Trump just lost the trade war with China - which he started!

Donald Trump is losing the trade war

against China which he himself started.

Trump held an important meeting with

China's president CiPing in South Korea

on the 30th of October and they came to

a new agreement which essentially

amounted to a one-year truce in the US

trade war. Now, in a few minutes here, I

will look at the exact details of this

agreement and I will further discuss

issues like Trump's tariffs on China and

China's export restrictions on rare

earths. I will also look at the trade

between US and China, especially

agricultural trade and China's exports

of advanced technologies. And I will

look at how China has been catching up

in some cuttingedge high-tech sectors,

especially semiconductors. But the main

takeaway from all of this is that

although this is not the end of the

trade war, it's only a one-year truce,

Donald Trump has clearly lost this

battle in the trade war. China has won

this battle. As the Financial Times put

it, China is emerging as a US peer rival

at the CiPing Donald Trump summit. The

FT noted that when Trump first started

the trade war on China back in his first

term as US president, it actually

surprised Beijing. However, the FT

noted, quote, "This time, a better

prepared and economically more powerful

China has been able to fight its once

far mightier opponent to a standill."

End quote. The FT noted that there were

at least three examples of how China was

able to defend itself and fight back in

this trade war that Donald Trump

started. First of all, Trump increased

tariffs on China to 145%

as an act of shock and awe. This was a

kind of nuclear trade war and Trump

thought that China would give in and

surrender. On the contrary, China

defended itself and hit back with the

exact same level of reciprocal tariffs

which freaked out the United States and

it backed down. Then the second example

of China fighting back was when China

put export controls on rare earths. And

later I will show how China dominates

the global production and processing of

rare earth elements that also freaked

out the US because US industry relies

very heavily on Chinese rare earths and

Trump once again was forced to back

down. And then the US government

extended export controls not only on

semiconductors but also to thousands of

subsidiaries of Chinese companies. And

in response to this, China tightened its

controls on rare earths which once again

forced the US to back down. Unlike any

other country on Earth, you know, Trump

has been waging war on dozens of

countries. China is the only one that

was able to actually fight back and

defend itself against the US and prevent

Trump from imposing an unequal treaty.

And this is why an analyst at the major

European bank BNP Paraba wrote the

following. The United States is

accepting that quote it is now dealing

with a peer rival capable of imposing

material economic harm on it. a

relatively new position for the US and a

development which at least to us

confirms China's ascendancy to global

economic superpower status. End quote.

That is the money quote today. China is

officially an economic superpower and

the US empire cannot bully around

Beijing and try to force it to do what

it wants like the US has done with its

so-called allies in Europe and South

Korea and other countries. China was not

willing to be bullied by the US.

However, with that said, I emphasized

earlier that this is only a battle in a

larger trade war that is going to

continue. It is certainly not the end.

And the FT made it clear that further US

China tensions are inevitable. They

noted that most of the agreements

between C and Trump were relatively

narrow and they mostly suspended

existing punitive measures but did not

scrap them altogether. The FT quoted a

Chinese scholar who said quote this

summit can only bring about a tactical

dant rather than a strategic reset for

the US China relations. End quote. And I

agree. This is a dant. It's a temporary

truce. It is not the end at all. Now

let's discuss what exactly was agreed to

in this sheump meeting in South Korea.

Here is the so-called scorecard that was

kept by Bloomberg. So one, the US agreed

to lower its fentinel related tariffs

from 20% to 10%. The US is also

suspending the 50% expansion of its US

entity list which is basically a form of

sanctions targeting Chinese companies.

Trump is backing away from the 100%

tariff threat on China and the US is

suspending ship fees. Those were the US

concessions. On the other side, China is

giving up its rare earth controls and

China is going to resume buying American

soybeans, although China was already

buying those soybeans before. So, this

is not really a new concession made by

China. And maybe China will agree to buy

energy from the US. That's what Trump

floated, but there's not actually an

agreement on that yet. That's a

hypothetical. And then finally, China

agreed to crack down on the export of

chemicals that are used to make

fentinel, although China already had

some restrictions on that. And maybe

there will be some kind of agreement on

Tik Tok. But again, this is not clear.

