{"id":1315,"date":"2020-05-28T11:44:03","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T12:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malvinartley.com\/blog.malvinartley.com\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2020-05-28T11:44:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T12:44:03","slug":"countering-the-yellow-peril-part-ii-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malvinartley.com\/blog.malvinartley.com\/2020\/05\/28\/countering-the-yellow-peril-part-ii-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Countering the Yellow Peril, Part II: The US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Navarro, Trump\u2019s trade advisor, recently stated, \u201cWe are at war with China\u201d. He did not mean a literal shooting war, but his statement carried more meaning than that of a simple trade war. He then went on to accuse China of deliberately putting passengers infected with the coronavirus aboard flights bound for the US in the early days of the epidemic. It was an inflammatory statement. The American economy is perhaps facing shrinkage of its GDP by as much as 10% in 2020 due to its mishandling of the pandemic, while Asian economies are now almost up to full capacity, having clamped down the spread of the virus. So,why the heightened rhetoric?<\/span><\/p>\n

Chinese trade within Asia has shot upwards<\/a><\/span> since the pandemic has subsided in Asia, while economies in the West and global South are on life support. In fact, the US is not even China\u2019s biggest export market.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blaming China for the virus would appear to be a distraction from Washington\u2019s own mishandling of the crisis. But there is a much wider picture here, with the virus simply being used as a convenient cover story for a Beltway strategy that has been building since the \u201908 financial crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Added to Navarro\u2019s accusations, preceding, Mark Esper, US Secretary of Defense, is warning that China will use the pandemic to spread its footprint in Europe<\/a><\/span>, “as a way to invest in critical industry and infrastructure, with effect on security in the long term\u201d. If so, it is hardly surprising. The Trump administration has been no friend to Europe recently. But the real story here is given away by Esper\u2019s statement \u2013 \u201cthe effect on security in the long term.\u201d Whose security, we might wonder?<\/span><\/p>\n

Broadly stated, America\u2019s security interests relate to two areas: its economic power and its ability to control energy and outcomes to its advantage. Those cover a very broad area, and are backed up by its military, projected via its navy and the 800+ military bases it has scattered across the globe. Its economic power lies in its dominance over the SWIFT system of financial exchanges and the ties of global currencies to the US dollar. It is clear that the US is doing everything in its power, short of war, to maintain the control it has had since WWII \u2013 Pax Americana<\/em>. And now China is seen as the primary threat to that, with Russia a close 2nd<\/sup>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Staying with China then, since Trump came to office in 2017, what actions have we seen in the Beltway\u2019s attempts to halt the Chinese momentum forward?<\/span><\/p>\n