about all of the Canada and Mexico tariffs before commenting.
Wrong analogy. Go back to wrassling.
Chinese eating dogs is highly exaggerated:
1)There’s no industrial dog/cat farming in China. In industrial husbandry, scientists are hired to yield higher animal carcass(meat) to fodder weight ratio by breeding new subspecies or improving the fodder . Those of poultry, pork, beef have greatly improved over the decades.
2)Dog/cat meat ,if available in China, are usually a lot more expensive than poultry, pork, beef because herbivores (like bovines)are more mucular(meaty)than carnivores (like dogs&cats).
There’s a ‘moral’ difference between eating pigs and dogs: Scientists will tell you pigs and apes are genetically closest to humans than other animals. Xeno organ transplants are usually body parts ripped off from pigs and apes.
Plant lives matter too!
He should meditate and draw energy directly from the universe.
He, unless you’re talking about some Chinaman named He, should do nothing of the sort, because I’m NOT a vegetarian. I just don’t eat cats and dogs because they’re pets – I’m not an “Ohio man”.
Even Ron Unz has not written about his “America did it!” claims recently, but regarding my comment, your timeline is off. I’m talking about 2022. The initial PanicFest in China was at the beginning of ’20. That’s when we saw fake videos of people dropping dead in the streets, the goal being to spread it around the world … no, not the virus, though that too, but the PanicFest. It had to be spread around the world to test out Totalitarianism in different venues.
China had that major relapse starting in late Winter of ’22.
Yes, I agree that it was nice the Chinese didn’t have to be threatened with the mRNA. However, my Chinese sources showed me videos of people who didn’t want said vaccine being held down in terror by 3 or 4 Big Whites and jabbed. That’s not pleasant. That’s not what you do in a free society.
Just for you, M.M.:
Instead of some new Winnie-the-Pooh control freak, China could do with a guy like Trump and a loose organization of people with hats ready to raise hell against Globalism. You all like red anyway.
Yeah, see that’s the kind of answer the HR ladies are suckers for. It’s just that by “soon”, you mean 40 years. It took that long for the starvation, killings, cultural upheaval, and other “deficiencies” of the Chairman Mao period to be identified. Sorry, that’s too long. That doesn’t work for me.
Beef Steak is Murder!!
Subramanian Swamy, a hindu politician and former Harvard economics professor, wants death penalty for cow slaughter!!
https://www.livelaw.in/amp/subramanian-swamy-introduces-bill-seeking-death-penalty-cow-slaughter-read-bill
Carrot Juice is Murder!!
One day, walking talking vegetable ET aliens will descend from flying saucers and have all the vegetarian earthlingss BBQed !!
Racist ignoramus-you Yanks are STILL lying about the genocide of the Native Americans, your co-operation with the Nazis, the litany of CIA atrocities, the true nature of your oligarchic State, the ‘necessity’ of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc, so you have some chutzpah whinging about China’s tardiness. You’re such a cartoonish Sinophobe that it’s quite funny.
God, your brainwashing is AWESOME. We saw ONE video of a collapsed man, in a city of ELEVEN MILLION. EVERY day in such a metropolis untold numbers collapse and are treated and whisked away by ambulance. The panic was in the West, designed to coerce, illegally under the Nuremberg Laws, people to get deadly dangerous modified mRNA gene therapy injections, with resultant great suffering. You cannot rationally blame China for that.
Mr.Dumb As Fuck outdoes himself. The US prospered behind tariff walls, through IP theft on a grand scale, from the extermination of the Indigenous, from tens of millions of immigrants, from raping the vast forests, from mining deep agricultural soil and vast aquifers, from exploiting gigantic mineral reserves including fossil fuels, from attacking and looting other States and from the Bretton Woods rackets imposed on a devastated world after WWII. Not from some ‘Free Market’ fuckery you poor brain-dead robopath.
Whatever.
The Chinese people trust their government. Cannot say the same about the US people.
https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-01/2025%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Global%20Report_01.23.25.pdf
(page 6) 77% of the general population in China trust their government and 47% of the general population in the US trust their government. Why Americans don’t trust their supposedly democratically elected government?
Sorry, American is not a free people. Rather it is a misguided people.
H.L. Menckin’s famous words are:
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
In reality, democracy is perverted in the US, mostly by the corporate “free” press.
China is the best governed large State on Earth not because Chinese are inherently better people or the chosen people. Rather, 1) Chinese elites have learnt their history well. They keep what had and would work and corrected the mistakes. They also take teaching the people VERY seriously. And 2) Chinese ideals are greatly facilitated by modern technology.
In contrast, many things are a matter of “God’s willing” in the West. This is how Trump was elected, not once, but twice. The more I know the US, the more I find the West including the US gets democracy wrong. There is no reason to equate ritualistic voting with democracy. The US also gets religious freedom and free speech wrong.
Yes, “urban population”, the kind that’s not rural population. The people who don’t live on a farm and don’t grow their own food.
Compare to somewhat less dysfunctional countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Meat_Festival
There’re 2 basic tricks in propaganda:
1)Name calling: like your system is evil, oppressive…and mine is sublime, progressive….
2)Potemkin Village(or negative version): Spot or create a piece of negative/positive image of your antagonist/protagonist entity and try to promote the impression that’s the norm.
If I want to put forth certain narrative, I would try to quote data/message from the followings:
1)Major international institutions, like the UN
2)Credible data source
3)At least ‘main stream media’ which are not biased on the subject matter.
…………
Here’s a good example: China is a developing country:
1)China popn is 4 times that of Murika but car production/sales is only twice as much.
2)China(norminal)GDP/capita is only 1/5th to 1/6th of Murika’s.
3)Chinese (land)animal meat consumption/capita is only 60% of Murika but protein consumption/capita is about the same.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/health/other/average-chinese-national-now-eats-more-protein-than-an-american-un-food-agency/ar-BB1qbAEz
It was much more info on Internet about dog meat festival in Yulin just a few years ago. More censorship on this matter nowadays. Back then you easily could run into video clips where dogs and cats were boiled alive, in order to enhance the taste of the meat. And people who perpetrated this, along with the custumers, appeared happy to watch the horrible spectacle. People who find pleasure in torturing animals are not civilised, to put it midly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Meat_Festival
That’s exactly an example of (negative)’Potemkin Village’…only 1000 or 3000 dogs slaughtered? Less than I expected for such ‘festival’..
