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America's China Dilemma

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Sunday, Sep 08, 2024 - 14:32
AI image of ethnic Chinese at high levels in American society.

A Proposition Nation Versus An Ethno-State

In a post last year about Vivek Ramasawamy's foreign policy ideas (Turning India Into The Next China), I mentioned the obvious problems with the U.S. fighting another Cold War (or hot war) with China: 

The National Question 

Vivek has repeated tropes about how Americans are united by the ideals of the Founders (without every specifying which of those ideals Americans still agree on), but America's Founders saw themselves as bound by more than ideals. As John Jay said in Federalist No. 2 (emphasis mine):

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

To current-year Americans (including Vivek Ramaswamy), that may sound like an anachronistic view of nationality, but it's not anachronistic to current-year Chinese and Indians. Chinese and Indians aren't bound by vague ideals; they are bound by ties of blood and history going back millennia, ties that have transcended different ideologies and forms of government. Just this month, two Chinese-American sailors in the U.S. Navy were arrested for spying for China. 

My view is that there's no reason for the U.S. to be enemies with Russia or China (or India, for that matter). We could just respect their backyards the way we expect them to respect ours (the Monroe Doctrine). Neither China nor Russia is trying to export a radical ideology, like the Soviets were during the Cold War. If anything, we're the ones pushing the radical ideology today (transgenderism). I suspect Vivek is attempting to curry favor with the national security establishment with his newfound China hawkishness, but I don't see how his colorblind nation of ideals can survive war with an ethnonationalist power. 

Last week's indictment of a former senior staffer of the Governor of New York as a Chinese spy highlights this problem. As our friends at America 2100 note in the thread below, that Chinese spy is just the tip of the iceberg of Chinese infiltration of the U.S. 

Before we get to that, a brief market note.

All Comes Crashing 

As I mentioned in Saturday's post, valuation offers no margin of safety in this market. 

If you're concerned about downside risk from here, consider hedging. The beauty of capitalism is that for $5.99, you can buy the hedging tool I spent years and tens of thousands of dollars to develop. You can download the Portfolio Armor iPhone app here, or by aiming your phone's camera at the QR code below. 

 

And if you're looking to buy when there's blood in the streets, here's what we bought on Friday. 

Now on to America 2100's thread on China in America. 

The Tip Of The Iceberg 

 

If you'd like to stay in touch

You can follow America 2100 on X here, and visit their site here. 

You can scan for optimal hedges for individual securities, find our current top ten names, and create hedged portfolios on our website. You can also follow Portfolio Armor on X here, or become a free subscriber to our trading Substack using the link below (we're using that for our occasional emails now).

 

 

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