It's completely ambiguous. So in

reality, China is not making very many

concessions, which is why, as Bloomberg

put it, China is giving up less than

what the US gave up. Bloomberg concludes

that China won this round of the trade

war. This was also the conclusion of the

Associated Press. As the AP put it, "The

deal between the US and China is undoing

the damage of a self-inflicted trade

war." The AP quoted an influential

economist at a prestigious US

university, Cornell, who said, quote,

"It is hard to see what major gains the

US has made in the bilateral

relationship relative to where things

stood before Trump took office." End

quote. So basically, after months and

months of Trump escalating against China

and attacking China, we're back to

square one. We're basically back to

January when Trump entered office again.

Now, this is quite funny because if we

go back to April when Trump massively

escalated the trade war on China,

Trump's Treasury Secretary, the

billionaire hedge fund manager Scott

Bessent claimed that the US had all the

cards and China was playing with a quote

losing hand end quote. He claimed that

the US had so much leverage over China

and that Beijing would completely

surrender amid Trump's threats. That's

clearly the exact opposite of what has

happened since then. I remember making

videos back then in which I argued and

looked at a lot of evidence that I'll

review today. I showed that actually the

US is more dependent on China than vice

versa. And this is not 2000. 20 years

ago, 25 years ago, China was very

dependent on trade with the United

States. But in the past two decades,

China has significantly reduced its

dependence on trade with the US and

export to the US market. And today, the

US only represents around 10% of China's

overall trade. And China represents

around 11% of the US overall trade. But

China still has some clear advantages.

When I was doing my original analysis

back in April when Trump launched this

new phase of the trade war, I analyzed

what exactly the US exports to China and

what China exports to the US. And you

can see that the most important goods

that China exports to the US include

many technologies that the US simply

cannot produce like cell phones and

computers and electric batteries and

electrical transformers and other

electrical machinery and car parts were

no longer in the 1990s or early 2000s

when the majority of China's exports to

the US were low value added goods like

furniture and toys and household

appliances. China has very quickly moved

up the global value chain. And the

reality is that the US simply cannot

replace many of these technologies that

it imports from China. Now, if you look

at what the US exports to China on the

other hand, yes, the US does export a

few high-tech goods that China cannot

replace, especially integrated circuits,

advanced semiconductors. However, many

of the other goods the US exports to

China can easily be replaced. This

includes things like crude petroleum and

gas and soybeans and corn. These are

commodities that many other countries

produce. China can import them from

somewhere else. The US did used to

export cars to China, but now China has

become the world's number one producer

of cars. And most people in China prefer

buying cars from Chinese companies

because they're cheaper and they're of

better quality. So the reality is that

overall the US is more dependent on

trade with China. Now many people in the

Trump administration like Bessant and

Trump himself think that the economy of

China today is like the economy of China

in the 80s and 90s when China was making

very low value added labor inensive

goods of low quality. China has

massively boosted its technological

capabilities and today China is the

world's manufacturing superpower leading

in the vast majority of industries. This

is why the Financial Times published a

report in which it concluded that China

exports a lot of advanced tech to the US

that the US cannot source from anywhere

else. And the FT published this chart

using data from Harvard showing how the

US is actually dependent on importing

highv value tech including machinery,

telecommunications equipment, vehicles

and semiconductors and also a lot of

machine parts that it cannot get from

anywhere else. Whereas China imports a

lot of fuel energy from the US which it

can get from many other countries. So

what we've seen over the past two

decades is that the Chinese government

has used industrial policy, state-led

development policies and planning,

central planning in order to move up the

global value chain and increase its

technological self-sufficiency. So it's

no longer as dependent on the US. So in

the past 20 years, China has become less

reliant on exporting to the US market.

