Decision 2024…DeSantis on China
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Okay, as a part of our decision 2024 series here, where again, we don’t pick sides, we kind of present to you what the candidates are saying and we review and I give you my opinion on things. You got Ron DeSantis just pen to piece in regards to China and how he’s gonna handle China and countering China. This is obviously right now because Joe Biden is meeting with Xi Jinping in San Francisco.
Um, Santa said if the administration’s record is any indicator, Biden is going to focus more on flattering Xi than holding his regime accountable. His cabinet has chased Chinese officials around the globe only to bow, sing their praises and make concessions when the meetings are finally secured. The president seems content to manage America’s decline rather than confront China and win this decisive decade.
times running out to act and to prevent China from overtaking the United States as the world’s leading superpower. I’m getting into hyperbole here, okay? That’s nowhere close to happening. Okay, it’s not, I mean, it sounds good. I mean, you’re trying to get votes and everything, you know, get the people going and all riled up. I’m just being honest here. Just being honest. It’s, you know, China’s not gonna take over as the world’s leading superpower. Communist
government’s just, it’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen. And watching them fail right before our very eyes. I am, if you’re paying any attention to what’s going on over in China, like we do, the overall rhetoric coming from even government newspapers and whatnot, that’s obviously controlled by the communist party, the tone has shifted. It shifted to a much more conciliatory tone towards the United States. They’re in trouble.
They need investment. Their unemployment has skyrocketed. The Communist Party is in a bit of a tenuous position at this point in time. And again, we’ve covered that here on the program. Anyway, I’ll go on. DeSantis said he’s gonna restore America’s strength on the world stage and focus attention on resources, on deterring the Communist Party, the greatest economic and security threat.
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Facing America today again. This is where I disagree wholeheartedly again. He’s trying to get votes here How is a Communist Party a secure by definition? Okay by definition Communism is a failure. It’s failing there now. Okay, you want to do the opposite of communism So economic greatest economic threats the Communist Party. No, no communism is never an economic threat
Security threat, yeah, could be. Could be, but again, I’m not seeing it. And Ron DeSantis, whenever he’s asked about China, if you notice this, he says, my goal is straightforward, we win and they lose. Okay, what are we trying to win?
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See, I guess, what is your definition of winning when it comes to this? What is your definition? If your definition of winning is out competing, coming up with better technologies than they do, again, getting our own house in order here, that to me is winning, right?
Winning isn’t about, I mean, if you’re, someone’s like, winning is like, do you want to destroy China? What do we mean destroy China? I mean, why would you want to destroy customers? Business could be, they’re customers there. I don’t really get that. We win, they lose. That’s what he said. He said it in the debates. He said it here in this editorial as well. Both US parties have mistakenly treated China as a friendly competitor, letting a hostile.
Marxist regime exploit our openness and steal our technology, jobs, industries, and assets through trade abuses, currency manipulation, and slave labor. Now, no argument for me there. We allowed that nonsense to happen. We allowed a lot of businesses here in the United States allowed for that to happen. Because again, they were more concerned, they were more short-sighted, concerned about getting involved.
in the markets there and outsourcing and lowering costs. And that’s changed to some degree. We are now, obviously we’re doing more trade with Mexico, manufacturing with Mexico than we are with China. The dynamic has changed over time when it comes to that. But yeah, I agree. I said, you know, when you talk about dealing with trade, obviously one of the biggest concerns you have out there.
is intellectual property theft, because that’s one of the things that we’re really good at. We’re great at building new things and creating things. And that’s, you know, our society has been very, very good at that in comparison to the rest of the globe. Believe it or not, you know, Europe’s much worse than China is when it comes to this. And that’s because of all the ridiculous regulations that they have. But again, yeah, China jumps on board, our technology steals them, whatever it may be, forced technology transfers.
