This was a big theme of the first Trump term and why it was so infuriating the support Trump got from farmers this go around.
The Chinese soybean market is so big that a significant portion of American farming redirected efforts to meet that demand. Trump’s first attempt at a trade war then resulted in China putting big tariffs on US soybeans and moving most of their purchasing to Brazil. As part of the negotiations for how to get out of the tradewar Xi promised if some of Trump’s tariffs came off he would remove the soybean tariff and commit to an unprecedented increase in soybean purchases. They reached a deal, but Xi lied. He understood Trump cares about the headline not the outcome and so got the relief he wanted and continued to strengthen ties with Brazil. The result was US farmers having crops rotting that they were unable to sell and Trump having to compensate them with subsidies, wiping out whatever increase in revenue they claimed to get from the tariffs. When all was said and done we had a US farming sector still geared towards supplying a market that had already pivoted away from them, and then still giving support to the political actor who had stupidly destroyed that balance.
That said, Chinese soybean purchases did rise significantly, 2022 was an all-time peak. That entire market is going to collapse again, worse than 2018.
Why does this woman have such a profile? She is one of the premier “I used to be a Democrat but they forced me into MAGA by forgetting the working class” talking heads, but why does anyone give a shit what she has to say? Her credentials are as an academic in literature yet we are repeatedly presented her views as if she is an expert on the economy/politics/foreign policy/whatever issue is being discussed. And she is all over the place in terms of appearances.
This budget has been projected to produce a near 6T increase in the debt over the 10 years of the budget, with a large portion of that going to tax cuts for the extremely wealthy. RW concerns about the debt and populism is a grift. If you voted for a Republican and did so because of the economy and you’re not already a multi millionaire you are a total fucking sucker
Chinese representatives have claimed they have been trying to for weeks to engage US trade representative and cannot get anyone to take their calls. It seems no one in the government wants to speak for Trump and so they are trying to short cut the process to a 1-1 between Trump and Xi, which no one connected to China thinks has any chance of happening without all the leg work being worked out between the respective teams first.
Having seen what they did to Zelensky, there is no way in hell there is going to be anything but the most formal and structured contact between Trump and Xi. There are consequences for demonstrating that you are willing to humiliate even a friendly head-of-state, the Chinese were appalled at that incident notwithstanding they are de facto on the other side of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Everything will need to be decided before they speak - which is exactly the opposite of what the White House wants, because they cannot actually operate that way.
Nah, he would be careful, diciplined, distanced and haughty.
He is a dictator, but he is also from a diciplined Asian tradition and would not have risen to the top of the party if he was a babbler.
