The Duran Podcast
EU takes on China
All right, Alexander. Let's talk about the trade war that seems to be coming with China, a U.S. trade tariff war, possibly, probably EU as well. The Financial Times, they put out an article the other day with the title U.S. set to impose 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicle imports. I believe the EU is also planning something very similar. Ursula is very upset with Chinese EVs. It's one of her obsessions. It seems, and we had Xi Jinping recently in Europe. He was in Hungary, he was in Serbia, and he was in France, and at the meeting with Macron was none other than Ursula Van der Leyen. What do you think is going on here between China and the European Union and China and the United States? It is a geopolitical conflict masquerading as a trade war. That is what basically it is. It's absolutely true. The China has massively developed its EV technologies, its leading, it's become a global leader in this area. It's got big manufacturing capacity. You could say that about every sector of the Chinese economy now. China economically is huge. That is the reality of it. Always, the Chinese are going to have a massive presence in any industrial or out trade sector. The reality is that, at least in Europe, the EV sector of the car industry is an absolute crisis. There's been a struggle getting EV sales to grow. The investment in this area is in crisis. Also, some companies, apparently some automobile companies, are apparently looking to switch investment back towards more conventional cars. Others are talking more about hybrids. It's not in particularly good shape if the European Union really wants to meet its targets to achieve net zero, whatever it is, by 2030, at least in cars and moves all to electric cars by that time. It can't realistically do it without China. That's not my view, by the way. I'm not a person who follows this particularly closely. I've read articles about this, both in the motor car media, which is quite big here in Britain, but also places like the financial times. Talk about Chinese overcapacity is misplaced. I understand that the same is largely true in the United States as well. The United States obviously, there's Tesla, which is doing quite well there, or has historically done quite well there. But elsewhere across the US car industry, I understand that there are many problems. Again, if they are going to meet their targets, then again, logically, they have to try and import some cars from China. It can't be done otherwise. Now, they say they're not prepared to push their targets back, which might have been the alternative option. What they're going to do instead, despite the fact that they need imports from China, is that they're going to push up these huge tariffs. Why are they pushing up these tariffs? Because they want to do everything they can. And I think this is not becoming increasingly clear to choke off or to close off Chinese development in advanced technologies, be it these sort of electric vehicle technologies, how advanced they really are. I'm not going to get into a discussion about that. I don't have that understanding, but that's the assumption that these are going to be the motivational technologies of the future. They want to close the Chinese off there. They also, as we know, want to close the Chinese off in microchips, in solar panels, in every kind of high-tech field that they possibly can, because the Western powers have come to see China, essentially, as a major geopolitical competitor. So this is what it is. It's about containing China. I'm not saying that the Chinese haven't taken advantage of the West in the past, that they haven't encroached on Western businesses, and done damage to some Western industries. But this was always, remember, driven by decisions made in the West itself. Western governments, as I very well remember, and Western businesses, chose to outsource production to China. I can remember in the 90s and 2000s, this was considered the smart thing to do. You relocated your industry to China, your dirty manufacturing to China, so that you could focus on the more high-tech, more advanced sectors within your own economy. What's now happened is the Chinese economy has grown to the point where it's developing high-tech sectors of its own and people in the United States and Europe to their own detriment won't stop it. Right, so one part of the China row is overcapacity. That's the one beef that the United States and the EU have with China, this overcapacity problem. They need to settle and resolve this Chinese overcapacity. The other part of the equation is the Chinese supply of dual-use goods to Russia in order to fund Russia's war machine. Lincoln talks about this often. Ursula talks about this often. What do you think they're telling China with regards to the supply of dual-use goods to Russia? What deals are they trying to cut with China? What agreements are they trying to make with China in order to get China to stop working with Russia? It can't just deal with the overcapacity thing first. I've now been reading through all the various things, all the various Western officials and political leaders, Blinken and Borrell and all those people have been saying. What Ursula, what they're basically saying, it's quite clear what they mean is the