posted when your 410k comes back 10%? you don't live on market value because surely your rent income (if you have some) and salary would not let you retire, ever. in the case of china, they ran trade surplus with persian, spain, dutch, britian, etc, for centuries as always it had been, there is no need for outside goods. the brits ran out of goods to sell them hence the drug trade started, mind you no slaves to china. backfire, sure, but no one escapes completely, hence financial m.a.d.
History’s cute—but it’s 2025—address the numbers. China’s $54T debt, 3x $18T GDP, $759B liquid reserves, $263B export hit from 125% tariffs as of today. That’s $22B/month—they’re bleeding. Global chains aren’t 1800s silk routes—they need our chips, soybeans, and dollars. We can pivot—they can’t. M.A.D.? They’ve got no equal power—$1.9T USD total isn’t liquid—they starve without trade. You got data—or just old stories?
54t debt is a wildly guess number, aka to our debt of nonfinancial sectors, which is 76t as of last quarter. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/z1/nonfinancial_debt/chart/#units:percent-of-gdp other source have us total debt to gdp 722% https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/total-debt--of-gdp china central goverment debt is only 14t. you can make an arguement local goverment debts are part of central goverment's problem, which may or may not get repayment if you are a local goverment bond holders, your have to read the debt issuance fine print. some are, some are not. local projects like highways can collect revenues and repay bonds but high-speed trains may be not. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp last night i was on es thread posting, china sold or is in the process of selling 50b treasuries, for that initial yield spike. my colleague now in the east with a us ib desk is not panicked at all, government will bail out the market but only with china domestic etfs, not hsi. other than semi chips, which they lack, and can only make high-end i3 and low end i5 cpu equivalent, the rest they can get by without as soon as smic has a manufacturing breakthrough, may be 2-3 years or 3-5 years, who knows. (i owned tons of smic stock until cheetos put it on restriction list in 2019, us persons/entities can only close positions but not open new trades, i folded with losses and got hurt). smic is still a number two fab by size, bigger than intel and global foundries. they are also buying us soybeans in one-off basis, if brazil can fill the shoes. https://www.reuters.com/markets/com...ile-us-china-exchange-blows-braun-2025-04-07/ the big end game china wants is a modern version of a "barter" system, non-currency base. if you can have a direct answer to this question real time, that you can sell solution and be the richest guy in the world. "how many avocados a mexican farmer is willing to pay for a mobile phone with his avocados?" that is an old slik road question.
Yeah China adding triple the reciprocal tariffs in retaliation is not blackmailing. LOL Whatever US does is bad bad bad imperialism, bullying, humiliating... Whatever China does is justice! LOL China needs to get off its high horses and at the same time stop living under the shadow of its 19th century war defeat failures and start living in the present. It's incredible how a country can have so high of self-esteem and low self-esteem at the same time.
when i read this this afternoon, it chilled to the bone. don’t care about imperialism much it is phase. what cheertos inner circle tried but failed this time, it is recreating colonialism. all these motherfuckers need to be hanged. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...n-steve-miran-hudson-institute-event-remarks/ First, other countries can accept tariffs on their exports to the United States without retaliation, providing revenue to the U.S. Treasury to finance public goods provision. Critically, retaliation will exacerbate rather than improve the distribution of burdens and make it even more difficult for us to finance global public goods. Second, they can stop unfair and harmful trading practices by opening their markets and buying more from America; Third, they can boost defense spending and procurement from the U.S., buying more U.S.-made goods, and taking strain off our servicemembers and creating jobs here; Fourth, they can invest in and install factories in America. They won’t face tariffs if they make their stuff in this country; Fifth, they could simply write checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-trump-tariffs-just-got-even-worse "The Trump Tariffs Just Got Even Worse Higher costs, uncertainty and crony capitalism, oh my For electronics, at least, we’re now putting much higher tariffs on intermediate goods used in manufacturing than on final goods. This actually discourages manufacturing in the United States. Uncertainty created by ever-changing tariff plans is arguably a bigger problem than the tariffs themselves. The stench of corruption around these policies keeps getting stronger. So just like that we’re turning into a nation where policies are ill-considered and constantly changing, and business success depends not on what you know but on who you know and whether you pay them off."
Despite Trump's tough talk, it's America that's making all the concessions. China hasn't given an inch. Tariff carve-outs underscore weak US position in China trade war: ‘This is going to get really ugly’ https://www.yahoo.com/news/tariff-carve-outs-underscore-weak-095500647.html
happening now. that’s even before the koreans are even planning to come to dc. https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.co...FTA-in-service-investment-and-finance/2284968 Korea, China to hold talks on expanding FTA in service, investment and finance Published: 15 Apr. 2025, 06:00 Over 40 representatives from Korea and China will be present, including Kwon Hye-jin, the Trade Ministry’s director-general for FTA negotiations, and the Chinese Commerce Ministry's director-general Lin Feng.