I think what the americans don't get, from top to bottom, yep, even the bottom, is that China is interested in dealing with the people of the world and it knows who and what they are.
They are impoverished millions is what they are. Trodden on by everyone and mainly by america.
China knows, just as India does, and Russia does and in fact the whole non-western world does.
They are all familiar with subsistence farming, labour intensive agrarian economies, thousands of villages without paved roads, street light, sewers, piped drinking water.
Because they have these to this day in their own countries. And in the areas not like this they have a population that came from that or with parents that came from that.
When they go to a village or a tiny impoverished country and say you need a road, or a railway, or power stations or whatever they know what they are talking about: they are talking about what those people need to make the next step forward from where they currently are.
America and americans literally have no clue. No clue.
When ever they go and say 'you need a road' or whatever they mean 'we want to make big profits by selling you a road whether you need it or want it or can afford it or not'.
America conducts itself like this all around the world and thinks the world doesn't notice.
Their own population and in fact the whole western population, doesn't notice, that's true.
Senator Fulbright made a similar observation in his “Arrogance of Power” when he condemned USAID in 1967. Lokk at how long it took to raise Appalachia somewhat ought of poverty—I say somewhat because poverty still exists there and in many other places within America. There’s more to be said, but then I’ll be writing a book.
Yep. Those Appalachians perhaps would be an exception to my sweeping condemnatory assertion about americans. I hope so. :)
I note that in the preface of the book you mention it says that, of Fulbright:
The great challenge that faces us now, he believes, is to make certain “that the major strand in our heritage, the strand of humanism, tolerance, and accommodation, remains the dominant one.” The America of Lincoln must prevail.
Might be good to bind that sentiment front and centre between the eyes on the foreheads of certain americans, might it not?
When I recently wrote about some of what he had to say, I wanted to write much more because the book is so powerful. I didn’t read it until 1998 when I’d returned to university and my many annotations tie the two time periods together. I later photocopied pages to use when I taught. Yet, it’s clear from Fulbright’s career that he was very conflicted, but at least he sought to deal with it unlike most of his peers.
Well thank you for that. I cannot comment further for I have not read the book. Did not know of it nor have it until you mentioned it. I then got it and read the preface. That's as far as I've got so far. I look forward to reading more. :)
What I like about Trumplethinskin is if you give him enough rope he'll always hang himself.
He's the kind of person who walks from one building or factory or restaurant to the next, setting a fire in each as he leaves but is totally oblivious to the destruction and chaos left behind.
Despite America surviving for decades on heaps of Debt they're the best in the world at everything. One of the greatest authors ever Charles Dickens, no matter how successful, lived a lot of his life terrified of being in debt having witnessed his father serving time in Debtors Gaol owing a few pounds.
Trumplethinskin's been bankrupt several times, likely bailed out like his fellow billionaire chums and it's now how many billions we can add/siphon to/from the Public Debt/Coffers.
Shameless!
Worse still, Trump's spent so much time around Bibi (who kips down with Jarred Kushner whenever in town & vice-versa) that he's picked up Bibi's worst habit, Playing The Victim Card.
Finally, sending a Jewish American to negotiate with Iran is another Trump clusterfuck designed to get the Iranians back-up before talks even begin. Clouseau esque
Not any more Russian armaments are much better, since WWII but more and more so as time goes on. In the 30 most cutting edge technologies, China leads in 25, and is rapidly catching up on the rest.
I suspect the series of obscene assaults on humanity are an aside for the new team in charge of the usa banks and stock markets. This is a get rich quick gambit of smoke and mirrors with a little colonial expansion across West Asia as the main goal. The rest is dust in your face.
Laura RU https://t.me/LauraRuHK/9919 reports some mighty interesting associations and develops some excellent thoughts. I reproduce them below for those who are not telegram linked.
She begins with an extract from Politico:
""President Donald Trump this week upended not just his tariff strategy but his trade team.
Former hedge fund manager and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — the White House’s main conduit to beleaguered financial markets — is now at the helm, with populist Peter Navarro relegated to the sidelines and Howard Lutnick recast into the role of “bad cop,” according to three people close to the White House. The personnel shuffle comes amid a tug-of-war in the White House between the “fair trade” and protectionist camps."
Then continues with her report:
"I think it’s worth sharing again something I posted last November when Donald Trump picked Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury secretary.
Bessent, a hedge fund manager and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, used to work for short seller Jim Chanos and George Soros. Actually he was chief investment officer (CIO) of Soros Fund Management and the head of its London office when his team, betting against the British pound, garnered over $1 billion for the firm. His bet against the Japanese yen in 2013 brought additional profit. Bessent's own hedge fund, Key Square Group, received a $2 billion anchor investment from George Soros. From 2014 until 2020, Bessent was listed as a council member of International Crisis Group (ICG), an NGO/think tank linked to the CIA and all the notorious "philanthropists". The beneficiaries of market chaos due to sudden policy shifts like tariffs or geopolitical shocks are likely the usual suspects who know how to surf the waves because they are policy insiders.
Bessent frames Trump tariffs as a "negotiating strategy":
"every country in the world who wants to come and negotiate, we are willing to hear you, we are going to go down to a 10% baseline tariff for them."
