Trump's Big CON: 'I Saved Us From China'

UPDATE:  "Since his inauguration, President Trump has backed off several core campaign positions, including making a stark reversal of his posture toward China. He has explained that rather than pursue a tough-on-China trade policy, he will capitulate on U.S. trade interests to win Beijing’s cooperation on North Korea. . .

In fact, he has made trade threats against U.S. allies such as Canada and South Korea while giving China a pass.

The reason? Trump believes that obliging China on trade will win its cooperation in handling North Korea. He’s gone so far as to promise even more favorable trade terms if China can “solve the North Korea problem.” This approach deeply misreads China’s motivations, and the president seems to have just realized it. He recently tweeted: “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!” We will wait to see if this tweet actually signals a shift in U.S. policy, but no doubt it is a confession that the president’s conciliatory approach toward China has failed.

The president should have known from the very beginning."

Read the Washington Post, Chuck Schumer: Trump railed against China while campaigning. Now he’s gone soft.

"President Trump's interview with the Economist contains a few strange claims. . .

[In one,] Trump appeared to claim credit for China reversing its long-held practice of intentionally holding down the value of its currency to make its exports relatively cheap and boost business abroad.

'You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped,' Trump said about the Chinese.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who spent decades working on Wall Street and in hedge funds, backed up Trump's specious claim. 'Right, as soon as the president got elected they went the other way,' said Mnuchin.

The claim is patently untrue. For roughly a decade and a half leading up to 2014, China did depreciate its currency, to the detriment of U.S. businesses. But data shows that China abandoned the practice long before Trump came into office."

Read the Washington Post, Trump just took credit for something China did in 2014.

It's China, Stupid

UPDATE IV: "A bill that could impose tariffs on Chinese exports would trigger a trade war and distract the United States from the real issues it faces." Read The New York Times, Imagined in America.

Maybe, but China must allow free trade in its currency.


UPDATE III: "Ask yourself: Why is it so hard to restore full employment? . . .

The answer is that we used to run much smaller trade deficits. A return to economic health would look much more achievable if we weren’t spending $500 billion more each year on imported goods and services than foreigners spent on our exports."

Read The New York Times, Holding China to Account.


UPDATE II: Finally, someone sees the economic benefit of "crack[ing] down on China’s currency practices." Read the Washington Post, The China stimulus.


UPDATE: Want to know how 'Made in China ' is displacing North American made goods big time? The Emma Maersk. I first posted about this impressive weapon in the war against the middle class in April 2009 and I recently got another email about her, which reminded me:

"This monster transports goods across the Pacific in just 5 days!! This is one of three ships presently in service, with another two ships commissioned to be completed in 2012.

These ships were commissioned by Wal-Mart to get all their goods and stuff from China . They hold an incredible 15,000 containers and have a 207 foot deck beam!! The full crew is just 13 people on a ship longer than a US Aircraft Carrier (which has a crew of 5,000.)

A documentary in 2010 on the History Channel noted that all of these containers are shipped back to China , EMPTY. Yep, that's right. We send nothing back on these ships. What does that tell you about the current financial state of this country? Just keep buying those imported goods (mostly gadgets) until you run out of money.

Then you may wonder what the cause of unemployment (maybe even your job) in the U.S. and Canada might be????

'Nuff said ??"

Over the weekend, in a statement full of irony, China, the "largest foreign holder of American debt . . . lecture[d] Washington to get its fiscal house in order."

But, as the Wall Street Journal notes, "who are the Chinese kidding with their chest-pounding economic nationalism?"

China "is ignoring that America's real problem is sustained international trade imbalances." Read The New York Times, U.S. Debt Is Not the Culprit, which notes that the "root of global instability still lies in trade imbalances and currency values, and the need for adjustments in both Asia and the United States."

There is an easy way to resolve our government budget woes, end unfair trade practices, including Chinese currency manipulation.

May You Live in Interesting Times

"HOLD onto your hats and your wallets. Since the end of the cold war, the global system has been held together to a large degree by four critical ruling bargains. Today all four are coming unstuck at once and will need to be rebuilt. Whether and how that rebuilding happens — beginning in the U.S. — will determine a lot about what’s in your wallet and whether your hat flies off.

Now let me say that in English: the European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model has suffered a warning heart attack and needs a total rethink. Recasting any one of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once — when the world has never been more interconnected — is mind-boggling. We are again 'present at the creation' — but of what?"

Read The New York Times, All Together Now.

Keep America Great: Stop Chinese Trade Cheating

"China uses unfair trade practices to wage war on our manufacturing base, [and] the American economy is the big loser." Read the Los Angles Times, How China unfairly bests the U.S.

