MAGAThread XIII: The Summit of Putin

[Vassenor]

No it didn’t. SCOTUS only ruled on the case at hand and that’s it. They didn’t say that the law is unconstitutional but that the way the Colorado Civil Rights Commission applied it was. The CCRC didn’t act as a neutral arbiter and was unfairly hostile towards the baker

Regardless, this sets precedent and if Kennedy goes and Trump replaces with him with another right wing nut, it could get worse.

"Go back and do this again" isn't really a precedent. The ruling doesn't actually say anything about religious liberties being outright violated.

[Geneviev]

Did the president say anything about that disgusting Supreme Court ruling?

[Petrasylvania]

Did the president say anything about that disgusting Supreme Court ruling?

Wait until FOX and Friends praises it first.

[Geneviev]

Did the president say anything about that disgusting Supreme Court ruling?

Wait until FOX and Friends praises it first.

An apology from him would be nice too.

[Vassenor]

Did the president say anything about that disgusting Supreme Court ruling?

Wait until FOX and Friends praises it first.

Would they willingly distort a purely procedural ruling like tha...

No I can't finish that question with a straight face.

[Geneviev]

Wait until FOX and Friends praises it first.

Would they willingly distort a purely procedural ruling like tha...

No I can't finish that question with a straight face.

They would.

Which is why the president should say something like "I'm sorry that this is such a terrible country."

[Geneviev]

https://youtu.be/SF4vL8RN0Kg

This isn't really funny anymore and that means Donald Trump's presidency must be over soon.

[Thermodolia]

No it didn’t. SCOTUS only ruled on the case at hand and that’s it. They didn’t say that the law is unconstitutional but that the way the Colorado Civil Rights Commission applied it was. The CCRC didn’t act as a neutral arbiter and was unfairly hostile towards the baker

Regardless, this sets precedent and if Kennedy goes and Trump replaces with him with another right wing nut, it could get worse.

No it doesn’t.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Aww man I missed the new trump thread?

Darn internet.

anyway Trump is still bad

[Oil exporting People]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-baker-who-denied-same-sex-couple-a-wedding-cake/

They just unleashed a dangerous slippery slope...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... index.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... index.html

Definitely some good news.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-baker-who-denied-same-sex-couple-a-wedding-cake/

They just unleashed a dangerous slippery slope...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... index.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... index.html

Definitely some good news.

No just some dumb decision being backed up by scotus

[Farnhamia]

Definitely some good news.

No just some dumb decision being backed up by scotus

About which we have a separate thread.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

No just some dumb decision being backed up by scotus

About which we have a separate thread.

Indeed, I posted there

[Oil exporting People]

Extremely on point about the Tariffs:

I think Trump's real goal in his dealings with China is far deeper than that. There's blood in the water right now as China has been bleeding capital since the US recovery took hold. They spent a shit ton of money trying to avoid a correction in 2008 and that has resulted in massive overcapacity throughout their economy. These overcapacities are, at the very core, driving the glut of steel, aluminum, and other raw materials and even bitcoin as cheap electricity in China drives mining server farms which, until the Communist Party wised up to it, were being used to drain capital out of China around their other capital controls.

When the Fed turned on the printing presses in the recession, China had to match our printing Yuan for Dollar in order to maintain their exchange rate and avoid having currency appreciation shut down their export economy. This resulted in a rapid buildup of USD Forex reserves in China peaking at over $4 trillion in 2014. As the US has begun to raise rates and unwind this position, Chinese Forex holdings have fallen in lockstep with the rise in value of the USD and US yields eventually plumbing the $3 trillion level. That's just forex holdings and not private capital flight which was also en masse. Eventually the Chinese realized they had to clamp down on capital flight or face a shutdown of their FDI driven economic expansion so in 2017 we saw them plug the gaps like Bitcoin and turn the screws on capital outflows. Go to this graph, select 5 years and then add the US Dollar index to compare the lockstep relationship between the price of the dollar and how much USD forex the Chinese government must maintain:

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/fore ... e-reserves

It's quite striking really, they were forced to liquidate their holdings at the worst possible time: when rates were beginning to rise in earnest and decimate the face value of debt bought mostly in the era of ZIRP. As I mentioned, they saw some respite in 2017 as their policies began to stem outflows and the Dollar rally let up a bit.

