Wednesday, 23 June 2021

Hitting back at China - imports ban and trade war?

 Following on from the last post, suggesting we try a worldwide bond default to de-stabilise China if it continues to deny its involvement in allowing Corona to escape into the global population, another way would be trade sanctions. 

China thrives on trade, this is why it invests so much in its Belt and Road programme to connect it to the world to allow its goods to flow. These goods generate the hard currency needed to keep improving its economy. 

Of course, China produces a huge amount of the key goods for the world and even though is viewed as short of commodities, has a strong market on key elements such as rare earths - hence dominating mobile phone production for example. 

But we could also use our 'Green Agenda" to stop say importing hard plastic products or things like steel that we know are produce using high energy processes. This may hurt the UK economy in some ways, but there are other suppliers and some domestic businesses could step in. 

China's reaction is unlikely to hurt us more, we export so little to them really. Burberry might not like it. However, US and Germany may not be so supportive of this stance as it is a bigger proportion of their GDP in exports. 

China won't like the 'war' that occurs as it will deeply damage its image so it still remains a good shout, not like hitting them in their pocket directly though perhaps.  

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wasn't this essentially US policy during the Trump years?

Sackerson said...

Why a war? See what that's done for Britain in the 20th century. Just a system of tariffs to rebalance trade and protect our economy.

E-K said...

And I believe the green agenda IS being used to hit back at China (as I mentioned in the last thread.)

This is going to make us all poor, no doubt about it. No money to spend. That's the way to hit China and force us to rebalance without direct confrontation though.

The only thing is that cheap Chinese imports is what people are resorting to to fight off the effects of real inflation. Perhaps some limits on ebay and Amazon too.

Anonymous said...

What the US might do.
Exchange the long term low interest Chinese loans made to second world countries for discounted US ones. Then the US imposes an aggregate haircut on them and distributes the proceeds as US bonds globally.

Rich

Sackerson said...

@E-K: prices up, wages up even more. The opposite of what we've seen for decades: domestic wages kept down by cheap imports. Maybe controlled inflation could be our friend.

Anonymous said...

We absolutely must open the Cumbria mine, unless we plan to stop using steel, which I very much doubt. AFAIK you can't make steel without coking coal, which the mine will produce.

At present we import coking coal. Absolute no brainer.

Don Cox said...

Assuming that the COVID virus is a lab escape (which is not certain), what exactly have the Chinese authorities done wrong ?

As I see it, their error was to try to cover up the accident, suppress the whistleblower, and save face. Such reactions are not unknown in Britain, and I think are cause for the sacking or demotion of the local authorities.

But not for a trade war. The next virus escape could well be from a British lab.

Don Cox

E-K said...

Sackerson

The Mars bar is a reliable measure of inflation. Have you seen the size of one recently ?

I thought it was fun size and I'd been sold it by mistake.

(Shrinkflation.)

visc said...

Ah I remember the days when lab leaks questions were just conspiracy theories and should on no account be listened to.

Funny how a change of US president, a few sanctioned MSM articles and we've all always wondered if it was the case - not weak minded at all, no siree.

Elby the Beserk said...

Unknown said...

But not for a trade war. The next virus escape could well be from a British lab.

Don Cox

6:36 pm
===============================

Correct, Don. Indeed, remember the last Foot & Mouth epidemic, that cost farmers billions and a few lives along the way? Escaped via the waste disposal system at a DEFRA* Lab.

How did that happen? Well, it may be something to do that some months before, David Miliband (remember him?) refused to stump up £50k to upgrade the waste disposal system.

However, F&M does not really compare with Covid with all sorts of weird spike proteins, does it?

Lot of China apologists about. Good luck with that.

Elby the Beserk said...

Long article on "lab escape or nature".

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

Well worth reading.

Don Cox said...

Yes, excellent and informative article. Thanks for the link.

I doubt if it's the last word.

Don Cox