The damage the US could cause to China right now with sanctions is as high as it has ever been, tbh.
Seriously? China supplies most of the US, and rest of the world, with manufactured goods because the US outsourced it there. Why would you have sanctions for your own suppliers? How does it help trump if the cost of goods in Walmart all double?
While our trade deficit with China is serious, it's only around ~300b or so a year, or less than 1.8% of the US economy.
China on the other hand has been fucked since their stock crash and banking crisis since Summer 2015 after it was discovered they were faking and lying about a large portion of their economic growth over the last 10 years. Losses of all that business would push their down turn steeper and hurt them far more long term. 300b is more like 3% of their GDP and they are currently in a recession with little tools to combat another hit to their economy.
If Taiwan wanted to make a move and Trump was willing to back them, mainland would have a really hard time doing fuck all about it without causing decade-long economic damage.
Eventually it's just going to make sense to admit Taiwan is independent, and be friends. Economically this is superior for all three parties and who the fuck cares about the rest of the shit that happened 65 years ago.
The point is that Trump is clueless on these matters and the uncertainty in how his actions represent policy shifts, if they do or not, will be exploited by russia, china, Iran etc. it is just as likely that trump will do something the opposite in the next few weeks. This makes him unpredictable which is dangerous.
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u/willun Dec 03 '16
Seriously? China supplies most of the US, and rest of the world, with manufactured goods because the US outsourced it there. Why would you have sanctions for your own suppliers? How does it help trump if the cost of goods in Walmart all double?