Big Panda Announces Retaliatory Tariffs – Mostly, In Name Only – It’s all Propaganda

Sundance reporting for CTH 

Big Panda has a problem, and his name is President Donald Trump.

CTH went (proactively) directly into the heart of the Chinese Potemkin Village, much like my trip to Russia, to specifically see what the reality is on the ground in the region of all Beijing influence.  Where the East meets the West you will find a hot mess of propaganda, kept in place by widespread geopolitical pretending.

Never was that reality clearer, than in the example of the retaliatory tariffs announced in response to President Trump’s trade tariffs.

(Via AP) – China said it would implement a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas products as well as a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars imported from the U.S. The tariffs would take effect next Monday. {link}

First, tariffs on energy products are pure propaganda.  Coal, LNG and crude oil are fungible. In the case of China the energy products arrive from a global market, there is no identifiable way to tariff American energy products.  This is not like Canada where the Candian energy products are entirely dependent on pipelines into the USA, and therefore unavoidably easy to tariff by Trump.

Chairman Xi gets most of the Chinese imported energy resources from Russia, specifically Coal, LNG and Crude Oil.  So, this subset of tariffs against American energy products is pure propaganda, essentially moot.

You know who buys USA-made “large-engine cars” (Chevy Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Ford Raptors) in China?  People well connected to the Chinese Communist Party, that’s who.  If you are not a member of the elite ruling class in China, you do not buy large-engine cars.   So, what exactly is the intent on this one?  The target is a domestic internal political apparatus, in combination with narrative creation that Beijing believes will create the biggest splash headlines in the West.  That’s it.  Again, pure political propaganda.

♦ What are the two exports from the USA that Beijing cares about?  Food and Tech, that’s it. Period.

China cannot feed itself, and despite all the western nonsense, China has no intellectual capacity to create technological systems.  That’s why Big Panda steals IP from the west.

The belt and road initiative is the insurance policy by Beijing to ensure food and technology products, both raw materials and support for their manufacturing base.  That’s why they started the Belt and Road, and that’s why it is vital for them.  China cannot feed itself and China does not innovate because they are a society of compliance, not innovation or entrepreneurship.

President Trump is well aware why China has invested so heavily in USA farmland.  China doesn’t have enough.  President Trump is also well aware why Beijing steals IP from all U.S. companies that do business there.  China doesn’t innovate.

On this dynamic of trade, China needs access to the USA consumer base, and China needs our food.  President Trump is trying to break the need for Chinese manufacturing and source product supply, and President Trump is going to break the dependency of U.S. Ag on exports to China.  Chairman Xi knows this.

The approach you see now from Chairman Xi and the dragon hiding behind his panda mask, is to create the illusion through U.S. media that the U.S. economy would be impacted by retaliatory tariffs.  In essence, Chairman Xi is counting on the Wall Street multinationals and U.S. media to stir up a narrative against President Trump’s trade confrontation with Beijing.  That’s what this is.  That is all this is.

If you want to see what industrial sectors President Trump is trying to bring back to the USA, just check the sectors of our import reliance.

[source]

“It’s almost like [Beijing] telling American companies, what your government is doing is bad, you need to tell the government that if you add more tariffs or hurt U.S.-China relations at the end of the day it’ll backfire on American companies,” Chen said.

President Trump has all the leverage in the world, real world leverage on actionable stuff.

The only leverage China has is propaganda against Trump, nothing of material consequence at all.  Zero. Nada. Zilch.