• admiralteal
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    8 months ago

    Meanwhile Republicans are going on every news channel to declare that this administration’s policies are guaranteed to make China the dominant world power.

    The reality is, China is not really that concerned with what the US does beyond whether those actions benefit China. They’ll complain publicly any time they aren’t being treated “fairly” – which in their doublespeak means favorably – and then turn around and treat everyone else with explicit unfairness in a fairly public and obvious manner. Don’t subscribe to their reaction videos.

    The only question that matters is whether the policies are effectively delivering on their professed goals.

    The IRA mostly such a brilliant piece of legislation that it is hard to even understand that it made it through the legislature nearly unscathed. Ignore the leftists so far up their own assholes that they’ll pretend Joe Manchin taking a small shit in the corner means we should permanently condemn the whole pool. The chips bill is pretty reasonable, albeit quite protectionist. The bipartisan infrastructure bill has its priorities all over the place, but still manages a fair amount of impressive progress (though god help me the amount we are STILL spending on highway expansion is simply incomprehensible. We KNOW it doesn’t work).

    Whether or not China likes or hates these policies… no one should care who isn’t Chinese. It’s not our problem. They have an authoritarian government and can change their domestic rules to get on friendlier terms with the rest of the world any time they please, and if they aren’t doing so that is their choice to make. They have a right to complain to the WTO. They know better than anyone that the WTO has no real power to change domestic policies, though.