America revels in its role as cancer of the world

[armati]

N Korea?

Thats why the invasion plans?

Could be I guess, the americans invade or overthrow govs. all over the world for resources.

[DoomYoshi]

Trivia Time: What's the only place worse than North Korea?

Answer: China... out of the frying pan and into the fire!
https://www.koreafuture.org/report/sex-slaves

[waauw]

Trivia Time: What's the only place worse than North Korea?

Yemen.

[mrswdk]

The rude and unnecessarily aggressive child that is the US Government is about to be put on the naughty step and have its allowance stopped by the new world leader - China - as the global community runs out of extra chances and special treatment for the US:

"China is seriously considering restricting rare earth exports to the US," tweeted the editor of Chinese state-run Global Times this week.

Around 80% of the rare earths imported by the United States comes from China, according to US government data.

Estonia, France and Japan also supply processed rare earths to the US, but the original ore comes from China.

The one rare earth mine operating in the United States sends its ore to China for processing - and already faces a 25% import tariff imposed by China.

The restriction of exports to the United States, if enforced, could have a major impact on major US industries worth trillions of dollars that rely on rare earth minerals.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48366074

[mrswdk]

America likes to punish ordinary Iranian and North Korean people with economic sanctions, and attack Chinese and European companies out of naked protectionism. How will the bully feel when it gets a taste of its own medicine?

[GoranZ]

America likes to punish ordinary Iranian and North Korean people with economic sanctions, and attack Chinese and European companies out of naked protectionism. How will the bully feel when it gets a taste of its own medicine?

You are asking wrong question... The correct one: Can US withstand a taste of its own medicine? And the answer is... No
So they better not get to that point

[mrswdk]

How will the bully feel? Eliminated

[GoranZ]

Can US defense industry survive the Chinese "nuclear" response? China could use rare earth metals embargo to land killer blow on US defense industry

[mrswdk]

The drawbridge continues to rise:

Trump announces tariffs on Mexico in latest anti-immigration measure

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48469408

[2dimes]

+6 -6 +6 -5 +5 -5 +5
+4 -4 +5 -4
+5 -5 +6 -6 +6 -5 +5 -5 +5
+4 -5 +5 -4 +4

[waauw]

Can US defense industry survive the Chinese "nuclear" response? China could use rare earth metals embargo to land killer blow on US defense industry

They probably can. It's likely the reason they restarted their own little bit of rare earth mining. The ones who would struggle is their private sector. This being said, China is playing an equally dangerous game as the USA right now. Google basically screwed the future of the Android OS in China, but China threatening to cut the US off of rare earths could hold the same effect. The whole world could start reopening their rare earth mines, thereby weakening China's influence globally.

Both sides need to come back to the table and stop escalating. The global economy is going to plunge into recession.

[HitRed]

Texas is building the first Rare Earth Metal refinery outside China.

I would also like to state that most Rare Earths aren't rare. Just not found in mine-able quantities.

[Dukasaur]

One benefit of this brouhaha might be that companies invest in improving the efficiency of electronic recycling.

[waauw]

Texas is building the first Rare Earth Metal refinery outside China.

I would also like to state that most Rare Earths aren't rare. Just not found in mine-able quantities.

Maybe the first Rare Earth Metal refinery in the USA. Because multiple countries already have such refineries.

[GoranZ]

Can US defense industry survive the Chinese "nuclear" response? China could use rare earth metals embargo to land killer blow on US defense industry

They probably can. It's likely the reason they restarted their own little bit of rare earth mining. The ones who would struggle is their private sector. This being said, China is playing an equally dangerous game as the USA right now. Google basically screwed the future of the Android OS in China, but China threatening to cut the US off of rare earths could hold the same effect. The whole world could start reopening their rare earth mines, thereby weakening China's influence globally.

I can not agree that the whole world can restart their mines for extraction of rare earth metals. The issue is that although there are location outside of China they are very expensive for mining. At the moment China has monopoly over mining of rare earth metals because they are mining for the whole world.
So US can restart their mines but at what price will they mine them? Math is still on Chinese side

Both sides need to come back to the table and stop escalating. The global economy is going to plunge into recession.

I dont think this will happen. US sanctions towards China, EU, Mexico, Russia and good part of the world are marking the end of globalization as we know it. The same globalization that rebuilded the world after WWII.
But if the world goes into recession US wont come out on top. China might tho. And the Russians are preparing for the next global recession for some time... Clever Putin

[Bernie Sanders]

Trade war will hurt everyone, but China will suffer the worst with sky high unemployment. This will result in unrest and a possible regime change.

[waauw]

Can US defense industry survive the Chinese "nuclear" response? China could use rare earth metals embargo to land killer blow on US defense industry

They probably can. It's likely the reason they restarted their own little bit of rare earth mining. The ones who would struggle is their private sector. This being said, China is playing an equally dangerous game as the USA right now. Google basically screwed the future of the Android OS in China, but China threatening to cut the US off of rare earths could hold the same effect. The whole world could start reopening their rare earth mines, thereby weakening China's influence globally.

I can not agree that the whole world can restart their mines for extraction of rare earth metals. The issue is that although there are location outside of China they are very expensive for mining. At the moment China has monopoly over mining of rare earth metals because they are mining for the whole world.
So US can restart their mines but at what price will they mine them? Math is still on Chinese side

Costs can be overcome. The USA has plenty mineable rare earths in its soil. If ever China were to cut anybody off, prices would skyrocket, making many deposits suddenly financially feasible. And even if prices were not to rise, I'm willing to bet Washington is willing to mine these metals at a loss if national security were at stake. If China had thought it could just waltz through the American military by just cutting them off from REE's, they would've done so a long time ago.