Bankruptcy by Demographics

UPDATE II: The U.S. government spends $40 billion to $50 billion each year on end-stage kidney disease. Read The New York Times, Asking Kidney Patients to Forgo a Free Lifeline, which highlights one case:

"One patient, a 78-year-old woman whose name is being withheld, was not a good candidate for dialysis, her doctors said. She has complications from diabetes, high blood pressure, a heart valve problem and severe coronary artery disease. Her medical problems were so grave that dialysis was likely to lead to a series of medical interventions — hospital stays, drugs and doctor visits — but would not necessarily prolong her life. And her doctors told her that.

But she insisted on dialysis, saying, 'Some life is better than no life.' In the seven months she has been on dialysis, she has been hospitalized four times, including twice for heart surgery.

'I go to dialysis because I want to live,' she said in a telephone interview. 'I want dialysis.'"

UPDATE: Medicare doesn't cover everything. So how much do you need to save? A lot. Read The New York Times, Getting Old Is Expensive.

Should old people just die younger and quicker? Read the Washington Post, A growth lesson from China, which predicts a pretty bleak future for the U.S.:

"This demographic destiny might entail starving every other sector of society -- including national defense, at great cost to America's international standing. It had better not, given what Fogel argues in another essay, this one in the current issue of Foreign Policy. It carries the headline "$123,000,000,000,000." Fogel's subheadline is: "China's estimated economy by the year 2040. Be warned."

He expects that by 2040 China's GDP will be $123 trillion, or three times the entire world's economic output in 2000. He says China's per capita income will be more than double what is forecast for the European Union. China's 40 percent share of global GDP will be almost triple that of the United States' 14 percent.

Fogel finds many reasons for this, including the increased productivity of the 700 million (55 percent) rural Chinese. But he especially stresses "the enormous investment China is making in education."

While China increasingly invests in its future, America increasingly invests in its past: the elderly. China's ascent to global economic hegemony could be slowed or derailed by unforeseen scarcities or social fissures. America's destiny is demographic, and therefore is inexorable and predictable, which makes the nation's fiscal mismanagement, by both parties, especially shocking."

Tell your kids to learn Chinese.

The End of America's Zenith?

UPDATE X: "Americans seem unable to grasp the magnitude of the challenges that face us. Despite the hyped talk of China's rise, most Americans operate on the assumption that the U.S. is still No. 1." Read Time, Are America's Best Days Behind Us?


UPDATE IX: "Napoleon is famously said to have declared, 'When China wakes, it will shake the world.'" Read The New York Times, China Rises, and Checkmates.


UPDATE VIII: "China is playing games with its foreign-exchange policy at the world’s expense." Read The New York Times, The Renminbi Runaround.


UPDATE VII: The title says it all. Read Newsweek, It’s China’s World We’re Just Living in It.

Thanks again to Wal-Mart and the Republi-cons.


UPDATE VI: Thanks to Wal-Mart, "China has the United States about where it wants it. You can make your own calculation of President Obama’s leverage over Beijing — and it’s heading south." To understand why, read The New York Times, The World’s Watchmaker.


UPDATE V: For yet more proof of the growing power of China, read the Washington Post, China's strident tone raises concerns among Western governments, analysts.

And there is not much that can be done about it since the Republi-cons' war on the middle class and unfair trade policies gave China a $2.4 trillion slush fund to "create a world economy that serves China's interests."


UPDATE IV: Tell your kids to learn a new language of business. Read The New York Times, Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese.


UPDATE III: After yesterday's fireworks, read The New York Times, Chinese Fireworks Display, about the future of Chimerica, the tightly integrated China-America symbiotic relationship.


UPDATE II: Will the dollar soon be worth less (pun intended)? Read The New York Times, The Almighty Renminbi?

And if you doubt the growing power of China, read The New York Times, China’s Heart of Gold, in which the writer, the executive director of the Beijing Private Equity Association and a director of the China National Association of International Studies, demands "inflation-protection measures for China’s existing investments in America, and [requests] additional security or collateral for its continued investments. America should also provide its largest creditor with greater transparency and information."

This is a stunning demand and challenge to American sovereignty.

This is also the beginning of the end of America's debt addiction, and the withdrawal/detox of the American economy is going to be ugly.

All thanks to Republi-con unfair trade policies as part of their war on the middle class.


UPDATE: Read The New York Times, America the Tarnished.

Will this decade prove to be America's zenith? I predict that the economic mess will be the event leading to the emergence of Chinese economic and military dominance.

Read Washington Post, In Downturn, China Sees Path to Growth.

China, Rogue Economic Superpower

UPDATE II: "Is "our newest economic superpower may indeed be on its way to some kind of economic crisis, with collateral damage to the world as a whole. " Read The New York Times, China Goes to Nixon.


UPDATE: "Here we go again.

China's Supreme Leader visits Washington, and administration officials declare in the run-up to the visit that the United States has had quite enough of Beijing's currency-manipulating, intellectual- property-stealing, domestic- industry-subsidizing policies. . .

