Wall Street readies to sabotage Biden’s China fightback

through the shifting personnel strands of the Trump presidency. This is not to say that the 45th President of the US was himself a creature of the Street, only that he was dazzled enough by its products to, once elected, throw into the dustbin his campaign promise to rid policymaking in the Washington Beltway of Wall Street influence. and wide through flights from affected locations to cities across the world, such a spread became inevitable through such traffic. Also, the constriction in domestic production in the US and Europe that was caused by the effects of, and responses to, the pandemic caused the PRC to just record the highest trade surplus in its history. The absence of any substantive decoupling of production facilities based in China (in part because conditions in India are judged by several investors to still be far from what they need to be to emerge as a significant alternative) has resulted in the PRC retaining its status as the Factory of the World, trade war or no trade war, decoupling or not.

BATTLE FOR US PRIMACY RAGING

It will be clear from the statistics that President Trump’s battle to retain US primacy has been less than successful, in large part because he has surrounded himself with the favourites of Wall Street. It remains to be seen whether President Biden will be similarly handicapped in his efforts at reversing the US drift towards second class status that has been witnessed for some time, certainly since the trillion dollar Lost Wars launched by President George W. Bush and Vice-president Dick Cheney and the 2008 crash. Now that Hunter Biden is under investigation for influence peddling as a consequence of the generous compensation received by him from Chinese companies, efforts will be ongoing to compare incoming President Biden’s policies towards the PRC with the largesse handed out to his only surviving child from his first wife. Both Jill and Joe Biden are known to be exceptionally decent human beings. Those familiar with the Bidens say that the bond between father and son has become exceptionally close after the passing away of Beau Biden, an idealist who would have been an immense success in public life. The question is: will Wall Street sabotage the Biden counter-offensive against efforts to displace the US from global primacy, they way the interests supporting them have substantially succeeded in the case of his predecessor? If there is a failure by Joe Biden to rein in the onward march of the PRC, the blame will be placed not on Wall Street but on the 46th President of the US. It will be alleged that such failure is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which Hunter Biden was looked after financially by old friends in the PRC. Senators Sanders and Warren are right about Wall Street, and President Biden could do worse than to consult them more often about the battle for retaining primacy for the US and its values. Trump talked a lot, acted much less than he ought to have. The reverse needs to take place.

MAO-DENG-XI MODEL

Those focused on ensuring the continued primacy of not simply the US geopolitical ascendancy but the spread of its values warn that across the world, the success of the China Model is leading to a spurt in public acceptance of authoritarian structures and values. Whether in Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Turkey or Russia, liberal democrats have given way to autocrats largely as a consequence of public support. The forecast that the end of Cold War 1.0 between the USSR and the US led to the “end of history” has proved to be less than accurate. Cold War 2.0 has made an appearance that even the Atlanticist speechwriters for President-elect Biden may not for long be able to ignore by constantly referring to the dead “Asia-pacific” construct rather than the reality of the Indo-pacific. Once sworn in on January 20 next year, Biden will need to sabotage the Wall Street saboteurs. In a way that his predecessor failed to do, the 46th US President needs to concentrate on (a) holding investment managers personally accountable for sending capital from the US in hundreds of billions to PRC entities that have linkages with defence production and other security related entities. The US Senate and House of Representatives will need to pass enabling legislation for this, as sabotage of the saboteurs may not be possible through executive orders alone, (b) work towards a BRI debt moratorium of 15 years followed by a 15 year period of repayment for any country that seeks to take advantage of such a provision, (c) cut off banks and other financial entities from the SWIFT system that violate sanctions designed to maintain primacy of the global democratic alliance that is taking shape, (d) delist ADRS from stock exchanges that are not compatible with domestic accounting rules. Rather than go alone in such matters, both Atlanticist as well as Indo-pacific partners need to be brought on board with such measures, and adopt them as well. The key to the battle is access to money, and Wall Street and others that prize cash above liberty and security need to be taught otherwise, not simply by sound and fury but by the light of action.