A quick wallow in the swamp
I apologize about this, first and foremost to myself. I try very hard not to comment on the politics that be. I’m not getting anywhere near enough money to express any opinion on such matters. But sometimes I can’t help myself, especially in regards to truly incredible things such as the attempt to change 50 years of American China policy, dating back to when David Rockefeller announced, on July 4th no less, Chase Manhattan would be the official representative of the Bank of China in the United States. The rest as they say is history.
Wind forward forty-three years, Donald Trump is elected president, greatly assisted by the economic decline visited upon vast swathes of the US landscape as American corporations moved manufacturing facilities to China, bipartisanly supported by the majority of the American political class. Trump, always of the most dubious taste, repugnantly brought the issue up, and to the immense surprise of America’s political class, and really what reality doesn’t surprise them at this point, provided a strong enough issue to help land him in the White House.
Trump’s China bashing was always unfair, after all, the US’ deindustrialization was exclusively made in America. Trump’s policies set in motion a split between the American National Security State, never big proponents of China’s industrialization, and America’s biggest corporations who couldn’t open a factory in the Middle Kingdom fast enough. A few months back I wrote an extended piece on this growing political power split, Politics of Technology: Chip War.
The most volatile politics can be found in the greatest contradictions. There’s no greater contradiction in DC at this point than the National Security State’s and America’s biggest corporations disparate views on China. So when Janet Yellen comes out with a speech, “Yellen warns US decoupling from China would be ‘disastrous’,” it’s worth a note. It reveals foremost what must be the massive resistance the Biden administration is hearing about their China bashing from corporate America. This is realpoltik in DC, not the usual shitshow offered say like the debt debate.
The speech was foreshadowed by the FT with “The new Washington consensus: Yesterday’s US economic orthodoxy is today’s heresy,” written by Edward Luce. Back in the dismantling US industry heydays, Luce was a speech writer for none other than the great China industrializer Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who worked for Mr. Bill and his former Walmart Board wife. Walmart’s business model was Chinese industrialization.
In her speech, Treasury Secretary Yellen states, “Pronouncements of US decline have been around for decades. But they have always proved wrong.” Yet, in China policy and more than a few others, the Biden administration is very much the second Trump administration, and as any good Democrat would agree, that’s all about decline.
Subscribe to Life in the 21st Century
History, Science, Energy, Technology, Environment, and Civilization