Summary
China condemned JD Vance on Tuesday for calling Chinese people “peasants” in a Fox News interview, where he said, “To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry labeled the remarks “ignorant and disrespectful.”
The backlash exploded on Chinese social media, garnering 140 million Weibo views.
Critics mocked Vance’s own “hillbilly” background and pointed to China’s advanced tech and infrastructure, highlighting rising tensions amid Trump’s trade war.
You know that isn’t good for China either, right? It’s the same twisted trade deficit logic that Trump is using. China’s economy depends on selling those goods.
While trade war isn’t good for anyone US is clear looser here since China’s export to US (as of 2023 stats) is only 15% from its overall export. They can sell more other countries to smoothen impact. Meanwhile who gonna buy US stuff? “Best friend“ Russia with total GPD of less than California?
“only 15%”? That’s a huge percentage when you look at global trade. In 2023, their next biggest export partner is Hong Kong at 8%, which is now part of China. After that it’s Japan at 5%, followed by South Korea at 4.5%.
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports-by-country
The point is, China doesn’t want this trade war at all, and neither do we. Trump and Co. are complete morons that are fucking up the global economy for nonsensical reasons. Yes, other countries can eventually establish new trade deals without the US, and they likely will, but let’s not pretend they all can just bounce back within a few months if these idiotic shenanigans continue.
That use of “only” before “15%” is a serious underestimation in absolute terms, but wholly appropriate when those 15% are relative to the US’s self-inflicted trade damage: it’s still immensely better when 15% of your trade goes to a trading partner which has picked a fight with you than when 100% of your trade goes to trade partners you have picked fights with.
Further, in the last 2 decades or so China has both been growing its internal market (so that its Economy is less dependent on exports) and diversifying the countries they export to, likely in preparation for the death throes of empire as the US falls from its top position, which were entirely expected for decades, as was that they would include some form of trade pressure on its closest adversary.
Absolutely, this is going to hurt China in the short-term (and possibly mid-term, depending on how easy or not is to redirect those exports to other destinations), but the Trump trade war with the World is going to totally fuck up the US and it’s the kind of harm that gets worse the longer these measures remain in place because it will be further eating away at the US brand (so even after the tariffs are removed many customers won’t be coming back) and accelerate the demise of the Reserve Currency status of the USD (which will in turn be reflected in massive inflation as those dollars flood back in and way bigger deficit related problems because the costs of debt servicing will go up when there is little demand for US Dollars abroad).
I wanted EU but the closest breakdown was Europe at 22%. Russia is 3.4% and assuming that’s included in Europe puts it closer to 18.6%.
The US is just one country out of ~190 with a population of 300m out of 7b. Losing some exports to the US will sting a bit, but in the grand scheme it’s nothing.
The US needs to get its head out of its ass and realize its not as important as it thinks.
300m not 300k
Corrected, that’s what I meant
Yeah, except America isn’t the only country in the world
Certainly, but we’re the biggest consumer economy by a long shot. Trying to replace roughly $600 billion in exports isn’t an easy ask, especially since the next biggest economic bloc after the US and China, the EU, has been trying to move away from over reliance on China for years.
They may be trying to move away from China, but they’re going to be moving back fast with these tariffs in place. Everyone loses in a trade war, but China is very much going to be the winner. No matter what happens after today, the US has lost it’s bargaining position and value as a trading partner and ally.
Putin has won his war against the US, it’s just a matter of how we fall at this point.
I don’t disagree, I’m just pointing out that no one wants this and China isn’t going to just magically replace their biggest trading partner overnight, which is why they were legitimately trying to work out a new deal originally.
Trust me, I fully agree the US will be the biggest loser from all of this.
Not to mention many of those Chinese products are designed by and built for American companies or nonamerican companies that sell in the US, which complicates things even further. This is much more complicated and much messier than simply looking at how many US goods there are in a typical Chinese household. Everybody loses thanks to Trump’s idiocy.
China has the entire rest of the world to sell to.