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113974/china-domestic-bird-slaughter-volume/#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20approximately%2016.82%20billion%20domestic%20birds%20were%20slaughtered%20in%20China.
“In 2023, approximately 16.82 billion domestic birds were slaughtered in China. Poultry meat was the second largest segment in the meat production industry in China that year.”
Imagine if one keeps bird pets…Guess what, Swan Lake is one of my favourite music..
So, what are you trying to say Mr. “Lee”, that only 47% of Americans are stupid vs. 77% of Chinese people? What the heck kind of propagandist are you anyway? (Someone’s not getting his money’s worth.)
Anyone with any wisdom whatsoever knows that you don’t trust ANY government, PERIOD. It’s not there to help you. I really thought Chinese people were smarter than this. They seem so…
Is it possible that people being polled don’t always tell the truth? That aside, I’ve been polled, and I saw how much of a 45 min. waste of time that was, as most of the questions were plain stupid, designed to lead to the poll’s clients wishes for certain “results”.
I dunno, is it because the country was not founded as a democracy, and they have been watching the Republic that was founded a quarter Millennium ago being destroyed before their eyes by the ctrl-left? (But, none dare call them Commies.)
I was trying not to bring up the cruelty part, Anna, because some of that has been changing for the better.. I could not stand seeing the one cat cabled to the stove in this one place. (It was not specifically to be cruel, but as crowded as the place is, if he had gotten loose, he’d have been trampled, run over, or, yeah, cooked up by Mr. MangledBrain’s relatives still in the Olde Country.
See Dispatches from The Middle Kingdom: Year of the Pet on the Peak Stupidity blog*.
This guy seems reasonably content considering conditions (crowdedness):
.
.
The Great Wall Cat. He gets lots of attention, plenty of treats, but is just too long-haired to be comfortable in the Peking summer. He lives on the north side, so originally his, errr, people were not the Han. Answers to Chairman Meow, but so long as you’ve got some cheese on ya’…
.
.
* Yes, of course the post has the great Al Stewart song in it. That goes without saying …
3 Consistency: NEVER, NEVER, EVER say or admit to anything derogatory in the slightest about the country you are tasked with propagandizing about, no matter how minor or even humorous it is.
Humor has NO PLACE in the work of a Chinese propagandist – got that,
Lin, Mr. Lee, MangledBrain, Red Dot, D. Dan, D.B. Cooper …oops, I mean “you guys”?!You just can’t help but laugh at some of the stuff Mulga posts.
He knows next to nothing about anything, but that doesn’t prevent him from dishing out large dollops of projection when he’s cornered and exposed as a dunce.
If 10% tariffs are so great, then 20% tariffs should be twice as good.
In fact, let’s go to 100% and get ten times the ‘prosperity’ (according to Mulga’s logic anyway).
But the reality is that THERE IS A DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN HIGH TARIFFS AND DIMINISHED PROSPERITY.
The countries with the highest tariffs are predominantly sub-Saharan African shit holes.
How can that be Mulga? You promised us that tariffs result in prosperity.
And, with that in mind, you should be praising Donald Chump and his push for higher tariffs.
But you aren’t. You smear the Orange Baboon at every opportunity.
What’s with the inconsistency?
As I specified in those couple of minutes in the video within comment # 465, China has an average tariff rate of 3% – hence the reason it’s firing on all cylinders (with the occasional misfire).
Remove those tariffs completely and get Chinese Gubmint meddling out of the way (ie: stop those wasteful Gubmint boondoggles that China has initiated over recent years), and those misfires disappear.
In case you don’t already know, Democracy means People Rule. People were indeed not informed and they could not get their reasoning straight. This is exactly why Plato considered Monarchy a better form of government. But that was thousands of year ago.
Feel free to consider any people stupid. But it is like considering the earth flat.
Nowadays, people are a lot more intelligent and they could be a lot more informed. But in the US, their corporate “Free Press” have done an excellent job misinforming the people. Of course, America’s theocratic predilection does not help. As is, the US is not a democracy, neither is it democratic in the form of a republic.
America’s current problem is economic. But the problem has its root in its non-democratic government. And the government did not government with the consent of the people according a series of polls carried out by RasmussenReports.
The following from Paul Krugman’s substack article, “Voodoo Trade Policy Comes to America”:
“I’ll do a longer-form explainer at some point, but maybe this will help readers’ intuition. Any tariff causes consumers to shift from imported goods to domestically produced alternatives that are more expensive, inferior in quality, or just not quite what they want. But with a low tariff domestic alternatives will be only a little bit worse than the imports they replace; with a high tariff many of the domestic goods consumers buy will be a lot worse than the imports they replace. (Some readers may know that I’m talking about Harberger triangles; never mind.)
Whew! The second point is easier. Imports of goods are about 11 percent of GDP. While you can tell stories under which import prices wouldn’t rise by the full amount of the tariff, they’re weak and poorly supported by evidence. So a first-pass estimate would be that tariffs on the scale Trump is threatening would be a 25 percent sales tax on goods that account for 11 percent of consumer spending, raising the cost of living by almost 3 percent — well over 3 percent if, as he says he intends, he puts much higher tariffs on imports from China.
Since median household income is more than $80k, that’s around $2500 a year for the typical household. People who voted for Trump because they believed he would bring prices down are in for a rude shock.”
Thank you very much, I truely like your sense of humor
One thing people like you don’t understand: One important outcome of anti-china propaganda actually serves china’s long term strategy quite well. Quoting a chinese proverb, Deng Xiaoping asked chinese to Hide your strength/brightness, bide your time (韜光養晦)
Joe Biden exactly fell into that
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-slams-china-over-lack-of-innovation/1924891.html
Please repeat your claim wherever you could:
You don’t have to be a wise Chinaman to fool Joe Biden. A Panda Bear could to that.
1) Yes, but money spent in America.
2) Hahaa! How could anything be of lower quality than its Chinese equivalent. You’d have to make a special effort!
3) Uhhh, why would you buy it, then.
BTW, nobody with sense figures Trump can stop FED-caused inflation. The money is still being borrowed into existence. Your 3% (and I appreciate your effort in putting a numerical estimate to this) is a 1-time increase, is it not? Inflation is steady. I see it everyday.
China has inflation too, which one could call out biggest export to China. Were the Government there to quit pegging the RMB to the US $, it wouldn’t have to be so. Yet, they apparently see the need to keep doing that. What does that tell you, Mr. Lee?