Bessent said that China is an exception to Mr. Trump's easing.
The US is using tariffs in a doomed attempt to inflict damage on China. By raising tariffs on some nations while offering exemptions or lower rates to others, Washington intends to incentivize alignment with its interests, and create a bloc that’s economically tied to its orbit. Obviously it's not going to work - the idea of cutting China off is totally delusional. China is not isolated. It is interconnected, influential and prepared."
So we have an amalgamation of grifters, China haters, opportunist charlatans pulling the biggest heist they can at the very commencement of Trump's term. I recall a short video clip in the last 48 hours where Trump is pointing to his cabal bragging how this one just made $2.8 billion and this other one $500 million. Perhaps this is one time when he said the truth and these thieves are turning the stockholders over across the globe to fleece them. I wouldn't be surprised.
Yes, I suspected as much with the many lurches causing sharp rises and falls, the perfect environment for short sellers. Further proof that Neoliberals own the government for their benefit and their benefit only. I’ve seen a few Congresscritters seeking hearings on insider trading.
There's another point that needs to be discussed. Tariffs, subsidies (gifts, theft of taxpayer money), sanctions (economic warfare in violation of international law), mafia methods of extortion, etc., that's just one side of the story. The reindustrialization of the USA cannot succeed for one very simple reason. At least not within a short period of time.
Consider the desolate education system in the USA. As production shifted abroad, so did the professions, the skills, and the knowledge. In many professions, there is no staff to train future skilled workers and engineers. It would take several decades to rebuild them. Okay, the focus is on the development of AI + robotics as a replacement for human labor. This can no longer be stopped globally. I'm curious whether the oligarchs and elites will succeed in "reducing" the population "in time" and/or enslaving it in "digital shackles" and reliably controlling it.
Furthermore, it will ultimately result in the US never being able to pay its public and private debts. Never. Therefore, a horrific debt-wiping crash will be necessary. Have we witnessed the beginning of this process since 2020? I can't say for sure.
The culture of skilled labor, seeded by the medieval guilds and fully developed by the Industrial Revolution, was what made the West unstoppable for over two centuries. The RoW, while being colonized, enslaved, and generally ruthlessly screwed, at first didn't realize what the white man's advantage was; they erroneously thought it was the clever wheeling-dealing or having a more modern military.
Japan was the first to catch on; the Meiji statesmen at first tried to emulate the Western political system, with a parliament and everything, and financial institutions, because that's what the Western propaganda said were the roots of their success. But eventually they realized it was industry, and started to modernize their own. It took them several generations, not to build the factories, but to develop a proper working class, with the right ethics: the culture of skilled laborers. But the Japanese eventually got it right, and even exceeded the standards of the West, which was already floundering under the weight of its parasites all that time.
South Korea was next; then eventually China, which has just arrived. Iran and then India are not quite there yet, but getting very close. I am an engineer, working in industry; we order a lot of modules and parts from subsuppliers around the world. Twenty years ago Chinese products had a well deserved reputation of being cheap and shoddy. Ten years ago, the bad rep was still there, but the products were mostly solid, if not stellar. Now they make parts and equipment better than the Germans, not to even mention the US; quite on par with Japanese products. Twenty years; a full generation.
But the whole process, from the start, took more; two or three generations; same as in Japan. First to build up the infrastructure, and teaching cadres for technical education. Then to turn out the first, raw cohort of industrial workers, while at the same time developing the know-how, mostly by copying others and learning by painful trial-and-error. Finally, to build the attitudes and the culture of skilled labor, which is what made the difference between the "Chinese crap" of twenty-years ago, and their cutting-edge tech of today.
The United States, and the rest of the West including Germany, meanwhile destroyed their culture of skilled labor, for profit. The destruction is complete; just as we mistrusted Chinese products recently, now (in my industry, and elsewhere) we are coming to realize that German industrial products are shoddy, and not to be trusted. And Germany is the best of the lot, they still retain some old-timers who know what they are doing. American companies fired the lot of them, demolished the facilities, and salted the ground.
All manufacturing in the West is just coasting now; producing minor variations of products that were designed by previous generation's designers, on legacy production lines that have been running for decades. That is why they were so utterly unable to accelerate ammunition production. The old production lines, at Rheinmetall and elsewhere, are still limping along, but establishing new ones is not feasible---no one knows how to build them, or get them running properly. Other industries are in the same bind, churning out the same-old widgets---as financialists disdainfully refer to industrial products---using trivially upgraded legacy designs and production lines. The only real innovation comes from abroad, mostly in the form of faster chip designs.
That is why Trump's ambition of reviving American industry with nothing but financial leverage is a pipe dream. There is no know-how anymore, no cadre of industrial workers, and the culture of skilled labor that made the West has been canceled and erased. By my estimate it would take one generation to start churning out crude, failure-prone lemons, and yet another generation to bring industry to world standards. Not the kind of timeframe Mr. Deal-artist is used to be working in.
