China’s Trade War Against America

The Chinese regime is the creation of the globalists. Going back to the Nixon era, Henry Kissinger set into motion a staged and preferential trading system that would inevitably build the Red Communists into the very model for global dominance. Approving China into the World Trade Organization guaranteed a distorted playing field by favoring PRC and allowing their draconian conditions to engage in business by Oriental Marxists. Even The Guardian reports that World trade rules too weak to stop China distorting market, “It is now clear that the WTO rules are not sufficient to constrain China’s market-distorting behavior.” The end result produced a perverse capitalism that merged with totalitarian oligarchists to distort, extort and circumvent any semblance of a legitimate free trading exchange.

Behzad Yaghmaian provides some valuable insights in China: Empire Building in the Age of Globalization.

“The United States helped China’s economic ascendance by promoting globalization and embracing, in recent years, a free market orthodoxy. In the annals of history, it will be noted that it was the United States itself that championed a new economic structure which ultimately undermined its own position in the world.

How did this happen? China’s decision to open its economy to the world coincided with the U.S. drive for globalization. U.S. and Western corporations opened the economic floodgates to China through direct investment and subcontracting agreements. As Western capitalism globalized, China became the factory of the world.

Meanwhile, its free market ideology and obsession with balancing the budget became policy straightjackets that hobbled the United States’ ability to spend strategically on its future. As a result, money that could have been spent on education, research and development, modern infrastructure and other requisites for out-competing its rivals was in short supply.

Unencumbered by a free market orthodoxy, the Chinese opted for the opposite choice. They poured resources into areas pivotal for building a robust and competitive economy. China became the unintended winner of the limits of the United States’ free market ideology.”

Well, this is the short version of why America has allowed such an enormous balance of payments with China. In real terms, this recipe for economic demise was designed by the transnational corporatists. The intentional encouragement and approval of de-industrializing America has been no accident. The systematic dismantling of the merchantry economy followed as plant and equipment manufacturing moved offshore in order to build the Chinese coolie export dynasty.

This trade and industry structure was planned as a global warfare assault to bankrupt the American economy. The way back to a viable merchantry is to defeat the 21th Century robber barons who are most vulnerable to any significant drop in their exports. China has proven they are threats to any rational receptacle trading partnership.

Alan Tonelson in All of the Reasons Why Trump Can Win a Trade War With China, clearly lays out why China is a distrusted actor and major reasons they will lose far more from a curtailing of their overseas sales into the United States.

“Would a country that could take or leave its trade surpluses work so hard to extort or steal its rivals’ intellectual property? Would it pursue industrial policies aimed precisely at creating advantages for so many designated key sectors of its economy over foreign competitors? Would it limit exports of critical commodities like rare earths (essential for electronics and information technology manufacturing) to give its own producers a leg up on rivals press non-Chinese companies to move operations to the PRC? Would it subsidize massive overcapacity in goods like steel and aluminum in order to undercut the competition globally? Would it place so many restrictions on foreign providers of farm products along with banking, insurance, telecommunications, Internet-related, audiovisual, express delivery, legal and other services? Would it sue its trade partners in the World Trade Organization simply because they’re exercising their right to bring actions against China? Would it remain so determined to keep foreign firms in the dark concerning the regulations concerning licensing and operating requirements; product, investment, and business expansion approvals; and business license renewals?

One of these benefits has to do with achieving a goal that’s become imperative to the Chinese authorities—improving the quality of Chinese growth. As with America, too much of China’s economic expansion depends on ever higher levels of debt, rather than on more sustainable sources of demand. And Beijing at least sounds determined to rein in its unregulated shadow banking firms—particularly important lending culprits that have showered credit on provincial governments anxious to meet politically rewarding growth targets.”

In order to forge a worldwide economic alliance, Trump Is Building An Army Of Nations In Trade War Against China. Only President Trump has the guts to put the Chinese State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the ruling State Council (SASAC) business enterprises in the target sights to reign in their predatory practices.

“Earlier on Thursday Larry Kudlow confirmed that Trump is indeed building an army ahead of the big showdown with China. According to Bloomberg, Kudlow wants to rally “pro-market allies to push back against China’s unfair trade practices,” a senior White House adviser said.

“The damage of our economy comes from China’s restrictive practices. Blame China. They’ve been doing this for decades. Don’t blame Trump,” Larry Kudlow, head of the White House’s National Economic Council, told reporters in Washington.

In threatening to punish China for its abuse of intellectual property, Trump is “doing what everyone in the world has said we should do,” said Kudlow, adding that the administration will have more to say about its efforts to recruit other major economies to support the U.S. position.”

America has been pillaged by China for decades. Much of the rest of the world has also been abused by their same theft methods. Fear that China will strike back ignores the fact that China cannot afford missing out selling to the U.S. consumer. Americans gain the opportunity to defeat this aggressor by becoming independent of Chinese export dependency. The United States can win this trade war, it is time to get serious.

The post China’s Trade War Against America appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Thiel: Bullish On Bitcoin, Trump, & Musk; Bearish On AI, EU & Political Correctness

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

Fresh off his move to Los Angeles, and a profile in the New York Times where he defended President Donald Trump and lashed out at the pervasive groupthink that drove him out of Silicon Valley, billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel sat for an interview with Maria Bartiromo at the Economic Club of New York.

Early in the discussion, Bartiromo asked Thiel – who famously opened for Trump at the Republican National Convention – what he thought about Trump’s performance.

In response, he explained that he’s extremely happy with the president’s performance during his first year in office. While the media has been hyperfixated on the latest leak from the Russia probe, Trump has quietly been slashing regulations and questioning orthodoxies like the economic benefits of free trade.

