We urge
the United States to cancel immediately sanctions on Chinese companies
including Huawei to push for the healthy and stable development in Sino-U.S.
ties.
China’s
Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng Gao
The collateral damage is spreading…The impact of any further
deterioration of the relationship will not be limited to these two major
powers.
Australia’s
PM, Scott Morrison
The hottest country in the world right now is the United States and
everybody wants a part of it… We have a
lot of time…There’s no rush, they can take their time. There is absolutely no
time pressure. Hopefully in the end it’s going to work out. If it does, great.
If it doesn’t, you’ll be hearing about it.
Donald
Trump
China is just one failing effort. Donald
Trump is playing a hand that gets weaker by the day. As the world looks on in
horror, Trump baits and prods Iran’s leaders, threatens them with obliteration
and amps up sanctions for Iranian leaders (who truly do not care, have no bank
accounts and do not travel) as well as nations and companies that continue to
do business with Tehran. But it was Donald Trump who abrogated the American
commitment to the six-party Iran nuclear containment accord, a flawed treaty
that at least halted Iran’s nuclear program as verified by an extensive U.N.
inspection.
The remaining treaty nations are
struggling with how to keep that accord intact, while Trump does everything he
can to undermine its effectiveness. His use of American domination of the
global financial market has caused European allies, who resent his bullying
economic tactics against them for doing what the treaty was intended to do, has
forced his allies into using alternative financial structures to circumvent
Trump.
His pledge to secure a better treaty
from Iran remains, as expected, another dismal foreign policy failure.
Paralleling his “peace plan” for Palestine, that was laughed into
meaninglessness at the recent Bahrain conference (boycotted by the Palestinian
contingent). His “nothing in it for the United States” unilateral concessions
in Israel – moving our embassy to a hotly contested Jerusalem and recognizing
Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights – have further isolated the United
States from most of the rest of the world.
Or that his efforts to close our
border to asylum-seeking refugees, in contravention of global law, have
resulted in both an increase of Central Americans at our gates and a litany of events
of mistreatment of detainees, especially of children already separated from
their parents (the “zero tolerance” effect). Death and pain at the border
provide unending photographic evidence to the rest of the world of Trump-America’s
newfound proclivity towards raw cruelty. Failure. Just like his promise of an
elusive denuclearization accord with North Korea as Kim Jong Un cozies up to Russia’s
Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Just like Trump’s tariff and trade war
with Beijing.
Ah, China… We don’t even have a
military advantage anymore. While our massive military might, far greater than
that of the Peoples’ Republic, is spread thin all over the world, China has
focused on regional power. Korea, the Philippines and Japan have taken notice
and are moving accordingly. Most of Asia is under their growing influence,
underlined by their Belt and Road Initiative. We don’t matter much anymore.
Fact: while China is definitely open
to a balanced negotiated trade agreement with the United States – our economic
bullets are truly hurting both them… and us – if Xi Jinping were truly to
accept most of the concessions demanded by Trump, his political life would be
over. Since China is not a democracy, rather a centrally-directed state,
President Xi is using that power to defy American demands – other than normal
trade concessions – even if his people and his economy suffer. He will not
self-destruct to placate Donald Trump and his out-of-touch base.
One of Donald Trump greatest
philosophical weaknesses, a dramatic tragic flaw in international relations, is
his application of generic business practices – The Art of the Deal – to
foreign policy. In a world where multiparty trade agreements are the rule –
companies today are multinational, manufacturing often aggregates components
made in many different countries – Donald Trump only understands one-on-one
negotiations.
Trump’s dramatic ignorance of
economics (he did not do well in those college courses), ignoring the history
of failure when relying on tariffs, is truly horrifying. Strategically, he
believes that America’s bargaining power should not be diluted in a multiparty negotiation
with many nations. A bully needs to be able to focus bullying-power on a lone
negotiating “opponent” on the other side of the table. And guess how those
“opponents” (vs “trading partners”) respond to such tactics? It’s just not how
the world works in a modern era.
For weeks, Trump has been touting his
“special relationship” with China’s Xi, suggesting that the two men can just
sit down and finalize a bilateral trade agreement. That sit-down was basically
going to take place at the G-20 meeting, now rolling along in Osaka, Japan.
Don’t hold your breath. An isolated and internationally disliked Donald Trump
is not bringing home the bacon.
As world leaders gather, “expectations
for significant progress are remarkably low, even within the [Trump] administration.
During a White House briefing for reporters, a senior administration official,
speaking anonymously under the briefing ground rules, noted that Trump’s
planned meeting with Putin is ‘not a formal summit’ and that, while the
conversation will probably focus on regional security matters, there is no
official agenda.
“The lowered prospects reflect how
much less of a role multilateral institutions and meetings have in the Trump
era. They also highlight the administration’s lack of clearly articulated
foreign policy goals. Trump has repeatedly suggested that improved U.S. ties
with Moscow would be a good thing, for example, but has never made clear what
he hopes to gain.
“The personality-driven nature of
Trump’s diplomacy is familiar by now. He relishes the global spotlight,
toggling between tough talk and effusive praise for other leaders, and often
expresses confidence that the most intractable geopolitical problems can be
resolved by building strong personal relationships… But well into the third
year of his norm-shattering presidency, there is scant proof that works…
“Rather than trying to build a
consensus among multiple heads of state, Trump tends to view these group
meetings mostly as an opportunity to hold a series of one-on-one discussions.
This time, he plans to hold bilateral meetings with at least eight leaders.
“In addition to his expected meeting
with Putin on Friday [6/28], the most attention probably will be on his
expected sit-down Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when the
trade war between the two countries appears to be at an impasse.” Los Angeles
Times, June 27th.
Trump is telling increasingly
skeptical Americans that the additional renewed pressure of blacklisting
Chinese companies and limiting how U.S. companies can deal with them will force
China to do what he promised they would do. He is telling hapless farmers in
mid-America, slammed with both massive flooding (ah, but Mr. Trump cares not to
try and address the cause – man-induced climate change) and sales losses from
the effective closure of the Chinese market due to Trump’s trade war – that
this tact is sure to work. It won’t.
The quotes above, dealing with the
U.S. trade war with China, tell you just how far Trump’s reality veers
from reality. There are no winners, and the longer this impasse
continues, the list of losers grows. When a trade agreement is ultimately
consummated, sooner or later, it will reflect a negotiated trade balance. Trump
will undoubtedly ignore his being forced to compromise and brag about the “best
trade agreement with China ever negotiated.” Right. China is a small and weak
country that must do as Donald Trump wishes. And I am the Easter Bunny.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and reality seems to be particularly unpopular with the Trump
administration.
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