Hmmm, not a student of American government, are you? Constitutional Republic was the idea. Look that up.
Ha, I respectfully beg to differ!. OK, what I am I saying – respectfully? People are much dumber all over the world than they were even half a century ago. You don’t get out much, do you?
Back to that Constitution as the sovereign Law of the Land in a Constitutional Republic. Americans have done a great job, especially over the last half-century, of defending their rights specified in Amendment II. We’ll see how this pans out, but we DO NOT have to suffer through things like Big Whites swarming people, holding them down, and sticking needles in them. Actually, I’m proud of the many Americans who put up with a lot of workplace threats and social stupidity to resist it here. The authorties stood down.
Thank you, also, Canadian Truckers!
Hmmm, not a student of American government, are you? Constitutional Republic was the idea. Look that up.
Yes a constitutional Republic with representation of the people through the electors and not a direct democracy. The electors in fact have the power to ignore the choice of the people but that is rare.
But that Republic is also supposed to have an executive branch with limited power. The president is not supposed to be a king are tariffs and supposed to be handled by Congress.
Trump claimed “emergency powers” to pass tariffs on Canada even though he couldn’t explain them.
That is usurping the constitution and he knows it.
Our ass kissing Republicans claim to care about the constitution when it comes to guns but on executive power they are clearly fine to look the other way. Trump is talking about 3 terms even though the constitution is very clear on the matter. The Republicans have sold their soul for power. They are losing the demographic game and are trying a hail mary with this ex-Democrat who puts Israel first and doesn’t give a damn about the constitution.
1. Please provide the source.
2. In case the statement is based on personal observation, it depends.
For instance, as people live longer, more of them would suffer Alzheimer disease as well as other forms of dementia. One could easily get the impression of more dumb people than before if one lives around lots of old people for too long.
However, humans are humans because they learn from each other, including from the past. For example, Pythagoras had proven Pythagorean theorem, without doubt through trial and error. He was remembered for his achievement. Today, many high schoolers could do the same thing. By themselves or looking up from the internet. No one cares. People of average intelligence are supposed to do you.
Of course, all modern people are standing on the shoulders of giants. And they are more intelligent and capable than the past generations.
Anyway, return to previous comment germane to China and the US, Chinese people trust their government because they are intelligent collectively speaking. Americans have a lot less trust toward the US American also because they are intelligent collectively speaking.
Simply put, Chinese leaders earn the people’s trust. American leaders have not or lose the people’s trust.
Skip to 01:25 for my advice to you, M.M. “Get ahold of yourself, ya’ yellow something something…”
Whatever medication you’re on, the dosage is WAY WAY OFF. Ask your doctor if Sinostraphul is right for you.
BTW, in this scene co-pilot John Wayne is talking the Captain into slowing to below the power curve. You’re gonna’ burn more fuel per mile that way than right at your minimum L/D. That’s stupid. “Life’s hard. It’s harder if you’re a stupid First Officer.” – John Wayne, paraphrased to some degree…
You get confused very easily on terms. You surely did not understand my point a couple of days back about the Chinese people NOT getting taught their real (recent) political history. Many of course know how bad things were from family, with stories of the “Great Leap Forward into Starvation” and the Cultural Revolution, but they will not teach that stuff. I imagine you only learned the real story from the internet – as a Propagandist, you are not to repeat it.
Here, you are confusing knowledge with intelligence. They are different things. People are more stupid now – on either side of the Pacific… Atlantic… Indian Ocean, anywhere. My source is HERE. If over 3,200 posts are not enough for you, I don’t know what more to tell you.
Americans would rather have had NO leaders. That’s how freedom actually works. There’s no way for a Chinese person to get that – it’s beyond y’all’s imaginations, and really the same for 90% of Americans at this point.
America still has the Boy Scouts. (Officially, the “Scouts”, cause, chicks, but chicks are not going to go on camping trips with boys at puberty, per about anyone who has a say in it!) I was a Boy Scout, so my post for you is Citizenship in the Nation.
Exactly. And the fact that the tariffs are unconstitutional completely undermines the claim/implication by the fat orange bastard’s shameless apologists that the tariffs will somehow result in some kind of a domestic manufacturing boom. Notwithstanding the other obstacles, nobody is going to invest money in domestic factories based on illegitimate tariffs that could be revoked at any time by congress or the next president (assuming there is one) or enjoined by a federal court order.
Why didn’t you post this in the long SS #4 thread? I’m not going to explain it again for you or go over the whole Alfred Eckes book on tariffs.
In case you somehow don’t remember, Trump, not the Congress, levied tariffs on China 6-7 years ago, and so did Zhou Bai Dien. Indeed, it used to be a Congressional power, but they gave up that power long ago. (Nixon’s time, IIRC).
Face it, the ctrl-left cares not a whit about Constitutionality, as we’ve seen with the taking of 1,000 Political Prisoners, taxpayer-funded harassment of a private citizen via Bills of Attainder, direct disregard of the SCROTUS ruling on student loan forgiveness (hell, that there ARE Gov’t student loans or Gov’t-guaranteed student loans is unConstitutional too!), etc. I could come up with a thousand examples.
We’re far into this, Mr. Johnson. The ctrl-left will tyrannize the American population a whole lot harder (if there is a) next time. They are Communist. We are in the 2nd stanza of a rhyme started a hundred years ago in Europe.
This is a fight. Fight like a man, not like a pussy. You are completely a black-pilled loser. You’ve got no will to fight, so just roll over now and get out of our way. I’m not gonna let it rub off on me, LOSER.
Wakey, wakey, Ten Percenters!!
It’s 8 in the morning. There’s a certain commenter who keeps writing honest common-sense information about China. Your job is to MAKE! IT! STOP!
Quit lying flat, and starting lying sitting up.
– W. Pooh, CCP Chairman
Was there a government while USA was still a republic?
I got you first time. The issue is whose version of history as I had raised.
For example, in most Western narratives, the man had bravely blocked the column of tanks as if he was trying to stop the tank from entering TAM to harm the students. But to the Chinese who know the area well, they look at the picture and they KNOW the truth, the tanks were leaving.
Sorry, you do not seem to understand intelligence or wisdom.
Without knowledge, there would be no intelligence or wisdom. If one does not know what whole numbers 1,2,3,4,5,..N, decimals, and etc are, can he or she really be intelligent in number theory? Intelligence is often a new and fruitful combination or recombination of well known or LITTLE known knowledge.