But look at the shift since the beginning of this year and Trump's trade war rhetoric. The trend of rising dollar and capital outflows from China has returned. The tariff battle is not about unfair trade practices, though the Chinese have landed themselves in this predicament via central planning, it's about popping the China bubble. It's not an aggressive "bring manufacturing jobs back" move, but a pointy stick being jabbed at a real big bubble. The more Trump jams trade, even if it causes temporary pain for some sectors in the US, the more difficult it is for the Chinese power structure to head off an inevitable economic correction after 40 years of mandatory economic growth. They have been getting by since the recession by simply mandating overproduction at state owned heavy industries in order to maintain employment and growth. This has come at the expense of industries elsewhere on the planet and Trump is prodding directly at that sore spot in the Chinese economy with these tariffs. If you are trying to control capital flight and reverse shrinking forex holdings, what's one way of doing that? Well commodities are priced in the main reserve currency, the one you just saw $1 trillion+ of disappear from your bank account. So if you produce commodities, you can turn them into dollars, even if you are selling at a loss in terms of your own efforts or currency. If you have too much electrical capacity you can turn it into dollars by making aluminum (which is basically solid electricity) and selling it for dollars. This is fundamentally why we are where we are. Aluminum and steel prices have crashed as the Chinese have flooded the world markets with their overproduction in an attempt to stem the flow of capital from their economy. The ship is listing and they are running the bilge full tilt and what the bilge is pumping out is raw aluminum and steel. The prices of these metals are symptoms of something much more sinister bubbling just below the surface.

So I think, while everyone else is fearing a trade war, the real story is what happens if Trump gets what he wants? What happens if these policies finally burst the China bubble? What happens if huge quantities of raw materials start piling up in Chinese ports and stockyards when the countries consuming them now stop buying? What happens when that flow of dollars into Chinese bank accounts from the sale of these dumped commodities is cut off and the capital flight continues due to rising US yields? What happens if the state mandated steel, aluminum, and electricity glut can no longer be converted to forex reserves? What happens if the massive debts held by local governments in China (the ones who run many of these enterprises) begin to make it impossible to continue subsidizing output? Workers start getting laid off and recession soon follows. What happens to the current autocrats running the show? How soon before the mob shows up and starts chopping off heads? It seems that this thought has crossed Xi Jingping's mind before as he has consolidated his own power recently.

The real concern here should not be a trade war, but civil unrest in China. How many of his own citizens will Jinping be willing to slaughter to maintain president for life status? The biggest story of the 21st century is being set up right now in China and all the media seems to be able to focus on is whether Trump banged a pornstar. I think the biggest worry about these Tariffs should be whether the end result is civil unrest in China and what that ends up meaning for the rest of the world. Economies don't just grow forever. The Chinese have gone four decades without contraction and they've maintained that as of late by swiping the credit card using their USD horde as collateral. The horde is dwindling and the bill is coming due. Meanwhile Trump is hacking away at their income sources...

As to why the other nations were targeted:

Well if the goal is to smash Chinese ability to dump their products on the world market, you can't very well just let them send it all to the EU and Canada essentially causing those markets to just dump their supply into the US instead.

There was just an article a while back about a Chinese billionaire stashing $2 billion worth of aluminum ignots in the Mexico desert for export and sale to the US or NA market. China has more of these metals than they have places to send it. The more places to send it that are taken off the table, the more effective the policy.

[Senkaku]

No it didn’t. SCOTUS only ruled on the case at hand and that’s it. They didn’t say that the law is unconstitutional but that the way the Colorado Civil Rights Commission applied it was. The CCRC didn’t act as a neutral arbiter and was unfairly hostile towards the baker

Regardless, this sets precedent and if Kennedy goes and Trump replaces with him with another right wing nut, it could get worse.

Flutter it literally doesn't set a fucking precedent at all read what people are fucking telling you lmao (or I don't know, actually do some thorough research yourself for once in your life!), it was literally just saying that the CCRC was biased smh

[Mushet]

Pfft I got 10 years.

n00b.

Crotchety old man

[Bombadil]

Trump cancels the Eagles visit to the White House because not enough people will show up.. wish he'd canceled his inauguration for the same.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... hite-house

[Napkiraly]

Did the president say anything about that disgusting Supreme Court ruling?

How was it disgusting?

[Geneviev]

Did the president say anything about that disgusting Supreme Court ruling?