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I have no problem with going after that. You want to have a level playing field. You don’t want to play a ball game. Sports wouldn’t be very successful, right? If you’re playing a baseball game and one team, the rules for one baseball team is six strikes and you’re out and the other one, it’s three strikes and you’re out. That’s what you need to work towards. Anyway, he goes on talking about Beijing’s defense budget and military to rival ours. No, it’s not even close.
Their military budget is not even close to what we spent. And again, they start talking about the Chinese Communist Party, this is DeSantis, expanding its influence globally, Africa, Mediterranean and Western Hemisphere. Now, were they doing that via guns or butter? You see China.
Is China going into Africa, the Mediterranean, all these countries there, and are they doing it guns blazing? Are they doing it by lecturing these countries? No, I talked about that. There was a great line. It was a leader in Africa, I forget where it was, South America, whatever it may be. They say, when you’re dealing with the Americans, you’re gonna get lectured. When you’re dealing with the Chinese, they build you an airport.
I don’t know, could be me calling me crazy, but I think their way makes a little bit greater sense than our way. We must make sure that the United States economy remains the largest and most dynamic on earth. Yeah, we want our economy to continue to grow and you want our economy to be dynamic. And again, you want our per capita GDP continue to grow. You wanna continue to build wealth here in the United States. That’s what you should be focused on. I don’t have any problem with that.
That’s competing. While China’s grown its influence in our backyard, our foreign policy establishment merely talks tough. Biden administration claims to be cracking down but continues seeking detente with no accountability for China’s spy balloon. The spy balloon thing keeps coming up. And again, we talked about it here on the show. We got a kick out of it. Okay. What countries do is they spy on one another.
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If you don’t think that we’re having flights nearby, gathering information, they all do it. They all do it. What was this Chinese spy balloon, a bit of a smack in the face? Yeah, it was. But, you know, again, you know, back in not too long ago, 2010, you know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and all that information coming out. And all of a sudden, oh, geez, yeah, we’re spying on all of our allies and all of our leadership. Hey, we’re spying on Americans.
So again, I’m not surprised. Wasn’t surprised by it at all. COVID-19, another story. And I think one of the reasons why no one’s really gone after China and COVID-19 is I think that they’re afraid what is gonna be found out in regards to our culpability. And that’s been coming out little by little in regards to the
Wuhan Institute there and other arrangements we have with China with this type of research. And I think that much of our leadership will talk around it, but again, they don’t want to let that cat out of the bag saying that, hey, guess what? Our tax dollars were helping to produce COVID-19. Do I have proof of it? No, but I mean, come on, people.
You can add things up, you can see where the money flows, you can see what’s taking place, see where it came from. Again, I think again, the powers that be are afraid that information might get out. Yeah, we got cyber breaches, military provocations, abuse against the Uyghurs. This is nothing new. He says that the…
The Chinese Communist Party continues to steal our capabilities, undermine our economy and displace the United States on the world stage. Again, we can talk about this, but to me, I’ve said this again and again, it’s almost like we have some sort of, you know, we’re insecure as a nation. Just by running America as America, we should be kicking their tail.
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We should be, I mean, this is self-inflicted stuff. I mean, I’d be honest with you. I mean, Obama signed on to the Paris Climate Accord. I know China said that they were gonna do it. We knew that they weren’t. Trump got rid of that. But then again, now you got Joe Biden, who’s all in with all of this green nonsense. It’s not China that’s doing this to us. We’re doing it to ourselves.
We’re doing it to ourselves. We’re hamstringing ourselves. Anyway, again, while adversaries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea threaten America and must be countered, China is our foremost national security threat. When you examine the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, who is Russia’s main backer, China, if you look at what’s happening in Gaza with Hamas, much of the terrorism is funded by Iran.
whose regime is ultimately funded through black market oil sales to China. China supports and protects a totalitarian regime in North Korea. Again, China doesn’t want to deal with North Korea. Again, I disagree with that. China doesn’t China doesn’t want to have North Korea fall apart and they’re going to be dealing with all these refugees born across their border. That’s their a number one concern.
