Opinion Columnist Nov. 17, 2018, 280 comments
“Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are a bit alike, and that presents a danger to the global order.
The American and Chinese leaders are both impetuous, authoritarian and overconfident nationalists, and each appears to underestimate the other side’s capacity to inflict pain. This dangerous symmetry leaves the two sides hurtling toward each other.
The 10 percent tariffs already imposed in the trade war are scheduled to rise to 25 percent in January, but there’s also a broader confrontation emerging.
Trump and Xi may well be able to reach a cease-fire in their trade war when they meet for the Group of 20 in two weeks. Even if a deal is reached, though, it may be only a temporary respite that doesn’t alter the dynamic of two great nations increasingly on a collision course.”
Source: Opinion | The Dangerous Naïveté of Trump and Xi – The New York Times
David Lindsay: Thank you Nicholas Kristof. Yes, and here are the top comments, which I endorsed:
And those of us in Japan and Korea are caught in the middle. The contest will likely be decided by which side has the most friends. Indeed, the TPP would have been a very strong economic platform favoring the US. Trump chose to scuttle it and he has also chosen to starve the state department, effectively crippling the two biggest, peaceful levers America had to work with: trade incentives and diplomacy. Hopefully the next US President will revive these programs, but for now, we haven’t much choice but to hunker down.
I agree with many things in this article, but I’m not certain that Xi has shown himself to be ‘impetuous’. On the contrary, I believe that most of his actions are deliberate and carefully considered. I have been impressed with Xi’s constraint in his responses to Trump’s Twitter rants. If Xi was ‘impetuous’ he might have pulled the trigger and put an end to the Chinese buying of US Treasury Bonds. Also, I suppose that you could make the argument that the two men are ‘a bit’ alike, but there is one very big difference, Xi is a very intelligent man and Trump is not.