I was with you until you went back to harping about TPP without even giving equal time to the problems it had. Here are a few identified by the Roosevelt institute:
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/tricks-trade-deal-six-big-problems-trans-pacific-partnership/
and a couple by the Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
There are more but this will be a good start.
Mr. Friedman, please give up on the failed TPP. Not everything, I hate to say this, Trump killed off is a bad policy.
His tariffs on the other hand hits most Americans where it hurts most, in the wallets.
Trump's actions are nothing to do with economics - whether that is or is not a science makes no difference because he does not understand it anyway and in any case economics is irrelevant here. This trade war is NOT about getting any economic benefit for anyone here in the US. This is ONLY about poking an "enemy" in the eye so that his base "feels good" and goes "Attaboy!" They go ga-ga for him because he is doing all the right things for all the right reasons and makes them "feel good" - stopping caravans coming from the southern border, family separation, ICE raids, El Paso, packing the judiciary (not only at the SCOTUS level but at all the lower levels as well), constantly ranting about and keeping focus on the Deep State, etc etc etc. As a showman, he does and says what he needs to please his audience; substance be damned. There is no reason to be worried about the substantive effect of these trade war actions taken by either side - and frankly these actions were never designed to achieve anything substantive anyway. Trump is ONLY playing to his base - showing them he can poke the "enemies" (domestic and foreign) in the eye so that his base "feels good" and continues to believe that he is making America great again
5
Trump started this with his ridiculous notion that "trade wars are easy to win." Sure, China was engaged in some nefarious practices, but there were better ways to approach the issues than to tax the American people and pretend it was costing the Chinese money.
At this point, both men are locked in and have to save face. Perhaps this will give them the impetus to solve the problem in a win-win manner rather than a zero-sum manner, but I won't hold my breath.
3
My guess is this column was written before the market opened this morning - for the market tanked badly, losing twice as much as yesterday's gain.
No matter, Trump's obsession of Chinese surplus may very well be another shiny object for Trump, nothing more.
He famously said "trade wars are good and easy to win." Not sure he has gained anything not just from China but also America's allies like Canada, Mexico and many European countries. After incurring trillion dollars - and counting - deficits, American economy is going backward in spite of all the tax cuts and freebies. Even the stock market, it was trucking along after the last Federal Reserve's tax cut, he came out with a 10% tariff on September 1st. A partial walk back is too late. No planning managers would want to do any plannings. Not just long term 1, 5, 10 year plans but even a 3 month plan can be perilous when Trump decides to tweet 3AM some nutty tariffs against someone.
America is paralyzed right now
4
@Bos
Oh, one more thing, America is now Trump's Taj Mahal 2.0. People said casino is a great business but he managed to run it to the ground. America is a great country, so is she next?
5
It is a stretch to consider China 'virtually America's technological equal'. Yes, China has made great strides in advanced fields like quantum computing and space technology, buy they lag behind in designing, engineering and manufacturing advanced aircraft engines for export, and advanced machine tools and manufacturing techniques. Most of their competencies in robotics have come from acquisitions (e.g., Kuka) not organically developed within China. That isn't to say China isn't far behind...
as it is often said the chinese take the long view. their eye is on 2047. that is the year that they can legally invade hong kong. although given their current miscalculation they may do it sooner rather than later. after all the chinese may be inscrutable but they are not infallible. with an eye on 2047 they have been engaging in an effort to kill off democracy in hong kong through a death by a thousand cuts. incremental attacks on hong kong democracy and self governance. but with the extradition treaty they appear to have overplayed their hand cutting too deeply and broadly. the people of hong kong recognized the extradition law for what it was; an attempt to legally remove dissenters from hong kong and put them in chinese jurisdiction where they could be made to disappear. the people of hong kong have stood up to this attempt to subvert what is left of their democratic freedoms. it is time for western liberal democracies led by the US to realize that the attempt to democratize china started by the Nixon opening has failed. its one partial success, the splitting of russia and china during the cold war, has also been rolled back recently. the chinese advance must be blocked at every turn. the belt and road initiative must be countered. unfortunately the (t)Rump administration's hamfisted trade war is not going to do the job. the chinese are counting on the indifference of the west if not its outright acquiescence. lets hope the events in hong kong are a wake up call
1
Trade cannot be viewed in isolation.
Does the American government have plans about how to respond, if China militarily "secures" Hong Kong.? There is no way of knowing nor, if there are plans, should we know what they are, unless publicity is part of a coherent diplomatic and/or trade strategy.
I think back to 1968 and the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, which the former considered part of its political territory. The U.S. made no response, nor is it obvious what a response should or even could have been at the time. The reality is that when push comes to shove, semi-abstractions such as freedom, democracy, and sovereignty get shunted aside by "facts on the ground."
The strongest reality in Hong Kong's corner is that an invasion by China would likely irreparably damage the ability of Hong Kong to serve as the huge financial center from which China gains so much. However, rational material effects, including trade, might not prevail over the CCP's interest in preserving Party-defined stability at all costs, as well as wanting to suppress any inspiration Tibetans, Uighurs, and other non-Han peoples might get from Hong Kong successfully saying "No!" to Beijing.
The dynamic was similar in 1968, as the Soviet Union was afraid that the Prague Spring, actually lead by the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership (Dubček, Smrkovsky, Svoboda, et al), would serve as inspiration to various effectively colonized Soviet "republics", as well as East European vassal states.
1
By using intellectual property (IP) as a strategic bargaining advantage Mr Trump has given China and every other country in the world a legitimate reason to infringe US IP. IP law does not envisage IP being used for that purpose.
But wasn't part of Mr Trump's original complaint that this was what China was doing - infringing US IP?
I'm at the point where I can no longer look at or listen to this president without feeling physically ill, but even worse, I'm having a hard time reading anything about him that doesn't begin with the essential truth about this man, that he is in every possible way absolutely unfit for the presidency and that every additional moment that he remains in office constitutes another opportunity for additional damage to be inflicted on the country, its inhabitants, and its relationship to and within the world in myriad ways that will certainly have far reaching and most likely extremely damaging consequences.
The bottom line is that he does not have a single positive attribute or qualification to hold the highest office in the land and that combined with his inability to tell or even distinguish the truth, execrable taste in everything from people to policies to decor, disdain for expertise and faith in his own demented instincts, refusal to separate his businesses from his family from the government that he is in the process of unraveling, along with an utter lack of morals, scruples or ethics, make him a clear and present danger to society, as well as an ongoing national security threat.
Frankly, to discuss this ignorant and corrupt, malignant narcissist in regard to policy in comparison with any other leader, however heinous, is a joke. He's not a leader; he's an existential crisis for the country.
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@pixilated,
Excellent comment. It should have been an Editor's Pick. Thank you for taking the time to speak out.
4
"That’s why this moment is so complicated and fraught with danger." And look who we have leading us. This situation will not end well for us.
3
China, the USA and Russia are not Canada's friends. I have been writing that in comments to Friedman's op-eds for a decade and a half with very few comments printed.
The comment unprinted to-day concerned Russia and its Zombie economy and its inability to compete and why the USA and China will survive because they will turn inward and withdraw from the world and why Russia will fall apart.
The people that matter in Friedman's world all have cell phones and understand that it is Russia that is our greatest danger because they are the pre-eminent conservative society on Earth and despite great resources they prefer to tear down everybody else rather than build a vibrant and prosperous middle-class.
The life expectancy for Russian males is 66 which is usually dismissed as the result of alcohol. Is alcohol the disease or the symptom? China understands and will survive because it will adapt knowing that for China, Hong Kong is as important as New York is to America. Russia is failing, the USA has decisions to make.
1
It really is infuriating to watch from the UK that a US president this arrogant, reckless, ignorant, racist, pathologically lying daily and sometimes (hey don't ask too much) pretending to be presidential. Our current leader UK has yet to prove he is competent and our past leader has not been our finest. But I cannot understand how half or 40% of the country thinks that his president is the best ever etc, just because he is a business man. He has a number of bankruptcies, king of debt etc. The other 40% thinks he is dangerous etc. The other 20% i don't know. Every day seriously minded experts, learned and knowledgeable opinion writers have to make sense, explain and somehow agree or mainly disagree with his tweets, actions and policies. To me Trump now is on a downward spiral. Anything he implements regarding the economy will mean that the US economy will be in decline. He won't win any trade war because after reading comments a lot of people understand that his policies will not work long term. In short he is not fit for office, never was and never will be. The american people will have wasted 4 years. My only hope is that people will wake up to the fact that they were wrong but we all will be punished for being conned.
3
Trump is like a dog on a bone. Except unlike a dog on a bone, Trump starts chasing the next bone to distract us.
Trump started his Presidency by going after our Allies, sticking up for Putin and chasing after Kim un Jong and XI.
It is apparent Trump is not the man for International Relations or for straightening out any inadequacies in our Trade relations.
He lacks stability of thinking, self-control, or seeking the information needed before he acts. Trump is a prisoner of his own
inadequacies as a person, so how can he solve Trade problems or any other problems in this Country?
And worse, he is a danger to us all. The crux of the problems we find ourselves in are due to Trump, his Administration and McConnell's Senate. Then there is the GOP applauding every step of the way. Until the Republicans stand as one against this poor excuse for a World Leader we are going to continue going down hill in the world, let alone in this country.
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To the hard working Chinese people, calling them theft and currency manipulator is a non starter. China did no such things. They never forced US companies to transfer the IP, it was done voluntarily. Most of the IP are also licensed and China pay a lots of royalties to the IP owners. Go Google it if you don't believe what i said. As for currency manipulation, China has actually been probing up the currency instead of the other way around. So your repeated narratives of stealing, theft and manipulation are so overused, old and frankly insulting to the million of hard working and diligent Chinese people.
1
Xi, unlike Trump can look beyond next week. When you're president for life, it's easy to play the long game.
1
Trump brought a huge chip on his shoulder into the White House combined with out dated ideas about how trade works. These combined with a massive ego have resulted in the situation we find ourselves. He’s incapable of accepting advise, and he prefers working bilaterally on trade issues for he fears appearing incompetent amongst world leaders who are more versed in such complicated issues. I’m hesitant to accept any critical analysis of his performance that isn’t based on these fundamental flaws in his character.
1
Whatever smarts President Trumps possesses is so overwhelmed by his insecurities and narcissism that he is incapable of developing, much less comprehending a long term trade policy. Everything is viewed through the lens of him being able to declare, victory...whatever that means. The Chinese will simply wait him out.
3
Good analysis, but hated to see the misuse of "unravel" in the close.
"If Xi retreats on Communist Party control over his economy, and over Hong Kong, his whole system can unravel."
Plans, schemes, organizations and even the cuff of a sweater can ravel. A mystery or disorganized mess can be unraveled. Perhaps I'll feel less grumpy after a nap to knit the raveled sleeve of care.
To the hard-working Chinese people, calling them theft and currency manipulator is a nonstarter. China did no such things. They never forced US companies to transfer the IP, it was done voluntarily. Most of the IP are also licensed and China pay a lot of royalties to the IP owners. Go Google it if you don't believe what i said. As for currency manipulation, China has been probing up the currency instead of the other way around. So, your repeated narratives of stealing, theft and manipulation are so overused, old and frankly insulting to the million of hard working and diligent Chinese people.
What a shame that millions and millions of people around the world have to suffer as these two power hungry, soulless, and careless bullies fight it out.
Neither will "win" in the long run, but the untold damage will remain and we all pay the price for their misguided tactics.
Surely there are better leaders to be found than these two, and we here in the US need to do all we can to remove at least one of them from the world scene.
1
A question for Xi is whether it is in China's interests that Trump win in 2020. If a win is seen as benefiting China Trump will get a deal to increase the odds of reelection. Thus far most of what Trump has done is to weaken the U.S. in the long term and to create opportunities for U.S. competitors that produce farm products. This could be viewed as positive by Xi and China will act accordingly.
Sounds like we need a sophisticated strategic thinker that understands the complexity of the supply chain and and has solid international relationships to form partnerships to confront China's policies.
Where are we going to get that person?
4
Effective diplomacy begins with extensive research, internal debates by experienced diplomats over alternative strategies, and private discussions with allies to develop consensus and support.
Tweets cannot supplant consistent strategy and careful process.
3
The postponing of the tariffs was a very considerate gesture by trump. He could have ruined the Christmas period for the Chinese by making them pay the US treasury billions and billions of dollars. At least, that's probably the way the stable genius sees it.
1
A number of commenters point to recent volatility in the stock market, and suggest that the president is deliberately doing this to enrich himself and his family and friends through profits on equity positions.
Don't be fooled. He's creating the market instability to place more pressure on the Fed to cut rates soon. Why? Either to bail himself and his company out of a hyuge debt load or to improve sales by his real estate "empire."
If he'd let us see his tax returns, we'd have a better sense of which it is. But at the end of the day, that's all he really cares about. Everything else is just noise.
1
I must take issue with one thing in this article. Mr. Friedman characterizes Trump as being "a U.S. president obsessed with being seen to win and appears to be interested in America first and only." The first part of that is spot on. As for the second part, nothing Trump does is in America's interest; it is all in Trump's interest. That's why the administration is weakening environmental protection rules and endangered species rules. That is why Trump is embarked on his tariffs-can-do-anything war. As for "trade wars are easy to win," well, Trump's trade war--apart from not being easy to win--caused his administration to have to offer U.S. farmers a welfare package. Trump had no idea what he was doing when he began his trade war, had no strategy to "win" it, and now will either back down--fat chance--or plunge the world into economic disfunction, which is what is now beginning to happen.
2
1. Chinese and American workers are just pawns in this power struggle and as a result are suffering the consequences. The average person has been forgotten in this conversation. I think Elizabeth Warren's proposal to import goods and services only from countries that pay a living wage to their workers is a great one. This would end the "race to the bottom" and end the outflow of jobs from this country. It would also put pressure on China and other low-wage countries to give their workers a much needed pay raise.
2. Tariffs will not stop the rise of China and will only hurt our economy. And if you look at the historical record, the UK Parliament considered an economic embargo against Germany in the 1800s as Germany's economy and power grew. However, Parliament decided against it because they realized that it would hurt the UK's economy as much as Germany's. Perhaps Trump's recent backing down on tariffs means that he has arrived at the same conclusion as the UK did in the 1800s. However, I remain skeptical that he reached such a conclusion because he seems to have learned nothing since he took office.
3
Thomas Friedman describes Mr. Trump with astute and clear-sighted accuracy. More than winning in his conflicts with others, as in this trade battle with XI, is the appearance of winning: ". . ". . . desperate not only to win, but to be seen to win, . . . ."
Trump has spend his life as the master showman. Often, his only contribution to a project has been the attachment of his name, the "Trump brand." He was not producing , but putting on a show for prospective buyers. He ran a TV program where he gloried in the world of make-believe---hiring and firing , lauding and criticizing---and the end-goal was winning, or giving a good showing where you appeared to win. So frequently, the appearance more important than the reality: to win.
In the present combat with XI, Trump does not ask himself what is best for America and the globe, but asks how can I show my base and Fox News that I am not a loser but strong enough to fight till the end . If I can only show the winner's hand that is what I want.
It devolves into a battle to save face. But here face is as important to XI as it is to Trump--so in this chicken contest, Trump's attitude and XI's attitude can crash both countries with untold damage to both.
3
China has a plan. China is not run by an incompetent immoral fool. Xi Jinping is a well educated experienced world leader who loves his country and his people. He has traveled the world. He lived for awhile in Iowa. As a young man he was exiled to a remote urban area where he lived for 7 years and rose to become a popular leader. Gradually he worked his way up to leadership of the Chinese Communist party of 90 million members. He is smart well educated with a wealth of executive experience. Since the fall of the Soviet Union China has gradually increasingly experimented and integrated capitalism into their economic system with ever increasing success. They view capitalism as a powerful necessary evil that must be carefully controlled and regulated. Through the use of Keynesian economics fiscal and monetary policy coupled with economic planning China has achieved the most economic growth in the history of the world
Since the Chinese don’t and won’t tell the world how they do it we really don’t know the details. It’s complex and done in secret. The successive 5 year plans are definitely far reaching innovative and provide a blueprint concerning where China wants to go and how it plans to get there. Success breeds success. Rapid economic growth is the engine they believe will take them where they want to go. This is definitely not a one man show. They mandate continuous real wage increases which ensure a demand lead economic growth yielding the world’s largest market.
3
You do not mention a critical aspect of this dynamic: the reason that the Chinese are doing things the way they are doing.
In the 19th and early 20th century, a senile and decrepit Chinese empire was brought to heel economically by Britain and other European powers, starting with the Opium wars and continuing with the foreign concessions. When China began its revolutionary era in 1911, the humiliation of this experience was a major issue. The attitude persists today--no Chinese leadership will tolerate being told what to do by the West.
Any change in Chinese behavior has to be perceived on their end as serving their own interests, and not the interests of foreign powers. Any leverage applied to them needs to be portrayed simply as "this is how we do business with each other; if you want to play, you need to play by the rules we all play by."
Instead, we are saying, "China is bad, they are cheating, we need to apply pressure to them to make them stop." but what they see is another attempt by foreign powers to force concessions.
They were forced to let in traders in the past; now they are simply charging a price for doing business in China--give us your technology. They feel justified based on past experience.
We would be more effective in changing their behavior if we recognized this dynamic. They are not any worse than we are.
4
Trump has bluffed himself (and us) into a corner from which he cannot escape without backing down. Xi must represent the intentions of the majority of the Chinese Communist Party or risk losing their support. They have no more options, so this deadlock can only lead to the escalation of this pointless trade war.
1
Five words that will make a fool out of any pundit:
"Trump was right in arguing..."
Trump doesn't read. He watches TV. He doesn't listen to conflicting viewpoints. He has no serious advisers. He has no knowledge of macroeconomics. He gets his "world view" from the fantasy land created by FOX and conservative media. So no, to say that Trump is ever "right" about anything is to say that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.
9
"If Xi retreats on Communist Party control over his economy, and over Hong Kong, his whole system can unravel."
Bingo! Xi has to be consistent, and he has to win. The house of cards that any government lives in can tumble down any minute. Xi is painfully aware of that; he has 1.4 billion mouths to feed and as many minds to placate.
He stands under the sword of Damocles.
Could've, would've, should've. Suggesting anything logical or thought out to Trump is like arguing with the NRA to give up their guns or a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist to stop watching Fox. Logic and reason just aren't who he is. All we can hope for is that he doesn't start a war between now and the election. We'll be picking up the pieces for decades. Putin got his monies worth.
3
trump's "zero-sum" mentality will never allow for any kind of mutually beneficial agreement, which could possible if there was any wisdom in the room, but that possibility has sailed.
Batten the hatches, & reef the sails...the proverbial hurricane is just over the horizon.
2
I don't understand the "forced technology transfers" part always mentioned on the list of China's misdeeds. Were the US tech execs threatened or bitten up until they released the technology? No, they gave it up in exchange for cheep labor and tax breaks. Blame them for that, not China.
5
Mr. Krugman, or someone else: Can you tell me under what authority our president has the right to impose tariffs on China, or any other country? Thanks.
2
My hunch is that China will play hardball through next year's election, denying Trump any victory and harming our economy to some degree. They will tolerate the economic pain for the remainder of Trump's term in hopes it will deny him a second term.
4
Every day Xi wakes up with a terrifying question, "Is this the day I turn into Gorbachev?"
Gorbachev, you see, is the man who 'lost' the USSR for the Communist Party.
So if you want to know Xi's real position on trade with the rest of the world, it's "How do I keep the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in power?"
The truth is that China was never 'open' in the first place. And Xi's mission is to make sure it never becomes so.
Apparently, though, some people in Washington still think that because the CCP isn't actually gassing Uyghers in Xinjiang, it's OK to talk trade relations; or because the CCP hasn't yet actually launched a blood bath in Hong Kong, things can be patched up and money can be made over innocent people's futures.
