Friday, June 15, 2018

To Keep China from Global Dominance Neoliberalism will have to be Destroyed

Based on the initial announcement (see Ana Swanson's "U.S. to Put Tariffs on $50 Billion in Chinese Goods as Trade Fight Widens") it appears that Trump has decided on a battle royale with China. Made in China 2025, the Chinese effort to become a global leader in high-tech manufacturing, will not be tolerated:
In a statement Friday morning, President Trump said the United States would levy the tariffs on goods that contain “industrially significant technologies,” including those that relate to the country’s Made in China 2025 plan for dominating high-tech industries, and that the United States would pursue additional tariffs if China retaliates.
The Chinese will respond with tariffs of their own, most likely on agriculture from the rural states that are Trump's base (see last week's "Why Trump Might Cave to China: Iowa Soybean Farmers").

Then at the end of the month the other shoe will drop when the Trump administration announces restrictions on high-tech exports to China, as well as limits on Chinese investment in the U.S. According to Swanson,
Tensions could escalate further in the coming weeks. The White House is currently formulating a plan for restricting Chinese investments in the United States and putting stricter limitations on the types of advanced technology that can be exported to the country. It has said those restrictions will go into effect shortly after they are announced by June 30.
If a full blown trade war is about to kick off I say fine. We need change, and I am willing to take any kind if only to get the dialectic of history motoring again.

Neoliberalism didn't bring peace and plenty, as Francis Fukuyama predicted, but he was right in the sense that it did freeze history. I'm not a student of the colonial period of capitalism. So I'm not sure how long that lasted -- the 1880s until the beginning of World War One? -- but that's still a decade shorter than our neoliberal paradigm.

The Dragon is the spawn of neoliberalism. To prevent the Dragon from reaching its zenith, neoliberalism will have to be destroyed.

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