By Cynthia Chung

Mark Wauck recently published on his substack “Who Lost China? And Are They Ultimately Losing America Too?” It is a great short read and I highly recommend it.

In case you have not been keeping up-to-date with the latest news on the tariff war between the US and China, which is really turning into Kabuki Theatre from Trump’s team, or a WWE wrestling match with just themselves – here are some important updates which I will follow with an explanation of why this approach is completely wrong if one truly wishes to build up American industry again, and I don’t mean the military industrial complex which to many is viewed as synonymous. I will end by discussing whether there is a possible way to end this chicken run and have a mutually beneficial outcome.

Trump has made it clear that the high priorities on his list in this tariff war are chip supremacy, AI supremacy, military supremacy (which are largely one category when you think of it) and a mention of the need to bring back the backbone of American industry with “blue collar jobs.”

In the case of chip, AI and military supremacy there is a massive caveat in this plan. China is not just dominant in the rare earths and supply chain, they practically have a hold on the entire market.

China has 83% of global rare earth refining capacity (we will go into what this is shortly) and 92% of the world’s magnet production. They also have the ability to reach 5N purity (99.999%) in their rare earths refining. They are the only country in the world that can accomplish this presently.

Ignis Rex writes:

“Beijing has built a fortress around one of the most critical inputs to modern technology. But it’s not just the volume—it’s the purity that defines the moat.

…In a world increasingly defined by technological sovereignty, the ability to refine rare earths to 5N purity is not just a technical achievement—it’s a strategic weapon.

Unless the U.S. can build a vertically integrated, environmentally sustainable, and purity-competitive rare earth ecosystem, it will remain dependent on China’s moat. And in the semiconductor arms race, dependency is vulnerability.”

The AI Chip Race for Technological Supremacy: Has the United States Already Lost & What Does That Mean for the Future?

Pay back time for attempting to squeeze China out of the chip industry? This is a massive boundary condition right now in the world of physical reality in what Trump would like to achieve and what is the very very stark reality of what he can truly achieve. Not only is the lag tremendous at this point, but they do not even have access to bountiful rare earth minerals as a raw resource. And even if they did, the amount of tremendous effort and money to close the gap between the US and China in their refining capabilities would require that the entire country effectively has this (and the semiconductor industry) as their only goal, and even then, the odds are not looking good.

As for the recent Trump-Xi meeting, I will not even bother to go over this due to the whiplash I have already undergone with the constant flip-flopping of the Trump team. There are already good briefings out there such as from The Duran on this recent meeting. This is not the first meeting between the US and China this year, and the US has unfortunately shown bad faith in what they “promise” and what they actually do. For instance the meeting in Switzerland a few months back (the first in-person meeting since the tariff war was started by Trump) was mainly about gaining access again to China’s rare-earth minerals. China had blacklisted a number of companies, the majority of which were US military companies, from purchasing Chinese rare-earth minerals in response to the 100% tariffs being invoked against China across the board.

Bessent and Lutnick wanted to have re-access to these rare earth minerals for their namely military industries, in return China was asking that the US not shut them out of the chip market the way they have been doing, which is not via competition, but rather outright threatening of countries to not buy Chinese chips or face the consequences, an economic fallout. This should not be a surprise to anyone, this is effectively what the tariff war has been about, it is no secret that it was about getting the world to trade with the US and shut out China’s industries, especially from the EV and chip market.

The other big mention by the Trump team has been to bring back “blue-collar jobs.” Many of these so-called “blue collar jobs” however, are now being done by robotics within the leading factories of the world.

Lutnick has in fact acknowledged this in interviews. There is just no way to compete, with the Chinese EV (electric vehicle) market for instance, if you are not going in that direction. However, he has failed to explain how current blue-collar workers fit into this plan. There has been no serious discussion yet as to the greatly needed technical training upshift that is required if American factories are going to compete with Chinese factories. Why is that?

In other words, besides the very loud accusations and threats being thrown around against other countries, why has there been no serious program proposed as of yet to retrain American workers so that they can find usefulness in the manufacturing sector? Why has there been no plan laid out as to how they plan to build back these factories made in the USA that will be able to compete with the leading factories of the world? Instead all we hear is the demand for foreign factories to move to the US and build their products in the US. But that is not the same thing as building back American industry, and it won’t play out that way qualitatively speaking.

