In the series of trade wars unleashed by him, Trump won another brilliant victory: China agreed to increase US imports by $ 200 billion over two years. The increase in US industrial exports will be $ 75 billion, energy - 50, agricultural products - 40, services - $ 35-40 billion.
Surrender — or, in official terminology, “an agreement on the first phase of a trade deal” —is signed on January 15 in Washington, after which Trump will “very soon” go to China to negotiate a mysterious “second phase of the deal”. Probably, it will relate to technology, and far from being only at the forefront of 5G.
The concessions of China are reportedly strictly one-sided. The fact that it is excluded from the list of currency manipulators (and placed on the list of “current control” along with Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and Vietnam) is not a response step, but only a reaction to the successive appreciation of the renminbi, that is, to another concession to China. Probably, an attempt to support the national economy by weakening the yuan will immediately return China to the list of currency manipulators.
Perhaps the DPRK’s fate either explicitly or implicitly enters the "perimeter of the deal": it is unlikely that the US announced the expansion of sanctions against it precisely against the background of reports of an agreement with China.
But the main thing is the strengthening of the yuan. China can easily withstand an increase in spending of $ 200 billion (even with understandable problems for manufacturers), but the decline in the competitiveness of the economy due to the revaluation of the currency is a way that painfully resembles a road to a Japanese catastrophe.
The depression that Japan entered in the early 1990s (and which it didn’t really get out of) was caused, among other things, by the signing of the Plaza agreement in 1985, which provided for the strengthening of the yen to support the US, which was suffering from a trade deficit (although smaller than now). The strengthening of the yen got out of control and buried the Japanese economy, to the relief and delight of the American partners, who seriously feared the "Japanese miracle."
The modern American elite is united by the desire to destroy China as a strategic competitor and reduce it to the level of modern Japan - and it is logical for it to use proven methods against it.
The difference between Trump and Reagan is that he does not have the opportunity to stop. Indeed, the long-awaited reduction in the foreign trade deficit reduces the withdrawal of dollars from the United States - at the same time that they can exist only due to the growth of their emissions (a new stage of the “quantitative easing” completed in May 2014 - of course, under a different name - had to begin September). This emission is not provided for anything: if new dollars are not withdrawn from the country, they will cause acceleration of inflation, disorganization of complex technological chains and, as a result, the collapse of the American (and, therefore, the entire world) economy.
Each victory of Trump reduces the export of dollars from the United States - and dooms him to new aggression in order to bind the dollars that are “stuck” inside the country, serving the growing production due to trade wars. However, with a hypertrophied financial sector, the necessary US emission of dollars is guaranteed to be higher than their volume, which even growing production can absorb.
Thus, in a series of unleashing trade wars and constantly winning them, Trump only pushes the collapse.
Its logic is to strengthen the real sector that supports it, as opposed to the financial sector, which is hostile to it - so that in a crisis the latter could be drastically reduced, thereby weakening its political enemies.
China in this situation is only an “ideal target”, allowing Trump to get the support of even his opponents. War with him will be waged until its destruction as a competitor to the United States.
Does all of this understand the Chinese leadership?
Probably, he simply has no choice, since too strong resistance to the United States will cause a domestic political crisis due to the direct action of pro-American forces in the Chinese elite (and it developed in partnership with the United States from 1979 until very recently) against patriots led by Xi Jinping.
Real resistance will become possible only when the forces of the patriots prevail - and here every US victory over China works against them, forcibly re-educating Chinese society, accustomed to living in symbiosis with the USA, and especially its elite.
Xi Jinping’s strategy is probably based on the expectation of a US disruption in a systemic crisis related to the expected attempt to overthrow Trump after his victory in the 2020 election with standard “color revolution” technologies. U.S. disorganization will ease their pressure on China, and a fall in stock markets will expand China’s competitiveness (albeit dramatically narrowing the US and EU markets that are vital for it).
The main thing will be a change in the psychological balance in Chinese society and the political one in its elite: the loss of illusions regarding the possibility of partnership with the United States and the recognition of their immanent hostility to China will unite it and allow it to firmly defend its interests in direct clashes in the economy and in other areas.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.