Comment by ericmay

> It is the definitive end to it, and the birth of Chinese hegemony.

I think you’re spot on about the risks of the tariffs (I’m not really sure where I stand on them today), but your arguments don’t produce this conclusion. China is far more protective of its markets, nobody has or will have any interest in trading in any Chinese currency, and tariffs from not just the US but other nations will continue to exacerbate existing problems at home for China.

Companies like Temu came into existence because global pullback on purchasing Chinese manufactured goods is resulting in job losses, and instead of having factories go under the Chinese government would prefer to sell products that very quickly fall apart or are built extremely cheaply or with very poor environmental practices to at least get some money.

Further, while these tariffs seem questionable and everyone is piling on Trump (which is deserved, with prejudice, in my mind), let’s not pretend that the EU, Japan, and others are saints here. They do enact trade barriers to protect their own domestic industries as well. On the tech side for example there’s simply no argument that the EU is fining US tech companies just because they happened to enact policies and rules that the US companies break all the time. Some portion of that is a shakedown or a form of a trade restriction.