The reality is that American factories are nowhere near this level of technology. Even Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, has criticised the US policy in banning Nvidia’s chips in China. Huang has stated in multiple interviews that if the US wants Nvidia to continue being a top dog in the chip market, they need to be used in the most stream-of-the-line technologies, namely in the robotics used in the leading manufacturing factories in the world – which is in China.

Competition is the most cut-throat right now in R&D research. And the only way you can stay on top in this is to compete and participate in leading technologies. The further you cut yourself away from this, the more daunting the task to stay cutting edge in R&D on a worldwide scale. This is Huang’s point. And it is rather poetic when you think of it.

The reality of the situation is that you cannot have a win-lose situation here where the US wins and China loses. You can only have a win-win situation if the US wants to “win.”

The US is no longer an economic island, it is time for the US to open up and participate in world markets in good faith and not as a saboteur.

The Sword of Damocles over Western Europe

Arnaud Bertrand shared an interesting interview with Wang Yi on X. Wang Yi is the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs. Bertrand writes:

This is interesting. Wang Yi’s answer to the question: “Some people say that the US cannot accept China’s technological innovation and leadership. They fear that if they can’t compete, they will seize our companies; and if they can’t seize them, they will destroy them. How do you view this?”

The poem Wang Yi cited in his response is worth paying attention to. This is something we’re not exactly used to in the West (especially given the sheer crassness of the Trump administration) but senior Chinese officials love replying to question with references to classical poetry, which often carry layers of deeper meanings and references.

In this case, the line Wang Yi cited – “the green mountains cannot bar the river’s way; after all, it flows east” (”青山遮不住,毕竟东流去”) – is from the poem “Pusa Man: Written on the Wall at Zaokou, Jiangxi” (”菩萨蛮·书江西造口壁”) by famous Song Dynasty poet Xin Qiji.

Even at the time, the poem was eminently political in its meaning since Xin Qiji wrote it out of frustration of seeing Northern China occupied by the Jin Dynasty after the fall of the Northern Song. The “river flowing east” symbolizes the inexorable force of historical destiny – if a river is bound eastwards no mountain can stop it – and in this instance the poet meant that China is meant to eventually be reunified.

The modern meaning in Wang Yi’s usage is clear when he also says that “decoupling and severing ties will ultimately isolate oneself”: the mountains (US) think they can block the river (China), but the river will simply flow around them, leaving the mountains isolated and irrelevant.

In short the US believes it’s containing China, but Wang Yi suggests all it’s doing is actually containing itself.

In America’s attempt to contain China, they are willing, and have been committing sabotage to healthy and free competition in trade and manufacturing of not just China’s economy but Europe and Asia more broadly. America’s ally Japan, has been getting absolutely pummeled by these tariffs coming out of the Trump Administration.

In other words, the US has been putting all of its effort in keeping other countries down rather than lifting themselves up. It is a game of enforced scarcity that has been played over the past decades a la Trilateral Commission. It is about increasing the have-nots, with a larger growth in lower income brackets, the middle class becomes smaller and are now really just what used to be considered upper-middle class, and then you have the ever-dominating billionaire class that is buying up key strategic infrastructure around the world. That is the strategy presently coming out of the United States Administrations, which has been constant since the death of JFK.

The Enemy Within: A Story of the Purge of American Intelligence

BlackRock is buying up the World’s Infrastructure to serve Billionaire Oligarchs as part of the WEF Global Model “You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy”

Is Japan Willing to Cut Its Own Throat in Sacrifice to the U.S. Pivot to Asia?

American car factories need to be updated, as well as the training of their staff. Presently American cars are unable to compete in the world market, they are simply too expensive for what you get quality wise. In other words, America is falling behind in an industry that they have dominated for over half a century.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick when asked about whether the tariffs will in fact increase cost in manufacturing, and hence prices to the US consumer, has answered, “Not if you make it in the US.” That is not really true in the current situation. You can avoid the tariffs if you make everything within house, sure, however, the cost of production is higher in the US than for example China because the US is not as streamlined as China presently in its manufacturing.

