Closed stores

[jblaze5779]

I was wondering today how China would do if the US didn't have the money to buy their exports?

As for Carrefour, if you want to see a super shitty one go to the one in NQN. Basically no food left and dirty. They just leave the pallets on the floor and don't even bother unloading them onto the shelves.

This particular store was my first experience and I found myself in a different world when I visited one in The Netherlands a couple years later. It was actually very nice inside.

 

[Ries]

I was wondering today how China would do if the US didn't have the money to buy their exports?

As for Carrefour, if you want to see a super shitty one go to the one in NQN. Basically no food left and dirty. They just leave the pallets on the floor and don't even bother unloading them onto the shelves.

This particular store was my first experience and I found myself in a different world when I visited one in The Netherlands a couple years later. It was actually very nice inside.

17% of The chinese GDP is exports- and about 17% of that is to the USA. Which means that, as a percentage of the entire Chinese economy, the USA purchases only represent about 4%. So, China would be just fine if the US stopped buying their exports. The EU buys as much as the USA, and if you add up the other major chinese buying nations, the US is just not that important to the chinese in pure numbers.
The complications might come due to the fact that the Chinese import from the US $150 Billion or so , much of it in components for things which then are exported globally for big profits. Also, many US owned companies have important factories in China- Caterpillar, for example, has over 20 factories, which, in turn, earn China a lot of money exporting Cat machinery to the middle east, asia, africa, and south america. If the US and China completely cut ties, many of these Chinese made products would lose their brand name status, and be worth much less. Nike, Apple, and dozens of other globally desired brands make money for China because they are authorized by the US companies. If they were chinese brands, the demand would be much lower.

 

[Ries]

I was rounding up to get 4%. Because so many people think the US is floating China's boat, and even at 4%, its still a factor, but not a huge one. And the chinese are more than willing to suffer economically to prove a political point.

 

[Greg S]

The more I think on it, the more is strikes me that Argentina is the dark future of the western world.

The Europeans saw it first with their similarly ungovernable nations of Italy and Greece (once it returned to democracy). With Portugal, Spain, and even France tilting that way all through the 1980s, the European Union tried to save Europe by removing the ability of national governments to adopt Argentine-style tax/spend and anti-productive policies. The Euro and monetary role is the most famous mechanism for this, but Brussels has been gradually assuming various national governments' powers for decades, narrowing their fiscal marge de manoeuvre.

At the same time, World Bank/IMF and a host of other institutions and arrangements (GATT/WTO/regional trade agreements with enforceable settlement dispute mechanisms) - essentially the entire neoliberal system - took this national. People called it coca cola capitalism and rioted and the rest, but at some basic level, it was all designed to prevent your Venezuela/Argentina type scenarios by folding countries into extra-national rule systems for trade, taxation, etc.

Whatever the successes, this schema - which prioritized stability and growth as the basis of shared prosperity - is clearly on the wane, and national governments led by populists is the order of the decade.

As the neoliberal system breaks up, two great populist coalitions have already taken shape in most western nations: on the left, it's class politics supercharged by a equality-of-condition rather than opportunity (aka 'equity') mobilizing call; on the right, it's the last stand of a (sometimes incoherent) coalition of old national identitarian groups in the various nations.

The populist left is obviously going to win just as
it has in Argentina. The simple fact is that if you promise people free stuff, paid for by wealth you take off wealthy individuals, 'greedy businesses,' banks, 'big tech,' etc. they're going to vote for you. The internet is a grievance-making machine, and it will only progress. Even the US is doomed.

What we're seeing here in Argentina is the future of the west, and why the Asians will run the 21st century.

The Chinese run things now. Don't kid yourself. Asia, Australia, much of Africa. Venezuela is their foothold in SA, among other countries.

This is spot on.