COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE HILL
Marine Corps leader
warns that China is 'weaponizing capital'
This just has to be one of the dumbest comments I 've ever
read from a high-ranking person.
The Marine simply has no idea what he is talking about.
But then Marines are not noted for their intelligence.
When a country accumulates large reserves of another
county's currency through the normal operation of trade, then using some that
currency reserve to purchase assets is completely normal and the expected thing
to do.
China's reserves of US currency would not build up so
heavily if they could buy American products in return for what they send
America, but America simply makes too few things, at competitive prices, for
that to be possible.
China today is the world's manufacturer. It makes almost
anything anyone anywhere wants for a competitive price.
The US enjoyed that position for a while after WW II when
all its competitors were flattened, but it can never regain it again, no matter
what Trump and the Marines say.
The world today is buzzing with competitors in many, many
things, competitors who do things better and cheaper than America does them. And
more of them are just going to keep coming. That is just a fact and a fact that
is not going away.
It's especially ridiculous to hear any American talking
about normal direct investment as though it were an evil, both because the statement
is economically obtuse and because this is what America itself has done for so
long abroad.
Time to grow up, America, and deal with the realities of the
world, not indulge in childish fantasies that it can be 1954 again.
You never solve any problem by pretending it is not there,
but so many Americans do this about international trade, not recognizing that
America is noncompetitive over a whole range of economic activities and not
recognizing what a different world it is, one brimming with competitors,
compared to 1954.
A good start for America might actually be to trim itself
down, getting rid of the bloated, unproductive ball-and-chain it drags around
with its military and security agencies – all of it at outrageously high cost –
and stop listening to ignorant economic views from Marines.
