Who is Winning Trump’s Trade War with China?

September 25, 2019

Trump took the U.S. Constructional mandated Oath of Office (and he has repeatedly violated that Oath of Office) to become President of the United States on January 20, 2017.

  • In 2016, the United States exported $115,594,800,000, in good to China and imported $462,420,000,000 from China. [- $346,825,200,000]
  • In 2018, the United States exported $120,148,100,000, in good to China and imported $539,675,600,000 from China. [- $419,527,400,000] – United States Census Bureau

Do the math. Since Trump has been President of the United States, the imbalance in trade between China and the United States has increased by more than $72.7 billion dollars.

The Balance.com says, “China can produce many consumer goods at lower costs than other countries can. Americans, of course, want these goods for the lowest prices. … If the United States implemented trade protectionism, U.S. consumers would have to pay high prices for their ‘Made in America’ goods. It’s unlikely that the trade deficit will change. Most people would rather pay as little as possible for computers, electronics, and clothing, even if it means other Americans lose their jobs.”

Then we learn from the South China Morning Post that “Donald Trump’s trade war tariffs on China failing to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the US

“There is a clear sign that in the trade war between the US and China, the winner is not going to be the US and it’s not going to be China,” Breteau said. The winners are “going to be Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and very likely Mexico and Bangladesh”.

What is China doing to counter this loss? The World Bank tells us about the significant policy adjustments required for China’s growth to be sustainable. “China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) addresses these issues. It highlights the development of services and measures to address environmental and social imbalances, setting targets to reduce pollution, to increase energy efficiency, to improve access to education and healthcare, and to expand social protection. The 13th Five-Year Plan’s annual growth target is 6.5%, reflecting the rebalancing of the economy and the focus on the quality of growth while maintaining the objective of achieving a ‘moderately prosperous society’ by 2020 (doubling GDP for 2010-2020).”

In addition, according to McKinsey.com, “[Chinese] Consumers remain the key driver of China’s domestic growth (not the United States), creating 78 percent of GDP growth in the first nine months of 2018.” … For instance, “Sales of China’s fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) grew by 6.3 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, and even supermarkets have grown by 5.0 percent. Across fresh foods, alcoholic beverages, cosmetics, and more, ten times as many consumers report trading up to higher-priced goods than down.”


Meet China’s New Middle Class representing 30-percent of the total Middle Class in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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China’s Shrinking Carbon Footprint

July 31, 2019

If you don’t know what per capita means, you will not understand that the United States is a much bigger polluter than China is.

Collins Dictionary.com says, “The per capita amount of something is the total amount of it in a country or area divided by the number of people in that country or area.” Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers

i.e., per-individual person.

The Union of Concerned Scientists reports each country’s share of CO2 Emissions and ranks the world’s countries. China is ranked #1 for total carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion but is #36 for per capita carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion.

China’s population at 4:49 p.m. on 5-19-2019 when I first wrote this post was 1,419,480,841, and the U.S. population was 328,912,052.

Based on those population numbers, China’s per capita carbon dioxide emission from fuel combustion (metric tons) was 6.59 metric tons per person for a total of 9,354.5 million metric tons.

For the United States, the per capita was 15.53 metric tons or 5,107.8 million metric tons total.

To put it another way: if China’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions from fuel consumption were the same as the United States, China would be producing 21,589.2 million metric tons or 2.3 times more than it actually is.

And if the United State emitted the same per capita carbon dioxide that China does, then the U.S. would reduce its total carbon dioxide emissions by more than half to 2,167.4 million metric tons instead of 5,107.8.

Then there is what I call the Trump Factor that will increase pollution.


President Donald Trump is replacing the Clean Power Plan with a dirty one, and he will deny it because he is a serious serial liar.

Thankfully, China is not following in the tracks of Donald Trump’s golf cart.

The South China Morning Post reports, “China is stepping up its push into renewable energy, proposing higher green power consumption targets and penalizing those who fail to meet goals to help fund government subsidies to producers.”

Forbes.com reports, “No country has put itself in a better position to become the world’s renewable energy superpower than China, … China has taken a lead in renewable energy and is now the world’s largest producer, exporter, and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles.”

