Isolationism has never been a workable strategy but capitalists don’t care about what works for a country they only care about what works for this quarters stonks
It also doesn’t help isolationism if before you try it you offshore a bunch of your manufacturing. Like what is China gonna do? Close down the factories because the “rules based international order” said so?
The things is, sanctions have historically been very effective at harming the countries being sanctioned - but now that China makes all of our shit and have the confidence in their foreign policy not to abide by US-lead sanctions their effectiveness is a lot more questionable.
Even still, I would hesitate to call sanctions totally useless from the US’ perspective - at least for countries that aren’t physically close to China, like Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, they still have a big impact. Hopefully that continues to change as the BRI continues to build out.
edit: Here’s a cursed thought - we’re going to have another Cuban Missile Crisis, but there won’t be any missiles and it will actually be because China wants to expand a port.
As we all know, a “shadow economy” is when you don’t trade in US dollars.
See also “shadow fleet”, ie. ships insured by companies whose head office is somewhere else than the west.
- Tries to sanction states connected to history’s mightiest industrial economy
- Doesn’t work
- Pikachu face and cope
Tfw when it turns out banking isn’t more important than access to natural resources
but instead have led to a shadow economy
The proxy war in Ukraine supplied the US with a bunch of short term wins, in exchange for serious long term losses.
Indeed, they managed to cleave Europe away from Asia and cause a bunch of chaos, but once the dust settles there’s going to be a hell to pay.
The economy has centred on china for years. The Anglosphere elite just thought rent seeking was real economic activity and guided manufacturing is cheating. No matter how big the brand is, most western “manufacturers” have essentially been drop-shipping since the 90s. Naomi Klein wrote no logo 25 years ago FFS.
as someone with an econ diploma, i’ve never seen this use of the phrase “shadow economy” lmao
