Re: Dear Mister Trump.
How much does America owe China due to all their infusions of cash to help prop up our economy? How many square miles of our country do they own either outright or via proxy? How many American businesses are owned either whole or in part by Chinese stakeholders? How much damage would it do to this country if China decided to demand payment in full of our debts .... You shouldn't try to play hardball with an opponent that has bigger balls than you as it tends to get you hoist by your own petard.
What you say is broadly true, though the legalities of some of these actions aren't exactly cut-and-dried. China does own a staggering pile of US debt (bonds and suchlike) and might deploy this as a weapon, but it's a two-edged sword. Trade war, as the Orange Imbecile has proved, tends to hurt both sides.
What worries me more is not whether China has "bigger balls" but "bigger brains". If you look at the people now running things in the White House (and a fair proportion of Congress), they're strikingly second- and even third-rate intelligences. Listen to 'em speak for a while, look at their command of fact and reasoning: there are an awful lot of troublingly and transparently thick politicians out there. Trump has got rid of all the smart people—intelligent enough to think for themselves, weigh evidence and think logically, then contradict him—and now has surrounded himself with some seriously dim bulbs, like Pompeo and Bolton. His entire administration is characterised by mediocrity (look at clowns like Ajit Pai and de Vos, etc).
The Chinese regime, by contrast, vile though it undoubtedly is, tends to have a lot of notably smart people at the top.
And it's an issue in other hotspot relationships. All the commentators and talking heads focus on the politics and the personalities but they're mostly overlooking something really worrying: from Tehran to Beijing to North Korea to Russia—in every case the American top team is intellectually outmatched, easily, by the other guys. It's not just that Trump is as thick as pigshit; he's winnowed out the smart, intellectually honest people around him. It surely is no surprise that in every one of these cases, the US has been out-manouevered and is coming off worse.
Trump lickspittles Putin and looks like a kid in short trousers next to him. North Korea has committed to nothing while Trump fawns over Kim. Iran is chortling as US warmongers begin to realise what they cannot do. Even China, going back to topic, has ample cards yet to play as the US gets itself into ever-messier tangles over trade policy.
This won't end well.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