The simple fact is, however, that free market, democratic societies like the US are incommensurable with authoritarian systems like China. There are no 'common rules' that the US & Co. can agree on with China. China will always go with state subsidies over market realities, force over regulations, terror over rule of law.
In his blundering way, Trump has exposed the fact that the Xi-emperor has no clothes. Let's not sell him any. Decoupling is the right policy for the US.
.
1
@VCR
You do know that we need the 95% of global market more than they need our 5% market in the long run right? Decoupling with global economy from China and India alone is losing one third of global market. China is the largest market for for pretty much anything and India is rapidly becoming the third largest market. Infact China is the largest market for many American companies like GM, Boeing, Intel etc. US will lose millions of jobs if we decouple the largest market for many American companies.
It is not a smart idea to withdraw from large markets that have made us prosper so much.
1
As one who has often complained that TF is not an objective obsever of the Trump phenomenon and is myopic as part of the global elite and thus does not understand what the Country sees in a Trump Presidency, I now commend TF for a great column and one that is prescient and timely. Well done.
1
Trump is not a “phenomenon “ in the sense that he is phenomenal. He is a phenomenon in the sense of being a singular embarrassment for this country & what it means to be an American.
His go it alone posture on foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. His overtly & subtle racist notes—from a racist birther conspiracy to immigrants are “infestations” to his tolerance of white supremacists—makes him singularly unfit & indecent to lead this great country.
Last but not least, his refusal to insist the Senate GOP allow a vote on the bipartisan supported 2020 election security or even support the background gun checks Bill that will save lives is further proof that this president is unfit & unwilling to protect all citizens of this great country. He’s got to be our worst president ever -and he’s got to go.
5
Like it or not the efforts to exploit the Chinese labor market have been turned into a powerful engine that China has used to become a behemoth. Clinton's Bridge to 21st Century was China's ticket to world power. The USs hegemonic free trade world has placed the US in the position to unilaterally impose their will on countries through their control of the world's financial markets. The euro has failed to dent the USs position. Italy and Iran suffer under the weight of unilateral decisions by Trump. China did much to help the US gain their present position. Without China the cold war would not have ended in the clear US victory.
1
The Chinese take the long view.
They know the sheer momentum of their national economy will take them to pole position eventually. The Chinese are not squandering their economic growth in a self serving ever expanding, insatiable military industrial complex. Chinese employers are not burdened with providing healthcare at twice the unit cost of every other developed nation, so that 20% of GDP can be transferred to the pockets of the owners of the private health industry. The Chinese government gives its industry long term stable economic direction without the distraction of political obstruction. These are facts.
China can afford to take the long view.
The last 2 years Trump and the GOP have dedicated their efforts towards eradicating the work and achievements of the previous President - regardless of the costs or consequences - just so that they can obliterate his legacy. This is true in terms of both national policy and international relationships. China does not have a GOP with the sole aim of "rule it or ruin it"
China has taken the opportunity to fill the gap left by the Trumps isolationist, xenophobic, America first approach.
Trump is term limited to the election cycle - there is no 20 year vision - not even 20 months. So he panics and thrashes to look tough.
So Chinese growth slows - the Chinese people are controlled and will accept whatever privations they are told to. The USA consumer society goes into meltdown when its consumption is restricted. Trump fails.
2
"I don’t buy the argument that China has found a magic formula for making political repression, state control over large sections of the economy and innovation all work together for the long haul."
Well there have been repressive systems which have lasted a long time. We should not be naive about this.
Now if such a repressive system has to compete with a much more open system it will usually fall far behind. No doubt we are still more open than China but the growing corruption we have, the rise of a billionaire class that looks a lot like the beginnings of a new nobility--if these aren't dealt with we may find repression everywhere we look, in particular right here in the USA.
2
The only difference between the "Communist Dynasty" and other strong Chinese dynasties is its, so far, non-hereditary nature. The dynastic cycle seems to be repeating itself but at a faster rate.
The more our economy expands the more we consume and import and the more whine buzz we get from the president.
Trump, if anyone has paid attention, is not a team player. He has teammembers but rarely listens to, or accepts there advice. On the economic side, he has two of the more clueless economists on his team: the TV economic pundit, Larry Kudlow who, like Jim Cramer, never saw The Great Recession coming, instead embracing the thrice-failed trickle-down theory of the air-headed libertarian economist, Arthur Laffer. (Greenspan, too, is a libertarian economist which is how we got into so much trouble in the first place thanks to his failed policies of deregulation.)
Then there is the trickle-down academic, Peter Navarro, who never knew a tax cut he didn't like.
Thus, the president who refuses to show us his grade from Wharton, has surrounded himself with economists of questionable skills.
And that brings us to Xi and Trump. Xi is a self-declared autocrat for life. Trump wants to be one, too. With Putin, Xi and Kim as his personal trainers-for-authoritarianism, Trump is not about to team up with our allies to win this trade war. It is all about his "brand" and that is fading the longer he is in office.
Vote out the Mad King Trump in 2020 and let the healing begin.
3
Excellent, Tom. Straightforward and clear. The current furor over Hong Kong adds a certain taste to the entire situation. The title delicious. Now we wait and see Xi and Trump sittin' on the tree. Or is it Humpty and Dumpty sat on a wall...
2
It is a mistake to discuss Trump’s actions as if he were capable of plans or even thought. If there exists any kind of strategy behind Trump’s acts, then it originates among the billionaires that tell him what to do next. And the main goal of these folks seems to be the orchestration of chaos with the idea in mind that they can profit amidst the anarchy, both in dollars and in amassing power.
4
The issue raised here by several who comment that Trump is steering the stock market to line his pockets and those of his family and cronies, seems like a valid one. He's President to reap financially as much as he can. Yet, like a teenager crazily joyriding down the road, there's an eventual crash. We are all in the car too.
1
@blgreenie -- the stock market volatility is just a tool being used to press the Fed into ever-lower interest rates. He doesn't care how the market tumbling impacts working Americans, directly or through retirement savings or by enticing corporations to cut staff further to maintain profit levels. He just wants rates back near zero -- because what real estate developer doesn't?
"But I’d rather be Trump than Xi."
That makes no sense, Mr. Friedman, when you consider trump would rather be Xi. Just like he would rather be Putin or Duterte or Un or King Midas. Christmas and farmers? Bah! Humbug! Let them eat their crops! But, luckily, as corrupt as he is, as depraved and craven the GOP is, our eroding democracy still has some legs under it. And, ironically, Xi is our secret weapon. If he is sitting in a tree, he's waiting out trump for the 2020 election. By that time, the simpleton, in-over-his-head trump, the ever-destructive trump, will continue using one hammer tactic after another until Wall Street realizes there is no more tax-cut-deregulation-judge-sludging juice left in this rotten lemon, if they haven't already realized it. His 40% base is a myth. All he has are the racists, the screamers and the dreamers. trump is in trouble in more red states than the Soviet Union circa 1989. Xi knows the replacement won't make it easy for him. But he has a sophisticated brain and he understands global capitalism better than trump. If this is a card game, Xi has walked away from the table. trump still sits with his hammers and a lot of chips aka US economic power. But like the chips his father bought at his casino in Atlantic City in a failed attempt to save it from bankruptcy, nothing good will come from our economic power as long as trump is in the White House.
6
Americans decided to buy all China could offer, and by electing an 8 year old as Commander and Chief closed off the opportunity to do the smart thing like the TPP. Americans should get a mirror to come face to face with the real problem.
4
A trade war with China is long overdue. Trump is not the person to lead it. We need allies in a trade war and Trump alienated them. Trump doesn't actually care about any of this. He only cares about his image, and perhaps the Dow.
3
This trade war is Trump's favorite game. He virtually can't lose. He just changes his mind any time he likes with a cute little all caps tweet and the US stock and world markets respond accordingly. This has to be so empowering and just plain fun for him, he surely revels in it. Why doesn't Congress swing the pendulum back and pass new legislation that takes away the president's ability to pass tariffs without their consent? I never realized that one person in this country could affect the world economy so much, it's frankly quite startling and terrifying.
3
China is playing 4 dimensional chess and Trump is playing 'heads you win, tails I lose'. What could go wrong? Keep up the good work, Mr President! You'll lose the next election by 25 million votes. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go.
4
what happens if China decides to call in all the US Treasuries it owns?
2
You have to factor in Trump's narcissistic personality disorder and obsession with being a tough guy. Those will be the main obstacles to a deal. That's why China would be wise to wait until after the election to get serious about dealing.
2
Xi has an ace in the hole, and that is control total control over certain components needed to make all cell phones and computers function. We don't have access to these items, and Xi at some point is going to tell Trump to take a hike. We will see.
1
International trade is a mutually-beneficial exchange of goods and services between business enterprises, not a war among national governments for trade supremacy.
Trump's arrogant attempt to orchestrate the world market by imposing trade tariffs and sanctions is counter-productive. America does not offer any goods or services that other nations cannot produced in-house, or obtain elsewhere. In the short-run, tariffs and sanctions reduce the volume of beneficial trade. In the long run, they drive foreign importers to seek or develop more reliable trade sources.
America is ill-positioned to battle China in the world markets. Our manufacturing sector is hamstrung by high labor costs and overly-cautious, overly-demanding investors. Our persistent meddling in the affairs of foreign countries, and our hostile deployment of military assets around the globe, foster resentment of our products and services.
China cultivates trade relationships, develops trade sources, and builds trade infrastructure around the world. Trump reneges on trade relationships and shrinks our export markets.
Trump's impetuous tariffs incent China to develop in-house sources for imported American technology, to further disregard the onerous patent protections that stifle American innovation and competition, and to develop South American sources for the agricultural products imported from the US.
Trump has dealt himself a losing hand on trade. Better fold than bluff and blunder!
3
Trump isn’t a problem.
The problem is that our government has stopped governing and just blindly follows the input from the global corporations.
The reason why the voters are attracted to Trump is that they recognized that willingness TO LEAD in him.
It’s not Trump’s alleged racism that attracted the voters but obvious readiness to lead. Trump isn’t a racist because as an egomaniac dividing all the people in only two groups – “pro-Trump” and “contra-Trump”, thus he is truly color-blind.
The problem is that Trump is incapable of the long-term thinking. That’s the failure of our educational system that is focused on the short-term objectives, today’s profits and the contemporary value of Dow Jones.
Those not willing to permanently ignore the short-term swings of the DJII aren’t capable of being devoted to the long-term objectives.
How can we expect Trump to successfully wage the long-term trade war if we don’t have enough patience for maneuvering, endurance or willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the country?
Nobody can win the trade war under those conditions, especially against China - the epitome of the strategic thinking and the long marches…
1
Please, Tom. Trump's only policy is to shake down China in exchange for another large bribe, just as he did with the imposition and raising of the ZTE sanctions. Pretending otherwise is naive. Xi badly misplayed his hand in this matter. China's economy was bound to run into trouble eventually due to overly centralized planning. Ours is running into trouble because the government is dominated by lazy, rent-seeking hacks lead by Trump.
2
Bottom line this all goes to Trump's narcissism and insecurity driving his need for constant strokes to his ego. Trump doesn't involve or work with any US allies because he fears doing so might make it harder for him to take all the credit for whatever is accomplished. Nor do I think does Trump ever consider any impacts other than on himself. And Trump seems to constantly act in a knee-jerk fashion without seeking or considering expert advice beforehand. In Trump's mental illness nobody is more supremely qualified or competent in any area than he is, so he almost always acts unilaterally. And Trump also is completely unwilling to study any issue in depth because his intuition is all that's needed. About the only things Trump has going for him is the power of his high office and the confusion his unpredictability puts on those opposing him.
Tariffs are just another cost of doing business. The country being taxed will simply pass the cost along to the consumers. In this case, that's us. Even the simplest concepts escape Trump.
A slight distortion of Thomas remark brings it closer to the truth: “fixing [...] problem[s] does not seem to be Trump’s only, or even primary, goal.”
And fixing problems by accident, not by intention, isn’t a notably successful approach.
1
What is one of the worst national security threats to America?
The short-term thinking!
We don’t have the long-term strategy because our government has crumbled under the pressure from the global corporations and embraced their business logic as own.
That wrongful logic is to maximize the profits right here and right now, meaning the business credo is the epitome of foolish short-term approach.
Any country without the government capable of imposing the long-term priorities and values on the society should be worried about the future.
Basically, we witness a conflict between the short-term profit-obsessed American approach and the long-term Chinese strategy.
The question is who is going to prevail in the long run.
We as a country cannot let the global corporations dictating to the US government what to do.
We must have the federal government imposing the long-term national strategy and priorities upon the corporate world and making sure everybody is playing according to those rules.
If we cannot accomplish this simple task, we have already lost the trade war regardless who is going to be the president or what party in control of the Congress.
It will be absolutely irrelevant as a color of your socks for the eventual outcome…
1
America's nightmare.. a serial bankrupted, reality TV star con artist who's only proven talent is media manipulation being President of the United States continues. He was out of his league as a developer of condos and rental units, a business taught to him by his father but for some reason unable to have the discipline for it. He was proven to be out of his league as a casino owner. As a marketer of Trump University, Trump steaks, Trump vodka, Trump water etc. etc. etc. not so much. If investigated properly he might have shown a penchant for helping Russian mafia figures launder vast sums of money buying his condo's but we may never know since there seems to be no serious inquiry into as of yet. Now he's directing his personal staff of incompetent sycophants to proceed with a trade war with the World's second largest economy at the end of a long running business cycle and somehow not implode the global economy. As we've heard so many times before since Trump was elected...this doesn't end well.
4
"Trump can retreat, compromise, change on a dime and call anything a win. We saw that on Tuesday.
If Xi retreats on Communist Party control over his economy, and over Hong Kong, his whole system can unravel."
That is ridiculous set of comments. Trump's retreat, compromise, change on a dime may lead him to call it a win, but that doesn't mean it is! What we saw Tuesday was Trump "blinking" and everyone knew it. Everyone - including China!
It's presumptuous of Friedman to think he knows what would happen if Xi decides to change tactics not only on the trade war but also on Hong Kong. Friedman calls it "retreats" but what if Xi calls them "wins."
The funniest and most telling headline I ever read. Great
work, Tom. I'm still trying to get up off the floor. SDS
2
If memory serves, all the major Democrats in 2016 opposed TPP—except Obama.
Do they still?
1
@david webber, TPP is a very flawed piece of work which is not to say it doesn't have the value touched on in the article. But it gives companies, foreign and domestic, not just the ability but the RIGHT to run roughshod over consumers and even over states. A stronger representation of OUR rights and less absolute power in the hands of abusive corporations, the sort of abusive hegemony you find in fascist systems, would have made TPP palatable if not even attractive. It is hard to name things without both pros and cons but when something has such deep flaws which are easily seen to pave the road for terrible abuses it is not only fair but proper to insist on a better agreement than TPP. I must add that had politicians for it not been in the pockets, not been lap dogs, for corporate hegemony then perhaps a truly reasonable trade agreement cod have been in the offing and the indicated (and prefearble) approach would have been available.
1
Let me get this straight. The same guy who can’t get Mexico to pay for a crummy wall is going to get Xi to do something that helps us.
Pardon me while I fall down laughing.
5
I believe we are headed to a time of turmoil. A recession appears to be looming and the coming Chinese annexation of Hong Kong could be the trigger. It is time we recognized that China is our enemy and started treating them as such. We need to move our trade away from China, cutback and downgrade our dealings with them.
Lastly, with his 'win at any cost' election strategy, I fear that Trump is going to make the coming recession worse. He would be better off to declare 'victory' walk away and let it fall to pieces on someone else's watch.
Our leadership seems to have no clue, it is time to get conservative in your finances and look out for your own self.
China's four great inventions: moveable type, paper, the compass, and gunpowder have come full-circle over the past millennium to re-emerge as the internet, GPS, and nuclear weapons (all weapons actually), and while we've attached everybody's well-being in "the West" to property and/or intellectual rights during that round-the-world trajectory of modifications to original Chinese inventions, one could make the case that the U.S. (as well as most countries) owe a huge debt to China. It is hugely ironic these four great inventions now have 'returned home' to a now-modern China bent on outcompeting the rest of the world in these areas (Tom didn't go into why the U.S. is no longer competitive in many industries--another topic I guess). The approach to ownership in 'the West' and 'the East' has been and is different. On the Asian side, basically, once an invention was made public, it was everyone's to refine and innovate on freely without an individual owning the invention or innovation. 'The West' attached 'property-rights' to individuals as profit generators, not to the collective's (everybody else) overall 'profit.' Through force, individual property-right protections are now in-place worldwide. Indeed, in the U.S., before the whole, white, 'land-grant' system was imposed, the natives knew nothing of 'property ownership.' What should the 'property ownership' profit-margins be today for China's four great inventions, upon which the U.S.'s 21st century prosperity has been built?
2
@JD
I am impressed with your long-term thinking and extremely sharps analytics!
The market is down another 400+ points again. Welcome to pre-Obama. If the Dems win, it’s going to take four years to fix a Republican administration’s economic catastrophe again. Republicans give the impression that they are wiz kids with money. Their record proves them so wrong. EVERY Republican President since Teddy Roosevelt has suffered a recession during their first term in office. Hang on to your hats, here comes trump’s recession. Keep voting for the wiz, or actually fiz, as in economic fizzle.
Hey farmers, I thought you were independent folks, but you accept welfare just like most people in need. So get off your high horse and get real, or else land auctions are AGAIN in your future.
4
@David J, my mistake, stocks down 600+. Aren’t slides fun, I mean the ones in playgrounds. But our economy is no playground, so why do Republicans enjoy them so much. Perhaps the party should change their name . The Recessionists. Well, that fits. So does Do Nothings, Know Nothings, just rely on the same in voters. Do nothings, know nothings, what a perfect match.
2
The Trump supporters wanted a "businessman" to do things that the politicians apparently couldn't. Well, they got what they asked for: a sociopath whose business model has always been heads I win, tails you lose. Except for this time the entity that declares bankruptcy is the US, not Trump inc.
4
You had me until you said “Drumbo can call anything a win”.
Tell that to our farmers who probably permanently lost exports to China.
4
Mr Friedman's solution is practical and it could work with a different President. But, like many such discussions, it ignores the fundamental problem, part of which Trump's claims get right (his behavior gets wrong).
American industry profits are more important to Americans than anything else. Cheap, quality products run a close second. The importance of well paid labor runs about 15th on that scale. What Trump says and how he is a slave to industrial profits is a vicious contradiction.
Starting in 1980 America discovered that inexpensive products and high industrial profits could be obtained by doing our manufacturing in China. Then we discovered that China made our products well, but stole our technology from us.
We are so utterly addicted to industrial profits and cheap products that our response was to continue with Chinese manufacturing and whine about the fact that they steal from us.
Why isn't this the same as leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the car parked in the bad side of town and then complaining when it is stolen?
We should be moving our manufacturing to countries that we may trust like Vietnam, Mexico, possibly Singapore, or India, or for critical technologies, God forbid, make them in America and face up to the higher prices.
But no, true addictions are exceptionally difficult to break. Industrial profits and cheap products are our addiction. It would be expensive to move our production to other countries. So we'll whine about it.
3
Moving manufacture to foreign countries is the main mechanism for transferring technical knowhow abroad, including China. The cutting edge of tech in the integrated circuit industry, for example, is generated from solutions to problems identified during manufacture. Problems discovered and solved by those actively involved, not those sitting in boardrooms thousands of miles away.
2
China has 1.3 billion people. The USA has 0.3 billion. Could we be outnumbered here? About 2 percent of the human population are “highly gifted”. Looks like the need for American tech by China will soon be overcome. Especially if the USA is run by Trump’s billionaire agents of chaos.
6
A lot of this column is a reiteration of Mr. Friedman's last column on Trump's tariffs and his ignorance of markets and how they work, as well as the grave mistake Trump made by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific partnership, alienating allies and going it alone. That said, Friedman is spot on, and if both leaders keep pushing the limit, we could end up in a global recession---all for the love of ego.
1
Congrats Tom. I believe you're the first person to say "I would rather be Trump."
