Get ready for the next gut punch, and shout out to the...

Catahoula® · 2025-04-29T13:39:30.351Z

Port workers who are hard line Trumpers and get paid wages. There will be a massive decline in shipment activity coming from China over the next few weeks with a 40 percent reduction in container capacity. That means empty and dead ports with no ships to unload. The SC Ports system is the state's largest employer (Jebus, where have I had to make this argument before?) and all those folks who operate cranes or load trucks or drive trucks are about to take it right in the groin. Now multiply that by all the major U.S. ports in America. Get your Chinese stuff while you can (and don't pretend you don't buy a ton of it). Oh, and it's going the other way, too. United States agriculture exporters are getting absolutely ###### as China now turns to other nations for ag imports. If you're still backing this president, I predict you won't be much longer.

He's absolutely going to get it. What's about to happen to China, tariffs or no tariffs, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You're old enough to remember when the Berlin Wall came down, and how fast it all was...this is going to be far, far, far worse. And China will not be getting off the mat again. Neither will Russia, this time around. I mean, pick your poison - demographic collapse unmatched in human history. Housing-market collapse followed by a bank collapse caused by 100%+ overbuild that built ghost cities that will never be occupied as far as the eye can see in places. (We were overbuilt by about 7% in 2008 and you saw what that did.) Critical water shortage that's about to affect 400+ million people in their west and north. Debt-to-GDP ratios that would make even Japan in the 80's blanch. It goes on, and on, and on. They've managed to keep a lid on it so far - barely - with insane amounts of propaganda and social-media manipulation but their population all feels it - the movement of the moment the last few years among Chinese youth has been tang ping - "lying flat". Hard work gets you nowhere, so just lie flat and don't sweat it, gather your flowers, and all that. That's been followed by bai lai - "embrace the end", since basically we're all effed anyhow. Not good. And there are more people over the age of fifty than under in China right now. That's even more Not Good. In fact it's far beyond terminal. You need a fertility rate of 2.1 for replacement level. It's dropped to less than 0.5 in the bigger cities.

China was pointing an autoloading pistol with a hair trigger squarely at their own temple right on their very own. They don't need our help with a "kill shot".

quozzel

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Re: Welp. There it is.

Apr 29, 2025, 2:01 PM

You asked:

Won't the people of China just suffer and the government just be fine?

Very few people in China are likely to be "fine". The numbers in terms of demographics aren't just bad, they're appalling. We're not talking social stress and civil disorder, we're talking Malthusian catastrophe, Zombie Apocalypse-type bad. There's houses of cards stacked atop houses of cards there, and the more you look the more your mind reels.

People view China as some sort of monolith and it's trying to be but absolutely isn't. The CCP is based in Beijing, far in the north, and it's also Han Chinese and they speak Mandarin. The demographics from Beijing to Inner Mongolia - the part inside the Great Wall - all the way down to Shanghai are flat awful, and actually Shanghai (where Elon Musk's Tesla Gigafactory is) has the worst demographics in China.

I do not think there will be a Chinese state in those regions ten years from now.

The Cantonese region in the south - Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Macao - has a much better chance of making it...their water security and demographics are far better, but they are also largely Cantonese and not Mandarin speakers, and they're no fans of the CCP, either. It's interesting, for instance, that Warren Buffet (and almost every other Western business interest) dumped almost all of Berkshire Hathaway's shares everywhere in China but Buffet has held onto about half of his more than $4+ billion position in BYD (which is absolutely obliterating Tesla right now) and he got himself just under the 5%-share level (4.94%) of a company that legally requires him to list sales publicly on the Hong Kong exchange. So in other words - he can dump and run if he needs to, but he isn't dumping yet.

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I buy all my Chinese products

Likely both but mostly the empty shelves.

Re: Get ready for the next gut punch, and shout out to the...

52 percent of containers that come into the port

Good thing they went on strike...

Well, there's some phenomenal ignorance

Re: Well, there's some phenomenal ignorance

Re: Get ready for the next gut punch, and shout out to the...

Wasn't part of the new deal with the dockworkers was less hours? Yep, sure was.***

To correct more ignorance

They should go to Tim Scotts, Nancys and Lindseys town hall meetings.***

Lol. And to think they were worried about automation.

Re: Lol. And to think they were worried about automation.

Re: Lol. And to think they were worried about automation.

Good.

Welp. There it is.

Re: Welp. There it is.

Re: Welp. There it is.

Re: Welp. There it is.

Re: Welp. There it is.

Re: Get ready for the next gut punch, and shout out to the...

You live in Sioux Falls?

Re: You live in Sioux Falls?

Re: Get ready for the next gut punch, and shout out to the...

Re: Get ready for the next gut punch, and shout out to the...

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