While at the same time, US industry has

become much more reliant on importing

inputs, industrial inputs from China,

which are needed for the advanced

manufacturing in the US. Economists at

the firm Gavacal concluded that the US

is more reliant on inputs from China in

all of the following industries:

agriculture manufacturing including

electronics, motor vehicles, and

machinery utilities construction

services, and in general, the whole

economy average. And yet, despite all of

this evidence, top US officials simply

drank the Kool-Aid. They believed in

their own propaganda. They believe that

China's economy was a basket case and

that as Scott Bessant said the US had

all the cards. China was playing with a

losing hand. China is completely

dependent on access to the US market,

exporting to the US market. In reality,

if you look at data in most Chinese

industry, the vast majority of revenue

comes from domestic purchases. Yes,

China is dependent on exporting

electronics, especially consumer

electronics. But overall, in the vast

majority of China's industries, it is

actually domestic revenue that makes up

the vast majority of overall revenue.

And even when you look at the export

revenue in aggregate, the US does

represent an important part, but it's

still only a minority of the overall

export revenue. And there are other

countries around the world. Even if

China is simply exporting to Vietnam or

Mexico or Indonesia or Thailand and then

maybe companies in those countries are

adding a bit more value to the product

and then exporting it to the US. It

doesn't matter. Chinese exporters are

only concerned about selling the good.

They don't care if it ultimately goes to

the US. They just want to sell it. And

this is actually by the way good for

countries like Vietnam and Mexico and

Indonesia that are developing their own

manufacturing sector and taking

advantage of the US trade war against

China. So what this shows overall is

that this is why the US has been losing

the trade war against China that Donald

Trump started and of course it was

continued by Joe Biden and the

Democrats. This is bipartisan. It's not

just Trump. But now that Trump is in his

second term as US president, he

massively escalated the trade war on

China and he believed the propaganda

claiming that the US had all the cards

and China had a bad hand. But, you know,

as people joked on social media, China

makes the cards. The US has

de-industrialized, China is the world's

manufacturing superpower. And that's why

I'm not surprised at all that China has

been winning this trade war. So, I think

all this explains why Trump ultimately

came to this agreement. And let's keep

in mind, it was the US that was

pressuring China to come to the

negotiating table, not vice versa. China

was fine waiting longer. It was the US

that was increasingly desperate. And as

the Financial Times put it, this is

simply a one-year truce. The FT quoted

an analyst from the hawkish US think

tank CSIS, which by the way is an

anti-China think tank. They're not in

any way pro-China, but this analyst

acknowledged that China's President Ce

stared down Trump and Trump blinked. C

has mastered managing Trump. Meeting US

threats with larger threats has gotten

Washington to back down. End quote. Now,

of course, if you listen to Trump, he's

claiming the exact opposite. In his

typical bombastic fashion, Trump claimed

that it was an amazing meeting with

President C. and he claimed on a scale

of zero to 10 with 10 being the best,

the meeting was a 12. Now, this is

because Trump will never admit when he

loses. He doesn't want to acknowledge

the fact that he started the trade war

on China and yet he has been losing. And

this is especially because midterm

elections are coming up in the US in

just one year in 2026. And Trump and the

Republicans are already focusing on

those elections. I think this is a big

reason why Trump wanted this one-year

truce. I would not be surprised if after

the midterm elections, Trump restarts

the trade war on China. But Trump was

afraid that continuing to escalate the

trade war on China would blow back on

the US economy and hurt the Republican

party's chances in the upcoming midterm

elections. Especially because polling by

groups like Pew Research shows that the

Republican party and Trump are very

unpopular. Although, of course, I should

point out that the Democrats are also

unpopular. Both parties are very

unpopular. The majority of Americans say

the Republican party is too extreme in

its positions. And the majority of

Americans do not think that the

Republican party governs in an honest

way. Although, I should point out that

they feel the same about the Democrats.

I'm not trying to defend the Democrats

here. I'm just being objective in

looking at the facts and they show that

Trump and the Republicans are simply not

popular. In fact, the latest polling

from The Economist from the 31st of

October found that 284 days into Trump's

second term, his net approval rating is

18% and it has continuously fallen

throughout Trump's term. Only 39% of

Americans approve of Trump's policies.