However, in the United States, Donald Trump wants to cut renewable energy and energy efficiency by 70-percent. Does that mean everything China does to improve clean energy consumption will be reversed by Trump’s agenda in the United States?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Singapore’s Role in the Successful Birth of Modern China

July 10, 2019

Born in 1923, Lee Kuan Yew would become Singapore’s founding father. He was elected its 1st Prime Minister in 1959. After victory in seven elections, Lee stepped down in November 1990, making him the world’s longest-serving prime minister.

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and Lee offered him advice on how to modernize China, and it wasn’t by following America’s example.


CNN’s Fareed Zakaria talks with Lee Kuan Yew about his life as prime minister of Singapore.

“I want everyone to be a homeowner,” Lee Kuan Yew told CNN’s Zakaria. “I want investments. Do I want to be like America? Yes, in its inventiveness and creativeness, but not like America’s inability to control its drought problem. No! Or the gun problem. No!”

Lee also said, “I believe that during the second half of the 21st century, America will have to share the top spot with China and also India, make space for them, too.”

When Lee is asked by Zakaria if India will have an advantage because it is a democracy and China is not, Lee replies, “Let me put it this way, if India was as well organized as China, it will go a different speed, but it is going at the speed it is because it is India.  It is not one nation. It is many nations. It has 320 different languages and 32 official languages.”

India cannot reach all of its people with one language like Beijing can.

The South China Morning Post reported in 2015, “Singapore’s founder (Lee Kuan Yew) was alone among world leaders in his belief China would emerge as a global power and his views proved prescient. … In his memoirs, Lee makes plain his admiration for the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping who led China’s opening up in 1978. Lee recalled his conversations with Deng, including one that year when Deng visited Singapore. …

“There was nothing that Singapore had done which China could not do, and do better,” Lee wrote. When Deng Xiaoping told the Chinese people to do better than Singapore, Lee knew he had taken up the challenge he had quietly tossed to Deng 14 years earlier.

Mothership reveals “Singapore was special because it represented the achievement of an estranged relative. Nowhere else outside China was there a country with ethnic Chinese in its majority.

“Lee Kuan Yew told (Deng) that if Singapore Chinese who were the descendants of poorly-educated coolies could make good, how much better mainland China could be if the right policies were adopted. …

“On the economic front, China studied Singapore’s developmental experience to glean lessons for itself. … Deng’s visit to Singapore in 1978 had left an indelible imprint on his mind. That year, some 400 delegations from China visited Singapore (to learn more). …”

In addition, “China’s decision to open up the Internet within China (based on how Singapore managed its internet), (by) … keeping the internal universe separate from the universe outside …. (led to) the vibrant (and controlled) cyberspace we now see in China.

“For many years, Singapore was an inspiration to China … Increasingly, however, Singapore has also much to learn from a China that is breaking new grounds in many fields.” Something that Lee Kuan Yew predicted in 1978 when he met with Deng Xiaoping.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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China takes the lead in growing indoor crops

June 26, 2019

I recently read a comment on another blog that said Trump was going to win his tariff war with China because of a crop eating pest known as the fall armyworm that is threatening China’s domestic food supply.

So far, this worm has only attacked crops in Southern China.

The flaw in this thinking is the fact that China imports food from other countries. In fact, in 2017, China bought more food products from France than the United States, and World Bank.org lists the countries China buys from and how much China spends. All you have to do is click the World Bank link in this paragraph to discover those facts.

The comment I read mentioned Inkstone News.com, “To compound matters, China’s food supply was already under pressure after it was forced to slaughter millions of pigs with African swine fever affecting all 31 autonomous regions and provinces within just nine months, trimming 20% of the national supply and driving up prices.”

First, China is not going to starve because they lost twenty percent of the country’s pigs, because the Chinese eat a lot more than pork. I’m a vegan and have never had a problem finding a variety of plant foods to eat when visiting China.

Second, Smart Cities Dive reports, “How China Leads the World in Indoor Farming. China is investing significant amounts of effort into developing vertical farming systems to feed its burgeoning urban population. It aims to become a world leader in industrial scale applications of these systems.” …

“Compared to conventional farming, a plant factory with natural solar light can increase productivity per unit area by between two and ten times. With artificial light, this rises to 40 times and by adding vertical farming this goes to 1000 times.”

