The Trade War Distraction: Huawei And Linchpin Theory
Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.com
Wednesday, 12 December 2018
Since the beginning of this year, I have been warning that trade tariffs initiated by Donald Trump would develop into a full-blown trade war with China, and perhaps other nations, and that the timing of this trade war is rather suspicious. Suspicious how? Almost every instance of further escalation was made by Trump around the exact time that the Federal Reserve was also making a large cut to its balance sheet or raising interest rates. Instead of focusing on the fact that extreme volatility has returned to markets because central banks are pulling the plug on life support, the mainstream media is holding up the trade war as the ultimate culprit behind the accelerating crash.
In other words, Trump’s trade war is acting as a perfect distraction from the crisis which the banking establishment has now deliberately triggered.
The initial response to my suggestion by a minority of liberty movement activists and skeptics was outright denial. Some people argued that the trade war would be over before it even began and that China would immediately capitulate in fear of losing the U.S. consumer market. Others argued that the trade war “had been started by the Chinese years ago” and Trump was simply “fighting back.”
Clearly, the trade war is not fading away as many assumed. As I predicted, it is only continuing to grow. And the notion that a trade war is necessary at this time in defense of the U.S. economy ignores certain realities. For example, the trade deficit itself was never “theft” by the Chinese, but a BARTER between the Chinese and the U.S. government and U.S. corporations. In exchange for the Chinese and other trade partners using the dollar as the world reserve currency (and petro-currency) and buying up US treasury debt, U.S. elites have arranged a deficit advantage for China. One could also add China’s cheap labor and low cost manufactured goods as part of that barter as well.
While the American working class got the short end of the stick in this deal, the government and the corporate cabal certainly benefited.
Now, if Trump had pressured corporations to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. in order to reap the rewards of his dramatic tax cuts, tariffs after the fact might make a little more sense. With production back on U.S. soil we would have more economic stability to weather future crisis events. Instead, Trump gave corporations a tax cut for nothing. And instead of using that extra capital to innovate or add value to the real economy, companies used the money to continue artificially propping up their own stock prices through stock buybacks.
The Rest…HERE
