Tag Archives: United States

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 18.

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            Americans have come to depend on cheap Chinese products.  Conversely, China has come to depend on massive exports of its goods to the United States.  Hence, President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 145 percent tariff on imports from China will shock both the American and Chinese systems.[1] 

            What does the United States get from China?  At least 75 percent of electric fans, dolls, video game consoles, tricycles, food processors, and smart phones.[2]  Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard all source many of their products from Asia (China, Taiwan).  The tariffs could push the price of a basic iPhone 16 from $799 to $1,140.[3]  China also produces and exports renewable energy equipment, lithium batteries, and electric vehicles. 

            Much of the American reaction to the trade war with China has been “Eeeek!”  One newspaper warned  of “an economic crisis that could leave America poorer for generations.”  A West Coast port executive said that “essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased.”  As a result, one business economist[4] warned of “empty shelves in U.S. stores in a few weeks,” and “Covid-like shortages for consumers.”  These stoppages will cascade into job losses for longshoremen, truckers and railroads, and retail sales.[5] There could be a grievous toy shortage at Christmas because 80 percent of America’s toys are made in China.[6] 

What does China get from the United States?  Soybeans.  Some kinds of computer chips.  And many jobs.  All the stuff no longer going to America either has to be sold somewhere else, or stock-piled in warehouses, or not made at all.  Neither of the last two is sustainable, politically or economically, for long.  So China has to find a new target for its exports. 

Which country will blink first?  Is there a reasonable compromise that can be negotiated? 

Trump has wobbled on China to a degree.  He exempted some consumer electronics (smart phones, laptops) from most of the China tariffs.  He also indicated that he was ready to negotiate with China and that Xi Jinping had called him.  At the same time, he seems determined to “decouple” the economies of the two countries.[7]  At the very least, he said, “China will probably eat those tariffs.  Everything is going to be fine.” 

For their part, the Chinese seem not to have anticipated the “speed and ferocity” of the American trade counter-attack on China’s economic strategy.[8]  China’s public response has been to dig in.  “Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst.”[9]  Threats of retaliation abound.  When Trump said that Xi Jinping had called about tariffs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry basically called Trump a liar.  Hard to know which of those two to believe. 

[1] “Decoupling: The U.S.-China trade divorce, The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 34.    

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Inflation: How tariffs could push up prices,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 17.    

[4] As in an economist employed by a business, in this case an asset management firm. 

[5] “Trump shrugs off warnings over trade war costs,” The Week, 9 May 2025, p. 4. 

[6] Feels heartless denying kids their hearts’ desire at Christmas.  Still, Boxing Day can be a time for repentance. 

[7] The historian Stephen Kotkin has observed that Trump often talks out of both sides of his mouth, but if you look at what he actually does, you can tell what he really means.  His remarks bore on Iran’s nuclear program.  He thinks Trump means to stop it, whatever that may require.  There’s no reason not to apply the same view to China trade. 

[8] “Decoupling: The U.S.-China trade divorce, The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 34. 

[9] Given China’s behavior toward its neighbors in Taiwan and the Philippines, this is comic. 

China Tariff Shock.

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            Once upon a time, people harbored high hopes for post-Mao China.[1]  The country adopted “market socialism,” invited Western capital and experts to facilitate its transition to participant in the global economy, and sent many of its own best and brightest to study and work in Western countries.  Employing a very simplified understanding of the West’s own history, people conjectured that a market economy would grow, enrich, and make assertive a middle class that would insist upon a more responsive government.  China would “Westernize.” 

            To accelerate this process, in 2001, China won admission to the World Trade Organization (W.T.O, successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, G.A.T.T).  “It did not have the effect that Long Shanks planned.”[2]  Instead, for ten years, cheap Chinese goods deluged foreign markets.  In the United States, 2.4 million jobs were lost, a million of them factory jobs.  All this happened between 2001 and 2011, and it kept happening at a slower pace afterward.  In 2019, China earned a trade surplus with the rest of the world of more than $500 billion.  Nobody did anything about it.  Why not?  Well, the price of many consumer goods fell.  Consumption increased for many people.  The number of service jobs increased, so lots of people weren’t working in factories, “dark, satanic” or otherwise.  “We’re doing better, right?”[3] 

            Since 2020, China has pursued a major export offensive on top of this already large volume of exports.  It has done so by subsidizing manufacturers of its already low-cost products to the tune of $1.9 trillion over four years. 

