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Comment by finnthehuman | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if 50 years from now the thing Trump is most remembered for is ending the US' blind eye towards China.

Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing. Hollywood was tailoring their products to appease the Chinese government and be allowed in the market, anyone who wanted to do business there like NBA owners and players were biting their tongues and hiding their political opinions. But not Trump, he turned the tide and made America care about human freedom again.

Ok, fine, crazy thought. But it raises the question, why aren't any of our other leaders even pretending to try and be that person?

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Nobody wants to stand up to China and it’s going to lead us to a very dark place. I fear we either go to war or we just acquiesce and become similar to China. I really hope we can avoid the whole bloody cultural revolution part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre

From my perspective though, your cultural revolution might be already on its way, with a more genital cancellation, rather than execution.

> Ok, fine, crazy thought. But it raises the question, why aren't any of our other leaders even pretending to try and be that person?

Don't you think that's a very easy question to answer?

A ton of money, an amount of money serious enough even for America to be made concerned.

Pretty much everybody with stock market exposure, including pretty much anybody in USA who counts as an elite, will loose big time if one day Beijing presses the Delete button, and half of Fortune 500 vanishes.

Remember, it was Apple out of everybody who was granted an exemption from punitive tariffs on China.

It's not just money, there were decisions made over the course of 30 years that got us to this point.

And, yes, those decisions were influenced by money but they were also influenced heavily by American Exceptionalist arrogance. Of course our culture will dominate theirs and they'll take their rightful, subservient place to us in the global order.

Never mind that they literally converted their own conquerers to Chinese culture TWICE (mongols/yuan, manchu/qing) in the last millenium.

What do you mean “press delete”? China is not in a position to blackmail the US via financial means, not even in the slightest. If they sold their treasuries, they would be bought in a heartbeat by others with a penchant for stable valuation.

> What do you mean “press delete”?

I mean they would prohibit all vital operations of these companies in China. What would Apple do if China will give them a Huawei treatment?

They wouldn't even be able to move away from China, if their Chinese suppliers would be told to cease doing business with Apple globally.

Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.

Second to that: check what you saw in the previous half of the year. A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China. Would US elites be ready to deal with angry unwashed masses who, with some help, and incitement, would go torch their houses because they can't get not only their new Iphone, but basic medicines, clothing, car parts, basic household goods, widgets for their businesses, and such?

Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.

Banning Apple means taking a hit to the economy, likewise for all the other industries you mention. The Chinese economy is just as dependent on Western economy as the reverse. Nobody wins when the world economy grinds to a halt. Especially not the exporter, the importers will just import from somebody else if conditions favor that.

https://theconversation.com/we-estimate-china-only-makes-8-4...

> We estimate China only makes $8.46 from an iPhone

> What would Apple do if China will give them a Huawei treatment?

Well, all those people would instantly be out of a job for one. What Huawei factories in the US are being shut down? It's one thing to lose market access, it's another to lose jobs.

> Pretty much every globally prominent company dealing with light industries, manufacturing, electronics has some things in their products which they cannot reasonably expect to get elsewhere but in/from China.

Cheap is a better word here. There is not a single item in China that can't be replicated elsewhere in the world for consumer products.

> A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China.

Because of cheapness, not because they can't be created elsewhere. Many countries can create these goods, including the U.S.

> Unless Americans are ready for that, they can't fight China, and the people in Beijing know it very well.

Americans might not be "ready" but they can definitely decouple with China if push comes to shove.

What would Chinese companies do if half or more of their business suddenly dries up? Supplying the US is a major sector of China's economy, and the economic fallout of cutting that link will fall just as hard on China as it does on the US.

> What would Chinese companies do if half or more of their business suddenly dries up?

Sell to another country at lower prices, and less profit than the can get from the US?

Who? Export substitution of non-fungible products is quite difficult.

Interestingly, this is basically by design.

> No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree

>> No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. [0]

> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree

It's worth noting that most of the wiki article is basically a list of counter-examples that proved that statement false. There have been a half-dozen wars between McDonald's-havers.

and only one of those examples is before the publishing year

And as noted in the Wikipedia article, this was disproved within months by NATO involvement in the Yugoslav Wars.

It should also be noted that there were plenty of experts who would tell you that the world is now too economically intertwined to be able to support any major war between major powers... in 1914. Economic integration preventing global conflict has been disproven time and again in history.