How was it disgusting?

I misunderstood it at first and thought it would allow discrimination against LGBTQ+.

[Dahon]

And today in Trump's rage-tweets: There is no pleasing the God-Emperor.

In his late clarification of his rage-tweet against the Philly Eagles (a team I don't give a shit about playing a sport I don't give a shit about, that nonetheless stood up for flag and anthem and gave back to millions of Americans but failed to acknowledge Trump as God-Emperor), Trump remarked that sitting inside the locker room is as bad as taking a knee.

To that I say: There is no pleasing an authoritarian humbug.

[Bombadil]

And today in Trump's rage-tweets: There is no pleasing the God-Emperor.

In his late clarification of his rage-tweet against the Philly Eagles (a team I don't give a shit about playing a sport I don't give a shit about, that nonetheless stood up for flag and anthem and gave back to millions of Americans but failed to acknowledge Trump as God-Emperor), Trump remarked that sitting inside the locker room is as bad as taking a knee.

To that I say: There is no pleasing an authoritarian humbug.

Glad he admits that locker room talk is disrespectful to the country..

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Manafort attempted to tamper with witnesses...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/manafort-attempted-to-tamper-with-potential-witnesses-u-s-special-counsel-idUSKCN1J1043

[Nazis in Space]

Extremely on point about the Tariffs:

I think Trump's real goal in his dealings with China is far deeper than that. There's blood in the water right now as China has been bleeding capital since the US recovery took hold. They spent a shit ton of money trying to avoid a correction in 2008 and that has resulted in massive overcapacity throughout their economy. These overcapacities are, at the very core, driving the glut of steel, aluminum, and other raw materials and even bitcoin as cheap electricity in China drives mining server farms which, until the Communist Party wised up to it, were being used to drain capital out of China around their other capital controls.

When the Fed turned on the printing presses in the recession, China had to match our printing Yuan for Dollar in order to maintain their exchange rate and avoid having currency appreciation shut down their export economy. This resulted in a rapid buildup of USD Forex reserves in China peaking at over $4 trillion in 2014. As the US has begun to raise rates and unwind this position, Chinese Forex holdings have fallen in lockstep with the rise in value of the USD and US yields eventually plumbing the $3 trillion level. That's just forex holdings and not private capital flight which was also en masse. Eventually the Chinese realized they had to clamp down on capital flight or face a shutdown of their FDI driven economic expansion so in 2017 we saw them plug the gaps like Bitcoin and turn the screws on capital outflows. Go to this graph, select 5 years and then add the US Dollar index to compare the lockstep relationship between the price of the dollar and how much USD forex the Chinese government must maintain:

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/fore ... e-reserves

It's quite striking really, they were forced to liquidate their holdings at the worst possible time: when rates were beginning to rise in earnest and decimate the face value of debt bought mostly in the era of ZIRP. As I mentioned, they saw some respite in 2017 as their policies began to stem outflows and the Dollar rally let up a bit.

But look at the shift since the beginning of this year and Trump's trade war rhetoric. The trend of rising dollar and capital outflows from China has returned. The tariff battle is not about unfair trade practices, though the Chinese have landed themselves in this predicament via central planning, it's about popping the China bubble. It's not an aggressive "bring manufacturing jobs back" move, but a pointy stick being jabbed at a real big bubble. The more Trump jams trade, even if it causes temporary pain for some sectors in the US, the more difficult it is for the Chinese power structure to head off an inevitable economic correction after 40 years of mandatory economic growth. They have been getting by since the recession by simply mandating overproduction at state owned heavy industries in order to maintain employment and growth. This has come at the expense of industries elsewhere on the planet and Trump is prodding directly at that sore spot in the Chinese economy with these tariffs. If you are trying to control capital flight and reverse shrinking forex holdings, what's one way of doing that? Well commodities are priced in the main reserve currency, the one you just saw $1 trillion+ of disappear from your bank account. So if you produce commodities, you can turn them into dollars, even if you are selling at a loss in terms of your own efforts or currency. If you have too much electrical capacity you can turn it into dollars by making aluminum (which is basically solid electricity) and selling it for dollars. This is fundamentally why we are where we are. Aluminum and steel prices have crashed as the Chinese have flooded the world markets with their overproduction in an attempt to stem the flow of capital from their economy. The ship is listing and they are running the bilge full tilt and what the bilge is pumping out is raw aluminum and steel. The prices of these metals are symptoms of something much more sinister bubbling just below the surface.

