...
Most of Chinese exports from China are
not from Chinese owned factories. One would assume they are from world corporate entities that have moved there to escape, not only labor costs, but pollution restrictions as well. Some nations resist this "back door" avoidance policy by restricting imports ....since it isn't possible to presently forbid some well-heeled citizens from engaging in this form of free capitalism.
It makes me wonder if we, in the US, won't have to import almost all of our military supplies, if and when the next world war ensues. It's possible the "runaway corporate military industrial complex",
that Ike warned us to fear, doesn't really care which country it finally headquarters in ...as long as the bottom line looks good. Sometimes I think Ike was the last conservative Conservative. We all know that liberals were
never conservative.
I have a friend that works in a major US farm machinery factory that produces air seeders. Air seeders are, by far, the most efficient way to plant crops. Russia is ordering the machines by the thousands and has been doing so for some time. Russian "government" farming is not really that different than corporate farming, meaning a few are in control and an elite few benefit the most financially, workforce be damned. Russia has far more farmland, and probably other natural resources, than we do.
Our attention seems to be continuously diverted by irrelevant minor problems. As we play the fiddle with silly circus politics, it looks like not only the manufacturing sector is gradually moving off-shore, but the "breadbasket" as well. It won't hurt until our displaced and broken farmers have to sell
all their land for urban housing ...and we buy not only
all manufactured goods from overseas, but
all food as well.
So what will we trade as money for all this importing? Well, for one thing, we can legally trade our US soil to non-citizens, to be used for urban housing of course, and rent it back from the new foreign owners.
The cost of rent? Whatever the new 800 pound gorilla wants, I suppose. I hope the looming shortage of petroleum doesn't affect the cost of vasoline too much.
...