Gordon Chang
speaker
524 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 23 May
Gordon Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The opposition, the progressives, the leftists, really have been sympathizing with North Korea. They've been attacking South Korea's democracy, but that was not a reason to declare martial law, and it was declared really poorly. The unions are very much controlled by leftists, which means they're controlled by North Korea.
They can do a lot of disruption in South Korean society, as they've done in the past, and now they've got a reason to do so.
President Trump's picks indicate that he's going to, first of all, go for tariffs, which we saw in the beginning of this week with the announcement of 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and the additional 10% tariffs on China for fentanyl. And clearly, Trump is probably going to add some more tariffs on China as well. This is important because it's going to rearrange trade flows around the world.
And because of that, I think these picks are good ones. because we're talking about people who will support his tariff initiatives. So I think when you look at Treasury, his nominee Bissette probably was a little bit reluctant about tariffs to start out with. But there is reporting that Trump insisted that he support tariffs should he nominate him.
And so this is going, I think, in the right direction. And of course, you have China hawks. You have China hawks at the State Department, Marco Rubio, and as National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz. So right now, the president has made it clear where he's going, at least as a first position in his administration. Do you imagine...
Probably both. A lot of people talk about these tariffs as negotiating tools, and Trump has used that. In his first term, he imposed the 25% across the board tariffs in 2018. And in the beginning of 2020, he had his phase one trade deal, which I think was a mistake. But nonetheless, you can see that the tariffs set the stage for that agreement. This time, yeah, he could negotiate them.
But we've got to remember that during the campaign, he talked about tariffs continually. And it wasn't just sort of off-the-cuff talk. He actually discussed McKinley and the effect of the McKinley tariffs on the American economy. And that shows that he's actually done a lot of learning about this. Because this is a president who obviously believes deeply in rearranging trade through these levies.
What's fascinating, Mike, is that throughout this month, we have seen China go uncharacteristically quiet. It is peripheral seas and airspace. And that's a real indication that the regime in Beijing is very concerned about Trump. They're giving him a wide berth. They don't want to take him on, at least at this stage. And that's a real indication of, I think,
and the realization in Beijing that they have got to please Trump. So, at this time, at least, and I don't know how long this will last, but at this time, at least, things are going fairly well. We've also seen some other things in China setting the stage. So, for instance, again, throughout this month, China has been forcing down the value of the renminbi.
That looks like anticipation of a trade war with the United States or anticipation of very high tariffs. When we go back to 2018, when Trump imposed his Section 301 tariffs, China picked up somewhere between 75% to 81% of the cost of those impositions. And this time they have even more incentive to do that.
So I think that this move to force down the value of the currency is a real indication that they're getting ready, as you say, setting the table. So it's not just geopolitically, it's also from an economic point of view as well.
Well, China has already imposed export embargoes on certain rare earths, and they could increase that. And as you point out, during the early months of the pandemic in 2020, they threatened to cut off pharmaceuticals. Got to remember that, yes, we have got to buy, but also China's got to sell. So I think what would happen would be, if they were to say, impose export embargoes on pharmaceuticals,
we'd still be able to buy Chinese pharmaceuticals. We may not be able to buy them from the Chinese directly, but we can buy them through third parties. Go back to 2010, China imposed an export ban on rare earths to Japan. Japan actually just bought them directly from Chinese state-owned enterprises, which had to sell despite the embargo.
And the embargo lasted a month or two, and then Beijing just capitulated. So I think we'll probably see the same thing here. If China were to impose export embargoes on the U.S., they might be more determined with us than they were in 2010. But nonetheless, the market is a global one, and we'd be able to source what we need. Higher price initially, but we'd be able to do it, Mike.
If things really go south, and there's a possibility of that, of course, China probably wouldn't be in a position to export stuff, even if it wanted to. And we would suffer mightily, especially pharmaceuticals, which is a warning to us that this is something that we need to do on an emergency basis. We should have done this a long time ago. But nonetheless, we have that critical vulnerability.
Bottom line? We need to be prepared for China to do anything, at any place, at any time. Because Xi Jinping is under domestic pressure, and he can lash out. And we got to remember that in Beijing today, only the most hostile answers are considered to be acceptable. And I don't know if he can control escalation. Having said all that, at least at this moment, China is not ready to go to war.
It's not ready to go to war because the senior leadership of the PLA, People's Liberation Army, is in disarray with all of these purges which are continuing. Also, we have a Chinese military that just doesn't want to go to war, which is the reason why we've been seeing the removal of officers who are opposed to war.
And we also have a Chinese military that, although it has a lot of shiny new weapons, is not confident because they have not fought a war since 1979. In that 1979 war, their first string army got beaten up by Vietnam's third string. We saw real failures of command in 2020 when China launched a surprise attack against India in Gawang. This doesn't look good for the Chinese military.
Also, we know the Chinese people don't want war right now. This is a populace that is really angry at the leadership, and they're in no mood to go after and kill people, especially people that they consider to be Chinese. In other words, people in Taiwan. People in Taiwan don't think they're Chinese, but the people in China do, and the people in China do not want a war, especially with Taiwan.
And then you got to remember one other thing. For Xi Jinping to launch a big war, combined air, land, sea operation, he's got to give some general officer, some admiral, or some general total or almost total control over the People's Liberation Army. making that person the most powerful person in China. Xi Jinping doesn't trust his general officers even in the best of moments.
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