As he prepares to return to the White House, US President-elect Donald Trump has appointed neoconservative Iran hawk Brian Hook to lead his State Department transition team. This has excited pro-Israel groups.
At a September event at the Israeli-American Council, Trump proudly declared, “I was the best friend Israel ever had”.
All of the likely candidates for Trump’s secretary of state and national security advisor are China hawks. These include neocons Marco Rubio, Robert O’Brien, and Mike Waltz. Three other possible choices, Ric Grenell, Bill Hagerty, and Vivek Ramaswamy are so-called “MAGA” Republicans who have distanced themselves from neoconservatism, but still share the neocons’ vehement hatred of China and would escalate tensions with Beijing.
Trump’s former trade representative Robert Lighthizer is coming back in his second administration. Lighthizer is another hawk who oversaw the trade war on China during Trump’s first term. Lighthizer started his political career in the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, when he helped wage a similar trade war on Japan.
During his campaign, Trump pledged to impose tariffs of “more than” 60% on Chinese goods. China is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, after Canada and Mexico.
The former chief strategist in Trump’s first administration, Steve Bannon, boasted in 2018, “We’re at war with China”. Bannon confidently predicted a US war in the South China Sea by 2027. The week of the November 2024 election, Bannon made similar remarks, stating that Trump will have to “defend” Taiwanese separatists. Bannon urged Trump to settle the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in order to prepare for conflict with Beijing.
In the following video and podcast, Ben Norton analyzes what Trump’s foreign policy and economic strategy will likely be, based on his previous term and statements made by him and his allies during the 2024 campaign. Norton addresses China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, tariffs, de-dollarization, and more.
Topics
0:00 Intro
0:33 Summary of Trump’s foreign policy
10:44 Neocons in Trump’s cabinet
14:41 China
18:48 Tariffs & trade with China
24:47 US dollar & re-industrialization
29:39 Protectionism
37:01 Russia & Ukraine
42:23 Israel-Palestine
44:31 Iran
46:36 Middle East (West Asia): Yemen, Iraq, Syria
49:41 Latin America: Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia
53:17 Africa
54:32 Europe
56:11 Japan & South Korea
57:53 Outro
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-11 at 07:29
If Drumpf appoints even one single neoconartist to his new cabinet, it will prove that he has learned absolutely nothing from his first term and far from being a stable genius, he is a whackadoodle imbecile. Hence properly shooting him in the head next time will raise his IQ, it will be a considerable improvement.
Putting aside Drumpf’s tariff trade war blather, what is China’s agenda and how can that be achieved?
Xi Jin Ping openly declared that after raising 850 million Chinese out of absolute poverty, his next goal, because relative poverty still remains widespread, is to ensure fair distribution of moderate prosperity throughout the entire country. Material wealth extending to the farthest reaches of rural China: washing machines, solar panels, electronic items, electric vehicles, indeed all consumer goods. How to achieve that? Redirect the huge Chinese manufacturing capacity away from exports and towards the largest market* in the world of 1.4 billion people: China. But how to ensure that all Chinese can afford these things? Raise their wages, particularly of the poorest people (just as Henry Ford did for his own workers, so they could afford to buy Ford cars). All this is happening RIGHT NOW.
Trade with the USA was historically important for technology transfer and industrial development of China. That phase is over. With dedollarization**, the US dollar will no longer be required to buy oil, minerals, grain etc. Having huge foreign reserves of USD will therefore be USELESS if there is nothing exported from the USA that you cannot also get elsewhere cheaper.
How to correct the huge trade surplus that China has over the USA? How to avoid accumulating increasingly useless USD?
Drumpf imposing heavy tarrifs on all Chinese products will do the trick! If all Chinese exports into USA are blocked, this totally justifies China blocking all overpriced, inferior quality US exports into China. Thank you Drumpf!
China can then focus not only on its own HUGE, increasingly more prosperous domestic market, but also on BRI connectivity and the rising BRICS economies especially ASEAN. Not to mention massive Chinese development projects in the Russian Far East, whose population will increase exponentially with climate migration as global heating proceeds apace. Also as India becomes wealthier in the short term (prior to it’s medium term climate collapse) there will be huge rising demand for Chinese goods there. Africa and Bolivaran Latin America will also represent massive trade partners and resource suppliers.
What about Europe? Who the faark cares? Apart from Turkiye and those wanting to connect to the BRI eg Hungary, Serbia and maybe Slovakia, the collapsing European economies are utterly irrelevant.
