We're like 14% of China's business. They'll be fine without us.
We won't be fine without them. Not even remotely. And not just in manufacturing.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Americans don't know that there's a world outside of the US. They genuinely believe that the world will cease to function without them.
At this point you could make quite a lucrative business sitting in a 10% tariff country buying goods from China and reselling them to the US.
Countries like India have made bank doing this. Theres no way to do what he wants rationally
Even if these big, erratic disruptive moves do bring people to the negotiating table to buy more US exports (what exports?), there's no apparent calculus being done for the distrust and hostility it will engender. This is a big moment for the slow death of US soft power.
I always knew the capitalists won't let their lil cheeto doom their profits. Makes me think the end goal of this tarrifs stunt is political pandering. They really are testing the boundaries of my capacity of material analysis
You are forgeting about the big supporters of the regime likely knowing what is going to happen, and even helping decide what will be done, meaning when the "markets" are going up or down they are making bank with their insider info.
This is just phase 2.
IF Trump was rattled by China's retaliation he would include them in the pause and pretend it had nothing to do with them, he'd attempt to play it off as a global thing so as to not given undue impression of power on China's part. That he hasn't tells you he doesn't care.
The point of this was never hurting say India. It was always about China, other nations were included to disguise this fact and to shake them down because why not. Also to pressure them to bring them into the fold for the next phase.
But the fact that China's tariffs were increased, not removed tells you all you need to know. Namely they are absolutely dead serious about decoupling from China.
India is not going to help China, they're a reactionary/fascist nation actively trying to stab China in the back and take their industry and courting the US for a trade deal which the US will give them in exchange for helping move important (iphone, etc) manufacturing from China to India for the US. China is courting them anyways in public but it won't work. The only real allies China has in this are likely to be Vietnam (maybe, US is trying to peel them from China and stoke division and these moves were going to badly hurt Vietnam but were pulled back), DPRK, Russia. The US likes those odds. The US feels it can deal with an isolated bloc of those countries and Trump feels he can maybe peel Russia away with time.
China made a call and Trump seized on them trying to stand fast and rally the world to them to fight the US by giving everyone else a reprieve and thus no reason to stand with China while he leaves them isolated and alone. They can't back down now so in a way I think Trump has them where he wants them. Namely standing alone, with the rest of the world negotiating with the US on terms which will doubtless include measures to pull them into the US orbit and away from China's orbit in exchange for tariff relief.
I don't disagree with China's call but they may have walked right into a trap of certain intent and design by the US. To be fair they didn't have any great choices. If they just bowed their heads and pleaded on their knees things would also be bad for them. I've heard that Trump admin has been refusing meetings with envoys and so Trump and co are lying about China not trying to negotiate, it's just a lie they're pushing while they refuse to listen or treat with China so they can justify all of this and cast China as the belligerent aggressor who doesn't want to be fair.
It's about isolating China. It's about creating economic interests and incentives that isolate China and I think its working at least at this stage. The pause will cause most countries to come and negotiate and most will be given relief for token concessions which Trump will trumpet as big deals and big wins.
The US may indeed be intent on devaluing their currency to make exports competitive but as part of this they have to isolate China, they have to smash Chinese industry and competitiveness and look what we have? China standing alone against the US, calling out to other nations who even now slink away from it leaving it alone because no one else wants this fight, they all want to take the out because the US is still too strong.
China needs to use what strength it has to really hit the US.
Though I worry it doesn't matter. I worry they've built into their plans a hope that tariffs can continue to spiral out of control, that Chinese goods become unaffordable, that the economy crashes, that supply chains are forcibly rerouted and there are years of shortages but that they achieve a quick, fast, if painful decoupling from China leaving them free to isolate, sanction, blockade, and attempt to destroy China using their navy, their control of global finances to sanction and make trade with China for third party nations impossibly expensive or painful, and so on and use this to crush Chinese industry and economy, to break up the belt and road, to re-enslave the global south that China was trying to free with better loan and development terms. If that's the case and capital doesn't revolt and I think there's a very good chance it doesn't as at least tech capital seems to be standing with Trump and can always be bought off with specific exemptions for say Apple to import x amount per year not subject to tariffs then China has a hell of a fight ahead of them.
And no rerouting goods through India for finishing for lower tariffs isn't a long-term solution as at that point the capitalists begin to ask why they're paying those higher Chinese wages and then a cut for the Indian finishers when they could just move production itself to India as Apple has been doing to a degree.
The way for China to defeat the US and specifically Trump's anti-Nixon shock was to rally other countries to it and create their own system based on common interests of resisting US tariffs and they seemed to be making moves to attempt this, but now no other major country on earth (save maybe Russia which is subject to sanctions instead of tariffs) has that common interest, the US quickly peeled them away by offering everyone else a way out but keeping China in the cross-hairs after China had already escalated leaving China alone locked in a loop of escalation with the US with other countries looking on but having no interest in challenging the US while it's still this strong.
All of this is predicated on countries preferring not to be tariffed in the US over trading with China and that's just not going to be the case. The US market is small and it's shrinking as the consumers are being drained of their purchasing power. If you had an exclusive choice whether to launch a new consumer product in the US or China, you would pick China 95 times out of 100. And if it wasn't a consumer good but an intermediate product in a production flow. 99 times out of 100 you would choose China.
Economically, there will be very few countries that prefer to pull their products from China in favor of lower tariffs in the US. And very few countries can choose to stop buying from China, including the US.
China cannot be isolated simply because it has intermediated the vast majority of the world's value chains and it continues to do so by intermediating more and more of the natural resources value chains by providing better options to Africa.