IQ tests often response time. All other things being equal, quick mind is considered better, or more intelligent than slow mind. Reality: Quick mind would not be useful if the mind is empty of knowledge. The mind has nothing to operate on.
What is true for individual is also true as a group or a crowd.
The following from Wikepedia – Wisdom of the Crowd
“The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds.[7] This has contributed to the insight in cognitive science that a crowd’s individual judgments can be modeled as a probability distribution of responses with the median centered near the true value of the quantity to be estimated.[8]”
Chinese people certainly know what had happened during Mao’s time although the events are not on the top of their mind. But they had collectively reached a decision, China is better with Mao then without Mao. I would call it a case of wisdom the crowd. It is also their sense of history and current reality. Not taught.
Of course, it is your freedom to consider Chinese or Americans stupid. Just like members of the flat earth society love to insist that the earth is flat.
Your empathy for animals does you credit.
However it would be better if it were matched by rationality.
There is less info because the Chinese government has been discouraging the practice.
If you had actually read the article rather that recoil in horror over pictures of dogs hanging on hooks, you would have known that.
——————————-
After you have let yourself become emotional rather than examining the facts objectively,
your mind which has been trained by decades of Western propaganda takes control in this way:
When you see that there is less info, you immediately assume that there is the same amount of dog meat consumption going on, but less info appears because of “censorship because the Chinese government is embarrassed”.
There has been less info because there is less occurrence + the Chinese government is actively discouraging the practice.
Would you call the discouragement of dog meat consumption a kind of censorship?
Is such kind of censorship good or bad?
Is censorship necessarily bad?
——————————
Now let us examine your objections, one layer deeper.
On the consumption of dog meat itself. So you do not object to eating dog meat? Only that it is cruelly prepared?
If dogs were quickly dispatched like cows or pigs are, would that have your approval?
Of course one can’t think intelligently without any knowledge, but one can have lots of knowledge without much intelligence. One can have a lot of knowledge AND intelligence and still not have wisdom.
Talk about lack of intelligence, wisdom, AND knowledge… or you’re just a liar. No, the Chinese people had no say about living (if you could call it that) under the Communist Butcher Mao ZeDong.
I wonder why they couldn’t have shot him… hmmmm…. why couldn’t they have just … Ohhhhh.
I would call it the wisdom of not wanting to be thrown in a dungeon or being shot dead.
Look, it’s one thing to read “Rah, Rah! Go China! China is Supa-Dupa-Powwa!” They’ve had a lot going for them over there. But, if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao….
.
.
… you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
Imagine! (Not the song.) While the The Beatles were playing that fuzzy guitar and singing this Rock & Roll, China was in it’s deepest darkest place in that Cultural Revolution. We had no idea what a hell-hole Chairman Mao had made your country until later.
You lying sack of shit.
Yes.
Little Lee writes:
Really??
The following under 4 min video is titled ‘How Mao killed More than WWI and II combined’:
What the eff is wrong with you Little Lee?
Using any metric one chooses to apply, Mao Tse-tung was a Mass Murderer.
If that’s how you define ‘better’, give me worse every time.
Will Ron Unz be advocating for Mexican truck drivers, mass injections, $30 min wage, mosques, pork bans in public schools and mandatory Mandarin lessons next?
He seems to early-onset TDS.
Ron, a country which produces no micro-chips, rare earth minerals, steel, or testosterone is not a country.
I cannot believe you published this. Did you suffer a fall? Hit your head? Call 911.
I’ve been as miffed as you lately, Unbeliever. No, he’s not getting paid for this. Hopefully he didn’t take a spill either.
Ron Unz is a terrible, terrible judge of character and other people’s intelligence. He’s the guy who got himself so worked up about his “America did it!” Kung Flu theory, originally motivated, from what I recall, by some commenter named MetallicMan or something.
Then, he likes what that Hua Bin Chinese propagandist had to say and then the pretty White Western ladies reporting on youtube from China, and, that’s it: China must be promoted, and Trump must be a crazy mean Maoist bastard to want to stop the unfair trade and bring back some manufacturing.
I told Mr. Unz to go visit China and see it for himself, with Chinese people he could trust, back in ’19. He didn’t listen. I’ve been there 11 or 12 times – lost exact count.
He’s quite the braggart and TV huckster, but President Trump is the first guy in arguable 4 decades to want to do things that are good for Americans. I support him in all of it.
Whatever.
Feel free to go to China and tell the Chinese people Mao is such a monster he image should not adorn TAM and RMB bills. After all, Mao’s historical position does not depend on your opinion or my opinion.
But please consider this, do you know China, including Mao’s China, more than the Chinese people collectively speaking. They have decided to trust the CCP led Chinese government a lot more than Americans trust their SUPPOSEDLY DEMOCRATIC government .
I would defer to the collective wisdom of the Chinese people. Of course, it is your freedom to arrogate yourself above the Chinese people and tell themwhat they should think/accept or should not think/accept.
Why didn’t you post this in the long SS #4 thread? I’m not going to explain it again for you or go over the whole Alfred Eckes book on tariffs.
In case you somehow don’t remember, Trump, not the Congress, levied tariffs on China 6-7 years ago, and so did Zhou Bai Dien. Indeed, it used to be a Congressional power, but they gave up that power long ago. (Nixon’s time, IIRC).
Trump passing tariffs on China in his first term doesn’t somehow affirm a power that was granted to Congress.
It’s really quite clear if you want to take a look at the constitution:
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution vests the power to lay and collect tariffs with Congress. The Founding Fathers intended for legislative oversight on taxation, tariffs, and related financial matters, viewing tariffs as strategic levers to be used with caution and prudence.
https://www.usconstitution.net/executive-tariff-authority/
Would you allow your argument for guns or free speech? If a US Democrat president bans a gun without any pushback does that mean the constitution can now be ignored?
We’re far into this, Mr. Johnson. The ctrl-left will tyrannize the American population a whole lot harder (if there is a) next time. They are Communist.
We are not fighting Communists. The US liberal establishment is back by billionaires.
I honestly wish we were fighting a labor left.
This is a fight. Fight like a man, not like a pussy. You are completely a black-pilled loser. You’ve got no will to fight, so just roll over now and get out of our way. I’m not gonna let it rub off on me, LOSER.
