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The irony, of course, is that the US is pulling these heavy handed maneuvers at a time when the rest of the world would have gladly done it for the US for free. Half the world is currently pissed with China. India already banned Tik Tok. The US could have used what is left of its diplomatic corps (devastated in the past few years) to encourage other countries such as the NATO nations, 5 eyes countries and other allies to threaten to ban Tik Tok and the likes of China didn’t resolve their security concerns. And the vast majority of them would have agreed, essentially forcing China to do this or something similar without the US losing its moral high ground, and gaining strength and respect amongst its allies instead of looking like a street level rent a mob type. The same with the TPP. The US under this administration and tried hard to punish China, and basically, over the past few years has managed to slightly alter the fortunes of 2 individual companies, at a huge cost to its local farm sales, and hasn’t gained much in return at all, while hurting China only marginally. If they had remained in the TPP, they would have had a much greater effect across Chinese companies (since it wouldn’t require cherry picking individual companies and acting specially for each of them) and the influence would have been levered since it would have come from pretty much every neighbor of China, and further, would have come at little cost to the US. What’s most disturbing about these actions isn’t so much the actions themselves, but the fact that they have traded away so much of the US’s reputation built over generations, cost the US so much in rep and straight up cash, and has barely got it anything in return. And all this while much more effective alternatives which would have cost the US nothing but instead would have helped it strengthen its position in the world, existed by acting through its alliances. |