Posted On: Monday - January 18th 2021 6:22PM MST
In Topics: China Economics The Future
(continued from Part 1: Intro, Part 2: Housing, Part 3: Big Biz, Part 4: The Fruited Plain, and Part 5: The Wilderness.)
In parts 2 through 5 of this series on current and upcoming looting of American assets by China, be it housing, big business, farmland, or even the preserved wilderness, I see the same problem for us. I don't think it'll be easy to stop this. It's simply about money, and money talks.
With manufacturing having been eviscerated over the last 3 - 4 decades, America just doesn't create as much wealth as it consumes. Trade deficits have ensued, and, by far, the biggest one is with China. As one can see from this same graph seen before in Part 4, the difference between our imports from China and our exports has gone from a piddling amount in 1990 to $419,000,000,000 in 2018:
The US Census site, for some reason, has a nice month-by-month chart of the balance of goods trade between the US and China on this page**. Way on back, in 1985, while the Japan imbalance had already gotten a little worrisome (nearly $50 billion in 1985 dollars***), America had a small even-Steven trade with China, at $3.86 billion in exports, and $3.86 billion in imports. (To be more precise, there was a very small trade deficit of $6 million - that's "million".) Things went downhill from then on, or uphill if you're Chinese. That balance in 1985 went to a $1.5 billion deficit a year later, $10 billion by the end of that decade, $83 billion by 2000, and from 2005 onward, it was in the $200 billion and higher, to the moon, Ai Leitz!
For the last 15 years, we've really just been giving away the power to buy up our country to China. The numbers are staggering now. Almost half a Trillion bucks flowing out of the US economy and into Chinese hands happens yearly.
The money talks. Even if this country had non-Chinese sympathizing, blackmailed, or bribed officials encouraging the selling out of our country, it's just not that easy to prevent the Chinese big money guys from purchasing assets. There were laws passed in Canada, from the province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver, to put higher taxes on the purchase/holding of property to try to stop the conversion of Vancouver to Hongcouver. There were raises in both sales taxes and property taxes. This did send more Chinese business to Seattle, San Francisco, and LA.
However, there can be front owners that are citizens, Chinese of course, to get around it. China is well known for corruption, and the CCP is about nothing but corruption, so who's to say officials won't be bribed to let it slide? Then, the last step is to increase your population share so much that your influence, and money too, can change the laws to lock open the barn door.
It can be the same story for land. The sale goes to the highest bidder, and no seller of farmland is going to lose money selling to a known American over foreign money, even if it were not hidden. If he did, the American would be ready to just "flip it", same as with houses.
I don't even need to get into the situation with the Globalists that will sell out Big Biz. As for the wilderness, the influence will have to go a little higher, on up to the Pai loe qis and the Zhou Bai Diens.
Perhaps the hope is with local jurisdictions making laws requiring residency for purchase of real estate. Again, there are ways in which the money talks louder though.
Let me wrap this up with a comparison to the looting of Russia in the 1990s. The USSR had fallen. The place was an economic shambles. The still solid economy of the US, with it's almighty reserve-currency dollar let the big NY City finance boys treat Russia like a yard sale. Well, we don't have too long before the this economy fails. You don't just print up 1 to 3 Trillion bucks yearly and expect it to keep its value. Now, if we created more wealth to back it, that'd be one thing. The Kung Flu PanicFest sure hasn't helped, but even without it, our social and demographic problems are making it harder and harder for this country to compete with the rest of the world in manufacturing.
I don't see why that Russian experience couldn't be repeated here, with America as Russia, and the Chinese CCP oligarchs as the NY City finance boys. Can we prevent this during the SHTF to come? If not, we will not just be buying everything from the Chinese, but we will be working for them, renting from them, and getting priced out of everything nice that was built by Americans.
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."**** I wish it were the same people that looted Russia that would get their comeuppance, but it doesn't work like that. In large economic matters the golden rule is slightly different anyway. It goes "He who hath the gold, maketh the rules."
* The trade in services is not insignificant, as, per the US International Trade Commission, in '16 the US "exported" $54 billion in services vs. importing $16 billion. That's a $38 billion surplus, not even 10% of the goods trade deficit. (That's the most recent data I could find on short notice.)
That page is interesting in that it has a breakout of the types of services. A whopping 62% of the service exports are travel services. Just seeing who's been doing the flying back and forth since then, even pre-Kung Flu, that will get more than balanced out shortly. The Chinese airlines have been growing fast, both domestic and international. Without the former imbalance, when the US dominated the skies, that service surplus will be, or is already, insignificant.
** It's easy to look year-by-year there too.
*** Japan is no slouch itself, with $166 billion yearly surplus with us as of late, very significant even compared to China. It's just that the Japanese just don't seem to be the same type of economic threat.
**** From Mathew 7:12, but there are 4 to 5 other instances of it.
Comments:
Moderator
Tuesday - January 19th 2021 12:10PM MST
PS: Mr. Blanc, I guess the real big shots (top 0.01% or so) figure they can live large and comfortably anywhere in the world. They'll have to find some other good spots. This is perhaps something new with the jet age vs. the days of the "robber barons" who really couldn't just come and go anywhere week by week (still a week across the ocean to Europe, if that was there thing).
MBlanc46
Tuesday - January 19th 2021 8:43AM MST
PS The haste with which our elites have tripped all over each other to sell the republic that our ancestors built to the Chinese is truly astounding. They’re not exactly advertising it, but they’re not making any serious attempts to hide it. I wonder whether it ever occurs to them that their own grandchildren are going to have to live under Chinese domination.