How will Drumpf impose exorbitant blanket tariffs on Chinese-made imports without killing Apple, Walmart, Costco etc, (which will lead to massive US service sector job losses), and without causing US hyperinflation that will spark civil unrest, maybe even revolution? Perhaps all USAnians can be employed by the MIC and start eating bullets? Or be employed by Goober, Facepoop etc and start eating goobers and poop?
Ben perceptively mentioned that products made in Chinese owned factories in Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia etc will simply be rebadged as being made in Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia etc for export, thus evading US tariffs, just as Russian oil was bought by India and rebadged, and then sold to Europe, thus evading western sanctions.
Even if the Vietnamese, Mexican, Indonesian etc factories are not Chinese owned, many will import >90% of components from China and then export the assembled products as being made in Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia etc, thus evading US tariffs.
What about targeted tariffs only, to protect high end industries like microchips or aerospace? The USA has already banned Chinese microchips and tried to relocate TSMC to Arizona, laying the factory foundations, but were unable to find enough qualified US personnel to run it. So the USA’s plan B is to bomb TSMC in Taiwan to prevent China from getting their hands on 3nm microchips. Newsflash: China is already making 3nm microchips.
Boeing, an existing “premier” aerospace firm is going down the toilet with failing spacecraft and planes. Ditto all high tech US manufacturers, due to lack of investment in R&D, profits instead going to share buybacks and CEO bonuses.
Summary: everything Drumpf wants to do economically will massively help China and harm the USA.
Just as everything that brain-dead Biden did with his 15,000 sanctions against Russia massively helped Russia, screwed Europe and turbocharged dedollarization, which will ultimately kill the US economy.
Summary of summary:
The USA is faaaaarked.
*India now has the largest population, but being dreadfully poor overall is far from the largest market. Poop-in-the-street Indians cannot afford to buy imported Chinese goods no matter how cheap, as is true for the exponentially increasing number of poop-in-the-street Americans.
**Drumpf declared he will stop countries from dedollarising. Exactly how will you do that, jackass? If you impose sanctions on them, it will actually encourage them to dedollarise even faster, you moron. You are like King Canute declaring he will stop the incoming tide, but without the irony. You are a whackadoodle imbecile. Or maybe you are a covert pro-Chinese agent, in which case you are supremely clever.
PS: Francis Faarkyoullama needs to write a an update, the definitive tome,
“The new End of History – how I previously got everything completely wrong but was paid well to write crap because I am a prostitute of the US empire which is now in the process of collapsing”.
JonnyJames
2024-11-11 at 17:30
Faarkyoullama can co-write that title with Paul Krudman – what a team they make. We could take the piss all day long…they make it so easy
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-11 at 20:03
Extract from the CIA curated wikipedia:
In December 2022, TSMC announced its plans to triple its investment in the Arizona plants in response to the growing tensions between the US and China and the supply chain disruption that has led to chip shortages.[121] In that same month, TSMC stated that they were running into major cost issues, because the cost of construction of buildings and facilities in the US is four to five times what an identical plant would cost in Taiwan, (due to higher costs of labor, red tape, and training), as well as difficulty finding qualified personnel (for which it has hired US workers and sent them for training in Taiwan for 12–18 months.) These additional production costs will increase the cost of TSMC’s chips made in the US to at least 50% more than the cost of chips made in Taiwan.[122][123][124] In July 2023 TSMC warned that US talent was insufficient, so Taiwanese workers will need to be brought in for a limited time, and that the chip factory won’t be operational until 2025.[125] In September 2023, an analyst said the chips will still need to be sent back to Taiwan for packaging.[126] In January 2024, TSMC chairman Liu again warned that Arizona lacked workers with the specialized skills to hire and that TSMC’s second Arizona plant likely won’t start volume production of advanced chips until 2027 or 2028.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC
Delay upon delay to produce super expensive economically uncompetitive chips of doubtful quality in the hypothetical future. Yeah, right.
JonnyJames
2024-11-12 at 10:14
Once again, Michael Hudson’s prediction was and is accurate. It is impossible for the US to re-industrialize: the overhead costs are much too high. The financialization of the economy, monopoly price gouging, insurance, fees, taxes, exorbitant housing costs, extortionate health care costs etc. are ridiculous when compared to other countries.
