I’m not a paid subscriber to David Farrar’s private, paywalled website Patreon where he provides political and polling analysis more detailed than on Kiwiblog, so I’m having to somewhat guess what his ideas are from Kiwiblog regulars who have read his Patreon piece, How New Zealand Should Respond To The Trade Wars.
However, the overall thrust of the advice appears to be that since the USA can no longer be trusted (…the decision by the United States to renege on all 21 trade agreements it has signed is terrible…) he proposes that we should get even closer to China than we already are with our Free Trade Agreement with them, signed almost a quarter century ago.
With that in mind readers might like to cast their minds back to November 2nd, 2020 when DPF outlined what he wanted for the Republican Party in the USA as they approached the 2020 election with President Trump in power:
It will surprise no-one that I want Trump to lose. I have made that clear over many years.
But I also want the Republican Party to lose the Senate and remain in the minority in the House. I say this, even though I will detest many of the policies a Biden Presidency could push through a Congress they control. And don’t even start me on the Judges.
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Only if the outcome in 2020 results in stuff GOP officeholders and activists hate, will they learn the lesson. A Supreme Court packed with liberal judges. A huge tax hike. Democrat controlled state legislatures deciding congressional boundaries etc. The more it hurts, the more likely they will turn their back on Trump.
That was and is an utterly fucking insane desire.
Had that happened the result would have been a one-party America controlled by the Democrat Party, just as they control State shit holes like California, Illinois and Minnesota, and cities like San Francisco, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis and now even New York.
A nation where any future GOP “victories” would thus be rendered meaningless since so much could not have been reversed, resulting in an endless series of tweedledee vs tweedledum elections while the nation declined.
All because he so hates Trump. This is a perfect example of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS): a willingness to cut your nose off to spite your face because democracy did not go his way, either inside the GOP or in the nation at large. And of course it’s now happened again, and with GOP majorities in the Senate and House.
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As a result we now have DPF’s advice on China, a nation that, as leftist journalist Matt Taibbi says, as he translates NPR’s similar advice, is:
A serial trade and human rights violator that with the help of decades of corrupt politicians from both parties polluted, price-dumped, and stole its way to a generation of American jobs and revenue, now owns so much of our debt that we must put up with its shit indefinitely. That’s the point of view of our own federal news agency. We have officially cucked ourselves past the point of no return.
A nation which has also broken major international treaties, since DPF is shocked by such:
On July 12, 2016, The Hague’s international arbitral tribunal, relying on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty (UNCLOS), issued a ruling supporting the Philippines’ claims that China had violated Filipino territory in the South China Sea by seizing islets and “sea features.” China had also plundered resources in the Philippines’ maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Despite having signed the sea treaty (which meant accepting the arbitration process), the Chinese government callously ignored the verdict and disdained the court’s authority.
China’s blunt rejection of the decision stunned the Filipino government and alerted other nations on the Pacific Rim. The Beijing regime not only broke a major treaty it had ratified but also openly maligned legal procedures created to promote peaceful resolution of international disputes.
I’ve covered much of the arguments about this here before, starting with a March 2020 post as the Covid pandemic cranked up and fights between China and other nations started over that, before they were suppressed, Trump was right about China:
Trump has been hammering the idea that the USA is too dependent upon China since the start of his campaign in 2015. I admit I rolled my eyes at this because he was saying the same thing about Japan back in the late 1980’s, and we know how that turned out. What most people have missed however is that Japan never had the sort of global geopolitical goals that the Chinese Communist Party has, nor did it ever appear to turn its economic links into international political leverage as the CCP has, with its One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative being the most obvious.
That article lists numerous trade threats and actions on trade taken by China against the USA, Australia, Japan, the EU and other nations, long before the current blowups.
As I said back then, I supported our FTA with China as well as their accession to the WTO in 2001. The collapse of the USSR and its communist satellites just a decade earlier, plus China having given up on communist economics a decade before that, pointed to a non-communist future for China, if they were allowed to trade freely like a non-communist nation, thus growing wealthier, with that wealth pushing greater degrees of freedom.