Lemme translate that: Stop pointing out that pesky constitution and just get behind the ex-Democrat New Yorker billionaire that puts Israel First.
I’ll pass. I don’t think our problems will be solved through Trump and as such I view him as a waste of time. Trump is more deck chair arranging. He should get back to building the wall he promised us in his first term and respect our constitution.
Part1 “How the news makes us dumb : the death of wisdom in an information society”
Congratulation!
Sounds like you do learning something. If you pay attention my my previous response to correct your mistaken idea that American are no more intelligence, I wrote :
Simply put, American presses are making Americans dumb. They are not selling wisdom, they are selling “Now this.” In case you still don’t get it, may be the following can help.
“What happens when you sell information on a daily basis? You have to make each day’s report seem important, and you do this primarily by reducing the importance of its context. What you are selling is change, and if readers were aware of the bigger story, that would tend to diminish today’s contribution. The industry has to convince its consumers of the significance of today’s News, and it has to make them want to come back tomorrow for more News—more change. The implication will then be that today’s report can now be forgotten. So News involves a radical devaluation of the past, and short-circuits any kind of debate. …
The product of the news business is change, not wisdom. Wisdom has to do with seeing things in their largest context, whereas news is structured in a way that destroys the larger context. You have to do certain things to information if you want to sell it on a daily basis. You have to make each day’s report seem important. And you do that by reducing the importance of its context. …
“Now . . . this” is commonly used on radio and television newscasts to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously. There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly—for that matter, no ball score so tantalizing or weather report so threatening—that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying, “Now . . . this.” (Is the News Making Us Dumb?)
C. John Sommerville wrote the book “How the news makes us dumb : the death of wisdom in an information society.”
James Bovad wrote the sequel “Attention Deficit Democracy”.
Step 1, a citizenry that seems to be paying less attention to facts, and is less capable of judging when their rights and liberties are under attack.
Step 2, “Elections are reverse slave auctions in that people are permitted a nominal voice in choosing who will exercise ownership rights over them. But once the winner is sworn into office, the candidate’s campaign promises do nothing to curb his power. The moment the bidding ends and a winner is declared, the illusion that the slaves are running the show vanishes.”
Replay step 1. How American people were governed did not matter as long as people’s collective focus is redirected to “Now this.”
On the matter of Mao and his alleged achievements, the Chinese people have been brainwashed – just like you.
Now, if you did a poll and it delivered a certain percentage of people trusting their Gubmint, it means nothing. It may just be a reflection of how gullible the people in that nation are.
Meanwhile, to the extent that a large chunk of Americans don’t trust their Gubmint, I commend those people.
But I’m at a loss to explain how the remainder could trust their elected representatives after the way they lied to them during the Covid Psyop, on vaccines, on 9/11, about the murders of JFK/RFK/JFK Jr, about Saddam’s alleged WMD’s etc.
The U.S Gubmint lies non stop. Meanwhile, the Chinese people have been indoctrinated since birth to believe that Mao Tse-tung was the saviour of their nation.
Well, at least they have an excuse for being so ill informed.
Little Lee, what’s your excuse for being so ignorant about Mao’s criminality?
Thanks for info and for asking about my stance on the issue of eating animals. Well aware that most people prefer to look the other way when it comes to the cruelty animals are subjected to, both at factory farms and in abbattoirs, I have limited my objection to the case of deliberately perpetrated animal cruelty.
Truth be told, it is now 26 years since I last ate a sentient animal (meat). I have stopped eating meat solely because the animals are badly treated before they end up on our tables. I am now 74 years old and have yet not noticed any damage to my health. Due to the difficulties to get enough nourishing food, I continue eating eggs and cheese. Sometimes even fish.
In case you don’t know.
Every Chinese in the PRC who carry money is carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. His picture on the 1, 5 , 10, 20, 50, as well as the 100 rmb bills.
Again, the Chinese people had collectively reached a decision, China is better with Mao then without Mao. Of course, there are Chinese who hate Mao. After all, the wisdom of the crowd of the group could be modeled by a probability function. People attitude toward Mao NATURALLY ranged from those who love Mao a lot to those who hate Mao a love.
For foreign journalists who visit China, it would be easy for them to concentrate and report from those who hate Mao and consider him a devil. But those reports are not representative. Again, China a civilizational state. In addition, it is a civilizational state which always emphasizes the importance of the people. 民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕。
Populism in China means trust toward the party in power. A far cry from populism in the West including the US where populism also mean hating the party in power.
This also explains a 2020 Bloomberg Headline: “China Is More Democratic Than America, Say the People.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree
The sponsor did repeat a second survey. Similar results. The sponsor did not bother to did the third time.
Sounds like a version of “Head you lose; Tail I win” kind of argument.
OK. You are always right. I will give up.
You got me there, I admit. I am quite familiar with especially the red 100’s – probably got a few dozen at home still.
That’s not exactly what John Lennon meant – he was talking about people carrying big posters of the “Great Helmsman”. I appreciated that the Chinese DID use cash for nearly everything back 20 years ago, but things have gotten pretty Orwellian now, what with facial reckog/phone payments. I believe your Chairman Xi over there thinks of the Book of Revelation, Chapter 13 as some sort of instruction manual
LOL!
4) Keep pushing the same lies. They’ll get tired of correcting you and go to bed at some point. Then, you’ve WON! … and deserve a nice bowl of WON TON soup.
I am not questioning your good heart or intent. It is clear for all to see.
I am just raising the possibility that you are being selective in your objections?
When American farmers raise cattle and pigs and poultry in overstocked factory pens. They too know that it is a cruel life their animals are subjected to.
Why do you focus on what a tiny minority of Chinese do?
Those that eat dog meat in China can compared with those who eat Rocky Mountain Oysters in the USA. Do all Americans or even a significant proportions of Americans eat bulls’ testicles? Why should the tiny minority be used to define the majority?
Is not the fact that Americans think that dog-torture-consumption is the norm in China, actually a result of deliberate demonisation of a perceived enemy? The same way Iraq was demonised before it was attacked? The same way Libya was demonised before it was attacked?
——————————————————————————————-
You have compassion for animals, and it does you credit.
Perhaps you should also extend that compassion to the Chinese who have been unfairly demonised by the USA?
It’s part of the USian propaganda–reduce the endless array of “enemies” as sub-human; e.g., “disgusting” persons who lower than the oh so ‘wonderful’ west.