A case in point is the ongoing attempt to transplant chip manufacturing from Taiwan to the US. The factories have largely been built, at exorbitant expense, and only because Taiwanese engineers were on hand to supervise the construction. But there are no engineers and no tech-aware managers in the US to run these factories, so Taiwanese cadres were transplanted---essentially by making them an offer they couldn't refuse---to manage these factories. But the production is still no-go, because in all the third of a billion of Americans, there is not enough skilled workers capable of working in these production lines, despite the promise of exorbitant pay. Now they are at the stage of importing slaves---er, I meant coerced-volunteer production line workers---also from Taiwan, to work in these "American" chip factories. Money is being poured in by the bucketful, but I will wager a guess: once they get the production running, the chips coming out will be so substandard, that nobody will be buying them. For years.
And that is the absolute best the US can do, with all the government and finance leverage you can get, and workforce imported wholesale. In less strategic fields the situation will be much worse. And it will be made much worse yet by the impending reverse brain drain: all the foreigners doing science and STEM education in the US, all the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Persians, and Germans whose foreign names figure on most engineering textbooks and on most STEM research papers, will soon pack up and go home, because they were here only for the living conditions---and living conditions in the US are going to hell in a basket.
There are practically no top-level American-born STEM researchers left, and the few adequate exceptions have been recruited to work on classified military projects, where foreigners are barred. And we can judge their level of know-how by observing how these projects are spectacularly failing, from the F-35 boondoggle to the hypersonics development clusterfuck, to the pratfall of Boeing orbital vehicles.
Thanks for your detailed comment on an area in which I’ve no real expertise. I’ve hypothesized about what you described based on my life’s experience. Over the years of following Russia, when Putin meets with industrialists and businesspeople in general, they are always citing the need for highly trained professional personnel, and one of the state’s priorities is post-graduate professional education so the professionals continue being professional. I’ve lamented the US education system since 1979 when I entered the US Army and saw just how many illiterates were inducted, and I know that situation hasn’t improved. I’d go on, but I’d just echo what you wrote, and I don’t need to do that.
Thank you so much for these detailed and interesting thoughts. I completely agree with you. I wish I was just having a bad dream and would wake up any minute. But unfortunately, this is reality. I'm too old and sick to go anywhere in the world. So I'll have to figure out how my wife and I can survive the inevitable and still experience happiness together. At least in our shared embrace.
I hear you! For us, the key is our medical insurance which is A-1 because my wife is employed with our County so I don’t need to deal with Medicare, its shortcomings and costs.
Take it easy; failure to restore US dominance is not quite Armageddon. If I can offer any advice, pick a location for your retirement where you will not be dependent on heating; in other words, somewhere in the South or Southwest. Firstly, with the inevitably rising energy costs, the expenditure for heating will at some point become impossible; and secondly, it is quite possible that at some point electricity and gas/oil might become unavailable for long periods. People have lived through worse, and in many places in the world, still do.
Regarding health, I'm worried about whether I'll be able to get vital medication in the future. All the raw materials for this come from China, and these EU idiots think they can wage economic war against China. That could have consequences. My second concern is the unmistakable trend toward fascism and totalitarianism in the EU. The dictatorship will soon be far more extreme than it was in the GDR. But from now on, it will be even more dangerous. My final point is that freedom is as important to me as breathing oxygen. What the EU has announced in this regard is reminiscent of the darkest times in German history.
As regards medication, India has laws that allow disregard of patents for life-saving medication (to teeth-grinding rage of the pharma corporations), and consequently produces generic equivalents at a fraction of the price. And Indian pharmacies will deliver abroad, with only token attention to prescriptions.
So my advice is, stock up on your most important meds. Many pharmaceuticals have expiration dates on the safe side, and can be used well past that date, especially if kept in the dark and cold.
The Oregon coast and interior is enchantingly beautiful, and I envy you living there. The only drawback I can see is that the climate still requires heating in winter. Insulate like crazy, and you might mitigate that.
You know that there's a winter in Germany every year? Rhetorical question. 😂 I'm not desperate. Just extremely frustrated. I wish for better times for my age. My grandmother survived the pogroms and famine in Poland, typhus and yellow fever in Russia, the civil war, and two world wars. Including the German Gestapo. ... Still, I'm frustrated and angry.
I'm sorry I dissed German tech, but I have to stand by what I wrote. I experienced the lowered quality of German engineering not just anecdotally, as a car owner, but in my professional capacity, specifying and vetting equipment for the energy sector. Now Chinese equipment is often preferred not only because of lower price and fast delivery, but also because of high quality, especially from established vendors. A 180 degree flip.
And now it's going to get worse, because Americans are luring what's left of German know-how to relocate to the US. That's part of what these new tariffs are about, but there are also other incentives---the growing oppression of which you write, and Vance warned, is one of them. Why Germans voted for that crazed warmonger, who betrayed his program to drive the final nail into German economy's coffin before he was even inaugurated, is a conundrum to me.
Proof in point: MetaboHPT, power tools designed in Germany and Japan, manufactured in China.
Bought a drill from Rochester Welding Supply in the mid-eighties. Metabo, made in Germany. Why not Makita? Metabo never comes back, Makita occasionally. HPT is Hitachi Power Tools.
