The real problem is not China producing cheap steel, but human rights abuses, and censorship. 45 hasn't done anything about that.
- He refers to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus (CCP is trying very hard from distancing themselves from responsibility; they won’t even let us into Wuhan to investigate).
- He started a trade war with China, which has forced companies to move their manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, Taiwan, etc. (Biden admittedly said he would end Trump’s China tariffs, but the many companies that already left are unlikely to return), and even high end tech such as the iPhone is starting to get assembled outside China as well.
- He was the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan's President since 1979.
- He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades.
- The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Hong Kong Autonomy Act were signed under his administration.
- The TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration.
- The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was singed under his administration.
- Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration (which dragged Canada into it because China decided to arbitrarily arrest Canadian citizens).
- China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks.
- Huawei was blocked from using Android and chips with US tech (which will effectively kill their mobiles once their stock runs out).
- Huawei was blocked from building 5G networks (USA paid other nations to block them as well).
- Hong Kong’s special status was revoked.
- Universal Postal Union agreed to let countries raise postal rates after Trump threatened to leave - this means you’ll no longer be able to buy cheap junk from Aliexpress (and resellers like Wish) at no shipping cost (the receiving country was previously forced to deliver the products for free, even if you brought some toy for 10 cents).
- Trump is pushing for WTO to drop China’s developing country status.
- TikTok and WeChat (likely with more to come) would’ve been blocked by now if it wasn’t for judges temporarily blocking the bans.
There's a reason China's GDP growth in 2019 was the lowest it's been since 1990, and there's a reason China's worldwide reputation is at an all-time low. That reason is Trump. It's also no surprise that all the nations that suffer the most from CCP's actions, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. tend to be pro-Trump.
The first item in your list is President Trump calling the virus the Chinese virus. Aside from maybe bringing his supporters as a rallying cry, what does that actually achieve? It feels more like hollow political rhetoric and not something that delivers any kind of results.
What do the arms sales achieve? Is it merely profit for the American industrial complex, or are you saying Hong Kong now has some chance against China in the event of a military conflict?
Replace prevent with reduce and I'd say almost all of them.
Say what you want about Trump but he has started to made it clear that there will be consequences.
You're moving the goal posts. OP simply said the president "accomplished jack-all". I can't stand the guy either but these are at least accomplishments, even if the effects of some of them are symbolic. What do you want him to do? A land invasion?
From your last comment, are you implying no action can be taken that isn’t simply symbolic except for a land invasion?
Interesting that you turn this into a personal attack. If you agree with the OP, that’s okay. The goal has always been delivering results, not empty, feel good rhetoric that makes you “feel” good. If it’s about your feelings, then okay, I’m sure his strong man rhetoric is good enough over any actual policy shift.
Under all these external pressures, the economy of China has suffered. And this is more crucial than most realize, as CCP would remain in power, and the majority of its citizens tolerate the oppression and ignore minority's human rights abuse, as long as the economy is growing. Also as a result, CCP is experiencing more internal factional struggles. This is apparent in Xi's deployment of cultural revolution style tactics such as purges (under the name of anti-corruption, as vast majority of CCP officials are corrupt), requiring study of Xi thoughts (think Mao's little red book), and demand for absolute loyalty from the military to himself (generals have spoken out against him).
Kublai Khan. For your education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China . To respond to your hyperbole, he actually conquered China rather than issue some decrees which you're counting as "winning".
Obviously (from my point of view; I could be wrong...) you're a deluded Trump supporter and there's no point in trying to convince you what a terrible president he is and to show you how he hadn't even considered how his policies (domestic as well as foreign) could (and did) backfire and disadvantage American businesses and consumers, but maybe I can convince you to consider this, written about Primary Candidate Trump in December 2015: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-...
> Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. [...]. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren’t.
> Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”
> And very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Trump despite establishment denunciations — which means something like a third of Republicans — will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish. At this point such people will insist that any negative reports about Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media; Trump’s very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient looking forward.
But who knows, maybe I (and the Not-Trump voting folk) are the chumps, eh? To quote Orwell (full essay: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...):
> [W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
Trump is first president to come into office already supporting gay marriage.
>make it illegal for me to get the medicine I'm on
You are going to need to explain this since as far as I can tell Trump has not attempted to make any medicine illegal.
>Nothing like a little down-home American human rights abuses
Will you explain this one as well?
> He can't even condemn a terrorist group when asked directly to.
Trump has denounced white supremcy like 20 times.
https://thepostmillennial.com/over-20-times-trump-publicly-d...
>Mr Trump told the Axios news site that achieving a "great" deal meant he could not impose "additional sanctions".
>The issue arose after allegations in a book by ex-Trump aide John Bolton.
