China’s Opening Gets Bigger & Bigger As Trump Walks Into More Traps (His Own Traps)
As I pointed out before the election, Donald Trump’s campaign was so full of irony it could have filled a gold-plated plastic slurpee cup — something Trump may well own. Of course, now that he’s “President-Elect” Donald Trump (with nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, sprinkling more irony into the cup), the craziness has continued.
From a strictly American perspective, the looming economic, environmental, and social decline is depressing as hell, but there are some counterintuitive ways that Trump’s extremism could eventually land us in a net win on climate and cleantech matters (and that’s not accounting for potential global economic collapse at some point in the coming decade once Donald’s latest cons come to light).
Three ways we could get a net win on the climate (in my humble and optimistic opinion) are by Trump extremism stimulating an unprecedented amount of civic activism, greater city leadership, and much more consumer activism (stop funding oil, gas, and coal billionaires!).
However, there are also international factors at play.
Just after the election, I highlighted what I still think is a giant likelihood. China has the potential to greatly boost its reputation in the world — especially relative to its foil, the United States — by showing up as the adult in the room while other global leaders watch Trump’s moves in horror. The more Donald moves forward with his insane (there could be literal insanity at play here) “shake things up” approach to US society and international politics, the more political leaders in other countries are going to side with China on key global topics that require the leadership of major economies.
International politics isn’t about just two or three players, of course, but there’s no denying that the US has had abnormally large influence over international politics and the global economy for a long time … but that China has become a more and more powerful leader. In some respects, China has become more powerful — but now Trump is essentially hoisting the country into the king’s chair. The good news there for all of humanity could be that China accepts the climate science consensus, is keen on strong climate action, and would likely shift the world in that direction more quickly if it had more influence and the US has less.
Back to Trump: In case you missed it, Trump is skipping his daily intelligence briefings. He’s reportedly not fond of reading at all — some people who have shadowed him closely don’t think he’s read a single book not “written” by him in his adult life (well, that’s what the actual author of The Art of the Deal believes). Trump is packing his cabinet and advisor team with science deniers (in particular, global warming deniers). All of this is setting him up for one massive assault on global intelligence after another. Maybe that worked against rural voters and disenfranchised Rust Belt voters in the US of A, but don’t expect that to work on international global leaders — just like it didn’t work on Democratic and Republican elites … until the latter group gave up a moral backbone in favor of a “team win.”
Every misstep Trump makes — whether it’s denying the Earth revolves around the Sun, denying President Obama was born in the US, denying that Russia interfered with the US presidential election, or denying that global warming is one of the greatest threats humanity faces — is an opportunity for China to say, “Hey, what’s going on here, I thought the USA had its house in order? What happened? Can we trust the US any longer? Can we listen to the US on anything at this point if it is going to elect a science-denying, politically unaware, unstable, and perhaps legitimately insane con man?#8221;
Day 1 hasn’t started yet and Trump’s imposition on China’s decades-long “One China” policy has hit the top of Google News.
The world’s political leaders basically know that Russia had a big hand in getting Donald J Trump elected, that Russia very obviously interfered in the US democratic process — successfully — and that Trump is already making moves to set up a much friendlier relationship with Russia and destabilize Europe and the global economy in the process.
California, the largest economic player in the United States, is already speaking up in opposition to Trump’s extremist approach to climate science and energy. How hard would it be for China to convince political leaders to rely on its stability over the USA’s when the largest state in the country won’t stand for the federal government’s “flat Earth” approach?
How absurd do world leaders think the US is when its incoming president, Secretary of State, head of NASA, head of the EPA, and head of the Department of Energy are pollution-pushing global warming deniers who are trying to slow the fastest-growing jobs and fastest-growing industry (cleantech) in their country and the world?