“That’s why, if he runs again, he will be reelected,” Thiel said.

Though “it’s probably the case that Democrats will do quite well in the midterms.”

He also pointed out the irony that people in the Bay Area describe him as a “contrarian” for supporting Trump…

“Supporting Trump was the least contrarian thing I ever did…nearly half the country voted for him. But within the context of Silicon Valley it was viewed as extremely contrarian.”

“The one thing that I liked about Trump and still very much like about him is a willingness to ask questions and to reframe the debate and not be bound by these strictures.

“There are any of a number of issues where it’s good to rethink things.”

Later in the conversation, Bartiromo asked Thiel about the “Gawker situation.” Thiel, who sounded uncharacteristically willing to discuss an episode about which he has been famously reticent, explained that Gawker’s argument in its own defense was, in reality, an insult to journalism. Thiel said that just because Gawker billed itself as a news site doesn’t automatically extend first amendment protections to everything it publishes.

“I’m very proud to have supported Hulk Hogan in a successful lawsuit… The claim that a pornographer pays someone for sex tapes, and a journalist gets to publish sex tapes without paying people… that’s what in effect what Gawker was arguing.”

“We have a first amendment, we believe in free speech, but that doesn’t mean you get to steal a sex tape made in the privacy of a bedroom and post it on the Internet for everybody to see. We have a first amendment…but we also have a fourth amendment that protects us from unreasonable search and seizure…so that’s the legal framing.”

The Gawker lawsuit demonstrated to America why defining the scope of privacy protections in the digital age is so important. Today, the conventional wisdom is that Americans have tacitly surrendered their right to privacy by participating in the digital world. But Thiel says this notion is anathema to the preservation of a free society.

There was a brief discussion of trade, in which Thiel briefly pointed out that US is in a much stronger position to bargain with China and EU than vice versa…

“Quite unclear where China can reciprocate with tariffs on US. We’re exporting so little. US no longer is a monopoly exporter in any single area.”

“With Germany, it’s a very similar thing, hard to know how you retaliate in a way that hurts them more than it hurts US.”

The Silicon Valley billionaire then added that Peter Navarro has sold 1 million copies of his book “Zero To One” in China vs. 40,000 in India, which Thiel says is one way to show how one country is thinking about entrepreneurship versus the other.

When Bartiromo raising the European Union’s decision to introduce the “first ever” regulations of Google, Facebook and other giant tech platforms. Thiel sees good reasons and bad reasons for this threat of regulation:

“The good reasons are these privacy concerns and the bad reasons are there are no successful tech companies in Europe and they are jealous of the US so they are punishing us.”

Additionally, Thiel acknowledged that “privacy in a digital era deserves to be rethought” but said that “as a libertarian I always dislike regulation.”

Intriguingly, amid all the hype and anxiety surrounding investment, Thiel explained why, as an investor, he wasn’t particularly interested in artificial intelligence: because of its bad reputation.

“The thing that struck me is how uncharismatic AI is at the point. Basically, it’s going to take our jobs and, once it takes our jobs, at the singularity [the theoretical point at which superhuman artificial intelligence is created, triggering an unprecedented cascade of technological change] it’s just going to kill everybody.”

“I’m not sure that dystopian view is necessarily correct but that’s actually what most people believe,” he said, adding that when considering investments he tends to ask whether technologies are good and how they are going to make the world better…

“The answers for things like AI are quite weak,” he said.

Bartiromo then steered the conversation toward bitcoin, and mentioned that, the last time she had spoken to Thiel, that he had expressed reservations about a lot of cryptocurrencies, but was optimistic about the long-term prospects of bitcoin. Thiel explained that he’s owned bitcoin for a long time, and has been consistently bullish.

Though he doubts it’ll ever be successful as a medium for payments, Thiel believes bitcoin could endure as a store of value that, much like gold, could serve as a hedge against inflation.

“The technology that people like to talk about is the blockchain technology, and I’m somewhat skeptical about how that translates into good investments, but the one use-case of cryptocurrency as a store of value may actually have quite a bit of a ways to go. I would be long bitcoin and neutral to skeptical of just about everything else at this point, with a few possible exceptions.

“The question with something like bitcoin is whether it can become a store of value. And the thing it would replace is something like gold. The analogy is it’s like bars of gold in a vault that never move and you get it and it’s a hedge of sorts against the whole world falling apart.”

“The objections that people have to bitcoin are also objections to gold. It’s this weird currency that’s not backed by any government. Same thing is true of gold. It’s not clear what the intrinsic value of bitcoin is. Same thing is true of gold. It may well be a bubble, but – and most bubbles are unstable and end – one of my friends has this line that ‘money is the bubble that never pops’, so if it is a bubble, then it is money.”

“If everybody decided that a $100 bill was worthless then you wouldn’t want to have a $100 bill.”

There are a lot of crazy dynamics in the crypto world, but one thing that’s different from the dot-com bubble of the late 90s is there aren’t any Wall Street bankers involved… yet – one reason why bitcoin strikes Thiel as “deeply contrarian.”

At the very least, both Wall Street and Silicon Valley were both late to the bitcoin party. While this isn’t a reason to be bullish in and of itself, it’s definitely a factor worth considering. And while there are risks surrounding the influence that miners exert, as well as the unraveling of privacy protections. But, Thiel says, there will likely be only one online equivalent to gold…and right now, bitcoin is the only crypto product that fits that bill.

Thiel offers some parting advice: “Never bet against Elon.” and “don’t compete with Amazon.”

When Thiel first invested in Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, he was sceptical that it would be able to build a reusable rocket.

