Michael McCaul of foreignpolicy.com has sounded an alarm over the impending trade war between the U.S. and China, and it’s not what you probably expect if your news diet consists of nothing but the mainstream media, The Democratic Party, Establishment Republicans, and most NeoCons.
Both McCaul and surprisingly Ian Bremmer of Time Magazine believe that Trump’s war with China is not primarily about money but identifying our true allies and taking a stand against Xi Jinping’s quest for world domination. Something he plans to accomplish, not with bullets, but with the knowledge and technology we have gladly sold to him for a short-term profit.
According to the President’s distractors, the way he is playing hardball with China over tariffs is going to ruin the economy because it is a war we cannot possibly win.
Trump has made it plain that he had no plan to impose tariffs on the European Union and countries including Canada, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea. But China is a different story. U.S. businesses have been greatly affected by China’s determination to restrict market access and continues to steal their intellectual property. The later enabling China to make great advances in warfare applications without paying a dime for the research and development.
Our trade deficit with China amounts to what it pays for its entire military complex in a year.
Just before Trump announced his plans to impose tariffs on China, he signed the Taiwan Travel Act. This reversed an almost 40-year-old policy, now allowing officials at all levels of the U.S. government to meet with their Taiwanese counterpart in Taiwan, and for high-level Taiwanese officials to enter the U.S.
The lame-stream media gave this angle of the story little notice but not so in China. State officials there saw Trump’s signing of the Act as a blatant rejection of its “One China policy” as proof that U.S. trade action is not primarily to revive American industry but to block China’s expanding influence.
About the same time, Beijing officials were fuming that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un went directly to President Trump not allowing for an official statement from a Chinese representative.
Bremer notes that the man his voters put in office is intent on keeping a contract he made with them – checking China’s wholesale pillaging of American technology and intellectual property must end.
Trump knows that China’s economy is susceptible to trade action since it depends on it more than the U.S. does. According to the World Bank, 37% of China’s GDP comes from trade–though that’s down from more than 65% in 2006–vs. 27% of the U.S. That creates a vulnerability for China.
“But Trump is more politically vulnerable than Xi … the U.S. goods targeted by China are ginseng and pork, products that will hurt farmers and business owners in states like Wisconsin and Iowa, which are essential for Trump’s re-election bid in 2020. [unlike in the U.S.] There are no swing states in China,” Ian Bremmer.
President Trump wants U.S. companies to have real access to China’s vast marketplace and he wants a win for the U.S. by forcing a much lower trade deficit.
China desperately needs access to the technologies that could help its economy make the transition from manufacturing power to a cutting-edge creator of industries – advanced microchips, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
The U.S. will win some concessions on market access, but China won’t give up its practice of forcing U.S. companies to share technology as the price of doing business without being forced to.
McCaul brings things into focus when he writes:
“Under Xi, China is developing military bases around the world, in Djibouti, in Pakistan, in Sri Lanka; reorganized the People’s Liberation Army, establishing the Strategic Support Force to militarize space and cyberspace; attacked U.S. websites to neutralize the First Amendment; violated the 2015 cyber-enabled theft commitment with the United States; violated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea … purged over a million of its citizens from government service; and granted Xi the ability to rule indefinitely.”
Xi Jinping is on a march toward lifelong dictatorship over the world’s most populous nation and his strategic window of opportunity seems boundless.
According to McCall “the United States must shut that window.” Now it appears that Donald Trump is willing to take the political risk to do so. Then again, Trump told us that he is not a politician.
~ American Liberty Report
