Recently at a conference called FII in Miami held by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Investment, the Saudi state-owned chemical company Aramco, and the Saudi PIF investment company, President Donald Trump had this to say about China:
"I must say, I respect China greatly. Because it's amazing that with a system that in theory shouldn't work-- you know we go to school and we go to the best business schools, and we do well in those schools, and we read about free-entrepreneurship and we read about all these, uh, different things, but.. you look at China and how well they do, how well they manufacture-- I mean, they manufacture cars, so many that they actually have a contest for who can manufacture the least cars because they have so many cars. You have to have great respect for China for the job they do. Like them or not like them, you have to respect them."
For context, Trump said this as a non-sequitur to speaking about how “America is the hottest country anywhere in the world.” The question he was asked was “The world is entering a new economic era. Who do you think are the winners and who do you think would be the losers?” Let me respond by hearkening to the recent past.
In 2023, I wrote this short piece about the Chinese Spy Balloon and Attack on Titan:
https://www.aaaahh.net/a-frustrating-balloon/
This particular moment in time (January 2023) filled me with dread, because when this balloon started making headlines, all my previously liberal friends immediately turned into China hawks. Like, all of our discourse became anti-Chinese propaganda, feeding into the growing political current that Biden was an ineffectual commander-in-chief (probably true, as will be discussed below) that was not strong enough to fight the forces of this “axis of resistance” forming on the other side of the planet. Politically, America soured on Biden’s covid-recovery era progressivism and became war hungry. We needed to project power against China, apparently. You know, despite the fact that almost every single object you can observe and touch is made in China and shipped across the world for your convenience.
Well, that same year of our lord 2023 saw Oct. 7th happen in Israel. Biden abandoned his domestic messaging pretty much entirely to become a war president. He was fighting for Ukraine, he was fighting for Israel. He was building forces in the Pacific to counter China. Jingoism was IN! War was exciting again! Yahoo! We ended our occupation of Afghanistan under Biden, but we started two new proxy wars to make up for it. What are we as a nation if we are not constantly burning precious metals and fuel on foreign conflicts?
For obvious reasons, Biden would go on to lose catastrophically to Trump in the next election. Trump somehow simultaneously promised to both end “forever wars” and “finish the job” in Israel and Ukraine. He would talk about expanding the military to one crowd while pandering to anti-war hippies at the very next rally. The actual track record shows that Trump made war in the Middle East constantly throughout his first presidency, including working directly with Netanyahu to try and start an Iran war back in 2019 just before Covid erupted and shut down everything. How could Biden have ever hoped to top that pedigree? Republicans LOVE war. They make a new one in the Middle East every presidential cycle. Yes, that’s right, every single Republican president since the 90s has started a new war. Yes. Yes! Every single one! Look it up. So yeah, if WAR is the MESSAGE, then Republicans are going to beat you in the election. Biden couldn’t even stop Putin from invading Ukraine with a WWII level army. Biden was so weak that Putin could rattle his nuclear saber and just march right in to Ukraine ground-war style, starting a conflict that has continued well into 2026 and could endure “forever.” A forever war. Biden lost hugely to Trump, and the progressive policies he campaigned on all those years ago are now dreams on the wind.
So look where our hawkish tendencies got us this time. We went from expediently loathing China during the Biden era in order to usher in a president that would be “tough” on China. The new Republican administration went in and shuttered hundreds of thousands of government jobs, cut state funding for healthcare across the board, and now actively makes war in Iran. Gas prices have exceeded the very worst of the covid-recovery era. Inflation has not reversed and only increases in growth. And now, Trump is speaking at Saudi state-backed investment conferences where he is declaring that China “must be respected” because its socialism that shouldn’t work “in theory” actually works amazing in practice and has allowed China to become the industrial powerhouse of the world.
In all honesty, I knew almost nothing about China is 2023. I had one Chinese friend, that’s it. Since then, I have come to learn a lot more… and I must say this is one of those areas where I do agree with Donald Trump. Yes, we should respect China! What an amazing, massive place. What a history! What an incredible recovery! From being literally raped, pillaged, and murdered on Holocaust scales during WWII to a thriving country in 2026. The propaganda that China is some backwards evil 1984 dictatorship is falling away before our very eyes. It is being replaced by a new propaganda of optimism for Chinese success. And you know what? I’m all for it. I wish OUR country was producing propaganda about how great it is to live here. Unfortunately, Trump has recently stated that America is so busy making war that it cannot even afford to fund daycare for children:
"The United States can't take care of daycare. We're a big country, we have 50 states, we have all these other people, we are fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. We got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay for it too-- they have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. [...] It's not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis, you can't do it on a federal basis. We have to take care of one thing-- military protection."
And it makes me sick to my stomach because it was so obvious this is the direction we would go in 2023. As soon as Biden began to lose the thread of why he got elected, the slide back into war and austerity began. Biden campaigned on reinvesting in America. He didn’t spout “America-First,” but his message was essentially that we, as the wealthiest country on the planet, should be able to improve the lives of our own citizens. We were going to manufacture our own solar panels and semiconductors. And that was while we were dying en-masse to a pandemic. The world became real for a second, but the moment of clarity brought on by the pandemic has passed. Can we find that progressive optimism again? Or has American Fascism finally stamped the life out of hope? Are we doomed to wage war forever, always navigating some great power struggle between nations on the other side of this fragile little planet we all call home?