“I have known Elon for 18 years and you should never bet against Elon,” he said.

“I thought it was inconceivable that it could be done … and they have actually pulled it off,” he said.

The company to watch, he said, was Amazon, which has expanded into a broad range of industries, from infrastructure and logistics to retail and healthcare.

“Amazon is the most ferocious company in the US at this point. It’s probably the company you don’t want to be competing against,” he said.

“I can’t think of any other company even close to Amazon.”

Finally, Thiel circled back to Silicon Valley and the politically-correct folly of it all…

“It’s striking how what had always been a very liberal place has become almost a one-party state,” he said.

“When you have complete unanimity that tells you that political correctness may have gone a little bit too far.”

Tariffs On Washing Machines Coming Up; Mish Rages "Let's Tax The Sun And The Rain Too"

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Whirpool bitched to the Trump administration and the International Trade Commission about unfair pricing on Samsung and LG-brand washing machines.

The ITC panel ruled U.S. washing machine makers hurt by South Korean imports, so your price is guaranteed to go up.

The U.S. International Trade Commission on Thursday found that imports of large residential washing machines were harming domestic producers, in a major step the imposition of duties or quotas on foreign-made Samsung- and LG-brand washers.

The case, brought by U.S. appliance giant Whirlpool Corp, asked the ITC to recommend to President Donald Trump “global safeguard” restrictions on imported washing machines to stop South Korean rivals Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc from flooding the U.S. market with cheap washers.

The commission, which voted 4-0 in finding that large residential washers were being imported in such quantities to create injury to domestic producers, will recommend remedies by Dec. 4 to Trump, who is expected to make a final decision by early next year.

Crony Capitalism

The ITC ruling will not save a single US job. But it will drive up costs on US consumers.

When corporations cannot compete, they bitch. They also pad the pockets of politicians so the politicians see things their way.

French economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote about this in 1845. I encourage everyone to read Bastiat’s famous Candlestick makers’ Petition.

The petition was a sarcastic proposal on behalf of candle makers and similar occupations to tax the sun for the unfair practice of providing free light.

Were it not for the sun, there would be more jobs for the manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting says Bastiat in his petition.

Let’s Tax the Sun and the Rain

Bastiat’s petition explains the folly of tariffs. Samsung is no more stealing jobs than is the sun.

Speaking of which, the US has massive sugar tariffs to protect the sugar lobby from “unfair competition” from countries that happen to have better-growing conditions for sugar cane because they get more sunlight and water.

Hmm. It seems we need to tax water for falling into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan instead of the desert where’s it’s badly needed.

Why should Illinois farmers get more rain than Arizona farmers? By tariff logic, we need to level out the playing field so that all corn farmers in Arizona and Greenland are not disadvantaged compared to Illinois.

Related Articles

1. Reflections and Reader Comments on Free Trade: “China Doesn’t Play Fair!”


2. Disputing Trump’s NAFTA “Catastrophe” with Pictures: What’s the True Source of Trade Imbalances?


3. Trump Accuses Germany of “Currency Exploitation”: Merkel vs. Trump, Is Either Side Telling the Truth?


4. Navarro Nonsense and the Folly of Trump’s Proposed Tariffs

All this talk of “fair trade” is complete nonsense. The only “fair trade” is free trade.

Those who wish to understand the true source of escalating trade imbalances need look no further than Hugo Salinas Price and Michael Pettis on the Trade Imbalance Dilemma; Gold’s Honest Discipline Revisited.

Trump Reneges on Abandoning NAFTA

On Wednesday, the White House said Trump will renegotiate what he once called “one of the worst deals ever.”

Twenty years after its 1994 enactment, Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach said she “remember(ed) crying” on the day NAFTA took effect – January 1, 1994.

“Not only did promises made by NAFTA’s proponents not materialize, but many results are exactly the opposite,” she explained.

Around a million US jobs were lost. A “staggering $181 billion US trade deficit with…Mexico and Canada” was incurred.

Over a million small Mexican farmers were displaced. Immigration to America doubled. Undocumented millions came north, desperate for work lost at home.

Predatory corporations were paid over $360 million by so-called “investor-state” tribunals, serving monied interests exclusively.

NAFTA and similar deals contributed to growing income inequality in all three countries. “NAFTA’s outcomes (20 years later shows) how damaging this type trade agreement is for most people,” said Wallach.

The only equitable solution is fair, not free trade, benefiting everyone, not business and large investors exclusively.

On Wednesday, Trump broke another promise to ordinary Americans, saying “(i)t is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation.”

“It is an honor to deal with both President Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Trudeau, and I believe that the end result will make all three countries stronger and better.”

Whatever is agreed on almost surely will be worse, not better, for workers in all three countries, better for monied interests alone.

In early April, the White House notified Congress of its intent to renegotiate NAFTA. Material leaked showed it largely replicates TPP’s final text, including:

•    favoring investors over consumers;

•    reneging on halting jobs offshored to low-wage countries;

•    instead of buy and hire American, his plan maintains jobs-destroying NAFTA rules.

Trump’s trade policy is corporate/investor-friendly at the expense of worker rights and consumer protections.

Virtually all his pledges to working-class Americans were abandoned. Like his predecessors, he’s an anti-democratic corporatist/warmaker, a reckless scoundrel.

He’s only just begun, the worst likely ahead.

