The View from Right Field

The Twins of Trade

The following appears in the Letters section of the Financial Times on May 20, 2024, under the heading “Chinese cars face a wall of protectionist measures”:

“Joe Biden has imposed 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-built electric vehicles. Donald Trump says he will impose 200 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs. With retaliation and knock-on effects certain to follow, one wonders: which one of them is Smoot and which one is Hawley?”

The Coming Constitutional Crisis of 2024 – And American Foreign Policy

In a recent news review,¹ one of the commentators said that, because Trump has made the world part of our political fracas, the political rhetoric now, during the campaign. may be more dangerous for America, and foreign relations. than what comes after November, when the election is over.

I disagree.  I’m afraid the result won’t be known – or, perhaps more accurately, won’t be accepted by the “losing” side – and the things will heat up even more after November 7.  I worry that the election will result in a constitutional crisis greater than any we have seen since 1860-61 – because, no matter who wins, the other side won’t accept it.² 

If Trump loses, he and his supporters will say the election was stolen.  Former President Trump is already saying the election will be rigged.  We know what some Trump supporters did on January 6, 2021.  Who knows what they may do this time.  I understand that last time Mr. Trump was President and that gave him things he could try to do.  But this time, his people may be more upset.

What’s the Matter With China?

As we look at all of the problems in the United States and wonder how we are going to deal with them, perhaps we should give a thought to a country with just as many problems: China.  Recently, I have been watching shows and reading articles about the economic problems in China.  Experts and pundits have been asking what China should do about economic growth, the stagnate real estate sector, youth un- and under-employment, deflation, etc.   And then they go on to offer all kinds of proposed policies and solutions, most of them straight out of standard Western economics theory. 

Which means they won’t be implemented because they miss the main point.  The most important thing to Chinese President Xi Jinping is not solving this problem or that.  It is keeping control.  It's maintaining, and strengthening, the power and role of the Chinese Communist Party – and his own control over the CCP.  President Xi may be a committed Communist and dedicated Marxist-Leninist, but more importantly, he wants to keep control. 

When Joe Met Xi

The press reports of Joe Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping in San Francisco were reasonably positive.  I hope they are right.  It never hurts to be able to talk with a country as big as China, especially when they have nuclear weapons.  But, while reports are that the meeting was good, who knows for sure what the Chinese are really thinking.

One of the results of the meeting that the White House, et al, touted the most was China’s agreement to resume contacts between their military and ours.  China cut off these contacts in August, 2022, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a big trip to Taiwan before she left office as Speaker.  It was sort of a farewell tour for her.  But China was upset, so they, among other things, discontinued regular contacts between their military and ours.¹  And they wouldn’t restart them even though we asked; more than once, I think.  Which was scary.  It increased the chance some small issue, something that could be easily taken care of if the two sides were regularly talking, could wind up becoming a big problem. 

Israel, Ukraine, and More: Biden Must Do More; Congress Must Do Its Job.

I applaud President Biden’s actions and support of Israel since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.  It is right, proper, and necessary.

At the same time, we must continue our support of Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression and terrorism.  It is unfortunate that President Biden did not send more weapons and more advanced weapons to Ukraine sooner, so Ukraine could have been closer to victory before Hamas attacked Israel.  But we are where we are, and now we must keep our focus on two wars at once.

Visiting the Baltics After “Voting for Estonia” in 2016

Just before the 2016 election, I wrote a post entitled “On Election Day, I’ll Be Voting for Estonia”.  The post continued – and explained: “and Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and many more.”¹  At the time, I was worried about then-candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy: “He has threatened to abandon most of our NATO allies.  He has implied to Japan and South Korea that they are on their own.”  While I disagreed with some parts of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, and even more of her domestic policy, I voted for her because I felt she would maintain our NATO commitments and would continue to support our other allies and friends.  I felt such a foreign policy was the best way to protect the security and well-being of the United States. 

In saying I was “voting for Estonia”, I was really saying I was voting against what I feared would be President Trump’s foreign policy.  And I still think that was the right vote.  If President Trump’s foreign policy in his first term wasn’t as bad as I feared, that may have been because, for the first couple of years, he didn’t know how to do what he wanted (and, at times, didn’t even know what he wanted).  Inexperience slowed him down – and made his first term foreign policy not as bad as it might otherwise have been. 

Something Is Going On in China –

And I don’t know what it is.  For that matter, I don’t think anybody knows what it is for sure.  But unusual things are happening in China.  The foreign minister, a close associate of Xi Jinping, all of a sudden disappeared and after almost a month was replaced by the man he replaced, all with no explanation.

The head of the PLA Army’s rocket force, a separate branch of the Chinese military, was replaced by a person from outside the rocket force, the first time this has happened.

And more: The economy has not taken off after the strict Covid restrictions were lifted late last year.  The prices for housing, a key way of saving for Chinese, are down.  Jobs for graduates are harder to come by (and the government has stopped reporting youth unemployment statistics).  And the economy is suffering from a bout of retail price deflation, even though the government is saying deflation isn’t happening.

Jack Ma’s Back. But the CCP Won.

On November 3, 2020, I was thinking that the most significant event that day might be the Chinese government’s decision to cancel the IPO of Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co., and not the U.S. presidential election.  Mr. Ma had given a speech in late October in which he very publicly criticized Chinese government regulators.  The speech did not go over well, and Ant Group’s IPO was cancelled, reportedly by President Xi Jinping himself.  In any case, Donald Trump fairly quickly put my original thought aside.  Still, the cancellation of Ant Group’s IPO was, and still is, a big deal.

The matter came up again last week when Jack Ma went to China to talk to a school in Hangzhou, the hometown of Alibaba (another of his companies), and it was announced that Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, the e-commerce empire Mr. Ma built up, was going to split up into six parts.  Articles talked about how Alibaba was getting too big to manage and how investors didn’t know how to value a company with so many unrelated businesses (not unlike the conglomerates of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States).  The articles said the smaller companies would be more nimble, and growth would be easier.  All of which may be true but is irrelevant.

Helping Ukraine. Defending Taiwan. Talk Is Cheap. Actually Doing It Costs Money.

If you support Ukraine in its war with Russia, if you think the United States needs to defend Taiwan’s right to choose if it unites with China, then you need to support more money for defense.  The Russian attack on Ukraine is a new kind of war.  Actually, it’s not a new kind of war, but it is a kind of war that we have not seen for a long time.  It is a war of attrition, which means it is a war of weapons, supplies, and ammunition.

We are rapidly using up our inventories of all kinds of weapons and supplies in supporting Ukraine.  If we are going to continue to support Ukraine, we are going to need more of these things.  Right away.  And if we support the right of Taiwan to decide its own fate, we need to get supplies of these things to them – right away.  Plus, we need to replenish our own supplies because who knows where else trouble might arise.  There are countries and groups that might think now is a good time to take advantage.

Supporting Taiwan With Military Preparedness, Not Just Words and Visits

In The Wall Street Journal’s editorial yesterday about Nancy Pelosi’s speakerships and the lessons the GOP can learn from them, the Journal gave Speaker Pelosi due credit for “believ[ing] in American freedom” and visiting both Ukraine and Taiwan this year.  However, as Walter Russell Mead said at the time of her trip to Taiwan in August:

“Mrs. Pelosi is sincere in her support for Taiwan …. But to make that support effective, she should have beat the drum for the past 15 years for greater military preparedness even if this meant larger defense appropriations.”