It wasn’t like I was expecting a Jeffersonian democracy, or even some Parliamentary democracy like Japan’s. Even Asian democracies have had long periods of dominance by a single political party – Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has been almost continuously in power since 1955 – so I hoped for something similar in China eventually. The imposition of two maximum terms for the CCP’s General Secretary position, thus limiting the chances of the usual communist cult-of-personality crap, fit nicely with this hopeful future.
There were reservations, but to paraphrase Leo McGarry from The West Wing, was not engagement with China better than Cold War II? I was hardly alone in these beliefs, as shown by Never Trumper, Andrew Sullivan in this piece from early 2020:
I remember the old debate from the 1990s about how to engage China, and the persuasiveness of those who believed that economic prosperity would lead to greater democracy. COVID-19 is the final reminder of how wrong they actually were.
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Integrating a communist dictatorship into a democratic world economy is a mug’s game.
Exactly. The CCP hasn’t retained much communism but the world of the Marxist-Leninist politburo and three thousand years of massively centralised, technocratic government has fitted together nicely. Add to that the other traditional Chinese government aspect of The Mandate From Heaven – which Xi Jinping has embodied by trashing the two term limit and remaining as General Secretary now since 2012 – and regarding all other peoples as barbarians, and you’ve got yourself a very ambitious government that very much wants to be top dog in the world, supplanting the accursed Americans.
To that end the capitalist economy has been bent in the directions the CCP wants it to go, which just so happens to be what will support being the No 1 superpower in the world. It’s actually the old Socialist-Democrat dream of commanding the heights of the economy – in this case the world economy, via crucial areas such as production and control of key minerals and metals, steel production, aircraft (China is determined to beat Boeing and Airbus), pharmaceuticals (as America was shocked to find during the Covid lockdowns…
On March 4, 2020 an article titled “Be Bold: The World Owes China a Thank You”, was published in China’s state-run Xinhua news service and amidst all the usual propaganda tropes it noted that China has leverage over the U.S. and Europe because it can restrict the supply of medicines that have been outsourced to China. Specifically the USA could be “plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus.”
Frankly I thought this was just the usual boasting bullshit one expects from Communists, but it turned out to be true.
Ultimately this would lead to high tech stuff like space technology and computers, especially silicon chips and AI. As a result of this strategy the CCP has targeted all these sectors to grow via exporting, with things like R&D, tax credits, indirect subsidies like cheap state loans, cutting rules and regulations where necessary, and of course protection from foreign competitors via tariffs and other tactics.
China’s IP (intellectual property) theft, according to an investigation led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, is costing the U.S. “between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.” As far back as November 2015 The Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that China’s hacking was costing U.S. companies $360 billion per year.
Finally, there is a military aspect to all this: it just so happens that those industries are crucial for building and supporting vast military capabilities. Shipbuilding depends on having a huge steel production industry, metal processing industry, and machinery manufacturing industry, and they’ve got all that. As a result, aside from the commercial shipping, China’s navy is already the world’s largest, and its shipbuilding capacity, estimated to be 230 times larger, dwarfs that of the U.S.
Such preponderance provides an important wartime advantage: one recent study concluded that larger fleets won 25 out of 28 historical wars. Like those historical combatants, China has the numbers to absorb more losses than the United States and keep fighting. In one recent set of wargames, China lost 52 major surface warships compared to between 7 and 20 U.S. equivalents. Even after such catastrophic losses, China still had more surface warships than the United States and was able to continue the naval battle.
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China’s Ships Are Newer and its Shipyards More Productive
Despite recently pushing around commercial and coast guard ships from the Philippines and other smaller Indo-Pacific nations, I don’t think China is aiming to fight America. Those actions show she’s up for bullying her neighbours, but with bigger nations it’s all about deterrence. That will be crucial in the case of Taiwan, where China could win not with a bloody and messy invasion but by simply blockading the island. Blockades are an act of war but less obvious than outright attack, so China could defend itself pretty well militarily against American and Taiwan trying to link back together across the Pacific, and diplomatically against the rest of the world.
In summary it’s clear the idea that free trade would lead to a free society in China turned out to be wrong. Their Chinese Communist leadership simply used the wealth to build a 21st century military and security state the East German Stasi could only dream of.
