I have almost developed a form of news-fatigue
syndrome!
A member of one of my WhatsApp chat groups religiously posts a daily update on the Iran War. I do not know where he gets these updates from. I simply skip them each time they appear. I also doubt that he himself reads these daily updates!
But people love to post, as if to register their presence — rather like the “Good Morning” greetings you so often receive.
The truth is, how many of us really read about the Iran War now? Or the Ukraine War? Or the aftermath in Venezuela?
Perhaps the next headline we are waiting for will be the US invasion of Cuba.
Trump loves to generate headlines. But who believes him anymore?
Answer: The silliness of many Ang-mohs, pseudo-Ang-mohs and wannabe Ang-mohs!
Just a day or two before the expiry of the temporary 10% global tariff, the US announced a new measure: tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on imports from about 60 countries/economies. The stated justification is that these countries — of all reasons — have inadequately enforced prohibitions on goods produced with forced labour. (Much of the Liberation Day regime, as we all know, had been struck down by the Supreme Court.)
And Singapore is slapped with a rate of 12.5% — even higher than that handed down to Malaysia, at 10%.
However, these new tariffs do not simply erase every existing US tariff. They are generally imposed on top of the normal Most-Favoured-Nation/customs duties, while various products and existing sectoral measures have exemptions or separate treatment. India, for example, gets a 10% rate, but roughly 45% of its exports — including specified categories such as generic pharmaceuticals and smartphones — are exempt from this particular new levy.
The administration is shifting towards established trade statutes such as Section 301, which are legally harder to overturn.
The other more pertinent cases: China, 12.5%; India, 10% (total, including MFN); Japan, 12.5% (total, including MFN); South Korea, 10% (total, including MFN); Canada, 10%; and Mexico, 10%.
Just a ballpark figure for China: the cumulative tariff on an individual product can readily be 20–40%+, depending on its tariff classification.
Is China concerned? Of course. But is it lethal? Certainly not. And I bet you, Trump will yield. He is just profiling. The US needs all those Chinese goods. Period.
And is anybody reading this news? I bet hardly anyone.
In response to the EU’s latest Russian sanctions, which included 14 Chinese/Hong Kong companies, China struck back immediately. It placed 14 European entities on its export-control list. Several of these entities are among the most significant in Europe. The Chinese ones, on the other hand, are peanuts in size.
(Among the European companies affected are Germany's Rheinmetall and Poland's Vigo Photonics, alongside firms in France, Italy and the Czech Republic. These are industrial giants.)
This is actually the second such retaliation against Europe this year. In April, China put seven EU entities under similar export restrictions following the EU's 20th Russia-sanctions package.
After the US expanded its list of Chinese companies alleged to have links to China's military in June, China responded by imposing trade/export restrictions on American companies, particularly firms involved in defence, aerospace and strategic materials. Ten US companies were subjected to export controls.
Beijing now has an increasingly elaborate anti-sanctions and anti-extraterritoriality legal framework that allows it to punish foreign companies for complying with foreign sanctions that China considers illegitimate.
What is particularly interesting is China's choice of weapon. Rather than merely answering tariffs with tariffs, Beijing is increasingly using its leverage over rare earths, critical minerals, magnets and other dual-use supply chains. For certain Western defence and high-tech companies, losing access to these inputs can hurt considerably more than an additional 10–20% tariff.
These Ang-mohs are very bodoh. They are living in a delusional world!
The Silliness Extends Beyond the Ang-mohs
Wang Yi, in his meeting with Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro on July 22 in Manila, on the sidelines of the ASEAN meetings, was most pointed. He warned that China–Philippines relations had reached a “crossroads” and that Manila needed to make the “correct and rational choice.” (You could also see Lazaro’s attempt to look taller than Wang – by tilting her nose skywards in a one-for-the-album photo-shoot session!)
The immediate background was the latest “wayang” staged by the Philippines near Ren’ai Shoal (仁爱礁, Second Thomas Shoal), where Philippine vessels had deliberately rammed a Chinese Coast Guard vessel. The Philippines should henceforth decide whether it wants cooperation and stable relations with China, or continued confrontation.
Incidentally, Marco Rubio was also in town. Did anyone notice his presence?
Instead of living peacefully with a heavyweight neighbour, Sanae Takaichi is determined to revive militarism in Japan and is trying to enlist the Philippines and Taiwan to serve her cause. China and Russia are not going to let Japan have it that way.
