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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 20 Feb \ parent \ on: Milei's promotion of shitcoins is turning into a real scandal Politics_And_Law
I agree governments are almost always messy but where would you be without them?
Governments can only be as good as the citizens they govern and are more often than not more serving the wealthy elites who gain access to them above all else.
But US democracy has become a joke- ironically the Chinese de facto Mandate of Heaven system while giving the CCP huge power also gives them huge incentives to serve the people with an improving economy or risk very brutal removal- because western 'liberal' democratic governments do not face such harsh consequences they are ironically much more prone to corruption and corporate sponsorship.
The USA used to limit and control monopolists and cartels- now it is owned by them.
Chinas productive economy (trade exports) is now double that of the US...and it has enjoyed large and growing trade surpluses since the 1980s- in contrast the USA has not had a trade surplus since the 1960s.
Can you name a single nation that can now afford not to trade with China?
The west seems blind and in denial about the scale with which China has beaten it at its own game - now the battle is for the tertiary layers of global control- institutions and protocols and the US led by Trump is busy trashing the legacy of rules based international order (aka western imperialism) it once established upon succeeding the British empire.
Oh I will be the last to challenge you on the US part. When Trump talked about Ukraine the past 24h it was kinda ... unique and it made the US look unreliable af. But this is a mere reflection of the national identity crisis in large part due to the polarization going on. And it's not just in the US, it's all over the EU, Canada, the UK, Australia and NZ too... The arguments you hear politicians post on the daily in all these countries are very weak: party lines or preprogrammed narratives. High "told you so" factor because everything gets narrated back to divide further. Nothing actually intelligent enough to be worth mentioning has been detected by yours truly in at least a decade.
you're saying that this statistic is now 2x, from 1.15x a year ago? (source)
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No I said manufactured GOODS.
The US services exports are mostly financialised products like the trillions of USDs finance and debt (and insurance) that the US is now reliant upon and that is based upon its USD Reserve currency status.
For example where I live- here in New Zealand- 80% of the banks are majorityowned by US shareholders- they extract massive profits from NZ every year and route them via tax havens to their US bankers owners.
They sponsored 2 of our last three Prime Ministers. One came directly from BoA/Merril Lynch.
After the large amnd devastating Christchurch earthqauke of 2010-2011 that PM arbitrarily ordered the demolition of repairable civic structures before they had been assessed for insurance- the insurer was AIG.
He did a similar trick on residential homeowners arbitrarily ordering over 10000 homes 'redzoned' which meant they got an offer from the government which bypassed reinsurers and short changed homeowners and saved US reinsurers billions.
The fiat debt slavery bankers cartel now owns and controls most governments.
Not only do the US owned banks extract huge profits they also fund these NZ banks capital requirements- these USD capital funding supplies are booked in NZ as taxable expenses reducing the tax liability of the banks while these payments are again routed via tax havens to their US bank funders. How are these USD capital funings created- out of thin fucking air.
This is how the US economy is now hugely reliant upon the fiat debt slavery bankers cartel.
China exports manufactured goods double the value that USA does. And that was what I said in the first place.
Agree most politicians speak from a script -they are puppets to the corporate banker sponsors who own them- Biden was a classic and sad example of this. It is right across the so called liberal western democracies with very few exceptions. Trump does not speak like that and I can see the appeal- he talks like a gangster and comes across perversely more genuine than the other sponsored puppets...but that's only because Trump is a genuine sociopathic shyster and never had any morals to begin with.
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The statistic I posted above excludes factor services (i.e. capital flows including dividends like you describe above) and things like salary remission. See the metadata definition (this took me forever to navigate because it kept crashing my browsers - worst performing site ever, sorry)
I think that we cannot just measure goods anymore like in the 60s. In 2023, digital service exports alone netted over 600bn for the US - a significant portion of US exports. Those are not shady investments but actually deliver great value. We cannot ignore that. Most organizations I've worked with outside of the US use AWS, Azure and/or Oracle Cloud. Also if they have otherwise fully domestic supply chains, simply because there aren't real contenders. I've directly seen this evolve starting around 2014 in EMEA, LatAm and even APAC - despite Alibaba competition - first hand. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in these businesses, and they're extremely profitable.
If you want to compare nation states, the apples-to-apples comparison is to exclude as little as possible.
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Countries that do not need China include:
- Taiwan
- Norway
- Finland
- Switzerland
- Irelands Chinese imports fell a whoops 24% in FY 23 the most recent year available
It can be done. It’s stupid to think it’s impossible. Btw this list hits not only an Eastern Nation but several Western Nations
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Good answer and I cannot easily or readily refute any of the nations you point to.
All of them however with perhaps the exception of Switzerland are subservient tribute states to the USA both monetarily and militarily.
Switzerland with its famous role as the neutral state where Europes warring nations could safely stash their gold and treasure probably is the most independent of the list but even Switzerland is dependent upon the nod and wink acceptance of its neutrality.
The Chinese might take another view to that Europe did.
How much of global GDP do Norway and Finland account for? 1%?
Otherwise they are dependent upon NATO US military protection from the rising Chinese alliance fronted by its proxies N.Korea, Iran and Russia.
Taiwan is increasingly and inevitably integrated with China simply as a result of Chinas huge economic growth- the chips Taiwan makes mostly go to China for use in the manufacturing giant that China is.
Some of that Chinese manufacturing (mostly lower grade electronics) is now migrating to S.E.Asia which in turn is increasingly subject to Chinese influence...and may avoid US sanctions.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are now very firmly held extensions of Chinese influence.
Thailand and Vietnam may resist Chinese influence but they cannot deny or avoid the economic advantage and centre of gravity that is China.
China is building its bullet train network via Laos into Thailand eventually to penetrate all the way down to Singapore. Reverse engineering the rail seized and built with slave labour by the Japanese in WW2 which sought to cut off British supplies to the then Chinese Kuomintang government which eventually fled with the gold to Taiwan...
China is also building a canal from Cambodia out to sea to provide it and Cambodia with a direct shipping access and to avoid Vietnams control of the Mekong delta.
You do not put Japan on your list because Japan is increasingly dependent upon Chinese supply chains as is every industrial economy in the world.
China has won the trade war and he who dominates trade inevitably must dominate in other ways as well, or fail.
Both the USA and China know this...even if many western citizens don't seem to understand it, yet....and the fact is that USA no longer dominates global trade even though it still clings to dominating global trade payments...
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