See this is dangerous talk. This is exactly the catalyst that would cause China to start embargoing it's goods to the West. If China can't import Russian grain or energy they will have no choice but to lash out. The West has no consumer goods industry of it's own, it's over reliance on China means such an embargo would lead to a worldwide depression. The entire worldwide economy needs Chinese consumer goods and industrial parts as it's lubricant, without which liquidity immediately dries up.
Besides what other alternative is there to Russian energy and grain? You can't import Ukrainian grain anymore. The US has been increasing the value of the dollar so much that China can't buy oil from Saudi Arabia or the US because oil from those parts is sold in dollars and the Yuan can't keep up. Arabia also just recently cut their oil production. Also Biden is not pumping more oil, as he has suspended new drilling leases.The only other major food producer is the US, so you can't buy food from there because again expensive dollars required. So where can China get food and energy that's cheaper then what the West is willing to sell?
There really is only Venezuela and Nigeria left for the energy. Unfortunately Biden now wants to make a deal with them to siphon the oil away to cheapen the US domestic supply, thus cutting out China from buying. And food? There's Canada, but they'll most likely be raising interest rates to reach parity with the dollar, thus making the Loonie too expensive for the Yuan to get such food. China can't start buying from Australia or New Zealand because they can't reward them for the recent trade war, it would be a major loss of face. So only Brazil, Argentina, and Chile are left as major food suppliers to China assuming they too don't start raising interest rates and Bolsonarro doesn't lose his election.
China is going to eat the US's lunch. After spitting Europe's industrial bones, which we european (our idiots in charge) are serving them on a silver platter.
The US is simply politically irredeemable as it stands, in terms of recovering its industrial economy. Know-how has been dying for the past 20 years and the generation that knew hoe to make all kings of stuff is now literally dying out - no going back (easily) has been reached in this decade, it becomes impossible to quickly "bring back" industries even if the political problems are fixed.
Financial rents in the economy are too high, everyone is doing "services" trying to squeeze money from everyone else. This leads to multiplication of costs
and of bureaucracy. The US simply cannot compete with other countries in industrial production. China no longer needs american companies, period. They'd rather postpone a geopolitical confrontation until they became stronger and the US weaker per ongoing trends, but if it must be now so be it. It's too late.
It could drag on some of its more capital intensive or more "knowledge complex" industry, though losing it gradually. But instead has chosen to attempt to use it as a weapon - too late.
Those design and "knowledge" corporations sell services to actual manufacturing industry. If that industry is in China and the US embargoes sale of those services - other companies will arise (they already have - will grow fast) in china to service the industry there. The US ones wither and die.
This has relevance to the current war in Europe also for a very simple reason: western Europe and indeed the US itself simply do not have the industrial capacity to support an attrition war with any other big country. They can't even support one with
Russia. Certainly not with China.
China won't interfere there. Just do its own stuff, trade within the eurasian blow which will be the power centre for the 21th century, and ostensibly ignore the US. Let it wither. No one in eastern Asia will volunteer to be Ukraine II.
China won't even embargo "the west". Just - not now but in a few years after picking Europe's bones clean - refuse to accumulate its currency as payment.
What China will do now, is, in order to get replacement markets for its exports, choose to use existing accumulated dollar reserves to "buy out" of the "western system" the "third world" by buying up the foreign (dollar) debt that had held them tangled via the IMF, WB, etc. Actually only need to start doing so, because soon enough repaying that debt in dollars cease to matter to the rulers of other countries - the ruling elites of thiose "third world" countries indebt their countries actually because they want to loot and then export wealth and need a reliable place to store it in. It once was sterling, the UK. Then for a long time the US and its dollar. Now the US has proven itself unreliable by seizing assets from multiple countries.
I have said months ago: look at what the arab countries do. Look at what Turkey does. They see where the wind is blowing.
www.fas.usda.gov