Due to the confiscatory costs of an education and lack of education policy, there is a big shortage of medical doctors, veterinary doctors, skilled tech mfg. workers etc.
And of course, this will only continue to worsen.
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-12 at 13:34
JJ, so you are saying the USA is faaaaaarked?
JonnyJames
2024-11-12 at 14:24
Claro que si, amigo. Necesito aprender mas espanol por que quiero mover al un otro pais, otra vez.
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-12 at 18:22
JJ:if you can move to the very best place, South Island of NZ, you won’t need to learn Spanish, only how to drive on the left.
Next best place is the high latitude Russian Far East where they are offering land for free, even for non-Russian speakers. Good survival location as global heating goes ballistic.
Español wise, I understand Paraguay is not too bad, but I don’t know how they view Yankee gringos.
elizabeth keenan
2024-11-14 at 19:19
NZ is very particular about who they let move there. I believe you have to have experience in an occupation that no local person or group has which will benefit the country. You also have to have a certain level of income. I’m guessing at this point they would be pretty suspicious of Americans, we’re not really popular with most of the world. American tourists still claim they are from Canada.
elizabeth keenan
2024-11-13 at 22:27
Excellent analysis! China has been preparing for this for some time, and whatever % of their trade was with the US in the past, it’s now only estimated to be about 10%. No trade with the US will give China a tiny little ouch, but not at all affect their economy (the fastest growing economy in the world) while as you mentioned it will devastate ours and speed the demise of the petro-dollar. I had a feeling this was coming so stocked up on some cheap Chinese Halloween crap. I’m good, but this is going to hurt Amazon along with the rest, wonder how Bezos will feel about a loss of revenue.
biden was of course equally bad, when he sanctioned Russia’s wheat China gave us the finger, ignored the sanction and bought it at a reduced price then sold it to the usual customers. With Ukraine too busy what with the war and all to export its wheat, China had most of the market cornered and the whole thing only helped to expand China’s economy. Europe had to get its wheat from somewhere, so pretended nothing was wrong. We are “ruled” by idiots, they are not even competent crooks.
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-14 at 01:25
To further elaborate why Drumpf’s tariffs will actually be doing China a huge favour:
If there were no US tariffs imposed on Chinese imports and China wanted to redirect its manufactured goods from the US towards the burgeoning Chinese and BRICS markets, how would China do it? Raising the value of the Yuan is not an option if China wants its exports to remain affordable for poorer countries.
Also it is essential that China NOT rely on US imports for vital commodities, it must greatly reduce dependency on imports from a capricious and belligerent USA, which has openly declared it wants to go to war with China.
If China was to unilaterally drastically curtail the export of Chinese goods to USA and of imports from USA, China will be accused of being the bad guy, of starting a trade war.
However if Drumpf himself imposes punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, China’s reciprocal tariffs on and hence drastic curtailment of US imports will be 100% justifiable as a response to the US aggression. So the optics will be entirely in China’s favour and the rest of the world will view the USA as an asshole country which engages in economic warfare to promote it’s hegemony, which it has a long track record of doing.
Which again raises this question: is Drumpf actually a super smart covert pro-Chinese agent?
The LEMSO* could certainly make a stronger case for a Drumpf “Chinagate” than it previously did for Russiagate, which was proven beyond a shadow of doubt to have been a bogus US Deep State fabrication despite endorsement signatures by 51 US ex-intelligence professionals (Orwellian language for the exact opposite: they were in fact 51 US actively stupid amateurs).
*Lying Establishment Media Sewer Outlets
JonnyJames
2024-11-15 at 11:03
Elizabeth Keenan: “ruled by idiots” indeed. There is even a fancy word to describe that, from the classical Greek: Kakistocracy
The puppet emperors get more freakish as the empire slowly decays.
Also, you are right about Aotearoa: it is beautiful, but not cheap. And US oligarchs have all bought property there and built their nuclear-proof bunkers.
Despite the negative stereotypes and media images of cartels, gangs etc. there are many places in Mexico, for example, that are safe and absolutely beautiful. And IMO, the cuisine is one of the best in the world.
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-15 at 15:15
Claudia Sheinbaum, as mayor of Mexico city, dramatically reduced crime rates there and as now President of the country is poised for great achievements. She is by far the smartest and most credentialed and most ethical of world leaders, a worthy successor to AMLO and hence a prime target for assassination by the despicable terrorist criminal organisation known as the USA.
