Trade War with China

gelgoog said:

If the US does go along this route, then China needs to properly analyze capital flows to ensure they aren't short-changed in that transaction.

Like I said here before, I see signs of malinvestments similar to what happened with Japan in the late 1980s like attempts to purchase media companies in the US. Or purchasing expensive land in the US. I think Tencent is rumored to want to acquire Universal Music Group for example. It is a waste of money. China shouldn't bother with things like that. Whenever there is an economic downturn entertainment is always the first thing to collapse. If people need to cut on expenses what do you think is the first thing they'll consider? Right now the economy is at the height of a bubble. i.e. it's the worst possible time to do acquisitions of media companies.

Presently investors in China don't know where to put their money. I think the Chinese government would be advised to sell bonds to Chinese citizens. The bonds could fund, for example, major public works. These would be later paid back to the bond holders with a small amount of interest. This could be used to increase the amount of public transport, build sewage and water treatment facilities, or other infrastructure works.

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Biscuits said:

What you don’t get is that US wants to work out a way to eliminate ALL trade deficit or at least a large part of them.

US needs food export and passenger planes to even get the current trade balance, which is highly stacked up against them. Consumers in China are already buying everything they need from America, there’s zero demand for more.

Of course, the onus is on the US to come claim it’s export money. If they don’t want it, they don’t have to take it.

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tidalwave said:

There's hole to that argument US bluffing about decoupling.

Many conservative would love to go back pre Nixon time when China was not engaged. There's this sentiment of big regret of engaging China and brought it to WTO subsequently. This cold war against China is seen as redemption.

Many of them think by decoupling, China would greatly dimished and that means China would less capable of challenging US leadership in the world.

To them, that perceived benefit would outweight the idea of controlling China.
Boxing China to a hole and contained is a very appealing idea to them.

To them even if it means costing more to US. To greatly dimish the strongest opponent is worth it.

Read about Peter morici article.

China , cannot take that as bluffing, it has to prepare for that .

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Gatekeeper said:

This prof the trade war was just an excuse. All the talks about China doing all the unfair stuff. Like stealing IP. forced sharing of tech. Money munipilatuon. Etc. Are all BS and just excuses!
The real reasons are there coming straight from that neo-con Lighthizer mouth, and agreed by the committee led by the democrats. So its cross party US official foreign policy. You can't get clearer than that.
It is not China doing things differently or wrongly. But it is the US steadfastly refusing to accept it's place in the world as number ..... 2!
King canute anyone!?

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CMP said:

That would be my fear as well. Hopefully not though.

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CMP said:

I frankly don’t care what they want. If they want to sell, it’s up to them to come up with things the buyer wants. It is not up to China to bend over backwards accepting unwanted, unneeded, inferior, or insecure products. The trade balance is what it is and will be what it will be. All that depends on the US. Ban sales of all the products a buyer would want? No sales for you.

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Biscuits said:

True. But where our opinion differ is on whether their hardware really is totally useless.

Even from only an intelligence perspective, it would be a goldmine. Soviet Russia sold off equipment to western nations in exchange for debt, this isn’t unheard of.

And even if their hardware is inferior to the best frontline equipment, it’s not going to be inferior to the worst surplus equipment. Padding the numbers is more important than you give credit to.

Anything produced by a foreign country means another free slot for PLA to build something truly demanding instead.

If the concern is about backdoors, products are always checked throughly. Chances are, backdoors will backfire spectacularly like earlier attempts to spy.

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gelgoog said:

Like I said, the USA wouldn't sell any weapons system that was critically important for them.
Let's say China offered to buy the F-35B. Do you think the USA would sell it? Or a Virginia class submarine? Russia basically leased an Akula submarine to India. I think even if China asked for a now mostly obsolete weapon system like the B-1 the US would still not sell it to them. Yet they still plan to strike them down once the B-21 Raider is available.

We are talking about the country that crushed F-14 Tomcat aircraft and destroyed the tooling allegedly so Iran couldn't get access to parts to upkeep their aircraft. That's the kind of people you are dealing with. They also scrapped their Spruance-class destroyers and now they're concerned China will catch them up in naval fleet size over the next two decades. It's kind of pathetic really.

Russia sold the best fighters they had back then. In fact Russia export fighters were better than those available to the Russian Air Force when the Su-30MK sales were made. Russia also sold the BMP-3 (for example to South Korea) and other then leading edge weapon systems to pay down debt.

I don't see the US doing that any time soon. Because, you know, they are "exceptional".

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CMP said:

Choice quotes from Lighthizer about the trade war/deal with China:

"We have to be number one. We just have to stay number one. And by the way most people in the world want us to be number one." -Lighthizer

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