Sundance, at Conservative Tree House, contends that Trump has a larger policy goal in the case of China than is generally understood.
China controls North Korea; essentially as a proxy province. As a result Beijing controls the messaging from the DPRK. Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping is the captor and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un is the captive – it’s essentially a hostage dynamic. The historic objective has been to use DPRK aggression as a hedge against the west.
Predictably there was going to come a moment when Chairman Xi realized the trade negotiations by his adversary, President Trump, were a hall of mirrors. The U.S. President has played China by using their own panda-mask strategy against them.
President Trump achieved his goal when no-one was paying attention. The goal was a decoupling from China on economic terms. Strategic decoupling has been underway for over a year. There is no actual intent to reach a trade deal with China where the U.S. drops the tariffs and returns to holding hands with a happy panda playing by new rules. This fictional narrative is a figment of fantasy being sold by a financial media that cannot fathom a U.S. President would be so bold as to just walk away from China.
For almost three years U.S. President Trump has been working on two connected objectives: (1) removing the threat posed by North Korea by severing the ability of Beijing to use the proxy province as a weapon (Kim is hostage to China); and (2) deconstructing the growing economic influence of China.
Both issues are directly connected to U.S. national security; and both issues are being approached by President Trump through the use of economic leverage to achieve national security results.
If he’s right, and Trump really is undoing the tremendous harm that Richard Nixon did, he is going to go down in History as a great president.
HT: John Meyer.
OneGuy
China wants to destroy us and they have been using us for decades to improve their economic situation. Trump is turning that around. I do suspect that as soon as we get a different president we will revert to sleeping with the enemy.
Schill McGuffin
I’m not sure I’d trace the harm back to Nixon, who had what seemed like legitimate Cold War strategic reasons for reengaging with China (even when still led by the monstrous Mao). I think the harmful relationship with China really commenced after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Congress started tripping over themselves, bipartisanly, to extend Most Favored Nation status to China while seeking essentially no concessions from them in terms of foreign or domestic policy. There was, at best, an attitude that naturally Free Trade would put them on a slippery slope to liberal democracy. While China managed to navigate a form of business-friendly fascism without really losing authoritarian social control, it was the West that was quite firmly on the hook for letting them do as they wished, so long as they supplied cheap goods and hungry (though regulated) markets.
As with so many things Trump, I was skeptical with his initiation of this seeming Trade War, especially with an election looming. I’m impressed by the lack of a catastrophe, and curious to see where it all leads — most importantly whether any future successor of Trump’s (in 1 or 5 years) recognizes the achievement here, or just ends up tossing it all aside in a panic.
Fusil Darne
You can practically smell the fear the Soviets had for the Chinese when you read the story of Lt. Victor Belenko’s defection to Japan in a MiG 25 (MiG Pilot, by John S. Baron). The Soviet military reminded members that, even if they successfully killed a million Chinese a day, it would take them 37 years to eliminate every one of them.
Richard Nixon, for all his faults, understood this.
The proper lens for Richard Nixon’s action was the era of the MiG 25, not today.
Please Leave a Comment!