Chinese economy is too big. It has to be cut down to size. The fact that China has now overtaken the West in manufacturing and is now competing with high technology, that upsets the real, the proper balance of the world as they see it. It's risks taking away a technological and industrial leadership from the West, and that's what they don't want to see happen. If you read their statements, it's not actually so carefully disguised. Now, the business about Russia, China's relations with Russia, this is taking increasingly now center stage. Partly, it's a rhetorical device because what they want to do is that they want to use China's trade with Russia as an excuse to impose all of these restrictions, first sanctions, tariffs, paint China as this unfriendly country that is a threat and a challenge to the West and all that. Secondly, they very much want to win the war in Ukraine. They've been spooked by the fact that the Russians are massively outproducing them. They've convinced themselves that the reason their sanctions aren't working is because the Chinese are supporting the Russian economy. Of course, it isn't just the Chinese. By the way, the Indians too, but it's China that they want to talk about more. They're saying to China, stop supplying Russia with dual-use technologies, including chips and machine tools. The trouble is that pretty much any industrial good can be described as a dual-use technology. So if the Chinese were to agree to something like that, they would be faced with unending demands to restrict evermore types of goods, industrial goods, to Russia, and it wouldn't just be Russia sooner or later, it would be other countries, any other country that the West sanctions, they'd be coming along to the Chinese and said, "Look, you can't trade with them. You can't supply Ethiopia with machine tools, because these are dual-use technologies, and Ethiopia is misbehaving according to us, or Iran is misbehaving according to us, or whichever country in the world is misbehaving according to us, and therefore you've got to stop doing." So the Chinese are never going to do that, because they can't let their trade policy, in bear in mind that China is now the world's biggest trading country in durable goods. The Chinese are never going to let their trade policy be controlled for them by the West in that sort of way. It goes beyond China's relation ship with Russia, important to those that anyway is the Chinese are never going to agree to simply restrict sales of goods and in effect enforce the West's sanctions for it. I mean that would be a catastrophic loss of sovereignty on China's part, so of course the Chinese are not going to agree. Now apparently there was a really, really difficult meeting in France, firstly in Paris and then in the Pyrenees, because Macron took Xi Jinping to this resort in the Pyrenees mountains in the south of France, the party was all fog and the weather wasn't at all good, but anyway regardless of that, apparently there was this very, very difficult meeting. Macron pushed Xi Jinping very hard on this issue, especially with Russia and Xi Jinping, as he always does, just very deftly and very politely, battered it all the way. Now there's been a rather interesting article in the Financial Times by a rather well-connected journalist called Martin Sandberg, and the Financial Times of course is also in some ways very well-connected, and I have a suspicion that this was what this article suggests is what Macron and Ocelot, who was also in on some of these meetings, basically suggested to Xi Jinping. It was, maybe it wasn't put quite as clearly as I'm going to describe it, but they were suggesting some kind of a bargain. China stops exporting, deal use goods to Russia, stops exporting microchips, accepts the fact that the EU will confiscate Russian assets, not just the interest but the capital as well, and in return the Europeans, because they need some Chinese EVs to make up the numbers if they're going to achieve their targets, that the Europeans cut the Chinese some slack on EV imports, and don't go the way that the US has done, and impose the 100% tariffs. Now importantly, it's important to point out that these reports about the US imposing 100% tariffs on Chinese imports of EVs into the United States, that came exactly as these discussions and prompts were underway. So it seems to me that this is what they were trying to do, they were trying to push Xi Jinping, get into agree to this bargain, look, he's saying to him, in effect, either you do what we want on Russia, or we will impose all these tariffs on your EV vehicles, we'll stop them, block them, and stop exporting, and don't be too fast about ceasing if we seize China's Russia's sovereign assets. And well, unsurprisingly, Xi Jinping said no, apparently he didn't give an inch on trade with Russia, and as night follows day, we have now had a ferocious editorial in Global Times, which is China's mouthpiece, in which they've discussed the question of confiscating Russia's assets. They said this is a fundamental violation of sovereign immunity. This idea that you can do this to Russia, and it won't affect other countries is an absurd one. And the implicit thing is don't remotely think that we in China are ever going to agree to anything like this. We strongly disagree with this