You have zero chance of anyone taking you seriously ever again.
We have that. “Not owned by jews.” Now fuck off, yid.
You have zero chance of anyone in the USA taking you seriously ever again.
There, I corrected it for you.
There is a reason why Chinese products are outcompeting American ones in world markets..
They simply have a far higher value : price ratio.
This is why you guys have to resort to banning Huawei phones and Chinese EV cars in the USA, using all sorts of silly excuses.
You guys are afraid of Chinese competition.
Oh, yeah. Here is an example.
For the life of me, I could not find my old compact rotary tool used for crafting and hobby work.
So I bought cordless one online. It arrived in less than a week and cost me USD $6.
It is 3% of the price of your American branded one that costs $180. (and it is probably made in China anyway)
Even if my Chinese tool lasts me only 20% of the lifespan of the American one, it is well worth it.
You guys have simply overpriced yourselves.
WRT Trump’s goals and tariffs. (https://www.unz.com/runz/donald-trumps-looney-tunes-trade-policy)
Trump sees the end of the US post-world war era. The US won the Cold War by enforcing free trade among its allies, and by opening the US market to members of its alliance. This enforcement included maintaining oceanic trade routes that were freely available to all alliance members. This was successful in winning the Cold War against the USSR. The winning mover was breaking the alliance between the PRC and the USSR, and the Cold War was effectively over by 1990.
The US is no longer capable of enforcing free trade and maintaining free access to commercial seaways. The US manufacturing capability has been destroyed, and the destruction was largely carried out by the New Deal and its descendants: the bureaucracy that FDR grew and the generally socialist US government that became a plutocracy after about 1970, deteriorating into a dictatorship during Obama’s “pen and phone” speech. Without the US manufacturing capability, the US can enforce very little outside of the continental Unites States, and had been gradually losing its ability to enforce much more inside the continental United States. This loss of formal governmental authority has manifested itself most obviously in various unsuccessful anti-Trump initiatives from 2016 onwards. These initiatives have ranged for “lawfare” to outright fraud.
So, with the above to establish context, what is Trump doing? What can Trump do?
The “looney-tunes” charge assertion can be safely dismissed: a lunatic would not have survived what Trump has survived.
So what is the plan?
I suggest that it is the standard corporate raider plan, the one that Musk used when he revived Facebook, or the one that the successor to Aeroflot used to ensure its viability. For that matter, it is the one that Parkinson recommended to revive a decrepit corporation: Fire all people and abandon all property not required by daily operations. Musk was reported to have fired 80% of Facebook employees and to have sold off all “employee comfort” equipment to include some very expensive expresso/capuchin preparation equipment.
The objective in such a corporate raid is not entirely to save salary costs and get money from selling surplus equipment. The objective is to smash the “corporate culture” that enforced unprofitable behavior (massive political censorship in the case of Facebook, a very strong culture of minimizing work at the cost of safety and transporting people and goods in Aeroflot). In the Trump’s case, the objective is to destroy an oligarchic American social system that has presided over an impoverishment and partial replacement of the US population. That destruction is what Trump was elected top accomplish. To use technical vocabulary, the American electorate no longer considers the US Government in its present form to be legitimate, and has elected Trump to reform the US Government. Trump is apparently authorized to destroy quite a bit in order to stop the US Oligarchy’s ongoing destruction of the American polity.
If you wanted to draw Classical analogies, consider that Trump’s task is similar to that of Sulla as Dictator during the late Roman Republic. One hopes that Trump is more successful than was Sulla.
I suggest that Trump is pursuing the above objective, if only because Trump’s previous experience is in real estate development. Trump would have a good idea of how corporate raiders worked, and would also realize that the first step in building is demolition of existing structures.
For example: Trump has been criticized for not having the staff to handle the more than one hundred tariff negotiations that Trump’s tariff initiatives have made necessary. This seems valid, but any experienced staff that Trump might recruit would be experienced in the oligarchic Uniparty/Swamp way of doing things, and would simply promulgate the culture that Trump is trying to change. The end result would simply be a recreation of the status quo ante Trump. I might note that Aeroflot’s successor had an ironclad policy against hiring anybody ever employed by Aeroflot.
Trump is attempting a rapid withdrawal of the American sphere of influence to the Northern half of the Western Hemisphere. If Trump fails at this withdrawal, the US Uniparty/Swamp oligarchy will continue the post-WW II framework, selling their country and thanking God and History that they have a country to sell.
CONCLUSION:
Therefore, Trump’s only fundamental objective that has a chance of being reached is to destabilize (the media would say “disrupt”) the post WW II international framework, and do so without starting WW III. The sudden change in tariff policy is such a destabilization.
This is why you guys have to resort to banning Huawei phones and Chinese EV cars in the USA, using all sorts of silly excuses.
You guys are afraid of Chinese competition.
By “you guys” I think you mean the government and only for a few areas. The US government has been protective of clean energy related sectors. There have been some legitimate concerns with Chinese EV vehicle safety but I’m not denying a protection factor. The Chinese government however has more protection regulation in its markets.
Huawei phones are banned for security reasons. Has nothing to do with American made phones. Most cell phones are made in China. Backdoors in Chinese electronics have been found so it isn’t without precedent.
If you go to Home Depot you will see that the number one tool brand (Ryobi) is made in China. Their top lawnmowers are also made in China.
The US isn’t protectionist. Our trade policies have mostly been directed by Friedman type libertarians that not only oppose tariffs but even against countries that manipulate the market or set their own barriers. For decades both Democrats and Republicans believed that America needed to be the big idiot on trade and just shrug when other countries pass tariffs or have state subsidized manufacturing. Now we have Trump who is going too far in the other direction and I am concerned that will just affirm the fears of the status quo. As in our next president will go back to a Morty Goldman who says to do nothing.
Jewish John’s Johnson (JJJ) writes:
Milton Friedman was from the Chicago School of Economic thought.
He was a MONETARIST (like Ben Bernanke), and thus in opposition with the libertarians.
The fact is that Friedman disliked the libertarians and they reciprocated.
Just because Friedman criticised the Keynesians (as Libertarians do – because Friedman at least had the commone sense to know that Big Gubmint is destructive), that does not mean that Friedman saw eye to eye with the libertarians.
Once again JJJ, as with your false assertions that Ayn Rand was a libertarian (she NEVER was at any time during her entire life – by her own admission), you’ve demonstrated once again that you’re clueless on Milton Friedman and what he represented.
