Manufacturing in China makes up nearly 50% of its GDP and any moves to suppress their manufacturing markets would be devastating to both the economic and political stability of the People’s Republic of China.
Considering that the United States began what was ostensibly a trade war to punish Chinese economic malfeasance, of which as of 2021 which not one iota has been corrected, as the PRC is militarizing the Southwest Pacific, is in the midst of a racial genocide in Xinjiang and a political genocide in Hong Kong, and recently threatened nuclear war with Japan, and therefore treaty partner the US, over Taiwan, it is high time for the United States to end the facade that economic liberalization will lead to the political liberalization of China.
The United States must aim to depose the Chinese Communist Party from power, and have party officials, including Xi Jinping, arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
One very small step, before the radical restructuring of international relations that would be required to make this a reality is to end the sad outdated reliance on China for both raw materials and manufacturing, and this begins by placing tariffs on the golden goose of Chinese manufacturing, consumer electronics.
Despite the tariffs campaign put in place under Republican Donald Trump and continued under Democrat Joe Biden, consumer electronics, a major piece in the intellectual property debacle, a critical driver of supply chains and the value-added electronics industry, and the symbolic power move that shames every American leader who belittles China while holding an iPhone, were left without their own tariffs.
To push Tim Cook and his cadre of engineers who installed backdoors and spyware at the behest of the Communist Party of China onto hundreds of millions of devices sold in the United States to diversify manufacturing,
to push 郭台銘, who in conspiracy with Tim Cook, has a long track record of exploiting low-wage workers, and putting his own personal business interests over those of Taiwan to stop assembling cheap disposable devices with the blood of the Chinese working class,
to push countries in the world, especially the United States and Taiwan, whose regimes are politically iniminal to the PRC, yet both with more than 50% of their population buying iPhones and funding the growth of a totalitarian party-state which aims to reshape the world order as we know it, to reconcile their beliefs with their crass consumerism,
there must be a global campaign to impose unilateral tariffs on all consumer devices exported from China, led by the United States and Taiwan, including the ubiquitous iPhone, regardless of the social costs.
Without this, the the supposed tariffs campaign will be rendered nothing more than symbolic, and the Chinese export market will continue to grow unabated, as more than half of the devices used in both countries will be susceptible to spying by a state enemy, a completely unacceptable future for the world.
Staff writer: Ari B