Trump 2.0 official thread

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wuguanhui

New Member
henrik said:
CPTPP already includes a range of countries like Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam. This is a good chance of isolating the US from the world's trading system.
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I expect negotiations with Anglo countries to be slow, tedious and ultimately doomed to fail if the US leans on then to sabotage negotiations. Cut them out and it will surely go much faster. Remember what a bitch, China's WTO negotiations were? Let's NOT do that again.

If they are agreeable, we can merge the two agreements later. IF.
 
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gadgetcool5

Senior Member
Registered Member
A lot of countries are feeling disappointed by the U.S. right now. China should step up and offer a better economic deal to the world. Since China runs a big trade surplus overall and will have to reflate the domestic economy to boost aggregate demand lost due to tariffs, in the short run it can do this by increasing investment abroad in friendly countries. In the long run, China should move to a more balanced trade accounting that has roughly equal imports and exports, with imports coming from friendly countries. In exchange for helping other countries economically, China should require integration into Chinese digital networks, or at least explusion of U.S. ones, and abstention from entering into defense pacts with the U.S.

In my view, China's historic position was "We are just going to mind our own business and we don't take sides", but that is not feasible anymore since the world's #1 power has declared China an enemy. China is in the same position the U.S. was in in 1940-41. Even if China doesn't want to fight a new Cold War, a new Cold War has been brought to its doorstep. Every other country, such as Japan, the Philippinnes, India, and so on are much lesser threats to China than the U.S. is. China has to awaken that it now lives in a world of geopolitics and it should participate more actively in building up BRICS as an alternative, multipolar trade, investment & technology bloc that is more reliable than the U.S.
 
BillRamengod

BillRamengod

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Good artical by Yanis Varoufakis, I think he might have actually guessed Trump's plan correctly.

But tariffs are only the first phase of his masterplan. With high tariffs as the new default, and with foreign money accumulating in the Treasury, Trump can bide his time as friends and foes in Europe and Asia clamour to talk. That’s when the second phase of Trump’s plan kicks in: the grand negotiation.​


Unlike his predecessors, from Carter to Biden, Trump disdains multilateral meetings and crowded negotiations. He is a one-on-one man. His ideal world is a hub and spokes model, like a bicycle wheel, in which none of the individual spokes makes much of a difference to the functioning of the wheel. In this view of the world, Trump feels confident that he can deal with each spoke sequentially. With tariffs on the one hand and the threat of removing America’s security shield (or deploying it against them) on the other, he feels he can get most countries to acquiesce.​

Acquiesce to what? To appreciating their currency substantially without liquidating their long-term dollar holding. He will not only expect each spoke to cut domestic interest rates, but will demand different things from different interlocutors. From Asian countries that currently hoard the most dollars, he will demand they sell a portion of their short-term dollar assets in exchange for their own (thus appreciating) currency. From a relatively dollar-poor eurozone riddled with internal divisions that increase his negotiating power, Trump may demand three things: that they agree to swap their long-term bonds for ultra-long-term or possibly even perpetual ones; that they allow German manufacturing to migrate to America; and, naturally, that they buy a lot more US-made weapons.​

Can you picture Trump’s smirk at the thought of this second phase of his masterplan? When a foreign government acquiesces to his demands, he will have chalked up another victory. And when some recalcitrant government holds out, the tariffs stay put, yielding his Treasury a steady stream of dollars which he can dispense with any way he deems fit (since Congress controls only tax revenues). Once this second phase of his plan is complete, the world will have been divided into two camps: one camp shielded by American security at the cost of an appreciated currency, the loss of manufacturing plants, and forced purchases of US exports including weapons. The other camp will be strategically closer perhaps to China and Russia, but still connected to the US through reduced trade which still gives the US regular tariff income.​

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I'm sure that everone will tie them up to America's wagon, give Trump whatever he wants. What could possibly go wrong, RIGHT?
 
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Xiongmao

Xiongmao

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BillRamengod said:
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Good artical by Yanis Varoufakis, I think he might have actually guessed Trump's plan correctly.
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If this is the true plan and it works, it will make the US stronger but it will also make China stronger relative to other countries who acquiesce because China will never bend the knee. So the US and China will both take more of the pie to make a bipolar world a reality.
 
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