Angry Alcoholic Aussie (AAA) writes:
Milton Friedman was from the Chicago School of Economic thought.
He was a MONETARIST (like Ben Bernanke), and thus in opposition with the libertarians.
Chicago School of Economics is libertarian oriented and opposes tariffs. They promote minimal regulation in all economic matters.
I realize you try to live some deluded outlook where the libertarian ideology isn’t heavily Jewish in origin but their most influential writers are Jewish and that is simply the reality. Rand, Mises, Rothbard and Milton are all Kosher club. Sorry if that keeps you up at night. Maybe find a new ideology to run your brain or better yet try thinking for yourself instead of having Rand do it for you.
As for Milton you’re just plain wrong……again.
Economist Milton Friedman Explains Why Tariffs Are A Terrible Idea
https://www.dailywire.com/news/economist-milton-friedman-explains-why-tariffs-are-frank-camp
And here is the libertarian party calling for an end to all tariffs:
https://lp.org/libertarians-call-for-zero-tariffs-zero-trade-barriers-zero-subsidies/
Look I have read quite a bit about economics so please do a little reading for responding.
Once again JJJ, as with your false assertions that Ayn Rand was a libertarian (she NEVER was at any time during her entire life – by her own admission)
She didn’t like being referred to as a libertarian but the founder of the libertarian party modeled the platform after her teachings and he openly admired her. Thus it is fair to call her a libertarian as they have the same beliefs. The libertarian party views are exactly what she promoted: Open borders, legal crack and heroin, no safety regulations on vehicles, no food regulation, machine guns for everyone including felons and also 9 month abortions. I can cite both the libertarian platform and Rand on any of those positions. Both Rand and the libertarian party support opening America to millions of third worlders and letting them buy all the crack and machine guns they want. I will happily source that if you would like.
Trump’s Tariffs Have Done What No US Adversary Could
Great powers often decline through self-inflicted blows. By starting a trade war he was unable to follow through on, Donald Trump may have just dealt a severe one to the United States.
Often in history, there’s no blow struck by the enemies of a great power more fatal than the one it inflicts on itself. The British invasion of Egypt in 1956, for example, and the ensuing pushback, walkback, humiliation, and loss of prestige for the country, came to be viewed as the own goal that firmly ended the United Kingdom’s claim to being a global empire.
Donald Trump’s sudden declaration of, and subsequent quick retreat from, trade war on China may end up being remembered the same way: an unforced error cementing the decline of a unipolar world order dominated by one single power and signaling the transition to something new.
The Trump administration’s stated goals of reshoring the jobs that years of pro-corporate free trade deals had sent out of the country and reconstituting the US manufacturing base are good and arguably necessary. After all, it was only a few years ago that the United States had to rely on airlifts of vital medical supplies from its leading rival to grapple with a pandemic.
But the specific way Trump has rolled out the tariffs, and the decision to turn that project into one big pissing contest for global supremacy, has potentially done the exact kind of damage to global perceptions of US power that the president was trying to avoid.
To the extent that the Trump administration had a coherent set of goals in its ever-shifting public justifications for its tariffs, they were meant to not just kick-start the process of bringing manufacturing back to the United States but to force countries into renegotiating their terms of trade in a way that was more favorable to the United States and, more broadly, to isolate and put pressure on a rising China vying for global leadership. That last one was reportedly what Trump officials had been discussing two weeks into the tariff announcement, reasoning that most of the world’s countries, China included, would face such an economic shock from losing the ability to sell their exports to the United States’ sizable population of big-spending consumers, they would simply fold and agree to whatever Trump wanted.
So far, none of that has worked out.
The blanket, erratic, and often nonsensical nature of the tariffs has, far from showing signs of jump-starting the long process of reshoring manufacturing jobs, actually proven a major obstacle to that project, while also leading manufacturers to shed jobs or scale back their plans and plunging the entire US economy into uncertainty more broadly. This reached a crescendo with the mass sell-off of US Treasury bonds earlier this month that briefly threatened to send the entire US financial system buckling.
The promised renegotiated trade deals, which Trump had first insisted weren’t the goal of the tariffs before turning around and claiming they were, haven’t materialized either. After three weeks, the United States still hasn’t signed a single one of the “ninety deals in ninety days” his trade advisor promised, with other countries’ baffled officials unable to be sure Trump will stick to anything they sign, and who have sometimes found in negotiations that US officials don’t even seem to know what they actually want.
But it’s on the last goal, of squeezing China, that the tariff rollout has been most damaging, at least on the symbolic level of perceptions of US power.
Trump mostly succeeded at demonstrating in the most public way possible that the United States, for the moment, needs China’s exports a lot more than China needs the massive US consumer market.
After initiating the standoff publicly and engaging in public bluster — that “China needs to make a deal with us” but that “we don’t have to make a deal with them,” in Trump’s words, while his officials maintained the president “has a spine of steel, and he will not break” — and insisting Chinese premier Xi Jinping would have to request a call with him, Trump has since had to retreat.
Trump has more quietly sent Beijing unrequited suggestions that Xi call the White House, while issuing exemption after exemption to his tariffs, now finally conceding they would eventually come down “substantially,” even publicly claiming progress on trade talks that both Chinese officials and his own Treasury secretary say aren’t happening.
Trump is now being widely pilloried in the domestic press as having lost the game of chicken he chose to start — and not just by progressive media.
“China called Mr. Trump’s bluff and seems to have won this round,” the right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on April 23, describing the “harsh reality” of the situation. Other business and right-leaning outlets have similarly flatly described Trump as having “blinked” in the standoff.
It’s easy to see why he did. While the tariffs have caused economic pain in China, it has not been nearly on the scale of the chaos Americans are suffering through.
While the International Monetary Fund has downgraded growth projections for both, it’s the United States that has taken the bigger hit. US growth this year (1.8 percent) is still expected to be less than half of that of China’s (4 percent). The predictions of a US recession are now widespread. Trump has also faced a parade of CEOs, donors, or both complaining about the tariffs’ impact on their bottom lines, a problem Xi Jinping doesn’t have in the authoritarian Chinese system.
Reportedly, though, the real trigger was China’s retaliatory restriction on exports of rare earths, the metals and other minerals that are vital components of the supply chains of countless products vital for manufacturing. In the end, it seems, Trump mostly succeeded at demonstrating in the most public way possible that the United States, for the moment, needs China’s exports a lot more than China needs the massive US consumer market.
