- cross-posted to:
- economics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- economics@lemmy.world
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it’s really hard to imaging china winning this dispute when the americans are the biggest paying consumers by far; examples like EV’s and huawei suggests that it’s going to be more difficult for china than the united states and, if the rest of the western world follows suite like they with did with huawei and EV’s, china would be an a very tough spot.
US accounts for a tiny portion of Chinese exports at this point. China saw this coming a long time ago and they redirected trade toward the Global South. On top of that, they’ve been pursuing dual circulation strategy ensuring that their domestic economy was insulated from problems in global trade. China is going to be just fine even if the western economy collapses entirely.
i remember reading this from something else you shared earlier and now why i’m wondering if that pivot will help considering the EV & Huawei; both of these chinese companies expanded to include the entire world and the united states twisted the arms of the rest of the world to impose tariffs and bans on these products.
it seems like the united states could simply expand this arm twisting some more to force countries to stay away from china and i suspect that’s the goal of the tariffs now considering that they’re rejecting the feet-kissing compromises from places like vietnam, who work closely with china today. if vietnam starts distancing itself from china to appease the united states, it could become the canary in the mine for how things are going to go geopolitically in this trade war.
EV manufacturers and Huawei are already making vast majority of their sales outside the west. Furthermore, China alone is an economy of 1.4 billion people. That’s already bigger than all of the west combined, and China is actively raising the standard of living for its population which translates into increased demand. Meanwhile, countries the US is now attacking economically are going to be increasingly looking to China. I predict we’ll see Latin America, Asia, and even parts of Europe start joining BRICS, BRI, and so on.
All the US is accomplishing is to isolate itself from the rest of the world. It’s likely going to retain some vassals in Europe, Canada, and Australia, but majority of the world will be moving on now. This process was already happening, but Trump has drastically accelerated it with his trade war.
it seems like the united states could simply expand this arm twisting some more to force countries to stay away from china and i suspect that’s the goal of the tariffs now considering that they’re rejecting the feet-kissing compromises from places like vietnam, who work closely with china today.
I don’t see how that happens because the US has very little to offer compared to China. And you can already see how Vietnam got rebuffed even after trying to beg for a deal. The demands US is putting on countries are beyond all reason.
i think you can add latin america (excluding brazil and argentina) to that vassal list considering that the united states is imminently poised to put boots on the ground in peru and mexico and with panama, el salvador & columbia not far behind.
american hard & soft power will keep anyone else in latin america from joining brics, no matter how much they want to join (as exemplified by mexico today); american boots on the ground in peru is the response to bri (and it will be turned into an example like venezuela or cuba); and milei is going to do everything in his power to remove argentina from brics.
Brazil alone is by far the biggest economy in Latin America, but we shouldn’t forget Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua as some other important countries in the region. The countries that end up bending the knee to the US will necessarily see their economies decline as they become further exploited, meanwhile countries that turn to BRICS will see their economies grow.
American soft power is primarily based on its economic power, and that’s far weaker today than it’s ever been since WW2 ended. The whole G7 bloc was already smaller economically than BRICS, and now with the west fighting each other, the situation for US is even more grim. Meanwhile, US hard power has been exhausted in Ukraine, the US is still mired in West Asia where over a billion has been spent on bombing Yemen in just the past few months, and a potential war with Iran is looming. All while the US has ambitions to take on China. Where you think the US is going to get the resources to project hard power in Latin America, I have no idea.