Pax Americana vs Pax Sinica vs Multipolar World

[Strannik]

Putin brought Nabiullina (Central Bank Governor) and Kadyrov to Riad to meet with MBS.

Nabiullina - some currency deals?

Kadyrov - a PMC Wagner style for SA?

[Strannik]

China and Russia have almost completely phased out the dollar from their bilateral trade that surpassed $218 bln

More than 90% of trade between the two nations is done with either the yuan or the ruble.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-russia-almost-completely-abandoned-022700349.html

Edited December 23, 2023 by Strannik

[FALightFighter]

18 hours ago, Strannik said:

China and Russia have almost completely phased out the dollar from their bilateral trade that surpassed $218 bln

More than 90% of trade between the two nations is done with either the yuan or the ruble.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-russia-almost-completely-abandoned-022700349.html

$218B is ~ 25% of the US-China trade.

Its also fairly clost to Nevada's GDP, which is <1% of US GDP. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm pretty sure that it is insignificant

[Strannik]

27 minutes ago, FALightFighter said:

$218B is ~ 25% of the US-China trade.

Its also fairly clost to Nevada's GDP, which is <1% of US GDP. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm pretty sure that it is insignificant

Oh, the genius move with literal $ GDP comparison.

Let's just say it speaks more about your understanding of economy  than you would want the audience to know.

And on top of that your numbers are incorrect: 2023 10 month data gives about $480 bln and likely another $100 bln for Nov- Dec.  This will be constitute roughly a  20% drop from the previous year when the total trade indeed was  almost $700 bln.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

Edited December 23, 2023 by Strannik

[FALightFighter]

4 minutes ago, Strannik said:

Oh, the genius move with literal $ GDP comparison.

Let's just say it speaks more about your understanding of economy  than you would want the audience to know.

And on top of that your numbers are incorrect: 2023 10 month data gives about $480 bln and likely another $100 bln for Nov- Dec.  This will be constitute roughly a  25% drop from the previous year when the total trade indeed was $800 bln.

 

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

What else are you going to compare? Percentages? That seems even less useful.

You're right, I used the 2022 total figure of $800B and approximated to ~25%.

I think that my point stands, that this is insigificant in the grand scheme of global trade. Whether it is 1%, .5% or 2%, it is remains nearly meaningless.

Statista says that the US' trade to GDP ratio s ~25%, down from a high of just over 30% in the early 2010s. This graph would seem to indicate that Zeihan might have a point.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/trade-gdp-ratio

Frankly, I'm happy if Russia and the PRC do business in rubles or yuan. If it were up to me, I wouldn't do any business with either of them.

[Strannik]

1 hour ago, FALightFighter said:

What else are you going to compare? Percentages? That seems even less useful.

If one wants to compare GDPs more sensible to use PPP.

The point was not to compare US / CN trade with CN / RU ( although if the current trends continue for few more years they would be more comparable) but to show how quickly the world's trade/currency is changing.

Zeihan fans are ... welcome to wait for his prophesies as long as they like

Edited December 23, 2023 by Strannik

[Strannik]

1 hour ago, FALightFighter said:

Frankly, I'm happy if Russia and the PRC do business in rubles or yuan. If it were up to me, I wouldn't do any business with either of them.

As they say it's a free country - you can boycott Chinese products until the full disconnect happens.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Strannik

[FALightFighter]

3 minutes ago, Strannik said:

If one wants to compare GDPs more sensical to use PPP.

The point was not to compare US / CN trade with CN / RU ( although if the current trends continue for few more years they would be more comparable) but to show how quickly the world's trade/currency is changing.

Zeihan fans are ... welcome to wait for his prophesies as long as they like

PPP for what? Purchases inside Russia? Inside China? We're talking about US GDP and international purchases denominated in US $ (per the article that you cited- the only reference was to estimates of US $ for the actual transactions in rubles and yuan). HTF to you think you're going to compare anything except US$?

Meah, whatever. The RU-CN trade is a miniscule amount of global trade. So unless you have some indicator that others besides these 2 are going to de-dollarize, its insignificant. Per your article, they've already done ~90% of what they can do. What more do you think is ACTUALLY likely to happen?

Do you have another analyst that you think does a better job at analyzing broad geopolitical and demographic trends? I'm genuinely interested, both professionally and personally.

[Strannik]

1 minute ago, FALightFighter said:

 The RU-CN trade is a miniscule amount of global trade. So unless you have some indicator that others besides these 2 are going to de-dollarize, its insignificant.

Read through this topic and you will see many instances of countries switching trade to local currencies.

[FALightFighter]

16 hours ago, Strannik said:

Read through this topic and you will see many instances of countries switching trade to local currencies.

"Many" is a vague term. And magnitude of the trade in question matters, too.