3
The reason why Mr. Friedman is always wrong is because he stubbornly ignores the guiding principles.
For him it dwindles down to Bush vs Saddam Hussein or Trump vs Xi. He continually writes about the personalities and the politicians.
To learn the truth, pay attention to the principles that rule every aspect of our lives!
The principles will tell you what sustainable course is and what isn’t.
The principles don’t depend on the GOP or the Democrats being in power.
The principles are always in power.
The mathematics is strongest tool available to accurately predict our future.
The financial situation is going to get much worse. We are headed for a world-wide recession. The Obama era will look like milk and honey by comparison. Trump will lose in 2020 but get at least 40% of the vote anyway, and make it close in the Electoral College. What about those “deplorables” after all? An optimist will say they will die off in the long run.
3
@phaedrus, The Obama era was milk and honey in comparison in that it was sustainable growth rather than short lived measures buying a few some windfalls and the rest a brief party before the bill becomes due.
Yes much more needed to be done to strengthen immediate weaknesses and unresolved long term issues. But the impediment to that were Republican voters and politicians who made putting an "uppity" president in his place over the good and health of the country.
" But I’d rather be Trump than Xi. Trump can retreat, compromise, change on a dime and call anything a win. We saw that on Tuesday. "
Sure.
Both Trump and Xi JinPing are trying to win the tariff war while both the US and China lose!
President Trump and Peter Navarro are beginning to harvest the negative consequences of their foolish "easy to win" trade wars. US bond yields are inverting and the entire world economy is slipping towards recession. And in typical Trump fashion he is starting his PR campaign of blaming everything on the Fed. Trump will never accept responsibility for his actions. It's always someone elses fault. But if the recession begins he owns it. He gave the 1% giveaway tax plan that added a trillion dollars to the deficit. He started the "easy to win' trade war with China.He is the so called "master of the deal" who can't make a deal with China. Sorry Mr. President, you break it, you own it.
9
Tom, you hint at this, it don’t state it explicitly. The main reasons that Trump trashed the TPP and doesn’t enlist other countries to get China to stop its abuses are the same reasons that drive him on most other issues. The TPP, like NAFTA or the Iran nuclear agreement, are treaties with the taint of past administrations—and particularly those of Barack Obama. Trumps primary objective is erasing those things that might be seen, and were seen, as successes by his predecessor.
Secondly, Trump does not want to share any success with Europe, or Canada, or NATO, or TPP nations. It is he alone, as he’s told us, who can rescue us.
Of course, he’s made things worse in every area because he is ignorant of history, statesmanship, economics, and trade. It’s not as if any of this is a surprise. Those people who voted for an ignorant narcissist saw it during his campaign, but decided it was time to teach the Democrats a lesson. For their own part, the Democrats, with the FBI’s help, ran a campaign poorly enough to keep their voters at home rather than going to the voting booth.
6
"I don’t buy the argument that China has found a magic formula for making political repression, state control over large sections of the economy and innovation all work together for the long haul." - Totally agree.
The market is relatively unimportant. Rich people worry about their investments, but they are the minority. This little ego match between Trump and Xi is only a minor scuffle when one looks forward to what is really coming to the world of humans. Infinite growth has led us to a point of diminishing returns. The negative affects of overpopulation and excessive consumption will now set in and offset any real advancement humans can make in quality of life. Soon the rate of decay will be evident even in a lifetime. Indeed, it will be apparent on a decade to decade level and eventually on a year by year basis. That is, the rate of decay of human life quality will decay so fast as to be apparent to even the most ardent denialist.
It will be in our lifetimes that we see the ridiculousness of worrying about the markets and economy.
3
@Chris: The more of anything there is, the less each unit of it is worth. That applies to us all.
1
Agreed. We are already using 1.7 times the amount of resources earth has to offer, annualized.
2
Hey! It seems that Mr. Trump and the Chinese government have something in common. They both blame others for problems they, themselves have created!
If a country is isolationist and beats up on its friends, interferes in their domestic policies, insults their leaders, and threatens to withdraw from military treaties, then how on earth can it then turn around and ask its supposed “allies” to help? It’s a ludicrous position.
8
He said, Xi said. Declare you have fixed the TPP and put it back in place.
1
Why does Tom Friedman perpetrate the lie that Trump understands any of this? He doesn’t. All Trump knows is that bashing China gets applause at his rallies and that’s he cares about.
Honestly, I doubt Trump (or anyone in his base) could find China on a map if it was labeled with flashing. All Trump and his base of Southern and Midwestern Evangelical White Supremacists believe that they better than the Chinese solely based on the color of their skin.
7
We're just waiting for Trump to follow Xi's example and declare himself president for life.
2
It struck me that in effect we are still suffering from our original sin of slavery. Trump in all his racist wisdom is dedicated to reversing all things Obama and thereby shooting us all in the proverbial foot. So now we are confronting a China alone because have thrown away the treaty and all the other alliances that could have actually put real pressure on China to become a functioning trade partner and all to smite that black guy who was president. If that isn’t the definition of a monumental looser, I don’t know what is. Unfortunately we all get to loose with him.
2
Xi will win.
Firstly, he's not a moron.
Secondly, he doesn't have to worry about an "electorate", nor a "media".
Thirdly, the Chinese people will put up with the ramifications because they've been told it's a national emergency and it's their job to do so.
Fourthly the Chinese state has the power to tell consumers not to buy American goods.
Fifthly China has adequate foreign currency reserves & has headroom to devalue its currency, partly countering the tariff effects.
Sixthly Xi has at his disposal any number of levers he can use to balance the pain of a trade war, as he's in charge of them all.
Seventhly, there is a general election that Trump will get lose, hugely, in December next year.
Eighthly, Trump has isolated the US behind "America First" so much that allies are not minded to support his campaign against China.
Ninthly, Trump's promised return of US manufacturing jobs has turned out, like everything else, to be a lie and;
Tenthly, the US stock exchange is due an almighty correction of historic proportions that will have a rippling negative effects upon many Americans.
Add in the corruption of the Trump administration will become more apparent next year, and the disasters that Trump will unfold on America that we haven't yet even seen coming, and Trump - and by extension America - will lose.
6
Its just amazing how Trump ended up prostrating himself as hard and fast as he did. He has learned to grovel with the best of them and assumed the supine position with Xi and Chinese electronics manufacturers coming out on top. Perhaps he got a call from his boss Putin who told him to give it up.
6
Almost everything about Trump is understandable when you fathom the depths and destructiveness of his pathological and malignant narcissism.
It's the Rosetta Stone. Please grasp his darkest, darkest emptiness and it all makes sense.
4
Actually, Trump's sittin' in an olive tree...
And Xi's sittin' in a Lexus...
Metaphorically, not literally, of course...
Actually, Trump's sittin' in a grain elevator full of soybeans that would’ve been loaded onto a supercargo ship headed for China
And Xi's sittin' in a waterfront lot of Volvos that would’ve been loaded onto a supercargo ship headed for the US...
Metaphorically, not literally, of course...
Seems like the guy losing the most lucre in this is McConnell...
So – expect it’ll be fixed by next Tuesday at the latest...
1
May you live in interesting times.
Protectionist trade policies will only make America less competitive going forward vs China. TPP, Trumps idiotic tariff war and banning sales to Huawei will not work. We need a better educated work force and investments on our crumbling infrasture.
China has been doing that last 30 years. Have we? May be a progressive Democrat can do it, not Mr. Friedman who thinks Trump is onto the right track, but just bad execution.
1
This fuzzy match of wills also sends a message to others, that all prior conventions can be changed. This is why we are seeing so many previously dormant conflicts erupt, and global destabilization.
Once the global mess that has been kept under control by centralized American power unravels, all bets are off. I fear for the future.
2
"... the trade war with China, which he initiated ..."
.
Why does Mr Friedman continue this little piece of propaganda? Beijing has been waging the trade war against the US for decades. They signed and ignored bilateral deals to stop stealing US IP and give American companies market access in China in 1992, 1996, and 1999, then joined the WTO in 2001. Agreed again, ten more times, to trade fairly and honor their commitments during the Bush and Obama administrations, according to the USTR Robert Lighthizer.
.
Trump did not start the trade war. Trump, as repulsive as he is in so many other ways, is the first president to fight back.
.
Please don't push "Trump started it" line any more. It's something one would expect to hear from the Global Times, not the New York Times.
@West Coaster " Trump did not start the trade war. Trump, as repulsive as he is in so many other ways, is the first president to fight b"-- Trump talking point AKA as the " head in the sand" approach.
Just because Xi is 'president for life' does not mean the Party can't oust him tomorrow.
1
Trump is thuggish in temperament and mercantilist in his worldview - just like the PCC including its president for life chairman Xi. Trump’s instincts are the same as the PCC-lie, cheat, steal,coerce. Oddly, he’s the right worrier for dealing with China. But if course he’s bungled given his nationalistic tendencies.
This both sides non sense is just the latest in the self appointed elites rejecting reality in favor of a simple both sides story like a kid who only plays with two dolls as it gets too complicated otherwise.
Trump is a mess.
Emperor Xi is a communist party dictator who intends to make China an imperial power that dominates all close and the planet and he believes that using all power available is his right and duty and many if not most Han are fine with it.
Trump is a wannabe gangster clown leading the way in the restoration of right wing fascism.
Opponents like Friedman are one of his keys to success. Friedman probably being richer than Trump.
Who cares? Biden said China wasn’t competition for the USA so the long game is on...
Why do you still blame China for intellectual theft and forced technology transfers? #1 there is this place called international court where all that belong to the WTO can bring their grievances to. [ LEGO sued and won] #2 no one put a gun to their heads to make them transfer their technology, they did it for the MONEY. Let's be clear our corporations went to China for the MONEY. Know they see that China is tacking them to school and they are crying. They are crying because they do not want to spend their own MONEY to defend them selves, they want to spend ours to fight China. trump is fighting a fools war that he can not win in the long run, that is plain to see for all. China 1.7 billion consumers USA 320 million consumers. This is a fools errand and trump as we know is the BIGGEST fool of all time.
3
The Art of the Deal?
Since I’ve been so critical of his many recent columns, let me say this is Friedman at the top of his game. Hopefully, he is whispering in the ears of both leaders.
Is Trump crazy like a fox? Of just plain crazy? It is getting tougher and tougher to figure this one out.
More and more Xi - the President for life - looks like a 'front' for the many other internal forces controlling China
Pointless to think Trump or this Administration will succeed in any global negotiations when their ineptness is well publized and apparent to many average citizens in this country. Very difficult to communicate with someone you don't respect and trust to follow through with what is agreed upon. Putting forth intellectual inferiors with little background or knowledge in the subject and the lack of skills regarding diplomacy is a recipe for failure. Trump, Kushner, Pompeo, Bolton, Mulvaney, Mnuchin, Ivanka, the rest of the cabal is the best America has to represent us? They created disaster, turmoil in every Cabinet, Security Agency, Department of Justice, Congress nationally I shudder to think how stupid and arrogant they are overseas.
1
I don't know very much about Chinese culture. But I do know one thing. Saving face is important in its dealings with the rest of the world.
Trump wanted China to change its laws to suit our needs. In the course of which it would lose face in exactly the way it most resists acting in international relations.
An astute President would have given China a way to preserve its own dignity (and its leaders their place in Chinese society) in exchange for the changes to their laws in ways beneficial to our industries. Win-win however is not part of Trump's philosophy which is what makes him seem so clueless in situations like this one.
4
When Trump took power, the US was (and still is in spite of Trump) the richest country on earth and had the biggest economy, and as you say, that is why it ran a trade deficit with China, which is normal. That's not the problem with China, it's their cheating and stealing of patents. But Trump is an idiot who doesn't understand that or much of anything else in Economics.
So he governs by tantrum while China has a plan. He has already destroyed American agriculture, now he's going after the rest of the Economy. Thank you Deplorables.
7
Can Mr Friedman stop equating the President of the USA to the Chairman of the Communist party.
One is an elected official (that may be gone in a year) the other is a Dictator for Life.
Trump may be a dumpster fire, but look at history. Do you equate FDR to Stalin, or Truman/Eisenhower to Mao, JFK to Pol Pot? The history of the Chairmanship of the Communist party has characters that make Hitler look like an amateur. Don't look at the current occupant, but at history.
1
How did Xi overplay his hand? He played the hand Trump handed to him, on a golden platter.
Trump "blinked a bit"? More like folded like a wet souflle left out in the rain. Then threw in a typical incoherent excuse: Christmas season.
2
Trump has no policies other than making money for corporations on the backs of workers and the environment and enriching himself both monetarily and with personal ego stroking. If Trump could be like Xi and get away with destroying people in any fashion he chooses, it would bring him immense pleasure. He is jealous of Xi's power, corruption and dictatorship.
2
the problem wth trump is - he doesn't do long term strategy. he now accepts that he isn't winning but will never admit that.
1
The only reason Trump blinked on some of his China tariffs -- in reality a tax on American consumers -- is that some of his advisers feared they would raise the prices of Chinese-made goods to rise just before the Christmas shopping season, thus hurting his re-election campaign. Trump's trade war was foolish to begin with, and it remains so; Xi simply retaliated and will continue to retaliate because China's economy is more advanced than ours in artificial intelligence, alternative energy, high speed rail and the race to G5 and thus better able to wait out the economic missteps and incoherent trade policy of the bumbling buffoon in the White House.
153
I disagree. Trump is indeed a blight on American politics. However, sooner or later any president, R or D, would have had to confront China on trade practices, which lie well outside of any reasonable observer's idea of fairness. Trump deserves credit for at least doing so.
But he deserves derision for doing it so stupidly, for jettisoning the leverage his predecessors had carefully and painstakingly assembled in the form of the TPP, which Trump disregarded root and branch for no other reason, apparently, than a superficial desire to appear discontinuous with the policy outlook of the "Davos crowd." He threw away his best toolset.
Technologically, China is not in front yet. There is a reason they purloin American IP by any means they can. They are competitors; they have not surpassed the US yet. Building big parallelism is a matter of throwing money at the project. The bleeding edge fundamental research is still decidedly Western. At least until Trump's idiotic isolationism undercuts our advantages.
11
@Christy
In many cases the Chinese are actually cutting prices so that US retail prices remain unchanged. The Chinese are doing this to keep their people working - perhaps not at a profit but if they can outlast the Tariff siege, they then will have adjusted to accept a lower standard of living and when Trumps tariffs are lifted they will be able to consolidate their market position and claw back some of the lost pricing. Trumps tariff war is at best a 3 year war - my bet is the Chinese can last longer than that.
3
Your article fails to state the obvious: Trump is an idiot. Sure, there are systemic problems in our trade relations with China. But at bottom, Trump doesn't know what they are or how to address them. In this, as in everything else, he is a bull in a china (no pun intended) shop, raging around and breaking things with no understanding of what he is doing, why he is doing it, or how to put it all back together.
3
There's something I wish I could put in the president's ear:
Maybe you could come up with a way to get the US back into the TPP. Maybe get some minor changes made to it and pass it off as a revised agreement that you really put your stamp on. You tried that cheap trick with NAFTA and it looks like your base let you get away with it.
So try it again. It would really help with the China problem.
102
@Dixon Pinfold Nope, you don't understand. TPP was an Obama era thing. Therefore, Trump can abide it in any form. But, you may be right. If he revives it as his own and something else, he may get away with it.
5
@Dixon Pinfold one thing you will never be able to do is to get Trump to admit he was wrong. Because even he realizes that this is what your suggestion would amount to.
5
@Dixon Pinfold
There is zero chance Trump will do anything multilateral. It smacks of globalism which Bannon, Trump, and the Mercers abhor. Besides, there's no way Putin, Kim, or Xi will let Trump rejoin TPP, and they appear to have far more sway with Trump than our foreign policy and security experts. The former want the US to exit the western Pacific, not forge stronger ties there.
You're definitely on the right track with US membership in TPP if you want sane and effective foreign policy in that region, but that's never been within Trump's capabilities.
4
An open society cannot win over a closed society. China has no one to answer to, XI can do whatever he wants, while Trump has to answer to the American public.The Dems are not pulling for Trump, if anything ,they would like to see China kick Trumps butt. After the smoke clears China will be in the cats bird seat, and rule the world.
1
China's ever increasing power is a danger to us all while it remains a totalitarian state. Those demonstrating in Hong Kong are carrying the torch of freedom on behalf of all chinese. Yet they receive scant support from our western leaders who fear to offend Beijing. None dare to echo JFK in Berlin with Ich bin ein Hongkonger. China under Xi will never be truely integrated into the world community. Which means our resources wasted in an endless cold war.
48
@Slioter I am not sure that China today is the equivalent of the Soviet Union back in the Berlin days. I don't see China having any warlike tendencies or desire to upend other countries. (Hong Kong is slated to continue on its agreed path to return to China.) We have made demands in our trade agreement terms that are deeply intrusive on Chinese sovereignty. And, under Xi, China has, through its OBOR (One Belt One Road) initiative, now the largest infrastructure project in history, China is truly integrating into the world community.
Mr. Friedman, the kind of negotiating you are suggesting is just not in Trump's tool box. He essentially, views every negotiation, as a WWF match, with a clear winner walking around the ring proudly displaying a World Championship belt--after a number of devastating punches and strangle holds--of course the winner would always be Trump. This is where we are at both domestically and internationally, a daily diet of WWF reruns.
139
Trump is not playing a tariff game, he is playing a stock manipulation game. With a single tweet he can swing the Dow 400+ points in either direction. Advance knowledge of coming tweets allows his family and cronies to make corresponding short/long bets, and the riches flow.
Trump does not make American economic policy. Trump makes Trump family/friends economic policy.
305
@Gina We of course do not know whether you are right. Unfortunately, we know however that you could very well be right, and that the most powerful person in the world wreaks havoc on it merely to line up his own pockets.
50
@nestor potkine. We know Gina is right, we just won't admit it.
27
@nestor potkine...she's right.
13
Do you know how we could force the government in Beijing to enact the export fees on the Chinese goods heading for America?
Do you know how we could dramatically increase the value of yuan and make all the Chinese goods significantly more expensive and less competitive?
Print out $22 trillion and pay off all the creditors.
That will accomplish several strategically important objectives.
It will eliminate the national debt and the everlasting burden on the US economy.
It will bring our economy back on the sustainable course.
It will force us to balance the federal budgets because after this step nobody will ever again borrow any money to the US government.
The government is in business of taxing the people. Don’t borrow in the name of the future generations because they haven’t voted for it and can easily reject to pay off the colossal national debt.
What are the future generations going to do to eliminate of the enormous debt burden and improve own standard of living?
Just read again the aforementioned sentences...
Thus, the question is who is going to do it, us or them, and when...
That’s the only real ace the US government has in dealing with the Chinese government...
The current course is absolutely unsustainable in the long run.
Remember where you read it first in two decades.
Don’t worry if you find this stupid, everybody was laughing too when I was predicting the Great Recession 15 years ago...
The most important long-term US objective is that we stop lying to ourselves.
It is the matter of the utmost national security.
We cannot run the chronic budget deficits because nobody will ever pay them off. If you are thinking that the future generations are eager to increase the taxes on themselves so you could have the better life today, then you are fooling yourself.
It means we must enact the constitutional amendment. If the government is incapable of taxing the citizens to pay for own spending, the Fed Bank must print enough dollars to fill up the hole.
It means the voters will pay for their spending and benefits, either with the taxes or the inflation.
We have to go back to the basics and understand that there is nothing free in this world.
As soon as we do it, the trade with China will get balanced.
Of course, Beijing will not eternally produce the consumer goods and ship them to America to be paid for with the freshly printed banknotes.
That’s how to can gradually get back to the sustainable course.
There are two ways how to reach this destination. Either by constantly adjusting our economic course through inflation or by ignoring the mathematic principles and waiting for the instant abrupt adjustment historically known as the Great Depression and the Great Recession.
We have to determine our future course today!