> Second to that, as you saw in the previous half of the year. A lot of living essentials are made almost solely in China. Would US elites be ready to deal with angry unwashed masses who, with some help, and incitement, would go torch their houses because they can't get not only their new Iphone, but basic medicines, clothing, car parts, basic household goods, widgets for their businesses, and such?

I don't think it'd play out like that. It's been a few generations, but Americans have experience with wartime rationing that was far more extreme. They didn't riot and demand a peace treaty with Hilter and Tojo, so they could could get the consumer goods they had been used to having.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States

https://www.history.com/news/food-rationing-in-wartime-ameri...

This sentiment has logic to it.

But, I don't see any US president standing for it before the election, or at least attempting to sell it to his electorate/funders, unless pretty much a hot war is happening.

USA was the biggest industrial power by late thirties, and I think no country would've stood for Germany in the open on the global arena by then. The situation is more than a bit different now.

Be hopeful that the politicians will be as logical as you are.

> But, I don't see any US president standing for it before the election, or at least attempting to sell it to his electorate/funders, unless pretty much a hot war is happening.

I don't think it would be a hard to sell the American public on some kind of rationing if Beijing suddenly embargoes the US in a way that necessitated it. Given the economic dependencies that you cite, I think a US-initiated decoupling would likely proceed slowly enough to not cause critical disruption, just higher prices.

Maybe if he hadn't already squandered all of the US's international credibility before making this move it would have been a bit more effective.

I think another Trump decision which may be viewed as important by historians in 50+ years time is the establishment of the US Space Force.

Why does reorganization of Air Force Space Command into a separate organization seem like a big deal to you?

Well, for one thing a separate organisation is likely to get more funding. It’s the nature of politics and bureaucracy. And increased military investment in space could produce flow-on benefits to the civilian side of the space industry

If the dreams of people like Elon Musk come true, USSF may end up being a far more important organisation than AFSC ever was.

I wanted them to open an academy. Even though I am likely too old for it, I'd definitely apply to be a space cadet.

I don't see how this is an unrealistic scenario. The rehabilitation of George Bush's image happened faster than I ever thought it would. In a decade he (Bush) went from a despised president who got us involved in 2 major wars, eroded our civil liberties, and oversaw an almost unprecendented economic bust to some loveable goof who paints pictures, has trouble putting on a poncho, pals around with Ellen, and, most recently, has been praised for being skeptical of a second Trump term.

Can you expand upon what audience you are referring to in context of the "rehabilitation of George Bush"? Political scientists have remained pretty consistent on his image over the last 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_preside...

Audience means online communities that I frequent, which is primarily Reddit.

People tend to be nostalgic for the years soon after their birth because to them it seems like a time when everything seemed simple because they were too young to be aware of the world.

Guess which age group has an outsize influence on Reddit?

The average person looks back quite fondly on him in retrospect thanks to the Trump Crime Administration. Even though there are many things Bush has done that were far worse like the Iraq war.

> I don't see how this is an unrealistic scenario. The rehabilitation of George Bush's image happened faster than I ever thought it would.

Trump isn't going to be rehabilitated like Bush. Politics aside, George Bush seems like a genuinely decent guy at a personal level. Trump, on the other hand, is a nasty, selfish bully; he always has been one, and he always will be one. As long as he remains alive, he will constantly remind America if his nature.

No one thinks he was good. He and his cronies did immeasurable damage to US prestige and treasury.

But he wasn't openly in league with hostile powers, wasn't blatantly corrupt, and didn't utterly meltdown when faced with a crisis. Arguably, this is because Chaney and other Neo-Cons were calling the shots, but things seemed mostly stable.

Trump is all of those negatives but without the veneer of good faith and competency.

Saudi Arabia...?

> Imagine if 50 years from now the thing Trump is most remembered for is ending the US' blind eye towards China.

> Imagine if he's celebrated as the politician who finally acted on principal in a time when the rest of Washington was looking the other way because of cheap manufacturing.

Trump won't be celebrated, since there's no strategy behind what he does: it's all short term self-interest. Bolton says he begged Xi in person to buy US farm products to help with his re-election (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53086042) and approved of the concentration camps that are being sanctioned here (https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslim-bolton-73ebf1e2-9d...).

If anything, Trump's bumbling, impulsive actions caused aspects of an already solidifying consensus on China to firm up a little quicker.

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