Blacklist Retaliation
With trade talks on the verge of collapse China Says ‘Stay Tuned’ for Blacklist Retaliation.
Key Points
- China poured cold water on hopes for a trade deal, signaling it would retaliate against the U.S. threat to put Chinese tech companies on a blacklist, just two days ahead of the highly anticipated trade talks in Washington.
- Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Tuesday said “stay tuned,” when asked whether China would retaliate for the blacklist over alleged human rights violations against Muslim minorities.
- “We urge the U.S. to immediately correct its mistake, withdraw the relevant decision and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs,” Geng said at a news conference according to a transcript on the Foreign Ministry’s website. “China will continue to take firm and forceful measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.”
- The White House is reportedly discussing blocking government pension funds from investing in China, further dimming expectations for a trade deal. Peter Navarro, the Trump administration’s trade policy director, however, denied the reports, calling them “fake news.”
Two Key Questions
- More acts of desperation?
- When does Kudlow come on and say everything is fine?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I have nothing to do with@Realist post
Its one thing for people to volunteer their own time and/or money — that is their own choice.
But its fraud, not hippy-ism when taxpayers must “volunteer” money and time or face IRS penalties and jail time. They aren’t choosing to help, they are doing so at gun point.
That is why socialism will fail. It starts off with a fraud that slavery is the same as volunteerism. If you are being compelled to do something, it is not volunteer at all.
Damn all socialists. You are all frauds
Imagine how useless and lazy these “rich kids” are that they won’t even lift a finger to give away their parents’ wealth. They want government bureaucrats or their butler to give away the money for them!
If they were serious and wanted to help others — and it wasn’t just a lazy kid virtue signaling — they could go and mentor other less fortunate kids. They could pay off other’s student loans. They could fund a homeless shelter. They could fund a soup kitchen at a local church.
But that would require work. They would have to ask their butler to bring them their cell phone, get the number for a soup kitchen, and then instruct their trust officer to write a check for them… that’s a lot of work for kids that have never even cleaned their own laundry.
The story is just useless people virtue signaling each other. They have no idea what it takes to get a job, they have never cleaned their own rooms.
In the USA news today… our former President Jimmy Carter (yup, that one) is 90 something years old and a few days ago he had a bad fall in his house. He was taken to the hospital where he got stitches and was released with stitches (presumably they were closing a laceration) and a big black eye.
So this ex-president, who has volunteered much of his life building houses for the less fortunate (via the charity Habitat for Humanity) — went to a PR event for Habitat with his black eye and stitches and what not. And it should be mentioned that only a few years ago, he was videoed swinging hammers, putting up framing and actually building houses. He doesn’t just write a check (or have his butler write a check like the “rich kids” in@numike ‘s referenced story).
Current President Trump, despite being quite busy as president and a night gig writing annoying tweet messages, donates his presidential paycheck to charity. He also donated a lot of money raised on his TV show “the apprentice”.
Two busy presidents — one ex, one current; one democrat, one republican. And they manage to make large donations to charity all the time.
So what’s with these so-called “rich kids”? What is stopping them from doing something, anything, to help others? Why do they have to strut in front of tv cameras modeling how virtuous they supposedly are? Why don’t they go give away their parents money themselves?
“Meet the Rich Kids Who Want to Give Away All Their Money” link to townandcountrymag.com
Its easy to give away stuff you didn’t earn in the first place.
Its easy not to appreciate the hard work that goes into building wealth when you don’t do any hard work.
Weeelllll…., since virtually, and ever increasingly, all concentrated wealth in America is no longer the result of anything at all aside from straight up Fed redistribution to those who own it, from those who worked to produce it, I guess noone will much mind giving it all away then…..
In practice, things don’t seem to work out that way. Neither public union pensioners nor clowns who “made money from their house and their portfolio” seem all that willing to hand much of it back…
Yay! What do we win next?
A recent edition of NPR’s Planet Money explored the injection of third-party investors in the courtroom and how in asymmetrical civil cases, backing in the form of extra funds might allow a disadvantaged plaintiff to pursue justice on more equal footing.
link to npr.org
Neither “the law” nor NPR are capitalist in any way, shape or form
…and neither is Civil Court lawsuits over anything, aside from differing interpretations of explicitly entered into contracts.
