American First

 The following article is from my book "China: the untold stories" available from Amazon.com

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I totally agree, so every other country should set first priority for his/her country. However, we have done a lot that hurt us more than our enemies (China and Russia as our potential enemies for discussion). It could be due to buying votes in the coming election. Here are some examples.

 

·         Chip war with China. Many chip companies have China as their primary customer. It has hurt our chip companies such as Micron, Intel, AMD and Nvidia. It also encourages China to be self-reliant. It also affects our auto sector that relies on cheap chips from China. It has successfully defeated Huawei from becoming the #1 phone company. The introduction of the new phone from Huawei in 9/2023 defeats our sanctions and our chip companies are losing our chip exports to China, where China spent more on chips than oil.

·         Anti-sanction. China is limiting exports of two rare earth elements that would affect many of our high-tech products.

·         Taiwan. Do we want to risk WWIII by defending Taiwan from China’s ‘reunification’? Cannot tell which side will win. However, the losing side would use nuclear weapons. A similar situation is happening in Ukraine. No Taiwanese except the politicians would want to be another Ukraine.

·         Reserve currency. Our USD as a reserve currency is being shaken mainly  due to: 1. The confiscation of the Russian assets, and 2. The excessive printing of the USD, which could lead to a world recession. Many countries including China are dumping the USD and our treasuries. China’s Yuan is gaining this status, especially with Russia and countries along the “One Belt, One Road”. BRICS eventually would have a new currency.

·         Trading deficits. It will be reduced with China in theory by moving some manufacturing to India and SE Asia. However, many components are still supplied by China. The tariffs lead to higher prices (to jack up our inflation) and lower quality. Most of these countries do not afford to buy our products such as jets as China does. Most of them do not care about the environment (same as China 20 years ago).

·         Brain drain. Due to limited funds for Chinese researchers in the US, many are forced to go home. It is very expensive to train an outstanding student, especially in graduate levels. As there are spies from every country including the US, most Chinese students are not spies and they contribute to the adopted country. It also cut down Chinese tourists  to our country.

Priorities. We have neglected our own problems for too long such as infrastructure, homelessness, drug problems, constant shootings, huge wealth gaps (stock owners of companies in the defense industry are sole winners), racial discrimination, disaster response / prevention, etc.