Crypto concerns are likely driving a lot of Trump “policy”

By Paul Krugman. I very much share his entirely well-grounded suspicions.

By now it’s obvious that Donald Trump suffers from CBS — Cowardly Bully Syndrome.

On Friday, Trump blasted China’s new export controls on rare earths, declaring them a “moral disgrace” which were “obviously a plan devised by them years ago.” And he threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on China, on top of the already high existing tariffs.

Less than a day later he was groveling…

This was the largest one-day crash crypto has experienced so far. My question, however, is why the prospect of an intensified trade war caused a crypto crash…

The answer, I believe, has little to do with economics and everything to do with politics. These days crypto derives its value largely from the support of politicians and government officials — in particular, officials who can be bribed. As a result, at this point crypto is largely a Trump trade. And crypto fell because the backlash against the potential trade war threatened to weaken Trump politically. - The National Memo

China's clean tech exports are crushing US filthy fossil fuels

The gap will likely only widen. Works for me.

Recent reports out of think tank Ember on China’s record-breaking $20 billion in August clean technology exports and the underlying data have stimulated discussion online. Electrek focused on the EV exports that are driving much of the growth. Meanwhile, Bloomberg put the numbers together with DOE and EIA data to show how China’s cleantech exports are outpacing US fossil fuels (reposted in Energy Connects). We also published a piece on it a few hours ago: “Renewables Drive A Stake Through The Cold, Dark Heart Of King Coal.”

…Of course, comparing fossil fuel exports to cleantech exports is like comparing apples to oranges. The two categories are significantly different. However, the differences indicate a substantial shift in how the world approaches energy and the global dynamics that drive trade. - CleanTechnica

Trump inadvertently screws US LNG exporters

I actually think this won't last long. Once he realizes that his trade war's a disaster for his own public standing Trump will back down. Probably with the "help" of some quiet, though very substantial, corporate bribes.

China has just suspended all LNG imports from the United States. No warning, no phasedown, just an apparent state directive that Chinese buyers, including the national oil companies, were no longer to sign, lift, or receive U.S. liquefied natural gas. The decision comes in the wake of a rapidly escalating trade war, reignited by a second Trump presidency that wasted no time imposing steep new tariffs on Chinese technology and industrial goods. The result is a gaping hole in the U.S. LNG export market, one that undermines years of investment assumptions and exposes the growing fragility of fossil fuel infrastructure in a changing geopolitical landscape…

Ironically, Trump’s trade war — by freezing China-bound shipments and halting new terminal progress — may have delivered an unexpected climate silver lining: a substantial brake on future emissions from fossil gas infrastructure that would otherwise lock in decades of high-carbon export activity. In trying to punish a geopolitical rival, he has accidentally slowed the expansion of one of America’s most emissions-intensive energy sectors.

The final irony is political. U.S. oil and gas executives spent heavily during the 2024 election cycle, once again backing Trump in the hopes of favorable policies, looser regulations, and accelerated fossil fuel exports. Billions were spent on lobbying, campaign donations, and friendly media to amplify the message that fossil fuels meant freedom and prosperity. - CleanTechnica

More proof that US pressure and sanctions are failed BS

Unfortunately the people in charge just will not learn. Too cowardly to personally face the realities of stupidity and failure, among other things.

This time around, the U.S. had been cut out of the picture, a sea change reflecting not just Chinese initiatives but Washington’s incompetence, arrogance, and double-dealing in the subsequent three decades in the Middle East. An aftershock came in early May as concerns gripped Congress about the covert construction of a Chinese naval base in the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. ally hosting thousands of American troops. The Abu Dhabi facility would be an add-on to the small base at Djibouti on the east coast of Africa used by the People’s Liberation Army-Navy for combating piracy, evacuating noncombatants from conflict zones, and perhaps regional espionage...

China’s interest in bringing to an end the Iranian-Saudi cold war, which constantly threatened to turn hotter, is clear enough, but why did those two countries choose such a diplomatic channel? After all, the United States still styles itself the “indispensable nation.” If that phrase ever had much meaning, however, American indispensability is now visibly in decline, thanks to blunders like allowing Israeli right-wingers to cancel the Oslo peace process, the launching of an illegal invasion of and war in Iraq in 2003, and the grotesque Trumpian mishandling of Iran. - Informed Comment

The Middle East is kicking the U.S. to the curb

And why not? Of course we don't know how long this Iran-Saudi glad-handing will last. But in any case U.S. influence will still be tanking. Looking at history, the only "surprise" is that it took this long.

In an interview with Al Jazeera English, veteran Washington Iran watcher Hillary Mann Leverett asserted that, in the wake of the reestablishment of Iran-Saudi diplomatic relations in an agreement brokered by Beijing, China is now “the indispensable nation” in the Middle East. She underlined that the United States could not have achieved this accomplishment.

The joint statement issued on Friday, crafted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and diplomats of the two feuding Middle Eastern states, pledged non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs. Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan tweeted that the agreement formed part of the Saudi vision for peaceful cooperation in the region toward a common efflorescence...

Now, half a century later, it is China that has 99% of the cards when it comes to relations across the Oil Gulf. The hardest of hard lines taken by the United States against Iran, with the imposition of a de facto global financial and trade embargo on that country’s oil exports, putting the two countries on a war footing, has led to the US utterly lacking influence in Iran or Syria, and to its having alienated most of Iraq. This invisible blockade was imposed on Iran even though it had carefully adhered to the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the Security Council, a deal from which Trump withdrew and which he more or less destroyed. - Informed Comment

Finding new wars post-Afghanistan

It's what too many people have their sick, dark hearts set upon.

Why are so many otherwise sane people, including Joe Biden’s foreign policy team, already rattling sabers in preparation for a new faceoff with China, one that would be eminently avoidable with judicious diplomacy and an urge to cooperate on this embattled planet of ours?

...Looking at the U.S. from across an ocean, a British friend of mine was bemused by this country’s propensity for turning rivals into dangers of the worst sort. He asked me whether the very unity of the United States hinges on hyping and then confronting external enemies, an “artificially contrived military commonality,” as he put it, that may serve to prevent this country’s states from performing their own little “Brexits.”

He has a point. What is it about this country that makes our leaders so regularly revel in inflating threats to our well-being? War profits, of course, as well as the kinds of dangers that seem to justify an ever more colossal military. Still, I suggested to my friend that inflating such dangers hasn’t induced a sense of national unity, though it has, at least, provided a major distraction from what, so late in the game, can still only be called class warfare...They also, of course, offer our oligarchs and kleptocrats yet more opportunities to plunder taxpayer dollars. - TomDispatch