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Originally Posted by bahbahmickey
How do you figure that the trade skirmish between the US & China is hurting the US more than China?
When I brought up the political aspects of the trade war, I meant more in the terms of what it means for Trump and Xi specifically. Xi has basically seized power for life in China at this point and it would take a monumental **** up for him to be removed from power. Trump has re-election coming up this year and yes, the US for the time being at least, has free and fair elections. For the most part, free trade is popular because it leads to economic growth and tariffs lead to well, the opposite of economic growth. Voters like economic growth.
In the long term, China and the US may lose some industry to other countries - Vietnam, Thailand, etc will pick up some of the slack in making cheap stuff for America to import and yes, that will hurt China a bit as they lose cheap manufacturing type jobs to other countries. That said, US exports especially in areas like soybeans are going to get pretty screwed, and aren't going to recover to previous levels because you can't just magically create a new billion people who purchase a ton of soy products out of nowhere and China have started getting their soybeans from Brazil. The US can prop up the industry with bailouts in the short term but in the long term, that business probably isn't coming back, because the Chinese demand for soybeans is now met with supply from another country with cheaper labour in Brazil.
American consumers lose because prices go up so that companies can recoup the cost of tariffs and American workers lose because jobs that rely on exporting their product to China aren't coming back any time soon, it's hard to un-ring that bell once another country with cheaper labor steps up to make whatever the product is that China used to buy from the US
I suppose I can't specifically say that the US will be economically harmed more than China in the long term without doing extensive research on the topic (i've only loosely been following the specifics of the trade war) but it's pretty clear that both countries will be harmed as a result of it on an economic level and the American public has a far lower for economic pain than the Chinese do.
Xi knows that he can hold onto power longer than any individual American president who is willing to put the country through economic pain because Americans can remove that President at the ballot box and American political parties rarely hold onto power for more than 8 years consecutively so he has little incentive to back down as long as the CCP is behind his long game. Sure, you can hurt the Chinese economy a bit if you're the American president at the expense of the American economy, but is America really going to be in a position to do that for decades or however long it would take to break the Chinese economy and make them back down? With absolute political power maybe, but when you're putting swing state farmers out of work and cost of living prices are rising for other swing state voters without seeing equal wage increases at some point you're going to have to back down or be voted out of office because Americans aren't willing to put together long term policy solutions that require short term sacrifice - look at the broad opposition to the Green New Deal and similar measures aimed at tackling global warming. They're the very definition of short term economic pain for long term gain and most Americans are not at all willing to undergo short term pain, which leads to a change in leadership and a change in policy.
China would have to rise to at least peak Soviet Union public enemy #1 status before the average American would be willing to make economic or lifestyle sacrifices just to hurt the Chinese economy and they're not even close. 31% of younger Americans can't even find China on a map (National geographic survey), they're not going to risk their jobs over anything China related and the US is still a huge exporter of goods and that puts tons of jobs at risk - granted a lot of those jobs will be lost to automation in the future but until some form of UBI exists, Americans need those jobs to live. If the Chinese people are dissatisfied their only recourse is revolution and things have to get a LOT worse for there to be a revolution than they do for Americans to decide 'hey I don't like costs of living going up while we have high unemployment maybe it's time for a new President'
Not the most scientific analysis but that's the gist of it without doing substantial research. China can take the economic pain without backing down. America can't, at least, not without the general public hating China a LOT more than they do right now.