Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Sunday, June 15, 2025 - 23:59 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

The Deal Is Up

势均力敌之时，谋策起得作用！

- when Strength and Respect (from Influence) are comparable,
Strategy becomes the deciding factor!
(the triptych was intentional, if it hasn't been noticed)


"The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can't do without."

- TRUMP's The Art of Deal, Chapter II - Trump Cards
[N.B. In the following case (and others), the "want" is something like not being a smoking hole in the ground.]




One supposes they didn't read The Art of Deal!
[Hint: are there any other deadlines coming due soon?]
(Source: bloomingbit.io)


Considering that the original I Ching is also known as the Book of Changes, the updated and improved The Art of Deal can naturally be rendered as the Book of Exchanges (because what is a Deal, but an Exchange)? These exchanges have indeed been coming hard and fast, with an initial change on X preceding Musk's (latest) apology to GEOTUS (and a rebound of TSLA to over US$320). That would pale in comparison to what next happened in the Middle East, though, as the Rising Lion (of Judah; the eschatological angle will be explored in Twilight Struggle: New Moon, in the future) battered Iran, decapitating much of their military and scientific leadership. This left the ever-merciful Lion of America to extend an olive branch, but alas, one expects this age-old feud to continue playing out.

Now, while the description of The Art of Deal as the successor to The Art of War as made in the previous post was partly tongue-in-cheek, a closer examination suggests that the proposition is more plausible than it might appear at first sight. Sun Tzu's introduction to stratagems began by asserting that to destroy something (i.e. in War) is always inferior to obtaining it whole and undamaged - which is exactly the realm of... Deals. What fortune it is, then, for America to be led by the consummate Dealmaker, once praised in less-bipartisan and more-objective times by the Chicago Tribune as "[being] a deal maker the way lions are carnivores and water is wet"!


Know Thy Self, Know Thy Enemy Competitor

"Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

- Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Chapter III - Attack By Stratagem


Since this exposition has been some time in the making, let's recap what has brought us to this. It began in early February, when the strategic move by GEOTUS to tariff "China, the European Union and (all) the rest" was predicted two months in advance, together with America's refusal to become a sucker with regards to the Ukraine war, as well as their following bid for Russia. The post on Strength then explained the preliminary effects of the universal tariffs (i.e. a bunch of countries suddenly being open to negotiations), with the true meaning behind the tariffs (i.e. a proclamation of [continued] American primacy) then revealed, a month after their imposition.

Given that it's more or less two months after the original tariffs, with about a single month remaining to T-Day (July 8th for Europe and most of the world, still August 12th for China... for now), a second update is in order. This then calls for additional revelations to establish background context (and explain why America is acting as it has), and today's Very Hard Truth is: AMERICA HAS NOT BEEN, UH, WINNING.

There. Simple as that.


Different charts, quite different stories
(Sources: economist.com [top], worldeconomics.com [bottom])


This fact has in fact been raised here back in September 2023, with reference to national Production. In short, China's GDP (in real PPP terms) had already exceeded the U.S. a decade ago and is currently some 20% larger, with the gap projected to only continue widening. Had it not been for a (slightly-suspicious) Pandemic Game starting back in 2020, this deficit (from the U.S. perspective) would likely be rather larger today. On the other hand, Team Blue outlets (such as The Economist) tend to present GDP statistics in U.S. dollar terms instead, which has China maxing out at 75% of the U.S. economy about 2021, before dropping back to 60-odd percent.

While commentators have largely decried Amerika's new (and tougher) methods, this is mostly putting the cart before the horse, in confusing cause and effect. The essential question, from which all else springs, is: Does America want to continue being Number One? This had been raised by a distinguished professor at the LKY School of Public Policy back in September last year (also published in Foreign Policy), and more or less advises the U.S. to just lie down and allow others to surpass them, because "...once you give up on the obsession* with being No. 1, your engagement with China no longer needs to be confrontational**". One supposes TRUMP (and LKY, were he still alive) might have some choice words about that!

Now, working backwards from the (pretty safe) assumption that Amerika does want to remain #1, one can begin to understand why TRUMP (and his administration) have been acting as they have. While the LKYSPP dean continues with "Do you know what will happen to the American people's way of life and the U.S. system of government if you become No. 2? Absolutely nothing.", one suspects that, at some level, he should realise that this is clearly not the case. To begin with, if becoming Number 2 entails the U.S. dollar no longer being the (major) global reserve currency, this would very probably force interest rates to increase, devalue the dollar, and (significantly) lower the American standard of living.



[Translation: The world of international relations was always anarchic. As to how Big Brother Uncle Sam imposed order, it was not through "principles"***, but through his fists! Whenever any country did not submit (ref: the U.S.S.R., Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, too many Latin American nations to count), he whacked them! Bro was definitely the greatest gangster of the seven seas!]
(Source: manhuagui.com)


And we're not even getting into the military/security angle yet. Discounting fevered dreams of Global Thermonuclear War (given that Russia has more nuclear warheads than the U.S. currently, with China making haste to catch up), the ongoing Team Red vs. Team Blue proxy wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have reinforced that there is really no substitute for production, where it comes to prevailing in such conflicts.

While Team Blue has generally played up their supposed technological edge in homefront propaganda, it remains that (just a portion of) North Korea's artillery shell output has allowed Russia to remain on the offensive in Ukraine, with almost all of the 31 upgraded M1A1 Abrams tanks that the U.S. gifted Ukraine, already destroyed (or worse, captured). Further south, Iranian ballistic missiles have overwhelmed Israeli air defences in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, so one can only imagine the outcome if Iran had twice, five times or ten times the amount of launchers and missiles to spare!

Given this, TRUMP's clarification on his tariff policy being intended to have the U.S. manufacture more tanks and tech, and not sneakers and T-shirts, makes plenty of sense. This as it happens is also why he's not entirely happy at Apple moving production to India (even if that's preferable to it remaining in China, from the U.S. perspective), since one figures that the ability to manufacture and assemble high-end computing and communications devices (like iPhones) is in fact relevant to modern war efforts. While the latest issue of The Economist claims a "manufacturing delusion" in dismissing the impact of subsidies (or tariffs) towards national security, it appears very much a problem when the entire U.S. builds just five (5) commercial vessels annually, with China having literally 200 times (not percent, times) the production capacity.

[To be continued...]


[*Interestingly, obsession happens to be a trait associated by TRUMP with success, in The Art of Deal.]

[**Here, one might muse at why the good professor did not instead address China, and inform them that they simply have to be content with remaining Number 2. This would certainly defuse mutual tensions with the U.S. too!]

[***Or, as Teddy Roosevelt was wont: Speak softly and carry a big stick; alas, the stick is simply not as large as in previous eras, thus GEOTUS attempting to make it up with strategy.]



comments (0) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (0) - trackback url


Related Posts:
Déjà Vu
War Of The Worlds
7 Reasons Why TRUMP Will Be The Next POTUS
A Question Of Production
Men Against The Machine
Back to top

Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.