Nearly all of my power tools are MetaboHPT. My original German made drill still works fine. One one my Makita palm sanders disintegrated.
I think the plan is to allow the oligarchs to reap the assets as insolvency and bankruptcy burns through the financial system. I guess they believe they can pay off enforcers and rule the plantation. It's already looking like a total bust as the two most resistant and powerful states aren't on board. All the certainties are falling apart, and China's success and wealth are an irresistible attraction for duplicitous compradors.
well robots need to be produced, maintained, repaired (not all of this is fancy white collar "something with computers/media" work). And, robots expect power all the time, reliably. They also need reliable logistics, all the parts and materials to be used in production have to be there in time. This is only easy if the production is vertically integrated, happening in close proximity inside of trade borders with additional risks.
I guess we will rapidly find out who really needs who. Trump is living in a world of past glories and has overplayed his hand with China. He seems to be operating as the BRICS promotional arm at the moment.
One topic, I haven't seen being discussed is insider trade. Having advance knowledge of Trumps plans (especially back and forth), someone could with ease expect drastic changes in asset values and make a fortune out of accordingly placed call/put orders.
"It is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails."
ASEAN caved in, India caved in, most of South America caved in, Much of Central America other than Mexico has caved in, the rules of these nations all fear their elites far more than their common people. China probably will come through, but it's going to be a hard fought war which is only now starting. Next USA may well bomb Iran in order to push Iran into taking out the Middle East, cutting China off from much of it's oil supply, but more importantly cutting off all of China's other customers off of their oil supply and thus crashing the world economy. Next step, have Taiwan declare independence, and using the resulting war to cut China off from Japan, Australia, and possible ASEAN. I hope I'm wrong, but while Trump is an idiot, the Deep State is not.
ASEAN President Malaysia has convened a meeting for this weekend and has yet to make any group decision. Yes, Vietnam dropped its tariff and a few other nations made similar moves that now don't matter one whit with the 90-day moratorium. That decision by Trump is the one that matters, and it was caused by internal dissent.
Yes there may have been dissent but when you set out to short the market you must have a strategy to trigger the rebound. It is the rebound that enables you sell at a profit a few hours or days later. Trumps announcement was preempted by a MSM news report to that effect and voila billions rushed back into the depressed market. The insiders had already bought back in a day before so they reaped the bounce.
I gather we will see a deepening global BDS move against us products and services.
There was an article by a Taiwanese writer in yesterday’s Guancha who talked about the strategic timing of Beijing’s announcements to coincide with market opening in such a way that Trump couldn’t issue a reply soon enough to keep China’s message from affecting markets. I thought about publishing the translation, but it was a real mishmash so I didn’t. I encountered lots of short-selling in the run-up to the 2008 Great Bankster Fraud. I thought about trying my luck, but decided to take a vacation instead.
Mate translate always does a top job on Chinese language and Russian language too. I use it in preference to many others as it is usually faultless. I think this is the report you might have seen:
No, I didn’t read that one, although it’s quite good. Pepe Escobar read the one about China’s timing its replies for maximum market affect and included it in today’s SCF column.
Bought in cheap initially overthrowing the Government, trained the Nazis,
provided all their best (expensive) weapons & missile systems, shot their bolt/load
and scarpered.
The frightening thing about it was that Russia fought with one hand behind its back, with restraint. Let's not make Russia so angry as it could turn off all the power in Europe and the US if pushed.
The US would also take a beating from Russia's brothers Iran & China.
Maybe It's too early to say it's a defeat. IMHO It will take another 20 years at least to figure out the tally, but just in the number of American dead vs. Russian dead I can see some might come to a different conclusion. I'm odd about that though. I've often wonder If I go to a casino to get out of the heat, and I get air conditioning and water and only spend a dollar on a slot machine, then who lost: me, the Casino investors, the tax authorities, the other gamblers who have to look at my ugly mug?
The greatest concern is the inability of the USSA to be agreement capable and trust worthy. Once trust is lost it may never return.
Yes, the trust issue I’ve always seen as critical. I laughed when Reagan said “Trust, but verify” given the Empire’s many previous lies.
These idiots will never learn because they are megalomaniacal narcissistic psychopaths with massive ego's.
The typical psychological profile of all the worlds most dangerous dictators.
It’s doubtful that the US was ever “agreement capable”. Shall we start with the “treaties” with the Native Americans?
I think what the americans don't get, from top to bottom, yep, even the bottom, is that China is interested in dealing with the people of the world and it knows who and what they are.
They are impoverished millions is what they are. Trodden on by everyone and mainly by america.
China knows, just as India does, and Russia does and in fact the whole non-western world does.
They are all familiar with subsistence farming, labour intensive agrarian economies, thousands of villages without paved roads, street light, sewers, piped drinking water.
Because they have these to this day in their own countries. And in the areas not like this they have a population that came from that or with parents that came from that.
When they go to a village or a tiny impoverished country and say you need a road, or a railway, or power stations or whatever they know what they are talking about: they are talking about what those people need to make the next step forward from where they currently are.
America and americans literally have no clue. No clue.