>Mr Bolton had alleged that at a summit last year Mr Trump gave Chinese President Xi Jinping the green light on building the camps in its western region, with the US leader saying it was "exactly the right thing to do". Mr Trump denies the allegation.
>Axios says that when Mr Trump was asked why he had held off imposing further sanctions on Communist Party officials over the issue of the camps, he said: "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.
>"And when you're in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on - we've done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53138833
If they were some minor country that supplied all the world's bananas someone could potentially put together something like that, and we'd all live without bananas for a while.
But China makes just about everything, and not just cheap and simple stuff anymore.
In game theory (and experiments with real people) sometimes it makes sense to punish a misbehaving player even though it harms you yourself. It really does not seem like any country in the West is anywhere close to being willing to do that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
Which was failry explicirly aboit containing China.
Interesting, although it's not clear that they worked because of or alongside efforts. China is not a small country that can be economically isolated.
Any pressure would need to come from governments forcing the hand of larger businesses to slowly move complex manufacturing elsewhere.
I'd like to see something along the lines of "tariffs go up 5% each year, and will be dropped to zero when China drops the GFC". I don't want huge economic disruption for China or the US, but a slow disentanglement. And a clear carrot that lets them know it's not personal, the CCP just has to let its citizens talk with the peoples it wants to trade with. "Your move" to the CCP, while remaining positive about the Chinese people.
Otherwise, in spite of gains in redundant manufacturing capacity (great for local employment, and for national security), it's likely there would be a degradation in workers' rights domestically in order to keep costs low. In order to avoid these outcomes, workers' rights and human rights need to be something that most voters believe are important.
I don't think the parent comment suggested anything like what you just said. And I agree with that parent comment, in that I find it amusing mental-floss to imagine how a very-low income family in the US can completely avoid Chinese made products.
Family living off the grid in eco-friendly community already does.
Farmer family can avoid a lot.
Poor family in the city or burbs has few options and can't avoid walmart/dollar stores.
I’d also say it’s surprisingly easy to boycott Chinese goods, as well as companies kowtowing to China.
Interesting how you left out the folks who buy the products in question.
The CCP already went unpunished with the Tibetans. Very few people in the west cared and it was before China became member of the WTO. The current administration tried to impose tariffs on China which were deemed illegal by the WTO. Maybe the west should have cared BEFORE welcoming China in the WTO.
I know that isn’t your point, and agreed on the WTO. As a mass we will never sacrifice a 10% cheaper product to stop inhumanities. We need to elect officials who will handle that via economics. I’ve always been a fan of taxing Chinese imports to offset this factor.
If only we can just keep partisan politics out of the discussions as the taxes on Chinese products were immediately bashed based on the person who implemented it. We need to look at the decision itself to evaluate it, not the party that made the decision. We can disagree with most of a party’s decisions but if you find you hate 100% of them you are likely applying a bias to something that may be good.
Check out Crouching Tiger. It’s a great modern book that includes how we are buying/trading our way into losing the next war.
It's also a perfect illustration of how otherwise supposedly intelligent people in tech are just as easily manipulate outside their area of expertise as the fox news audience.
Avoiding Chinese made products isn't a practical solution. Contract manufacturing needs to move elsewhere.
The CCP gains legitimacy from brining prosperity to the Chinese people. This prosperity is off the back of human rights violations, bullying other countries and corporate espionage. It is time we boycotted China. The whole world must turn its back on China to show this behaviour is not acceptable. It may hurt in the short term, but will benefit all of humanity in the long term.
The US is heading into a pretty contentious election, nobody is sure whether or not we're on the brink of a recession, international diplomatic relationships are in tatters. If the CCP took Taiwan right now, I don't see the US lifting a finger.
"China, Desperate to Stop Coronavirus, Turns Neighbor Against Neighbor" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/business/china-coronaviru...
I might feel something is a little over-the-top, but you might feel it's just fine. You might feel something is a little over-the-top, but I might feel it's just fine.
So, I guess my only answer would be that you would have to read the articles and decide for yourself.
You may have a different tolerance for the techniques described than I do.
"In the eastern province of Jiangsu, quarantine turned to imprisonment after authorities used metal poles to barricade shut the door of a family recently returned from Wuhan."
"Authorities have used computerized systems that track ID cards — which must be used to take most long-distance transport and stay in hotels — to round up people from Wuhan."
For example, I find this to be a bit much. I do, however concede that it works. You may be perfectly fine with it.
I find the prison camps in Xinjiang to be a little draconian. Plenty of other people feel that it's a wonderful idea.
Putting Uighurs in concentration camps is literally just helping them to learn more about the Han Chinese way of life.
Xkeyscore is literally just helping an analyst access a database.
