Headlines in the Western media suggest that the US is determined to impose harsh #economicsanctions on China for allegedly "planning to supply Russia with weapons."
This is actually great news. A 🧵 to explain why. (1/n)
China has denied the allegations, which only say that China is "planning to supply Russia with weapons," not that they have actually supplied weapons. But the US doesn't care about reality, only about its own decisions. Ask #Iraq . There were never any #WMD (2/n)
If China is not supplying weapons to Russia, why sanction China? Because China is an economic lifeline for Russia. China buying Russian energy and natural resources is what helps Russians get everything they need in return. As long as this goes on, sanctions will fail. (3/n)
Essentially, after one year of the war in Ukraine, the US had two choices. One, intensify US involvement in the war. Provide more tanks, fighters, and US servicemen to operate all this equipment, since the Ukrainians are unfamiliar with them. Get Europe to send land forces. (4/n)
But this would mean #WWIII If the West were to band together against Russia in Ukraine, China would join the war militarily on Russia's side, because it knows that if Russia is militarily defeated by the West, China will be next. There's the danger of a #NuclearWar (5/n)
There's the additional complication that support for Ukraine and for American military assistance to Ukraine in the US is waning. With Republican control of Congress, Biden would find it very hard to spend more on weapons to Ukraine. (6/n)
So the choice of increasing military involvement is fraught with political and existential peril for Biden.
That's why he has opted for the second choice: sanctions against China.
(7/n)
If the decision to impose economic sanctions on Russia and ban them from SWIFT in the belief that these sanctions would cripple Russia's economy was a huge miscalculation, sanctioning China would be the mother of all miscalculations. (8/n)
This is because Russia and China together control so much of the world's natural resources. Without them, most European and American industry would come to a grinding halt. Additionally, China is the world's largest market. (9/n)
China is also the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. Most products found in American and European shelves are Made in China. Without Chinese goods, the cost of living in the West will rise to unsustainable levels. (10/n)
China also manufactures components at world-class quality at a fraction of the cost of European and American manufacturers. Many products made in Europe and the US use cheap Chinese components to reduce cost. With sanctions, American goods will become too expensive. (11/n)
There's an important reason the world has come to China for manufacturing over the years, and it's not cost alone. It's cost plus quality. Chinese manufacturing is just a shade lower in quality than the best Swiss manufacturing, but at a third to the fourth of the price. (12/n)
Biden is leaning towards sanctions on China because, unlike more war assistance to Ukraine, it will not cost HIM anything. He will not have to beg Congress for a spending bill and won't have to increase the debt ceiling. (13/n)
But while sanctions will not cost Biden anything, it will COST AMERICAN TAXPAYERS A LOT. Their cost of living will skyrocket, unemployment will rise because the Chinese market will be off limits to US products, and the Chinese will stop buying US agricultural products. (14/n)
Sanctioning China will also push the global South together and accelerate the development of a Multipolar World.
Most likely, the first step in the implementation of us sanctions will be the theft of the $870 billion in #USTreasury Bonds that China currently holds. (15/n)
If the US does this incredibly stupid move, the rest of the World will rapidly dump the dollar as the reserve currency because it knows that the US is a capricious power that cannot be trusted to behave responsibly. After Russia and China, they could be next. (16/n)
If the world stops buying US treasuries, this makes the $31.4 trillion that the US currently holds a huge millstone around its neck, a giant albatross that the US cannot cast off, because it cannot print more dollars to service this debt. (17/n)
What will follow is a wave of bankruptcies and defaults, at the personal, individual business, city, state, and national levels in the US. The US economy will implode under the weight of its debt. (18/n)
The rest of the world will stop accepting the dollar and move to a world where there is no dominant currency. The Bretton Woods agreement and the petrodollar will finally be buried for good. The Saudis are already accepting Yuan payments for oil. (19/n)
As with Russia, only the "West," that is, the US, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea - will sign on to the sanctions. The rest of the world will continue to do business with both China and Russia. (20/n)
China bracketed with Russia means that the rest of the world need not worry about doing business with Russia any longer. If the West blocks them, they can always get what they need from China. The US will lose Africa and Asia for good. (21/n)
So the West will be economically destroyed, and with it, the power of the West to do more evil, without a single shot being fired and without a World War III. (22/n)
If #Biden goes through with this, I think we should nominate him for the #NobelPeacePrize (23/n)
Apparently, according to this protocol, there will be a "border at sea." Goods coming from England to Northern Ireland will be marked as those terminating in Northern Ireland or those going on to Ireland (EU checks.)
I don't understand how this will solve the problem. (2/8)
The whole point of the UK coming out of the EU was the implication that the UK will not benefit from the European market rules. That means, for example that French cheese is cheaper for European countries than it is for England.
Countries in the Global South are sensible and pragmatic, and act in the best interests of their people, unlike Western nations which, today, are acting on ideological impulses and often against the best interests of their people. A 🧵. (1/16)
That's why #China will support #Russia economically but not provide it with weapons. They know Russia can win this war on their own, so long as they are supported economically. China will continue to provide technological assistance/dual use items, such as semiconductors. (2/16)
They will buy huge quantities of pipeline gas, #LNG, and oil, because that is a win-win strategy. China needs to develop #Tibet and #Xinjiang and needs cheap energy; Russia needs money and goods that China can produce cheaply. This partnership has defeated US sanctions. (3/16)
Germany's de-industrialization (as of all of Europe) is now irreversible. The fact that spot gas prices are now at 50 Eur/MWh does not matter, because that price is still three times what companies were paying for Russian gas.
As part of a restructuring announced Friday, BASF will close one of its two ammonia plants and
corresponding fertilizer facilities at the company’s massive manufacturing complex in Ludwigshafen,
in southwestern Germany.
But he also stressed that high energy prices, which the company does not expect to return to the levels
seen before the invasion, were a driving factor. Although natural gas prices have eased considerably
since last summer’s peaks, they remain above long-term averages.
The US had probably its worst chemical disaster in decades on February 3rd, when a train carrying about a million pounds of vinyl chloride (the monomer, not the polymer, PVC) derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.
Vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) is an extremely toxic chemical. (1/n)
So the Hazmat teams decided to burn all that VCM. But burning VCM doesn't solve the problem. It releases hydrochloric acid (HCl), chlorine gas, and phosgene gas. Chlorine and phosgene are poisons which have been used in war. HCl is corrosive, damages eyes, skin, and lungs. (2/n)
HCl also destroys crops, makes soil infertile, kills fish in rivers, and when it pours down as acid rain, ruins homes. VCM is a carcinogen. Dead fish have been seen in a radius of 100 km from the area. Probably several hundred square km are too dangerous to live in. (3/n)
Those of you still laboring under the illusion that Western democracies and their media are "free" need to wake up. Western states decide what can and cannot be talked about - not through forced censorship, but through ownership. (1/n) #ohiotrainderailment#OhioChernobyl A 🧵
The way it works is that politicians are elected via expensive election campaigns requiring huge corporate sponsorship. So they are beholden to big corporates for their survival. The same big corporates own the press. (2/n)
So the big corporates tell politicians (whom they own) what to do and they then tell the press (which they own) to run stories that support the things that the politicians do at their bidding. The system works smoothly and nobody is the wiser. (3/n)
These are the only guys profiting from this war. That's exactly why Biden is giving more weapons to Ukraine and telling Europe to stop buying Russian oil and gas.
But you guys can keep supporting sanctions and chopping away at the branch you are sitting on. Have fun paying more for oil, gas, wheat, minerals, cars, food, ... everything.