57%

nearly 3-fifths of Americans disapprove

of Trump's policies. And it makes sense

that most Americans feel this way

because Trump's policies have been

hurting average workingclass Americans,

especially Trump's tariffs. Goldman

Sachs published data in October that

found that US consumers are bearing more

than half of the cost of Trump's

tariffs. Economists at this major US

bank estimated that US consumers are

paying 55%

of the costs of these tariffs. Now,

Trump has falsely claimed for years that

other countries pay tariffs. That's a

lie. It is not true. Tariffs are a tax

on consumption and it is importers in

the country where the tariffs are

imposed that pay the tariffs. So, US

importers pay the tariffs. Companies in

the US that import goods from China pay

the tariffs. Not China, not Chinese

exporters. And ultimately, US importers,

US companies, usually they pass down the

costs of those tariffs to customers in

the form of higher prices. So Trump has

been increasing taxes, consumption taxes

on workingclass Americans with these

tariffs, which is a form of regressive

taxation. And again, Goldman Sachs

estimated that 55% of those tariffs are

paid by Americans. And that figure is

likely going to increase, especially as

Trump imposes more tariffs. So US

consumers are going to struggle more and

more with higher prices. We've already

seen that consumer price inflation in

the US has been persistently high. The

main measure for this in the US is the

CPI, the consumer price index. And as of

September 2025, it was at 3% compared to

the previous year. This is significantly

above the 2% target that is usually set

by the US Federal Reserve, the US

central bank. And you can see that

consumer price inflation has been rising

ever since Trump imposed massive tariffs

on countries around the world in April

2025. Now obviously yes inflation is not

nearly as high as it was in 2022 coming

out of the pandemic. It peaked at around

9% which is likely a conservative

estimate. But the point is that

inflation in the US has remained hot and

the data shows it's increasing, not

decreasing under Trump, which is very

ironic because inflation was basically

the main reason that Trump won the 2024

US presidential election. It was not

because Americans agreed with all of

Trump's very right-wing policies. It was

because of the inflation crisis coming

out of the pandemic, which was a global

inflation crisis, of course. But the

Biden administration did not handle it

well, especially coming out of the

pandemic. The rich have gotten much,

much richer, and poor and working-class

people are struggling. And Trump claimed

that he would solve the economic issues

and bring down inflation. Of course,

he's only made inflation worse. He has

not solved these deep economic

structural issues. I mean, Trump's

policies have benefited billionaires

like him, but the Democrats did not

actually propose pro-working class

policies that would solve these economic

problems. So, Trump won because he had a

simplistic message claiming that he was

going to solve all of these economic

problems by deporting immigrants, which

did not work. It's actually making

things worse, and by imposing tariffs,

which are also making things worse. In

fact, Trump also claimed that he was

going to re-industrialize the US and

bring back good manufacturing jobs. But

in fact, the data shows that in his

first year as president, the number of

manufacturing jobs has been falling, not

increasing. From April to October 2025,

42,000 manufacturing jobs in the US

disappeared. And a lot of this is

because of the uncertainty surrounding

Trump's tariffs and trade war. CBS News

reported that for all of 2025, 33,000

manufacturing jobs were lost in the US.

And these were jobs making goods like

cars, household appliances, and

electronics. Many of these were good,

well-paid jobs, steady jobs for

workingclass families. And the main

reason for the loss of these jobs in

manufacturing is uncertainty again

because of Trump's tariffs. If you look

at the data from the US Bureau of Labor

Statistics, you can see that when Trump

entered office in January until April,

manufacturing employment was pretty

steady. In fact, it slightly increased.

