Ask someone in a third world country to do some basic addition and they can do it pretty easily. Ask the average American, and they can’t. We’ve become dependent on calculators. AI may be like this for a much broader range of thinking and we risk turning ourselves into morons.
The China shock was actually quite minor compared to the size of the US population. Most lost jobs are due to automation, not China. Tariffs don’t solve this. Dumb tariffs, like Trump’s tariffs, make it worse.
Trump’s aggressive rhetoric, threats of territorial conquest and ending countries’ existence, and trade wars, against allies, has led to US allies organizing more of their economies around the US, which weakens the US and makes Americans poorer. Trump’s actions have also limited his influence on allies. These actions put Trump’s misguided ideas first, and America last.
When you bully and act aggressively, other countries may not retaliate in the moment, but they do work to weaken you and become more robust to your attacks.
Such Trump aggression has increased China’s power, prestige, and popularity, while lowering those of the US. The CCP is an evil dictatorship, but at least they are predictable, unlike erratic Trump.
Democracies around the world have been weakened because foreigners trying to maintain democracy in their country relied on the US for pushback against the breaking of democratic rules.
At some point in the 1990s, the central Chinese government made it so that profitable things like factories didn’t benefit local government revenue as much because it started going to the central government instead. However, the local governments could still make money by leasing land, and they could make a lot more money leasing land if they built a bunch of cool and useful stuff, making the land more valuable.
Industrial policy has worked for China. It gained China its dominance on refined rare earths and magnets. A dominance China has used to choke other countries, including the United States. And this doesn’t only strangle economies, but militaries.
China’s covert ops are penetrating many countries, including the United States. Fifty percent of US counterspy efforts are against China. China likes to threaten Chinese living in the US to help their operations, if they don’t obey, the CCP will harm their family members still in China.
The CCP is threatened by American military power, but it’s most threatened by free expression and free peoples and that the Chinese people will demand more freedom and say in government, and the CCP fears what this will mean for their control of the country.
China hasn’t simply over invested in their property sector, their credit system is politically biased to invest in unproductive assets, their consumption seems hopelessly suppressed, making China dependent on exports, and all of their amazing new technology is not enough to overcome their malinvestment.
The Trump-Xi meeting didn’t change much, if anything important, but it does keep the conversation open, and, maybe more technical people can work something more substantial out.
A president meeting a foreign leader at the airport is rare and is a sign of deference and weakness. Xi stood at the top of his airplane steps, while Trump waited at the bottom like a subservient vassal. Probably doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things, but goes along with Trump’s flooding dictators with love and praise while repeatedly violating the rule of law himself.
Despite Trump’s public subservience to China and its leader, and despite backing down at his attempts of major trade war against China, the Trump administration is still pushing back against China in smaller, yet important, and less headline grabbing, ways.