By week's end, Americans finally turn their attentions back to the more pressing issue of whether the Jets can really make it to the Super Bowl.

So far, this week's visit by President Hu Jintao has pretty much followed the script."

Read the Washington Post, Chinese follow same old script (and they get the punch line).

"China’s rare-earth monopoly is yet another example of its refusal to play by the rules." Read The New York Times, Rare and Foolish.

And China laughs all the way to the bank.

But all is not lost, yet. we could "use tariffs to counter Beijing’s unfair export subsidies." Read The New York Times, For Our China Trade Emergency, Dial Section 301.

American Political Meltdown, The Road to Poverty

UPDATE V: "What if WikiLeaks got hold of a cable from China’s embassy in Washington? Here’s some of the “good news” that may have been sent home to Beijing." Read The New York Times, From WikiChina.


UPDATE IV: For another prediction -- "[t]here is very little likelihood the political class as currently constituted will address the looming fiscal disaster soon" -- and an explanation why, read The New York Times, Sin and Taxes.

Time to batten down the hatches?


UPDATE III: Be careful what you wish for . . . Read the Washington Post, Can business afford Jim DeMint?


UPDATE II: Does "the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis"? Read The New York Times, Blaming China Won’t Help the Economy.

The article concludes that America's political polarization and "nostalgic rerun of the experiment in market fundamentalism" may cause it "to ignore the global reinvention of capitalism. . . This would not prevent the rest of the world from changing course.

Rather, it would make it likely that the newly dominant economic model will not be a product of democratic capitalism, based on Western values and American leadership. Instead, it will be an authoritarian state-led capitalism inspired by Asian values. If America opts, for the first time in history, for nostalgia and ideology instead of pragmatism and progress, then the new model of capitalism will probably be made in China, like so much else in the world these days. "


UPDATE: Don't take may word for it, get "a good look at how the Chinese view us Americans" from someone who recently visited China. Read The New York Times, Too Many Hamburgers?

Some say the China model, also known as the Beijing Consensus or authoritarian economics, is the future, not "our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class [that is] more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country."

Have we lost that "'can-do,' 'get-it-done,' 'everyone-pull-together,' 'whatever-it-takes' attitude that built our highways, dams and put a man on the moon."

Political polarization and paralysis -- "the way wealthy nations become poor." Read the Washington Post, So goes the center, so goes the economy.

And China laughs all the way to the bank.

Keynes Told Ya So

Think Keynesian economics is bunk. Not China. "No country has taken better advantage of free trade than China, with its controlled currency and strong industrial policies, including huge public investments in renewable energy technologies." Read The New York Times, What Would Keynes Say Today?

Another told ya so!

China Laughs All the Way to the Bank

UPDATE II: 'While America fights China does business.' Read the Washington Post, China's quiet power grab.


UPDATE: Americans died for Chinese businesses. Read the Washington Post, Risk-tolerant China investing heavily in Iraq as U.S. companies hold back.

While most Republi-cons are obsessed by guys in caves who pose no danger to the country in the long term, China laughs as it creates a world economy that serves China's interests. Read the Washington Post, China's $2.4 trillion grip on the global economy.

Better sign your kids/grandkids up for Chinese lessons.

Bye, Bye America, When You Buy, Buy From China

The Capitol Steps perform "Buy, Buy American Pie" from their album "Campaign and Suffering":

Republi-Con Treason

Why would a Republi-con Congressman tell Chinese officials "the budget numbers that the U.S. Government has put forward should not be believed."



Don't forget that the executive director of the Beijing Private Equity Association and a director of the China National Association of International Studies, has already demanded "inflation-protection measures for China’s existing investments in America, and [requested] additional security or collateral for its continued investments. America should also provide its largest creditor with greater transparency and information."

Because he wants to bankrupt the country for the benefit of his political party.

So who is the real un-American?

An Impressive Weapon in the War Against the Middle Class

Want to know why most stuff is manufactured in China? There are over 1.3 billion people who want your job, and they are willing to work for a fraction of the average American wage.

And how are those goods transported to America? The Emma Maersk.






Some stats:

Country of origin - Denmark
Length - 1,302 ft
Width - 207 ft
First Trip - Sept. 08, 2006
Construction cost - US $145,000,000+
Engine - 14 in-line cylinders diesel engine (110,000 BHP)
Cruise Speed - 31 knots
Crew - 13 people
Typical Pacific transit time - 4 days
Net cargo - 123,200 tons, approx. 15,000 containers

Silicone painting applied to the ship bottom reduces water resistance and saves 317,000 gallons of diesel per year.

This is how Wal-Mart gets all its stuff from China.

According to an email I received "almost all of these containers are shipped back to China EMPTY! You heard that right. We send nothing back on most of these ships. What does that tell you about the current financial state of this country!"

As I said before, this decade may prove to be America's zenith. I predict that the economic mess will be the event leading to the emergence of Chinese economic and military dominance.