That’s the whole point of the tariff by the way, that US goods cannot compete price-wise with outsider goods’ prices. So prices are going to be higher for the US consumer if they were to buy things made in America vs China.

And that is fine, in terms of rebuilding US industry, as long as the prices are not too exorbitant. Mind you, you are also supposed to be building your working class with a proper approach to tariffs so the increased prices balance out with more jobs and better salary.

This is part of the benefits of how a proper use of tariffs is applied. You tariff key sectors from other countries that you cannot compete with price wise, and thus reduce competition with them, such that your consumer base will support the build-up of these domestic sectors within your own country.

The Difference Between William McKinley’s American System School of Protective Tariffs and Today

So prices were always going to increase for the US consumer, because that is the whole point of the tariff, to raise the competitor’s price for their competing product so you can be supported by the consumer base to build-up domestically. Nothing gets cheaper immediately in this scenario, and by immediately I mean this process is going to take years.

The problem here with what Lutnick is discussing is that, since the Trump team entered office this year, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has put forward a strategy to tariff everything in their attempt to gain ground with China as the world’s leading manufacturer. Thus, over the past several months everything coming into the country from China (which is a great deal) just got more expensive, not specific goods/materials. Everything. On top of this trade with China has seriously halted on key materials throughout the past months that are essential materials required for manufacturing that you cannot get elsewhere, more on this shortly.

For example, you would like to compete in the manufacturing of cars. This is all fine and good. But you cannot also decide to put high tariffs on steel and aluminum simultaneously! These tariffs were put in place against Canada and Japan, which obviously had major negative repercussions to their economies while making steel more expensive for Americans. Because the United States does not in fact produce enough steel and aluminum to meet all of its domestic demand, to which the car industry is just a fraction. So by putting high tariffs on steel and aluminum, which car industries have no choice but to import a portion of their demand, you are increasing costs dramatically for the production of these cars as well as other manufacturing that requires steel and aluminum.

You may be thinking, well why don’t we just increase steel production? Yes, this is also a fine and good thing to do. However, it would take years to build up the capacity, which even then would not be able to meet the full domestic demand and if you want to be a global competitor you will most definitely need to import steel. Meanwhile, the cost of car manufacturing is sky-rocketing making it less competive in the global markets. So it is not so simple as putting a tariff on everything and thinking this is going to bolster industry no matter what.

In other words, without a doubt, boosting industry is important and the United States should compete in car manufacturing and steel production on a global scale, however, this present tariff strategy has worked to actually undermine industry since the components it needs have been made much more expensive without anywhere for them to turn for a cheaper alternative.

The Difference Between William McKinley’s American System School of Protective Tariffs and Today (Second Instalment)

So now, US manufacturers who already had a higher cost of production (and thus were not competitive with global trade) now face ADDITIONAL costs for the materials they need to import to finish their products, which got more expensive with the tariff strategy of the last several months. So now US goods are a great deal more expensive, and we are talking about prices that many US consumers simply cannot afford.

This is the very opposite effect of what you would want with a proper application of tariffs. In this scenario, the prices of US goods are going to be so high that US consumers will not be able to afford them and these US goods cannot compete in the global consumer market either, so how are these US manufacturers going to earn their revenue?

This is a losing strategy.

And that is what has backfired from the Bessent tariff strategy that was put forth this year, making the mistake of using them as a weapon against other countries rather than from a protective measure to the benefit of the American economy.

Lutnick has put forward in interviews that this tariff strategy will act as a motivator for the US to just begin building everything in-house since there is no other choice. But with what supplies? There are no complete supply chains in the US. You will need to import necessary materials that are not available in the US in order to build your manufacturing industry. There is no advanced industry presently that the US has a complete supply chain in. This won’t just manifest out of thin air! You can’t build supply chains overnight, it takes years. So, this plan has been disastrously short-sighted.

Again, to be clear, I am not saying it is impossible to rebuild American industry, what I am saying is that this current strategy is a formula for failure.