Hence neither is America.
I admit I am not sophisticated enough for grandiloquent explanations and mathematical presentations, so allow me to express my common sense driven humble opinion : this overpopulated, half destroyed world, this overindulgent social economic paradigm we ve been enjoying for decades in our prosperous regions is simply at the end of its overendebted wits ! SO my ONLY question is : HOW is all this going to END ? With the emphasis on END … and NO, allowing a tsunami of even more China stuff to taxfreely inundate our markets won t save our asses ! ENLIGHTEN me pundits , I dare you !
I would’t dare. First I believed, the post-2009 financial apocalypse will do the trick, but the one trick ponies continue to kick the can. Now, I believe that it will be the confluence of economic, political and environmental accidents. There are accidents (one time events), and there are undercurrent. It will come to head in the multi-culturalized, once livable West.
A giant meteor impact. We can only hope….
It will end with The Muzzies winning. They’re the only ones doing a decent job of both producing soldiers (and soldier producers), and of teaching and equipping the budding soldiers to be so.
Which is what ultimately matters. “The West” vs “China”, meaning “getting unearned welfare from The Fed” vs “Getting it from The Party”, are both just self destructive theater and burning of seedcorn. Neither ultimately goes anywhere.
How many people here have actually negotiated deals with the Chinese? I’m not talking bargaining in a market or having dinner at the local Chinese restaurant.
My experience is limited to two instances, both unpleasant, both with cultural conflicts. No ‘deal’ is ever really agreed to, always subject to manipulation, counter offer, withdrawal, etc. You’re better off scratching your ass than shaking hands.
None of this comes as a surprise to me. If I wanted to get a good trade deal, now more than ever is the time to stand firm. Massively overbuilt and over supplied, China will cave before the US does.
I’ve dealt with Huawei directly and you are spot on. It is like dealing with a joker. China was always a bubble waiting to pop imo. We are getting closer to that point. In my opinion they came too far too fast and there needs to be some reversion to the mean. Chinese corporate culture is mostly under indirect orders from the communist party and the peoples liberation army. The war is always being fought and they have been behaving this way for far too long. There is no trust or goodwill when it comes to doing business in China.
“No ‘deal’ is ever really agreed to, always subject to manipulation, counter offer, withdrawal, etc.”
And you reckon some Chinese guy, feels any different? About Trump?????? Of all grandstanders????
I’ve dealt with Chinese (mainly Taiwanese but they are increasingly tied to the mainland), Japanese, Thais, Europeans, Latin Americans…. The general consensus is that Americans are the ones you cannot trust. Since absolutely everything you say or do or agree to, can be overturned on a dime, by some ambulance chaser on the make, attempting to use the courts to shake you down.
Developing (and developed) Asia, is much more comfortable dealing with weird EU (and arcane individual German State) regulations, than with US kangaroo courts, since the former is at least somewhat predictable. And while noone trusts the ultimate objectives of the Chinese, even they are viewed as more stable and trustworthy in day to day affairs, than a place effectively ran by ambulance chasers attempting to cash in on whatever harebrained obsession Angelina Jolie may wake up with one day.
The real story is in Hong Kong, not two groups of bureaucrats who will or won’t meet based on the level of hors d’ouvres that they don’t pay for anyway.
Hong Kong doesn’t want to be ruled by Beijing, Beijing cannot accept anyone challenging their rule (because then everyone will want to stop central planning).
If the PLA clamps down on the protests in Hong Kong, they would “win” in an hour or two…. but the brain drain out of Hong Kong and Shanghai would be so fast it would make Xi spin like a top.
If the protests drag on, a lot of Hong Kongians? Hong Kongers? A lot of HK residents are going to make plans to leave, even if the plans are “just in case”
China depends on “Special Economic Zones” (aka Hong Kong, Shanghai, and areas around JinJaing). Without those zones, Chinese growth looks pitiful. But those special zones operate with limited Beijing central planning (no central planning “yet” in Hong Kong’s case).