1
@Kenan Porobic Trump's increasing deficits are a problem because a cycle of economic growth ends. Always. During good periods, we should be decreasing the deficit so we can increase them when the good cycle ends and we must stimulate the economy again.
Every time we have had a balanced budget in the past, a recession has followed quickly. Balancing the budget is not a formula for economic growth.
Mr. Friedman, your column is all about policies. That’s not trump’s forte. He wouldn’t understand your column.
3
You are much too kind to Trump.
I don't think he has a clue what he's doing. Worse, Trump has surrounded himself with China bashers led by the human flamethrower Peter Navarro, who probably eggs on the boss with his advocacy for more trade tariffs.
General Custer had better scouts at the Little Bighorn.
5
Here's what it boils down to, Xi is for life, Trump will likely be gone come January 2021. China can afford to wait.
1
What Thomas points out is logical and problem-solving. I can not speak for Xi, but I think I can for Trump. Rational thinking has no place in this man's mind. He can have the best economic advisers in the world, but they will be fired in an instant if they dare refute what his underdeveloped and stunted psyche desires. This trade war is an egotist's folly. Its root is not to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the US. That's hogwash. It is about power over an adversary for one's self-glorification. It is about greed for oneself and those fat cats who help keep him in office. Indeed, Xi is a power-hungry, cruel, and all-controlling dictator. Look at what is happening in Hong Kong as we write and speak. But craftiness is etched in Xi's blood. China itself has had centuries of practice in out-foxing its opponents. Next to this leader of China, Trump is clueless about the "art of the deal." We shall see who "wins." I doubt it will be us, however. The best we can hope for is a stale-mate.
4
There was a recent column comparing Tiananmen to the current situation in Hong Kong.
The differences are overwhelming.
In 1989, China was ruled by the Communist Party. After a fierce debate, the decision was made to crush the demonstrations with overwhelming lethal force.
In 2019 China is an Empire ruled by a single man. The most important event in 2018 was not the Democrat's e;ectpra; victory. It was the change in Chinese governance to a dictatorship. This bodes ill for China down the road... once Xi dies or is displaced.
In the meantime, he holds all the cards, because of the stupidity of Trump outlined in this column. Trade wars are not easy to win. You need help. Trump's idiocy in both going it alone and having neither clear nor coherent goals means that the U.S. is losing.
Hong Kong presents Xi with a difficult choice. Crack down or compromise. Sadly for the short term, his megalomania will probably mean bloodshed and the end of Hong Kong as an international center of trade. China can (barely) afford this.
In the mid-term, Trump will weasel (like he did today), but still put American into recession, thankfully ending his misrule. It is hard to say when China will rebel against Emperor Xi, but it will.
Dan Kravitz
2
Trump goes short. Tweets about sanctions. Markets tank. Trump cashes in. Trump goes long. Tweets that he's rescinding sanctions. Markets soar. Trump cashes in.
It's good to be the king.
5
@Len Safhay
Thanks for stating succinctly what I have been thinking ever since Trump took over. Trump was/is in financial difficulty and what better way to recover than to fleece the system?
2
China has certainly committed offenses, but we put this dispute on the wrong foot by not working with international institutions, namely the WTO. That’s why, as the author points out, this is a matter of us versus them instead of China versus international norms.
Everyone expected China’s current status as a developing country would be renegotiated in the WTO. Any other President would have done that, and the world would have moved on to a better place. Since the US and the EU each have 18% of Chinese exports, we would have had more than twice the leverage we have now. If you’re looking for reasons why Xi thinks he can tough it out you can start right there.
Maybe you can assign equal blame to Trump and Xi for continuing this mess, but that’s not true for how we got here. This is our mess that didn’t have to be. We will pay dearly for Trump’s war for an exclusive deal with his name on it.
1
"But I’d rather be Trump than Xi."
We know Tom. Dear Readers, Remember Tom was for the Iraq war. What he doesn't know now, and won't know for another 20 years, is that Trump's "Trade Wars are easy to win" is his version of Bush's "Mission Accomplished." After all these years in Afghanistan we are now negotiating our exit with the Taliban, our enemy that we had running towards the desert on camels after a few hours of bombing because they have no air force, no satelite guided bombs, no tanks, no navy, no marines, only one helicopter and some leftover RPGs from the Soviet Era. What was their advantage? Patience and the will to endure the pain. None of which Tom and his fellow Americans have. Is anyone paying attention? No, we're out shopping. Can anyone see the parallels? No, we're two obsessed with ourselves! We're going to lose and lose big.
4
Trump wants to enrich himself and to stay in power, so he wants to get reelected. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking he has any other principal motivations.
Trump is not really interested in trade issues with China. Trump is not really interested in tariffs on China. These are obfuscations. Trump does not care about working with allies because he is not really interested in solving any actual problems. (He is spiteful, though, and enjoys working to destroy Obama’s legacy, regardless of consequences.)
What we really need to focus on are Trump’s China trade policies as vehicles to engage in stock market manipulation to enrich himself and his cronies. Because he should be under investigation by the SEC.
Trump will never allow the stock market and economy to crash before the election. He is constantly watching them like a hawk. After all, what else does he have to run on (other than racism)?
And let’s see how China handles Hong Kong. Could it devolve into another Tiananmen Square? That would be a bracing reality check, wouldn’t it? Let’s keep our fingers crossed and pray for a peaceful outcome.
163
@Blue Moon -- it's beyond "stock market manipulation to enrich himself and his cronies." I don't know how much he actually has invested in the market himself.
It's about roiling markets and the economy sufficiently to push the Fed into lowering rates. He's been yammering about that since the day he was elected. Market volatility and today's yield curve inversion will make it harder for the Fed to resist moving more quickly on rates than its board members signaled they would when they cut rates last month.
3
@Blue Moon
There may be one additional motive. If Trump is ousted in 2020, he will be subject to arrest and probable conviction on a number of crimes that would lead to prison. He wants the clock to run out on those crimes.
3
I keep wondering if the geopolitical turmoil of this economic war between the two largest economies actually benefits some other players (Russia) in the long run. If there is secret cooperation between Trump and Putin, could this be one of the areas. It would explain to me why Trump is taking positions that are against our interests. It may all be about Trumps ego, but what if not and there is a grand vision, just not an American one.
China is accused of IP theft by everyone including Mr. Friedman. This is ridiculous in this age of open source. Also, American companies gave their IP away to Chinese companies when they started their operation in China.
I was at Lucent Technology in late 1990s and we were told that China and India are important because these two countries had billion people each that provided huge market for our product.
In reality all our jobs were sent to these two countries. India or China markets were never opened up. However CEOs and stock holders were happy because corporate profit soared when manufacturing moved to China and software services moved to India. They never had to justify the original reason behind their overseas operation.
We accuse Huawei of theft. They have twice as many 5G patents as their US competitor Qualcomm.
If we are looking for the culprit then we have to look at US corporations, who were granted all the citizenship rights by our venerable Supreme Court.
346
@M Alem
Really, really well said. You speak from personal experience and with authority - "We have seen the enemy...and they are we."
20
@M Alem ...You get the facts right. Peter Navarro went on CNBC & FOX reciting his list of 7-sins of China trade policy after DOW dropped more than 700 points. With this China-hawk whispering in the ear of the white supremacist, it's more about promoting Yellow Peril Red-Scare to Trump's voters, many are farmers going broke. Friedman and others gladly follow the same script. China scare is easy to sell in USA, it's the only topic that unites GOP & Democrats.
11
@Observer The China threats are real; it's just the solutions that Trump chose that is flawed.
6
One thing the Chinese do well- they steal good ideas and pump out the results in vast quantities. I can't wait to see what they do with the best idea of the last 4 years- the Russian hacking of the presidential election. If the Chinese decide they want Trump gone, they will go into overdrive on anti-Trump propaganda. Not only is it easy to do, it has already been proven to work. And Trump has done nothing to protect himself, because like the French in the second world war, he's still fighting the first one.
243
@Jim The Chinese don't want Trump gone. He is single handedly destroying American soft power that took a hundred years to create.. What more could they ask for without firing a shot!
19
@Jim
Thank you for that review. And I, too, believe there is a possiblity that China will go all-social media with an anti-Trump campaign in the hopes of a new American president with whom they can negotiate.
Of course, if a Democrat DOES take the WH, she/he will have to show strength as well as a willingness to discuss those trade issues. In negotiations, no one gets everything but everyone gets something; this is what Trump fails to understand.
6
Of course this reckless trade war is driven by the outsize egos of both Trump and Xi. But Mr. Friedman is wrong in asserting that Trump is "overplaying his hand". Trump's reckless actions have and most certainly will continue to hurt this country. No doubt there, but Trump's support remains solid. His voters are still in lockstep with him.
Now, Mr. Krugman is also right that Trump has never articulated what a "win" is. This is because Trump doesn't have the intellectual capacity to grasp the consequences of his actions. But again, Trump understands that his voters don't care about this, either.
And Dr. Friedman ignores the "win" that Trump is giving his base here. No doubt his actions in starting this reckless trade war have disproportionately affected them, but as long as he continues targeting non-whites, Trump's base will take this deal every single day. As long as Trump is "sticking it" to the Chinese, the Koreans, the Mexicans, or any other non-white people, his base is thrilled. All they see is the theater of the strong white man putting non-whites in their place - this is all they care about, and they'll pay the price of his stupidity every single day, and come back for more.
Mr. Friedman and other reputable journalists need to stop writing serious columns about this president's "policies", as if he were a decent, sane, intelligent, qualified man. He is none of these things. But he is exactly what his base wants, and to him, this is the only "win" he needs.
631
@Rick Deckard
Trump's push goes beyond racism to include right-wing religious desires of fighting back the LGBTQ, women's empowerment, and abortion-rights, not to mention the perceived horror of "socialism."
60
@Rick Deckard The nationalism of Trump and his supporters is not necessarily racism. It's more provincialism. "America first!" means us against the entire world, including white European countries. It's "us against them," whoever "they" may be.
6
@Rick Deckard. interesting point. but people support trump not out of racial animus, no matter how hard the media tries to tell you so, but out of fear that democrats will do what they promise to do, destroy us economically.
The Trump Effect: to create chaos in every aspect of life, throughout the world, without and logic, anticipated outcomes or empathy for those who will be impacted.
7
The entire trade war was initiated by Trump. The Chinese simply retaliated with every tariff imposed or raised. I do not see Xi's ego in the trade war, only Trump's ignorance and incompetence. Trump continues to be advised by a half-baked economist, Peter Navarro. Navarro's best known work as an economist is a hysterical and sensationalist piece called "Death by China".
5
So far only criticism from the talking heads, the stock market is chugging along, employment at all time highs, the public yawns, until the bump in the road turns into an abyss Tom sounds like just another anti-Trumper. Neither side will blink: and how do you define blink?
Will the stock market dip a few thousand points in a few days? Huge currency swings?
This trade war seems irrelevant, this is until it’s not.
"But don’t be fooled. Trump and President Xi Jinping of China are still locked in a cage match over who is the true big dog in today’s global economy."
Boys will be boys. and if they wreck the planet in their enthusiasm, who will remain to complain?
Tom, we all need to view Trump’s economic actions with cynicism. We know he is dishonest (to put it mildly). I believe he is manipulating the economy for the benefit of wealthy friends and himself. Should we doubt that Trump’s latest tariff delay was not shared with wealthy friends, the Saudi’s, or maybe even the Russians and Chinese? His tactic is obvious. Threaten tariffs and interest rates drop( if you have a heads up, money can be made).Remove or delay tariffs and the stock market goes up(even more money can be made). Beat up the fed or label China currency manipulators and markets move.We are being played. Time to get the NYT skilled journalists to find out all of Trump’s friends who are profiting with the market swings.Plus congress should get on it ASAP.
8
Trump overplaying his hand assumes Trump has a hand rather than an out of control hammer. Some incoherent notions concerning trade and tariffs do not constitute a hand as it is understood in a card game. There is no strategy and only spur of the moment tactics sprouting out of a brain incapable of grasping what it is dealing with. Anything positive coming out of negotiations with China will happen purely by accident. The chances of that happening are minuscule.
A president like ours who seeks to crush the rules at home to become an effective king cannot comprehend much less enforce rules in the larger world of global trade.
Our ship of state heads into a cyclone and our captain thinks he can change the winds and the oceans by just willing so. It worked very poorly for Captain Edward Smith (RMS Titanic) and will work just as well for our captain.
“But beyond that, relying solely on the tariffs hammer is a mistake. Tariffs hurt U.S. consumers and farmers as much as Chinese manufacturers, which is why Trump just blinked, and they have unintended consequences.”
When the NYT columnists are wrong, they are really wrong!
Trump didn’t blink but was stabbed in the back like Julius Caeser was by all of his closest aids.
Everybody betrayed Trump – the free press, the Congress, the big corporations concerned for their profits, the shoppers, the consumers, the GOP, the Democrats, and frankly said, all the citizens.
Nobody is willing to personally sacrifice so in the very end all of us are going to lose. If it only matters who can produce the things cheaper, we will continue importing the Chinese goods till our wages are equal to theirs. Expect the long, steady and slow bleeding till we finally lose our vigor because we are too lazy to work hard and take a hit for the team.
Trump wanted to implement the basic principle of the Obamacare or the European style health care - to support those in a dire need, all the citizens should chip in a little.
The president wanted to protect the manufacturing workers at the minimal expense to all the consumers.
We have betrayed both America and the workers.
One day they will come for our jobs too, have no doubt about it!
Trump is an egomaniac and compulsive liar but all he does isn’t a priori wrong or crazy.
That’s just your bias.
"In his confusion, Trump has never spelled out what he considers “victory” in the trade war with China..."
But he has spelled it out. He has defined victory as "winning". This translates into him signaling to his base of supporters that he is a strong leader (in the ways that they define strength). Namely, belligerence, never admitting wrongdoing, and acting impulsively with your chest puffed out.
Tom, I wish you (and plenty of others) would stop calling our country “America.” We’re “Of America.” Arrogant and I assume grating to everyone else in this hemisphere. The adjective “American” is unavoidable. But “the U.S.” and “USA” can almost always be quite usable nouns that have worked for me for 40 years. My understanding is that calling the U.S. “America” began only 100-125 years ago.
1
Again, another NYT columnist thinking that Trump has a strategy for something. His only does what he thinks will gives him power and make money. Whether it makes sense, is hypocritical, or illegal are all irrelevant.
Sheesh, look at his lifelong record as a failure. Like the media did with W, stop trying to make these people into something they're not -- competent.
5
If American were educated equally and we had been investing in a competitively educated society especially in STEM we would not have this situation because we would not have Trump. We have our own types of oppression here and the result is a lazy uninformed country. I have to think there are always going to be trump types lurking but think about who went to the polls and elected him president.
America is a lot of what Sasha Cohen showed us. That is what we must change in the next two generations. Trade idiocy is just another symptom of this bigger problem. A largely uneducated unengaged electorate.
7
Trump is a bully who depends on crushing other people to make himself feel like a winner. Unfortunately for him and his fragile ego, China is too large to crush. By choosing to alienate allies by punishing them with tariffs also, Trump took a huge bargaining chip off the table. Meanwhile, Putin is thrilled that the two largest economies in the world are at loggerheads, deliberately hurting both their economies. With the world’s focus and worry about a possible recession caused by economic instability, Putin continues to employ his army of hackers to create disinformation campaigns that undermine democracy and governmental stability throughout the world, including the US. We need a real statesman who understands global threats as president, not a reality show charlatan whose knowledge of and interest in the global economy is limited only to what makes millions of dollars for the Trump Organization.
2
Trump's problem in all of this is layered. A deep layer is that, as George Will expressed it some time ago, Trump not only doesn't know, he doesn't know how to know. Willful ignorance and shallow thinking will be rife with unintended consequences. The next layer is laden with Trump's lack of credibility. He can turn on a dime and call a failure success but who believes him? Integrity, honesty and responsibility are not just great ideals we should all aspire to but are the essence of viable relationships in politics and good business practice. Name calling, petty stupid charges and turning on a dime hardly make for a trustworthy leader or good outcomes.
Bullying as a negotiating tactic may have worked for Trump in real estate, but it's a silly and fruitless way of negotiating international agreements, especially trade!
1
The fundamental problem with the trade negotiations is Trump’s global reputation as a proven liar.
What rational person organization would negotiate with a reflexive liar ?
This fact makes all finer details immaterial.
The only recourse for negotiators is to stall and await Trump’s departure from power.. They will reluctantly take the pain since there is no practical alternative for them.
Consider the this question : Would you buy a used car from Trump ?
QED !
2
Friedman is completely correct here. Saving face is important to both men. They need to find a win-win solution that both can brag about at home.
2
There's something I wish I could put in the president's ear:
Maybe you could come up with a way to get the US back into the TPP. Maybe get some minor changes made to it and pass it off as a revised agreement that you really put your stamp on. You tried that cheap trick with NAFTA and it looks like your base let you get away with it.
So try it again. It would really help with the China problem.
2
I'm sure that Trump is basing his policies on carefully thought-out strategy devised by the best experts in global economics while informed by his deep knowledge and critical thinking. He is a voracious reader and I'm certain he stays up all night reading scholarly books and papers and has thus collated all the best arguments and policy implications in his big brain. Remember, the stable genius knows all the best words.
6
Perhaps the largest problem is that we are watching two dueling, xenophobic, leaders duke it out in a winner-take-all global reality show.
Donald Trump sees the world in very simple, black or white terms, literally it seems, and figuratively. He is an impulsive leader, given to immediate gratification of both ego and body.
Xi, and the Chinese generally, on the other hand, take the long view, patiently marching forward, figuratively and literally, throughout history, foregoing the immediate win for a longer, more permanent one.
What we are left with is two national leaders who operate on different planes which, for now at least, don't seem to intersect.
Donald Trump spent his life building buildings but not bridges. The Chinese long spent their resources building walls but not doors.
Neither, for now, appears interested in building a better world. Theirs is not a recipe for mutually assured success, but of selfishly precipitated failure, the price of which will be paid by the people of both countries, while their leaders continue to play chicken on the world stage.
4
Trump is dangerous on so many levels but what really stands out to me he actually thinks he is smarter than he is. He seeks no advice or consul as a result. The world is a complicated place with various competing interests always in play, Trump simply does not understand this, he is a simple minded person demanding simple solutions to complex problems. This scenario never ends well.
6
“I don’t buy the argument that China has found a magic formula for making political repression, state control over large sections of the economy and innovation all work together for the long haul.”
This is such a biased statement ignorant of the truth and the facts.
If your standard of living improves every single day, would you be happy or brand it as the political repression?
If your leaders are telling you the truth and ask for your personal sacrifice, is that the political repression?
If your candidates keep lying on the campaign trail by giving you the false promises they can’t fulfill “because the Congress wouldn’t let them do it”, isn’t that very wrong?
If the state effectively controls the media outlets and prevents them from the cheap sensationalism, obsession with completely irrelevant topics, idolization of the delusional celebrities, brainwashing bombardment with the endless commercials including advertisement of the drugs, alcohol and smoking, or despicable inflammation of hatred, antagonism and bias for the sake of ratings, is that good or bad?
What did China do a quarter of century ago? It learned from us the basic economic principles and implemented those at home to make their lives better.
The question is whether we can learn anything from China or we are going to pretend that we are dramatically better than them.
Is there anything useful we could learn as a society and improve ourselves or we are just the perfect human beings?
2
This article fails to point out that Xi can simply wait Trump out.
The 2020 election is coming soon.
Worst case scenario, Xi has to deal with Trump in 2021 -- which is exactly where he is now, anyway.
Note: I'm omitting the obvious consideration that Trump's presidency, though technically legal, is, in every other respect, a blatant joke.
1
Can anyone explain why, in this country, there has been almost no discussion of Trump's move to abandon PPT and keep that decision under wraps? Is it the "shiny object" theory, that Trump keeps us in the dark with his daily lying, obfuscating, and outrageous comments?
Probably the biggest deficit the Trump presidency has created for this country is in terms of the lack of policy rigor - the lack of openness of policy discussion, and serious consideration about what he actually does and has done,
It is the dumbing down of America in terms of how the country is being governed.
