@RnaudBertrand has been having a lot of interesting takes lately. I’m not yet convinced this entire analysis is correct but it’s definitely interesting to think about. What do you think?:
"This may seem contradictory to many, but it actually makes a lot of sense.
A lot of the “Trump-adjacent” leaders like Milei who pursue radical change agendas at home may actually counter-intuitively prefer China than the U.S. as an economic partner precisely because it enables their transformative projects: China doesn’t interfere in internal affairs and they’re extremely predictable and stable. As Milei himself puts it: “They are fabulous. They don’t ask for anything in return. All they ask is that I don’t disturb them… They want to trade calmly.” ( https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/11/28/an-interview-with-javier-milei-argentinas-president )
Trump, on the other hand, while being ideologically similar to Milei, is not exactly the non-interfering and stable type… He is all about making the U.S. more more unilateral and unpredictable which, while this is probably what Milei himself would do if he were U.S. president, it’s less attractive if you’re on the receiving end. In particular, Trump might insist that countries like Argentina distance themselves from China which Milei wouldn’t want to do because, as he puts it (in this Buenos Aires Times article) both countries have “complementary economies.”
That’s one of the big Trump ironies: his “America first” ideology is pushing his “my country first” ideological brothers to make China their partner of choice. They share Trump’s anti-liberal vision of domestic transformation but conclude that China’s hands-off approach actually gives them more freedom to pursue it than Trump’s volatility would.
All in all, we might arrive at the paradoxical situation where the more aligned ideologically you are to Trump, the more you’re going to gravitate toward Beijing. And those who dislike Trump the most, your neoliberal types, will remain America’s most faithful vassals due to their nostalgic faith in the liberal order that Trump is dismantling. Go figure"
I’m not quite sold on the first part of that last paragraph but the second part definitely seems to be correct: “those who dislike Trump the most, your neoliberal types, will remain America’s most faithful vassals due to their nostalgic faith in the liberal order that Trump is dismantling”.
That’s exactly what we’ve been seeing and what has also been reflected in recent comments by various EU leaders warning about “not allowing anti-Trump sentiments to turn into anti-US sentiments”. Even as Trump humiliates them and exposes the hypocrisy of the West’s liberal-imperialist moral pretenses, the comprador European ruling class bends over backwards to affirm their loyal vassalage to the US.
It’s quite sad and pathetic, and all it shows is that they still don’t get that the world has irreversibly changed. They still think that Trump is an anomaly that they just need to ride out, meanwhile completely failing to understand that the US elites have, by and large, already seen which way the wind is blowing and have placed their bets on Trump and his crude, openly self-interested imperialism rather than attempt to keep up the old crumbling liberal façade.
The US is now clearly in the process of cannibalizing its vassals’ economies in order to consolidate into a less overextended and more “defensible” position as they continue to lose ground in the rest of the world at an accelerating rate. Their foothold in Asia is not sustainable in the long run and i think they know it. Sooner or later China will push them out.
So if it can’t preserve its global hegemony, Washington will at least make sure to lock down Europe and North America…(and ideally they would very much like to control their entire hemisphere, which is why we should expect to see in the coming years a heavy focus on trying to subjugate as much of Latin America as they can, while they still can, and in particular on finding a final solution to the Cuba and Venezuela “problems”).