Does China “holds all the aces” in a full-blown US-China trade war?
As the world is structured today, there’s only one way the U.S could lose a trade war with China, and that is the American workers form unions, strike, demand more wages immediately and force domestic prices in the U.S to go up. Trump is doing what said he would do, the bottom line is China has no advantage here, none whatsoever, not only does it have no advantage the longer this trade war prolongs the more the Chinese economy will collapse and lead to unrest.
The U.S economy as it’s structured today can only collapse if the U.S workers strike, demand more wages immediately and ask the government for more protections. Now, this is not to say that 10 years down the road the world might change, possibly in 2028 the U.S economy might be more vulnerable if other nations around the world drop their Marxists, socialist aspirations, but right now it’s not even close. China does a lot of central planning, their entire economy revolves around central planning and merging corporations with the Government. A lot of the laws in China are subjective, the Chinese government can pretty much arrest anyone for any crime at any time.
The Chinese government can also cease any private or intellectual property from anyone at any time, the private sector hates the Chinese government for the most part, but it preferred the Chinese government over, entitled U.S workers which is how we got here in the first place. I often write about what Canada has to lose in a trade war with the United States not country has more to lose than China, their countries entire stability is dependent on the United States. Furthermore, what a lot of people haven’t been paying attention too regarding Trump is Trump’s merit-based immigration proposal. Business people think long-term and their plans are usually well rounded.
A merit-based immigration proposal equates to jobs Americans refuse to do is given to outsiders willing to do those jobs, he plans on replacing chain migration with it, what does this mean for China? It means a potential less reliance on China if Trump is able to have his way. Now, if you’ve done business with China, there’s one thing you learn very quickly about the people ad this is one of the reasons I personally don’t worry about a war with China, the people in China feel oppressed by their government, they’re annoyed with their government, however as it stands today they don’t have the will to topple their government.
In real terms this is not good for soldier morale in the event the Chinese are forced to go to war, there’s a great chance that if the Chinese ever went to war with the U.S the results would resemble that of Islamic countries going to war with Israel, most Chinese soldiers would flee, defect and/or surrender. When the government controls almost everything you do, you view it the same way you’d view a controlling parent. You play nice until the parent is not around.
I say this because even the Chinese people are worried about this. Americans aren’t really worried because a large chunk of Americans are self-sufficient and those that aren’t, believe that the government will take care of them. So for Americans, this is just another part of their history. That said if American’s strike or if American businesses make the mistake of raising their prices too high too quickly, things could get ugly for Trump.
Interesting times ahead