3
The question becomes, "can trump (lower case "t" is intentional) and Xi negotiate a mutually agreeable solution so that they can both claim victory?"
Given their large egos and political issues in their respective countries, neither one can afford to be a "loser."
Fascinating negotiations to be continued.
If the name of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is simply changed to the Trump-Pacific Partnership, Trump would sign it, throw himself a Twitter parade and the Trump-made crisis would be resolved.
Please proceed, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
Your boss will not know the difference.
4
I've read it five times and can't tell ... what does this mean?:
(What’s truly crazy is that Trump hasn’t explained to the world that his team has actually been demanding that China change its laws, to make some of its worst trade abuses illegal, which would actually benefit every country that trades with China.)
Are you saying Trump isn't doing a good enough job explaining how good his team is doing for everyone's benefit in requiring China to limit its cheating?
Xi will be around for years, Trump for months, Xi is killing American farmers, Trump is spouting empty promises, Trump backed off for holiday retail sales (he just thought of it), Xi doesn't care, Trump is irrational, Xi will wait another few months, but Trump doesn't understand this yet. The fix is in, the outcome predictable, Xi will negotiate with the next administration while Trump fumes and tweets.
We should quietly make clear that any violent crackdown on the Hong Kong protesters will result in not just an acceleration in this trade war. But TOTAL trade war. Cripple the sellout western companies who invested in China by slapping 500 % tariffs on ALL Chinese goods.
Turns out that Tom's Flat Earth has developed a few ruts and potholes over the years.
President Nixon went to China overlooking its communism. And China took advantage of the US just like a communist nation. Now you have a President who has not been an active Republican Party member earlier. The party more than the country is overlooking this. It shows lip service, with a lot of pretension and little conviction.
Not only is Mr Friedman unassailable in his economic analyses, but he has the rarest of gifts for an economist- a sense of humor, even in the grimmest of times. The title of his piece, caused a misdirection of the coffee I was drinking at the time.
What a very sneaky move on Trump's part to suspend those tariffs which involve toy buying for Christmas. He wouldn't want to upset your lower and middle class consumer with higher prices at a time of the year which involves indulging children. Unfortunately the magical time will soon pass and the tariff war will resume with a vengeance
Just curious: how much money does the Trump organization owe the Chinese? Would we need to see Dirty Don's income tax returns for a precise idea?
I would be loathe to use the word "collusion," and Dirty Don seems to have cornered the market on conspiracy theories. But I'd also like to know the extent to which Xi is orchestrating, behind the scenes, the "on again off again" love affair between the current tenant of the White House and Kim Jong-un.
Who can remember all the way back to Trumpie's first address to the UN, when he threatened to "totally destroy" "Rocket Man?"
1
This whole thing is truly pathetic. All past administrations, both Democratic & Republican have failed with regards to China. Democracies and Communism are like oil and water; they don’t mix easily. You can shake them into what appears to be reality, but once that settles out, it’s still clearly Oil & Water.
Simply stating things like “Why can’t THEY see the light?” is like trying to convince a Republican that a Democratic idea is better and vise-versa!
China and the U.S. need to understand that together, we could do some pretty amazing things. We could actually make this planet a much better place to live in. One way to accomplish this would be if it were discovered that a huge Asteroid were headed for our planet and all the nations of the world had to work together to divert it. So far, no such Asteroid appears to be heading this way.
We can’t remove Xi, but hmmmmm... 2020 has some other possibilities.
1
Why don't we form a group with all the other countries who do business with China, and negotiate as a single block? We could call it "The Trans Pacific Partnership"!
1
Trump reminds me of my cat and the way cats behave! Cats have servants whereas dogs have masters. He's also playing around with this tariff thing like it is a cat tossing around a mouse.
1
It’s sad that Trump repeats himself over and over. First the negotiations and then the entrapment and belittling of his negotiating adversaries. Make absolutely sure they have zero political options and then press them for what they WILL NOT RELENT ON no matter what. Same strategy with Iran. Same policy with Mexico and Canada. So far same result. Zero!
So, the “Conservative” position is that Big Government has to prevent American corporations — who knew and know full well that their intellectual property will be stolen—from being free to choose to do business with China? So, greed isn’t good and anti business regs from Central Control are?
Meanwhile, being buddies with Putin—who continues to hack our elections because Russia dearly wants to “Make America Great Again”— is what our swaggering Big Government is doing.
What are the guiding principles of the Republican Party, again?
2
Trump has the delusion that he and he alone can reconfigure the world economy to be under his thumb. Trump may control the levers of our economic and military power but there are many nations in the world with many egos out there who want to win. Trump has been acting as the bully of the world and no doubt has made a lot of enemies and if the opportunity for payback comes they will do so with a passion. Trump fawns over dictators as he wants to run America as a dictator but we are a democracy and he could lose his 2020 re-election and become a nobody again.Trump lies about most things and backs away from deals as he sees fir who would want to make a deal with a guy who has stiffed contractors and had 6 bankruptcies and settled 25 milion $ fraud. President Xi is president for life and can make authoritarian decisions to control his economy Trump has to answer to his oligarchs and if economy takes a dip he is out of office.
What an excellent analysis by Mr. Friedman. Trump's obsession with the trade deficit, which he points out is largely driven by massive US budget deficits and our living beyond our means, is moronic. In fact, Trump has exploded the deficit and is massively compounding the problem.
By essentially ignoring the truly illegal and underhanded economic tools China uses against competitors from around the world, Trump is in essence enabling China and Xi.
Yet this is never discussed in the media most Trump supporters devour. They remain oblivious to this reality and continue to support their own version of Chauncey Gardiner, albeit one without integrity.
1
Trump has shown he can break a lot of things—the TPP, trade with China and Canada and Mexico and potentially the EU, the US debt, relationships between Americans, respect of our former allies, the global environment, respect for America, the health care system, the global trading rules, etc. All the things republicans hate.
The question is whether he can create anything, build anything, negotiate a deal with anyone. So far we know that there are no examples in the past two and a half years. But he has 5-1/2 years to go. We will pretty much know the final answer when he becomes a lame duck in 2022.
Trump’s weakness is that he has no one to pass the blame for his failures. Xi can blame Trump and America for everything. We are China’s Great Satan. Their people are being taught to hate the US. Another Russia or Iran, but far more powerful. Death to America now in Chinese
Will this MAGA? We will see
1
Thank you Mr. Friedman for yet another incisive analysis. djt and his crew of misfits have perpetrated massive damage to the good name and credit of the US. China is a clear and present danger, but also not without very significant problems: social and cultural unrest, massive ecological uncertainty (unprecedented pollution of air, water, and soil), and massive debt. The events in Hong Kong will not go unnoticed in the rest of China.
One threat that supersedes all others is climate change. If we are lucky, we can have functioning civilizations worldwide that can finally cooperate in thwarting the worst outcomes. The window is no more than 10-15 years. If not, none of the above really matters.
djt should have never been President, but it is a sad fact. He must be voted out of office.
5
“Trump should have signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which would have aligned the 12 biggest Pacific economies, excluding China, behind U.S.-designed global trading rules. Then he should have lined up the European Union countries, which suffer the same trade problems with China as we do, on our side. And then he should have told the Chinese we wanted to negotiate, out of the public eye, a new set of reciprocal trade arrangements: Whatever access Chinese companies received in the TPP and E.U. markets, we would get the same in China.”
I’m just an average guy, yet I thought the above as soon as TPP was conceived. Our survival as a nation depends on having highly intelligent, moral, and ethical leadership. Since Trump is none of those, his leadership is, frankly, frightening. Trump is a terrible negotiator and strategist, who seems more interested in ad hominem tweets, grift,and golf than well reasoned policy. Trump touted how tariffs were pouring billions into government coffers and not hurting consumers. Now he’s suspending some tariffs to “help consumers during the Christmas season.” Guess the light bulb lit up, if only dimly. 2020 can’t come soon enough.
4
China is losing control of its Yuan. Right now it's trading at 7:1 with the dollar. When it goes to 14:1 we will see a tsunami crashing on our shores and the tariffs will become tidbits.
1
The biggest problem with Donald J. Trump is that he almost always shoots from the hip without any thinking. He is still living in his own mind the ghost written book 'The Art of the Deal'. It is always about him and never about the greater cause or establishing a lasting legacy. It really bewilders me each and every day how he became the leader of our country.
8
The biggest threat to world peace is our general paranoia that we are losing our grip on being the stand-alone leader of the world and the leader of China being an autocrat instead of someone trying to build a democracy for the billions of people in China. This was not Chairman Mao's plan.
The U.S. talks the talk that all men are created equal, but we do not always walk the walk, with our own citizens and within the world community. Due to this paranoia, we the people elected an incompetent and immoral leader. The remainder of the world has taken notice and concluded that we can no longer be relied on to always do the right thing. The free world no longer has a leader that all support, let alone everyone within the United States.
Mr. Friedman gives too much credit to Trump for being in the same arena as Xi Jinping. While Trump and the United States are thinking about the next election, the leader of China is thinking about the next decade and beyond.
Xi Jinping's biggest error is it does not sink in that the citizens of China are watching how he is handling Hong Kong. If he can use force to clamp down on Hong Kong he can use that same force to further clamp down on the people in mainland China. Yes he controls the army, however will the army find it acceptable to slaughter its citizens? I don't think so.
2
Decisions made from the highest authority in the most powerful country in the world have consequences, seen and unseen, knowable and unknowable. Most leaders in that position, before making such decisions want to know the consequences, as much as possible and to be able to foresee countermeasures that could come in reaction to the decisions that are made.
Trump obviously does not make decisions using his brain, he refuses to read anything and consumes his "information" about the world from Fox & Friends, which charitably is only a right wing commentary on the news, not the news itself. Rather, Trump says he decides things using his "gut", meaning, I suppose his instinct.
The track record for his instinctual decision making is not so great. 9 bankruptcies and a cadre of hangers on whose duty is to clean up the messes left by his gut made decisions.
The issue with China trade policy, as Friedman writes, has consequences, it has legs and a misstep now will have consequences, foreseeable now and probably unforeseen that will be adverse to US interests and with which we will have to deal, down stream in an expensive way.
But this is the price that we pay for a President whose "style" is to be a lone wolf, to go it alone, to not seek out alliances, even where alliances are needed. The United States of America is destined now to be Trump's 10th bankruptcy, and like the prior 9, he will walk away counting his money leaving those who trusted him in a smoldering ruin.
3
The US needs to do what China has done: adopt a national industrial policy that amounts to collective bargaining. For example, Congress could create laws restricting technology transfers. That sounds like meddling, but that's because we assume businesses would oppose it. On the contrary, American industries need to negotiate in concert, and, under our anti-trust laws, Congress is where they go to bind their own hands for their mutual benefit.
Likewise, the US should impose retaliate against Chinese rules in kind by restricting investment of foreign assets in US real and, to a lesser extent, corporate assets. Debt, sure. But land and IP and equity not so much.
In short, China is "winning" because its businesses work together as a consequence of their system. We must match that power in our way.
2
America was a super-power the displaced strivers were the backbone of our wealth and power. This has morphed into American greed, money controls everything. China is on the threshold of becoming a super-power, they have the technology, drive, and people.
This last election, with the help of Russia, pushed us to return to both white Nationalism and the return to the 1950s, remember "father knows best". But the truth is that America is done, thanks again to American greed. The monied Americans want their money and control of maintaining that power. This was achieved with the takeover of our Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. This has been the game, the American public is nothing more than pawns in the game.
1
the US still has the initiative in this battle, as it has for eighty years since the U.S. Navy, by defeating Japan in the Battle of Midway, became the de facto protector of not only the Pacific Ocean, but all the worlds sea lanes, shipping all the world's merchandise, including that of its largest exporter, China.
Japan, China, the E.U. Saudi Arabia have always tacitly paid for this protection, racket you might call it, by subsidizing America's military with holdings of large US dollar reserves, giving it the world's lowest interest rates, and control of the world's financial system.
the US dollar dominated the world with the destruction of the only navy that ever challenged the US in an arena that is half the world - the Pacific Ocean.
1
When has Germany and France ever gone along with the US in a painful action against a foreign adversary? They know they can follow their own narrow trade interests and the US will absorb the pain of any difficult confrontation.
3
@Sam Yeager
If somebody teaches you what in your best interest is, they are not your adversaries but the friends.
Mr. Friedman,
I agree with your op-ed, but it does not go far enough. You tell us what Trump should have done. Agreed. But that does not tell what he should do now. Can TPP be resurrected with changes to work and environmental standards? Can he get EU countries to work with us? If not, what action should he take?
5
@JSM TPP is done, it cannot be resurrected because the countries that depended on us being a part of TPP have already made other arrangements, financially, economically, diplomatically and politically with China. WE had a blank chalk board to write on when TPP was done. Now that chalk board has on it one big word 'CHINA' To get back to where we were, pre-Trump, now you have to get back to the blank chalkboard and China does not erase easily.
The problem that Trump is trying to solve is this: China (and, by extension, state-owned Chinese enterprises) earn a huge trade surplus in their dealings with US and Europe. They then turn around and use that to build economic (and strategic) assets in Africa, middle-east, latin america, even australia. Unless that spigot is turned off, American influence in the rest of the world will hollow out. Tariffs will disrupt supply chains - US and Europe are large markets which will continue to need product and it would be much better for US and Europe to send their cash to those "rest of the world" countries directly - even if it means that the consumers and businessess here will need to pay a little more for the product than they would if they import from China. The issue with China is not jobs or currency manipulation or even IP theft; it is trade surplus leading to loss of global influence. The people and small businesses that support Trump dont understand this either - but they are willing to follow the leader like lemmings.
The TPP would have helped solve this trade surplus and global influence problem - but, like Obamacare, it was too closely identified with Obama for it to be continued under Trump.
So, he is trying the next best way - tariffs and trade war - and losing.
4
The bigger point that is missed here is the autocrat leader of China should be facing an American team comprised of seasoned diplomats, economists and the U.S. Congress.
He's facing the American autocrat, and one totally lacking all requisite skills.
Look out world economies, we're trump's casino now!
8
Trump blinked - that’s clear. Although what isn’t completely clear is what he’ll do next.
The farmers have been bought off but China is finding other markets for what they used to buy from them. Manufacturers that make things for Christmas shoppers might take a breath but others are still in trouble. My local flooring guy has seen prices go up a few times on many of his most popular items because of the tariffs - those prices were passed on to him and to his customers.
But the market soared so Trump is happy but let’s not forget he BLINKED.
5
Xi won. Trump capitulated yesterday. After all China pays the tariff/tax. That’s what Trump said. So why would this have any impact on consumer prices during the Christmas shopping season.
Or could it be that Trump’s lies have caught up with him.
Xi won.
9
“There was another way: Trump should have signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which would have aligned the 12 biggest Pacific economies, excluding China, behind U.S.-designed global trading rules. Then he should have lined up the European Union countries, which suffer the same trade problems with China as we do, on our side. And then he should have told the Chinese we wanted to negotiate, out of the public eye, a new set of reciprocal trade arrangements: Whatever access Chinese companies received in the TPP and E.U. markets, we would get the same in China.”
Let’s understand the problem!
Even if all of the aforementioned were implemented, it would have been irrelevant.
Even if the playing field were perfectly leveled, the truth remains that their team has several times more players with the dramatically lower wages.
If you start playing with them, the outcome is predetermined – you are going to lose.
The only solution is not to play at all.
Impose the balanced trade system and the import tariffs equal to the trade imbalance.
Of course, it’s painful to the consumers and the business bottom line, but it’s far less harmful than losing the trade war and all the jobs...
1
@Kenan Porobic I agree with you except that the tariffs don't necessarily have to hurt US consumers. For example, with the imposition of tariffs, China firms will have to absorb them( by lowering prices) or face the potential of losing markets to US competitors. Also,the tariffs plus the new US corporate rate which is now lower than China's incentivize US multinationals to relocate their manufacturing back here. For these reasons, I was disappointed that Trump relented on the tariff increases. Meanwhile, this nostalgia for the TPP, etc is misplaced as it would have been unnecessarily unwieldy for not much additional benefit; China and US have by far the most significant trade flows which needs to be dealt with directly rather than tangentially.
1
@Kenan Porobic - your math does not seem to work! By suggesting that imposing tariffs equal to the trade deficit, we will somehow eliminate the trade deficit? How does that work? How can that work? Can you please think thru and explain?
Instead, in order to reduce the trade deficit, you have to "stop" imports of items equal to the value of that deficit - so, do the sort of rationing which developing countries do. Say to importers that "you have to go buy export credits equal to the value of the imports you want to make (from China)". Imposing a 10% tariff on items does nothing to stop that
@ansuwanee
Fair question!
As you know from personal experience, the problem with the excessive shopping is that you sooner or later run out of the money.
Imagine that we have run the trade deficits of $1 trillion per year for two decades. It means that $20 trillion would have left the US economy thus bringing it to the screeching halt.
It means the chronic federal budget deficits and the colossal national debt are the only way to artificially maintain the free trade system on life support. There is direct relationship between the free trade and the national debt.
Of course that by imposing the import fees we would eliminate the trade deficits. Why do we have the trade deficits? The companies moved the manufacturing capacities abroad because of the lower wages to maximize their profits. If we imposed the import fees equal to the savings stemming from the cheaper labor and the trade deficits, there is no incentive for the importers to buy the goods abroad.
They can manufacture in America and be protected from their technology being stolen by the Chinese government. The only reason why they exported the industrial base overseas is because their local competitors did the same.
If nobody can profit from the cheap Chinese labor, everybody will manufacture here in the USA.
I worked in an industry that is entirely dependent on its intellectual property and quality control.
The moment the ink was dry on our company's contract with a Chinese partner, both of those points of control were gone. I can't blame our management- they were promised access to Chinese markets, and every one of our competitors were working on the same premise of cost cutting by access to a cheap labor source.
But, we surely should have known that we were dealing with pirates. And pirates do what pirates do. To have assumed any business scruples was pure fantasy.
US companies can complain about IP theft, and that occurs. But if we really look where our IP went, we'll discover that we have a contract with pirates that was willingly signed.
You can't recover what you've given away.
10
I agree with the whole opinion, but if Trump goes international, as he should, his America first rhetoric won’t work with his base. The main problem is that both presidents are more concerned about their own image and ego than they are concerned about their countries.
9
@Ferrando
The problem with rejoining TPP is that Trump would have to admit that President Obama had the correct approach all along to dealing with China’s unfair trade practices.
He would rather see the country suffer under an ineffective approach than admit his error.
9
The Bard wrote: ill blows the wind that benefits no one. Am I alone in wondering who is getting rich with these manufactured swings in the stock market?
16
Good piece, but the idea that the TPP plus Europe would make us stronger in negotiations with China is by no means a given. China could easily peel off a portion of the TPP participants, putting pressure on the US to make bad deal.
1
It makes me wonder whether Don Jr. and the other courtier-billionaires in Trump's inner circle are using their inside information about the continual about-faces on these tariffs to day-trade their way into big profits in the market.
Insider-trading by members of Congress was only recently banned. Given the Trumps' cronies', cabinet officials, and family members' casual relationship with legalities , ethics and compulsive lies --there's an opportunity for a journalistic investigation.
30
@John C I think you give Sr. too much credit and Jr. way too much credit. While no one questions the unscruplousness of these pirates, neither has the intellect, the foresight, or even the basic math skills to conduct such a scheme.
The explanation for these now daily tariff machinations is that Sr. has no plan, no understanding, doesn't really care about anything except being "loved" by others for that days bloviations
Trump will not ask for his allies help in this because he knows what the price of that help will be, namely no trade war against them. His allies, on the other hand, know that even if he promises that he may not keep his promise. Remember: it's "America First" not "America and friends First"
17
Trump's public grandstanding and accusatory rhetoric is totally contrary to the more constrained, private approach to negotiations the Chinese prefer. Trump's lack of cultural sensitivity has caused Chinese leadership and people to lose "face". As Jack Ma, former CEO of Ali Baba said, "it will now take 20 years or more to rebuild trust between China and the US". Very good work Trump. I'm sure you've made Putin even happier than he was when you were elected.