Again, we get into most of these speeches here. He talks about things we got to do and he uses a lot of buzzwords. Buzzwords, no specifics here. Top to bottom restructuring of American national security priorities. I don’t know what that means. Concrete objectives, not murky missions or misguided agendas. Okay, like what?
We cannot expend blood and treasure without clear goals. Okay, I agree with that. I will act decisively to achieve defined ends. What are those defined ends? America will be a steadfast ally to nations sharing our interests. What does that mean? Ron, does that mean that, you know, we’re going to continue to pour money into the Ukraine as far as the eye could see? Right, what exactly does that mean?
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Those seeking to harm us will find no worse enemy. The threat China poses will require a government-wide response. Again, there’s nothing here, man!
There’s nothing here. This sounds like some sort of half-ass fricking Ted talk for crying out loud, where you get nothing out of it. What are you saying? What specifically are you planning on doing? I will halt the flow of American capital and technology that empowers China’s military. A lot of that kinda has been done already to some degree.
Our trade policy will defend our workers, supply chains and essential industries. A lot of that stuff again, a lot of the supply chains have moved out at this point in time. My treasury and commerce secretaries will focus on American interests, not Wall Street’s access to Chinese markets, buzzword, buzzword.
Office of Economic Security and Competition. That’s what we need, another government office to prioritize reshoring and friendshoring critical production, protecting technologies and reducing reliance on adversaries. Again, didn’t Biden just do this with the CHIPS Act, kinda?
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Again, I go on, I will protect the homeland, I will align capital with our interests, not the Chinese party. Peace can only be achieved through strength. He’s grabbing stuff from Reagan’s, just come on, man. I’m gonna be honest with you, a little disappointing. Again, you’re gonna come in, if this was a business plan, you’re gonna come in and you’re gonna pitch this to someone that’s looking to invest.
by raising my hand, I got a thousand questions. Okay, how? How? How are you planning? Oh, I mean, again, you’re laying stuff out here, grandiose statements, lots of adjectives, all sorts of good stuff, but nothing straightforward. You wanna battle China. All you need to do is free America. It’s flipping simple, man. It’s not rocket scientists. You don’t need other offices. You don’t need this, that, or the next thing.
You just need to make America the most competitive place to do business in the entire world, okay? They are presenting, it works this way. They are presenting their version to the world. We present our version to the world. Our version, if our version looks better than their version, people are gonna flock to our version. It’s not that difficult to understand. It really is kind of that simple.
You know, the fact that, you know, you use the example, I cracked jokes about it yesterday, the fact that all of a sudden it took Xi Jinping in China for the authoritize in San Francisco to actually clean the shit up from the streets and remove all the homeless, you know, encampments and all that stuff. I mean, what does that tell you?
By design, we have a much better alternative than China. Most of the world does not want to live in some sort of lockdown type of regime or threat of being locked up in some sort of security state. Again, it’s a simple recipe. You wanna win, okay? You free up the American company, get rid of regulations, you make us the most attractive place to do business in the world, and guess what? Things will work out.
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You run a nation that’s actually fiscally competent, you’ll be able to respond to national security challenges without having to worry about it. You know, in his thing as well, he talks about how he wants them, we need more ships and we need more of this and we need more of that. That’s great, Ron, but we don’t have the flipping money for it, man. We don’t have the money for it. We already spent a ungodly sum of money on our military. What are you suggesting? How much do you wanna grow?
that budget. It’s easy. You want to defeat China? All you need to do is you need to put a better product out there. And countries are going to want to do business with us. It’s just that’s how it works. People, it’s not that difficult. All the flowery language, all the statements. Again, this is for I’m sorry for I’m going to say it is feeble minded, small minded people. They’re going to buy into that stuff. Ra-Ra type of talk.
Okay, you know, it’s America, we got to, you know, it’s a put up or shut up. Not true. We talk too much. Okay. We talk too much. I can go back to the old, you know, speak softly and carry a big stick. We have the recipe. Anything new, anything new, just need to go back to what works. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.