America Is Hardly A Bastion Of Free Trade

Rhetoric has recently trumped reality. It has become a misconceived bit of common “knowledge” that the United States of America is a bastion of free trade. Little could be further from the truth. The “freest” nation on earth, as we are taught to believe, imposes a staggering number of tariffs, import and export bans, sanctions and embargoes. Yet somehow “free trade” is blamed for the financial ills of the unemployed in the formerly industrial Midwest. Instead of taking a serious look at our existing trade policies, and maybe reducing some of the regulations, President Trump promised Midwesterners that their inefficient factor jobs that have been outsourced to the “right to work” south and overseas will be brought back by imposing new import taxes on specific companies. It is a naïve and ignorant notion that singling out countries and taxing the goods they import into the US will somehow help the unemployed while having absolutely no effect on the country’s general productivity and standard of living. Besides, we’ve already been doing that for far too long.

The US imposes tariffs on over 12,000 different goods and services. No that is not a typo — over 12,000. Some of these tariffs are so significantly prohibitive that they are effectively outright bans.

Sugar, for example, is one product that Americans get gouged on, paying an average of $277 million more per year than they should. That is $277 million per year that would otherwise be used to consume other goods, invested in growing businesses, creating jobs, and raising real wages. This is nothing new. The original tariff was imposed as a “temporary” protection for US sugar farmers, that was more than 80 years ago. It has protected US sugar farmers, but has also decreased the productivity of the sugar farmers’ land. The laws of absolute and comparative advantage would dictate that the land on which sugar cane and sugar beets are grown and harvested should be used to produce goods in which these particular regions can more (cost and time) efficiently produce.

Sugar is not the only good, not by a long shot.

Even America’s favorite snack while watching America’s “favorite” past time — peanuts — are significantly more expensive than they otherwise would be because of measures to “protect” the US peanut farming industry. Specifically, the government imposes a 131.8 percent ad valorem tax on shelled nuts, even higher tariffs are applied to unshelled peanuts. The peanut farming industry is a $1 billion industry, annually. The question is how much are those numbers padded by the tariff, and how much less would consumers be paying for peanuts if peanut farmers weren’t a privileged class. A further example that demonstrates how inefficient these tariffs are is the import tax and quotas placed on rubber tires. In 2012, President Obama bragged about creating “over” 1,000 jobs in the tire manufacturing industry resulting from the measure. One account estimates that in 2011 alone Americans paid an additional $1.1 billion for tires, or roughly $900,000 per “job created,” than they otherwise would have. The same estimation concludes that 2 retail jobs were lost for every 1 manufacturing job created by the tax.

Tariffs are not the only way that the US government engages in what many would call “fair trade” instead of flat out free trade. Embargoes placed on several countries for so-called diplomatic purposes also distort international trade. Worse than the distortions they create, they don’t work for diplomatic advancement either. History tells us — and as 19^th century classical liberal Otto T. Mallery (and many others before and since) did — when goods don’t cross borders armies do. Contrary to popular belief it was not the European Union being created, it was not the United Nations mandating a beach bonfire kumbayah between countries, and it wasn’t the US military presence around the globe that has prevented another World War. It has been the increasingly open global market, the economic entanglements and the consequential benefits that nations reap when trading with others.

Before “heaping absurdity upon absurdity” as Bastiat put it in his famous essay The Petition of the Candlestick Makers maybe first we should take a look at the existing pile of absurdity that is US trade policy. To be clear, trade policies can carry many nuances. Tariffs don’t always necessarily only effect price, they could quite possibly effect profit margins of overseas corporations and create employment. They do always necessarily reduce prosperity. Even in the event that new jobs are created, they are likely to be less efficient jobs — either in cost, time or both — than their overseas counterparts. The best way to increase the number of jobs and the wages paid to those jobs is to increase the productivity of industry. First steps toward that should consist of tax reform, regulatory reduction, encouraging capital formation and accumulation, and repatriating the trillions of dollars stashed offshore as a result of high taxes and burdensome regulations.

Imposing more tariffs on more goods and more countries will simply make America a less productive society. Instead we are far better off focusing on producing the goods and services that — as the law of comparative advantage dictates — we are most superior at producing.

Trump Wins: G-20 Drops 'Anti-Protectionist, Free-Trade, & Climate-Change Funding' Commitment

After delays and hours of discussions amid tensions over "trade" comments between the United States and the rest of The G-20, it appears President Trump has "won". While China was "adamantly against" protectionism, the finance ministers end talks without renewing their long-standing commitment to free trade and rejection of protectionism after US opposition.

The world"s financial leaders are unlikely to endorse free trade and reject protectionism in their communique on Saturday because they have been unable to find a wording that would suit a more protectionist United States, G20 officials said.

This would break with a decade-old tradition among the finance ministers and central bankers of the world"s 20 top economies (G20), who over the years have repeatedly rejected protectionism and endorsed free trade.

But the new administration in the United States is considering trade measures to curb imports with a border tax and would not agree to repeat the formulations used by previous G20 communiques, clashing with China and Europe, the officials said.

"Unless there is a last minute miracle, there is no agreement on trade," one official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.  "This is not a good outcome of the meeting," a G20 delegate quoted Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann as saying.

In a partial face-saving move, as The FT details, G20 finance ministers meeting in the German resort town of Baden-Baden noted the importance of trade to the global economy, but dropped tougher language from last year that vowed to “resist all forms of protectionism”.

The new communique said: “We are working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies. We will strive to reduce excessive global imbalances, promote greater inclusiveness and fairness and reduce inequality in our pursuit of economic growth.”

The watered-down commitments on free trade reflected the anti-globalisation mood that Donald Trump has brought to Washington and came in the first G20 meetings between Steven Mnuchin, the new US Treasury Secretary, and his foreign counterparts.

