Spiraling Trade War

A race to bankruptcy.

The United States is trying to turn the clock back to the late 18th century, when the lion’s share of federal revenue came from tariffs, rather than internal taxation. This makes perfect sense … as long as we plan to go back to horses for land transport and putting U.S.S. Constitution back to work as a revenue cutter.

This is China’s response. If you’ve followed China coverage here, you know they’re in terrible fragile condition in their housing market. We had a 3% to 5% over capacity in 2008, theirs is at least three times that. Unlike the United States that was, they do not have the combination of fertility and immigration to soak up that oversupply. And Trump’s approach will be seen as causing a “loss of face” for Chairman Xi. They will bleed out before they back down.

Prognostication:

Losing China would have been OK, had it been done gradually, while the western hemisphere completed its transition to Mexico as its workshop. What would have required a focused, multilateral decade of work is being done precipitously, by a government led by and infested with foreign agents.

The United States may recover a bit, economically, if the masses force a reversal of this suicidal policy. We will never recover our national stature, which isn’t the worst thing, because we have excellent tank obstacles to our east and west, but we’ll never regain that position of trust we once held.

And this means global climate change remediation, should it happen at all, will be driven by Asia and Europe. U.S. companies will be robbed of intellectual property and excluded from participation.

We had a good long run. I never imagined our imperial dissolution would be so .. humiliating.