the reason China was using stockpiles is they want to time the gasoline price shock right to the midterm elections. The moment they stop using stockpiles and start purchasing the prices will jump
What they did was aggressively reduce demand by accelerating the switch to EV's and firing up a few more coal powerstations.
In terms of influencing the midterms - I suspect China isn't anywhere near the front of the queue in hoping Trump get's a beating given the chaos he is causing.
Complaining about foreign interference is ironically straight from the Hillary playbook.
How much of their strategy is to change elections vs other concerns I don't know.
On the other hand the world might be better off if he was more constrained post mid-terms.
Frankly, in terms of countries wanting Trump to take a beating in the mid-terms, I'd put countries like Canada and most of Europe way ahead of China there.
And in terms of China's energy strategy - China is the worlds biggest net importer of crude therefore China's strategy is going to be focussed on managing that first and foremost.
I think it's the US who hoped that the oil crisis would impact China much more - this is the US making, not China.
Donald Trump can end this at any time if he wants. It would have been better to not have started it, thou. Less killing of innocent people, less spending on weapons, better mental health for USA soldiers...
And why is China suddenly at fault for America's actions?
I'm not really sure that's true. The US is no longer a credible negotiator. I'm not sure negotiating a peace would necessarily end the situation immediately.
The US isn't even negotiating. Fairly sure they don't have a full negotiating team and they're doing it via 1-2 Trump flunkeys and Pakistan intermediating.
OTOH midterm generic ballots are much more stable than top line presidential horse race polling. So it might only matter at the margins.
I see this over and over again with the Canada stuff. Or Greenland stuff. Not taking it seriously because "oh that's just Trump deflecting cuz of [Epstein|Midterms|etc]." Meanwhile the actual blast radius here is far far far outside of the domestic arena.
When will people just take this guy at his word? He says he wants to conquer or do X Y and Z. That's it. He said those things. Believe him. Stop trying to make it about yourself. (And also he wants to make personal money off manipulating the stock market and oil prices.)
It's not a good look, esp to the victims of Trump outside the US who have no power to vote in American elections and yet are victims of American power.
He says a lot of things he doesn't do though. Beleiving him is a bad heuristic and so is disbeleiving him.
China is playing long, most of the ~unchanging things are in their favor and the US already proved that they're unreliable. People won't forget that soon even if Trump is gone.
My bet would be that China doesn't care much either way, they win regardless.
In my view the worst that can happen for China is that Trump gets limited by anything. He's hurting US relations more than he's hurting China short or long-term. Relations take longer to build than trade
"Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"
Yeah, that's the obvious answer, but I suspect there's a point where if the US fucks things up too quickly and too messily, there's fewer customers for China's crap and/or the random throws of monkey shit drag China into messes they don't feel like dealing with.
Slow erosion of the US's global power is likely better for them than an implosion that might cause collatoral damage.
The situation you're imagining is one of a global all encompassing depression caused by a single government.
Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
Doesn't even have to go that far (though it pretty easily can, the US is a big enough market). If the US causes a refugee crisis that affects one of China's allies, or fucks with the global oil supply enough or a thousand other things, that stuff is still annoying to China even if it's usually relatively better for them than it is for the US.
> Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
The people in the US choosing do not care if the rest of America feels it or not.
- NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,
- tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):
https://wjno.iheart.com/content/2025-03-17-qa-how-many-count...
The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
> - NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,
NATO consists of a lot of countries, why would they only work for USA shipping? And where do you think that shipping comes from?
> - tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):
Of course they do. But they're not usually idiots about it.
> The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
You advocate for tariffs but don't understand how tariffs work...
So your point is moot: tariffs are a tax on your own population, ostensibly to stimulate local manufacturing but in practice it is just another tax. Protectionists will immediately reach for this mechanism because they believe - in spite of all the evidence - that this time around it will work. It never does.
Manufacturing is so intertwined now that all tariffs do is to reduce the buying power for those at the bottom of the totempole, whereas those higher up hardly feel any concrete effect. Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come.
"Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come."
I said nothing of the kind. You are injecting that statement here yourself.
---------------------------------------------
Returning to the topic of interest:
Tariffs do work: they protect certain industries and keep them onshore.
For instance the manufacture of nuclear warheads by the USA is an onshore industry and will remain so. I am certain that Japan or North Korea could eventually make a cheaper and probably even a better nuke but b/c I don't want to be forced to do periodic quality control tests and checks. The USA chooses to keep the industry here.
But as far as I am concerned, I'd also like to keep hand tools as a protected onshore industry.
I was feeling miserable reading this thread until I saw this, thanks for cheering me up.
How is that going? Any progress there? Are US citizens richer than they were before?
Some of them certainly are richer, specifically people with the last name Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/trump-presid...
The End of Germany as a Modern Economy - Peter Zeihan
As usual, none of you spotted the error and, of course, several misinterpreted my scribbling to best suit their own malicious intents, much to my chagrin (though no surprise).
I offer this rather late correction and apology: I so rarely make a mistake that I do not usually revisit a post but, in this case the piling on was merely too much to ignore. I shall try again:
It is a good thing that the USA no longer intends to pay for:
- NATO - Leaving NATO (STILL not done) would save the USA money! The USA pays approximately 16% of NATO's total budget and the USA is the largest spender on defense within the alliance, accounting for about 60% of NATO's total defense spending.
- Security on the high seas was primarily the task of the US navy. That will no longer be so.
- tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades).
https://wjno.iheart.com/content/2025-03-17-qa-how-many-count...
The USA can use the money saved from the above for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!).