32
@Ronald J Kantor Ma's statement about trust between China and the US is laughable. As it should now be obvious to anybody paying attention, that "trust" flowed in one direction. To paraphrase "Animal House", China to US:" You screwed up, you trusted us."
1
@Ronald J Kantor
Well, that is Trump's goal, keep Putin happy.
If you believe that the Trump Administration has launched the war on science, it means you haven’t met any liberal yet.
Their bias is really dangerous.
Let’s start with AOC. She is at age of 29 but would lecture the entire world. Do you know when we should trust her? When she hires the teenager aids and personally implements her own credo that experience doesn’t matter.
But, as a proof that the age doesn’t equal wisdom just look at the NYT columnists. None of them correctly predicted the outcome of the Iraq War, the Great Recession, the danger created by export of the US manufacturing base overseas or the total cost for our support for the worst dictatorial and undemocratic regimes in the Middle East.
Wrong on everything, but nothing can change them!
Of course, they are wrong on the China trade too.
The question is why.
They don’t believe in science. They prefer the economics over the mathematics although two of them provide us with diametrically opposite conclusions.
The mathematics is the mother of all science. The economics is basically founded on the human emotions, or translated in the economic lingo - the market.
There is no free trade. The real trade is exchange of the goods. The free trade consist of the trade and the shopping.
We will keep buying from China. For how long?
Till we run out of money.
The problem is that we are losing our jobs and income because the things can be manufactured cheaper in China.
The mathematic principles never lie.
3
@Kenan Porobic
People are only too young and inexperienced when they say things with which older people disagree.
@John C
The people can be stupid regardless of their age or experience.
The problem with AOC is that she is requesting more benefits without directly connected tax increases necessary to pay for what she is demanding.
She is protesting against the status quo by being a member of the political party directly responsible for the current conditions.
If she truly wanted the real change, she would have started another political organization.
But, nobody wants to build from the ground up. The want it served on a silver plate. They want the rest of country to be in the awe of their wisdom and intelligence.
They have never thought for a second that we already tried what they demand and that it failed.
While the US undoubtedly has a case Trump has completely mishandled the situation by turning the whole issue into a public spitting competition dictated by internal US politics. He's already lost as the latest U turn on tariffs demonstrates which has left him negotiating with himself. When he first threatened these tariffs it was going to be 25%; then it was reduced to 10%; now it's going to be 10% on half of them with opportunities for appeals and waivers.
The master deal maker is in reality in way over his head.
31
You rather be Trump than Xi and, I get it. But calling anything a win will not fix the situation or will not give us the world leadership we had and handed to China when we walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
As for Trump, he'd rather be Xi. Totalitarianism and the institutional mechanisms to control a country is much more appealing to Trump than a democracy with systems of checks and balances which he tries to bypass or destroy. Trump would feel very comfortable dealing with conflict.
We have to try to do the things you point out. That will be with a different Administration. We will also have serious damage control ahead of us.
18
The votes that put Trump over the top were votes to tear it all down. He may just accomplish that before we get rid of him.
13
To be clear ,this tariff abatement shows that Trump cares more about Wall Street( corporate stocks and profits) than Main Street(farmers and consumers). Can't be simpler than that.
17
Mr. Xi has the advantage of walking President Trump right up to his need for re election. If the trade wars result in a looming recession Trump will have to either try to get re elected with a recession on his shift or bow to Mr. Xi's wishes. And Mr. Xi will be in no rush to negotiate.
24
I think one of Trump's many problems is that he is only concerned with now. He cannot, or probably refuses to, consider long term problems such as climate change, his legacy, the future of democracy and a future successful global economy. He must have immediate gratification, current victories and, at all cost, a second term in office. He recently "blinked" as you note, only because of the instant stock market chaos. Certainly, his advisers told him his tariff positions might trigger a major shock to the market which would harm his re-election chances. Trump is the consummate snake oil salesman. Convince the public to accept his lies knowing he will be gone when the nation or the world explodes.
19
History tells us that there is an unspoken truth, China will one day become the largest economy. That history is our history before the great wars. Our population was growing, our economy booming, our innovation leaping and our economy becoming what China's is today, the manufacturing hub of the Western world. Our system won and we saved Europe twice in 30 years. After that we became the Hegemon, not before. So China will become the greatest economy but that won't make them the Hegemon, unless we fail to anneal their culture with ours somehow. We succeeded with Japan and South Korea, why not China? There is nuance to that because we pounded Japan and don't fear S. Korea, but China will be a different case with 4+ times our population, and a people with obvious talent. Xi may be a flawed leader, perhaps more than T, but he has time on his side. Winning might be a Pyrrhic victory, losing may be as bad. The war was strategically bad.
10
Whenever I see the phrase "economists keep saying..." I know what's coming next is wrong. In this case it's "fiscal deficits, interest rates and my favorite, US consumes more than it produces" wow what a presentation of cluelessness.
Not, of course, a word about the key driver of imbalances, exchange rates. The US consumes more than it produces because massive flows of assets from China into the US drives down borrowing costs and drives up the cost of US production relative to China. Initially, this was official purchases, creating a huge 3 trillion dollar pile of dollar reserves. Lately it's the private sector, logically fleeing domestic markets towards somewhere with transparent regulation and a tolerably fair legal system.
But, not, not because of the hard work of smart people in China, or the slackers in the US. It's not the relative math scores, it's the rigged system that works against American workers. When the regime of "free trade" began after World War II such imbalances would have been inconceivable, floating exchange rates would have seen to that. The system as designed has simply failed.
So sorry opening up markets won't make a dent in the imbalances as long as adjustment mechanisms are broken. I despise Trump. But his instincts on this are right. No amount of traditional negotiations would have resulted in any meaningful change, the regime's survival depends on this rickety platform holding up.
1
Rich,
China is the largest market for many American companies including GM,Boeing, Intel etc. We are only 5 percent of world market. China and India alone are one third of world market. So we need their markets than they need our market. That’s the bottom line.
We are delusional about technology lead. We are behind in renewable energy, high speed rail, super computers, even web2.0 technology. Our lead in defense system is meaningless and neutered by their nukes. But we are bankrupting ourselves by spending unquestionably on defense and tax cuts for the rich.
We should be investing in our weak healthcare system, poor education and infrastructure and not give tax cut after tax cut for the rich.
17
China will always win over the long term because the government doesn't care what the people think or what happens to them. Even trump cares what Americans think. After all he wants to get reelected so he pays off the farmers with handouts to get their vote while he postponed many tariff so they wouldn't upset people before Christmas.
20
@Thomas Renner The Communist party does indeed care what their people think. There are still millions of Chinese lively without the stuff that seems to make Americans happy. The party is well aware of the fact that Chinese workers are capable of putting the country on it's knees. They remember the Cultural Revolution. President Xi, himself, experienced that dark history.
2
"In his confusion, Trump has never spelled out what what he considers 'victory' in the trade war with China, which he initiated and declared to be 'easy' to win."
By using the term "confusion", Mr. Friedman provides a classic example of polite understatement. President Trump does not have a clue as to what he is doing. He is well past the point of deserving the deference of polite understatement.
52
Put aside, for a moment, the fact that Donald Trump does not really understand international trade. He only recently seems to have grasped that tariffs Imposed on China are paid by the American companies who import Chinese products in the form of higher prices and who hope that they can pass those import costs along to consumers by raising prices. The tariffs, therefore, are like taxes on the American people.
The key to aggravating our problems with China, which Thomas Friedman mentions, is the failure of free-trade Republicans and Donald Trump to support signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and Trump’s refusal to stop squabbling with the European Union long enough to form a common trading front against China.
Donald Trump is botching international trade issues and mismanaging the vibrant national economy he inherited from Barack Obama.
He has done poorly, not just out of ignorance. As in everything else he touches, Donald Trump wants to be the hero – the lone gunslinger who solves every problem and earns the accolades of a grateful nation.
Fat chance.
45
@sdw:
In addition to not forming "a common trading front against China," the US' recent plans to exit the Paris accords on global warming are also notable. Alternative energy, like IT and artificial intelligence, is critical to future economic development. And, China is currently a leader and driver of growth in solar energy development. Whereas the US, under the Trump administration, has bet heavily on "fracking" and other fossil fuel development strategies.
Besides skepticism toward forming productive multilateral alliances, these Trump strategies reflect a fixation on an extremely short-run time horizon that heavily discounts the benefits to be garnered from strategies that are more productive over a longer- term time horizon.
In terms of costs versus benefits of Trump's strategies, short term costs and benefits are prioritized, or heavily weighted, with lighter weighting and lower prioritization of longer term costs and benefits. A time prioritization scheme that is much like that of stock and bond markets.
[8/14/2019 W 8:44am Greenville NC]
3
@sdw. Trump never saw a group that he didn’t want to join because he couldn’t make all the decisions or take all the blame and claim all the credit — even if he did little or nothing. He simply doesn’t “play well with others.” Failed in kindergarten and failing in the WH. But will claim victory anyway even if it contradicts reality.
@John Joseph Laffiteau MS in Econ
Everything you write is true and certainly more important from an existential standpoint than the items which I mentioned. Only the limitations of space caused me to focus on the tariffs and trade aspects flagged by Mr. Friedman.
After this dispute is over, the business our farmers, manufacturers, tech companies and other sectors had with China is not coming back to anywhere near the levels it was before. China has now learned that it cannot be dependent on the US for its needs. For example, Brazil and others will grow more soybeans for China to buy (likely clearing out more rainforest to do so).
Much like Trump’s chaotic and haphazard style has infused many aspects of our culture over the past two and a half years, it has also now become a symbol of our dependability (or lack therefor) as a global supplier. The soybean farmer who previously exported 100,000 tons of product will likely see his business permanently cut by 20-30% once the dispute ends. We have taught the Chinese to better diversify their supply base and create greater competition.
Republicans like to say that capitalism is one of our greatest exports. Trump is proving it, unfortunately, by showing the Chinese how to better manage their global supply chain in the future.
60
Trump's mismanagement of the US trade economy and the resulting fall out is akin to what the European aristocracy did to ignite WWI and what the "victorious" Allies did to the middle east in dividing the spoils. Both sets of so called leaders were ego driven and self serving, sending the world on a negative course that has disastrous repercussions to this day. @Jack Sonville
1
Trump plays checkers; Xi plays chess.
1
"At a certain point, the more things change the more they can’t stay the same."
That would be a good phrase in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Because it's happening right at this moment in time. Because we're heading for a U.S. super ethnic race. That former President Obama hoped would not happen. That is happening now with President Donald Trump. Among other countries leaders who believe the day will come when there is a global super ethnic race. In spite of America. In spite of President Donald Trump. And in spite of the American People. Even if a Trade War with China exists only for a short period of time. If it doesn't lead us into a recession before the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Communism vs Capitalism will be at the forefront of business in the U.S. and in other countries that young adults today study about in school. As it was discussed in classrooms in the past.
1
TPP was dead on arrival - while Friedman and others saw an economic alliance, many American businesses and unions and workers saw a formal transfer of more jobs from the US to Asia. As with the Iran deal and the Paris Climate Accord, the Obama administration was uniquely weak and incompetent in arriving at a solution that benefit Americans.
7
No, it would not benefit Americans who still want to live in the 1950’s. However, Americans prepared to live in a globalized 21st century welcomed these agreements. Too many Americans cannot accept change & long for the past. That’s how we ended up with an ignorant president.
1
@Chris - Of course Chris you have read all three of those agreements (TPP, Iran, and Paris) and studied them in detail so that you could give us your highly informed unbiased opinion.
The American far right is uniquely incompetent at understanding but supremely capable at propaganda based on falsehoods.
@Chris which in itself says a lot about the US right now... It's inability to compete internationally due to declines in Its education system, infrastructure and innovation system relative. There is a strong argument that too much US innovation now depends on attracting human capital inwards rather than developing it and that is in danger of coming off the rails as prospective high value immigrants look elsewhere for safety and opportunities. Ultimately the Chinese know the US can't keep spending borrowed money forever (deficits and personal loans) and China knows it needs to develop more innovation or keep things going by nicking it elsewhere until punished... Mind you Chinese people are mearly looking to make money or look good to their bosses too not necessarily appropriate for the Party. Both have serious flaws and showcase a need for investing resources at home to compete abroad. Both need to grow up a little and start thinking long term and check the debt. Most of the US's natural allies are clubbing together and moving away from the US (See EU and RoW trade treaties... with a bit of a under muttered breath to the US by some ), combine to stave off superpowers with egos and rescue the current global model (democratic capitalism) before it gets screwed up. Too many people with short termist opinions now drive policy and not enough hard fact folks. Hopefully both these two hurt themselves badly and leave the rest of the world as untouched as possible to save capitalism
Ignoring basic rules of the international trade and the imperative of keeping global supply chains undistirbed the guerilla trade war Trump and Xi Jinping are fighting leaves no one unscathed as it is always a lose-lose game.
5
Now the president is a businessman, the whole country is in business and trade war as if there is no life without business, trade etc if someday a retired army general became the president then he would think military war is imminent to make and keep America number one.
This way I think a true academician would be a best fit.
4
@Sudarshan
The US has actually had a number of retired army generals as president. None of them, from Washington to Eisenhower, led the country into war. (Eisenhower ended the Korean war as soon as he came into office.)
15
By threatening tariff and sanction, US actually is trying to transfer the entire manufacturing supply chains out of China. That will spell the end game for China with Communist Party real quick. Because China's economy heavily depend on exports than US, in fact three times more like the Japan economic miracle three decades ago. On that score Trump actually is doing too fast but OK, but American consumers may have to suffer in short terms until other suppliers are established like Vietnam and India.
Other issues are more critical than trade and economy which Trump appears not much concerned. Human rights, universal values, democratic rule of laws, military bullying of neighbors, global pollution, corruption culture, extinction of endangered species, etc. Yes extinction, you heard it right. Imagine if all Chinese can afford shark fin, tiger bone, elephant tusk, rhino horn, etc hundreds of endangered species. That will cause global mass extinction in no time.
6
Actually, China is fast proving they will not need the US for high tech supplies. Also, they are fast developing other markets so they will not need the US market.
2
Thanks for this headline, had me smiling all the way to work. I haven't even read the column yet.
7
This is a waiting game. Xi believes that Trump will lose the elections, and then China will renegotiate and adjust some of their unfair business practices.
In any case, Xi and China will be the winners.
4
@Buja and if Trump loses the election, we will all be winners.
Tom Friedman begins this piece: "I was glad to see the stock market get a boost from the news that Chinese and U.S. trade negotiators were talking again. . . ." I believe that Trump is gaming the stock market. He knows that every time he threatens new tariffs the market declines precipitously. A perfect time to sell short and buy low. A day later he says, well, maybe I won't actually implement these tariffs just yet, and the markets soar. Perfect timing for making a fortune. Trump's business practices are so opaque we have no idea what he's doing. But the above described opportunity would seem irresistible to an opportunist like Trump.
115
@lhc Is this called "manipulating the stock market"?
1
@lhc: The stock options market is just a few clicks away via your computer. It is the national casino now.
1
Because he believes, or pretends to believe, that he’s the World’s greatest negotiator, Trump burns his emotional bridges behind him. His only way to settle an agreement is to win or to pretend that he won.
14
The Trump China tariffs have generated $27 billion in new tariff money in the last year, but Trump also handed out an extra $28 billion in farmer welfare to soften the devastation of his destructive tariffs.
So in essence, all Americans have paid an extra $27 billion in tariffs/taxes ---- the Chinese (exporters) DO NOT pay these tariffs - American businesses and their American importers pay the tariffs/taxes ---- so Trump can hand out farmer welfare of the same amount and cause massive chaos and uncertainty.
Trump is a swindler performance artist that 40% of Americans adore for some deplorable reason.
The important thing is for Americans is to register to vote and to vote in record numbers so that this epic fraud of a President becomes history on Jan 20 2021.
318
@Socrates,
Who pays the tariff depends primarily on the relative elasticity of demand in the consuming and producing countries and the availability of substitutes. It's almost certainly wrong to say that American consumers pay and Chinese exporters do not pay. The reality is somewhere between. A quick read to illustrate that reality is more complicated than slogans: http://www.revisionguru.co.uk/economics/protect.htm
The real issue is that China is an all-around bad actor, as this op-ed points out. Trump is a bufoon, certainly wrong about a great deal, but on the issue of China he is addressing the right issues too often the wrong way (as this op-ed states). Xi knows that he can idle as American partisans tear the nation apart, then deal with a President far more inclined to accommodate, compromise, and cave. This is 1939 and we don't have President Neville Chamberlain, but Xi is getting we soon will.
10
@Charles Becker
Chinese exporters do not pay American tariffs. Not a single penny.
Please justify your claim that they do. Cheers.
27
@Charles Becker
Chinese exporters do not pay American tariffs. Not a single penny.
Please justify your claim that they do.
What you may have had in mind is that they might have to lower their prices to maintain sales volumes. But that's not paying tariffs. Only Americans can do that.
Cheers.
24
Trade cannot be viewed in isolation.
Does the American government have plans about how to respond, if China militarily "secures" Hong Kong.? There is no way of knowing nor, if there are plans, should we know what they are, unless publicity is part of a coherent diplomatic and/or trade strategy.
I think back to 1968 and the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, which the former considered part of its political territory. The U.S. made no response, nor is it obvious what a response should or even could have been at the time. The reality is that when push comes to shove, semi-abstractions such as freedom, democracy, and sovereignty get shunted aside by "facts on the ground."
The strongest reality in Hong Kong's corner is that an invasion by China would likely irreparably damage the ability of Hong Kong to serve as the huge financial center from which China gains so much. However, rational material effects, including trade, might not prevail over the CCP's interest in preserving Party-defined stability at all costs, as well as wanting to suppress any inspiration Tibetans, Uighurs, and other non-Han peoples might get from Hong Kong successfully saying "No!" to Beijing.
The dynamic was similar in 1968, as the Soviet Union was afraid that the Prague Spring, actually lead by the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership (Dubček, Smrkovsky, Svoboda, et al), would serve as inspiration to various effectively colonized Soviet "republics", as well as East European vassal states.
13
@Steve Fankuchen - the USA is going to do nothing if China uses muscle on HK. What can we do? We're talking about a small island, that is filled to the gills with people. There is certainly no room for 2 armies. And you certainly can't bomb it.
Leave it alone, it's a place that is moving ever closer to being totally under China. As you state it will be China's loss to destroy the financial center, but they are large enough to sustain and handle that loss.
@Steve Fankuchen Sadly, you sound right.
1
Trump as he recalled some of the tariffs on Chinese consumer goods gave the reason that he did not want to hurt consumers over the holiday season. This is a back handed admission that we the consumer are paying for his tariff policies, some thing Trump has denied up to now. But what will he do when Xi does not blink and the structure of our economic relations with China completely collapses? Will the two countries just go their own way in deadly competition? China is dedicated to cornering the technological market by 2025 with or without our technology. And without cheap Chinese goods we will need to ramp up production here at home which will trigger inflation or perhaps we will move production to some country like Bangladesh. In any case Tump and Xi may sitting in a tree happy as clams in their arrogance, but it is our economy and consumers who will suffer under a barrage of cocoa nuts.
8
@just Robert - I'm pretty sure our economy won't suffer. Enough with the doomsday scenarios. Why does no one ever realize that people, business and economies are resilient. There are always tradeoffs in goods, markets, and producers.
2
@just Robert
The tectonic plates of North America groan under the weight of trillions of dollars worth of inexpensive Chinese goods. That's been massively to our benefit. But the weight of tens of thousands of factories and other businesses has been lifted. That's been to our detriment.
So we've saved trillions under the current arrangements, but it has weakened our economy. Obviously, halting the erosion means the savings will end.
