Huawei was only the beginning (Part 2) Trump failed as a politician/ After a re-election he will sizzle the world

Huawei was only the beginning (Part 2)

Trump failed as a politician/ After a re-election he will sizzle the world

Berlin, 7.8.2020

The following facts show that Trump is in need of reinforcement in its efforts to defeat the Chinese: Beijing reported growth of 3.2% from April to June despite the trade war with the USA and the Corona crisis. The US domain IMF, of all countries, is trumpeting to the world: China is the only one of the major economies that can be expected to achieve annual growth that is in the black. This makes the big man in the White House totally embarrassed, as the economic power of the USA declined by 4.8 % in the same period.

Now a part of the American elite is waking up – namely the part that no longer blindly trusts the President and that is very sceptical about another term in office for this unpredictable but also incompetent politician. Their conclusion after three and a half years of Trump in the White House looks like this: It was a lost cause. The man who before his election promised to drive the US economy so aggressively that the Chinese would only see their brake lights came up with nothing better than a hard to calculate game with tariffs. Virtually every trade expert shook his head over it, because in the age of digitalisation this instrument is outdated and difficult to control.

Accordingly, the result of the White House’s messing around is now correspondingly negative: Neither competitiveness nor productivity has improved. Innovations? Trump seems to have never heard of them. Education and training? Not so important – the rest is up to the red pencil. Health? The market will take care of that. Here, too, the axe has had its day.

I suspect the US president will soon find someone to blame for this disaster. His own problem: What will happen to the 30 million unemployed? Not a word yet. He looks the other way: with the tax breaks, his staff argues, he has saved the economy from worse.

That it would have made more sense to do something about the infrastructure that has been crumbling for years is something he lacks all understanding of. According to calculations by experts, between 600 and 2 trillion dollars urgently need to be invested in this area (road construction and bridges, rail transport, airports and power lines).

Now we will take stock. But when the keyword „America First“ is mentioned at a meeting of politicians in Berlin, most people can only grin gloating.

Nevertheless, they are aware that if Trump wins the elections in November, „he’ll have the world on fire for at least four years“, comments one of them, and nobody smiles anymore. Then he will divide the world according to the principle of friend and foe. Whereby the Germans apparently belong to the „enemies“ (keyword: withdrawal of troops; strong threats against Nordstream II, also the 5 G decision of Telekom is still pending).

In any case, the way Trump forced the Chinese company Tik Tok on the defensive is another indication that Huawei was only the beginning. More about this in part 3 (to follow).