Comment by elzbardico

The average believer in orthodox economics tends to forget that for all practical purposes customers and workers are the same entity.

China understands that and they prioritize employment over consumption (of course, not having the printing press for the world’s reserve currency kinds of force their hands into it).

America’s deindustrialization and financialization went too far. Consumption levels and waste are well out of any sustainable level. An adjustment would have to happen and Trump’s tariffs are just a desperate attempt to restore American Industry (with scarce chances of success).

It is not like China is an enthusiastic adopter of free trade. They notoriously never played by the same rules in terms of market access, exchange rates, subsidies and trade barriers. It is utterly stupid to open your market to china without reciprocity, and this is what the west has been doing for decades making baking and investors richer while completely decimating what was once a thriving middle class.

Even the racial issues in the current times are heavily linked to this. The fall of Detroit was felt disproportionately heavier by the blacks, Wall Street basically took the ladder from the feet of a rising blue collar middle class of blacks.

I sincerely don’t give a fuck if we can’t buy cheap BYD cars.