That’s not something that New Zealand should be enabling further in any way, least of all by deepening the trade connections between our two countries. In fact we should be reducing our dependence on China for exports and imports, and as I pointed out in 2021 with the article, The spoon is long enough, we can, we’re not as dependent on them as people claim, as economist Michael Riddell argued:
One notable thing about New Zealand is that our trade isn’t very concentrated with any single other country/region (much less so than is the case for Australia). Total New Zealand exports to China, pre-Covid, were about 5 per cent of GDP.…A severe and sustained recession in China would represent a significant (but cyclical) blow to the world economy, and to New Zealand – and would do so whether or not New Zealand firms traded much directly with PRC counterparts.
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The world price for commodity products is determined by world demand and supply conditions, a point given far too little attention in the timid New Zealand discussion of PRC issues….China didn’t make us rich or poor. It made China first (last century) poor, and eventually middle-income.
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Whatever the potential disruptions for individual firms – and they are real (for them) – it simply is not credible – given the (smallish) size of our total exports, the commodity nature of most, the share of trade with China – that any sort of conceivable economic coercion would represent a serious sustained threat to the New Zealand economy.
Not only that, but given China’s demographic problems, its recent very ordinary economic growth, debt, Covid-19 fallout causing a re-thinking of supply chains dependent on it, problems with neighbouring nations and so forth, it is a nation that we do not want to be strongly connected to in the future for purely economic reasons, let alone whatever political plans the CCP has.
All of this also does make me wonder about the National Party in general. I was talking to a friend the other night who has good contacts in National and he said they hate Trump over there to a degree that would astound our Lefty comrades. Add to that the China love they’ve exhibited over the years via MP’s like Jian Yang (A Glorious New Dawn Has Broken Over Our Harmonious Society) and I can see DPF’s arguments gaining traction inside the Party.
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See also:
The spoon is long enough (May 2021)
Trump was right about China (March 2020) – Also the original article on the old Blogger platform shows some interesting commentary.
Dark Clouds cannot hide the light of the Sun (Thoughts from Labour’s China MP).
No Minister 
Maybe ‘they’, the Nats will be happier to play along with JD Vance in the future.
TDS is a real thing. Amazingly.
“…Japan never had the sort of global geopolitical goals that the Chinese Communist Party has…”
I’m sure they mean “since 1945”, but whatever.
“I was talking to a friend the other night who has good contacts in National and he said they hate Trump over there to a degree that would astound our Lefty comrades.”
I can believe it. They’re the establishment party, and exactly the sort of people that a NZ version of Trump would destroy. Unfortunately, we have no NZ Trump, and they remain in charge. And they will happily manage NZ’s ongoing decline, because most of them own their own homes, so fuck everyone else. They also want to be liked by leftists at Wellington soirees. Which is ultimately why DPF has become such a terrible human being in middle age.
Unfortunately, I think many of ACT’s MPs aren’t that different either.
Do you know what I don’t understand Tom? I’m a reasonably “centrist” person, and I just can’t understand the growing number of people that seem to hate “the West” so much, that they have raised other countries like China onto some type of pedestal of holy virtue.
(I know it’ll trigger some readers here but I view Putin in the same light)
Our electoral system has flaws. So does the system in the USA. But to compare it to China or Russia and say that they are great, free nations? Give me a break.
I read the insanity every day over at TDB and say to myself “please let this just be a vocal minority and not actually be what people think”.
So on this topic I’m with you.
(On El Salvador we may disagree a little more)
Well I was having a little bit of fun with El Salvador.
But there’s no doubt that Sweden is going to have to do something dramatic about their Muslim immigrants or they’re gone as a Western nation, let alone one with their beloved Swedish characteristics in two generations via old Swedes vs young Muslims.
Tinman’s advice is likely too drastic but I wonder if compulsory schooling about what a great nation Sweden is and has been, would work?
I don’t know if they even pull that off given that this all started because a number of Swedish politicians (and probably a chunk of the voters) thought the nation was “too homogenous” – code for “too White”. Rather like Blair’s Labour wanting to “rub Tory noses in multiculturalism”, except there war no equivalent to the Tories in Sweden at the time.
Actually the thing that worries me is not that such advice emerges from TDS – because Trump will be gone in 2029 – but something deeper, longer term, and thus worse.
Perhaps National people – the insiders that is – really do think they’re rich enough and successful enough that none of the ethno-state BS will touch them.
