Comment by seanmcdirmid

Foreign debt is held in US treasuries, surely they know that? Trump can decide that treasuries can no longer be redeemed, but foreigners only hold 20% of them, so…he would have to somehow make them selectively redeemable, and anyways, there would go the USA’s credit, unless you mean other countries can bribe Trump with treasuries to bring down their tariff? They could also depreciate the USD reducing its debt in real terms but that will most definitely cause hyper inflation along with tariffs.

They have no plan, not even a concept of a plan. Trump is just hoping that he can get lucky with a good outcome, but that is really improbable. This is a huge opportunity for China though if they make deals with everyone else to the exclusion of the USA.

Even the idea of moving production back the USA is misguided, we are already at low unemployment, and haven’t made enough investments in automation like the Chinese are doing ATM. I doubt China will let us import that tech to setup our own factories quickly without worrying about who will work them.