China’s government has a really serious problem on their hands, and its not the USA or Trump. Its their two systems, one government schizophrenia.
The fact that the NBA (Houston Rockets?) are taking the side of Hong Kong is rubbing salt in Beijing’s wounds.
All over the world, central economic planning is smashing face first into a brick wall, and the central planners don’t like it.
There are also competing factions of central planners to consider. Hong Kong is being stoked by the West, similar to Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere.
Eventually there will be separatist sentiment here in the US (for real, not just noise on internet forums) and it will receive love from Russia, China, and others.
Central planners have two aims, to maintain a stranglehold on their own sphere of influence and to destabilize whatever is outside it, making for an increasingly chaotic world. In time most of the larger nations will break into pieces, like the former USSR, and there will be a lot more countries in the world than there are today!
I disagree with your assertion that Hong Kong is being instigated by the west. The west is giving moral support for sure. But the concern for freedom is home grown in Hong Kong… these people were used to British laws for more than a century (British laws BEFORE the UK became a police state in London).
Some western intelligence agencies might be trying to infiltrate HK groups, but given their “success” elsewhere in the world, I doubt they are having much effect if any.
Not sure I’d use the word “instigated” but HK protestors are being helped by the West. We’ve had a lot of success sowing discord, look at our track record in the entire MENA region, South America, and eastern Europe for starters. Soros made a whole second career out of color revolutions. Neocons made the idea a central pillar of policy.
It doesn’t take much skill to do, after all it’s easier to destroy than it is to build. We’ll get a taste of it here too eventually, far beyond what we currently see with Antifa-type astroturfing.
If I were a HK demonstrator the very very last nation I would trust would be the Americans…
“China depends on “Special Economic Zones” (aka Hong Kong, Shanghai, and areas around JinJaing). “
China may still, to some degree “depend” on Honk Kong. But to an ever declining degree. Not to nearly the extent they used to. Hence why they now feel comfortable tightening the noose ever so little more, as time goes by.
To some degree, this may be due to China having become more “Western” since Mao. But to, at least, an equal degree, it is due to the “West” which Honk Kong primarily serve as a Chinese conduit to, now being governed and ran along ever more Maoist lines as well. So there’s simply less need for China to worry about “losing” anything Hong Kong may have to offer, as it is no longer really all that different from what they have themselves.
All the special economic zones (aka Hong Kong, Shanghai, and areas around JinJaing) are the same. If China clamps down on any one of them, it sends a message to all of them.
That is why China is afraid to use the PLA against Hong Kong protesters. China isn’t worried the PLA can’t do the job — China is worried about what effect that will have on all of China’s economic engines.
China is FAR more dependent on the special economic zones than you appear to think. Strip out the SEZs, the rest of China’s economy is still very much a 3rd world mess.
That is why Beijing is afraid to send in the PLA to Hong Kong
Honk Kong is VERY different from the other SEZs.
I suspect the realization that the other SEZs now provide the regime with most, and more every day, of the benefits Hong Kong does, with precious few of the headaches, is another reason for the regime being more confident in “realigning” Hong Kong to be more like Shanghai, rather than vice versa.
China also don’t need to send the PLA to Hong Kong. Instead, they’ll achieve the same end result by simply waiting the current furor out, while slowly arranging for those willing to work with Beijing, rather than against it, being retarded with enough small advantages, to slowly shift a greater and greater share of resources their way. Until the holdouts are sufficiently marginalized they can be forgotten about, and all members of Hong Kong’s “Professional” and “Commercial” “Elite” “recognizes” the benefits of being an integral part of Greater China.
agree to disagree
I think the smarter / more capable persons in all the SEZs are going to be watching how Beijing treats HK very very carefully.
And many of China’s customers will be watching too.
Being the vassal of a dictatorship is heavily over-rated
The problem a Chinese trade negotiator has when negotiating with the US is the 1,400,000,000 people standing behind the curtain. Any hint of concession or compromise is potentially deadly, witness the ease with which Mao plunged China into chaos repeatedly with boondogles like “The Great Leap Forward” and “The Cultural Revolution.” The handling of the first recession in the Deng era wasn’t much better…Tiananmen Square.