In one sense, the offensive has succeeded: in 2024 it earned a surplus of almost $1 trillion.  Since 2013, China has deployed much of its new-found wealth to entangle other counties in a complicated relationship that makes tariff retaliation against China difficult.[4]

In another sense, the offensive has failed: it has aroused international alarm and resistance.  Beyond the United States, the affected industries range from Indonesian textile factories to the German auto industry.  The first phase of the counter-attack against China’s trade offensive appeared in President Donald Trump’s first term with tariffs on China.  These were retained by the Biden administration.  The Chinese responded by moving some of its production “off-shore’ to other countries like Vietnam and Thailand, Turkey and Hungary, and—of course—Mexico.[5]  Trump’s second term began with new and gigantic tariffs on China, but also on many other countries. 

The American tariffs close off an estimated $400 billion in sales to the American market.  If China can’t cut back production, those goods will have to go elsewhere.  Other countries have begun to follow Trump’s lead.  They are hampered by those previously-established economic relationships with China. 

            Trump’s tariff barrage is best understood not as the start of a “Trade War.”  It’s best understood as a counter-attack in a trade war that has already been going on.  It’s a trade war which the United States and many other countries have been losing.  Through not fighting back. 

[1] “China Shock 2.0” The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 11. 

[2] Reference to another Mel Gibson historical wish-it-had-been-this-way mess. 

[3] To belabor the obvious, both the job losses and the failure of solidarity eventually had large political effects. 

[4] See: Belt and Road Initiative – Wikipedia 

[5] See: How Chinese firms are using Mexico as a backdoor to the US 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 15.

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            Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has led the way in the construction of an international economic system based on “relatively free trade bound to relatively predictable governance and the rule of law.”[1]  Along the way, according to some critiques, America’s trading partners have exploited the system to America’s disadvantage.  Now, President Donald Trump has alleged that many of America’s trading partners engage in “unfair trade practices.”[2]  In early April 2025, Trump imposed a 10 percent basic tariff on all imports, plus additional tariffs as high as 50 percent on other countries.[3] 

            The reaction to this announcement got ugly: the stock market lost $10 trillion; China imposed a retaliatory 84 percent tariff on imports from America; and all sorts of people howled.  JPMorgan said the tariffs would probably cause a recession; and Lawrence Summers, the former Secretary of the Treasury and former President of Harvard University known for giving it with the bark on, predicted such a recession would cost 2 million Americans their jobs.  Other critics argued that the tariffs would dismantle the American-led international economic system.  Who will profit?  China will profit, because all the countries bruised by American tariffs and incoherence might look to China as a new leader.  Xi Jinping “is unlikely to miss the priceless opportunity Trump has given him.”  Really?  China will abandon its long-running policy of repressing domestic consumption and conquering foreign markets in order to replace the Americans as the world’s leading consumer-nation? 

            Then Trump abruptly crawfished, suspending the implementation of his “additional” tariffs on most countries for 90 days.  For these countries, the administration was willing to negotiate, if they wanted to do so.  However, he jacked up the tariff on Chinese goods to 125 percent in retaliation for China’s retaliation for Trump’s initial tariff increase.  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that trade negotiations had been the plan all along.[4]

            Critics on left and right belabored the incoherence of the tariffs.  Acknowledging that criticism to be on-target still leaves a question.[5]  Is it useful to distinguish between Trump’s tariffs policy toward China and Trump’s tariff policy toward the rest of the world?  Trump has flip-flopped on everyone except China.  With China, he has doubled-down.  That country produces many goods that were invented in America and are important consumer goods, like cell and computers. 

What is wrong-headed about Trump’s tariff war is that he has not offered a coherent plan to rally the rest of the world against the Chinese export giant while negotiating tariff equality with America’s other trading partners.  China has been steam-rolling many countries.  There is a lot of fear and resentment directed at China abroad in the world.  The makings are there for a better American-led system. 

