Cadence of Conflict: Asia, July 16, 2018

Global trade has become too congested and inbred. Enemies make vital weapons parts for each other—well, enemies of the US make vital weapons parts for the US, but don’t return the favor. Western companies outsourced to developing markets, then were surprised at workplace hazards, loss in consumer trust, and didn’t seem to anticipate that by sending jobs overseas they were downsizing their own customers.

The borderless fling wasn’t going to last for a myriad of reasons—cultural incohesion being an impossibility for a manufacturing industry in denial, security conflicts of interest being a concern for Western powers. Internationalization is about governments and cultures understanding each other, not forcing cooperation between peoples who haven’t yet learned to gel in the daily routines. Companies like Boeing got themselves too entangled in the scene of borderless manufacturing and are now whining and moaning because the inevitable finally happened. This indicates that their “globalist” action plan wasn’t based in foresight, but delusional hopes.

Globalism is inevitable, but it won’t take the path that the impatient hopefuls dreamed and thereby planned it would. Globalism needs cultural exchange to precede and exceed industrial integration, not vice versa. Boeing through the cart pulled its horse, banked on it, it backfired, and Boeing is now denying blame.

China and Europe, mainly Germany, are headed for the same blend of oil and water. This so-called “trade war” isn’t setting well in China’s market. Chinese people blame their government. That government doesn’t want any misreporting that could even remotely influence the people into thinking that the unrelated trade and stock market could have any kind of direct relationship. The trouble Trump is making for China isn’t demonstrated from rumors of censorship within China or its stock market, but in China’s attempt for yet another foreseeably incohesive relationship with Germany. China is being smart, Germany is not.

China is owed everything by the West, but Germany hasn’t figured this out yet. China doesn’t need to say so because no one tells the obvious. A relationship between China and Germany would rightly favor China, Beijing would have no objection, but Berlin will cry and whine just as much as Boeing, once it all lays flat on the table. And, China will have made the profit.

Security fears fuel calls to reverse US-China economic integration | Australian Financial Review

Boeing ‘concerns’ over US-China trade row | BBC

China looks to get cozy with the EU in annual talks as Trump tariffs bite | CNBC – Reuters

Don’t mention the trade war: What China doesn’t want people to know in its dispute with the U.S. | Politico

Who’s Winning the U.S.-China Trade War? | Fortune

US tariffs make China and Germany allies – until they’re not | SCMP