Posted by seumasach on March 7, 2018
“The idea is not to keep foreign goods out, but to induce foreign companies to move production here.”,
I also assume that is the idea: otherwise it can only be pure madness. America’s rapid growth towards the end of the 19th century was also the result, not just of tariffs but of inward investment- in that case, from Britain who had decided to outsource the empire after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Today, foreign investment provides the key to the reindustrialization of the USA and it is China in particular who can play that role. Prepare to hear Trump ringing out the slogan”The jobs are coming home!”
Patrick J.Buchanan
Buchanan.org
5th March, 2018
From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Chinese soft power, deindustrialization of USA, strategic partnership between US and China, tariffs and inward investment, trump agenda, Trump's pivot to Asia, US-China: clash of world systems | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 28, 2018
Whereas the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) aims to counter Chinese influence under the auspices of the USA, the result may not be all that Washington hopes. Note that Japan in mimicking China’s global infrastructure projects by investing in, amongst other places , Russia. The Quad may turn out to be a vehicle for Japanese strategic autonomy in a world where an economically and politically the USA is no longer capable of leadership.
Asian Review
9th June, 2016
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to invest $200 billion in the coming five years to build roads, power plants and ports around the world.
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Posted in Containing China | Tagged: Japan-US relations, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 28, 2018
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
24th February, 2018
The Quad – comprising the United States, Japan, India and Australia – was set up a decade ago, ostensibly as an Asia-centered security cooperation mechanism. Funnily enough, Beijing always suspected it actually represented a containment strategy.
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Posted in Containing China, Multipolar world | Tagged: Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), China Australian cooperation, Chinese soft power, End of empire, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 28, 2018
The Belt and Road Initiative now appears as an unstoppable reality shaping 21st Century politics. The Anglosphere may try to isolate itself from it at great cost to itself but with the failure of Western intervention in the Middle East it cannot stop it. The resurrection of the , allying Australia, Japan, India and the USA, as a counterweight to the BRI looks unconvincing. As US hegemonic aspirations fade the dream lives on in the vacuous rhetoric of a New Cold War and a union of democracies none of which relate to the reality of economic sclerosis, unplayable debt and political division.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
27th February, 2018
From an Indian perspective, the visit to the United States by the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his meeting with President Donald Trump on February 23 turns out to be a reality check on the power dynamic in the Asia-Pacific. Australia is torn between two vital partners – the US in the security sphere and China in the economic sphere. The dilemma is acute insofar as Turnbull has voiced opinions on threat perceptions regarding China, which are contrary to the Trump administration’s assessment and, yet, the US and Australia are key allies.
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Posted in Multipolar world, New Cold War | Tagged: Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), China Australian cooperation, Chinese soft power, End of empire, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue(QUAD) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 25, 2018
The prospects of Quads, an Asian NATO aimed at countering Chinese influence, may simply dissolve under the sway of Chinese sort power. After all, the BRI actually offers real benefits in terms of India’s development in contrast to the meagre offerings of the fading Hegemony. Furthermore, India has already joined the SCO, a sort of Asian NATO aimed at countering US influence, and cannot for long attempt to ride both horses.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
25th February, 2018
Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale has hit the road running, as it were. There isn’t going to be a time lag following his predecessor’s permanent retirement from the South Block before the much-needed abandonment of the China policies over the past three years got under way. Those policies were characterized by a muscularity without precedents or a sense of ground realities that brought the two countries almost to the brink of war. In retrospect, they proved fanciful, sterile and even counter-productive –except, perhaps, to create a raison d’etre for the India-US defining partnership in the era of “America First”.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank(AIIB), Belt and Road Initiative(BRI), Chinese soft power | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 30, 2018
GEAB
September, 2017
Qatar, North Korea, the Baltic Sea, risk of a World War III… and all the military ranting mentioned in the media lately, are issues going hand in hand with the programmed and imminent advent of the catastrophic scenario for the dollar as a unique world reference currency: the Petro-Yuan will be in place at the end of the year. More than a petro-currency, it will be a petro-gas-gold-currency! The West is thus preparing to switch to total anachronism with this founding act of the 21st century multipolar world.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: BRICS cryptocurrency, demise of dollar, dollar collapse, petro-yuan | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 30, 2018
Both Japan and Australia are breaking from the US sphere of influence. As Trump says, the US will follow it’s national interests just as other countries will follow theirs: that is exactly what is happening. But of course, following your national interest is by no means the same thing as following an isolationist policy: that is impossible in our globalized world where success is based on exercising strategic autonomy to maximize geo-strategic advantage. Trump seems to be enabling this for other countries but it remains to be seen whether he can do it for the USA itself, incorporating the USA itself into the multipolar order by way of a comprehensive trade and investment partnership with China. So far it appears not.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
29th January, 2018
The meeting between the foreign ministers of China and Japan – Wang Yi and Taro Kono – on Sunday in Beijing signifies the resumption of high-level exchanges after an interlude of two years. A series of goodwill gestures by the two sides in recent months preceded it. Sunday’s talks resulted in an agreement to hold the Japan-China-South Korea summit meeting “as soon as possible”.