A famine is literally just a national weight-loss program.
Extraordinary Rendition was literally just an opportunity for hundreds of people to visit other interesting parts of exotic countries.
Catch my drift? Pay attention to the 'rounding up' part that follows the contact tracing.
Again, feel free to disagree. There's a wide spectrum of opinions on this stuff.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/08/872470104/economists-announce...
> If the CCP took Taiwan right now
Maybe. They could still infiltrate Special Forces teams (I'm sure they have boat teams trained for this very thing), hit Taipei with DF-17s, mine the outside boundaries of the strait, parachute guys in and take the harbors.
My point is more that the US isn't in a position to do anything right now, than that China is going to take Taiwan.
China didn't displace tens of millions of people in the middle east from their homes, the US did.
China didn't destabilize dozen of countries (via assassinations, coups, and other unsavory ways to initiate regime change), the US did.
There's one threat to world peace, and that's the US. It's ridiculous that people think that somehow China could be worse than that.
China destabilized Korea, Vietnam and other countries in the area. Are seriously suggesting they didn't want regime changes in those countries?
Many of those people were displaced.
The US under Trump is actually starting to pull out of the Middle East. While bad things happened the US is at least stopping it.
China is continuing their aggression towards minorities in their country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea
There was a unified Korea, led by Lyuh Woon-hyung.
Americans arrived afterwards, Lieutenant General John Hodge said: "one of our missions was to break down this Communist government".
If the Americans wouldn't have come, there wouldn't have been any north/south division (in fact, Kim Il-sung wouldn't probably end up leading a country). And you somehow think that it's China who destabilized it?
Similarly, it's the US that invaded Vietnam from the other side of the world. The only difference is that the country was already divided, after the Anti-French Resistance War. You think of it as "communist aggression", but the truth is that these were liberation wars from western colonization.
Similarly, the US propaganda personally blames Mao for "killing" people due to a famine. The reality is more complex, and unfortunately personal responsibility of state leaders is never recognized during these events. Similarly, Trump is "killing" hundred of thousands of people due to his mishandling of the pandemic, but we both know that he won't be held personally responsible.
I can get into more details, but you should reconsider what you choose to spread. If you're just repeating propaganda talking points, you're not going to accomplish anything good for the people in Korea, Vietnam, China or US people themselves. The only people that you're doing a favor to are the fat cats in Washington.
China destabilized Korea, Vietnam and other countries in the area.
The US under Trump is actually starting to pull out of the Middle East. While bad things happened the US is at least stopping it.
You should watch "A radical experiment in empathy", by Sam Richards
That revolution will be messy, but it's needed.
It's always amusing when people who cause the most misery in the world shout the loudest about human rights and such.
Amazon has also become almost as bad as Alibaba in allowing counterfeit and knockoff items to be sold openly.
Besides, the rules around country of origin are complicated, and some countries have product description law about this. And what's to stop Amazon sellers sticking fake country of origin on, as they can already do for CE marking?
Or the reverse: Amazon stick a China flag on iPhones. Apple are going to get extremely upset about this and sue/offer money to change that to a US flag.
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Anti-Boycott_Act may make it illegal to force Israeli sellers to identify their country of origin.
Who declares the country of origin? Who ensures compliance for item? How is compliance done? Do you review every single item?
How do you ensure that manufacturers update their country of origin declaration if/wehen they change downstream procurement? If you the raw materials are sourced in China and assembled in Vietnam, does that count as a Vietnamese product?
Amazon still has trouble with fake reviews, brushing scams, and straight-up counterfeits. Adding another system that needs to be policed doesn't seem like a very good idea. Especially when that system (country of origin flag on every product) has questionable upside.
It's pointless. Actions that address the result of group behaviour need to come from the group (government). All else is just grandstanding.
If that's effective for the long-term future and prosperity of the US, which is also important to counter the CCP - I don't know.
We really need UBI, stimulus, healthcare reform, and as much as I hate to say it Biden is the closest we get to that. But, vote who you feel is good and safe, I voted green. I'm not gonna vote shame anyone.
Just when you vote think about all that's coming : Global Warming, Water Wars (already started in Mexico), Droughts, More Fires, Covid, Covid part 2, Income inequality raised a factor or two, joblessness, homelessness for millions, protests, uprisings, etc... Next two decades will make or break us.
TLDR: Trump probably would be best against china, and if that were the only issue facing us, it might be good enough reason to go against the grain, but there's so much shit hitting the fan now, maybe we do need change.
This isn't the time to make some symbolic stand, it's time to vote Trump out - if that's what you believe in.
If they lose this election it's because they threw it. All they had to do was field anyone in good health (Biden isn't) who wasn't widely detested and they would have had it in the bag.
