Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever:

China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why China's growth must be curbed, fast > tariff them to their death or so. But I really don't think it will work at all. And personally I don't even think it's a good idea at all to begin with.

See this is what I don't understand. Everything you just said about China is a positive. Everything you said about China is achievable in the USA, and we at least HAD a head start on soft-power influence.

Instead we should just have tariffs instead of actually making the lives of Americans better while FIGHTING affordable housing, high speed rail, and EVs.

We've got an entire team of goons who would rather rack up penalty minutes than score goals. These freaks think we are competing with China in an MMA fight instead of a Hockey game.

It's the whole "benevolent" dictatorship VS flawed democracy debate.

It might be an authoritarian one party state but China isn't a dictatorship right?

Technically China is a dictatorship.

The constitution of the People's Republic of China and the CCP constitution state that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship".

The current president has done much to make his appointment for life, so it is a dictatorship that is on the road towards having a dictator.

Cue comparisons to what is currently happening in the US.

Yes, 人民民主专政.

A socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.

I think you're ignoring some of the poetic intention of those words, the idea is that the Marxist collective is the dictator. It's turning the concept on its head to put the people at the forefront.

In other contexts such as casual conversation here in the West the term dictatorship means something quite different and you seem to understand that too because you say they're "on the road towards having a dictator" which is surely an admission that they currently do not have a dictator and are ergo but currently a dictatorship.

I'll certainly grant you that Xi has made moves to consolidate power in the individual but that's a separate discussion.

So it is a tyranny of the majority? That's not the vibe I get from China at all.

I wouldn't have said that either, no. What vibes do you get?