We’ve spent 40 years teaching Chinese business deal negotiators that we don’t give a damn about IP. (It wasn’t intentional, it just happens naturally when you send your best salesmen to find a way into that “vast China market”.) They couldn’t turn on a dime now even if they wanted to, and they certainly don’t want to.
The only hope for peaceful trade progress is the one used repeatedly throughout the ages when giants collide: Fair and impartial third party arbitration.
And I know the line is forming to piss on the WTO as I type, but it’s the only one we have on this particular planet at this point in time.
China has no replacement for the USA as global consumer of last resort — at least not in the short to medium term.
Beijing has no respect for intellectual freedom period. Not USA’s IP, and not Hong Kong’s IP either. Beijing requires both IP just to survive.
No third party is going to solve that. Trump smells blood in the water, but he can’t give Beijing what it needs. No one can.
Central planning and economic growth are not compatible. Not in the USA, not in EU, not in China either. Lots of socialist charlatans and hucksters will claim this time will be different and they have all the answers — but the other socialists all said the same thing.
USA’s biggest impediment is Washington DC. Europe’s biggest problem is Brussels
And China’s biggest problem is Beijing.
”
USA’s biggest impediment is Washington DC. Europe’s biggest problem is Brussels
And China’s biggest problem is Beijing.
“
Amen! Squared. At least!
And keeping their respective underlings from catching on to something that obvious, is why all three are so obsessed with supporting publicly funded indoctrination from an ever more tender age.
At least among the commercial (business) and skilled worker classes, the toothpaste is already out of the tube.
The peasants don’t have skills, so it doesn’t matter what they think or know.
“At least among the commercial (business) and skilled worker classes, the toothpaste is already out of the tube.”
If only….. The problem is, publicly recognized inclusion in any of the above groups, which most view as a positive, is, like all else, also a standard economic good.
Meaning, a good which you can buy, and for which there is a price.
The purpose of ALL legislation, regulation, “fiscal” and “monetary” policy, then become to ensure recognition as members of the above, is redistributed: FROM value creators, who by virtue of sufficient competence to be able to create value independently, don’t need a totalitarian state to obtain any such. Hence aren’t reliable supporters of any state. TO totalitarian-state-and-arbitrary-laws-and-regulations dependent leeches, who can be relied on to support the state. Since the state is what, after all, is providing their incompetent, leeching selves with everything they’ve got, and everything they ever will have.
Hence why “commercial” and “skilled” worker classes, are increasingly little more than shorthand for clueless, net-negative dunces in the FIRE and arbitrary-law-and-court-abuse rackets. Along with halfwits dumb enough to fall for the scam that the fungus in their house walls, along with their own “skills” at picking random numbers, and their favorite Dear Leaders’ ability to “manage the economy”, has somehow created millions in value for them to consume without anyone else having to create it for them.
The Globalist Oligarchs are not liking this. Not one bit. Thanks to Trump, they will have to find some other third-world, slave-labor hell hole to move their production to, or heaven forbid move it back to the US and watch their profit margins get cut in half. I can hear them yelling “Impeach him FASTER!!!” right now.
Is slave labor really necessary? I think that robots can do most of those repetitive manufacturing jobs.
Perhaps it’s about regulations and willingness to bend the rules instead.
No doubt that lack of regulation for pollution, safety, etc are also big factors.
“Thanks to Trump, they will have to find some other third-world, slave-labor hell hole to move their production to, or heaven forbid move it back to the US “
And again thanks to Trump (along with his 20 or so immediate predecessors): Those erstwhile two options, are now, in fact, one and the same…. Pretty darned convenient, that; if improved access to slave labor is your thing.
The real news will be when Kudlow comes on and says things are not fine. Fade Kudlow until then.
By that time no one will need to be told.
Yep.
When Kudlow (inevitably) does a U-Turn it will be noteworthy. Why? He will preach things fine … right up to the moment he wants the taxpayer to bail out the rich. Again.