The party system in the US leaves so much to be desired.
Trump's worldview is destructive and idiotic, so then vote for his opponent.
Your point is being wasted, and another 4 regressive years of Trump all because you wanted to make a point that won't be heeded or come through at all.
How about the 3rd parties field a candidate people actually want to vote for? Not some fringe ideology.
As far as the democrats go, my prediction is that they will find another uninteresting candidate in 2024 and keep standing for nothing. Maybe its's Pelosi's turn?
> Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account. The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.
> Bolton also wrote in the book that Matthew Pottinger, a retired US Marine and the current deputy national security adviser, "told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-detention-camp-x...
Make no mistake about it, Trump's anti-China rhetoric arises purely out of Xenophobia, not concern for Uighurs or human rights.
This is the same Bolton who publicly declared that the single biggest mistake of the Trump presidency was not launching a war against Iran (a war that would kill a million people most likely). The same Bolton who has never shown a problem with aggressively supporting lies, like the foundational lies used for the Iraq war, of which he was a big proponent. There is very little from someone like Bolton that can be trusted directly - which also doesn't mean everything he said about Trump is false, it means there is inherently a severe credibility problem with anything he says.
As Senator he voted yes to give China permanent normal trade status, stating:
> [Our course is clear. China's growing participation in the international community over the past quarter century has been marked by growing adherence to international norms in the areas of trade, security, and human rights.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2000-pt13/html/CRE... of our colleagues disagree on this point. They would have preferred that the China trade bill be turned into an omnibus China Policy Act. I understand their objectives and their frustration with the slow pace of reform in China. But amendments offered by Senator Smith of New Hampshire--covering such diverse issues as POW/MIA cooperation, forced labor, organ harvesting, etc.--and Senator Wellstone of Minnesota--conditioning PNTR on substantial progress toward the release of all political prisoners in China--pile too much onto this legislation. Moreover, those amendments would effectively hold the trade legislation hostage to changes in China which passing the trade bill would promote. This seems backwards to me.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2000-pt13/html/CRE...)
Biden later lobbied to grant most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership to China:
> [In the critical fight over whether to grant most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership to China in the 1990s — a fight in which, again, many of his party’s leaders in Congress were on the right side — Biden carefully shepherded China through the process from his powerful perch as the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Wherever a brake might have been applied — by placing human-rights or labor conditions on most-favored-nation status, for example — Biden voted the measures down and lobbied other senators for Beijing. Unfortunately, China and Biden got their way, and American workers are still suffering from it.](https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/joe-biden-is-chinas-c...)
As Vice President:
> ["In order to cement this robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms."](https://newspunch.com/unearthed-biden-speech-in-china-urged-...)
> ["Already, we have made thousands of new items available for export to China for exclusive civilian use that were not available before, and tens of thousands of more items will become available very soon. That’s a significant change in our export policy and a rejection of those voices in America that say we should not export that kind of technology to – for civilian use in – China. We disagree, and we’re changing."](https://newspunch.com/unearthed-biden-speech-in-china-urged-...)
> ["I believed in 1979 and said so and I believe now that a rising China is a positive development, not only for the people of China but for the United States and the world as a whole." He continues: “it is in our self-interest that China continues to prosper” and retained hope “a rising China will fuel economic growth and prosperity and it will bring to the fore a new partner with whom we can meet global challenges together.”](https://newspunch.com/unearthed-biden-speech-in-china-urged-...)
> [Vice President Biden convinced China's vice president to agree to a deal that would unlock new fortunes for Hollywood. Biden asked Xi Jinping to relax China's quota of allowing only 20 foreign films to be shown at a time and to increase distribution fees for Hollywood firms.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/05/02...)
> [In 2013, the Obama administration allowed Chinese companies to invest in U.S. capital markets without having their books inspected by U.S. regulators, after meetings between Chinese officials and Biden.](https://epochtimes.today/where-biden-trump-stand-on-the-chin...)
As Presidential Candidate:
> [In 2019, Biden boasts about having spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other world leader, and that China wasn't a competitior to the United States. "China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man," Biden said at the time. "They're not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They're not competition for us."](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-trump-mischara...)
> [Biden Says He Will End Trump’s Tariffs On Chinese-Made Goods](https://news.yahoo.com/said-trumps-ideas-good-one-153901834....)
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aamazon.com+%22where+i...
We don't need crappy pens, toys, electronics, etc...
I don't know about you, but I'm personally happy to own one ballpoint pen that'll last me for 20 years (and only have to refill it from time to time). If anything, just to not see some poor guy work as a slave (long work-days, minimum pay, suicide nets). Right now you can just go purchase 10x crappy pens that easily break and dry out for around €2, whyyyy?