There has been a noticeable escalation in Japan's military friction with these two neighbours.
The most recent incident occurred in July, around Okinotori in the western Pacific. A Chinese naval group operating together with a Russian frigate entered waters that Japan regards as its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and conducted a live-fire exercise. Japan lodged a diplomatic protest, of course, China just gave Japan its middle finger.
Okinotori, which is about 1,700 km south of Tokyo, is essentially a rock rather than an island capable of generating an EEZ. And an EEZ is not sovereign territorial water.
And a few weeks earlier, China and Russia also conducted a major joint strategic air patrol around Japan and Korea with bombers and maritime-patrol aircraft. Chinese J-16 and Russian Su-35 fighters accompanied parts of the formation. They operated through the Sea of Japan and East China Sea. Takaichi should take note. This was their 11th joint strategic air patrol and no longer an occasional symbolic exercise.
The relationship had already become considerably more dangerous after the December 2025 encounter involving the Chinese carrier Liaoning. Chinese J-15 fighters twice directed fire-control radar at Japanese F-15s which were monitoring the carrier's operations.
China and Russia appear increasingly
willing to demonstrate that Japan cannot treat China, Russia and North Korea as
three completely separate security problems. Despite Trump’s abhorrence of geishas,
Takaichi still wants to sing and dance her way into Trump’s heart.
I posted two articles on Indonesia on June 2 but decided to pull them shortly afterwards. They are: Is Indonesia Turning Against China (https://yubooklim.blogspot.com/2026/06/is-indonesia-turning-against-china.html) and China and Indonesia: The Sweet and Sour Relationship (https://yubooklim.blogspot.com/2026/06/china-and-indonesia-sweet-and-sour.html?m=1). However, having watched further developments unfold, I decided to repost them.
When it was disclosed in February that Indonesia was agreeing to US aircraft overflying Indonesia — which meant that US aircraft operating between bases such as Diego Garcia, Guam and facilities in Australia and the Philippines could move rapidly between the Indian and Pacific Ocean theatres — we already knew that Indonesia had begun to ingratiate itself with the US administration. The export controls on commodities and the nickel policy, aimed principally at China, therefore came as no surprise.
Indonesia's Finance Minister, Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, on June 25, 2026, personally conducted a surprise inspection at a Chinese-owned steel company in East Jakarta, claiming that there was a large discrepancy between the apparent scale of the company's operations and the tax it reported.
Purbaya said his ministry had identified about 40 Chinese steel companies suspected of using similar methods. His language was unusually pointed. He said his ministry had specialists familiar with the ways “Chinese companies” allegedly misled the government. Earlier, he had stressed that the companies under investigation were Chinese, saying in effect: they are all from China, not mixed companies.
Yes, by all means go after tax evaders, but do allow the relevant authorities to follow due process. By naming and shaming China, isn’t this a blatant anti-China act? And his arrogance is totally un-Asian.
I often get “discriminated” against by our own kind in the way I am treated. Two incidents remain fresh in my mind.
The first was when I was entering the Business Class cabin of a Singapore Airlines plane, only to see a stewardess eagerly rushing forward to serve an Ang-moh despite a yellow man also being there.
The second was at Hong Kong airport. While my wife and I were waiting to be served at the priority line, the ground crew seemed to think we were invisible; he welcomed an Ang-moh couple first. I blasted him and actually wrote to SIA to complain. I remember they sent me some gift vouchers to appease me!
Takaichi is blatantly telling China that Japan did not lose World War II to China. It lost to the US. And they will always kowtow to the conqueror.
One of the first foreign visits made by Marcos Jr. was to China. But his American baggage was too heavy; he soon reversed gear and aligned himself with the former colonial master.
Prabowo also rushed to attend China’s September 2024 military parade, even though he was facing some unrest in his own country. But just observe how his eyes seemed to be begging Trump to pay some attention to him when they were in Egypt, where Trump was holding his Peace Summit in October 2025.
Trump did not disappoint him and greeted him warmly, publicly calling him a “tough man.” That must have sent him sky-high immediately. That must have done wonders for his self-esteem.
The problem is also China’s. It does not believe in acting like a tough guy, even in its confrontations with the Filipinos over some of the South China Sea islands. Whip the big cane and the Filipinos will come abegging. This was how Rodrigo Duterte turned the Filipinos around during his rule.
