Bulletins and News Discussion from January 13th to January 19th, 2025 - From Mar-A-Lago to Nuuk - COTW: Denmark (including Greenland)

Image is of Donald Trump Jr. in Greenland, proudly demonstrating what he's learned in his standing lessons.

The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump's gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.

However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.

Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

You're viewing a single thread.

987 comments

Trump says he will revive TikTok, but wants 50% U.S. ownership
Trump said he would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”
“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump said the executive order would specify there would be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before his order.
Joint ownership was exactly as I wrote in this comment here - we’ll probably see a joint venture in some kind of AI development between Meta/Google and a Chinese partner in return. The whole TikTok ban was just to open up the path for Meta/Google to enter China again:
I would expect some kind of joint venture in the field of AI development, which is what Meta and Google excel in.
For reference, Apple is currently in talks with Tencent and ByteDance to roll out its AI features in China, you can see why Meta and Google, both banned in China, would want a slice of that share too. How do you force China to lift the ban? By banning TikTok itself and force a hostage exchange situation.
It also fits with the recent US emphasis on banning AI stuff to China. The US then offers an olive branch if China allows American tech companies to enter to participate in their AI development. Now we see how China responds.
- I really hope they don't sell, but I can see it happening because TikTok CEO is a capitalist at the end of the day
  
  From a business/capitalist point of view, not selling and keeping it banned generate no revenue plus all the burden of paying for overhead cost and investment already in place. So, having the option of being restructured into a jointly owned enterprise as one of the most popular social media apps is still worth the revenues it generates.
  However, I suspect the situation is far from that simple. There are three inter-connected crises facing the Chinese economy right now: low consumption, property market bubble, and local government debt crisis.
  How all these crises came about will require an entire effort post (I have written parts of it but it’s way too massive in scope to address everything) but let’s take the local government debt problem as an example.
  Currently, many local governments are running deep into deficits and have overburdened debt ratio (all these have to do with property market/land premium speculation and Covid but I will not go into it here) and as soon as the Fed cut interest rate back in September last year, the Chinese government immediately rolled out their debt relief program for the local governments.
  Because China does not have debt cancellation mechanism (amazing huh), the proposed solutions involved debt restructuring/refinancing, for example, raising the debt ceiling by 6 trillion yuan so local governments can borrow more money at the now lowered interest rate, to pay back their outstanding debt that demanded higher interest rate. So the debt relief comes from borrowing cheap to pay back expensive outstanding interest.
  Just last month, Fed’s Powell released more mixed signals, citing uncertainty in inflation and said that the Fed may only cut once or twice in 2025. Of course, interest rate has very little to do with inflation in the US, but it should be seen as an imperialist tool that controls foreign economies.
  So Trump has a lot of leverage here: if he can get the Fed to cut more rates this year, then the PBOC can also cut their rates, this will then allow the local governments to borrow at an even lower interest to pay back their outstanding debt, and thus bringing huge relief to their current budgetary situations. Here, you can see how the Fed’s interest rate directly impacts China’s local government finances.
  This is just one weapon the US can use. Tariffs, sanctions, interest rates are all “threats” that can be negotiated down if China gives in to what the US wants. What we will have to wait and see is how Trump and Xi deal with these issues in their ensuing negotiations.
  (On the other hand, the Fed bringing down too much interest rates plus Trump’s government deficit cuts with DOGE will also have the opposite impact of plunging US into recession, and that hurts China’s export industries too. So, we are locked into a complex and difficult situation with both the US and Chinese economies being their own ticking time bombs, and this will send shockwaves across the global economies. Things are really in a delicate situation and we can only hope that the US and China sort out a deal that isn’t going to crash the global economy.)
  
  but, they aren't making no money. the app is banned in the US but still has many millions of users elsewhere. is it a significant part of their userbase? sure, that's not up for doubt. so, from a capitalist point of view, they're making revenue right now, and by selling them will make none. so idk if that argument holds as purely logical
  
  They’re being asked to sell the US unit, their operations in Europe (UK-based), Australia/NZ and Asia (Singapore-based) are not affected.
  
  oh I thought they were being asked to like sell EVERYTHING from international tik tok to the US
  
  Yeah I recently learned that many Chinese capitalists (and probably many global multinational corporations as well) set up many subsidiaries to avoid taxes and scrutiny at home. TikTok Ltd itself is just a shell company in the Cayman Islands, and its regional subsidiaries funnel their revenues there.
  It is not even clear how much of those revenues actually go back into China, as the capitalists are more interested in storing their assets overseas, and this is one of the reasons that make it hard for China to decouple from the dollar regime because many huge corporations in China have already invested in so much dollar assets, it’s hard for to tell them “we don’t want to use dollar anymore, we’re gonna make them useless”.
  It’s also one of the reasons why China has ramping up on cracking down corruption. For example, it’s been rumored that the real reason behind the prosecution case against Evergrande was how much their profits have been funneled overseas into their Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands shell companies - the 2.3 trillion yuan scandal, much of which came from scamming the Chinese people had likely been laundered into overseas accounts. (It’s also part of the answer to the very important question of “how can China see such amazing development over the past two decades, and yet its people have no money to consume and local governments mired in endless debt?” - far from the only reason, but certainly part of it).
  
  Just so I understand, would a TikTok ban in the US be that impactful to the Chinese economy? Are you saying the sale of it can be a negotiation tool for a economic agreement between the US and China?
  
  No, but it can be used as one of the conditions, as an incentive for China to take for maintaining a good business relations with the US.
  For example, Trump can say, “look, you’ve banned Facebook from China before under national security reason (for refusing to share the Xinjiang terrorist information with Chinese government), and now Biden’s banned TikTok for the same reason. But I can offer you a deal: how about we turn TikTok into a joint venture to circumvent the ban in the US, and in turn, you lift the ban on Meta and let it participate in one of your AI development venture?”
  I have no idea what Trump’s going to say but you can see how this is a standard business dealing that he’s used to.
  Note that Trump’s trade war against China even back in 2018 always had equivalent retaliatory measures (such that they can eventually be negotiated and settled in a very business-like fashion), whereas Biden’s sanctions, tariffs and bans against China were imposed in such a way that provided no equal exchange in return.
  
  Would the idea of forcing a joint venture even sound bad to a Chinese public? I mean, that's how the Chinese economy got off the ground in the first place in a way.

987 comments