A careful reading of everything that’s been written about President Trump’s so-called Phase One trade deal with the Chinese government leads me to conclude that the Chinese have been vindicated by adopting an intransigent Long March kind of approach. The Americans simply lacked the intestinal fortitude for a prolonged standoff. In the end, domestic considerations prevailed. Trump is dealing with an impeachment and a re-election. He wants a strong stock market and does not want any further tariff pain inflicted on American farmers or consumers. The Americans negotiated with themselves.
One of the most important pieces of evidence came in Keith Bradsher’s story in the New York Times yesterday written from Beijing. “People close to China’s economic policymaking process,” he wrote, “say that as the talks progressed this past week, the mood among Chinese officials shifted from deeply worried to cautious and finally, by late in the week, jubilant and even incredulous that the hard-liners’ goals has been achieved.”
One possible upside is the dawning recognition that we cannot negotiate any meaningful change in the Chinese government’s behavior. It perceives, correctly, that its state-led model backed by massive subsidies is prevailing in the key battleground for the development and control of key technologies. As I argued in The New Art of War: China’s Deep Strategy Inside the United States, seen here, we have to put our own house in order on multiple levels; we have to harden our computer systems to prevent hacking and we need to organizing ourselves to develop technologies more rapidly while understanding the social and political impact those technologies may inflict.
When it comes to sheer delusional thinking about the so-called deal, the Wall Street Journal editorial page took the cake by writing this: “Mr. Trump is showing good faith in giving China a chance to show it can play by the rules of honest global trade.” What pampered college kid wrote that? First, Trump doesn’t understand the concept of good faith. But the really incredible statements are that China needs “a chance” to “play by the rules.” The cold reality is that China is demonstrating in virtually every country in the world that it is exploiting an opening to impose its own systems, values and rules which center on the concepts of control, corruption and wealth. China is recreating a Chinese empire while editorial writers engage in mental masturbation.