US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin spoke to reporters after the meeting:

• *MNUCHIN: LOOKING FORWARD TO WORKING CLOSELY W/ G-20 COLLEAGUES


• *MNUCHIN: CONFIDENT U.S. CAN WORK CONSTRUCTIVELY WITH PARTNERS


• *MNUCHIN: U.S. BELIEVES IN FREE, BALANCED TRADE


• *MNUCHIN SAYS WILL LOOK AT TRADE SURPLUSES WITH VIEW TO CORRECT


• *MNUCHIN SAYS MULTILATERAL AGREEMENTS HAVE VERY IMPORTANT PLACE


• *MNUCHIN SAYS U.S. WANTS TO RE-EXAMINE TRADE DEALS INCL. NAFTA


• *MNUCHIN: U.S. BELIEVES IN APPROPRIATE REGULATION


• *MNUCHIN SAYS IMPORTANT BANKS CAN PROVIDE LIQUIDITY IN MARKETS

Reuters also points out another potential win for Trump as the communique will also drop a reference, used by the G20 last year, on the readiness to finance climate change as agreed in Paris in 2015 because of opposition from the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Trump has called global warming a "hoax" concocted by China to hurt U.S. industry and vowed to scrap the Paris climate accord aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump"s administration on Thursday proposed a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency"s budget as the White House seeks to eliminate climate change programs and trim initiatives to protect air and water quality.

Asked about climate change funding, Mick Mulvaney, Trump"s budget director, said on Thursday, "We consider that to be a waste of money."

The G20 do agree, however, to show continuity in their foreign exchange policies, using phrases from the past on foreign exchange markets.

As we noted earlier, needless to say, such an acrimonous end to the weekend"s summit would likely result in a surge in FX volatility when markets open for trading late on Sunday, reflecting the new state of global trade flux, in which the future of the US Dollar is completely unknown, and reflecting the emerging chaos over the future parameters of trade.
 

As Americans Debate Immigration, China Says War With US is Now ‘Reality’

Discussing the United States and rapidly accelerating tensions, an article appearing on the Chinese army’s website, states, “The possibility of war increases.”

And China is preparing itself accordingly.

Liu Guoshun, a member of the national defense mobilization unit of China’s Central Military Commission, reports CNBC, penned the editorial on the day President Donald Trump took the oath of office.

His characterization of U.S.-Chinese relations evinces how much has unraveled between the two nations over the potential looming trade war — China is preparing itself for military action.

“‘A war within the president’s term,’” Liu asserted, “‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, but the reality.”

Although the opinion piece certainly sends an ominous message, Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the global political risk consultant, Eurasia Group, and inventor of the Global Political Risk Index, believes it to be more bluster than outright bellicosity. However, China’s long habit of posturing seems to be nearing an end.

“The Chinese government is quite concerned about the potential for direct confrontation with the Trump administration,” Bremmer told CNBC by email.

Egged on by Trump’s indiscriminate bashing of China, Beijing may be nearing the point of intolerance — and could act out in a military show of force.

“Chinese officials are preparing for the worst,” Bremmer continued, “and they expect to retaliate decisively in response to any U.S. policies they perceive as against their interests.”

Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea have further degenerated already cool relations with the U.S., as South Korea, in particular, has turned to American aid to protect its interests in the international waters.

China ramped up hostility by refusing to recognize the South China Sea as international waters per a ruling last year — and has continued construction on a series of manmade islands. The nascent Trump administration has already provoked vociferous condemnation from Beijing for vowing to prevent Chinese aggression in that region.

Asked if he agreed with Secretary of State and former Exxon Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, that China should not have access to its constructed islands, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted,

“The U.S. is going to make sure that we protect our interests there.”

READ MORE:  While Americans Focused on the RNC, the US was Provoking War with China

Some of the manmade islands have been outfitted with landing strips and stocked with military weaponry — sufficient for Beijing to claim the U.S. would have to “wage war” to stop it from maintaining access.

CNBC reports, “The U.S. needs China’s cooperation to keep North Korea’s nuclear threats in check. But challenges to the U.S.’s ‘One China policy’ that does not officially recognize Taiwan’s independence — a red-line issue for Beijing — could also add to tensions.”

Provocation over the South China Sea, trade, Taiwan, and more — even of the semantic variety Trump has limited himself to thus far — could spark a response from Beijing in the future.

“China doesn’t want trouble with the U.S., especially not in the run up to their own leadership transition this fall,” Bremmer told CNBC. “But if it comes, they want President Trump to understand the consequences.”

As part of the escalating conflict over trade between the two largest economies on the planet, Beijing has been deeply critical of inefficiencies of so-called Western Democracy and corporatist capitalism.

“Western-style democracy has played a progressive role in history, but right now it has heavy drawbacks,” Communist Party secretary of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Han Zhen, wrote in an editorial for the People’s Daily, cited by CNBC.

Some analysts feel Beijing might be opportuning contention in the United States over the election and subsequent executive actions by Trump to insert commentary favorable to its interests while shining a negative light on the West.

“I think they’re just trying to take advantage of what looks like a disorderly transition in the U.S. and a great anxiety around the world about what a Trump administration looks like,” noted Scott Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as CNBC reports.

“When you have a country like China whose growth is slowing with massive debt, with concerns of its neighbors as it moves to become more powerful, I don’t know if it’s the right time for China to be strongly promoting its system relative to others.

“Democracy isn’t meant to be efficient,” Kennedy explained in an answer to Chinese criticisms. “It’s meant to reflect diversity, have checks and balances on power and proceed in a manner where everyone has a say.”

China, in the meantime, has continued limited missile tests and made its military prowess known to Taiwan and parties present in the South China Sea. While belligerence has thus far been limited to talk, were the Trump administration take a tangibly aggressive stance in the South China Sea, China’s military will apparently be more than prepared to respond in kind.

