I think we are hung up on an incorrectly simplified calculation. If China produces a cell phone and takes labor and raw materials costs and a bunch of IP holders and stock holders then take the majority of the sales price then China supposedly has a major trade surplus. This incorrect measurement has probably been a driver in China ensuring it gets everything it can out of anything that will be measured as part of its surplus which means competing with foreign brands made in China as quickly as possible. Eventually this should mean trying to limit the exports of Chinese companies that have foreign investors.

Major war seems more likely than US or china changing their economies so much that it moves the needle on this

I don’t think so at all.

What I’ve seen over the last decade is a relatively spoiled and entitled asset owning class who expects there to be a financial class divide where they’re on the winning side by default.

Frankly, I haven’t seen rich people produce anything of value in a long time. They assert wealth, and print money (over $40T now), they don’t create value.

I see inflated valuations, free credit, millions and billions of dollars in value being asserted with nothing to actually back it up - few profitable startups, no real estate buyers (other than investors getting it at half), and all the value is being produced by an increasingly squeezed working class who does all the work but isn’t allowed to partake in the asset economy.

I can’t see how this works out for a financial super class that produces nothing of value.

> China is the most vulnerable

How? They produce everything. No, countries like China and Mexico are acting more how America used to act, and they will benefit from it long term as they continue to produce value and refine processes.

The wealth class of the West that produces nothing of value will continue to stagflate their economies, continue to price out workers, and will become totally left behind by an upswing in corporate wealth and individual wealth attainment through a global service economy.

What starts out as an entitled asset owning class producing nothing of value ends up as a debt class wondering how to keep up on all their payments as new companies founded out of desperation to serve them tighten grips, increase prices and find higher paying lower cost customers in expanded and emerging markets - including non-US dollar markets which may create a mess they can’t print themselves out of.