There is a wise saying: "keep your friends close & your enemies closer" IMO, Kevin Rudd is Australia's best expert on China and at times like this we need to understand both the USA & China so that we can exploit them rather than be exploited by both.
Australian Populists including ScoMo have been cajoaled (some would say forced) by Trump into backing Trumps re-election strategy by blaming all of the US economic woes on China when blame should be laid at the feet of US multinationals who gutted (and are still gutting) US manufacturing chasing profit in developing & 3rd world countries and leaving a devastated rustbelt at home.and then bunging the overseas profit tax free in tax havens.
Trump spruiks patriotism but when the chips were down he pleaded foot trouble so that he could evade the draft. Perhaps that has advanced now to foot in mouth disease? And have we heard Trump calling the US multinationals that gutted US manufacturing and shifted manufacture to China as being un-patriotic? Instead he is giving Microsoft a pre election present ( good for re-election funding) by banning TicTok and giving Microsoft 45 days to buy it. This is precisely what we expect China to do but rusted-on Trump supporters cant see the irony.
And what is Apple doing? Retaining limited manufacture in the USA for domestic consumption and cranking up production in China for the balance of the global markets with the release of its new 16" MacBook Pro .
GM closed a US plant and replaced with a new one in Mexico and both Tesla & Harley Davidson set up factories in China to counter Trump tariffs on Chinese Aluminium & Steel .
And what has Trump done for his "deplorables" ( the rustbelters) who were relegated from well paid factory workers to at best minimum wage service workers. Instead, apart from blaming China and collecting more tax in the form of import tariffs, he gave the uber rich a massive pay rise by reducing corporate tax from 32% to 20% while adding $6 trillion to the national credit card with trillions more debt in the offing.
What has Trump done with the billions of tariffs collected . Has he built new factories? I dont think so, Has he built the Mexican Wall, I dont think so, Has he built any significant infrastructure, I dont think so.
He just continues to spruik himself with laughable rhetoric and fake tweets . One could be forgiven for thinking that post November that he will be remembered as a twitterbug ( Some intelligent Americans might say twit!)
