Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke

They are not, if you take the larger context into account - and that is China and their saber rattling not just against Taiwan but also against everyone else in what China thinks is "their" influence sphere such as the Philippines.

Russia's warmongering (not just in Ukraine, but also via Syria, Iran and Yemen!) is breaking apart both the US and EU internally - recent elections have shown that both populations are pretty much fed up with the wars and their consequences, and once enough countries either fall to Putin's 5th column outright or their governments pull a Chamberlain, China can be relatively certain no one will intervene too much when they decide that now is the best time to annex other countries.

Of course that can and does also happen in democracies, but at least most reasonable democracies have some sort of "checks and balances" that at least prevents open war from breaking out.

American Secretary of Defense: "Mr. President, the Chinese just destroyed our Naval base in the Philippines, killing hundreds of US servicemen. As part of a plan to annex the country or something."

American president: "Let's not intervene too much."

So yeah, the US absolutely got outplayed here.

The only response the entire West was able to give in years of Chinese transgressions were strong words, about as effective as "thoughts and prayers". China is a bully that escalates continuously (similar to Russia's behavior in Syria with the countless "red lines" that were crossed, eventually including chemical weapons) and needs to be brought to its knees before they one day trigger WW3 by accident.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-coast-gua...

[2] https://maritime-executive.com/article/philippine-official-a...

I think it's unlikely that the world will pick an economic partner that:

- builds 90% of the new coal fired plants while the rest of the world (including the US) is decarbonizing

- has 280+% debt to GDP ratio

- has capital controls on its currency (the real exchange rate could change suddenly at the drop of a hat)

Well at least in prior crises, the US had sensible leadership on both sides that was willing to put country before party.

The 47th however? Not just the man himself but especially the cabinet picks are an utter joke. None of the currently known picks are known for any kind of competence or even experience in their respective fields, and there are ideas floating to have the Senate go into recess so the 47th can appoint them without the usual review process - astonishing in itself given that the Republicans control the full Congress, they shouldn't have to fear any of their candidates not getting past the Senate. What politics they want to follow is just as dangerous - Musk and DOGE slashing 2 trillion $ from government expenditure for example, large parts of the government will literally be unable to do their job (which is, among others, to handle crises).

But I'm also well aware of the fact the US has gone through extremely dark periods and its past success is not a promise of future success. At the end of the day a country very possibly plunged into Great Depression II and almost certainly with trade policy changing by the day is not a good trading partner.

There is a very real possibility that we deport our way into a famine. The US economy cannot possibly sustain the type of deportations that have been promised and are already being put into motion by the incoming administration.

As far as stability goes, the comment above you talked about a stable trading partner, not a stable economy. China is probably more stable as a trading partner than the US is. The US changes trade policy too often.

Obviously most of that devastation was from the war itself, but if every enslaved person in the country were shipped back to Africa (as many proposed at the time), it absolutely would've had deeply negative near-term consequences. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that economies don't actually depend on labor. Dismissible on its face! And to be explicit: those near-term consequences were morally necessary to bear anyway.

> In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.

Not sure what this is responding to, tbh

That this is not as big a deal as you think was the reason for my grandparent post. The "US citizens wary" thing can reverse itself the moment Americans are killed by a hostile adversary.

> Not sure what this is responding to, tbh

I think this is related to this here:

> The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying citizens legal wages.

They do have a point there - their argument (as I read it) is that the widespread use of undocumented/illegal labor and the exploitation of these laborers in agriculture has led to an economic gridlock situation: employers make big bucks by not paying their fair share in social security and taxes, fair employers have a hard time competing on price because the cost of fair, legal labor is too high, and they cannot raise prices to a sustainable level because the consumers have no money to pay for that because they themselves don't get paid fairly.

The associated economic theory is commonly associated with the economic effects of minimum wage hikes - these lead (despite all the Corporate Whining) to economic growth because the lowest rungs of society, those actually living on minimum wage, go and immediately spend their additional money, similar to what happened with the Covid stimulus checks, while the upper levels of society hoard additional income and do not directly contribute to economic growth.

How well did that trade war go last time he was in office? Trick question, farmers got fucked, and rational minds agree that the US lost.

>Initiating steel and aluminium tariff actions in March 2018, Trump said "trade wars are good, and easy to win,"[54] but as the conflict continued to escalate through August 2019, Trump stated, "I never said China was going to be easy."

It doesn't matter what you claim to want to do or who you claim to "hate" if your sheer incompetence prevents you from accomplishing your desire.

Maybe putting a serial business failure in charge of a trade war isn't very effective?

Biden didn't get rid of them, because it's basically impossible to unwind a trade war, and then put some more limitations on solar panels. I don't think there is a clear answer yet on Biden's addition to the trade war. Probably will be "meh".

A trade war between the US and China is almost always going to be extremely negative sum. Both of our countries rely on each other for prosperity and nice shit.

"The US economy cannot possibly sustain the type of deportations that have been promised" is not saying "an economy cannot function without illegal labor." It is saying exactly what it says: an economy cannot sustain (i.e. remain healthy through) the mass expulsion of a huge portion of its lowest level labor force.

I made it explicitly clear that I am talking about an (almost certainly) non-permanent problem: "I also believe America will almost certainly recover from whatever dark period it's (probably) about to endure."

By analogy: The statement that the US economy cannot sustain a 90% reduction in equity values market-wide doesn't mean an economy can't exist that's 10% the size of the United States'. It doesn't mean an economy 10% of the size of the United States' can't grow to become as big or bigger than the United States'. It doesn't mean a 90% drop in equity values would delete the United States from existence.

It means that a sudden 90% drop in equity values would shock the system in intensely undesirable ways.

Mass deportations as proposed would be a gigantic shock to the system, and that shock will almost certainly make the US an undesirable trading partner for some time.

This is what one would do to a school yard bully. They push you, and you immediately do a full face punch and knee to the nose. Fight to the death from the first push/shove, and let it escalate. One fight, and the bullying is over, or you both get injured sufficiently to go to the hospital. There should be no middle grounds.