When ever they go and say 'you need a road' or whatever they mean 'we want to make big profits by selling you a road whether you need it or want it or can afford it or not'.
America conducts itself like this all around the world and thinks the world doesn't notice.
Their own population and in fact the whole western population, doesn't notice, that's true.
But the world notices.
Senator Fulbright made a similar observation in his “Arrogance of Power” when he condemned USAID in 1967. Lokk at how long it took to raise Appalachia somewhat ought of poverty—I say somewhat because poverty still exists there and in many other places within America. There’s more to be said, but then I’ll be writing a book.
Yep. Those Appalachians perhaps would be an exception to my sweeping condemnatory assertion about americans. I hope so. :)
I note that in the preface of the book you mention it says that, of Fulbright:
The great challenge that faces us now, he believes, is to make certain “that the major strand in our heritage, the strand of humanism, tolerance, and accommodation, remains the dominant one.” The America of Lincoln must prevail.
Might be good to bind that sentiment front and centre between the eyes on the foreheads of certain americans, might it not?
When I recently wrote about some of what he had to say, I wanted to write much more because the book is so powerful. I didn’t read it until 1998 when I’d returned to university and my many annotations tie the two time periods together. I later photocopied pages to use when I taught. Yet, it’s clear from Fulbright’s career that he was very conflicted, but at least he sought to deal with it unlike most of his peers.
Well thank you for that. I cannot comment further for I have not read the book. Did not know of it nor have it until you mentioned it. I then got it and read the preface. That's as far as I've got so far. I look forward to reading more. :)
What I like about Trumplethinskin is if you give him enough rope he'll always hang himself.
He's the kind of person who walks from one building or factory or restaurant to the next, setting a fire in each as he leaves but is totally oblivious to the destruction and chaos left behind.
Despite America surviving for decades on heaps of Debt they're the best in the world at everything. One of the greatest authors ever Charles Dickens, no matter how successful, lived a lot of his life terrified of being in debt having witnessed his father serving time in Debtors Gaol owing a few pounds.
Trumplethinskin's been bankrupt several times, likely bailed out like his fellow billionaire chums and it's now how many billions we can add/siphon to/from the Public Debt/Coffers.
Shameless!
Worse still, Trump's spent so much time around Bibi (who kips down with Jarred Kushner whenever in town & vice-versa) that he's picked up Bibi's worst habit, Playing The Victim Card.
Finally, sending a Jewish American to negotiate with Iran is another Trump clusterfuck designed to get the Iranians back-up before talks even begin. Clouseau esque
Yeah, that’s why the talks are indirect.
"they're the best in the world at everything".
Not any more Russian armaments are much better, since WWII but more and more so as time goes on. In the 30 most cutting edge technologies, China leads in 25, and is rapidly catching up on the rest.
I suspect the series of obscene assaults on humanity are an aside for the new team in charge of the usa banks and stock markets. This is a get rich quick gambit of smoke and mirrors with a little colonial expansion across West Asia as the main goal. The rest is dust in your face.
Laura RU https://t.me/LauraRuHK/9919 reports some mighty interesting associations and develops some excellent thoughts. I reproduce them below for those who are not telegram linked.
She begins with an extract from Politico:
""President Donald Trump this week upended not just his tariff strategy but his trade team.
Former hedge fund manager and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — the White House’s main conduit to beleaguered financial markets — is now at the helm, with populist Peter Navarro relegated to the sidelines and Howard Lutnick recast into the role of “bad cop,” according to three people close to the White House. The personnel shuffle comes amid a tug-of-war in the White House between the “fair trade” and protectionist camps."
Then continues with her report:
"I think it’s worth sharing again something I posted last November when Donald Trump picked Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury secretary.
Bessent, a hedge fund manager and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, used to work for short seller Jim Chanos and George Soros. Actually he was chief investment officer (CIO) of Soros Fund Management and the head of its London office when his team, betting against the British pound, garnered over $1 billion for the firm. His bet against the Japanese yen in 2013 brought additional profit. Bessent's own hedge fund, Key Square Group, received a $2 billion anchor investment from George Soros. From 2014 until 2020, Bessent was listed as a council member of International Crisis Group (ICG), an NGO/think tank linked to the CIA and all the notorious "philanthropists". The beneficiaries of market chaos due to sudden policy shifts like tariffs or geopolitical shocks are likely the usual suspects who know how to surf the waves because they are policy insiders.
Bessent frames Trump tariffs as a "negotiating strategy":
"every country in the world who wants to come and negotiate, we are willing to hear you, we are going to go down to a 10% baseline tariff for them."
Bessent said that China is an exception to Mr. Trump's easing.
The US is using tariffs in a doomed attempt to inflict damage on China. By raising tariffs on some nations while offering exemptions or lower rates to others, Washington intends to incentivize alignment with its interests, and create a bloc that’s economically tied to its orbit. Obviously it's not going to work - the idea of cutting China off is totally delusional. China is not isolated. It is interconnected, influential and prepared."
So we have an amalgamation of grifters, China haters, opportunist charlatans pulling the biggest heist they can at the very commencement of Trump's term. I recall a short video clip in the last 48 hours where Trump is pointing to his cabal bragging how this one just made $2.8 billion and this other one $500 million. Perhaps this is one time when he said the truth and these thieves are turning the stockholders over across the globe to fleece them. I wouldn't be surprised.
