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发帖数: 38600 | 1 but if the price is any significant loss of China's independence and
sovereignty, I doubt China will pay that price.
While Trump and his minions rant on about China engaging in "unfair trade",
the elephants in the corner of the Oval Office are the US-based
multinational corporations that persuaded the USA to sign international
trade agreements that allowed the multinationals to move their factories out
of the USA and into low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation, litigation-free,
human-rights-advocates-free, and pollution-tolerant countries like Mexico
and China, while allowing tariff-free access to the US markets for goods
produced outside the USA.
Meanwhile, many iconic US firms turned from manufacturing to "brand
management", in which others did the manufacturing for them but the goods
were imported and sold under the old brand name.
China provided the low-cost environment that the multinationals wanted, and
built up manufacturing and financial systems. Multinationals also benefited
by parking their profits from non-US manufacturing in offshore banks,
frustrating the IRS.
Then US businesses discovered the 1-B visa scam that allowed them to fire US
workers and bring in cheaper workers from India, etc.
Many famous US corporations like Caterpillar and various auto manufacturers
maintain some manufacturing and assembly centers in the USA, but use parts
made in international supply chains. CAT has some 13 or so factories in
China, for example.
And some famous US companies have set up factories in China to serve the
Chinese market (Ford, GM, etc. for example).
The loss of manufacturing in the USA has helped gut the US Middle Class,
which has been trying to maintain its disappearing standard of living by
maxing their credit cards and falling ever deeper into debt.
The US trade deficits with Mexico, China, Viet Nam, Indonesia, India, etc.
became huge and are now recognized by Trump as unsustainable, as the USA and
its citizens struggle under rising mountains of debts. China gets the
blame, although much or most of the profits from China's manufacturing are
taken by US-and-EU-based multinationals and held in tax-free countries. US
and EU banks get caught occasionally assisting multinationals to evade taxes
on these profits, with London's City reputed to be "Money Laundering
Central". Jean-Claude Junker of EU leadership fame made his mark devising
tax avoidance schemes while leader of Luxembourg.
Trump is trying to prevent the collapse of the US Dollar and the US economy
by restoring the manufacturing sector of the USA. Trump is aiming his blame
at China, but his real target is the multinational corporations - he wants
to force them to return their factories to the USA and to pay taxes in the
USA.
It seems unlikely that the multinationals will return their factories to the
USA, given the overwhelming problems and costs involved in labor costs,
taxes, regulation compliance, constant claims by various activists,
political blackmail, and litigation headaches. Rather, they seem to be
planning to bypass anti-China laws and tariffs by moving production (or
products, for re-branding) into other low-cost countries.
Meanwhile, China is not amenable to US demands that it kowtow to US hegemony
. China has only recently recovered from 3 centuries of exploitation by the
European and US colonial powers and Japan that bankrupted China by 1900 and
left it split up and in chaotic misery that made Mao and his communist
promises attractive as an alternative. Mao finally kicked out the colonial
powers and their puppet Chiang Kai Chek ("General Cash My Cheque") in 1949,
and China was then punished by isolation from the rest of the World from
1949 until Nixon allowed China back into the international community in 1972
. China's Communist party and its people have a long institutional memory
of the humiliation and misery practised upon China before 1972, and then the
attempts at renewed exploitation, and are very unsympathetic to any demands
that China again bow to foreign forces.
China has been planning to disengage from the USA for many years, with
successive 5-year plans stretching many decades into the future. China is a
main proponent, with Russia, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
BRICS, IMF "Basket of Currencies" and "Drawing Rights" to replace the US
Dollar, and the Eurasian trade, political, and mutual defence bloc, of which
the One Belt One Road initiative is a key feature - meant to tie all of
Asia and Europe together in a bloc immune to US influence. China is
reinforcing its relationships with commodity suppliers worldwide, and
financing pipelines to bring oil and natural gas from Russia. China now has
more than half of all the steel producing capacity of the World, and has
clout as the largest importer of oil, coal, and iron ore. Its internal
market is huge, its GDP rivals that of the USA, and it has instituted an oil
-futures trading center and Gold bullion for Yuan exchange there, while it
has built up large reserves of Gold in an implied strategy to back the Yuan.
In the meantime, China has been sending its best students to US and EU
universities and investing heavily into R&D to catch up and even gain an
edge on the US and EU. |
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