[1] Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner, quoted in “Trump dials down tariffs, but not for China,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 4.  On the institutional structure of the American-led, rules-based order, see: Bretton Woods system – Wikipedia; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – Wikipedia ; and World Trade Organization – Wikipedia 

[2] If he means that other countries impose higher tariffs on American goods than America imposes on goods from those countries and/or they raise up other “non-tariff barriers,” then he’s pretty much right. 

[3] “Trump dials down tariffs, but not for China,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 4. 

[4] Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (3/10) Movie CLIP – I Meant to Do That (1985) HD 

[5] I’m willing to stipulate that it is an ignorant, probably stupid, question.  But I want to ask it all the same. 

War Movies 6: “The Lost Command.”

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Jean Pierre Lucien Osty (1920-2011) came from a French-peasant-moved-to-Paris background.  War became a central experience of his life: he served in the French Army at the start of the Second World War; then escaped from Vichy France to North Africa by way of Spain; and fought in Italy and France.  Earning an officer’s commission, he then served in the Far East, including a stint in Korea.  Then he became a war correspondent.  His experiences provided the basis for a string of book, published under the pen-name of Jean Larteguy.  One of these books was the novel The Centurions (1963), about the war in Algeria.

The Centurions became a huge best-seller in France, then was translated into English and had a wide readership in the United States as well, many of those readers were Army Special Forces officers.  Larteguy sold the movie rights to the book to Americans.

The book is sprawling as it tries to cover a half-decade of complex action.  Nelson Giddings, who wrote the screenplay, and his frequent collaborator Mark Robson,[1] who directed the movie as “Lost Command” (1966), had to greatly simplify the story for a two-hour movie.  It is a classic statement of the American liberal anti-Communist point of view.  They shot the movie in Spain because they could find there the same dry, scrubby Mediterranean countryside and the European looking cities that prevailed in Algeria.  (Thank you Fernand Braudel for the insight.)  Also, labor costs were low under a right-wing dictatorship, and that met a pressing concern for progressive people making a movie about the evils of oppressive government.

Basically, it is a very conventional war movie, dressed up with some awareness of current issues.  It has standard stock characters: Colonel Pierre Raspeguy, a plain-spoken Basque peasant who has risen to become an officer in an army led by aristocrats;[2] Captain Philippe Esclavier, a well-intentioned aristocratic officer who recognizes that things have to change; Lieutenant Mahidi, an “assimilated” Algerian Muslim army officer who is driven to support the rebels by the abuse of his people; his very wiggly sister Aicha,[3] who becomes Esclavier’s lover; and Major Boisfeuras, a Franco-Chinese half-caste who is an exponent of counter-insurgency.[4]

It begins in the doomed French fortress of Dien Bien Phu.  In brief compass, Dien Bien Phu falls; Raspeguy’s men return from the Vietminh prison camp just in time to join the Algerian War; Raspeguy is restored to a command thanks to the machinations of a French countess with political influence who is swept away by his manly charms; Raspeguy’s unit fights the Algerian rebels in the “bled” and in Algiers, but they start to have doubts when they discover that people like Mahidi and Aicha are on the other side, that Boisfeuras uses torture, and their scummy aristocratic commanders will leave them to bear the blame for any failure.  Raspeguy has to fight against both sides while maintaining his honor.  He wins the “Battle fo Algiers” as well as a final shoot-out with Mahidi.  “Lost Command ends with the enlightened Frenchman shaking hands with the enlightened African medical officer in a foreshadowing of France’s loss of empire.  So, Hollywood, except that Esclavier doesn’t get Aicha (although Raspeguy may get the countess).

The movie got so-so reviews, but Larteguy’s novel has continued to command the attention of people concerned with counter-insurgency warfare—like David Petraeus.

[1] Robson specialized in directing adaptations of middle-brow literature.  He had directed the war movies “The Bridges at Toko-ri” (1954); “Von Ryan’s Express” (1965).  He had directed “Home of the Brave” (1949) and “Trial” (1955), which are attacks on racial prejudice, the latter as an entering wedge for Communism.   He became confused by American culture in the late Sixties and Seventies.  That is true of many of us.

[2] Raspeguy is modeled on Marcel Bigeard, as is Colonel Jean Mathieu in “The Battle of Algiers.”

[3] Played by the very wiggly Claudia Cardinale.

[4] Boisfeuras is standing-in for the French theorists of “revolutionary war” David Galula and Roger Trinquier.