And then in April, when Trump started

this new trade war, what happened? the

number of manufacturing jobs in the US

fell significantly, which is the exact

opposite of what Trump claimed his

tariffs would do. This is yet another

example of how Trump's trade war has not

been helping average workingclass

Americans. It's been doing the exact

opposite. Now, another group in the US

that was hit hard by Trump's trade war

in China was farmers, especially those

who produce soybeans, who rely very

heavily on exporting to the Chinese

market. Now, as part of the agreement

that was made between Trump and China's

presidency in South Korea in October,

the Trump administration boasted that

China will be buying soybeans from US

farmers. Scott Bessett said this was a

major victory for the Trump

administration and that China will buy

12 million metric tonses of US soybeans.

That sounds like a lot of soybeans,

right? But if you look at the details,

what you see is that in reality, this

number is actually a decrease compared

to what China purchased from US soybean

farmers in the prior season. Last

season, China bought 22.5 million tons

of US soybeans. Now they're going to buy

about half of that, 12 million tons. So

this is not a major concession here by

China. In reality, what happened is that

China was already buying soybeans from

the US and then China paused its import

of soybeans in response to Trump's

aggressive unilateral trade war. And now

China's going back to buying soybeans

like earlier. So from China's

perspective, nothing changed. Trump's

trade war did not actually result in any

gains for the US, at least in this area.

Meanwhile, US farmers have been going

through severe economic pain. As Reuters

put it, quote, the drop in Chinese

demand cost US farmers a key pillar of

Trump's political base, billions of

dollars in lost sales, and the deal

would represent a return to normaly in

trade. End quote. So Trump was hurting

his own voters. The majority of US

farmers voted for Donald Trump. He hurt

them. And now we're back to square one,

exactly where things were before Trump

entered office, before his escalation of

this trade war on China. And again, what

this shows is that when Scott Bessant

claimed that the US held all the cards

and China was more dependent on the US,

it was actually the opposite of reality.

China is less dependent on the US

because what China said is fine, we're

going to stop importing soybeans from

the US and instead China massively

increased its imports of soybeans from

Argentina. China also increased its

purchases of soybeans from Brazil which

has become a major ally of China, a

major trading partner. Brazil is the bee

in bricks. It's one of the co-founders

of bricks. So, China has alternatives to

the US. Again, the Trump administration,

these top US officials drank their own

Kool-Aid, which is always very

dangerous. And I should point out that

this is not surprising at all if you

actually study the facts of what

happened during Trump's first term when

he launched the trade war on China. And

what happened? 92%

of the tariff proceeds of the revenue

that the the US government made from

Trump's tariffs between 2018 and 2020,

nearly all of it, 92% of it was paid to

US farmers as a bailout in the form of

subsidies and relief payments. So Trump

has claimed that supposedly his tariffs

are going to raise all of this revenue,

which by the way, again, I need to

repeat this. That revenue comes from

American consumers. It is a tax on

workingclass Americans, on consumption.

It is a very regressive tax that

especially hits poor and working-class

Americans the hardest because they spend

a much larger percentage of their

paycheck on basic staples like food

compared to rich people who only spend a

small percentage of their income and

wealth on food. But again, Trump used

that revenue during his first term that

he raised from tariffs in order to bail

out US farmers who were hurt by his

trade war. And by the way, the Trump

administration has already been talking

about another bailout of farmers. Now,

during Trump's second term, Trump has

been considering a $10 billion bailout

for US farmers because they've been

hurting due to his escalation of the

trade war on China. So once again, when

you hear Trump boast about all of the

revenue he's raising from tariffs, you

need to keep in mind that a lot of that

money is actually going to pay bailouts

and subsidies because of the damage

caused by his trade war. And again, that

money is not coming from foreign

countries and foreign companies. It's

coming from American consumers paying

attacks in the form of tariffs. Now,

with all of that said, one of the

biggest and most important takeaways of

China's victory in this round of the

trade war is the importance of rare

earths. China completely dominates the

global rare earth supply chain,

including both the mining and especially

the processing and refining of rare

earths. China made up more than 60% of

the mining of rare earths as of 2024.

and over 90% of the refining of rare

earths. Now, despite the name, rare

earths are actually not that rare. They

can be found in many countries around

the world. But what makes it difficult

for other countries to replace China in

the supply chain is the processing of

rare earths is very labor intensive and

it's very complex and most countries do

not have the technology and the supply

chains developed needed to actually

process rare earths. If you look at a

chart visualizing China's dominance in

the global production of rare earth

metals, I mean it's just there's no

comparison. No country even remotely

comes close. The US role is very minor.