What can happen is the US can create maximal counter play along the lines you've described and that can mean sanctioning world leaders, embargoing small countries to deliver collective punishment to oust existing leadership, etc. That will work for some countries for some time. It will certainly create the conditions for fascist movements to grow in Europe, which I think is ultimately the only way they're going to have enough soldiers to fight China. But economically it is not enough to isolate China.
We shall see won't we? I wouldn't discount dollar hegemony and control of things like SWIFT given the replacements are years away still. For that matter I wouldn't discount how Europeans and a few other vassals may be happy or coerced into offering themselves as firewood for the US empire to keep it going.
Notice to the downvoters: I never said this would work I just said I think this is their thinking. But apparently even the idea that the reactionaries have some sort of cogent thought or plan in their head is anathema to far too many people here. I'm sorry to say there is at times in the western left a kind of circle-jerk of acceptable logic. It pays to at times attempt to get into the heads of our enemies.
I never said this would work I just said I think this is their thinking.
It would have been best to clarify this in your initial comment.
I think it would be a mistake to view China as isolated in this. First of all, Russia, Vietnam and Iran are pretty strong partners to have. Secondly, there is the BRICS bloc, which has been growing largely due to American abuses of the international finance system. America flip flopping so hard on tariffs and then extorting every country in the world will no doubt cause American soft power to decline rapidly in the coming years as countries grow weary.
Also, on a purely military and industrial basis, China outclasses the whole of the west by such a margin that there really isn't anything to worry about. China of all countries cannot have its industries decimated short of nuclear strikes.
I think it would be a mistake to view China as isolated in this.
In -ALL- of this? No. In this specific situation where everyone else has already slipped the tariffs? Yes. Absolutely they're standing on their own basically in the immediate moment.
As to US soft power I think Trump was already the sign that they've given up on that. If they hadn't they wouldn't be gutting all the soft power operations with DOGE and doing so much damage to image with threats to annex Greenland and Canada. I think the die has been cast there that hard imperialism is the way forward, cold war 1.0 playbook basically. I think Ukraine was a wake-up call because US propaganda didn't pull in the global south, it just plain failed outside of Europe and US vassals in Asia. What soft power they retain will be aimed at "traditional values" crowd as in the cold war, running up red-scare stuff about Chinese commies gay marrying you against your will and things like that.
America is very much in a do or die situation and we know it, they know it, China knows it. They're trying to undergo a transformation which will either succeed in prolonging their grip on power or hastening their demise, the way to delay and hedge against either was to continue the old path but that led to certain doom while this they feel gives them a chance.
No. In this specific situation where everyone else has already slipped the tariffs?
China is the biggest target, it hasn't been isolated from the world economy or the free trade system. America is making an attempt to isolate china but how many countries will play along?
What soft power they retain will be aimed at “traditional values” crowd
Fair enough. But there is more to soft power than just cultural factors. The reliability of the American market itself is in question, and this is not a good thing. America going with fascist aesthetics is nowhere near as America trying to interfere with the global gravy train.
It is impossible to convince the Europeans to side with the global south out of the goodness of their hearts (which they don't have). However, fucking with their wallets will cause everyone except the most ardent European hitlerites to rethink their relationship with America.
China is a dependable ally, the US is a country that will randomly threaten their allies militarily and economically for no reason other than that they can. China is behaving like a responsible, trustworthy nation, the US is acting like a mobster demanding "protection" payments. Even if they have gone back on these tariffs, their intention behind all of this was so obvious a child could point it out.
The idea that the nations of the world will just side with the US to "destroy China" is ludicrous. They'd all be destroying their own economies so that their masters in Washington can continue to loot and plunder them. Even the US's most mindlessly loyal vassals are aware that the days of the US empire are numbered and are looking for a way out.
You're also forgetting that nations can choose to just pick neither side, and stay neutral. China is fine with this, and is still perfectly willing to trade with them. I doubt the US would be, and would likely use economic and military threats to force nations to side with them. Historically, threatening people into being your allies doesn't create reliable or effective allies, instead it generally pushes nations away from yours, working with your enemy.
The US is not this undefeatable immortal titan of a nation, and China is not this passive, mindless drone of a nation unable to react to international geopolitics.
So many people here who are so uncharitable towards me...
Please point out where I said "this plan is brilliant and guaranteed to succeed and socialism and China are doomed and we're fucked and Trump and the US are the most masterful planners to ever exist" or anything along those lines which everyone seems to assume I've said based on the hostile response.
Not a one of you has pointed out how this is impossible for the US planners to be thinking this or acting along these lines. It's no more ridiculous than assuming it's all just Trump throwing a tantrum or doing greedy things which to me is true absurdity when it's clear there are bipartisan plans. It's buying into the liberal lie that Trump is some aberration breaking things which were it the case Biden would have reversed a lot of his decisions instead of doubling down.
What Sodium_nitride said. If this was an analysis of the plans of the US establishment, instead of your own geopolitical analysis, you should've made that clearer.
No offense comrade but this reads like a MAGA fever dream. It's all wildly unrealistic and detached from the realm of what is possible in reality given how international trade actually works. It also vastly overestimates the US's capabilities. The Europeans couldn't even properly decouple their energy from Russia, but the US is going to decouple from China? Lol. No. Not happening. You don't just rebuild entire industries and supply chains overnight. If the economy crashes it's not going to be a magic ticket to re-industrialization, it's going to be complete pandemonium and things will spiral very badly, very fast. This isn't some 5D chess move, it's a bluff with a very mediocre hand.
China and vietnam dont really see eye to eye, i dont see them happening. historically they are pretty much enemies,a nd vietnam has always been closer to usa than with china. also its usa making all these threats not china, china will just trade with other countries, even if it weakens them slightly, look at soybeans, china was for a time totally dependant on soybeans form the us, and when trump tariffed it, china found other countries to trade with, whom had no issues with china.