A scuttled destiny without China

Just one of countless things the Biden Administration did away with that will haunt us for the rest of our lives

It's 1946. Europe is ruined, China is still a backwater communist shithole. The US via the Marshal Plan has a market where everyone within it can trade goods into our markets without significant trade barriers. Europe can export their way back to prosperity after WW II. It facilitates room to grow their economies beyond what their kinda damaged and burnt out cities with and sorta depleted population will allow. In addition to allowing the free flow of goods, The US becomes the security guarantor of the free world by using our navy to police the world's ocean and enable low risk (and hence low cost) global trade.

But there was a catch - for American dollars, you had to be on our side in helping to combat and contain the Soviet Union. Essentially the US traded some of its economic/manufacturing capacity for increased security and strategic assets to assist in the Cold War. The Soviet flag went down in 1991, and the US didn't make any changes to how it ran their show.

George H.W. Bush tried to set up a new show, and was finally put to rest with "No new taxes" despite everything else he got away with, coffin shenanigans and Geronimo's skull not withstanding. Since then, American voters side overwhelmingly for candidates who focus on domestic rather than foreign issues. This system limped along for another few decades, mostly because of our demand for oil and energy sources.

Enter shale. Around 2007 net US energy imports have been in sharp decline cause someone somewhere figured out how to process shale into oil and natural gas. The US has a lot of shale. In two years we became a net energy exporter. That means the US can afford to no longer gives a fuck what's going on oil-wise in the Middle East but everything else is fair game. ISIS has autoglocks, but we don't. THANKS OBAMA.

In theory, the US can bring their troops back. Now I'm not here to discus the legacy media and the top-down thing it keeps alive and their outrage over President Donald Trump saying he wants to pull troops out of Syria. Its not just a case of 'orange man bad'. For 50 years or so, the US kept a naval carrier group in the gulf sea at all times to protect Saudi Arabia. But in the past few years, it's been there 6 months out of the year.

For better, worse, and whether you like it or not - the United States of America is done protecting the world and getting nothing in return, as you can see by the foreign heads of states visiting Trump. Shinzo Abe knew he needs America's help, so he brings a five hundred billion dollar investment for US infrastructure and manufacturing with him. Good lateral move. Theresa may knew she needed America's help, so she offers to sail the Royal Navy's to shiny brand new supercarriers with US fleets, and offers to share intel from Britain's Intelligence services, who recently had their budgets doubled. Excellent lateral move.

Xi Jinpeng knows America regrets calling off Soviet Union nuking them in 1969. So he puts everything on the table - From Intellectual Property law to helping them stall their budget deficit by flooding our markets even more to helping facilitate North Korean denuclearization - all so we can keep making nice with China despite in spite of its influence and meddling our affairs. Best play he had.

Angela Merkel didn't know or didn't think she needed America's help, so she came through telling Trump "If you do this, it will be the end of Europe". He hands her a three hundred billion dollar bill for services rendered. She didn't bring anything to the table. Bad play.

The US is the least globally integrated economy by percentage of GDP. We're evolving into a global superpower with no global interest beyond the Military Industrial Complex, which also includes Google and Amazon. It's not a Trump thing, this would've happened with anyone in office but this is happening faster with him around. Its logistics and geography. When the US leaves the world stage, the world will resume fighting over breadcrumbs.

No other navy on the planet has the ability to protect the world's shipping lanes, much less the motivation to do so. All things equal as of posting this - the rest of the world's naval forces combined won't catch up with the US until the late 22nd century. China's navy can't operate outside its sphere of political, not economic, influence. If the US stops protecting the ships that China relies on for food and oil, and for sending us trillions of dollars worth of carcinogen dildos and $30 microwaves that break after two months of use - their economy, government and nation collapses.

Outside this entire shitshow, Iran is in a great position to initiate a war with the Saudis over control of the oil production infrastructure. That leaves Russia and Israel being the only two countries who really need to give a shit and act on it, how delightful.

We're still the largest and wealthiest consumer import market on Earth, and since Europeans forgot to have babies since the 1970s, they'll remain so for decades to some. China NEEDS the US to buy whatever they can sell. They don't have any other customer who can buy as much as they do. China needs this for maintaining employment rates. Not profit, and not a working product. Employment. Because if people have jobs, they're less likely to march into the capital and hang their politicians.

Remember the Obama stimulus package? Eight hundred billion dollars, and all the corruption and wasteful spending that goes along with that kind of top down spending? The Chinese government loans out that much, on average, around two times every three months. And even that doesn't work anymore. The average hourly wage in China has octupled in the last decade. They're twice as expensive as Mexico now, which is why factories are reshoring to the US and Mexico. They know its gonna be over in their lifetime. The smart money is already out. China's just trying to make it end in a way that their country doesn't implode.

Globalization is over. Free trade is over. The rest of the world riding on America's back is over. Atlas is shrugging. To any Europeans out there, I'm not trying to be mean and I don't have anything against you. But you can't expect a free ride to last forever. You ladies and jerks really, really shouldn't have stopped having kids.

Once your boomer equivalents retire and you don't have the tax base to pay for their benefits or the young consumers to drive the economy - you're looking at decades of stagnation, spending cuts, and tax increases. Incidentally, this is why the EU is importing migrants as fast as they possibly can. Gotta have someone to put on the bottom to keep the pyramid scheme going just a little while longer

Take a look at what’s been happening in Greece for years, then consider how much worse it is everwhere else in Europe, Scandinavia, and the UK