More tariffs paid by US consumers

[Dill]

(06-10-2019, 04:03 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: BY the US, yes.  Of course, it would be much easier to have outside support, and in some areas, such as Huawei, there is multilateral support.  The simplest way to put it is that China needs the US, the US does not need China.  Please note I say need in the strictest sense, not implying that there would be no economic pain associated with a major trade dispute.  The problem with multilateralism right now is that Russia is on board with China to stick a thumb in our eye.  Europe is fast becoming financially dependent on China and Australia is having not insignificant concerns with a perceived infiltration of their nations governance by China.  Put simply, the US is the only nation in a position to put China in their place.  China has grown at the expense of other nations, they have never played fair.  They are also not a benevolent nation and I see them as a thousand fold greater threat to the free world than Russia.  We've had numerous administrations, both Dem and GOP, kick the can down the road on the China issue as no one wanted to be responsible for the possible recession that could ensue from actually calling them onto the carpet.  Trump, for all his faults, does not appear to be concerned by this.

I would dispute some of your characterization of China. Chinese, thinking of how they were violently colonized in the 19th century, could rightfully ask "when has 'the West' ever played fair with China?"  And they could point out how other nations have grown at their expense for 200 years, including the many corporations who still find beneficial the cheapness of Chinese labor.

The US seems to be needlessly strengthening Europe's ties to the Chinese economy, while needlessly stressing out its ties to ours. The US was, in 2016, the only nation that could have orchestrated the world economy to consistently reward China for good behavior and punish it for bad, but Trump appears to have trashed that opportunity by trashing alliance networks in favor of unilateral foreign policy with individual nations. His negotiating style is not recommended by his business record--the many bankruptcies and eventual refusal of US banks to loan him money--and I think that a global version of that is where the US is headed at present.

While I find warnings about the China threat laughable when formulated "Committee-on-the-present-danger" style, I agree it is a the potential superpower competitor/adversay with a political system incompatable with ours, as well as with current international norms. At the same time, though, many have come to regard them as a good world citizen, insofar as they have taken seriously UN obligations (rather than just taking advantage of the UN) and extended a great deal of aid to developing countries, greatly enhancing their soft power at the moment the US is pulling back from its once-held advantage in that area. They may be playing a better long game.

The assumption that integration into the world market would liberalize their government seems to have fallen short of expectation, but that doesn't mean that concerted diplomacy of many nations could not exact better behavior from them. 

Here is some reading you might like.  David Shambaugh is one of the US' foremost experts on China, and he makes the case that China is in an economic decline which the party cannot likely manage. He build's a case around China's "middle income trap" (which erodes China's comparative advantage in cheap labor) and assesses four possible future directions for the government/economy. He might agree with you that the US could weather a trade war better than China. (I don't agree, though).  http://www.iberchina.org/files/2016/TWQ_Fall2016_Shambaugh.pdf