Ideally, he should've just pounded Cheen and other countries(like Viet) through which the chinks redirect their goods, but instead he decided to take on the whole world - which puts him in a much weaker negotiating position than he needs to be in. Other countries including India should probably take advantage of this situation.
America will hurt bad, but this will be very severe for China as well. 104% is just absolutely brutal. Maybe some exports can be redirected to other countries, but there is no replacement for the American market because nobody consumes like the Americans do.
We actually dont want Vietnam to be pounded at all.
Its basically the Afghanistan of East Asia ( flat out unconquerable by anyone and even 800 years of straight rule by chinese ends in chinese being kicked out) and is the most trusty geo-political long term piece against china. And to top it off, they do not have any clashing interests or conflicting geopolitics with us. Aka natural ally.
We should infact help out vietnam if we can.
China will find a way. its not hard. If you cannot stop western electronics from going through to Russia, despite sanctions, you wont be able to stop chinese goods long term with tarrifs - remember, sanction busting is a felony crime in every nation, tarriff evasion isnt, its a misdemenour, meaning a fine.
So if in todays world you cant stop goods access via sanctions, you also cant via tarrifs.
Also, american market is not in position to get off without equal amounts of pain - remember, America doesnt have an alternative to Chinese goods either- at least not yet. It takes several years to create a supply chain and therefore, if you ban chinese goods now,it means you go without goods for a few years till others can make up the infrastructure.
And we all know american public is basically fat piggy of the world hooked on 1 million addictions, from sugar to slop to entertainment to cheap stuff and if you fuck with any of that, you make yankees very very angry.
Currently, yankeestan is holding because MAGA doesnt realize that this is gonna get ugly for americans and it will end up in 50 dollar t-shirts as starting price for at least next few years.
Once they do, its game over on tarrifs for trumpwa.
This is why he is using this as a guessing game and doing two steps forward,one step backwards because this is intimidation tactic more than clear cut tarriff plan.
if he had clear-cut tarriff plan, he would bring it out in one go and keep it same - why create market volatility with yes-no-yes-no if the end game is just to create tarriff regime to bring back industry ? The more you do yes-no-yes-no, the more you fuckup the process and cause systemic delays on every side. Ie no one wins.
So why is trump doing this ? because he knows within six months of a consistent tariff regime, MAGA is gonna lose their shit.