I went long TQQQ in 2011 and am up 50x. I wonder how much longer can the bears keep reading their porn. Porn is porn. Don’t do it.
The market won’t tank in this low rate environment for the foreseeable future now that the Fed is accomodative again.
Some may find it weird but I am in favor of the crackdown and cutting off trade talks with China. Remove them from the WTO also. If we are going to stand on our principles, we need to let all communist nations rot from the inside and helping them by facilitating trade is not the way to do that. When you deal with the devil you have to make compromises and the ONLY way not to do that is not deal with the devil.
China is not communist. They are ruled by one party that calls itself “Communist”, but that is about it. The US is ruled by one party too.
“China is not communist. They are ruled by one party that calls itself “Communist”, but that is about it. The US is ruled by one party too.”
And the party which rules the US, is effectively communist as well….
Anyway, silly debates over semantics aside, the US and Chinese governments are largely the same. Ditto their political systems. People can call them what they wish, but they don’t differ much, if at all, in practice.
They look out for Regime members and reliable Regime sycophants. And do so by coming up with a never ending stream of childish “theories,” which they posit as “scientific,” that they claim justifies them robbing the productive, in order to prop up their own idle-to-worse selves.
The Chinese may brand the sycophants Party Members, while the US brands them “Investors”, “Job Creators”, “Bankers”, “Lawyers”, “Public Service personnel”…. what have you. But, again, that’s just silly semantics. If either regime cared one whit about accuracy, they’d quite the pretense and just use the straight forward term, privileged leeches.
Neither of the parties are communist. The American is corporate trannies with left-liberal anti-white bias. The Chinese are basically national-socialist, but are learning sophisticated dissent suppression methods from the west.
Organ harvesting of Uighyurs by the Chinese government isnt exactly in the same category of freedom as in the US. The fact you and anyone can comment freely here is not allowed in China. Pretty sure Mish’s site gets blocked there. Irony that anyone here would say China and US are the same. They arent even close.
When did I say they are the same? Can you read?
Your making false equivalencies for sure. Sophisticated dissent suppression? China uses more direct methods like imprisoning their own minority groups and non believers. Dissent of any kind is not tolerated. They cant even handle Hong Kong without resorting to violence on their own citizens.
You are making stuff up. Where did I make a false equivalence? I explicitly wrote ” The American is corporate trannies with left-liberal anti-white bias. The Chinese are basically national-socialist” – that is not the same, is it?
I also wrote: “[The Chinese] are learning sophisticated dissent suppression methods from the west.” – well, they are. In the past, the military would have simply crushed the protests. Now they are using white shirts (the Triads) the same way like the US establishment is using Antifa. They are also a lot more patient with the protesters.
You mean the cop that shoot a protester in self-defense? Well, I did write that they are learning, not that they have already mastered the western ways of suppression. Give it time.
No one in China has any freedom or liberty. Not the case in the US. Keep trying though.
Trying what? You just wrote some deluded nonsense, but failed to show how China is communist.
“No one in China has any freedom or liberty. Not the case in the US. Keep trying though.”
Sure they do. The Chinese have all the freedom in the world, to do what the Regime allows them to do. Just like Americans.
And none to do what the government don’t allow them to do. Again, no different from Americans.
I am not a WTO expert, but tariffs and sanctions are an abrogation of the WTO. When you sanction for political aims, all rules are off.
Then it is a formality that they should be removed. The sanctions and tariffs are not for political reasons. They should have been implemented by previous administrations that looked the other way on human rights violations, intellectual property violations and violations of trade agreements as well as sanctions agaisnt North Korea and Iran that were agreed to by China.
“They should have been implemented by previous administrations that looked the other way on human rights violations, intellectual property violations and violations of trade agreements….”
Not “looked the other way.” “Made up”, is the term you’re looking for……
Sorry. Clearly you’ve never been to mainland China.
Your writing makes somebody look dumb. If you don’t know who that person is, look into the mirror
Thank you oh August the Great. You have a way with words however you know not of what you speak.
The question here is “Who’s the devil” in your little saga! If you think America is about Freedom and democracy, have I got a bridge to sell you!
