Tag: peaceful trade

2019 Trump’s Economic Strategy: Throwing Punches Blindfolded?

Ever since enacting our existing Constitution in 1787/1788, the US has had issues controlling itself. To pay down the war debt, instead of staying the course with the states deciding on their payback schedule, the general government jumped in for the power grab. It has been rough sledding every since.

So here we are in 2019, while US propaganda spins the latest twists of the expanding trade war with China, one of my favorite bloggers, Moon of Alabama, does a great job of setting the context and teasing the truth out of this current situation.

I can only think that Trump sees his time as short even if it is two terms and he sees this area of US policy as the only place he can “play” with the big boys, and perform his legacy business strength, the “Art of the Deal“.

Other areas like foreign policy are in the hands of the neocons and the domestic games hold little real interest to him (except it gives him plenty of material to Tweet about).

Moon of Alabama is balanced enough to say:

Some aspects of China’s trade behavior can and should be criticized. But overall China sticks to the rules of the game, while the U.S. is now breaking these.

It was not China that moved U.S. factories to its country. U.S. managers did that because the U.S. economic system is based on greed and not on the welfare of its citizens.

There are much better ways to get China to change its trade behavior than by bullying and ever increasing tariffs and sanctions.

Bullies don’t play by the rules, from US/Israel/French nuclear development that the US vetoes the UN on WHILE picking on Iran which has dotted the “I” s and crossed all the “T” s .. to the way the US waged war on itself especially in 1864/1865 with the total war mantra, killing civilians, burning homes, stealing silverware, raping the wives and slave women and wrecking havoc over a large portion of the South, bullies never play fair.

Non-bullies almost have to until the bully is significantly weakened, but having over 5000+ nukes with multiple warheads keeps the US in “business”.

Back to the China tariff “strategy”:

The U.S. started a trade war with China by suddenly putting up high tariffs on Chinese products. China countered with tariffs on U.S. products, but was ready to negotiate a fair deal. The negotiations about an agreement were held in English in the United States. The U.S. provided a written draft.

When that draft reached China and was translated to Chinese the relevant party and government institutions were aghast. The U.S. demanded that China changes several of its domestics laws. It essentially demanded a complete change of China’s trade policies and, most infuriating, was unwilling to go back to the old tariff rates, even if China would comply. It wasn’t Xi who rejected the uneven deal, it was the whole Chinese government.

You see, historically, the US likes to portray an “evil bogeyman” in foreign policy struggles like it likes to paint the “lone gunman” in domestic shootings:

U.S. propaganda is always pointing to one person that solely cases everything and therefore deserves all the hate. It once was Saddam, Saddam , Saddam. Then Ghadaffi, Ghadaffi, Ghadaffi, Assad, Assad, Assad, Putin, Putin, Putin. Now it is Xi, Xi, Xi.

So now what? The “negotiations” that supposedly Trump is so good at (like 4D chess moves, etc) seems to have no real pattern. Maybe that is his genius, random chaos?

As Ambassador Chas Freeman lays out at length:

“There is no longer an orderly policy process in Washington to coordinate, moderate, or control policy formulation or implementation. Instead, a populist president has effectively declared open season on China.”

So what is the end game here? Does he want this to become a war that he can blame the neocons on (since they are itching for another conflict to insure the Military-Industrial Complex is well “fed” with government revenue, up to $1.2T annually IF you count the ten different accounts that make up the “military” budget).

China will response in kind and asymmetrically. It now restarts to buy oil from Iran. Ambassador Freeman sees no way how the U.S. could win the game.

China has long prepared for this conflict. Consider Trump’s recent move against the Chinese manufacturer Huawei:

The White House issued an executive order Wednesday apparently aimed at banning Huawei’s equipment from U.S. telecom networks and information infrastructure. It then announced a more potent and immediate sanction that subjects the Chinese company to strict export controls.

The order took effect Thursday and requires U.S. government approval for all purchases of U.S. microchips, software and other components globally by Huawei and 68 affiliated businesses. Huawei says that amounted to $11 billion in goods last year.

So basically, US chip manufacturers are feeling the same way as soybean farmers .. what did Trump do to our market? Consumers may never know the deal they might have had with solar panels.

Maybe Trump has had enough of the presidency and wants to “kick the can” to the next president to deal with, landmines like rising Walmart prices WILL hit his core base, if they can connect the dots.

Things are going to get even more interesting!

-SF1

What is With the Obsession with Russia, Primarily, and China Secondarily? PART 1

I have to be honest, I am a “boomer” who served in the US Navy after Vietnam and before Gulf War I, in a relative season of peace (rare for the US Empire these days).

The 1970s saw increased cooperation and trade with China and in the late 1980s finally saw increased cooperation and trade with Russia. With the Cold War over, people in general felt a lot better about the global conflicts and started to look at our domestic issues. Politicians and the Deep State do not like that. In search of distractions the Deep State looked for opportunities and continued to feed skewed Intel to the US government.

One would have thought that peace would allow the US to get a handle on its own economy and its own trade balance sheet. Nothing could be further from the truth. What happens time and again in large corporations, government and in bureaucracy in general is that politics squanders opportunities to take things to the next level, a better place AFTER addressing some key foundational and structural issues. The problem with politics and older organizations is that the momentum of the status quo keeps the change agents and whistle-blowers at bay while the existing paradigm sucks the life out of the organization or nation slowly. Because the leaders are temporary custodians of the organization, there is little incentive to do anything but “kick the can” down the road for others to deal with, the next generations of corporate leaders or the next crop of politicians or even the next generation of consumers and taxpayers.