Yes, I suspected as much with the many lurches causing sharp rises and falls, the perfect environment for short sellers. Further proof that Neoliberals own the government for their benefit and their benefit only. I’ve seen a few Congresscritters seeking hearings on insider trading.
Blow back is not a beach. Thank you Karl. Educate,...etc..
There's another point that needs to be discussed. Tariffs, subsidies (gifts, theft of taxpayer money), sanctions (economic warfare in violation of international law), mafia methods of extortion, etc., that's just one side of the story. The reindustrialization of the USA cannot succeed for one very simple reason. At least not within a short period of time.
Consider the desolate education system in the USA. As production shifted abroad, so did the professions, the skills, and the knowledge. In many professions, there is no staff to train future skilled workers and engineers. It would take several decades to rebuild them. Okay, the focus is on the development of AI + robotics as a replacement for human labor. This can no longer be stopped globally. I'm curious whether the oligarchs and elites will succeed in "reducing" the population "in time" and/or enslaving it in "digital shackles" and reliably controlling it.
Furthermore, it will ultimately result in the US never being able to pay its public and private debts. Never. Therefore, a horrific debt-wiping crash will be necessary. Have we witnessed the beginning of this process since 2020? I can't say for sure.
The culture of skilled labor, seeded by the medieval guilds and fully developed by the Industrial Revolution, was what made the West unstoppable for over two centuries. The RoW, while being colonized, enslaved, and generally ruthlessly screwed, at first didn't realize what the white man's advantage was; they erroneously thought it was the clever wheeling-dealing or having a more modern military.
Japan was the first to catch on; the Meiji statesmen at first tried to emulate the Western political system, with a parliament and everything, and financial institutions, because that's what the Western propaganda said were the roots of their success. But eventually they realized it was industry, and started to modernize their own. It took them several generations, not to build the factories, but to develop a proper working class, with the right ethics: the culture of skilled laborers. But the Japanese eventually got it right, and even exceeded the standards of the West, which was already floundering under the weight of its parasites all that time.
South Korea was next; then eventually China, which has just arrived. Iran and then India are not quite there yet, but getting very close. I am an engineer, working in industry; we order a lot of modules and parts from subsuppliers around the world. Twenty years ago Chinese products had a well deserved reputation of being cheap and shoddy. Ten years ago, the bad rep was still there, but the products were mostly solid, if not stellar. Now they make parts and equipment better than the Germans, not to even mention the US; quite on par with Japanese products. Twenty years; a full generation.
But the whole process, from the start, took more; two or three generations; same as in Japan. First to build up the infrastructure, and teaching cadres for technical education. Then to turn out the first, raw cohort of industrial workers, while at the same time developing the know-how, mostly by copying others and learning by painful trial-and-error. Finally, to build the attitudes and the culture of skilled labor, which is what made the difference between the "Chinese crap" of twenty-years ago, and their cutting-edge tech of today.
The United States, and the rest of the West including Germany, meanwhile destroyed their culture of skilled labor, for profit. The destruction is complete; just as we mistrusted Chinese products recently, now (in my industry, and elsewhere) we are coming to realize that German industrial products are shoddy, and not to be trusted. And Germany is the best of the lot, they still retain some old-timers who know what they are doing. American companies fired the lot of them, demolished the facilities, and salted the ground.
All manufacturing in the West is just coasting now; producing minor variations of products that were designed by previous generation's designers, on legacy production lines that have been running for decades. That is why they were so utterly unable to accelerate ammunition production. The old production lines, at Rheinmetall and elsewhere, are still limping along, but establishing new ones is not feasible---no one knows how to build them, or get them running properly. Other industries are in the same bind, churning out the same-old widgets---as financialists disdainfully refer to industrial products---using trivially upgraded legacy designs and production lines. The only real innovation comes from abroad, mostly in the form of faster chip designs.
That is why Trump's ambition of reviving American industry with nothing but financial leverage is a pipe dream. There is no know-how anymore, no cadre of industrial workers, and the culture of skilled labor that made the West has been canceled and erased. By my estimate it would take one generation to start churning out crude, failure-prone lemons, and yet another generation to bring industry to world standards. Not the kind of timeframe Mr. Deal-artist is used to be working in.
A case in point is the ongoing attempt to transplant chip manufacturing from Taiwan to the US. The factories have largely been built, at exorbitant expense, and only because Taiwanese engineers were on hand to supervise the construction. But there are no engineers and no tech-aware managers in the US to run these factories, so Taiwanese cadres were transplanted---essentially by making them an offer they couldn't refuse---to manage these factories. But the production is still no-go, because in all the third of a billion of Americans, there is not enough skilled workers capable of working in these production lines, despite the promise of exorbitant pay. Now they are at the stage of importing slaves---er, I meant coerced-volunteer production line workers---also from Taiwan, to work in these "American" chip factories. Money is being poured in by the bucketful, but I will wager a guess: once they get the production running, the chips coming out will be so substandard, that nobody will be buying them. For years.