For example, how many National Party people ever went hunting in the Urewera National Park or ever would? So what would they even know, let alone care of the collapse of that park since the Finlayson deal (and can you imagine him even tramping through it)?.
New Zealand as a collection of Iwi Corporates within an ethno-state? I could see National fitting in quite nicely with that.
I never realised the situation in Sweden until it was bought to my attention one day. They sound though like just an extreme version of what happened in many countries in Europe.
You welcome people hoping to give them a better life, but neglect to notice that they despise your way of life.
And it’s even worse when your own politicians decide that for their image that they want to support whatever is the trendy cause of the day.
When Chloe Swarbrick stands up supporting Hamas as a gay woman (something that she makes sure that we’re all aware of every 3 seconds), is she actually that stupid that she thinks that they’d welcome her? Personally I don’t think she’s an idiot which is what makes her actions all the more reprehensible (and is one of the reasons why I despise her). You can have a problem with a number of Israels actions, but don’t raise Hamas up as some type of noble, enlightened leaders when they’re just a bunch of murderous pricks.
Who else globally, could manage this?
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1911493189250547876
Hmmm….. words. As always I watch actions, so I’ll wait until I see the actual agreements.
I looked at Farrar’s patreon site when it first emerged.
Just typical National party socialism disguised as unoriginal thought. Obviously it has remained so.
For the record I disagree with the idea that China is a major threat to New Zealand. I suspect New Zealand has more to fear from Indonesia or the Phillipines, at least until countries start exploiting Antarctica.
Just to clarify, the “threat” I see amounts to China muttering about our trade if we get mouthy about whatever they’re doing in the South China Sea, Taiwan or whatever, as they’ve done with Australia and others. An FTA won’t matter to them anymore than UNCLOS did in the Philippines.
I am continually amazed at the people who in most respects are good value centered people who have been completely brainwashed by the Concentrated CNN, WAPO, NYT line of assessing Trump New Zealand is continually exposed to in almost all media. Now as one who gets a lot of my information from Sky News Au, Fox in The US and various podcasts I have views at variance to say David Farrar
It appears with the public assessment of Dutton at present in electoral battle with a complete sleaze ball Prime Minister of Australia suffers similarly also.
Now I do not think I would even want to have a session with Trump yet my reading concludes he is good company for many, including doubters in the extreme who ending up becoming that close to him and actually change their perception.
One of the weaknesses of current political conversation involves a total media controlled version where the real person is totally submerged in a media presentation that is careful in its sanitised imagery. That woman who Peters elevated from first loser to winner a prime example.
Just how many voters would vote for a person who came to camera exhibiting all the “Hints of a Cocaine Snort” with red eyes, sniffing and so in need of tissues, if someone had the cojones to suggest what appeared to be a fact of life an eruption may well have ensued whether or not it was a truth was outed.
The old times when all candidates even in a “shoe in” electorate such as Sydenham in Christchurch were forced to actually front up in the flesh, warts and all. Of course in a NZLP stronghold it mattered little but the actual real Mabel Howard did have public exposure sans any image enhancement..
Just look what happened when the Vegetable was forced to front the cameras in A Real Debate, the mythical personna was exposed in catestrophic levels of disaster in spite of the reassuring calls even by our own Prime Minister that all was fine. Ron Klein’s admission how during prepping for that final debate at Camp David, Biden could not last 15 minutes before walking off to doze in a lounger beside the pool. Now an avalanche of literary exposees tell it how it really was and the shameless Media still do not understand why their once pretty well accepted reporting was taken as gospel has seen thier credibility slide into an abyss.
Many suggest the loss of religion in shaping society is relevant, I diminish that in the demise of any levels of competence by a media dominated by youthful edherents to their indoctrination at Journalism School instead of an apprentiship under a gnarly old veteran news hound.
I consider the one aspect of modern life that sustains my belief was the sudden ending of the Soviet Bloc and the wall being smashed by freedom desiring ordinary people almost entirely driven by the loss of control of the truth via the Internet.
However that salient point was driven by some very desperate people, actually seeking truth and not accepting what those in power deigned to allow to be published.
I still maintain that the dislike for The Donald is due to snobbery. Plain and simple.
Which also tracks with many National Party people I’ve known over the last fifty years, starting with all the sheep and beef farmers I knew when they discussed dairy farming in the 1970’s.