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Comment by password54321

3 days ago

"It (Venezuela) currently exports (oil) about 900,000 barrels per day and China is by far its biggest buyer."

Ah ok, so this was about China. MAGA's fixation on China is certainly going to lead to more instability.

13 comments

password54321

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groundzeros2015  3 days ago

Democrats and republicans are concerned about China because it has a massive impact on many issues that both parties care about. This includes Taiwan, Hong Kong, Us manufacturing, US ip, immigration, etc.

  • sigwinch  3 days ago

    Replying to your earlier comment: in terms of words spoken during the 2024 campaign, tariffs and immigration tied for first. I think MAGA heard “China” when tariffs was pronounced positively and “Hispanic” when immigration was pronounced negatively.

    • groundzeros2015  3 days ago

      How did you conclude that democrats do not care about china?

      > Hispanic” when immigration was pronounced negatively. reply

      I think it means Chinese, Indian, and other ethnic groups too.

      1 reply →

  • jmyeet  3 days ago

    The one part of this I will agree with is that US foreign policy is uniparty.

    The disastrous War on Terror spanned 4 presidential administrations, 2 Democrat and 2 Republican. Middle East policy differences between the two parties are somewhere between superficial and nonexistent.

    Even something like Ukraine where you might say Republicans and Democrats differ isn't true. Had Trump been in office when Russia invaded Ukraine, the two parties would simply be in each other's seats.

    This is 100% the case when it comes to China too. Oh, and when it comes to Taiwan (and Hong Kong), official US policy is the so-called One China policy [1].

    As for US manufacturing, it's dead. Because capitalists killed it by moving it to China to increase profits and (under Regan, in particular) to destroy unions and the labor movement [2].

    As for China and IP, US companies did this to themselves knowingly to increase short-term profits and to break unions and suppress wages. At no point will I accept the framing that a Chinese person, a Mexican, an Indian or a person from [developing country of choice] stole someone's job. No, a capital owner made a choice to take your job and give it to someone else so he or she could become slightly richer.

    I'm not sure how immigration factors into China concerns.

    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China

    [2]: https://ourfuture.org/20140930/reagan-set-up-the-death-of-th...

culi  3 days ago

The only reason China is the biggest buyer is because of crippling US sanctions since 2017 that have made it impossible for Venezuela to trade with any western nation

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05775132.2019.16...

> This article analyzes the consequences of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the U.S. government since August of 2017. The authors find that most of the impact of these sanctions has not been on the government but on the civilian population. The sanctions reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They made it nearly impossible to stabilize Venezuela’s economic crisis. These impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans.

password54321  3 days ago

Few hours later: "US oil companies will fix Venezuela's "broken infrastructure" and "start making money for the country", Trump added"

Obviously anyone with common sense understands that the above translates to exporting oil to the US. Just like that, a lot of noise about democracy goes out of the window.