I don't disagree, but China was just an example of a country that could feasibly tell them to get bent. What would they do about it? Trade sanctions? Most of the shit in Europe is made in China, too.
The problem with China is that it has taken a hostile non-cooperative approach, ie it’s acting in bad faith. This is evidenced by its diplomatic failures with the region and with the world. The CCP is using economic leverage to coerce smaller players in the global system. The US has its hands tied here, there really are no other options geopolitically.
I live in Europe as well, and sometimes it feels like European leadership is extremely confused: EU is a shitshow that nobody seems to be able to lead (just look at how long it took for agreeing on debt mutualization/Eurobond, Brexit, VDL apologizing to Italy, etc), Germany working with Russia on Nord stream 2 after its actions in Ukraine, Sweden pretending like the lax virus approach has nothing to do with its hyper leveraged banks and heavily indebted households, list goes on... and all we can do is entertain ourselves by making fun of Trump. We are a joke, we can’t even keep our union together. We can’t even pay for our military because daddy America has to foot the bill and if they don’t our European leaders start whining about lack of US leadership.
The US Fed had enough vision to extend the dollar swap lines to more central banks including the Swedish central bank. For the ECB there is a permanent arrangement. Despite the “tough love“ we Europeans are getting on trade from the US, ultimately Europe will soon enough realize the US is its best ally.
We just want freedom and fair economic practices. We won’t get it if we let China play communist game theory with the only planet we have.
Europe has done pretty much everything the US wants, from spying on our citizens to foreign companies paying little to no tax. All you hear these days is how lame Europe is because we don't have a Facebook and how we should all move to the overpriced small town of SV. China doesn't only have a Facebook, it has a Google, an Amazon and an Uber. Which are in many ways surpassing their US counterparts. Since when was trade ever fair? I think the bigger thing here is just that China isn't in the US sphere of influence in terms of politics, but also in terms of culture and it's treating them quite well.
They weren't talking about simply any other country, but China specifically. In terms of government interference and freedom of thought, at this point I think the US is still pretty clearly the better place. From the point of view of the EU, though, it is edging closer to China.
It's not like that's a particular problem for Europe though. The US imports more from China than from any other country, and about the same as it imports from the entire Euro zone.
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