Why would they be?
Trump has effectively handed all of the USA’s soft power over to the EU, China & Russia, depending on the part of the planet we are discussing.
All of it.
In Trump’s words, “he doesn’t have the cards” “he has bad cards”. Which also makes it fairly clear he’s never played poker or has and is baffled by the rules.
It makes more and more sense that he failed to keep a casino afloat.
The Art of the Kneel.
Why would China be desperate?
China offers the cheapest high spec manufacturing in the world. If the US doesn’t buy that manufacturing, that leaves the rest of the world. Of course China wants American money, but it’s not going to devastate their economy in the short term. It’s a reasonable cost for providing China with so many opportunities, which they are aggressively pursuing, to cultivate deep seated international power.
The prevalence of Chinese manufacturing actually is a national problem for the US. While China has its pick of buyers, the US is stuck with one seller. The US should have been working for twenty years with India, Pakistan, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and maybe even some counties in Africa to create access to alternatives. It didn’t.
Weaning the US off Chinese manufacturing would take decades of elegant economic policy and diplomacy featuring several countries. China knows this is where it actually has power over the US.
China has been working with African countries for decades to build their supply lines. The US has had a blind spot over Africa the whole time
Not true, they’ve just done a better job and built infrastructure instead of corrupt power networks based on the threat of regime change
I think that underestimates the extent to which the Chinese economy is vulnerable to reduced demand from foreign partners. I’m not saying China’s in a worse position than the US, since the US has a blithering imbecile traitor as President. But they’re not invulnerable to economic shocks either.
Part of my company’s plan to weather the trade war was to stock up and wait for our competition to be priced out. We also expect the factories in China that supplied our competitors will shut down too. There is a ton of spare capacity with some of them and they work on slim margins. Even a short term downturn of orders can push many to close.
They don’t tend to close, they pivot.
Also, despite how much Trump wants to pretend he’s a dictator, he’s not. Both Congress and the Supreme Court have the power to stop this tariff idiocy at any point if the consequences get to be too bad. Xi is actually a dictator and the likelihood of any other power base overriding him is slim to none.
He needs a W and has pissed off anyone capable of giving him one.