The questions are whether much desirable economic strengthening will result and whether doing nothing is a good option. Cheers.
2
@Dixon Pinfold what trillions... Trillions ended up in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... Whatever savings you made got spent elsewhere to the detriment of the American people long term. That's not a political argument but a financial one. Those could have been spent to to support the weaker US States to become more competitive and resourced I. E. helping those with lessor skills or making college cheaper or world class infrastructure to support trade.
5
"Trump thinks..."
Any analysis of Trump fails when it has this as an underlying premise.
41
Friedman here admits three things.
First, "focused on protecting critical U.S. industries — from microchips to robotics to machine tools — that are the foundation of a 21st-century economy, which, for national security reasons, the U.S. does not want to see entirely migrate to China."
Second, "I suspect China’s leaders are now drawing up a list of advanced industrial products for which they will never allow themselves to depend on America again. What are the long-term consequences of that?"
Third, "They’re primarily driven by U.S. fiscal policy"
Thus, there are limits to globalization as a universal good thing. The world is not flat.
The nation state as an economic entity has meaning. It has national security needs. China also recognizes a nation state need the US has been ignoring -- to maintain within its borders an economy that serves its own population.
The US fiscal policy, and I'd include our tax structure, favors and enables offshoring. That has a "tragedy of the commons" element, in that the profits for any one producer to send its production offshore becomes a loss for the whole nation including himself if everyone does it.
Stop enabling the offshoring. Stop privileging it in our tax laws. Stop the parking of profits offshore, tax free, and the "taking" of profits offshore. This is as much an artificial legal construct as any economic need. It is arbitrage of pollution and labor.
The long term consequences I'm concerned about are from offshoring.
31
@Mark Thomas one thing is easy... Stop penalising companies that look to take Money back from overseas and reward entrepreneurial risk at home. Saves a tax amnesty and guarantees billions coming back into the US year on year.
We subsidized the tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest people in the country. We are taxed by the tariffs on Chinese goods. We are watching deficits accelerate and our "wealth" transferred to agribusiness to keep them afloat as China quits importing their products. As a middle class progressive, I support fair taxes that improve the infrastructure and help my fellow citizens who may need a hand. I do not support an economic illiterate as he transfers wealth to the upper economic strata. So very, very tired of winning.
231
@runaway -- not just an economic illiterate, but an economic illiterate who might have personal reasons for wanting to give tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and cut interests rate to or below zero. But since he won't let us see his tax returns, we have no way of knowing if he has those reasons or not, do we?
1
During the trade war, the dollar has risen 10% against the yuan, and most other currencies, while the yuan has depreciates a percent or two against the rest.
This is like a 10% tariff imposed by the US against its own exports to the world. But it's tolerated because the high dollar helps consumer sentiment and so wins public support.
Sure China is hurting in the short run because the raw material costs now seem relatively higher ... but they are capturing the export market share that the US is handing over on a platter, so in the long run they ARE winning.
9
@Craig H. - we don't have a high/strong dollar and haven't for years. Check out https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-dollar-index-historical-data-3306249
Even if Trump had an epiphany and backed off of his China tariff war in favor of pressure by a group of like minded nations, who would sign up? How many leaders of these nations has the President offended and alienated? Why would any rational leader trust a president who is at 10,000+ lies and is still rolling? It is not just the leaders. No. He has managed to anger and alienate entire nations of people. Sometimes for no useful reason other than the momentary rush it gave him. Years of statesmanship torn up at a pace that in its way is right up there with Sherman's March of destruction.
The President and his gaggle of trade/economic advisors have cast the dice for tariffs. There is no turning back the clock. Either tariffs work or the President will pull out and declare victory. Another choice, a tactic Trump has employed throughout his life. Leave and let somebody else clean up his mess.
41
@richard wiesner. My guess is that in the Spring when the recession is just about to set in he will get one more rate cut from the Fed and declare his Tariff War won. His blind supporters will believe that he has stopped the flow of immigrants and will try all the more to convince others of what a brilliant leader he has been.
Dems need to put their money and their efforts into voter registrations and then GOTV. His Party is glued to him by the corporate money that flows in, thanks to decisions like Citizens United which provided corporations with megaphone dollars that have bought the Senate and shown us what unpatriotic representatives the Republicans actually are.
Tom,
You have outlined an unsurvivable future. I am not willing to accept that the peoples of the United States, China, India, Russia, Europe, and South America and our bordering North American countries will NOT tolerate the continued irrationality attributed to these two national leaders to mobilize their peoples in preparing for conflict, engage in possible real conflicts, or supply proxy conflicts that would only benefit the military industrial complexes of China and its cultural allies and the U.S. and its old WWII allies including Russia. The homo sapiens of the World are not that stupid and 2020 is near.
The real future, unfortunately, is the continued use of fossil fuels until they are depleted or until our creative people begin to develop and sell technologies for generating very cheap electricity that will be competitive with fossil fueled technologies. E.g., with cheap electric power we will be able to desalinate water, capture CO2 from the atmosphere, and make synthetic jet fuel from air and water.
I forecast space solar satellites (China is currently engaged in developing this technology) launched by Maglev spacecraft propelled in a vacuum launch tube and released to reach geosynchronous orbit to collect the Sun's energy 24/7 to beam it to virtually any place on Earth. This won't replace all of the rooftop solar, OTEC, wind but I am projecting this vision of the future, based on the need for land for agriculture and a World population of 11 Billion.
2
A world population of 11 billion is totally unsustainable, no matter what kind of technology is devised to produce cheap energy on a vast scale. Don’t forget climate change is real and is almost certainly going to mean death and destruction on a scale never before experienced by us ever. As an aside, don’t forget, technology brought us to this state of affairs in the first place, it sure as hell isn’t going to extricate us from the mess we have created.
Cheers!
The world becomes an overtly Darwinian place internationally.
The US & China (the 2 military & neo-Mercantilist economic superpowers) are each withdrawing from international alliances & enduring relationships & substituting transactional case by case power-plays. The resulting turmoil will serve the interests of neither superpower in the long run.
Middle powers like Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, etc. & the emerging countries each too often finds itself gratuitously caught-up & collaterally damaged by either or both of the superpowers struggling for primacy on the global stage. These middle power & emerging countries are perplexed as each struggle in isolation to find an acceptable response to & an equitable place in the face of this new & unexpected breakdown of the post-WW II world order.
EU & CPTTP treaty countries increasingly will form the core of formal or informal alliances & act in concert to support rule base international relations & zones within which these allied nations can flourish shielded from undue pressure from the US & China (but open to building good relations & trade with the US & China insofar as this is on equitable terms & respects time-honoured norms of international relations between sovereign countries.
1
A bit of wishful thinking here, Tom, but very little reality. Yes, Trump can "change on a dime" which is why nobody trusts him or will do business with him (or the U.S. anymore). "If Xi retreats on Communist Party control over his economy, and over Hong Kong, his whole system can unravel. That’s why this moment is so complicated and fraught with danger." We know what Xi is going to do - maintain party control over the economy and crush the Hong Kong democracy debacle. Who is more dangerous - reliable Xi or mercurial Trump? Yes, things will not stay the same and China will likely come out on top when the smoke clears.
10
@JohnH
I seem to perceive an assumption beneath your analysis: That China's growth will continue on the arc of the last thirty years. Why? Why should they fail to encounter problems?
Did US growth after 1945-1973 continue on the same arc? Or that of Japan after 1965-1990?
Or Germany after 1950-1979? They didn't, for reasons unique to each.
Chinese expansion is not lighter than air, and it, too, will discover its unique reasons.
1
If I were Xi I'd take a leaf out of Putin's book and meddle in the election to try to ensure Trump loses. He certainly has the capability. Or maybe he's already meddling.
6
@PJ
Sure he is.
And Chinese influence can be shockingly out in the open.
Mainstream news outlets have given this a certain amount of attention, but not much. Cheers.
Lost a lot of respect for Tom with the whole MBS affair. Respect his knowledge, but Tom does change his opinion often depending on how things turn out.
3
@vladimir blinkin
When conditions change it is sometimes reasonable to change one’s opinion. The world is a fluid place.
2
@vladimir blinkin
Changing your assessment of reality when reality changes is an essential requisite of being smart.
It is to be expected that Friedman is "glad to see the stock market get a boost". Friedman does not really want to see China suffer for what it has done. He would rather the US multinationals reap greater profits at the expense of human rights and workers' rights. If you ask Friedman, he'd probably tell the Hong Kong protesters to lie down and take a beating if it meant a stronger Hang Seng index. Friedman has been wrong about China for so long. He has only begun his journey toward seeing China as it really is.
Don't listen to Friedman. Stop buying Chinese goods, as much as possible. Economic leverage is the only power we have to stop China from bullying its people and its neighbors.
6
@Justin Koenig: Friedman is not pro China or siding with the viscous totalitarian Chinese state. He is stating the facts that China as a result of US denying them chips/software is developing their own. His observation about Trump's egotistical poor personal skills arrogance is degrading the American alliances and soft power. very sad...
Cadillac sells more cars in China than they do here, the MAGA caps are made in China and you want a trade war? Got it.
@Justin Koenig
Really Justin ....... who's the BULLY? What are you typing your comment on ..... if it ain't Chinese it has many Chinese made components. How can you suppress 1.4 billion culturally and historically united people with only 330 million "American" people split into hundreds of "democratic" racially fired, religiously righteous tribes all fighting each other for a bridge to nowhere. Game Set Match ......
You make a very common mistake. You assume that every daily market move has a unique reason. Many studies have shown that when such explanantions have been viewed retrospectively, there is no positive relationship between market moves and the reasons attributed for them at the time.
However, I write principally to suggest that there are three basic types of wars. These are trade wars, cold wars and hot wars. Humanity has not learned the lesson that the outcome and duration of any of these types of wars are almost completely unpredictable. Trump has started many trade wars and a few cold wars (which he labels "love affairs"). He has no idea, any more than political or diplomatic or military experts, how long or how serious any of his wars will be. The trade war with China is a form of cold war, as well. The romance with Kim is a form of cold war, as well. The war in Afghanistan is a hot war which is in its 19th year even though it was started to capture Osama bin Laden, who has been dead now for more than 5 years.
No one should ever vote for a politician who says a war will be easy to win. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan stand as stark examples of the insanity of such a statement.
23
@James Ricciardi Perfectly right. But Deplorables love wars. They love agression, they love crushing those they do not love, they love to find an outlet for all the anger in their frustrated lives.
Trade cannot be viewed in isolation. Does the American government have plans about how to respond, if China militarily "secures" Hong Kong.? There is no way of knowing nor, if there are plans, should we know what they are, unless publicity is part of a coherent diplomatic and/or trade strategy.
I think back to 1968 and the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, which the former considered part of its political territory. The U.S. made no response, nor is it obvious what a response should or even could have been at the time. The reality is that when push comes to shove, semi-abstractions such as freedom, democracy, and sovereignty get shunted aside by "facts on the ground."
The strongest reality in Hong Kong's corner is that an invasion by China would likely irreparably damage the ability of Hong Kong to serve as the huge financial center from which China gains so much. However, rational material effects, including trade, might not prevail over the CCP's interest in preserving Party-defined stability at all costs, as well as wanting to suppress any inspiration Tibetans, Uighurs, and other non-Han peoples might get from Hong Kong successfully saying "No!" to Beijing.
The dynamic was similar in 1968, as the Soviet Union was afraid that the Prague Spring, actually lead by the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership (Dubček, Smrkovsky, Svoboda, et al), would serve as inspiration to various effectively colonized Soviet "republics", as well as East European vassal states.
4
Does Trump really think he can punish China on trade while soft-pedaling their crackdown on democracy?
4
@R.S. Trump does not care about human rights. Look what he did in response to MBS and Khoshoggi's death...nothing
Since Friedman is not participating in the "negotiations" between Trump admin and China, he does not know who is responsible for the impass and for what reasons - he's making this view up base on his own personal biases. Without claiming innocence on the part of the Chinese, I think it is as safe assumption that Trump is the major cause of the difficulties based on what we know about him. His approach to every problem, whether as President or in business, is to try to bully his way to success and make unreasonable demands for concessions. And he is always playing to fire up his base and appear to be the winner not matter what. And he started the whole tariff business, not only with China, but also with allies. If he even has a goal for this trade war, some are saying that it might be to sever economic ties with China entirely. What would Friedman think of that outcome?
4
@Larry Figdill
If you mean to make a serious comment, you ought not to base it on an assumption that because the president always seems to be at fault for being difficult with others, he's at fault with China.
He might well be at fault, but that's not a reason for assuming so. That's if, as I said, you mean to make a serious comment. Cheers.
"But fixing that problem does not seem to be Trump’s only, or even primary, goal."
It should be clear to anyone who's watched Trump since the day he took office that FIXING problems is never the goal. FIGHTING problems, real or imagined, is. If Trump ever fixed a problem, any problem, he'd have one less thing to be enraged about, and then he would cease to be Trump. He lives to fume, flex his imaginary muscles, fight foes and spotlight faux progress.
If things go south, as when his tariffs obliterated the American farmers' market for soybeans, he did what he's always done -- covered the mistake with someone else's money, in this case in the form of a taxpayer-funded bailout. But fixing the problem, either the pre-existing situation that prompted his ill-advised action or the condition he caused, is immaterial to him.
Trump has been in office for 935 days. He has yet to fix a single problem, and I fully expect this will not change by the end of his term. To believe otherwise is to miss the point.
35
@D Price Thanks for that illuminating contraposition:
The feral hog never fixes but always fights.
Brilliant.
for Trump a win is being on the front page of the NYT. For the Administration's financial advisors and trade negotiators it is insider trading on the stock market when the apparently erratic president causes Wall Street to swing wildly up and down.
There was no need for a trade war. China was already adjusting its trade practices. These things take time. 50 years ago China was emerging from its position as a third world country.
Freedman neglects to explain that the US has not been an innocent victim in the development of China's economy. It has taken advantage of China's poor population in order to help corporate America supercharge American consumer spending. So, stop taking sides. A solution is to develop a better relationship that is not a zero sum game of win or lose. Mutual benefit for both countries that include environmental, cultural exchange and military arms agreements would open doors. Instead Trump has created a situation that only helps himself and his accomplices.
12
Yes, but In six months, it will be another day.
"Instead of presenting this as America versus China vying to see whose narrow interests would prevail, Trump should have framed it as the world versus China vying to determine which global rules would prevail."
Both sides have made mistakes, as Friedman describes. Trump's mistakes would be correctable if he were a different man. Xi's mistakes would be minimal if so much weren't riding on them, and if Xi weren't about to show the ugly side of repression.
Of course, things can't change without a good dose of willingness, in addition to two iron-clad wills. So, in the end, I believe it's this stubborness that will be their undoing.
Both sides will suffer needlessly, assuming they can outwait the others. For patience, my money is on President Xi. Donald Trump cares too much about the love of his political base to keep this up indefinitely, particularly as we approach 2020.
He needs that love to stay out of jail. President Xi can simply jail anyone who crosses his path.
8
Not quite, Tom. Trump sees the world and trade in particular as if it were still 1989. As though the USA is the single superpower left standing. Russia can be made into our friend. China is a threat long-term, but for now we can show them who'd boss. Yeah, 30 years ago.
Xi does not want to defeat us, he wants recognition as the new, co-equal super power. Besides a market for consumer goods what do we have to trade? China will be able to get soybeans, etc. elsewhere for years to come. They can buy cars, tech goods, and medical stuff elsewhere. They can even relabel their goods and sell them through other countries to evade tariffs. Their military is pretty good and getting better fast. From computers and phones to A.I. to appliances, windmills, solar panels and Teslas, they already mass produce them.
This trade war is very hard for Trump to win, but Xi only needs an armistice to be the real winner.
9
@Speakin4Myself
Possibly Trump is merely doing what little can be done: trying to slow down the rate at which China is shoving the US aside like a Montenegrin prime minister, eventually to more or less bury it.
I can't see why he shouldn't. I think American people put American presidents there to do just that sort of thing.
1
Before Trump's tariff based trade war it would have been and ally based TPP vs China 2025. Now, the US cannot rely on strong trade alliances and protections as a TPP benefit.
Congress must claw back its Constitutional obligations under the Commerce Clause and stop Trump's egregious misuse of national security justified tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
No president should have this type of corruptive and unilateral power.
15
President Trump.
Read this article. Read it again. Read it out loud. Take some notes and paraphrase using your own (the best) words.
That is all.
3
@James Levy Trump doesn't read. Trump has a very limited ability to understand abstractions or complicated situations of any kind. Trump is intellectually lazy. Trump can't write well, which is to say he can't think well. He's made it to this point with intimidation, lies and an instinct for the jugular. Friedman treats Trump and Xi as equals, in some broad sense. Friedman is as wrong about this as he was about the Iraq war. The most that can be equal here is the caliber of people advising them, which especially in the case of the Chinese is unknown.
@James Levy
I would color you an optimist.
@James Levy Remember, he does not read.
And I thought Nixon was bad!
He was an angel compared to Trump and Watergate was a penny compared to the dollars this current administration will throw out with the morning NYTimes.
Unfortunately Trump can't save himself and declare bankruptcy with our money but the bottom line will be the same...we lose while Trump skips merrily along in his delusional self-importance and takes our economy with him.
12
"virtually America's technology equal": Nonsense. Technologically, China is at a level comparable to one of the major European countries. It leads in a few areas, is competitive in more, but nowhere near equal to US. But they are gaining.
If we want to stay ahead, we need to open our immigration system to Asian immigrants. 100 million of the brightest and most ambitious Chinese, Indians and other Asians will keep the US leading the world forever. Or at least for the next century. Ordinary Chinese (and citizens of other dictatorships) want freedom, which they cannot get at home---look at the Hong Kongers. Only we can give it to large numbers.
11
Have to agree with you. I spent 8 years working in China, in big cities, medium size cities, rural areas. One thing you can say about the Chinese people and the Chinese government: they are extremely practical. They believe strongly in studying science and doing what produces the most wealth. If a group of Chinese parents learned that their kids’ school was teaching Buddhist “creationism” say, rather than geology and physics, that school would surely be burned to the ground the following day. That is the background to this fight. The larger picture is that our society which gives extra political power to religious groups through the electoral college, is up against a society devoted to science. Tariffs and a trade war are a minor matter compared to this bigger picture.
10
@Jonathan Katz
Remember that Chinese people really love China for its Chineseness. And that thanks to the murder of the educated class during the Cultural Revolution, nearly all Chinese people's grandparents were illiterate peasants. Finally, remember that it's been 70-plus years of repression and thoroughgoing indoctrination.
Then you won't be misled by the example of the Hong Kong students, who are quite different. China is not overflowing with freedom-yearning America-lovers. Cheers.
@Jonathan Katz Tell Stephen Miller that we should admit millions more non-white people. Tell this to Trump. Tell this to his "base." What a joke.
Trump will cave in on trade because he needs a strong economy to win in 2020 and avoid prosecution in 2021. He will declare an imaginary victory, as he always does. Trump and his cult will believe this, as they always do. China will continue to make gains on key technologies and strengthen its position for the future.
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Tom,
China started thinking about technology independence a long time ago, not recently.
The Foreign Intelligence Subcommittee of the House identified Huawei as a security risk in 2012, after a year's work.
I'm pretty sure the very capable strategic thinkers in the Chinese government put a plan in place, perhaps even before the report was released and have been executing their strategy for the better part of this decade.
Don't imagine their decision making is as chaotic, short-sighted and amateurish as the US.
20
I don’t think China will deal with the Hong Kong protests well. With USA led by an executive branch that promotes authoritarianism, they will act unencumbered.
I don’t think Trump understands the Chinese will to absorb “western” bullying. His chaotic trade war by twitter could be a fiasco if the Chinese decide to play hardball.
We are cursed with living in “interesting times.”
7
The Donald cares about one thing -- himself. He loves being president because he is the center of attention 24/7 so he wants to win the 2020 election. Everything he does is calculated to play to his base in preparation for the 2020 election.
