Moments after the attempt to assassinate former US president Donald Trump at an election campaign rally on Saturday, he stood up and raised his clenched fist to send his supporters a message of defiance — a gesture that would surely appeal to Americans’ worship of heroism. Combined with US President Joe Biden’s frequent slips of the tongue, this event seemingly puts Trump very close to his goal of a second term in the White House.
Trump, who comes from a business background, failed to get re-elected in the previous presidential election, but if he is voted in for a second term this year, he would seek to implement his election slogan of “Make America Great Again.” As he did last time, he would probably use tariffs as his preferred tool for revitalizing the US economy, and if so, China is likely to be the prime target.
Taiwan has long depended on China, the so-called “world’s factory.” However, from the COVID-19 pandemic and US inflation to the chip war, Taiwanese entrepreneurs in China have suffered the pain of US-China rivalry. The current momentum is rolling toward a second Trump presidency. If he is elected and again takes aim at China, it could lead to a second round of US inflation. Taiwanese businesses operating in China should prepare in advance by moving to other regions, such as Southeast Asia, India or Mexico to avoid getting caught up in the storm.
Apart from the US, the EU is quite upset about China’s “cheap” electric vehicle exports. Major Chinese automakers are being forced to avoid high tariff penalties by moving their production to Europe. China’s role as “the world’s factory” is clearly now on shaky ground, and a worldwide trade war could easily break out.
With these trends in mind, hardworking Taiwanese businesspeople in China must keep an eye on the climate and make sure they are well-prepared for the mercurial Trump’s highly unpredictable moves.
Fang Fu-chuan is an international trader.
Translated by Julian Clegg
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS