China is the world’s second biggest producer of silver and seventh largest producer of nickel. Bonus is that the biggest producer of nickel is Indonesia, which has a free trade agreement with China and the third biggest producer is Russia (lol, lmao).
Also love the example of Sorghum because China is producer #8 in the world and 4 of the top producers are global south countries that absolutely would not cut off trade with China. Also, lmao at the thought of the CPC just collapsing because people can’t get one specific type of liquor. Imagine Russia trying to undermine America by targeting its strategic vodka supply.
All this tells me is that the West doesn’t produce anything that is irreplaceable to China and that the think tankers and journalists are too delusional to recognize this.
A lot of people don’t understand that this is the ultimate clash between finance capitalism and industrial capitalism.
The US truly and genuinely believe that they can defeat China (industrial capitalism) simply by wielding the power of finance. The depth and liquidity of dollar, the all-pervasive global financial institutions rooted in the dollar regime, are all extremely powerful tools to control the world’s economy. The US doesn’t need to produce anything, it controls how other countries gain access to commodities, goods and services through financial institutions and intellectual property rights, food through the World Bank and credit through the IMF. They’re going to flood the foreign sector with trillions of dollars this fall and there is nothing you can do to stop that deluge of liquid dollar from entering the world’s economy.
On the other hand, China genuinely believes that the sheer power of industrial capital can defeat the hyper-financialized and de-industrialized US empire. After all, people survive on real goods and services, and there is a lot of leverage to be gained simply by being a manufacturing giant. Nevertheless, China remains a net exporter country (using your labor to produce goods and services for others to consume and enjoy) while the US is a net importer country (imagine being able to get free lunches everywhere simply by writing an IOU on a blank piece of paper and everyone would fight and die for the pieces of paper you carry). At the same time, China is still deeply dependent on imported food to feed its 1.4 trillion population. No small task.
The fact is we don’t know who will win out. Some say finance is the ultimate weapon to wield, others say industry is what matters. Only time will tell, provided we haven’t annihilated the world before then.
Food as an industry is going to see rapid transformation in the next decade or so. Emerging meat technologies are progressing incredibly quickly and will reduce inefficiencies in the current food production system.