Another indicator of short-sightedness from this tariff strategy was the pulling back on tariffs to high tech goods from China, only after a few days of their announcement this summer. Apparently, whoever was in charge of calculating these tariffs didn’t factor in that China was in fact exporting high tech goods to the US that were not easily replaceable. Thus, effectively, the US consumer would no longer have access to these goods…notably laptops, smartphones and essential electronics for businesses if the tariffs had been left in place.

Lutnick has even talked about how these factories will be operated using automation and robotics but how are these advanced robots for assembly lines going to be manufactured? Even if the US knew how to build such robots – which is debatable – the greater majority of the materials required for such a thing would need to be imported. This goes for chip manufacturing as well. It is impossible to build these industries without using China’s supply chain.

The list below mentions just a few critical minerals to give us an idea of how important these are to US manufacturing, especially in advanced technologies, and which are almost entirely dependent on having access to China’s supply chain.

Note, a supply chain does not just mean where these minerals are geographically located, it also means who has the means to process and refine these minerals and metals. When we take into account both the geographical location of these critical minerals and metals plus who has the capability to process and refine them, it is China who comes out on top of these supply chains. And thus, China is the only one who has the capability to complete the circle of manufacturing.

Granted that this above graph is focusing solely on clean energy metals but it gives us a good idea of how China is the only country in the world right now that has the capability of processing and refining almost every critical mineral/metal you would need to build advanced technology industries.

This is why the United States now wants to build up its own capability to control its own supply chains, especially concerning chips/semiconductors. However, this is an endeavour that takes several years to accomplish. China did not build up this capability overnight. For the United States to build up its knowledge and know-how, let alone the actual building of these necessary processing and refining facilities is going to cost billions of dollars on just this alone. Not even factoring in the other billions of dollars needed to build up a manufacturing base, especially if you want to include high-tech robots for assembly lines. So this is a project that is going to take many years, massive R&D innovation, and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending before it is even up and running.

America’s return as an industrial leader in high-tech manufacturing is not so simple after decades of the very opposite.

Despite the US’s never ending aggressive posturing against the Chinese government, China has incredibly given an allowance, until recently, for the US to purchase these key critical minerals that are essential for chip manufacturing as well as the manufacturing of military weapons. China has allowed this despite the trade war, beginning in July 2018, which has aggressively sought to cut China’s ability to participate in the chip manufacturing industry.

The AI Chip Race for Technological Supremacy: Has the United States Already Lost & What Does That Mean for the Future?

According to Bessent, China is officially in recession, in fact, he believes that Beijing is on the verge of a collapse and that is despite the Chinese economy growing by 5% last year (a growth that didn’t rely on the country going further into debt to inflate that number, unlike the US’s 2.8% growth in 2024).

The US had to go into 6.4% GDP deficit, in order to boost the “real” GDP to 2.8%. In other words, for every $1 spent by the US, they made 50 cents in the year 2024. This is the “growth” of the US economy.

In Bessent’s US Senate confirmation hearing he stated:

“China is the most unbalanced, imbalanced country in the history of the world. They are in a severe recession/depression. They may have minus 4% disinflation. And they are attempting to export their way out of that as opposed to doing the much needed internal rebalance.”

This is a very weird statement from Bessent since in the next breath he admits that China still has a lot of money to build infrastructure.

“China will build a hundred new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race. China will build 10 nuclear plants this year. That is not solar. I am in favor of more nuclear plants.”

The Eye of the Storm: ENERGY WARS

In fact, China is one of the few countries in the world who are actively building new nuclear plants and are leading this by a large margin.

Notice in the above graph that the United States is still leading in number of nuclear plants, though the number is smaller today since they have been shutting them down. However, notice in the right column, that the United States is minus 11 nuclear reactors since 2011. In other words, the US, like most things industrial, is relying on past laurels that they have not bothered to even maintain. Notice that China has built 39 new nuclear reactors since 2011.

Notice in the above graph that the United States did not even make the list! In other words, they have no current plans to actually build new nuclear plants!

Westinghouse has announced plans to construct 10 large-scale nuclear power reactors in the U.S. with construction expected to begin by 2030, which is five years away from now. So there are no plans to actually begin construction on any nuclear plants until five years from now. Why such a long wait?