All this is not even taking into account all the mines that were closed globally because of environmental issues, not cost issues. A lot of countries might reconsider their decisions if necessity were to demand it.

Both sides need to come back to the table and stop escalating. The global economy is going to plunge into recession.

I dont think this will happen. US sanctions towards China, EU, Mexico, Russia and good part of the world are marking the end of globalization as we know it. The same globalization that rebuilded the world after WWII.
But if the world goes into recession US wont come out on top. China might tho. And the Russians are preparing for the next global recession for some time... Clever Putin

Russia is fucked if the world goes into recession. It already has economic issues and its dependence on oil and gas would add to that. Commodities are highly cyclical and Russia lacks the technology to mine many of its deposits. Putin might boast about military this, military that, but in the end he has withdrawn a lot of his previous renovation plans because Russia simply didn't have the financial means of renovating their entire military. Their new high-grade military techs are worthless if they can't afford to build them on a mass scale.

Now I realize a lot of alternative media like to prop up China and Russia because they're buying gold and acquiring currency reserves, but those reserves are actually extremely vulnerable. The price of any currency, including gold, can be wiped out or seized in an instant. Same with debts. It would cause a lot of social and political uproar, but it can be done. What a lot of these alternative propagators don't mention is what can not be wiped out by any economic or financial meltdown: commodities, technologies, a skilled and educated work-force, infrastructure and bureaucracy.

Most of these apply to the USA, Europe and China. Very few of these apply to Russia. Russia has mineral deposits, but no noteworthy civil technologies, no highly skilled and educated work-force, too little infrastructure and a highly corrupt bureaucracy.

[mrswdk]

Trade war will hurt everyone, but China will suffer the worst with sky high unemployment. This will result in unrest and a possible regime change.

Looks like someone set Bern's policy statements to '1950'. Can we do a factory restart on him?

[GoranZ]

Trade war will hurt everyone, but China will suffer the worst with sky high unemployment. This will result in unrest and a possible regime change.

As seen in Russia Putin is still there, be sure the same will happen with China.
Chinese as well as Russians can withstand a lot more then you think. The same can not be said for Americans tho. But I hope it wont come to testing that

[jimboston]

He said unrest and possible regime change.

The US won’t have a complete regime change if we go through a recession. We could get a new political party, there could be riots, it’s unlikely our whole system of gov’t would be toppled. The same is not true for China or Russia.

No one is saying that (if there were a regime change in either country) that the resulting regime would be more democratic or peaceful. It could be more totalitarian more repressive. I don’t know enough about the internal politics of either country to predict how it would shake out. I do however feel confident that neither political system is very stable relative to our own.

[mrswdk]

I do however feel confident that neither political system is very stable relative to our own.

The shrill talking heads in Western media have predicted that the Chinese government is on the verge of collapse pretty much every year for the last three decades. So far they've been wrong every year to date. The Chinese government, and political system more generally, do actually have pretty widespread support among the general population (check out page 41 of this Edelman Trust Barometer report), and there are a whole host of reasons why:

• The economy is strong, China's power is increasing and the blatant hostility and aggression America is showing towards China these days just serves to make people rally around the Chinese government even more firmly.
• Russia made a fairly rapid switch from a political system vaguely similar to China's to a different one at the start of the 1990s and look what's happened to Russia's economy ever since.
• Let's say you were to get rid of China's current political system. What would you replace it with? Foreign commentators seem to assume that the current US and European models of government represent the most advanced forms of government and that everyone in the world must surely want to 'progress' towards these. That's not actually true and, in China at least, you're unlikely to find many people who would want to do so. The disruption of the transition period aside, Chinese people look at other political systems abroad (Congress constantly gridlocked by partisan bickering, the UK mired in Brexit, etc.) and wonder, what's desirable about that?
• Even ignoring the points above, the current government is unlikely to cede power to anything short of an armed rebellion, and no one in China wants their country turned into another Syria or Libya.

[GoranZ]

[jusplay4fun]

America is the cancer? Really?

tiananmen square massacre

Twenty-five years ago Wednesday, Chinese troops violently retook the square in Beijing where pro-democracy protesters had set up camp for weeks. The Tiananmen Square massacre left an unknown number dead, with some estimates in the thousands, and smothered a democratic movement. But after a quarter-century—and a thorough attempt by the Chinese government to conceal the events that unfolded that June—our collective memory is sometimes limited to not much more than an image of a man defiantly standing in front of a tank.

Chinese authorities still censor information about the massacre

More than a quarter century after the massacre, the Chinese government’s extensive censorship apparatus—which employs two million online censors — still rigorously blocks information about the protest. The ban is so total that not only is the search term “Tiananmen Square” censored, but so too are related words and phrases. Authorities have even gone as far as blocking combinations of the numbers 6, 4, 1989 that might obliquely reference the date of the protest, June 4, 1989. So for many members of the world’s largest online population, the facts about the bloody crackdown have been erased.

[GoranZ]

Will he dare?

Trump Threatens China With New Tariffs Worth $300 Billion

I think he is bluffing

[mookiemcgee]

Will he dare?

Trump Threatens China With New Tariffs Worth $300 Billion

I think he is bluffing

I wouldn't count on it... much as I wish he was bluffing, so far he's been calling down to the river because he thinks he has the best hand. I think the larger question is who actually has the best hand. Jury very much out on that one IMO