,
9 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
There are many many things I do not think most people understand about the US China trade war. Most people currently following it place the dividing line as Trump winning and changing everything giving it what everyone assumes is poor foundation for the fight. This is wrong 1/n
I have bumped into enough diplomats from many different countries at conferences (and let me emphasize I speak for no one and none of this official in anyway) and I never met one that had any illusions about the enormous threat China poses. Even the ones who take official 2/n
money, their diplomats and desk officers know damn well they are signing their soul over to the devil. I would say that this really took off in about 2012 (guess who took office that year) but I've heard people even place it as early as about 2009-2010. There are a couple 3/n
of important implications from these two observations. First, the idea that this is just a Trump thing is flat out wrong. As I say over and over, we can criticize him for his methods, we can even argue over what the objective should be, it is flat out wrong to say this is 4/n
just Trump tilting at windmills. Second, there is vastly more internal evidence and information about the problems China is posing than make it into the press. Hell the best China stories never even come close to the press. Certain agencies like the @USCC_GOV have turned out 5/n
enormous amount of reports on the topic as has the @CECCgov and Congressional Research Service. Additionally, many executives agencies under Trump and well before Trump have written and testified about the litany of threats and strategies to address them. You don't need 6/n
to believe anything in a Trump Tweet, just go search all the reports the Obama and Trump administration did detailing these threats. Third, one thing you heard so commonly was almost shrugging of the shoulders about why politicians in home countries were not taking these 7/n
threats from China seriously. I have multiple theories but there is a clear and large gulf between the depth, breadth, and length of concern and the political behavior on the ground in China by diplomats and what the politicians do back home. Feel free to criticize Trump but 8/n
Be completely aware many of the criticisms about the threat be not there, no information or intellectual framework, or just a Trump fantasy are factually wrong. Done.
