Trump Administration: China as Strategic Opponent Not Climate Partner
by
Roy Morrison
The Trump administration's animus directed at China is no longer rooted in U.S. concerns about access to Chinese markets, opportunities for U.S.direct investment and ownership of Chinese companies, or intellectual property rights.
This was the justification for the trade war launched by Trump beginning with tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. These expanded to 10% to 25% tariffs on many billions of dollars worth of Chinese exports sparking China imposing countervailing duties on American exports. What has emerged in recent weeks is much more than just a trade spat that could be quickly resolved through bi-lateral talks.
The U.S. is now making the demand that China abandon its “Made inChina 2025” program for China to become a major global player in cutting age 21st century technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence,advanced vehicles, genomics and medicine. This is not just talk.
The 2019 National DefenseAuthorization Act mandates the Treasury and Commerce Depts. to draft regulations over the next 18 months limiting China's ability to access U.S. companies to obtain technology, data, infrastructure deemed to be of national security significance. U.S. national security under the Trump administration has now come to mean limiting the ability of China to develop new high technology products that supposedly represent a security threat to the United States and its global influence.
There are a number of things that are deeply wrong and counterproductive about this stance. First,while Donald Trump is likely unaware, China has become global leader in a number of high technology fields, not the follower. China is now global leader in quantum computing, having successfully transmitted quantum data signals from a Chinese satelite. China has emerged as global leader in super computing in terms of both speed and number of machines. China is global leader in development and production of lithium battery technology. China, by good fortune, has the world's largest deposits of lithium and other trace metals important for high technologies. China, of course, is global leader in solar photovoltaic and wind machine production and cost.
The United States has everything to gain by collaboration with China in co-operation and co-development of solutions to global ecological problems that include rapid development and deployment of a wide range of high technologies in energy, agriculture, aquaculture, and forestry. This means trillions of dollars of profitable investment for both U.S. and for China.
China as Global Investor
China's importance as investor and lender is of growing importance around the world, and unfortunately is viewed as a threat, and not an opportunity by theU.S. to leverage the resources of both nations for greater effect.China's huge Belt and Road initiative is viewed as a danger and part of a zero sum game, and not an opportunity to produce a bigger and more integrated economic pie for all that can pursue ecologically sustainable investments.
Ata time when the United states is cutting foreign assistance and loans, China is stepping in as a global source of aid and capital.For example, the Trump administration sought for 2018 a $617million dollar cut, a 36% reduction, in foreign assistance accounts managed by US AID for Latin America and the Caribbean. China on the other hand is expanding trade, investment, and assistance in LatinAmerica.
A Boston University study found that Latin and Caribbean extractive exports to China has grown while exports to the U.S. have declined. “In other words, China is effectively substituting for the traditional relationship with the US for these goods.”
Diego Ramiro Guelar, Argentina’s ambassador to China insisted this year that China is as important to Latin America as the U.S. Argentina is interested in pursuing in 2019 a free trade accord between LatinAmerica and China. While Trump builds walls, China will take advantage of the new opportunity as U.S. withdraws.
The United States has zero chance to force China to accept a perpetual role as low cost and low technology assembler and manufacturer. The U.S. does have a chance to damage the global economic order, and a chance to push nations of the world to find economic paths that exclude the U.S.
This is already in progress asIran, Germany, France, Russia, and China plan non-dollar means to continue Iranian oil exports this fall in the face of U.S.sanctions.We will find out if the Trump administration is so reckless to attempt to impose real penalties on these nations for opposingDonald Trump's counterproductive Iranian policies.
The long-term danger for the U.S.of many more years of Trump's America First policies is encouragement of the world's other major economies to find new financial arrangements without the dollar and end the reign of the dollar as global reserve currency. That would be catastrophic for a U.S.government attempting to finance a now one trillion dollar annual budget deficit in a world where the value of the dollar plunges and effective U.S.interest rates soar.
There is a fundamental difference between being a very rich debtor and a very rich creditor. DonaldTrump always followed the bankrupcy solution to resolve his unpayable debt. That would be financially catastrophic for the U.S. But the far larger risk the U.S.and China face is ecological, not financial.
U.S. and China Must WorkCooperatively
It is an existential necessity forboth the U.S. and China, as the world's two largest economies, to work together to face the challenges posed by global climate disaster and use this as the opportunity for sustainable global economic growth. The threats of failing to do so are dire for both the UnitedStates and for China.
As the recent October 2018 report from the IPCC makes clear, the world faces disastrous consequences if climate change exceeds 2 degree centigrade. The current path,based on present carbon dioxide and methane emissions, despite Paris climate accord pledges, is for a catastrophic a 4 degree centigrade(7 degree fahrenheit) temperature increase.
A future world map from the Britain's NewScientist publication of what a 7 degree average fahrenheit temperature increase will mean is terrifying. The United States, beyond Alaska and Hawaii , is largely uninhabitable south of a strip from northern Montana to Michigan, as is southern China and southern Europe. Green areas suitable for human habitation include Canada from the 49th parallel to the now warm high Arctic, Scandinavia, much of Northern and Siberian Russia, parts of Greenland, parts of southern Chile andArgentina, and large parts of a warm Western Antarctica.
https://www.paragkhanna.com/home/2016/3/9/the-world-4-degrees-warmer
TheNew Scientist finds “alligators basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 percent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4 °C.”
As global temperature change accelerates so to will famine, epidemics, failed states, economic collapse, war, mass migration of the desperate billions of climate refugees that include some from countries like India, Pakistan,Israel armed with nuclear weapons.
We have a choice.
Cooperation, not conflict, betweenChina and the U.S. on climate is a crucial place to start.
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RoyMorrison's latest book is BuildingAn Ecological Civilization: Outline for Getting from Here to There,forthcoming in 2019.
FactCheck
2019Defense Authorization Act and China
“TeamTrump Preps an Uppercut to the Chinese Economy: Thetrade war could be just the beginning.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-preps-an-uppercut-to-the-chinese-economy
Curbs on Chinese Investment
SouthChina Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/2163974/its-not-just-us-around-world-doors-are-shutting-chinese
ChinaOverseas Investment
SouthChina Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com› News › China
Jan12, 2017 - China'sforeign direct investments soared40 percent to a record US$190 billion in 2016 from a year earlier,according to a study released on ...
Chart of China Overseas Investment by Country
http://www.adg-fad.org/en/laus/project/chinas-overseas-investments
U.S. Foreign Assistance toLatin America Cut
U.S.Foreign Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean: FY2018Appropriations Peter J. Meyer
Congressional Research Service
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45089.pdf
China-Latin America EconomicBulletin 2017 Edition
Boston University: Global EconomicGovernance Initiative
Rebecca Ray and Kevin P. Gallagher
https://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/files/2014/11/Economic-Bulletin.16-17-Bulletin.Draft_.pdf
Argentina: China Just asImportant as U.S.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2142842/china-just-important-south-america-us-why-argentina
NewScientist
“Howto Survive the Coming Century”
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126971-700-how-to-survive-the-coming-century/