So I think, while everyone else is fearing a trade war, the real story is what happens if Trump gets what he wants? What happens if these policies finally burst the China bubble? What happens if huge quantities of raw materials start piling up in Chinese ports and stockyards when the countries consuming them now stop buying? What happens when that flow of dollars into Chinese bank accounts from the sale of these dumped commodities is cut off and the capital flight continues due to rising US yields? What happens if the state mandated steel, aluminum, and electricity glut can no longer be converted to forex reserves? What happens if the massive debts held by local governments in China (the ones who run many of these enterprises) begin to make it impossible to continue subsidizing output? Workers start getting laid off and recession soon follows. What happens to the current autocrats running the show? How soon before the mob shows up and starts chopping off heads? It seems that this thought has crossed Xi Jingping's mind before as he has consolidated his own power recently.

The real concern here should not be a trade war, but civil unrest in China. How many of his own citizens will Jinping be willing to slaughter to maintain president for life status? The biggest story of the 21st century is being set up right now in China and all the media seems to be able to focus on is whether Trump banged a pornstar. I think the biggest worry about these Tariffs should be whether the end result is civil unrest in China and what that ends up meaning for the rest of the world. Economies don't just grow forever. The Chinese have gone four decades without contraction and they've maintained that as of late by swiping the credit card using their USD horde as collateral. The horde is dwindling and the bill is coming due. Meanwhile Trump is hacking away at their income sources...

As to why the other nations were targeted:

Well if the goal is to smash Chinese ability to dump their products on the world market, you can't very well just let them send it all to the EU and Canada essentially causing those markets to just dump their supply into the US instead.

There was just an article a while back about a Chinese billionaire stashing $2 billion worth of aluminum ignots in the Mexico desert for export and sale to the US or NA market. China has more of these metals than they have places to send it. The more places to send it that are taken off the table, the more effective the policy.

That sounds sophisticated and all, but it rather painfully reminds me about the Chinese Ghost Cities craze that swept the Internet in the mid-2000s, when everyone and their dog predicted that the empty cities China was building heralded the collapse of the Chinese economy, state, and everything.

What actually happened was that the new middle class moved in. Meanwhile, the American real estate bubble collapsed, resulting in the 2008 recession.

Call it being jaded, but every time someone on the Internet writes about how China's in trouble and about to collapse because reasons, whether internal or external, I cannot help but feel that this is wishful thinking on the author's part and not particularly closely related to reality.

I mean, economic cycles happen. But for some reason, when it comes to the yellow peril, everyone seems to always be about how it is the eeeeeeennnnnnddddddd for China, rather than a fixable problem, there's an undercurrent of 'and the old order shall be restored, as it should be', and they're always wrong.

[Unstoppable Empire of Doom]

Extremely on point about the Tariffs:

I think Trump's real goal in his dealings with China is far deeper than that. There's blood in the water right now as China has been bleeding capital since the US recovery took hold. They spent a shit ton of money trying to avoid a correction in 2008 and that has resulted in massive overcapacity throughout their economy. These overcapacities are, at the very core, driving the glut of steel, aluminum, and other raw materials and even bitcoin as cheap electricity in China drives mining server farms which, until the Communist Party wised up to it, were being used to drain capital out of China around their other capital controls.

When the Fed turned on the printing presses in the recession, China had to match our printing Yuan for Dollar in order to maintain their exchange rate and avoid having currency appreciation shut down their export economy. This resulted in a rapid buildup of USD Forex reserves in China peaking at over $4 trillion in 2014. As the US has begun to raise rates and unwind this position, Chinese Forex holdings have fallen in lockstep with the rise in value of the USD and US yields eventually plumbing the $3 trillion level. That's just forex holdings and not private capital flight which was also en masse. Eventually the Chinese realized they had to clamp down on capital flight or face a shutdown of their FDI driven economic expansion so in 2017 we saw them plug the gaps like Bitcoin and turn the screws on capital outflows. Go to this graph, select 5 years and then add the US Dollar index to compare the lockstep relationship between the price of the dollar and how much USD forex the Chinese government must maintain:

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/fore ... e-reserves

It's quite striking really, they were forced to liquidate their holdings at the worst possible time: when rates were beginning to rise in earnest and decimate the face value of debt bought mostly in the era of ZIRP. As I mentioned, they saw some respite in 2017 as their policies began to stem outflows and the Dollar rally let up a bit.

