[rwwff]

As long as oil is being traded in dollars, China will get plenty of benefit from selling cheap junk in the US.

What I'm saying is once US consumer can't afford the cheap junk no matter how cheap it is, due to debt, fuel and food costs.

And once the sun turns into a red giant the planet will be fried. I just can't see getting particularly excited about predictions that far out, and you are talking many decades of time. I know doomers want to ignore economic inertia and postulate that as soon as the world's production drops to 70mbpd or something on the back side of the curve, everything will go splat.

Maybe I'm just in a less doomeristic mood having recently returned from a moderately long road trip, and saw no signs of anyone paying any attention to gas prices at all...

There's just too much inertia in this F18 backed dollar for China to want to let go of it any time soon. For them its a freaking free ride.

[emersonbiggins]

Maybe I'm just in a less doomeristic mood having recently returned from a moderately long road trip, and saw no signs of anyone paying any attention to gas prices at all.

Hey, as long as you can make the monthly minimums, who cares how high gas gets, right? That's the inertia that I'm seeing, more or less.

Of course, people would probably rethink those decisions if they knew that this wasn't merely a "bump" in the road for our economy, so to speak...

[americandream]

Any bet that China will not pull the plug on the US?

[Gazzatrone]

I know this US vs China warfare thing is part and parcel of some of yalls ideology, but I just have to chime in..

The US is not going to fight China.
China is not going to fight the US.

Yall are going to have to find a different way to play this thing out, if you want any hope of guestimating what really will happen.

We each make tons of stuff that the other doesn't make, the trade "imbalance" is required so that China can use some of those dollars to buy their oil, and there is no possible winner in enaging each other in open war. The Chinese suck at power projection, we suck at defense. You can't get a strong vs weak situation, we have to either go to them, our strong attack vs their strong defense; or they have to come to us, sucky attack vs sucky defense. And it all leads to both countries being relagated to the status of eternal has beens.

In other words. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

I agree, from what I gather the U.S and Chineese economies are symbiotic, Chineese workers making products for the West and ultimately itself (please correct me if my analysis is incorrect as the words "Made In China" are seen on just about every product I buy today.)

The last thing China needs or more importantly wants, is an event that will curtail there economic development, and picking a fight with one of its major markets i think highly unlikely.

But then this then boils down to the Global Free Market dictating actions these days and not Governments, though they'd still like to think so.

my playout would be that both parties ultimately agree with one another in order to protect the economic status quo.

The real wild card would be Russia, having said that. Russia has energy to sell so in the end game will to be forced to tag along with China and the U.S as a trident symbiosis will ultimately end up being beneficial for all parties.

[Doly]

The real wild card would be Russia, having said that. Russia has energy to sell so in the end game will to be forced to tag along with China and the U.S as a trident symbiosis will ultimately end up being beneficial for all parties.

You are missing Europe here. Russia sells a lot of their oil to Europe. Other people who want oil may prefer Russia to sell to them. Russia itself may think they'd rather keep the oil to themselves.

I see the US as the odd man out in this geopolitical game. At the end of the day, what they can offer is losing value all the time. The only thing they have to compensate for that is their army: negotiate with me... or else. But the US can't fight everyone that won't do what they want.

China doesn't have to sell their products to the US, they can sell to Europe too. Several oil sellers (starting with Russia) are interested in selling oil in euros because they trade with Europe. To make things even more complicated, there's India and Brazil, too. China, India, Russia and Brazil are in similar economic situations, and it makes sense for them to help each other. Too many people have their own ideas about what would be most beneficial to them, and it isn't always beneficial to the US.

[rwwff]

Any bet that China will not pull the plug on the US?

If I allowed myself to gamble, I'd take that wager, depending on the time frame specified. An open ended wager would never pay since the party opposite could always say, "well, they'll pull the plug next year."

As it is, I've never so much as bought a lottery ticket.

[JonathanR]

I agree, from what I gather the U.S and Chineese economies are symbiotic, Chineese workers making products for the West and ultimately itself (please correct me if my analysis is incorrect as the words "Made In China" are seen on just about every product I buy today.)

The US manufacturing economy was symbiotic with the WW2 Allied nations during '41-'45. Post '45, the US economy didn't tank it, rather it discovered it had all the skills and infrastructure to support a nice lifestyle, thank-you-very-much.

The chinese industrial base and associated infrastructure will be just as effectively used once the US can't afford to buy an increasing volume of chinese imports. That is when the tide will turn.