All of this is predicated on countries preferring not to be tariffed in the US over trading with China and that’s just not going to be the case. The US market is small and it’s shrinking as the consumers are being drained of their purchasing power. If you had an exclusive choice whether to launch a new consumer product in the US or China, you would pick China 95 times out of 100. And if it wasn’t a consumer good but an intermediate product in a production flow. 99 times out of 100 you would choose China.
Economically, there will be very few countries that prefer to pull their products from China in favor of lower tariffs in the US. And very few countries can choose to stop buying from China, including the US.
China cannot be isolated simply because it has intermediated the vast majority of the world’s value chains and it continues to do so by intermediating more and more of the natural resources value chains by providing better options to Africa.
What can happen is the US can create maximal counter play along the lines you’ve described and that can mean sanctioning world leaders, embargoing small countries to deliver collective punishment to oust existing leadership, etc. That will work for some countries for some time. It will certainly create the conditions for fascist movements to grow in Europe, which I think is ultimately the only way they’re going to have enough soldiers to fight China. But economically it is not enough to isolate China.
We shall see won’t we? I wouldn’t discount dollar hegemony and control of things like SWIFT given the replacements are years away still. For that matter I wouldn’t discount how Europeans and a few other vassals may be happy or coerced into offering themselves as firewood for the US empire to keep it going.
Notice to the downvoters: I never said this would work I just said I think this is their thinking. But apparently even the idea that the reactionaries have some sort of cogent thought or plan in their head is anathema to far too many people here. I’m sorry to say there is a certain circle-jerk far too many in the western left adopt in their cheerleading of China to ride in and destroy the west for them that China’s victory is inevitable and that they are invincible.
All of this is predicated on countries preferring not to be tariffed in the US over trading with China and that’s just not going to be the case. The US market is small and it’s shrinking as the consumers are being drained of their purchasing power. If you had an exclusive choice whether to launch a new consumer product in the US or China, you would pick China 95 times out of 100. And if it wasn’t a consumer good but an intermediate product in a production flow. 99 times out of 100 you would choose China.
Economically, there will be very few countries that prefer to pull their products from China in favor of lower tariffs in the US. And very few countries can choose to stop buying from China, including the US.
China cannot be isolated simply because it has intermediated the vast majority of the world’s value chains and it continues to do so by intermediating more and more of the natural resources value chains by providing better options to Africa.
What can happen is the US can create maximal counter play along the lines you’ve described and that can mean sanctioning world leaders, embargoing small countries to deliver collective punishment to oust existing leadership, etc. That will work for some countries for some time. It will certainly create the conditions for fascist movements to grow in Europe, which I think is ultimately the only way they’re going to have enough soldiers to fight China. But economically it is not enough to isolate China.
We shall see won’t we? I wouldn’t discount dollar hegemony and control of things like SWIFT given the replacements are years away still. For that matter I wouldn’t discount how Europeans and a few other vassals may be happy or coerced into offering themselves as firewood for the US empire to keep it going.
Notice to the downvoters: I never said this would work I just said I think this is their thinking. But apparently even the idea that the reactionaries have some sort of cogent thought or plan in their head is anathema to far too many people here. I’m sorry to say there is a certain circle-jerk far too many in the western left adopt in their cheerleading of China to ride in and destroy the west for them that China’s victory is inevitable and that they are invincible.
It would have been best to clarify this in your initial comment.