But look at the shift since the beginning of this year and Trump's trade war rhetoric. The trend of rising dollar and capital outflows from China has returned. The tariff battle is not about unfair trade practices, though the Chinese have landed themselves in this predicament via central planning, it's about popping the China bubble. It's not an aggressive "bring manufacturing jobs back" move, but a pointy stick being jabbed at a real big bubble. The more Trump jams trade, even if it causes temporary pain for some sectors in the US, the more difficult it is for the Chinese power structure to head off an inevitable economic correction after 40 years of mandatory economic growth. They have been getting by since the recession by simply mandating overproduction at state owned heavy industries in order to maintain employment and growth. This has come at the expense of industries elsewhere on the planet and Trump is prodding directly at that sore spot in the Chinese economy with these tariffs. If you are trying to control capital flight and reverse shrinking forex holdings, what's one way of doing that? Well commodities are priced in the main reserve currency, the one you just saw $1 trillion+ of disappear from your bank account. So if you produce commodities, you can turn them into dollars, even if you are selling at a loss in terms of your own efforts or currency. If you have too much electrical capacity you can turn it into dollars by making aluminum (which is basically solid electricity) and selling it for dollars. This is fundamentally why we are where we are. Aluminum and steel prices have crashed as the Chinese have flooded the world markets with their overproduction in an attempt to stem the flow of capital from their economy. The ship is listing and they are running the bilge full tilt and what the bilge is pumping out is raw aluminum and steel. The prices of these metals are symptoms of something much more sinister bubbling just below the surface.

So I think, while everyone else is fearing a trade war, the real story is what happens if Trump gets what he wants? What happens if these policies finally burst the China bubble? What happens if huge quantities of raw materials start piling up in Chinese ports and stockyards when the countries consuming them now stop buying? What happens when that flow of dollars into Chinese bank accounts from the sale of these dumped commodities is cut off and the capital flight continues due to rising US yields? What happens if the state mandated steel, aluminum, and electricity glut can no longer be converted to forex reserves? What happens if the massive debts held by local governments in China (the ones who run many of these enterprises) begin to make it impossible to continue subsidizing output? Workers start getting laid off and recession soon follows. What happens to the current autocrats running the show? How soon before the mob shows up and starts chopping off heads? It seems that this thought has crossed Xi Jingping's mind before as he has consolidated his own power recently.

The real concern here should not be a trade war, but civil unrest in China. How many of his own citizens will Jinping be willing to slaughter to maintain president for life status? The biggest story of the 21st century is being set up right now in China and all the media seems to be able to focus on is whether Trump banged a pornstar. I think the biggest worry about these Tariffs should be whether the end result is civil unrest in China and what that ends up meaning for the rest of the world. Economies don't just grow forever. The Chinese have gone four decades without contraction and they've maintained that as of late by swiping the credit card using their USD horde as collateral. The horde is dwindling and the bill is coming due. Meanwhile Trump is hacking away at their income sources...

As to why the other nations were targeted:

Well if the goal is to smash Chinese ability to dump their products on the world market, you can't very well just let them send it all to the EU and Canada essentially causing those markets to just dump their supply into the US instead.

There was just an article a while back about a Chinese billionaire stashing $2 billion worth of aluminum ignots in the Mexico desert for export and sale to the US or NA market. China has more of these metals than they have places to send it. The more places to send it that are taken off the table, the more effective the policy.

This is an interesting read.

[Salandriagado]

Extremely on point about the Tariffs:

I think Trump's real goal in his dealings with China is far deeper than that. There's blood in the water right now as China has been bleeding capital since the US recovery took hold. They spent a shit ton of money trying to avoid a correction in 2008 and that has resulted in massive overcapacity throughout their economy. These overcapacities are, at the very core, driving the glut of steel, aluminum, and other raw materials and even bitcoin as cheap electricity in China drives mining server farms which, until the Communist Party wised up to it, were being used to drain capital out of China around their other capital controls.