Nor has the goal of peeling the rest of the world away from China succeeded. Not only did Beijing promptly go and sign deals with Vietnam, a pivotal mutual trade partner caught in the middle, but even close US allies are refusing to pick sides.
The European Union is in talks to end sanctions on Chinese officials and end tariffs on China’s electric cars — part of what an EU official has called “an outstretched hand” from Brussels as it moves “in a more balanced way” after years of following Washington in a more anti-China direction — while Japan, unwilling to damage its economy, has openly rejected the idea of curbing its trade with the country, undercutting the administration’s apparent plan to negotiate a series of individual trade deals with allies before “approach[ing] China as a group.” This is particularly deflating, as the White House has also failed to strike a deal with Japan that it hoped would be the first domino to fall.
Trump, in other words, has not just inadvertently demonstrated the extent of the United States’s dependence on China. He has also wound up demonstrating other key nations’ similar dependence, while revealing stark limits to Washington’s ability to make even its allies do what it wants.
None of this had to happen. Trump could have taken a more strategic, balanced, and targeted approach to the tariffs that would have helped inch the United States closer to his ostensible goals without causing havoc at home, alienating the entire world, and trapping himself into an embarrassing climbdown.
What would that have looked like? It would have required careful diplomacy with US allies and countries caught in the middle, to deepen relations, maybe even move toward favorable trade agreements with them, in the process weaning the United States off dependence on China while helping peel those countries away from it — not insulting and trying to push them around.
It would have meant targeted tariffs on only certain Chinese exports, combined with large-scale government investment in US industries of the kind that got bipartisan support under Joe Biden, and policies to attract the workers these industries need, all of which would have bought time for the United States to make this transition — not immediate, blanket tariffs on everything China sells to Americans, the dismantling of Biden’s industrial investments, and immigration policies that are scaring the entire world from traveling to, let alone settling in, the United States.
And at its heart, it would have meant abandoning the policy of US primacy and all the elite cultural pathologies that come with it, which have proven so disastrous to ordinary Americans, not to mention the many millions of foreigners impacted. That would have meant treating the revival of US manufacturing and the improvement of US workers’ lives as a good and an end in itself, not as a chess move tied to winning a largely symbolic global tug of war — a war that only endangers Americans and, now, threatens to make them poorer.
Ironically, a more prosperous and well-liked United States with a functioning welfare state and a happy, optimistic population would be better positioned to “win the future” against a country like China anyway, which is certainly a goal of Trump’s. Instead, resorting to threats, bluster, and other heavy-handed measures has ended up painting Trump into an awkward corner that has severely dented the perception of US power on the world stage. Trump could well end up like the man who so tightly clung to what he cherished most, it broke to pieces in his hands.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-s-tariffs-have-done-what-no-us-adversary-could/ar-AA1DD3Pw
You mean that kikesucker who drool over zion semen all over his face,
that reality Pworn Star DeeJ Thumpb?
anti-China, ‘all-in with zogpet DJT’ with a surname Newman, tribe member 100%
This site will sink sooner than U.S. with these hasbara bots
Those guys love that Cockpration Shtick, they can’t help with those ‘premium’ ‘american-made’ ‘superior’ fantasy, while in reality : 👇
https://www.livescience.com/47032-time-for-us-to-ban-ractopamine.html
That’s what their ‘premium American hommie pigs’ on the table, what a superior taste yum yum
Yup, that is one reason why I have stopped buying American foods, goods and services for several years now.
The only thing is that once in a while I can’t avoid using my Visa credit card. But I am trying to shift to alternative payment methods as much as I can. Now I use it maybe twice a year?
I don’t want to feed the monster.
Its a funny thing though. When I started doing this years ago, my friends all thought I was a crazy conspiracy nut. Now most of them have started boycotting US stuff too. The world is changing fast.
That should work out nicely for all of us. You be careful now, you hear? Careful when buying food fried in oil recover from sanitary sewer and buying baby cement milk formula or chicken egg that actually concrete.
I asked my Chinese source when shown the concrete eggs: “Holy moley, isn’t it more trouble to mold realistic-looking eggs out of concrete than it is to just raise the freaking chickens?!”
China, where Quality is Job 4.
This is probably the best one can hope for in terms of a ‘Theory of Operations’ for Trump’s second term:
Looks like the central plank of domestic policy is going to be Trumpian mercantilism. The desire to punish foreigners who want to export to U.S. Unfortunately, there is not much in terms of promoting U.S. exports (other than squeezing other countries) or substituting imports by improving local productivity and economic efficiency.
Currency manipulation and the forcible destruction, by jews, of all white nations’ industrial capacity.
There’s no value in chink shit. 一分钱一分货. “Nothing for nothing.” You make bridges out of styrofoam and buildings out of sand.
The ones that just steal American IP wholesale without even hiding it, you mean? That’s the reason for the ban, yid.
You only exist as an industrial state thanks exclusively to trillions in white funding. You were still medieval peasants in the middle of the 20th century before we gave you everything you have. You think we can’t take it all back and leave you to eat yourselves down to 200,000,000 again?
Try us, slant. Push harder. Please.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH THE FUCKING YELLOW FEVER DIPSHIT EVEN ADMITS IT.
I’ve been as miffed as you lately, Unbeliever. No, he’s not getting paid for this. Hopefully he didn’t take a spill either.
Are you really that bothered by someone not having your opinion? Why do you come to an open forum if you are that agitated by disagreement? Why not find one of a thousand websites that offer the conformity of thought that you desire?
Trump’s approval rating just took a bigley drop and the impacts of the Chinese tariffs haven’t even hit yet. It will amount to a national sales tax on his supporters. So tax cuts for the rich and higher prices for the poor. Genius stuff.
Ron described Trump’s trade policy as looney tunes and so far both Wall St and the public agree.
You’re in the minority that still thinks the monkey pulling the levers knows what he is doing.
Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/27/politics/approval-rating-trump-100-days/index.html
Underneath the typical loud-mouth Yankee bluster, you can smell THE FEAR. Game’s up Yankee Doodle-you’ve been surpassed. Get used to being Number Two, Three, Four….
You really need to be a vicious and stupid racist to believe this shit. You qualify easily.
Yeah, but the Chinese are intelligent and well-educated, and you are NEITHER. I’d call you ‘brain-washed’, but you’d need a brain, first.