In the past few years, especially after

Trump launched the trade war against

China in his first term as president,

the US has increased its share of the

global rare earth industry. But again,

it's just very minor and it's going to

take many years, if not decades, for the

US to try to catch up. Now, when China

responded to Trump's aggressive trade

war and in an act of self-defense, China

restricted the export of rare earths to

the US, that freaked out Washington and

it freaked out the military-industrial

complex in particular because US tech

companies and especially US military

contractors, arms manufacturers are very

dependent on China's processing of rare

earths. The US military cannot produce

the weapons it needs to prepare for war

on China without China's rare earths.

This is why the US government in the

past decade has been pouring resources

into trying to develop a new supply

chain for critical minerals and

especially rare earth elements that cuts

out China. Because in Washington, hawks

are preparing for potential war with

China. And as they prepare for war, they

can't be dependent on critical minerals

coming from China. As China has shown,

if the US attacks China, China can

restrict the export of critical minerals

to the US and cut off US industry. This

was a major Achilles heel that was

exposed in the US by Trump's trade war.

And if you read the journals and the

media outlets of the US

military-industrial complex, they

acknowledge, you know, US military

contractors acknowledge that the US

cannot realistically catch up in the

production of rare earths. As the US

media outlet National Defense put it,

the US cannot dig itself out of the

critical minerals hole. This is a huge

issue. Now, we should always keep in

mind here that the reason that China put

those restrictions on is because it was

responding to US attacks on China. It

was the US that started this trade war

in Trump's first administration. But the

Democrats, Joe Biden, continued the

trade war on China that was started

under Trump and the Republicans.

Unfortunately, the new Cold War, Cold

War II, is completely bipartisan in

Washington. And let's not forget that it

was Joe Biden that put very significant

restrictions on the export of advanced

technologies and especially

semiconductors

to the US. The Biden administration

restricted the export of advanced chips,

advanced chipmools

and semiconductor technology to China.

And the idea in Washington was that this

would be China's Achilles heel. They

said China will not be able to catch up

to the US in new cutting edge

industries, especially artificial

intelligence. US big tech corporations

in Silicon Valley will have a monopoly

on AI. China will be left behind. That

is of course not what happened. Now,

just as China's restrictions on the

export of rare earths have caused the US

government to pour resources and to

develop its own supply chain for

critical minerals, the same thing has

been happening with semiconductors. The

US restrictions on the exports of

semiconductors to China have inspired

China to massively develop its own

domestic chipm industry. And now, China

is dominating the global chip market. So

yes, China has not caught up in the most

advanced chips, but China is dominating

what are known as legacy chips, which

are the chips used in most everyday

technologies. Biden's commerce

secretary, Gina Rayundo, who was waging

this trade war and tech war on China in

the Biden administration, she

acknowledged in 2024 that around 60% of

all new legacy chips coming into the

market in the next several years will be

produced by China. the majority of chips

and the Chinese government has made this

a huge priority through its industrial

policy through its state-led campaign to

move up the value chain and to produce

higher value added more advanced

semiconductors. This is why the Chinese

government has restricted Chinese tech

companies from buying chips from the US

company Nvidia, which is now, you know,

the biggest company in the world by

market capitalization now with over a $5

trillion market cap, which is crazy

because Nvidia basically has a monopoly

on these most advanced chips. So now the

Chinese government has been saying we're

going to pour resources and government

support to develop our own advanced

semiconductors.