JonnyJames
2024-11-11 at 13:05
Another great piece from Ben. As predicted, the Bipartisan Consensus and the Washington Consensus will continue. The “hawks” should be called warmongering, bedwetting cowards. “Neocon” has lost all meaning: we should just call them all warmongering, necrophagist parasites.
One doddering senile genocidal freak stepping down, another doddering, senile, genocidal freak taking his place. Kakistocracy on Parade in the Late Empire. Cringe-worthy but it is apparently not an elaborate joke.
The DT said he will pay off the trillions of national debt with a bit of bitcoin. He will lower our grocery bills by 40%, he will deport millions of “illegals”, he will end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Any sane person should be able to see how ridiculous all this BS is, yet millions WANT to believe in Santa Claus.
He says he will deport anti-Israel protesters. So much for the rule of law and 1st amendment. And that is considered “patriotic? Stealing public finances and giving it to a foreign country to mass murder women and children is not “patriotic”, it is kleptocracy and a form of treason.
In the old days, people might have got their heads chopped off for such things, but now they are rewarded instead of punished. For example, Tony Blair is doing quite well I hear.
And already we see this https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/opinion-top-10-things-to-buy-before-heavy-tariffs-on-chinese-goods-hit/ss-AA1tLngI?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=3b90040062d649d994f763d84538bc9f&ei=102
(With Bipartisan support in Congress) The first DT regime imposed “sanctions” (economic warfare) on China (based on lies), the Biden regime imposed more sanctions and tariffs, and now DT will ramp it up to the next level. Prices are likely to spike and inflation like we have not seen in our lifetimes may come.
ASML has bowed to US pressure and will cease selling the most advanced chip making tech to China and also stop selling parts and equipment to maintain existing ASML machines in China. I am not an industry insider, but we can be sure that China is working on its own DUV and EUV technology and this will expedite China’s domestic R&D.
It is looking more and more likely that the US will provoke a military confrontation with China. If that happens, we might see some Mad Max Moments in the US of A in the coming years. It might be time to learn another language an GTFO of what the indigenous folks call occupied Turtle Island.
JonnyJames
2024-11-11 at 15:43
Side note: In addition to the good work of Ha-Joon Chang, one should also consult the earlier work of Michael Hudson on this topic.
America’s Protectionist Takeoff
https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Protectionist-Takeoff-1815-1914-Michael/dp/3980846687
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-11 at 15:45
Hey JJ:
Each heading among the top ten things to buy (before tariffs on Chinese goods hit) actually encompasses at least 50 individual items, so more precisely it should be top 500 (at least) things to buy
https://worldmatrix.com/opinion-top-10-things-to-buy-before-heavy-tariffs-on-chinese-goods-hit/
JonnyJames
2024-11-11 at 17:11
Yeah exactly, EAB: almost every consumer good in the US.
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-12 at 14:13
This guy, Ian Verrender, the chief business writer of the (Oz) ABC, is a clueless nincompoop AKA loyal stenographer of the Empire’s BS.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-13/bailing-out-chinas-economy-has-suddenly-become-more-urgent/104591932
So many errors, misrepresentations and outright lies in his crapulent article, it is enough to make Edward Bernays’ corpse head (while he sits in Hell) spin like a dreidel! Oy Vey!
Verrender’s final sentence makes no sense at all:
“After (Trump’s sanctions on China), it (China) may well look to other markets to offload its goods, like Australia.
If you’re (Australians) in the market for a cheap electric vehicle, Elon Musk may have a deal for you”.
To make sense, that sentence should be changed to “BYD may have a deal for you.”
I myself will be keen to buy a BYD car.
Eric Arthur Blair
2024-11-12 at 18:09
Shifting from an economic to a military focus:
The US vs Russia conflict (via UkroNazi proxies)
and US vs Iran conflict (via ZioNazi proxies)
have proven that the US Patriot air defences are useless and the Russian S400 air defences are super effective. Also Russian and Iranian hypersonic missiles can strike Ukie and Israeli targets at will. Also Russian / Chinese / Iranian technology can EASILY identify and track all so-called “stealth” US made planes.
Summary: USA and US lapdogs are faaarked.
https://scheerpost.com/2024/11/10/us-f-15-fighter-jets-arrive-in-middle-east-as-part-of-buildup-aimed-at-iran/
For investors: Sell all your shares in Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics etc NOW or YOU WILL BE FAAAARKED.