China is unlikely to overcome its dependence on the rest of the world for food in this century. International trade disruptions have the potential to put China into a famine situation. They have to be nice to the rest of the world or face hunger. Their government won’t survive their very large middle class going hungry.
From a humanitarian point of view, I doubt if the world would let that happen.
From an economic point of view, I doubt if the US would let that happen.
U.S. exports of agricultural products to China totaled $14 billion in 2019, the United States' 3rd largest agricultural export market.
That would be an awful lot of angry US farmers, even if many of them labor under the umbrella of Big Farm Industry.
And I thought China’s interest in Africa is driven by rare earth metals.
United kingdom has been the first world power for almost one century, and has chosen with the repelling of corn laws to become food dependants from imports.
“Substitutes” That would go for quite a few goods and services.
If we want to keep our creature comforts at an affordable level, we need to have global cooperation. I think that’s what these anti-globalists don’t get.
From a humanitarian point of view, I doubt if the world would let that happen.
From an economic point of view, I doubt if the US would let that happen.
Per Wiki: For Fiscal Year 2020 (FY2020), the Department of Defense’s budget authority is approximately $721.5 billion. Compare that with the $14 billion in food we sold to China. Our DOD could buy all the agricultural products that would normally go to China for the cost of a few advanced aircraft.
If China were to star a war with the USA we could defeat them more easily and more inexpensively with international trade disruptions than with bombs. China is dependent on food imports and their economy is based on exports. They depend on the rest of the world for their food and their economy.
China’s investments are probably not going to consider the small holder farmer, or promote democracy.
Probably? What reason would they have to promote trade with thousands of small farmers or to promote Democracy? None. I would expect them to try to turn nations in Africa into dependencies like the USSR did to Cuba. A little corruption would go a long way towards achieving control in a third-world nation. China's history shows us that the Communist Party wouldn't oppose genocide to get their way.
If we want to keep our creature comforts at an affordable level, we need to have global cooperation. I think that’s what these anti-globalists don’t get.
Totally wrong. The USA is not dependent on any other nation for anything we need. We do not need global cooperation; it is good for us for those things that we want, but we don't need it to satisfy our wants.
The one sure-fire way to become dependent on other nations is globalism.
Perhaps more important, when it comes to making solar and wind equipment, the U.S. simply isn’t that big a player. There is only one U.S. company (General Electric Co.) among the global top 10 wind turbine manufacturers, and one (First Solar Inc., which does most of its manufacturing in Malaysia) among the top 10 solar-cell makers. The wind industry is headquartered in Europe, and the solar industry increasingly in China.
If Biden’s Green New Deal eliminates Trump’s import duties on Chinese manufactured solar panels it will increase our dependence on China’s technology and production. Green at what price?
Totally wrong. The USA is not dependent on any other nation for anything we need. We do not need global cooperation; it is good for us for those things that we want, but we don’t need it to satisfy our wants.
The one sure-fire way to become dependent on other nations is globalism.
You totally missed the point.
No, we don’t NEED anyone else. But here’s a Top 10 list of products (translate into industries) that would be impacted by turning into an isolated country like North Korea:
The one sure-fire way to become dependent on other nations is globalism.
Globalism is inevitable.
Global warming is a purely global problem and we are in many ways dependent on what other nations do to the earth’s atmosphere.!
International cooperation in combating pandemics is paramount lest everybody dies. The human race is the only animal that does not just adapt to its environment, but actively changes it. What people in China do affects everyone in the world eventually and vice versa. That is why we enter into cooperative agreements and mutual assistance in several areas that affect every living thing on earth.
The earth has vast but limited resources which must be shared by all. Trade agreements and sharing scientific research is beneficial to all nations.
Whether we like it or not humans are not local species but global species. Better to have peace than war.
Seems to me all roads lead back to our inability to conceptualize the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide, for instance:
If we want to keep our creature comforts at an affordable level, we need to have global cooperation.
What about Earth's cooperation?
I couldn’t help but notice “climate,” “weather”, “arable land” hasn’t even gotten a nod in the above comments.
What if keeping our current level of creature comforts is a physical impossibility for Earth to maintain for us?
@#340228
What are you talking about - Repeal of the Corn Laws?
I went and looked at the link. It’s ancient history.
The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and grain ("corn") enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846.
The word ‘corn’ in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley.
They were designed to keep grain prices high to favour domestic producers, and represented British mercantilism.[a] The Corn Laws blocked the import of cheap grain, initially by simply forbidding importation below a set price, and later by imposing steep import duties, making it too expensive to import grain from abroad, even when food supplies were short. …
Repeal[edit]
In 1845 and 1846, the first two years of Great Famine in Ireland, there was a disastrous fall in food supplies. Prime Minister Peel called for repeal despite the opposition of most of his Conservative Party. The Anti-Corn Law League played a minor role in the passage of legislation—it had paved the way through its agitation but was now on the sidelines.[30] On 27 January 1846, Peel gave his government’s plan.
He said that the Corn Laws would be abolished on 1 February 1849 after three years of gradual reductions of the tariff, leaving only a 1 shilling duty per quarter.[31]Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck emerged as the most forceful opponents of repeal in Parliamentary debates, arguing that repeal would weaken landowners socially and politically and therefore destroy the “territorial constitution” of Britain by empowering commercial interests.[32] …
I couldn’t help but notice “climate,” “weather”, “arable land” hasn’t even gotten a nod in the above comments.
What if keeping our current level of creature comforts is a physical impossibility for Earth to maintain for us?
Yes, there’s that too.
Let China produce the “dirty” products and pollute their water, land and air, and we’ll just hand over the Benjamins and keep our people safe and clean. }
Globalism depends on political cooperation, something republicans are doing their best to destroy.
Globalism depends on maintaining trade routes, this depends on nice predictable non-destructive weather patterns.
Sadly for those who haven’t noticed weather patterns are intensifying, in strength of destructive power and chaotic delivery, with nothing but an increasing tempo of destruction to be expected - considering we’ve done nothing of substance to slow down our expectations or the amount of CO2 we are dumping into our atmosphere and oceans.
In yo head it’s all wonderful, imagine the possibilities, now let’s watch the fireworks display - Still, in the morning we wake up to the reality of the physical landscape of our planet, the thing that provides our only life support system and the only home humanity will ever know.
Totally wrong. The USA is not dependent on any other nation for anything we need.
It's always gut wrenchingly fascinating how people can ignore how much America has sucked out of other nations, from physical resources to intellectual ones. But, that part of this equation gets totally ignored by the Me First crowd. No matter how much we take, it's always others that owe us, within that trumpkin republican mindset. Victim role playing is what they do best.
I mean what’s the use of history if people are incapable learning anything from it.
@thatoneguy I doubt it could be interpreted that a world takeover can be interpreted from China beginning to dominate economically, though the repercussions of the U.S. not leading in this category will certainly be increasingly significant, IMHO.
This also raises the question: In what other areas will the U.S. lose the global advantage if a combination of challenging factors presents itself and we happen to have leadership in place who imagine matters can be handled as though this were the mid 20th Century?
Well, we have a lot to lose. I think the next thing to go is our military dominance.