It used to be, 200 years ago. At least sorta-kinda.
Then the progressive movement/cancer gained traction, and the rest is, or at least should be, pretty obvious…..
Some people are just a bit slow on the uptake…
Mish,
It’s pressure. Trump’s deep into it now. Chinese are playing the long-game, while Trump is playing to the crowd (i.e., 2020)…
And, yes, they will ‘bring out the clowns’ shortly to tell us ALL IS WELL! ALL IS WELL! No need to panic…
Clowns are already in charge of all Western countries. The Chinese must be laughing.
Amen to that, brother…
This is where a highly-structured / hierarchical central government can kick the crap (at least, short-term) out of democracies…. Democracies can’t help but suffer from ‘short-termism’….
Long-term, democracies end in national suicide.
Yep, it worked out flawlessly for the Russians and communist east Europe. Working out great in NK also. The fact that no centrally planned communist run economy has survived should be telling. So as bad and corrupt the crony capitalist shit storm we have it is still better than the corrupt ruthless murdering communists that have killed over 50 million of their own citizens.
China was a communist country, decades ago. It’s not communist anymore.
It is.
Th reason it may no longer be quite as obvious, is that by now, “we” are effectively communist as well. So the Chinese no longer stand out as much.
Neither one is communist.
You’re (very) arguably right. Just as neither is capitalist.
Both are progressive-totalitarian-infinitely-worse-governed-than-Taliban-Afghanistan-ist, though.
Not arguably 🙂 The only way to make an argument for China or the US being communist countries is either redefining what communism is or simply being ignorant.
All you really have to do, to make sure they both fall squarely in the “communist” camp, is to posit that all countries have to be counted as either communist, or capitalist. No other options permitted.
No, thanks, I live in the real world.
Clearly economic systems stand separately from political systems.
One can imagine a number of countries with very tight political systems but that appear to encourage a more open economic system (e.g., China and Vietnam).
The Russian model of centralized planning is part of some communist political systems, but not all. And, it’s a total failure.
The point of the thread is that democracy seems to move offering largess to the masses because the political system responds to the desire for more.
As such, democracies seem to have a much harder time acting for longer-term vs. a political structure less accountable to the ‘masses’…
Obviously you never heard of South Korea, or Taiwan. Solid dictatorships with paternalistic market economy for a long time.
” So as bad and corrupt the crony capitalist shit storm we have it is still better than the corrupt ruthless murdering communists that have killed over 50 million of their own citizens.”
Used to be better. Now they and we are the same.
hahahaha – yes, sadly, I believe you’re quite right!
That is why I do not count myself as a political libertarian. No political structure accountable in whole or in part to the masses will let people starve. While theoretically libertarian-ism says people have free choice and are made to suffer the consequences of exercising their choices, the truth is that unless the political structure is completely divorced from accountability, rules will be imposed that ameliorate the consequences of bad choices.
As you rightly point out, democracy stands a similar fate. In America’s case, it’s been able to survive a lot longer than people would have thought…
No society that has any kind of political structure held accountable through peoples’ votes can maintain power with people truly exercising ‘free choice’ – as soon as people do not have to FULLY SUFFER the consequences of their own actions (because politicians don’t get voted in letting people starve), libertarian-ism quickly dissipates along with all freedom its supposedly engenders…
Democracies suffer a very similar fate: people having the ability, but not the purpose of will to act in a manner that puts society first..
“Chinese are playing the long-game”
…
So they say.
I don’t believe that for a nanosecond.
IMO, China in much more dire straits than let on. Xi needs to create 10 million new jobs annually just to maintain status quo … or risk civil unrest.
I wouldn’t disagree with your assessment. Time will tell, of course.
I still like what ‘we’ have better (much more opportunities) than elsewhere, but it comes with a downside. Corporate chieftains know it’s much easier to restructure in the USA than elsewhere, so American workers tend to be the first ones out the door when it comes to controlling costs…. That creates its own issues politically and socially…
Trump the estate agent salesman with the big talk and headline grabbing slogan. He’s America first, but his reelection is most important. All other including human rights are not his concerns not even Americans rights.