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Posted by seumasach on January 30, 2018
“We have a different perspective on Russia and China, clearly. We do not see Russia or China as posing a military threat to Australia,” Bishop told Sky News.
We continue to see the fruits of Trump’s neo-isolationist policy. Australia openly contradicting the basic premise of the US national security strategy is the latest, dramatic reaction. We also have the re-engagement of the UK with Europe, the discord between the EU and the USA over Iran and over trade, the further shift of Turkey towards the SCO and Japan’s convergence with China and Russia.
Stuff
29th January, 2018
Australia’s Turnbull government has distanced itself from a central theme of the Donald Trump administration’s new national defence strategy, which defines growing Russian and Chinese military might as greater threats than terrorism.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: China Australian cooperation, trump agenda | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on December 20, 2017
“Per the first pair, any diminishment of China’s powerful economic influence in Australia – particularly in terms of commodity purchases, investments, real estate deals, and wealthy foreign students – could theoretically be replaced by the US or its allies, though not on the same qualitative level and not without self-inflicted damage to the island nation.”
This is an understatement: Australia is geared to exporting raw materials to the world’s foremost productive economy. The USA cannot replicate China’s role in this respect and, as for US allies, well, who are they? Merely assuming, as the latest national security doctrine does that India and Japan are US allies doesn’t mean that they are US allies. After all, is the UK, the country Trump refuses to visit, a US ally? Clearly, the Australian “security state” is biting back but can it trump Australia’s fundamental interests? Australia’s own little Brexit will likely be as ephemeral as Brexit itself.
Andrew Korybko
Oriental Review
Australia is implementing its own “foreign agents” legislation modelled off of the US’.
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Posted in Containing China, Multipolar world | Tagged: Australia-China relations, China-led globalization, Chinese soft power | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on December 20, 2017
Since any attempt by Washington to normalize relations with Russia will inevitably, anyway, have a markedly schizophrenic character, it is important not to jump to conclusions as certain commentators have regarding Trump’s supposed capitulation to the neocons. The president must address different lobbies, his base of support and the Russians with different voices. Having done so much to undermine the post-war US led order it over the last year it defies credibility that Trump does not plan to edge towards the new- multipolar order: the worldview outlined in the latest National Security Strategy offers no such perspectives for the US and , indeed, no useful perspectives whatsoever. There simply has to be something else unless we are to believe the US elite has completely lost its bearings. These astonishing CIA moves are likely the tip of the iceberg of that “something else”.
M.K.Bhadrakumar
Asia Times
In the annals of Russian-American relations, it is difficult to recall a precedent for the Kremlin leader calling his White House counterpart to convey his personal gratitude and appreciation for the profound contribution made by the US’ Central Intelligence Agency and its director to Russian national security.
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Posted in Global peace process, Multipolar world | Tagged: detente with Russia, trump agenda, Us-Russian convergence | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on December 17, 2017
The British government has wasted no time in informing China of its new relationship with the EU which will“replicate the status quo”. The stage is thus set for UK-China relations to take up where they left off in 2015 before the Brexit vote. The promised 750 million investment by the UK in Asia infrastructure may seem insignificant but it is the thought that counts. China holds hundreds of billions of pounds in UK guilts and can reinvest them in the UK to great mutual advantage: a classic win/win deal.
Kiro7
16th December, 2017
BEIJING (AP) – Britain and China pledged Saturday to promote London as a center for offshore use of Beijing’s currency and cooperate in clean energy research and promoting trade as the United Kingdom prepares to leave the European Union.
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Posted in brexit crisis, Multipolar world | Tagged: China-led globalization, China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 