Not cool.

In our existing morass it is apparent that the US Empire desperately needs an enemy. It needed one in 1990 as the USSR dissolved into over a dozen republics and it needed it yet again after the easy Gulf War I win that failed to produce the need for military in a big way for the long haul. Enter the “War on Terror” (Gulf War II, Iraq Invasion), which was designed to never end. This helped Bush II and Obama to satisfy the deep state and elites who see nothing but upsides to perpetual war, but after some rather apparent blunders, the target has shifted to Russia especially followed by China. Sure North Korea and Iran are in the mix but I am pretty sure the deep state is after another multi decade conflict so it can keep its job.

The blunder in the war on terror had to do with the exposure from Wikileaks and other leaks that made it clear that ISIS was actually a US/Saudi/UK and Israel initiative (to keep Iran from being a regional power that threatened Israel). The attempts to regime change Libya and Syria were part of an effort to further destabilize the Middle East which sent refugees to Western Europe by the droves, destabilizing Germany and France especially. The empire likes to keep its competition at bay, either directly or indirectly.

For the past three years, Russia has received the brunt of the attacks claiming that its motives are evil. A quick look at maps from 1990 to present say otherwise:

As you can see, the efforts in the Ukraine in 2014 was an attempt to further weaken Russian influence in the region. Their actual restraint shows the wisdom that Putin possesses in dealing with the US Empire and NATO. Russia did tactfully stepped in and secured Crimea and the critical port of Sevastopol on the Black Sea which they had possession of under lease agreements up until the US sponsored regime change in 2014. Beyond this, with the vast majority of Crimeans desiring ties to Russia there was swift and peaceful investments made by Russia like the Crimean Bridge below:

Crimean Bridge
Sevastopol Naval Base (Russia) on the Black Sea

This peaceful move PLUS the fact that the Russians were invited by Syrians to remove ISIS from their territories actually allowed Russian military to test their weapon systems and now have an edge in several different technological categories that make the Pentagon nervous. The fact that in October 2015 when this calculated effort to push ISIS out of Syria really started, Obama predicted that Russia would fail:

Syria (October 2015)
Syria Dec 2018

So the US was showed up in Syria, as trespassers they “fought” ISIS until Russia could beat ISIS .. and now the US rebels hold the land east of the Euphrates River.

Then, in 2019, the US turns its attention to Venezuela. The US Empire DOES have an addiction that it is not ready to admit. Of course they pull out the old Monroe Doctrine crap .. wondered if that applied in Iraq and Afghanistan, opps, wrong continent. Geez. But I digress. Why can’t the US just defend the US? Because it has a “need for empire” and its belief in the myth called “American Exceptionalism”.

At its root, the US obsession with “extending” Russia until it breaks is summed up by Moon of Alabama in this hilarious highlighting of a RAND think-tank article that was revised to look at the US instead in this  post:

This brief summarizes a report that comprehensively examines nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the Russian Federation and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress —overextend and unbalance— the United States’ economy and armed forces and the U.S. government’s political standing at home and abroad. Some of the options examined are clearly more promising than others, but any would need to be evaluated in terms of the overall strategy for dealing with the United States, which neither the report nor this brief has attempted to do.

Today’s United States suffers from many vulnerabilities — the financial crisis has caused a drop in living standards, regressive tax policies that have furthered that decline, a decreasing life expectancy, and increasing authoritarianism under Barack Obama’s and now Donald Trump’s rule. Such vulnerabilities are coupled with deep-seated (if exaggerated) anxieties about the possibility of Russia-inspired political manipulation, loss of great power status, and even military attack.

Despite these vulnerabilities and anxieties, the United States remains a powerful country that still manages to be Russia’s peer competitor in a few key domains. Recognizing that some level of competition with the United States is inevitable, RAND researchers conducted a qualitative assessment of “cost-imposing options” that could unbalance and overextend the United States. Such cost-imposing options could place new burdens on the United States, ideally heavier burdens than would be imposed on the Russian Federation for pursuing those options.

A team of RAND experts developed economic, geopolitical, ideological, informational, and military options and qualitatively assessed them in terms of their likelihood of success in extending the United States, their benefits, and their risks and costs.

Too funny, because the original 2019 RAND publication was focused in Russia’s situation and how the US might exploit her weaknesses.

What is noteworthy is the last line of this think-tank production, which SHOULD cause the deep state (as well as their Mossad ties) to pause in their agenda:

Most of the options discussed, including those listed here, are in some sense escalatory, and most would likely prompt some Russian counterescalation. Thus, besides the specific risks associated with each option, there is additional risk attached to a generally intensified competition with a nuclear-armed adversary to consider. This means that every option must be deliberately planned and carefully calibrated to achieve the desired effect. Finally, although Russia will bear the cost of this increased competition less easily than the United States will, both sides will have to divert national resources from other purposes. Extending Russia for its own sake is not a sufficient basis in most cases to consider the options discussed here. Rather, the options must be considered in the broader context of national policy based on defense, deterrence, and—where U.S. and Russian interests align—cooperation.

Cooperation, now there is a novel idea!

Hang on, there are more deep state and political thinkers that love their wallet more than life on this planet, especially for generations after their death!

Next time we will look more at China as well as the budding relationship that Russia and China are now enjoying and how Japan and other nations like Iran and Syria figure into all these geopolitics as well as the association called BRICS ( Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa ).

-SF1