Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The F-22 could have been far more capable, but the U.S., thinking threats to its air superiority were over, canceled the upgrades to save money. Now, U.S. air superiority is threatened by China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRIooaaPlOA
China is not really capitalist because some of their most important industries are owned by the government and the government doesn’t care about the stock market. The main goal of those state owned enterprises is not profit, and, unlike in the U.S., the Chinese government is not concerned with keeping their stock market growing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4__IBd_sGE
“Across Washington, China hawks are trying to draw a hard line against any plan that would let ByteDance maintain a degree of control of the company or insight into its underlying technology, both of which are banned by the bipartisan 2024 law passed by Congress.
But Trump is already violating that law by allowing the app to stay online. And if his promised deal goes through, Congress has almost no leverage to stop it: The law leaves final approval in the president’s hands, and lawmakers can’t take him to court even if he violates its clear meaning.
“Congress does not have standing to sue,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. He said a lawmaker can typically only file suit if they’re personally harmed by a violation.
An illegal TikTok-Oracle deal blessed by Trump would immediately join a host of White House actions that flout settled law. The Trump administration is being sued for breaking laws around deportations, civil-service protections, federal spending rules, government data-sharing and more — all of which are now playing out in federal courts across the country.
When it comes to TikTok, however, even the courts offer little recourse to enforce the 2024 law, which the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed in January.
The law requires a “qualified divestiture” of TikTok — an arrangement where ByteDance gives up all control of both the company and the powerful algorithm that runs TikTok’s video-sharing service. It can retain at most a 20 percent financial stake in the company.
The Oracle deal under discussion — a modification of a prior arrangement between TikTok and Oracle, where U.S. user data was stored on Oracle-run servers while ByteDance retained a role in TikTok’s operations — would likely flunk one or more of those tests. But it’s Trump who is ultimately empowered to declare an agreement acceptable.
“The president gets to decide what constitutes a qualified divestiture,” said Michael Sobolik, a former national security staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. “That is completely up to him, even though the contours of what needs to happen in a divestiture are spelled out in the law.”
China hawks on Capitol Hill are rattling their sabers at Trump, warning against any deal that keeps ByteDance in the room.
“The law is clear,” Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, wrote on Tuesday. “Any deal must eliminate Chinese influence and control over the app to safeguard our interests.”
But Moolenaar and other lawmakers have few options to stop Trump once he decides to proceed. And lawyers say Washington’s sense of powerlessness is compounded by the fact that the White House is already ignoring the TikTok law.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trumps-tiktok-oracle-deal-could-break-the-law-but-nobody-can-stop-him-00242107
“search engine optimization appears to be aiding pro-China, anti-U.S. content in a way it did not just a few months ago.
This would not be the first time China has employed such propaganda tactics on YouTube, even though the platform is banned within China. In a 2021 report, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute described how “the Chinese Communist Party uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally about Xinjiang” — where China is committing an ongoing genocide against one of its minority populations — “that are aligned with its own preferred narratives.” The pro-Chinese government influencers mentioned in the report match some of those that come up in our search results on YouTube when searching for “China.”
In 2023, the same institute found a coordinated influence campaign originating on YouTube that was promoting pro-China and anti-U.S. narratives. A recent article in the Guardian may offer a glimpse into what is happening. It found that “After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos.””
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5155350-youtube-promoting-pro-china/
“instead of trying to decouple unilaterally from China, let’s do it in an organized manner together. Let’s sit together at the negotiation table, because if 300 million Americans impose tariffs, that’s one thing. But if 300 million Americans plus 500 million Europeans and some of the largest economies in the world and other democracies from Japan to Australia are warm-heartedly invited to join, then I think we will have a much better outcome that is very much to the benefit of every non-authoritarian economy, but most importantly, for the U.S.
I would strongly suggest that “America First” will only work if it’s not America alone. And there are some issues where America will need partners in order to have the ultimate leverage, and I think that leverage would be increased by joining forces.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/18/mathias-dopfner-trump-europe-trade-00199102
An immediate impact of tariffs is increased prices. Paying more means less money for other purchases and investments. Less purchases and investments means a smaller economy than there otherwise would be. A smaller economy means less wealth and jobs for most people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQNMksYweWU
China is building invasion barges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klkpk_hO4FQ
“The trade deficit is huge. It stands at $235.6 billion — a 12.9 percent increase since 2023. EU countries impose an average 5 percent tariff on U.S. goods, while the U.S. imposes an average 3.3 percent tariff on European goods. Even worse, the EU collects a 10 percent tariff on car imports — that’s four times America’s 2.5 percent.”
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“This has to change — and it can — but not through a tit-for-tat race to higher tariffs. Rather, we need to lower tariffs and observe symmetry. Ideally, EU-U.S. trade would be tariff-free. However, if that’s unachievable, tariffs should be, on average, 2 percent on both sides. That would create a huge stimulus for both economies, and it could be the basis and precondition for what is existentially necessary: a common trade strategy on China.”
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“If Trump is serious about “America First,” there’s one thing he should come to terms with — it shouldn’t mean “America Alone.” More leverage at the negotiating table with China, a healthy U.S. economy without inflation, and a prosperous Germany that could turn around a stumbling EU would be in the interest of the American people and Europe.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/03/u-s-eu-trade-war-china-00206789
“President Donald Trump pledged Thursday to enforce his planned 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting March 4, after both were put on pause earlier this month.
“We cannot allow this scourge [of drugs] to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning.
Trump also promised to levy an additional 10 percent tariff on China starting the same date.”
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“Trump has already imposed 10 percent tariffs on China after the leaders were unable to stave off a deadline earlier this month”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-00002714
“the way we think about how China would overrun Taiwan may well be wrong. Rather than an all-out invasion, it could attempt to capture the island without firing a single shot through “gray zone” tactics. Such tactics might combine maritime blockades and advanced cyberwarfare capable of cutting off Taiwan from the lines of seaborne trade and the digital access it needs to survive. And Beijing could do so in a way that might be just far enough below the threshold of conflict that would drive Washington and its allies to come to Taiwan’s aid.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/390895/china-taiwan-conflict