And that is the absolute best the US can do, with all the government and finance leverage you can get, and workforce imported wholesale. In less strategic fields the situation will be much worse. And it will be made much worse yet by the impending reverse brain drain: all the foreigners doing science and STEM education in the US, all the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Persians, and Germans whose foreign names figure on most engineering textbooks and on most STEM research papers, will soon pack up and go home, because they were here only for the living conditions---and living conditions in the US are going to hell in a basket.
There are practically no top-level American-born STEM researchers left, and the few adequate exceptions have been recruited to work on classified military projects, where foreigners are barred. And we can judge their level of know-how by observing how these projects are spectacularly failing, from the F-35 boondoggle to the hypersonics development clusterfuck, to the pratfall of Boeing orbital vehicles.
Thanks for your detailed comment on an area in which I’ve no real expertise. I’ve hypothesized about what you described based on my life’s experience. Over the years of following Russia, when Putin meets with industrialists and businesspeople in general, they are always citing the need for highly trained professional personnel, and one of the state’s priorities is post-graduate professional education so the professionals continue being professional. I’ve lamented the US education system since 1979 when I entered the US Army and saw just how many illiterates were inducted, and I know that situation hasn’t improved. I’d go on, but I’d just echo what you wrote, and I don’t need to do that.
Thank you so much for these detailed and interesting thoughts. I completely agree with you. I wish I was just having a bad dream and would wake up any minute. But unfortunately, this is reality. I'm too old and sick to go anywhere in the world. So I'll have to figure out how my wife and I can survive the inevitable and still experience happiness together. At least in our shared embrace.
I hear you! For us, the key is our medical insurance which is A-1 because my wife is employed with our County so I don’t need to deal with Medicare, its shortcomings and costs.
Take it easy; failure to restore US dominance is not quite Armageddon. If I can offer any advice, pick a location for your retirement where you will not be dependent on heating; in other words, somewhere in the South or Southwest. Firstly, with the inevitably rising energy costs, the expenditure for heating will at some point become impossible; and secondly, it is quite possible that at some point electricity and gas/oil might become unavailable for long periods. People have lived through worse, and in many places in the world, still do.
We chose the Oregon coast 20+ years ago because of its climate and energy sources, plus the state can feed itself.
Regarding health, I'm worried about whether I'll be able to get vital medication in the future. All the raw materials for this come from China, and these EU idiots think they can wage economic war against China. That could have consequences. My second concern is the unmistakable trend toward fascism and totalitarianism in the EU. The dictatorship will soon be far more extreme than it was in the GDR. But from now on, it will be even more dangerous. My final point is that freedom is as important to me as breathing oxygen. What the EU has announced in this regard is reminiscent of the darkest times in German history.
It appears that Spain is doing well and is in Orban’s Anti-EU clique.
As regards medication, India has laws that allow disregard of patents for life-saving medication (to teeth-grinding rage of the pharma corporations), and consequently produces generic equivalents at a fraction of the price. And Indian pharmacies will deliver abroad, with only token attention to prescriptions.
https://www.indiamart.com/
So my advice is, stock up on your most important meds. Many pharmaceuticals have expiration dates on the safe side, and can be used well past that date, especially if kept in the dark and cold.
The Oregon coast and interior is enchantingly beautiful, and I envy you living there. The only drawback I can see is that the climate still requires heating in winter. Insulate like crazy, and you might mitigate that.
The house lot gets great passive solar and there’s lots of wood to burn, which is what we’re set up to do. We use no gas except of the cars.
You know that there's a winter in Germany every year? Rhetorical question. 😂 I'm not desperate. Just extremely frustrated. I wish for better times for my age. My grandmother survived the pogroms and famine in Poland, typhus and yellow fever in Russia, the civil war, and two world wars. Including the German Gestapo. ... Still, I'm frustrated and angry.
I'm sorry I dissed German tech, but I have to stand by what I wrote. I experienced the lowered quality of German engineering not just anecdotally, as a car owner, but in my professional capacity, specifying and vetting equipment for the energy sector. Now Chinese equipment is often preferred not only because of lower price and fast delivery, but also because of high quality, especially from established vendors. A 180 degree flip.
And now it's going to get worse, because Americans are luring what's left of German know-how to relocate to the US. That's part of what these new tariffs are about, but there are also other incentives---the growing oppression of which you write, and Vance warned, is one of them. Why Germans voted for that crazed warmonger, who betrayed his program to drive the final nail into German economy's coffin before he was even inaugurated, is a conundrum to me.
I wouldn't even dream of contradicting you on this. It's much worse than what you describe here. Much, much worse.
Proof in point: MetaboHPT, power tools designed in Germany and Japan, manufactured in China.
Bought a drill from Rochester Welding Supply in the mid-eighties. Metabo, made in Germany. Why not Makita? Metabo never comes back, Makita occasionally. HPT is Hitachi Power Tools.
Nearly all of my power tools are MetaboHPT. My original German made drill still works fine. One one my Makita palm sanders disintegrated.
