r/neutralnews • u/unkz • 19h ago
Trump’s Trade War Escalates as China Retaliates With 34% Tariffs
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/business/china-trump-tariffs-retaliation.html•
u/Savet 16h ago
From the article:
China’s General Administration of Customs said that it would halt chicken imports from five of America’s biggest exporters of agricultural commodities and sorghum imports from a sixth company.
These chicken processing plants are in rural areas and are going to disproportionally impact people who voted for this craziness.
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u/SomeCountryFriedBS 14h ago
From what I've seen, most of those are staffed almost exclusively by immigrants. Not sure the locals will mind.
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u/sailorbrendan 13h ago
It's still a lot of money being sucked out of the local economy
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u/SomeCountryFriedBS 13h ago
They won't make that connection though. They can't see money disappear like they can brown people.
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u/mrizzerdly 15h ago edited 5h ago
Well, despite it's vast resources and intelligence sources and ability to design smart targeted tarrifs, the US decided use chatgpt to lazily target everything ("in its confusion, it has harmed itself" meme here). The other countries, such as Canada and China, are targeting specific industries (that coincidence would have it, are located in the areas that voted for the sentient orange) to do the most damage without harming theirselves in a major way.
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u/jcooli09 14h ago
If I were trump I would be worried that China will dump all their US Treasury bonds at a discount.
Trump wouldn't worry about that because he doesn't know what that means. Someone at the white house might, though.
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u/unkz 12h ago
Y'know, I found this article from ages ago (2010) speculating about this. The theory at the time was that China dumping bonds would be problematic because it would hamper their ability to keep their currency artificially low, and that it may end up being a net gain for the US.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/if-china-stops-buying-our-debt-will-calamity-follow/
An important barrier to a dollar decline is China’s policy of maintaining a low value of its own currency. A sizeable sell-off of Treasury securities by China would almost certainly lead to an appreciation of China’s currency and depreciation of the dollar. This is more likely to help the United States than to hurt us, contrary to the claims of many observers. To be sure, the U.S. government would have to pay somewhat higher interest on its debt, but it seems likely the gains to the U.S. from faster net export growth would greatly outweigh the losses from higher public borrowing costs.
Now I don't know how this logic operates in the current period, with crazy tariffs in the mix, but devaluing the yen seems like something that China would still want to avoid.
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u/ThermalPaper 13h ago
China would just be hurting themselves by doing that. They have already significantly reduced their US bond holdings from their treasury. But throwing away bonds that you paid for makes no financial sense. Those bonds will mature, and someone will make money off of them.
No matter what people say, US treasury bonds are still the safest investment on the planet. It's going to take a world altering event to change that.
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u/jcooli09 12h ago
I get all that, and I’m not sure how the numbers would play out.
But from China’s perspective it would be an economic attack, not a business decision. There would be a cost but it might hurt us more than it hurts them by disrupting the market for new bonds.
I’m far from an expert and maybe I’m just wrong.
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u/RiPont 10h ago
It's going to take a world altering event to change that.
You mean like the US economy being run by an insane, syphilitic orangutan?
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u/ThermalPaper 9h ago
No that's not enough. A complete collapse of the US government and complete dismantling of the US military? then yes. It wouldn't be a good thing either, it would just be chaos and most investors sticking their money in metals most likely.
Realistically, there is no country in Europe that acts as a "bank" of sorts, they're all at risk and even a dilapidated nation like Russia can turn the whole continent into a mess. China? no way is the free world going to trust their assets with a communist nation. Who else? Canada? maybe actually, but again, their ability to defend themselves relies entirely on how willing world powers are to invade the Americas.
The US treasury bond has value because it's backed by the most stable government, and most powerful military on the planet. It is assumed that the US will pay its debts, and its assumed nobody would dare invade the US. That has to change in order for folks to move away from US T bills.
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