And, frankly, even if it IS significant, its probably a good thing. Bretton-Woods, and the US enforcing a global system may have made sense in 1950- it certainly doesn't today.

[Strannik]

The last French soldiers have left Niger after the country’s new leadership cancelled defence agreements and ordered the French ambassador to leave.

Earlier this week France also announced it was closing its embassy in the capital.

For the third time in under 18 months, French troops have been expelled from a Sahel country. They withdrew from Mali last year and Burkina Faso earlier this year due to military coups in those nations as well.

[Strannik]

2 hours ago, FALightFighter said:

Bretton-Woods, and the US enforcing a global system may have made sense in 1950- it certainly doesn't today.

Dedollarization will accelerate the drop in UST demand, which in it's turn will result in increase of $ that will stay in the US resulting in even more serious inflation.  Obviously the ability to sanction other governments extraterritorially will decline as well.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Strannik

[Josh]

Dedollarization is occurring in many locations but not at a rate that significantly affects the dollar. There is a hard ceiling for local currency use in the absence of any other freely traded global currency. Russia and China buy enough from each other that they can basically use each other’s currency-Russia sell commodities, China sells finished goods, in a quite perfect harmonious relationship. That isn’t going to be the case in most other trade situations (see Russia-India). Dedollarization is always going to hit a hard wall until there’s some other mechanism to take a payment and spend it almost anywhere else.

[Strannik]

Iran and EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia) sign free trade agreement.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well thats excellent. Maybe they can all sell each other F5 clones and Kamaz trucks.

 

[Strannik]

Saudia Arabia, UAE, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia joined BRICS yesterday. 

[FALightFighter]

4 hours ago, Strannik said:

Saudia Arabia, UAE, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia joined BRICS yesterday. 

So what?

The most recent data that I could find was for OCT 2023.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/ft900_index.html

For the first 10 months of 2023, those countries accounted for 2% of exports and 1% of imports. In the scale of the US economy, they just don't figure?

 

 

[Strannik]

Glasnost is coming to the US 🤣

 

Edited February 6 by Strannik

[Josh]

I can’t wait to see how long the table is…

[Strannik]

Likely no table.

But on a serious note: Western MSMs are about to lose their narrative.

[Josh]

4 hours ago, Strannik said:

Likely no table.

But on a serious note: Western MSMs are about to lose their narrative.

Tucker is a known Russian sympathizer whose lawyers explicitly stated his Fox News show was not a news program in a court of law. He is loved by a majority of MAGA-ites but no one intelligent would take his self serving propaganda as fact. An interview by him of Putin would be a proven liar asking soft ball questions to a proven liar.

[Strannik]

2 hours ago, Josh said:

Tucker is a known Russian sympathizer whose lawyers explicitly stated his Fox News show was not a news program in a court of law. He is loved by a majority of MAGA-ites but no one intelligent would take his self serving propaganda as fact. An interview by him of Putin would be a proven liar asking soft ball questions to a proven liar.

Ah, a "sympathizer".  Why not an  "enemy of the people"?

Zealots of all kinds will hate anyway, so no matter.  People though are tired of MSM propaganda slavishly serving this current admin.  I doubt the interview will be a soft ball - after all it's not with Biden.

[Josh]

13 minutes ago, Strannik said:

Ah, a "sympathizer".  Why not an  "enemy of the people"?

Zealots of all kinds will hate anyway, so no matter.  People though are tired of MSM propaganda slavishly serving this current admin.  I doubt the interview will be a soft ball - after all it's not with Biden.

I’ll read a summary of it when it comes out, but Tucker is a pundit that makes news for money, not a journalist. He used to work for CNN before switching to Fox. His texts revealed during the Dominion lawsuit that he cannot stand Trump; he just happily sucks up to him because it makes him money. As I said, no one with any intelligence will take his interview seriously, though he does have a large following.

[Strannik]

1 hour ago, Josh said:

I’ll read a summary of it when it comes out, but Tucker is a pundit that makes news for money, not a journalist. He used to work for CNN before switching to Fox. His texts revealed during the Dominion lawsuit that he cannot stand Trump; he just happily sucks up to him because it makes him money. As I said, no one with any intelligence will take his interview seriously, though he does have a large following.

Here is the thing: if Western media wouldn't be maliciously stuck in the self-comforting political mythology in the coverage of the RU/UA war with huge parts of story swept under the rug or distorted or whitewashed or straight lied about for two years then millions of folk wouldn't be waiting with such excitement for this interview. 

Edited February 7 by Strannik

[BansheeOne]

So many words. Jane Fonda stated the same motivation much more concisely. 😉

Quote

"Our government was lying to us and men were dying because of it, and I felt I had to do anything that I could to expose the lies and help end the war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Fonda