Free Trade Versus "Free Trade"

NPR featured an unintentionally funny piece this week on Donald Trump"s views toward the EU and free trade. The guest, former US ambassador to the EU Anthony Gardner, rightfully criticized the president"s view that "protection will lead to great prosperity and strength," and called for continued global engagement by US companies and consumers. But he revealed, perhaps inadvertently, what political actors mean by "free trade."  

Specifically, Gardner expressed great skepticism towards the prospect of the US striking a bilateral free-trade deal with the UK, supposedly one of Trump"s top objectives in his upcoming meeting with new Prime Minister Theresa May. Free-trade agreements are complex, Gardner informed us, and negotiating one will be neither easy nor quick. 

Why? To economists, free trade means the absence of government interference with trade: no tariffs, quotas, subsidies, or other interventions, explicit or implicit.

To politicians, "free-trade" means a complex set of managed trade policies (Gardner even referred to the solemn obligation to "write the rules for global trade," which in his mind is something either our government does or a foreign government does). Which imports will be taxed, and at what rates? Which exports will be subsidized, and at what levels? How will labor, environmental, and social policies be enforced by domestic and foreign governments? For government officials, countries are engaged in "free trade" when they agree on a complex package of explicit and implicit taxes and subsidies such that neither has a special advantage over the other, nor is disadvantaged relative to some other trading partner (however such advantages are defined).

As Murray Rothbard once wrote, 

If authentic free trade ever looms on the policy horizon, there’ll be one sure way to tell. The government/media/big-business complex will oppose it tooth and nail.

We’ll see a string of op-eds “warning" about the imminent return of the 19th century. Media pundits and academics will raise all the old canards against the free market, that it’s exploitative and anarchic without government “coordination.”

The establishment would react to instituting true free trade about as enthusiastically as it would to repealing the income tax.

"In truth," as Rothbard noted, "the bipartisan establishment’s trumpeting of "free trade" since World War II fosters the opposite of genuine freedom of exchange." The Bretton Woods organizations (the World Bank and IMF) and modern trade agreements are based on the mercantilist ideas that exports make a country wealthy, imports make it poorer. (Indeed, Gardner in the interview above worried specifically that a collapse of the EU would make it harder for US manufacturers to sell their goods in Europe, but said nothing about the advantages to US and European consumers of a reduced supra-national government). That"s why governments have little interest in genuine free trade.

About fifteen years ago I was part of a delegation of US officials on a fact-finding mission to Singapore, in advance of a potential US-Singapore bilateral free-trade agreement. (We all have skeletons in our closets.)

One of our tasks was to interview US businesspeople operating in Singapore to see if they thought the Singaporean government was unfairly subsidizing local companies at their expense. The idea was to use this as a bargaining chip: "If you don"t stop subsidizing your domestic manufacturers, we won"t stop subsidizing ours." (Turns out the Singaporean government wasn"t doing much to help its own companies, so the point became moot.)

It didn"t seem to occur to anyone that, even if the Singaporean government were protecting its own firms, at the expense of its own consumers, the US would not be better off by subsidizing its own exports to Singapore, as mercantilist theory claims. The idea that the US should simply refrain from interfering in peaceful exchanges between US-based and Singapore-based entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers — i.e., support for free trade — was simply too crazy to contemplate.

Top Chinese Economic Adviser Preparing for Trade War with Trump

January 18, 2017   |   James Holbrooks

(ANTIMEDIA) On Wednesday, the New York Times ran a biographical piece on Lui He, the top economic advisor to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Described as a “soft-spoken, American-educated technocrat” with influence “some believe rivals that of the prime minister,” the Times goes on to suggest Lui may be preparing for a trade war sparked by the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.

Lui, currently a deputy director at the National Development and Reform Commission — a powerful agency of which Lui is widely expected to become the next director — has, throughout his career, consistently pushed for open markets and the liberalization of the Chinese economy.

This position, however, has been met with staunch resistance just as consistently, as the Times explains:

“But even as he has gained influence, his ability to push through changes in these areas has been limited. Mr. Xi still calls the shots, and his pledge to revamp the economy jostles alongside his fiercely conservative agenda to restore party control and protect state companies.”

Donald Trump ran on an anti-China platform and has threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods once in office. His nationalistic agenda of economic protectionism stands in stark contrast to Lui He’s goal of open markets — a common problem, according to Lui, and one he addressed three years ago.

“Populist policies adopted by the governments of developed countries are often the instigators of crisis,” he wrote in a study that was published as a book.

This is, in fact, what’s happening in Europe right now. There, nowhere near recovered from the Brexit fallout, many European governments are having to combat potent, anti-globalization populist sentiments.

This is precisely the type of sentiment that allowed Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Now, with “Mr. Trump and his selection of a trade team that seems ready to restrict Chinese exports to the United States,” the Times writes, Lui’s task ahead — should he remain President Xi’s top economic advisor — will, undoubtedly, only get tougher.

The publication also noted that, for its part, China may already be preparing for a trade war:

“Chinese trade experts with government ties have already hinted that if the Trump administration imposes barriers on Chinese goods, they are ready to retaliate through steps like switching aircraft contracts from Boeing to Airbus, diverting food import contracts to rival countries like Brazil and possibly making it more difficult for Apple to sell iPhones in China.”

But the Times also notes that Lui is a shrewd and savvy player who’s managed to amass a great deal of power despite the fact some of his policies run counter to the party. This assessment would seem to be backed up by at least one seasoned China analyst.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Lui He is extraordinarily powerful,” says Christopher K. Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “He has shifted from a stance earlier on when he was very careful not to demonstrate the level of influence he had.”

