It ends with China being cut off from SWIFT and correspondent banking.
That would probably make them re-think their approach to economic warfare.
That would probably make them re-think their approach to economic warfare.
Personally, I rather Qualcomm goes bankrupt entirely than see Chinese global hegemony.
It actually seems like the recent change has been to let china get away with whatever they want with no struggle and simply accept a nice slow bleed out.
Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? They include: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Where on earth is this coming from? What does this even mean?
SWIFT becomes irrelevant if this happens, not China.
If China is cut off from any global trade structures, I can’t imagine any non US countries would go along with it.
The other reason for this is that all the US allies that could possibly have worked with the US on this are all under threats of tariffs from the US themselves.
Most of Europe plainly has even more at stake in dealing with China than the US does. The greater European region is far weaker than the US as a whole (half the GDP per capita, far less wealth, less economic growth, greater economic stagnation the past 10-20 years), both economically and militarily. China has in recent years demonstrated its ability to directly purchase votes and influence among weaker European nations. China is an advancing superpower that is pursuing both tech and industrial dominance. Europe has no tech dominance for China to plunder or compete with, however it does have a large amount of high-skill, advanced manufacturing in Western Europe. China wants to own that. What's left of Western Europe's economy if they do?
Most of Germany's economy is built on advanced manufacturing and an extreme level of exports (~32% of its economy is exports), resulting in the world's largest national trade surplus. China's goal is to move up the development ladder and to own advanced manufacturing. If China has its way, Germany will be gutted. Most of Europe's interests on China are aligned with the US. The two can likely manage to keep US-Europe trade issues separate from the need to also deal with China.
In fact further US economic decline plays to his advantage because he can clearly blame China and blaming foreigners is something that works with his base.
Even if US wanted to go nuclear and push for China being cut from SWIFT:
1. It will be suicide. Cutting China from SWIFT will have very very big impact in the US.
2. US corporations have too much interest to lose in here. No way corporate America allows that to happen.
3. The rest of the world is already pissed at US for pulling out from Iran deal. They are not following US regarding Iran. How do you propose they would follow US' lead to put such sanctions on China and suffocate themselves?
Again, the chances of China being cut from SWIFT are close to zero.
The US has crushed the Iranian economy. What are you talking about? Have you seen the collapse of their economy since the US left the nuclear deal and began pursuing sanctions? Have you seen the extreme inflation rate, the plunge in their currency, the plunge in their oil exports, and their increasingly wild behavior?
If entirely crushing their economy equates to barely, what would be a successful version of sanctioning Iran?
Apr 2019 "Iran inflation could reach 40 percent this year as economy shrinks further"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-economy-imf/iran-inf...
Apr 2019 "Trump's maximum pressure campaign hammers Iranian economy"
"The World Bank predicted in an April report that the Iranian economy would "contract sharply," and it expects GDP to shrink by 3.8% in 2019 on the back of U.S. sanctions."
"Iran's currency, the rial, lost more than 60% of its value compared to the U.S. dollar last year, and inflation surged fourfold to an estimated rate of more than 40% by the end of 2018. (In 2019, the Central Bank of Iran has stopped publishing inflation data, leading some analysts to believe that the rate has kept rising beyond 40%.)"
https://www.axios.com/iran-economy-trump-sanctions-irgcc-0a8...
Apr 2019 "Iran's Latest Inflation Figure Tops 50 Percent - Food Prices Jump 85 Percent"
https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-s-latest-monthly-inflation-...
You are right. The Iranian economy is crushed and basically the country is starving.
Here's what happened (oversimplified of course):
1. US has had sanctions on Iran for a long time (> 3 decades). No US entity can deal with Iran.
2. Obama extended these sanctions to the world: No entity form any country is allowed to work with Iran. If they do, they cannot work with the U.S.
3. Europe was happy with those sanctions and pushed for it.
4. JCPOA (Iran Deal) was signed.
5. Iran stopped nuclear activities.
6. US got out of the deal and push-forced everyone else out
7. The rest of the world, being powerless and bullied, bowed to it, but Europe, UK, China, Turkey and Japan have all been vocal in supporting Iran now. They even have exemptions from the sanctions to work with Iran.
8. Europe even has been working on a back-channel [0] (with no success though) to trade with Iran.
It is true that sanctions are crushing Iran but that's due to years of pressure that was already built-up during Obama era where the Europe and rest of the world did agree upon that.
US cannot cut China from world trade overnight without the support from rest of the world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_in_Support_of_Trade...
Who knows how this all will play out, won't be pretty either way.
I bet this is all empty brinkmanship.