I hear that many of the resource-rich countries in Africa are now also trying to adopt the Indonesian approach in dealing with China.
If you are really worth your salt, you process your resources all the way into finished products. But these countries cannot go beyond digging, yet they believe in resource nationalism. Without technology and markets, what good are your minerals?
Many mine owners owe their existence to financing even before the deposits are fully determined. Many go to banks to borrow to support fixed and working capital — and even their private jets and yachts. Once the sales contracts are cancelled, the banks will go after them, just like the farmers in the US. That’s when the politicians will realise the folly they have created.
Yes, to the leaders of these countries: do learn some ABCs of international economics.
Trump is a godsend to China. US antics have allowed China to stage “vertical take-offs” in science and technology especially during the last two years. Yes, the economy has not been that great, but its resilience is mind-boggling.
Despite its handicap in hardware, China is neck-and-neck with the US in AI. There are simply too many of the likes of Liang Wenfeng, Wang Chuanfu, Zeng Yuqun and Yang Zhilin in China, not to mention the recent Fields Medallists Wang Hong and Yu Deng. Without the Chinese in Google, Meta and those other IT giants in the West, they will soon fade.
Sooner or later, the US will bite the dust once China has overcome its remaining handicaps — which it definitely will. China is simply too formidable to compete with in terms of cheaper energy alternatives and their availability, which will be a determining factor in the AI race.
I personally do not quite like the South China Morning Post, for I think many of the journalists there are outright anti-China. However, when it comes to science and technology reporting, they are always fast and accurate. You can follow all of China’s advances in weaponry there.
A fact has simply emerged: the Western Pacific will become the graveyard of US warships if they come to Taiwan’s defence should China decide on forced unification. I believe unification is inevitable; but it will not be through a direct war.
Again, the huge pool of talent in the other branches of science and technology will propel China towards becoming the standard-setter in many things to come.
And ultimately, it is their leaders who
make all this happen. They are constantly adapting — in spite of the fear many
perceive, thanks to the misconceptions that have been laid out by the West and
pro-Western media.
A simple visit to China will destroy all these misconceptions. And China has now opened its doors for everyone to witness history.
Ditto the US flip-flops on the destruction of Iran. It simply fears China and Russia’s intervention, especially when its munitions are running so low.
In short, the US’s decline is inevitable. (Many will certainly disagree with me on this.)
And China is starting a new universe — fortunately or unfortunately.
End
Years later, people will look back to this period as the epoch of American resentment and greed triggered by a corrupt narcissist prone to increasingly outlandish bluster and supine blatancy which thus devalue US policy and commitment as much as the gyrations have profited insider traders who surround him.
ReplyDeleteInvestors are holding back their production lines, shippers are increasing their rates, and the markets are now numb to US trade and security announcements, putting up barely friendly faces while going their own way and awaiting a changing of the guard amidst howls of indignation.
It is also incredulous how the richest and most militarised country can harbour such deep insecurity until it abandons its rules-based international order, armtwists trade deals, and sullies all priniciples of fairness by displacing the very institutions which harmonise and protect the common weal of countries small and big. Yesterday, it was the WTO and WHO, today the USAID and ICC.
In the bedlam rush to champion its white-man exceptionalism and supremacy, the US has buried its moral conscience. It kills and steals and unilaterally prosecutes epic fury wars on goat herders and weather-worn farmers. For a ticket to its heaven, it has supplied bombs that have killed 75,000 in Gaza whose survivors are now cattled to a small slivver of utterly devastated land, living on crumbs that are only allowed in by an IDF even Himmler would have been proud.
At the funeral of its Lindsey Graham, its leaders waxed words for an unreconstructed racist and warmonger. No such words have been offered for the 165 schoolgirls killed in Tehran, targeted by Anthropic, Palantir and Anduril and unapologetically delivered by the USN, Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin. Only their valuations are as stratospheric as the heaven of the 70 million who continue to support the testosterone-building US Republicans, caricatures redolent of past foghorns of war.
Meanwhile, blinded by their stock market success albeit weighted towards tech stocks and those are merely propped by circular financing moated by the 'too-big-to-fail' syndrome, US leaders turn a blind eye to the pikettyish gap between the ultra-rich and the rest whose wages barely outrun the inflationary pressures pumped by their leaders' adventurism foreign and domestic.