This initiative by Westinghouse is part of a broader strategy to apparently quadruple nuclear power by 2050, however, with a failure to even start construction until five years from now, it is rather baffling as to how they expect to achieve such a goal.

What makes Bessent’s comments even more bizarre is that he clarifies he is for nuclear power but strangely acts like China is somehow a sick and unbalanced nation because it is actively building nuclear energy?!? The level of doublethink here is truly astounding.

Energy is at the core of determining a country’s social progress index. And unlike the situation the US faces, China is not going into debt to pay for this growing infrastructure.

China now relies on the EU and ASEAN countries for more than half of its total trade. And its trade with the ASEAN countries is expected to increase exponentially since these countries are quickly entering into “first world” economic status. They also house more than half of the world’s population so there is a huge consumer market here, and in the near future will surpass the US consumer market.

Scott Bessent calls this imbalanced and unbalanced, to the most extreme degree in ALL OF HISTORY. Meanwhile, what is the US attempting to do? Build back its industry so it can be a leader in the export trade since they realise that they can no longer be top dog with the system they were previously operating on, which was controlled artificial scarcity.

China has blown that tactic out of the water because they are offering essential, crucial trade with other countries that will allow these countries to be self-empowered. Look at the entire history of colonialism, they ALWAYS wanted to prevent or put a cap on industrialisation because it was always understood that that would free regions of the world to become self-sustaining. There is no more control if you are no longer the hand that withholds.

Here is a map (to the left) of the colonial rail lines of Africa built by the colonialists of Europe between 1890 and 1960. Notice that they for the most part do not connect with each other, except in South Africa where there are many white inhabitants. These rail lines are from a resource mine to a port and were used simply for wealth extraction and not to uplift the people.

[Note: You can refer to my paper, with the subsection “China’s Belt and Road Initiative Put Into Perspective” for something I wrote a few years back. Great resources on this are Lawrence Freeman’s website “Africa and the World” as well as Nicholas Jones’s Substack Nkrumah’s Africa both are also RTF lecturers.]

This is what President Putin was referring to in a speech from 2018 to light up Africa.

This map shows how much of the world is still in great need of energy and infrastructure.

The Eye of the Storm: ENERGY WARS

In 2019, Reuters reported that the United States’ top African diplomat warned that African countries running up debt they won’t be able to pay back, should not expect to be bailed out by western-sponsored debt relief.

“We went through, just in the last 20 years, this big debt forgiveness for a lot of African countries,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa for African Affairs Tibor Nagy, referring to the somewhat condescendingly named HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) program, started by the IMF and World Bank in 1996 as a nice window dressing.

“Now all of a sudden are we going to go through another cycle of that? … I certainly would not be sympathetic, and I don’t think my administration would be sympathetic to that kind of situation,” he told reporters in Pretoria, South Africa.

Hmmm, imagine if a Chinese diplomat were to have said that, how it would have been viewed by the west, but apparently when a westerner says it, it is somehow not exploitive and predatory…

Wall Street billionaire and former Soros employee, Scott Bessent, has even gone so far in interviews to say that China is not only sick and unbalanced for exporting so much, but that these massive volumes of exports must be going somewhere, but acted puzzled as to where that could possibly be. How about to where the majority of the world population lives that is in great need of this trade with China to lift their countries out of poverty Mr. Bessent.

So, there’s an incredible disconnect here. According to Bessent, China is both strong and weak at the same time. Is China an economic rival to which you need to guard against or is China crashing and no longer a threat – because you can’t have both. It looks like Americans might be still underestimating China, and their policies to contain her are already beginning to backfire.

The chart below gives you an idea of how much China alone supports US jobs in manufacturing through US exports to China which are now lost or seriously jeopardised. With the top exporter states being Texas, California, Louisiana, Indiana and Illinois etc. whose manufacturing industries have been left totally in the lurch over this trade war and having taken a massive hit rather than a massive boost to their industries.

Ironically, Bessent’s tariff strategy will deindustrialise America faster than ever before. Bringing plants back to the US only makes sense if the domestic consumption base is strong. Is there business to be had in the United States going forward?

