1）
Last night, CNN posted a comment that I found quite interesting, titled ‘China is Armed, Preparing for Trade War 2.0 with Donald Trump’.
What does it mean to be stubborn even after losing a fight? This is it.

When I was doing diplomatic work before, the leaders said that we must stand in the perspective of American thinking and use a critical eye to find out their way of thinking. The best way is to “treat others as they are”.
The article said that when Donald Trump launched the trade war in the summer of 2018, China’s economy was developing at a high speed. There are even rumors that China will soon surpass the United States and become the world’s largest economy.
However, it doesn’t say how well the trade war was fought. According to the American law of thinking, people will not admit the failure. Saying it is tantamount to beating their faces.
A large number of American elites believe that China has made a profound study of the operation of the president-elect in order to deal with it calmly, especially the understanding of Donald Trump’s election platform.
Because it is highly likely that he will launch a 2.0 version of the trade war again after taking office, and China has been preparing for this day for some time now.
Part of the reason is that under the leadership of Joe Biden, Chinese enterprises have actively reduced their dependence on the United States in the first continuous trade war.

In fact, Joe Biden’s approach is more insidious and vicious than that of Trump, accelerating the speed of economic decoupling between China and the United States, which is reflected in trade data.
CNN is very cunning. This is how it describes the United States launching a trade war – through trade diversification, targeted retaliation against American companies, and support for domestic consumption.
The public opinion debate in the United States is powerful. Although it is suppressing and harvesting other countries, it claims to be its own victim, and its ability to distort black and white is worthy of vigilance.
In 2022, bilateral trade between China and the United States reached a historic high. But the US Department of Commerce soon discovered that Mexico became the largest exporter of goods in 2023, as if Mexico’s manufacturing industry had risen overnight, while China’s total exports to the US fell by 20% to $427 billion.
Prior to this, China had maintained its position as the largest exporter to the United States for 20 consecutive years.
Expanding to the G7 level, according to Matthews Asia’s survey data, China’s total exports to the G7 also decreased by 30% in 2023, only 48% from 2000.
That’s right, according to the data released by CNN, our total exports to the G7 have been decreasing, but it’s a different story around the world. China’s share of global exports is 14%, higher than the 13% when tariffs were first imposed in 2018.
That is to say, the trade war provoked by the United States has been a lonely one, and the resilience of China’s manufacturing industry has exceeded the White House’s expectations.

2）
CNN said that the Chinese government is now very confident. For example, at the press conference of the Ministry of Commerce this Friday, Wang Shouwen, the international trade negotiator and deputy minister, said, “We have the ability to resolve and resist the impact of external shocks
Maybe we didn’t understand the weight of this sentence, but Americans took it to heart. Because the US government is very sensitive to the practice of “continuously selling US bonds” or significantly devaluing (offshore) the renminbi.
In the past three years, the Chinese yuan has depreciated by 12%, and the US government can only pretend not to see it, thinking that the problem is not big. In fact, the depreciation of the Chinese yuan has accelerated China’s exports and pushed up its market share.

Worried about the internationalization of the RMB, the Joe Biden government kicked Russia out of the Swift international settlement system, frozen Russian overseas assets, and confiscated the property of Russian millionaires, which was a bit difficult to get away with.
Seemingly seizing a considerable amount of wealth, it has actually seriously damaged the credibility of the US dollar, causing concern among many countries that they may also encounter the same situation as Russia and may not have the ability to respond.
Therefore, after the Russia-Ukraine conflict dried up in 2022, many countries quietly bought RMB as a reserve currency and a substitute for the US dollar.
This is something Americans never thought of before.
When predicting the trade war version 2.0, the article issued a warning – do not expect a simple tit for tat on the tariff issue. It is still unclear how Donald Trump will play.
However, the Americans acknowledge that China’s response measures are more targeted and asymmetric.
The Chinese way of “you hit you, I hit me” makes the US government very painful. Sometimes they think they have won, but they actually lose, and even don’t know how they lost.
In my opinion, the US government’s attempt to create a gimmick of “Xinjiang cotton” and suppress Chinese clothing industry competitors in the international market is very foolish!
Over the years, many European and American companies involved have miscalculated and their market share has actually declined. This is because they have offended China, a super large market, from the source of cotton to the consumer end. International brands like Nike and H&M, which have unlimited glory, have now become marginal brands and are despised by young people.
This is the price of playing political games with the US government!
From the anti sanctions list formulated by China, it can be seen that China’s tactics are very precise, actions are rapid, and the crackdown on suspected illegal activities of American companies in China is also very efficient.
For example, last year, the police raided the Shanghai office of Bain Management Consulting Co., Ltd., making Americans realize that the consequences of non-compliance with Chinese laws are serious, especially China’s zero tolerance for their illegal spying, business and economic intelligence collection.
In addition, the article speculates that China is more likely to retaliate against US agriculture in a trade war. When the US initiates a trade war that harms China’s interests, China will take countermeasures against US agriculture.
Because agriculture is a “sensitive area” of the US government, agricultural products lack market liquidity, and it is difficult to find super large buyers to replace China.

3）
Of course, in the face of Donald Trump 2.0, all export countries to the United States have lingering fears.
Because China is not the only target that Donald Trump intends to levy tariffs.
Donald Trump once said that he was not satisfied with the current average tariff of 2%, and he would impose 10% to 20% tariffs on all imported goods. We also need to impose 100% or 200% tariffs on Mexican made cars, especially companies that transfer manufacturing from the United States to Mexico.
This is his usual rambling, but even with a 50% tariff increase, Mexico’s manufacturing industry cannot tolerate it, which means that goods exported to the United States are no longer competitive unless everyone stops doing business in the American market.

New energy cars and buses are waiting for shipment and export in Lianyungang, photographed on October 31st
Some economists have calculated that if the tariff is raised to 60%, China’s economic growth rate will be reduced by half, and American families will have to pay more than 2600 dollars more each year.
I don’t know how they calculated it, maybe they came to the conclusion by subtracting China’s total exports to the United States from GDP.
But the trade war is not simply about adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Moreover, China itself has a super large market with a population of 1.4 billion, which is our confidence in carrying out internal circulation. Its consumption power is not smaller than that of the US market with only 330 million people, and the whole world is competing to do business with China.
The article states that starting from the end of September, China will implement a new round of economic stimulus plans, believing that it is necessary for anyone who is the next US president to prepare in advance for a new round of trade wars.
Next, China tends to respond to the actual situation.
Moreover, the speed of countermeasures is getting faster and faster.
We say this is called being prepared.