idea, and so does the rest of the world. So I mean, you know, if that was the package that was being presented by Macron and Ursula to Xi Jinping, which by the way, I suspect it was. I mean, this is my own sense. It sounds like something they do. It sounds like the kind of thing they would put together. I mean, you know, he just he just blew it away. We've got tools Ursula. The title of the Global Times article, if anybody is interested in looking it up, is confiscating Russian assets of violation of the principle of sovereign immunity. And that's in the Global Times. So a quick question to you, even if China agreed to this, it doesn't make the the stealing of Russian frozen assets any less illegal. I mean, I don't understand what the thinking is, just because China were to say, okay, go ahead. Does that make it legal now to take these these frozen assets? No, on the contrary, it is an admission that it is illegal. What they're asking the Chinese to do is, in effect, to become a co-conspirator in this theft. You know, the Chinese, you know, we're not bad. You go ahead, you know, steal those assets. And, you know, we're not going to be too fast. We're not going to be too bothered. We're not worried about international law or sovereign state immunity. Even though, I mean, we've got far more assets locked up in the West than the Russians ever did. So potentially could affect us much more. But, you know, we're not too worried. As I said, it's an it is on the country. It is properly speaking, an admission of its illegality. If it was legal to do, you wouldn't need China's agreement. I mean, it's obvious. Yeah, that was my follow-up question to wrap up the video. If this was indeed a bargain proposal that was made to China, if it was, then I would imagine that China would leave France even more freaked out about the assets that they hold in the collective West. I mean, I would imagine that Xi Jinping would be getting on the plane leaving France going, my God, we better get our assets out of here ASAP. That's exactly what they're doing. And, in fact, they're buying gold at a staggering rate, apparently, and they're holding strategic minerals and everything that they can do because they can see that this massive geopolitical rift is coming. And the Chinese are not fools. They know that it's not ultimate, even about Russia. It's ultimately about themselves. The whole overcapacity thing gives away the whole story. The fact that they've become too big, too fast, and that they're seen as a challenge and as a threat to the West is what ultimately drives everything. So that is what the Chinese are doing. It's clear to me reading the Chinese media that they were to put it mildly unhappy about the meeting with the French and with the EU. But what the Chinese say, which is always very measured, pales compared to what the media in France in particular has been saying. If you go to Le Mans, for example, it's clear that the summit was a complete failure and that the relations have actually deteriorated the financial times as well, that, in fact, the meeting not only didn't go well, but that he went badly and very badly wrong. I don't understand the strategy that the West takes with China. Help us, China, help us destroy Russia so that we can then destroy you. I mean, don't they realize that this is a no-go with China? That's their strategy. Help us destroy Russia so that eventually we can turn everything against you. They still persist in massively overestimating their own power. They believe that the Chinese are so shocked and frightened by the mere threat of tariffs on the EV cars, that the Chinese will simply buckle and capitulate to what they demand. And they also overestimate their own intelligence and the other sides underestimate the other sides. They think that the Chinese cannot adapt to these pressures that they're putting on them. And they assume, they also, I suspect, assume that if Xi Jinping holds firm and takes the stand that he is clearly intent on taking, there'll be other people in China who will rise up and put pressure on him and maybe remove him if he doesn't do what they want. It's the same thing that they think they thought with Russia before. They assumed that if they put sanctions on Russia, if they stop Russians from traveling to the west on shopping expeditions, the oligarchs would become so unhappy with Putin that they would remove him. They're thinking exactly the same about Xi Jinping. They're making the same mistake, by the way, that I encountered many times when I was interviewing people who were acknowledged criminals. Criminals always assume that everybody else is a cynical about things as they are. And that's exactly what you find from the leaders of the west at the moment. They assume a cynicism in China, which does not exist. Many assumptions, they make many wrong assumptions. They don't think the trouble is they don't think that they are assumptions. They believe them to be truths. They believe that Russians are cynical about everything. And they assume the same about China as well. All right, the duran.locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, picture Telegram, Rockfin, and TwitterX. And go to the duran shop, pick up limited edition, merch the link is in the description box down below. Take care. (upbeat music) You