When the Fed turned on the printing presses in the recession, China had to match our printing Yuan for Dollar in order to maintain their exchange rate and avoid having currency appreciation shut down their export economy. This resulted in a rapid buildup of USD Forex reserves in China peaking at over $4 trillion in 2014. As the US has begun to raise rates and unwind this position, Chinese Forex holdings have fallen in lockstep with the rise in value of the USD and US yields eventually plumbing the $3 trillion level. That's just forex holdings and not private capital flight which was also en masse. Eventually the Chinese realized they had to clamp down on capital flight or face a shutdown of their FDI driven economic expansion so in 2017 we saw them plug the gaps like Bitcoin and turn the screws on capital outflows. Go to this graph, select 5 years and then add the US Dollar index to compare the lockstep relationship between the price of the dollar and how much USD forex the Chinese government must maintain:

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/fore ... e-reserves

It's quite striking really, they were forced to liquidate their holdings at the worst possible time: when rates were beginning to rise in earnest and decimate the face value of debt bought mostly in the era of ZIRP. As I mentioned, they saw some respite in 2017 as their policies began to stem outflows and the Dollar rally let up a bit.

But look at the shift since the beginning of this year and Trump's trade war rhetoric. The trend of rising dollar and capital outflows from China has returned. The tariff battle is not about unfair trade practices, though the Chinese have landed themselves in this predicament via central planning, it's about popping the China bubble. It's not an aggressive "bring manufacturing jobs back" move, but a pointy stick being jabbed at a real big bubble. The more Trump jams trade, even if it causes temporary pain for some sectors in the US, the more difficult it is for the Chinese power structure to head off an inevitable economic correction after 40 years of mandatory economic growth. They have been getting by since the recession by simply mandating overproduction at state owned heavy industries in order to maintain employment and growth. This has come at the expense of industries elsewhere on the planet and Trump is prodding directly at that sore spot in the Chinese economy with these tariffs. If you are trying to control capital flight and reverse shrinking forex holdings, what's one way of doing that? Well commodities are priced in the main reserve currency, the one you just saw $1 trillion+ of disappear from your bank account. So if you produce commodities, you can turn them into dollars, even if you are selling at a loss in terms of your own efforts or currency. If you have too much electrical capacity you can turn it into dollars by making aluminum (which is basically solid electricity) and selling it for dollars. This is fundamentally why we are where we are. Aluminum and steel prices have crashed as the Chinese have flooded the world markets with their overproduction in an attempt to stem the flow of capital from their economy. The ship is listing and they are running the bilge full tilt and what the bilge is pumping out is raw aluminum and steel. The prices of these metals are symptoms of something much more sinister bubbling just below the surface.

So I think, while everyone else is fearing a trade war, the real story is what happens if Trump gets what he wants? What happens if these policies finally burst the China bubble? What happens if huge quantities of raw materials start piling up in Chinese ports and stockyards when the countries consuming them now stop buying? What happens when that flow of dollars into Chinese bank accounts from the sale of these dumped commodities is cut off and the capital flight continues due to rising US yields? What happens if the state mandated steel, aluminum, and electricity glut can no longer be converted to forex reserves? What happens if the massive debts held by local governments in China (the ones who run many of these enterprises) begin to make it impossible to continue subsidizing output? Workers start getting laid off and recession soon follows. What happens to the current autocrats running the show? How soon before the mob shows up and starts chopping off heads? It seems that this thought has crossed Xi Jingping's mind before as he has consolidated his own power recently.

The real concern here should not be a trade war, but civil unrest in China. How many of his own citizens will Jinping be willing to slaughter to maintain president for life status? The biggest story of the 21st century is being set up right now in China and all the media seems to be able to focus on is whether Trump banged a pornstar. I think the biggest worry about these Tariffs should be whether the end result is civil unrest in China and what that ends up meaning for the rest of the world. Economies don't just grow forever. The Chinese have gone four decades without contraction and they've maintained that as of late by swiping the credit card using their USD horde as collateral. The horde is dwindling and the bill is coming due. Meanwhile Trump is hacking away at their income sources...

As to why the other nations were targeted:

Well if the goal is to smash Chinese ability to dump their products on the world market, you can't very well just let them send it all to the EU and Canada essentially causing those markets to just dump their supply into the US instead.

There was just an article a while back about a Chinese billionaire stashing $2 billion worth of aluminum ignots in the Mexico desert for export and sale to the US or NA market. China has more of these metals than they have places to send it. The more places to send it that are taken off the table, the more effective the policy.

Moving from Reddit broke the link in the middle. Fixed version.