And this is at the heart of China's new

5-year plan. You know, China, it does

have a market economy, but it has a

socialist market economy with key parts

of the economy publicly owned by the

government. And still there are elements

of planning that are used, especially in

strategic industries. Every 5 years, the

Communist Party issues a new five-year

plan. And the latest 5-year plan for

2026 to 2030 heavily emphasizes the

importance of technological upgrading,

moving up the global value chain. And in

particular, the new 5-year plan calls

for extraordinary measures to have new

breakthroughs in advanced chip

production. And if you look at China's

past planning, its past goals, it has

met the vast majority of those goals. A

good example of this is the made in

China 2025 initiative. This was a plan

announced back in 2015. And the Chinese

government set goals to become globally

competitive in many important tech

industries. And Bloomberg concluded that

China was very successful in almost all

of the industries it targeted. China is

now the global leader in unmanned aerial

vehicles. That's drones, solar panels,

graphine, high-speed rail, and electric

vehicles and lithium batteries. And

China will soon be the global leader in

carriers of liqufied natural gas, LNG.

And China is also very competitive

globally in the production of advanced

drugs, large tractors, machine tools,

robots, artificial intelligence, and

semiconductors. The only area where

China is not yet competitive is

commercial aircraft. But China is very

likely to catch up in the next few

years. So when the Chinese government

makes plans, unlike the US government,

which almost never actually meets its

goals, China usually meets almost all of

its goals. Not all of them. It's not

perfect, but it comes very close to

meeting its goals. This was actually

admitted by a Western think tank that is

in fact very anti-China called ASPI,

ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy

Institute. This is a hawkish anti-China

think tank that is backed by the

Australian military and funded by

multiple western governments. And yet

they published a report admitting that

China is dominating global technology

and scientific research. They concluded

you know reluctantly but they concluded

that China is currently leading in 57

out of 64 critical technologies. That is

89% of the critical technologies they

are tracking which is an incredible

increase in just two decades. 20 years

before in the 2003 to the 2007 period

China was only leading in three

technologies out of 64. Now it's 57 out

of 64. And this report again it's an

anti-China think tank. They warned that

the US is in fact losing the strong

historical advantage that it had built

back in the 2003 to 2007 period. The US

was leading in 60 out of 64

technologies. Now the US is only leading

in seven technologies in the 2019 to

2023 period. This is a tectonic shift.

In just two decades, China has become

the world's technological and

manufacturing superpower in no small

part due to government planning and

industrial policy. And yet, China

continues to advance. You know, China is

not just giving up and surrendering to

the US in semiconductors and artificial

intelligence and commercial aircraft.

China also plans on developing very

competitive domestic industries in those

sectors as well. A key part of its next

5-year plan is what China refers to as

quote technological self-reliance. End

quote. So, China will not suffer from

the trade war that the US is very likely

going to continue. Like I said, this is

not the end of the trade war. This is

just a temporary truce in this trade

war. So you can see why hawks in

Washington from both parties,

Republicans and Democrats, are freaking

out about the fact that China has been

leading in some advanced industries. And

this explains why the US has been so

aggressive attacking China in this trade

war, in this tech war that again started

under Trump but also accelerated under

Biden. This is bipartisan. So, if you

look at all of the evidence, it becomes

very clear that Trump's trade war has

been a failure, especially his trade war

against China. Now, he's also waging a

trade war against other countries. I

don't have time to get into that today,

but it is very clear from the evidence

that China won this round of the trade

war. And again, I want to go back to

these absurd comments made by the

billionaire hedge fund manager turned US

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, who

claimed that China was playing with a

losing hand and the US had all the

cards. We can now very obviously see

today that that was not true. It is

actually the exact opposite. China is

less dependent on the US than vice

versa. I'm not saying that China is

completely independent. It's not. But

China clearly won this round of the

trade war. The war will still go on, but

China has won this battle and Trump lost

this battle. On that note, I'm going to

wrap up. I want to thank everyone for

joining me today. I am Ben Norton. I am

the editor-inchief of Geopolitical

Economy Report. Please like and

subscribe. Please share this. I will see

you all next time.