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What Nixon Could Tell Trump About Ticking Off the Establishment

Note from the Editor: Many people are still surprised (pleasantly or otherwise) that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. As with all new presidents, Americans have high hopes and questions about what his administration will bring. Although there have been some questionable appointments, Trump has shown that he is willing to fight for jobs, he is well on his way to making amends with Russia (and thus averting nuclear war), and I feel like our Second Amendment rights are safer than they have been in years.

Because Trump has flown in the face of the establishment (and the mainstream media) for his entire campaign, his time in the White House could be fraught with peril. In the article below, freelance writer Jon Rappoport takes a look at history to break down the dangers that Trump could face during his presidency ~ Daisy.

Trump: what dangers does he face from Globalists?

by Jon Rapport: No More Fake News

As I keep emphasizing, Trump achieved two great things in his campaign for the presidency: he stopped Hillary Clinton from occupying the Oval Office, and he ran against big media, helping to further destroy its reputation.

From here on, we shall see.

How many compromises will the new president permit? How many will he seek?

To put it another way, how many covert victories will arch-Globalist David Rockefeller and his associates pile up? They are, of course, aware that Trump has promised to kick the can of Globalism down the road, stop the excesses of “free trade,” and bring stolen jobs back to America. What actions will they take against Trump?

Here’s a lesson from the past, about a president who put a brief dent in David Rockefeller’s master-plan. Let’s look at Richard Nixon and a different version of Watergate, the scandal that toppled him.

On the mega-corporate front, the plan for world control remains the Rockefeller template. “Free trade.” This plan was advanced, ceaselessly, for 40 years until, on January 1, 1995, the World Trade Organization was fully formed and took charge of criminal rules of global commerce: the crowning moment for global corporate predators. No more tariffs.

However, back in the early 1970s, the whole operation had almost been derailed. One man, a crook, a president, a liar, an insecure parody of a head of state, Richard Nixon, went off script. He REALLY went off script.

In an effort to bolster US companies and protect them from foreign competition, Nixon began erecting tariffs on a range of goods imported into the US.

If this Nixon economic plan spread to other countries, the entire global program to install “free trade” and mega-corporate emperors on their thrones for a thousand years could crash and burn.

Nixon was a Rockefeller man. He was owned by them. He’d been rescued from financial ruin by The Family, and now he was in the White House undermining their greatest dream. You can’t overstate the degree of the betrayal, from the Rockefeller point of view. You simply can’t.

Something had to be done. The president had to go. This was the real motivation behind Watergate. This was the real op. Yes, there were sub-motives and smaller contexts, but the prime move was: get Free Trade back on track; get suitable revenge on the puppet in the White House who went off the script.

Whether the Watergate break-in was planned to serve the higher goal or was pounced upon after the fact, as a grand opportunity, is beside the point. It was there, and it was used. It became the starting point for the Washington Post, its publisher, veteran editor, and two cub reporters to break Richard Nixon into pieces.

And if the Rockefeller people needed an inside man to report on the deteriorating mental state of the president as he heated up in the pressure cooker, they had Henry Kissinger, who was another Rockefeller operative.

The Washington Post was owned by Katharine Graham, who was a very close friend of the Rockefeller family. Years later, she would be awarded a medal of honor by the University of Chicago, an institution founded by John D. Rockefeller. On her death, a paid heartfelt obituary was inserted in the NY Times by the trustees, faculty, and staff of Rockefeller University, where she had served on the University Council.

And she and Nixon already hated each other by the early 1970s.

The managing editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, was an old hand at writing promotional material, having worked in Europe crafting releases for a CIA front group. A former Naval intelligence man, he liked one of his cub reporters, Bob Woodward, who had also worked for the Navy in intelligence.

When Woodward came to Bradlee with a story about a man in a parking garage who was passing secrets from the White House/FBI about Watergate, we are supposed to believe that Bradlee naturally responded by giving the green light to a major investigation. Woodward and Carl Bernstein, another cub, would undertake it—with nothing more than Bradlee’s reputation and the future survival of the Post and Katharine Graham’s empire on the line if the cubs got it wrong.

We are supposed to believe Bradlee gave the green light, without knowing who the man in the garage was, without knowing whether Woodward could be trusted, without even getting permission from Graham to move ahead.

Bradlee, a grizzled veteran of Washington, understanding exactly what Washington could do to people who told secrets out of school, just said to Woodward and Bernstein, “You’d better be damned sure you’re right, because otherwise we’re all in trouble.”

Two untested cub reporters set loose in a cage with tigers.

The odds of that happening were nil.

Bradlee had to know a great deal from the beginning, and he had to have Katharine Graham’s signal to move. The series of breaking stories would be spoon-fed to the unsuspecting young reporters, instead of veteran reporters who would become suspicious that they were being used. The cubs would be consumed by their ambition to advance their careers.

Bradlee was confident in the whole op because he had the essentials of the Watergate scandal in hand—all the way up to Nixon, the target—well in advance of his two young reporters.

To have proceeded otherwise—Bradlee was simply not that kind of fool. Whatever Deep Throat, the man in the garage, was dishing out to Woodward didn’t really matter. Bradlee already had it in his pocket. Deep Throat was merely a contrivance to allow the story to expand and grow by steps, and to permit Woodward and Bernstein to believe they were peeling layers from an onion.

The man behind the curtain was David Rockefeller.