I think the plan is to allow the oligarchs to reap the assets as insolvency and bankruptcy burns through the financial system. I guess they believe they can pay off enforcers and rule the plantation. It's already looking like a total bust as the two most resistant and powerful states aren't on board. All the certainties are falling apart, and China's success and wealth are an irresistible attraction for duplicitous compradors.
well robots need to be produced, maintained, repaired (not all of this is fancy white collar "something with computers/media" work). And, robots expect power all the time, reliably. They also need reliable logistics, all the parts and materials to be used in production have to be there in time. This is only easy if the production is vertically integrated, happening in close proximity inside of trade borders with additional risks.
I guess we will rapidly find out who really needs who. Trump is living in a world of past glories and has overplayed his hand with China. He seems to be operating as the BRICS promotional arm at the moment.
One topic, I haven't seen being discussed is insider trade. Having advance knowledge of Trumps plans (especially back and forth), someone could with ease expect drastic changes in asset values and make a fortune out of accordingly placed call/put orders.
Sadly, the trumpster has 3 1/2 years left to finish off Amerika and us on Main Street.
Yes, dacoelec very true.
whether cognac and scotch were better alternatives to bourbon
Cognac before bourbon, never mind scotch.
I may have recoined the Ugly Americans moving into the White House after JD Vance referred to the Chinese as peasants.
I have known about the balance of Services for decades. Why it escapes media and political attention is a need for headlines, eyeballs and votes.
Yep, Arrogance + Stupidity = economic SUICIDE
Perhaps a more fitting comparison for Trump is Midas. Everything Trump touches with his dollars turns, in time, to gold for others.
I hope you are right, but I also remember,
"It is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails."
ASEAN caved in, India caved in, most of South America caved in, Much of Central America other than Mexico has caved in, the rules of these nations all fear their elites far more than their common people. China probably will come through, but it's going to be a hard fought war which is only now starting. Next USA may well bomb Iran in order to push Iran into taking out the Middle East, cutting China off from much of it's oil supply, but more importantly cutting off all of China's other customers off of their oil supply and thus crashing the world economy. Next step, have Taiwan declare independence, and using the resulting war to cut China off from Japan, Australia, and possible ASEAN. I hope I'm wrong, but while Trump is an idiot, the Deep State is not.
ASEAN President Malaysia has convened a meeting for this weekend and has yet to make any group decision. Yes, Vietnam dropped its tariff and a few other nations made similar moves that now don't matter one whit with the 90-day moratorium. That decision by Trump is the one that matters, and it was caused by internal dissent.
Yes there may have been dissent but when you set out to short the market you must have a strategy to trigger the rebound. It is the rebound that enables you sell at a profit a few hours or days later. Trumps announcement was preempted by a MSM news report to that effect and voila billions rushed back into the depressed market. The insiders had already bought back in a day before so they reaped the bounce.
I gather we will see a deepening global BDS move against us products and services.
There was an article by a Taiwanese writer in yesterday’s Guancha who talked about the strategic timing of Beijing’s announcements to coincide with market opening in such a way that Trump couldn’t issue a reply soon enough to keep China’s message from affecting markets. I thought about publishing the translation, but it was a real mishmash so I didn’t. I encountered lots of short-selling in the run-up to the 2008 Great Bankster Fraud. I thought about trying my luck, but decided to take a vacation instead.
Mate translate always does a top job on Chinese language and Russian language too. I use it in preference to many others as it is usually faultless. I think this is the report you might have seen:
https://www.guancha.cn/internation/2025_04_12_771885.shtml
No, I didn’t read that one, although it’s quite good. Pepe Escobar read the one about China’s timing its replies for maximum market affect and included it in today’s SCF column.
The US is coming off of a major defeat in Ukraine
Bought in cheap initially overthrowing the Government, trained the Nazis,
provided all their best (expensive) weapons & missile systems, shot their bolt/load
and scarpered.
The frightening thing about it was that Russia fought with one hand behind its back, with restraint. Let's not make Russia so angry as it could turn off all the power in Europe and the US if pushed.
The US would also take a beating from Russia's brothers Iran & China.
Maybe It's too early to say it's a defeat. IMHO It will take another 20 years at least to figure out the tally, but just in the number of American dead vs. Russian dead I can see some might come to a different conclusion. I'm odd about that though. I've often wonder If I go to a casino to get out of the heat, and I get air conditioning and water and only spend a dollar on a slot machine, then who lost: me, the Casino investors, the tax authorities, the other gamblers who have to look at my ugly mug?
It's not just a military defeat, Europe is bankrupt haemorrhaging jobs & services.
Yes, I think the EU was one of the USA’s targets. An angry master will beat his slaves.
I've thought about this some more. An angry master will beat his slaves. An angry clever master will have his slaves beat each other.
That’s what happened in Colonial America when the White slaves were used to discipline—police—the Black slaves.
’Caved in’ is a cowboy rethoric. Is a western idiot culture.
I like your deep analysis. It makes me feel that the world is in safe hands.
And then there are times when you can't even sell the 'indispensable' stuff:
https://www.ianwelsh.net/china-cuts-the-legs-out-underneath-the-us-lng-industry/
Xi takes his revenge cold and suddenly :))