We can count on the fact that at some time between now and November 2020, The Donald will declare victory in the negotiations about trade with China. He will say that it was the best trade deal in history with the usual chatter and tweets that we have come to expect.
But I venture to say that when The Donald and Xi do reach a deal, if we look into the fine print and see what the deal actually means, we will find that the Chinese come out way ahead. For one thing, The Donald knows or cares little about economics or trade and doesn't want to listen to anyone who does. The little that he does know is about 30 years our of date. He also knows that the trump faithful will think that whatever he does is wonderful.
Everything -- tariffs, Iran, religion, abortion, immigration, Israel, the wall, trade etc. -- is just a prop to be used as needed in the run up to the 2020 election. All of these props are pulled out and used as needed to rally various segments of his base.
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@Aubrey
quite right. to win. not to lead or plan or think or look for a long game. just let his whirligig mind play with television news.
1
At least for the overgrown toddler currently occupying the Oval Office, I would posit that it’s never been about trade or U.S. consumers- he just wants to be seen as the big man on the world stage.
Xi’s situation seems a bit more complicated: yes, he wants economic dominance for his country, but he also needs to look like the strongest to his people. If he wasn’t nervous about the Chinese people demanding more freedom, he most likely wouldn’t have ramped up the oppression so greatly in the recent years.
8
@Kate B.
yup. he has been given the biggest stage - the world - and a bigly audience - the world. so, he may strut and fret his hour upon the stage ... while our country is riven by his polarizing howls. while we wait for a plan to repair our infrastructure or improve our educational system. while we wait for a statement that, indeed, there is a climate crisis. trump is a oafish country with a paucity of ideas.
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Do you recognize, good sir, that China is a bigger economic, political, and military threat today than it was five years ago?
It seems to me like no amount of evidence about China's predatory trade, grabbing and stealing, lending money with thick strings attached, full steam progress on a blue water navy, getting into infrastructure projects in the third world manned by Chinese regulars in plain clothes, evidence of gun running and money laundering, human organ trading, and what not - would get in the way of dangerously unrealistic suggestions proffered by the current punditry (you included).
Wry observations are fine. But, contrary to several years of very wishful thinking, China is today a world class nuisance only; it is not anyone's partner.
The clearest implications are that you, and your fellow punditry: (a) underestimate China's threat to the planet, (b) overestimate the validity of your proposed solutions. For instance, the notion Trump can or should create an alliance of like minded countries who face Chinese threats - to deal with China - is laughable (apparently not to you). Even Obama could not have pulled this off, never mind Trump and his coterie of nationalist supremacists.
The solution is hardly in trade; it is in our industrial and tax policies. I.e., one that compels and rewards Americans for taking risk, investing in manufacturing in large scale (responsibilities they have abrogated). Toys can be made here cheaply with robots.
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Trump needs to pretend that the TPP never existed and create something similar that he can boast isolated Xi. That typed of trickery is in his wheelhouse. Of course, Congress should worry about this, but our current Congress prefers to let Trump do everything.
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@Anthony
Not everything. But his cronies sure do.
He has alone alienated us from our allies or prospective alliances. The work needed to achieve any of the suggestions in this article will now take 10 years at least.
4
One thing missing from this equation is Hong Kong and what the unrest there means to the Chinese economy...If Xi sends in the police or military to suppress the protests the result will be a big set back for the Chinese economy. It may be too much for him to juggle a trade war with the U.S. and overpower the civil unrest in Hong Kong. Meanwhile Trump really doesn't want a major economic crater just before a Presidential election. It may set the stage for some sort of compromise where both sides pull back and declare victory...except for the people who live in Hong Kong.
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China may not be able to sustain and tighten its unilateral control over its own people for the long term (say, 100 years from now) but for the short term, Tiananmen Square should remind is of what the state is willing to do.
Is the Tiananmen history too ancient? Well then, try the more recent example of Uighur oppression in Xinjiang. The coming days in Hong Kong will be shockingly brutal, while President Trump, with his deep knowledge of the situation, hopes it works out for everybody.
Always look on the sunny side!
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@John LeBaron, I agree. You almost have to assume that the Chinese will eventually resort to brutal violence to crush Hong Kong. Brute force and violence is how they "solve" these "disturbances". And then watch, perhaps after a short pause, how many countries continue to have economic and political relations with China. Including the US.
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@Buck Thorn
China needs Hong Kong more than Hong Kong needs China just as Britain needs London and America needs New York. They are the brains and without the brains they will all be zombie states like Russia unable to develop their own economies and only able to tear down others.
If Trump could pull off the repression and control that Xi commands, he’’d be ecstatic, and order his own massacres just as the Chinese did years ago.
Short of that: Only he would happily celebrate the mass shootings that led to the photo op with Melanie and the orphaned baby. H
Trump’s “go it alone” self-defeating posture with China flows, I believe, from his deeply flawed personality which distrusts everyone and thus is unwilling to work toward a common goal with anyone. He is fundamentally unable to be a fellow participant in any joint effort, a friendless loner on a personal level or as a President acting in a global environment with enormous responsibilities. These past two years, America has squandered opportunities to tackle shared international issues and tragically isolated itself from crucial allies because of Trump’s harmful pathology.
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@John Grillo Trump is unreliable, treacherous and untrustable ...Nobody wants to make a deal with Trump.
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@John Grillo
Well said!
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Each country seems to suffer its own peculiar form of blindness. Like all the Chinese emperors, Emperor Xi must claim the mandate of heaven, and furnish his people with prosperity and stability. When that bargain ends, so does Xi's reign. He has successfully instituted his "Total Surveillance Society as a bulwark against rebellion when things really start going awry, hoping that by then, the people will have internalized the algorithms of their "Social Credit Score" and remain docile, consumerist zombies, like their US brethren. Compounded by massive dislocation by automation, the Chinese people will surely notice a downturn in their standard of living at some point and will not be constrained by a bunch of apps implanted in their cellphones.
On the other hand, Trump's supporters never seemed to notice that they didn't receive a dime from the "greatest tax cut in history", their farms are going under at epidemic levels due to the tariff war, the coal jobs haven't returned, and they are dropping dead by the thousands from opioid overdoses. I believe the Chinese will wake up to the propaganda they've been fed, but I have no such confidence about half of America.
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The idea that China will collapse is almost entirely based on conjecture. There's simply no reason to believe this will be the case. China can take a hit from the US.
Hypothetically, if the TPP had been signed during the Obama administration, perhaps the US would be able to get its allies to go along with multilateral sanctions on China trying to force it to alter its behavior. But that ship has long since sailed. The entirety of the world now sees that the US can, at any moment in time, fall under the control of an unintelligible buffoon who will slash and claw at them for any reason whatsoever.
No Asian country will actually get behind the US in the future, no matter how much begging the next US President does. And the domestic situation is such that the next President is likely to be just as isolationist as Trump. Every Democrat except John Delaney is proposing "getting tough on trade", and while Mr Delaney might be a fine gentleman, he is polling at 1%.
Conjecture is a fun game to play, but it should at least be backed with some semblance of fact.
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@Dhanushdhaari
I agree. Except I see China faced with the same problem that gave the USA Trump and China needing to invest all its resources in maintaining its internal stability.
The USA did not collapse it just ceased to be a dominant nation.
Thank you , there are not many who understand that both American political parties seek to withdraw from the world and here in Canada we must learn the USA regardless of Dem or Rep is not our friend.
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I suspect China’s leaders are now drawing up a list of advanced industrial products for which they will never allow themselves to depend on America again. What are the long-term consequences of that?
That is the most important lesson in this trade war. I suspect the world will divide into 3 camps, the US, Europe and China. So, you can throw out all patent and copy-write protections. In the digital age I would assume it is easy to steal just about anything. And why not pay some disgruntled employee to steal important data, specifications and plans.
You can't base you economy or your country's future on the whims of President Trump.
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@Steve
I'm sure you're right that China is identifying critical dependencies on the US. But what about US dependencies on China? They own a large amount of our debt; they pretty much own manufacturing in many areas; they have a virtual monopoly of rare earths (which are vital to manufacture of electronics). Is anyone thinking about what happens if the you-know-what hits the fan? I doubt it.
9
Why is there always an assumption that the whole system can unravel here in China if some event doesn't go a certain way? This notion has persisted in American thought and creates an assumption about the Chinese system that it is unstable. What has the data shown us about this belief?
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@Owen The data of the last few centuries. The Chinese system has had its ups and downs. They've had a civil war, they've suffered immensely under Mao.
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@Owen
American arrogance. The West continues to treat Asia as a colonial backwater, even as their claim of moral and intellectual superiority looks increasingly outlandish with people like Trump and BoJo running the show.
Why wouldn't Xi wait? Trump had one position yesterday and a new one today. If the past is predictive of tomorrow, then tomorrow could be another course correction. He will have heard reaction, by then, from his friends at Fox and right-wing radio hosts. If they are fine with his newest position, he will be fine too.
Unlike China's five, ten and 50 year plan, Trump has a 24 hour plan. As always, subject to change.
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Our problems with China and technology did not start with Trump. To my mind the issue began to exacerbate when 'W' took office.
A war on labor had been on going, but the attack on American's engineers exacerbated. The Chinese had a great ally- the greed barons on Wall Street.
Eventually, there was a major warning sign. Greenspan covered it up.
The conservatives don't care. The socialists don't understand except for maybe, Yang. How odd is that?
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@Texan
It was Reagan who tore the solar panels off the White House roof. It was Reagan who betrayed his guild members. It was Reagan who forgot to set the alarm clock and the alarm never went off and America failed to show up for work.
6
In a so-called "democracy" how is it that that one man - an uneducated, illiterate, innumerate, and emotionally and intellectually stunted man - can singlehandedly set trade policy for 330 mm Americans, and thereby effect the entire world?
And wreck havoc on financial markets?
And on global manufacturing, and on business and economic relationships that took decades to develop.
I don't know about China, but here in the US major changes are needed to prevent one person from every again having this much power to unilaterally damage and destroy so much in so little time.
734
@Space Needle, I don't know about China, either, other than the obvious fact it is no longer Mao's China or even Deng's China. Talking about China and the U.S. side by side, however, it is clear whatever power the President has is defined by democratic institutions. There are written rules and procedures about how to make major changes here, but China offers no such established guidance to Xi. Don't mean to make you envy Trump, but he does have more guidance and less uncertainty.
2
@Space Needle
'... how is it that that one man ... can singlehandedly set trade policy for 330 mm Americans, and thereby effect the entire world?'
For the same reason one man is allowed the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons whenever and wherever he wants. We've always had the assumption that the president was of the highest character and judgement, and thereby deserving of the utmost trust.
Unfortunately, we have a president with all the defects mentioned in your comment, but that's not bad enough. There's a real possibility Trump is a puppet of one or more foreign leaders (Putin, MBS, MBZ, Bibi). He may even be beholden to China for financing of ongoing projects in southeast Asia.
We need a lot more than an overhaul of trade authority. We need a full and proper national security assessment of Trump and his family. Part 1 of the redacted Mueller report is just the start. We also need to abandon our failed Electoral College (see Federalist No. 68). And we need a serious reevaluation of presidential authority to launch nuclear weapons.
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@JY You are just plain wrong! China has far more rules than the USA and the Communist Party has more members than all the Democrats and Republicans combined. They have an evolutionary method of governance that sees what works the best in an experimental region and if successful they roll it out nationwide. America has a divided and belligerent form of adversarial governance dictated by a constitution that is so outdated it was set up before the advent of electricity for white landed gentry. No wonder China is winning and Trump keeps "Giving in". Who in their right mind would want to emulate the American system?
9
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. – Sun Tzu.
Trump is all noise. Nothing but simplistic tactics and juvenile tweets that makes him feel good in the moment, makes him feel "strong". Strategy requires discipline and thought. Trump doesn't do discipline and thought. Can't do it.
Trump will declare victory sometime before the 2020 election based in the calendar not the economy. His base with cheer him, even those spending their time in bankruptcy court, farm auctions, or the unemployment line. The reality based community will roll their eyes and shake their heads, the professional fact checkers will add a few dozen more lies to Trump's total.
But what we won't have is any progress on trade. Just more noise from our strategy free President.
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@LT - Thanks for that great quote.
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@LT
For Trump political timing is everything. He needs to cut some sort of half-baked deal with Xi and declare total victory just a few weeks before the November, 2020, election. His goal is to get the electoral bounce he needs to woo uncommitted voters but not leave enough time for the inadequacy of the deal to be widely understood.
The trade war with China exposes Trump's hopeless deficiencies. It's a battle that needs to be fought but in a strategic way. But with his limited intellect and insatiable emotional needs Trump is singularly unqualified to either devise or carry out a coherent strategy. In the end Trump will settle for a triumphant but meaningless photo-op and hope it provides enough dazzle to gull the rubes into awarding him a second term.
8
@woofer
Spot on.
2
There is now another factor in Xi's brinksmanship - the protests in Hong Kong. If Xi gives in, or appears to be giving in, to Trump, how will he and The Party deal with the protests? Would Xi be able to ease off on the protestors demands for more democracy? How much more face would he lose by doing that?
Which leads to the next questions - 1) if there's a harsh crackdown on the HK protestors, whether with beatings and, perhaps, killings, will Trump put sanctions on China the way there are sanctions on Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc; and 2) would Trump do such a thing, which would likely drive the US', let alone the world's, economy down before an election?
So much brinksmanship and face to consider!
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@JW
Hong Kong is an extremely dangerous and volatile situation. Trump will not help the protesters there. After all, he loves authoritarian dictators. Remember Jamal Khashoggi? Trump will let Xi get away with murder. Literally.
1
Chomsky: "... the times we’re living in are extremely dangerous, in some ways more so than ever before in human history — which will essentially come to an end in any recognizable form if we do not deal effectively with the increasing threats of nuclear war and of environmental catastrophe. That requires reversing the course of the U.S. in dismantling arms control agreements and proceeding — along with Russia — to develop ever more lethal and destabilizing weapons systems; and in not only refusing to join the world in trying to do something about the severe environmental crisis but even aggressively seeking to escalate the threat, a form of criminality with literally no historical antecedent. Not easy, but it can be done. There have been other severe crises in human history, even if not on this scale. I’m old enough to remember the days when it seemed that the spread of fascism was inexorable — and I’m not referring to what is referred to as fascism today but something incomparably more awful. But it was overcome. There are very impressive forms of activism and engagement taking place, mainly among younger people. That’s very heartening.... we always have two choices: We can choose to descend into pessimism and apathy, assuming that nothing can be done, and helping to ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can grasp the opportunities that exist — and they do — and pursue them to the extent that we can, thus helping to contribute to a better world. Not a very hard choice."
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@David - Thank you for sharing that. Amazing how some people have an amazing way with words. So understandable, deep, profound, exacting. Beautiful use of language.
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@David
We concerned citizens must "grasp the opportunities that exist"--our constitutionally guaranteed right to vote at every level of local, state and federal government.
We should all be concerned and not just for self-interest but for the direction global business interests are taking our country and the world. They abhor fair taxes and fair trade seeking to exploit workers and countries regardless of environmental damage. And in a world overflowing with weapons of mass destruction they stir up trouble over trade and immigration.
China and Russia are not our enemies. Neither is Iran. Their people are our neighbors trying to live in an increasingly dangerous world.
4
When you're president for life, you can just hold out, take the pain and make the other guy succumb to the ultimate blink - by waiting for Trump to lose his election.
33
If China refuses to follow its obligations under the WTO, why would they be willing to follow the obligations of a deal under TPP? I'm sure they would sign the agreement. But I don't see why they wouldn't just continue cheating the way they normally do on trade agreements.
Also, if confronting China through TPP was so easy, why wasn't it done before Trump came into office? What were people waiting for?
I agree that Trump's method of confronting China without any allies is brain dead. However, I think it would be naive to think they would fall in line under TPP. I don't think China ever had any intention of opening itself up to "foreigners." People need to come to grips with the fact that China will be staying closed off for quite sometime.
2
@John Chenango - TPP did not ask for China's signature, they were not part of it. The concept for TPP was to align other Asian and Pacific coast nations in a trading alliance to force China to change its trade policies and to stealing technology and forcing companies to hand over patent secrets in order to manufacture and sell products in China. I blame Bernie and Trump for labeling TPP as a bad deal for the USA. It may be the only way to get China to compromise.
36
If USA has strong evidence of breach of WTO trade rules, the correct avenue is to bring a case to WTO for adjudication. For example USA and EU fought at WTO over Airbus and Boeing subsidy and tax break case.
1
@John Chenango There is no TPP. It might've been, and if it had, it would have excluded China but included everyone else, so together those corporations could've forced China to comply. China of course could shut itself off from the world but given its current engagements, I doubt it would've.
There were issues with the TPP but I think corporate power and government power and the merging of the two to create excessive abuse was going to happen anyway.
3
“ Sittin’ in a tree, B-R-I-B-I-N-G “. It’s ALL about the Money, for Trump Family Brands. It always IS.
Grifters gotta grift.
234
Xi, like everyone else in the world, knows that Trump will always cave in when he starts to feel the pain of his actions.
If Trump's Tariffs had gone into effect on September 1st, Trump's followers would have felt the pain the most, and they would have felt it quickly.
If Trump hurts his followers, especially during their Christmas shopping, they won't cheer for him at his rallies.
Trump can not live, without the cheers and adoration of his followers.
As I say, Xi knows that Trump will always cave in when enough pressure is put on him.
88
"Trump can retreat, compromise, change on a dime . . .". That's Mr. Trump's great strength, he is in fact a skillful negotiator, he's prepared to make any deal that looks to him like it will work; he isn't bound by ideology, past statements, or unchangeable positions. That makes his opponents and even his friends crazy, but that's how deals are made--he's the man who can make them.
@Ronald B. Duke - He is not a great deal maker, he didn't write the book, he paid a guy to write it for him. He has bankrupted at least 5 businesses and committed fraud on multiple occaisons. If he had just taken his dad's money and put it into stock index funds he'd be worth much more than he is today.
53
@Wayne
Sorry, Wayne, but I think Mr. Duke has just proven that Trump did write at least a portion of "The Art of the Deal." You know, the words of wisdom that goes something along the lines of:
"If you tell the same lie over and over, people will believe it."
History has unfortunately shown us that not only did DT furnish the line, it may be the only thing he has written or stated in the last 20 years which has been demonstratively proven to be true (at least to around 40% of the American public).
8
@Ronald B. Duke
I hope you noticed sir that no one has recommended your entry. Now why do you think that is? I'm afraid that your entry about Trump is along the same lines as the mother watching her son in a parade and stating that all the others in the parade were marching out of step and her Johnny was the only one marching in time.
However, the greater point is that we are supposed to be a government with 3 branches that serve as checks and balances. We don't give a newly elected president the key to the kingdom and say here do what you want to do and don't worry I'll vote for you in another 4 years. That is not a president, that is a dictator and I don't believe anyone wants that, at least not me.
17
Let's be clear - this republican President's goal is to enact his own brand of Socialism - for himself, his family, his backers and all those within the 1% that toe the company line. (which is to say absolute deferment to him)
First it was the trillions of dollars in tax theft and giveaways, and then came the roll backs on all government intrusion. (or any oversight at all to run businesses and corporations as they so choose - even on public lands)
Then came the crushing new republican taxes (tariffs) that upended whole sectors of the economy - especially farmers. A token gesture of a couple dozen billion of taxpayer money was then offered as compensation or subsidy. Cold comfort when you are losing the farm and ways of life.
Then came the insider trading (we have only scratched the surface on this one) of people within the administration (getting minor penalties or none at all) having advanced knowledge of said tariffs. Who knows how many others are profiting in the hundreds of billions behind the scenes.
Now we have the about face on certain taxes (again tariffs) on electronic goods (phones) for the Christmas rush and buying season. Indeed, can't look bad on that one, because the optics (even more bad that they are ) cannot look worse.
The only difference between all this administration has done financially and the other country, are the differences in human rights.
Oh wait !
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