Egoistic to a fault, Trump is adamant to continue his inflationary tariffing even when his vascular dementia has unmoored him from the reality that tariffs cost without solving. Net a hundred thousand American jobs have been drained without return of manufacturing, and the new set of tariffs will cost payor America USD100 Billion a year.
And his US' fastidious focus to kneecap and decouple China has only awakened the dragon to make it on her own, increase her trade surplus and global connections, and grow her own indigenous technologies by sheer ingenuity, will and steadfastness, thus burnishing her global credentials as the pre-eminent industrial power, technology innovator and geopolitical actor, to wit the real stable genius. In fact, E&Y has calculated it would cost the West USD37 Trillion to try and decouple from China, not that it can succeed.
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ReplyDeleteIt must be noted the US trade policy mechanism is disjarred and should be disbarred. Someone wakes up one morning and decides to sanction China on x. He submits a proposal to the US agency concerned which then opens a file, gives it a sexy name, assembles a team to 'research' the reasons that will meet the objective. The recommendations are then escalated to a congressman who then activates a select committee which then meets to rubberstamp the report. It passes onto the table of the Man who picks up a sharpie, signs on it in front of his assembled press; depending on the weather, the bill may or may not head to Congress for approval; the press doesn't ask. It is then passed to the next relevant agency to implement. In none of those steps is there due diligence on what's really involved at the molecular level which thus makes its implementation untenable and counterproductive; neither the historical procession of reasons, causes and effects which would have squashed the objective in the first place, nor how the implementation of x is in direct contradiction to the agreement on y. And that's just in two-dimensions. Einstein will say China operates in 4-dimensions. Princeton's Witten? 11-dimensions. In the end and after the bloodbath, the authoring guy scurries away unaccountable. Meanwhile, thousands across the globe bleed.
It remains to tip the hat to Ravi Menon, Singapore's ambassador for climate change - he expressed the world no longer works as before: "
• Tariffs have become instruments of industrial policy.
• Critical technologies have become arenas of strategic competition.
• Businesses are redesigning supply chains—not just for efficiency, but for resilience.
• And a conflict in one corner of the world can, within days, send energy prices, food prices, shipping costs, and financial markets into turmoil across continents.
These developments are manifestations of a deeper transformation in what is termed geo-economics, the less well-known cousin of geopolitics.
Geopolitics and geo-economics both describe how nations compete and co-operate — but through different instruments.
• Geopolitics pursues power through armies and alliances — territorial control and deterrence.
• Geo-economics pursues it through markets, money, and machines.
• The toolkit includes tariffs, sanctions, export controls, investment screening, payment restrictions.
• But it also includes co-operative instruments: trade agreements, harmonised standards, supply chains, digital corridors.
The historical arc of geo-economics has turned in recent years.
• The post-Cold War economic order assumed that efficiency would dominate.
• Production would move to where costs were lowest.
• Capital would flow to where returns were highest.
• Technology would spread through trade and investment.
• It was of course not always as orderly as we sometimes recall with misplaced nostalgia. But it was a reasonably predictable world where rules mattered and economic efficiency delivered stability as well as prosperity.
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ReplyDeleteThat predictability has weakened in the last two decades.
• 2008: The Global Financial Crisis exposed the fragility of financial integration.
• 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of global supply chains.
• 2022: Russia's invasion of Ukraine exposed the risks of energy dependence.
• More broadly, the rise of China and other emerging markets on the back of surging international trade and global production networks was seen as imposing huge adjustment costs in the industrial heartlands of the US and Europe.
We have entered a new age of geo-economics.
• The old assumption was that economic interdependence delivered prosperity, promoted stability, and reduced conflict.
• The new geo-economic reality is that interdependence can also become a channel through which shocks, vulnerabilities, and conflicts are transmitted.
• The boundaries between economics, technology, finance, and national security are becoming increasingly blurred.
• Economics is not just about efficiency; it is also about security.
• Trade is not just about comparative advantage; it is also about strategic positioning.
• Finance is not just about allocating capital; it is also about power."
He spoke more but the weather has gotten blisteringly hot.
As for the other matters, sweet-dreams bedside readings for their respective leaders:
Japan: http://tr.ee/EASD5t
Indonesia: http://tr.ee/lpoy1S
Philippines: http://tr.ee/sxSk7Y
As for Europe, doesn't it want more 'overproduced' mobile air-conditioners?
Indonesia: http://tr.ee/E2GbYg
ReplyDelete