After the whole scandal had been exposed and Nixon had flown away, in disgrace, from the White House for the last time, Rockefeller addressed a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of the European Community (October 1975). He was there to allay their fears about Nixon’s betrayal of the new economic world order. There was really very little he needed to say. David had already created (1973) the elite free-trade Trilateral Commission; a new puppet, Gerald Ford, was in the White House; and Ford had appointed David’s brother, Nelson Rockefeller, as his vice president.

David told the European attendees, “Fortunately, there are no signs that these anti-[free] trade measures [of Nixon] are supported by the [Ford] Administration.”

And that was that. The global mega-corporate colossus was back on track.

The temporary rip in the Matrix had been repaired.

On a far lower level of power politics, everyone and his brother was consumed with the contrails of the scandal that had driven away Nixon and his colleagues. People were congratulating each other on expunging a corrupt conspiracy from public life.

The real players, of course, were still in place, more powerful than ever. David Rockefeller and his aides were preparing for an even greater coup. They had chosen an obscure man with zero name recognition to be the next president of the United States. Jimmy Carter. Carter would function to forward the goals of the Trilateral Commission in bold view of anyone who knew the score.

And every president since Carter, regardless of party affiliation, has supported and extended those Globalist-corporate goals. No questions asked. Obama, who fatuously remarked during his 2008 election campaign that NAFTA “needs to be revisited,” has taken his cues like any other puppet.

When, from this perspective, you examine the global takeover of land and resources by GMO agribusiness, the destruction of small family farms, the plundering of natural resources in the Third World, the use of UN “peacekeepers” and “humanitarian groups” and intelligence agencies to create a wedge, for corporations, into these areas, you see the hand of the Rockefeller plan.

When you see the destruction of currencies and the escalation of insupportable debt, the incursion of a bewildering number of UN-affiliated groups sinking their teeth into local communities all over the planet to “manage sustainable development,” you see the plan.

Now, as Donald Trump prepares to take office as the 45th president of the United States, the plan is very much intact. What will he do to disrupt it? How much will he risk? What deals will he make? How far will he go in opposing the Rockefeller Globalists? Is he already co-opted? What measures are the Globalists launching?

We will see.

But the lesson of Richard Nixon reveals that David Rockefeller and his team are willing to do whatever it takes to depose an enemy.

They play hardball.

Jon Rappoport

Secret Corporate Government Merger — Known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership — is Finally Dead

In perhaps the least ceremonious victory for U.S. and international activists, the decidedly abhorrent Trans-Pacific Partnership — a corporate giveaway of phenomenal proportions — effectively died yesterday.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle announced the much-maligned, so-called ‘free trade’ deal — which would have inextricably tied the U.S. to Asia and given corporations unprecedented powers over governments — would not be pursued in the lame duck session before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

President Obama had hoped the massive, 12-nation agreement would come to fruition under a Hillary Clinton presidency, but with her defeat and Trump’s promise to roll back the previous, similarly-modeled North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), all prospects of passage melted away.

Further, the deal’s secreted negotiations and Wikileaks’ publishing of enormously controversial sections — such as the Intellectual Property chapter — left the American public leery and increasingly contemptuous of what, in essence, constituted a gigantic corporate power-grab. Aware of growing skepticism among voters, Republicans previously supporting the TPP dialed back their enthusiasm in recent months.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, “Winning a majority of votes for the TPP in the House and Senate would have required both a last-minute deal to address Republican priorities and an election result that didn’t show such broad discontent.

“Neither occurred. Since the election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) have said no to bringing the TPP to a vote in the lame duck session, despite the strong support of many senators in both parties for freer trade.”

Despite going out with just a fizzle, the death of the TPP is no less a victory for the people. Although it will await Trump once he takes the White House in January, it’s doubtful the new president — who may, indeed, tone down previous radical ideas to better attune to the establishment — would revive the abominated deal.

In a statement cited by the WSJ, Rep. Kevin Brady said Wednesday “this important agreement is not ready to be considered during the lame duck and will remain on hold until President Trump decides the path forward.”

Clamoring but failing to be included in the deal in the months leading up to the U.S. election, China could now continue its current path spurning American involvement in its trade and economy. In fact, as nations in the Asia-Pacific region continue to foment an alliance both amongst themselves and with Russia, further tariff-eliminating trade deals aren’t likely to include the U.S. at all.

In the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping will reportedly seek trade arrangements with less strictures than had been included in the TPP, such as environmental restrictions, labor protections, and tightly-constrained rules about intellectual property.

Additionally, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — which includes ten “members of the Association of South East Asian Nations plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand” — also presents direct competition for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Business Insider reports.

“China is always positively advancing work on its own regional free-trade strategy,” said deputy international trade representative, Zhang Xiangchen, quoted by Business Insider. “We, indeed, are continuously and positively advancing RCEP negotiations.”

Beijing feared U.S. protectionism under the TPP would cause economic isolation in the region, but the death of the agreement — and warming alliances with its neighbors — offers a chance for China to fully assert dominance it has been building financially and militarily.

Repercussions from the presidential election echo on the opposite side of the globe as well, as negotiations for the European-focused parallel trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), also came to a screeching halt.

Whether or not U.S. officials will begin to switch focus from the international to the domestic in the coming administration has yet to be seen, but the predicted death of the TPP certainly portends that possibility. Trump’s sometimes vitriolic rhetoric apparently did not spark sufficient malaise for voters soured on the TPP and other proposed trade deals once he denounced the plans as special interests attempting to “rape” the country, as the WSJ noted.

As with quickly heightening tensions and utter unpredictability trailing the election of a non-politician to arguably the seat of highest power on the planet, the killing of the TPP only occurred for the odd turn of events. Its abrupt and inelegant demise — however it came about — will undoubtedly be welcome news for many.