Bessent said in his interview with Tucker Carlson:

“Well, I don’t know if they [China] can retaliate for a couple of reasons. If you look at the history, and I used to teach economic history, and when you look at the history, we are the debtor nation, we have the trade deficits. The surplus nation is in the weaker position because the Chinese business model and the economy are the most unbalanced, imbalanced in the history of the modern world. We’ve never seen anything like this in terms of their export level relative to their GDP, relative to their population. They’re in a deflationary recession/depression right now. They’re trying to export their way out of it and we can’t let them do that.”

US Billionaires Unite to “Make America Great Again”: Why the US is Headed for a Deep Recession

Again Bessent is talking about China as some sort of deranged Frankenstein, an exporter monster, and it is up to America to save the world from Chinese….affordable and high quality goods?!?

Bessent continues: “And this is the first step towards realigning that a lot of our trading partners, including some of our allies, have not been good partners. If tariffs are so bad, why do they have them? Or, if the American consumer is going to pay all the tariff then why do they [exporters] care about tariffs. Right, because they [the exporter] are going to eat them.

…

So this is a national security issue that we’re seeing here but it’s also an economic security issue and it’s to, I don’t want to say redistribute, but it is to give working Americans real wage gains and enhance their lives…Wall Street’s done great, it can continue doing well, it’s Main Street’s turn….and that is what we saw yesterday, it’s Main Street’s turn.”

I will let you dear reader decide whether you think you are living through “Main Street’s turn” right now.

…but I guess this is all according to the plan? After all, we are the good guys…right?

Where Do We Go From Here?

As I have made clear in this paper, American industry can indeed be rebuilt and the American economy can once again be prosperous but it cannot occur at the expense of others. The future markets and industries have reached such a level of complexity that no nation is an island or can afford to act like one, not China, and not even the US can succeed as a solo actor. We are now living in a world where all industries will rely on contribution from other nations to complete their supply chains, this is including China. And the countries of Asia, including West Asia, are now no longer stuck in a colonial status reduced to raw-resource suppliers. These regions have entered the 21st century with greater momentum than the West and are quickly becoming leaders in industry and advanced technological fields. And I think that is a very good thing.

The old battle strategy of the Trilateral Commission is growing obsolete just as the old world of colonialism did. This is not to say that everything will be rosy and injustice will be obsolete in this new paradigm, but it does mean that having centralised hegemonic power controlled by a few nations, or a few hands is getter harder to maintain. And that is a good thing. Hence the name multipolar, which has replaced the unipolar world, to the chagrin of neocons such as Marco Rubio.

In terms of what America should do to rebuild their industry – it is important to revisit the American System lessons from Hamilton, Lincoln, McKinley and FDR… and of which Kennedy was the last in this tradition. In this forgotten tradition it was once understood that the greatness of America did not only come from building up ones’ own economy but also assisting other nations in building up their economic sovereignty, that is, that helping other nations was in the best interest of the United States, for it would increase wealth in trade and industrial growth and all would prosper from this form of economic participation, as Henry C. Carey understood.

Thus, there can be a beneficial resolution to this tariff war, but we have to change our philosophy which is not only an erroneous one, but a destructive one, that is the belief in game theory and zero-sum economic and social theories which have been used to justify the most monstrous acts in the name of so-called “self-defence” and “national security.”

The Curse of Game Theory: Why It’s in Your Self-Interest to Exit the Rules of the Game

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John F. Kennedy’s Fight to Stop WW3 and America’s Tragic Slide into Empire – 60th Anniversary

To learn more about this you can read my series (the third instalment to follow):

The Difference Between William McKinley’s American System School of Protective Tariffs and Today

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The Difference Between William McKinley’s American System School of Protective Tariffs and Today (Second Instalment)

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The Eye of the Storm: ENERGY WARS

Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the books “The Shaping of a World Religion” & “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.

Also watch for free our RTF Docu-Series “Escaping Calypso’s Island: A Journey Out of Our Green Delusion” and our CP Docu-Series “The Hidden Hand Behind UFOs”.

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung