I think JD Vance marginally better than Biden. ‘I don’t like China:’ What JD Vance has said about Beijing | Nation/World 我認為 JD 萬斯比拜登稍好。 「我不喜歡中國：」JD Vance 對北京的評價 |國家/世界
I do agree that it’s absurd to blame China for everything, in particular “stealing jobs”. A job is not property you own. What you own is your own labor power, not the job it is applied to.
If that’s the case, how do you steal a job?
Do it better and cheaper? That’s not stealing, in mainstream thinking, that’s called capitalism–capitalist market competition–and it’s supposed to be the virtue of capitalism: competition driving goods cheaper.
So is he saying that Capitalism is theft?
Which it is, but not because of competition between workers “stealing jobs from each other”, but because the ruling capitalist class steals value from the workers.
Remember, Biden’s current policy is that of Kurt Campbell, Blinken, Sullivan & the China hawk CNAS crew. They want war. Kinetic war. And they are trying to provoke it ASAP.
Trump has said, for what it’s worth, he would not defend Taiwan, and that it’s not our business. He doesn’t care about them. He just wants money from them.
Vance in his VP acceptance speech, did say that he would “stop the CCP building their middle class on the backs of American citizens…no more free rides”, and that “we were flooded with Chinese goods”, but I thought it was interesting that he laid the blame on Joe Biden–“Thanks to these policies that Joe Biden and other out-of-touch politicians gave us”–and”corrupt washington insiders”– “the American ruling class wrote the checks”.
Likewise, when he says “China and the Cartels sent Fentanyl”, he says it was “done with Wall Street”.
I don’t know if it’s because he
a) knows the population don’t believe that the Chinese are responsible, but he still has to throw red meat to the China hawks
b) believes that the ruling class are responsible, but wants to soften his critique by blaming China in the mix.
I see his critique of China not as “China did this to us” (which is the Biden administration’s position”, but that “China did this in collusion with Biden”, or “Biden gave the Chinese permission to do this to us”. This distributes the target back to the Dems. That allows for some triangulated possibilities.
Because his “China bad” position is tied to “Out of Ukraine”, it creates friction with the hawks.
Likewise, Trump wants to dismantle NATO, at least that seems to be what NATO thinks. These frictions could slow down the acceleration to war. And even if they don’t, the cut-and-run is demoralizing for the proxies who have to do the real fighting, and it signals US weakness to the rest of the world: since when did the US have to penny-pinch when it comes to war? If you have to count your pennies and pick your battles, i.e. rob-peter-to-pay-paul, maybe you shouldn’t go to war at all.
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