“Trump is Really Decoupling the US Economy from China”
China, Donald Trump, North Korea, US Economy
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.