To learn more, read what Next Shark.com reveals about China’s high-tech indoor farms where “5,000-square-meter (53,819-square-foot) indoor space, produces eight to ten metric tons of vegetables DAILY while requiring only four staff members to manage it. Conventional farmlands would require about 300 farmers to produce the equivalent amount which can feed almost 36,000 people.” …

“The smart farming method involves a strict system that regulates temperature, water source, humidity, nutrients and LEDs that replace sunlight in a confined indoor space. Such regulations allow the firm to significantly save on water, granting each plant only the right amount it needs.”

If bugs, African swine fever, and global warming continue to threaten China’s domestic food supply, how fast will it take China to convert most if not all of its outdoor farms to these high-tech indoor farms?

The answer can be found in China’s high-speed rail network. China’s first high-speed train service was introduced in April 2007. Twelve years later, China has the longest high-speed railway network in the world, 18,000 miles in length, two-thirds of the world’s total, with plans to increase it to 24,000 miles by 2025.

How does China’s high-speed rail development compare to the rest of the world?

Well, the first high-speed rail system started operating in Japan in 1964, and it took the rest of the world 55 years to build one-third of the world’s high-speed railroads. The United States only has one high-speed rail line linking Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, but those bullet trains cannot take advantage of their maximum speed because some sections along that route are old rail lines that cannot safely support trains moving 150 mph.

When China needs to, it can move fast. For instance, the Chinese government made high-speed rail construction a cornerstone of its economic stimulus program in order to combat the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis and the result was a rapid development of the Chinese rail system into the world’s most extensive high-speed rail network. China moved up its timeline when twenty million Chinese lost their factory jobs because of the global financial crises … and let us not forget that the United States was responsible for that crises due to old fashioned capitalist greed.

One day, pork might not be on the menu in China, but there will still be plenty of fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and if I can survive for thirty-seven years as a vegan, the Chinese can do it too.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Will China rebuild its cities so they become people friendly?

June 12, 2019

Most cities were built to be friendly to cars and not people, but there is a growing movement to change that. The April 2019 issue of National Geographic Magazine (NGM) published “To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars”

Countries across the world, including the United States and China, or starting to build and/or rebuild cities to turn them people friendly.

The first page of the 20-minute read NGM piece started with, “SHANGHAI, CHINA Near the center of this city of 24 million, China’s largest, the Yanan expressway crosses under the North-South Expressway. The country has gained half a billion city dwellers since 1990—and nearly 190 million cars. ‘It’s truly almost incomprehensible what happened in China,’ says American urban designer Peter Calthorpe, who has worked there extensively. With nearly 300 million more people expected in cities by 2030, Chinese planners say they’re changing course, prioritizing walkable streets and public transit over cars. …

Chinese planners say they’re changing course, prioritizing walkable streets and public transit over cars.

“The key test may come in Xiongan, a 680-square-mile stretch of swampy land, including a heavily polluted lake, about 65 miles southwest of Beijing. In April 2017 President Xi Jinping announced, again to general surprise, that he wanted to build a new city there. Ultimately it could house five million people and relieve congestion and pollution in Beijing.”

The guide for building these people-friendly cities is the Emerald Cities Rule book, and China is in the best position to build these cities.

“Emerald Cities: Planning for Smart and Green China,” published in 2017 lays out green building and sustainability practices for low-carbon city planning and construction in China and abroad. Emerald Cities proposes 10 principles to help set a new development direction for Chinese cities: from urban growth boundaries and transit-oriented development, to small blocks with accessible public space and car control, to green buildings and sustainable infrastructure at constructive detailed planning and community levels. The 10 principles aim to establish green, healthy and economic vibrant cities, while solving pollution and livability challenges faced by China’s cities. Emerald Cities was jointly published by China Sustainable Transportation Center and Glumac with support from Energy Foundation and Energy Innovation.”

What do U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration want to build? Trump wants to build a wall that will divide people and promote hate and segregation while he holds rallies across the U.S. promoting hate and segregation.

However, the U.S. also has the possibility offered by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal that is similar to what Xi Jinping wants to do in China, so there is still hope for America to join China in making the world people friendly instead of focused on hate, segregation, and greed.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

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Leave a Comment » | business, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, economy, environment, family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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