THIS IS A LITTLE WORRYING

 From Instapundit comes this in his italics. My response is in bold.

    China has done everything possible to incur global distrust and fear.

But nowhere near to incurring the global distrust and fear of the United States earned by US.

    Most of the world accepts that the COVID-19 epidemic that killed and maimed millions worldwide was birthed in a Wuhan virology lab under the auspices of the People’s Liberation Army. The world also remembers that China and the Chinese-controlled WHO lied repeatedly about the origins and spread of the virus.

From what I've seen, that research was backed, supported, funded and guided by the CDC and the United States of America who lied about every single aspect of the virus and its origins for a damned good reason....they were behind it.

 
    The global public may recall that China stopped all domestic flights out of Wuhan on the internal news of the lab leak of the virus, while for days greenlighting nonstop air travel to major European and American cities. The world now accepts that China will never explain exactly when the virus appeared, how it “escaped” from the lab, why it was created in the first place, why Beijing repeatedly lied about all such inquiries, and what happened to an array of whistleblowers who warned of the leak.

What were the World's foremost Intelligence Communities telling us the reasons for that were and WHY DID WE IGNORE THEM and let those flights into our airspace?

These are of course the same brain dead morons that insist its perfectly safe to bring Ebola infected people here out of Africa because it's 'perfectly safe.'

    China’s so-called allies, such as Russia and India, have historical grievances and ongoing border disputes fueled by Chinese aggression.

Nobody on earth has 'so-called allies' like the United States does. See below. Have you looked at our borders and border history?

    NATO, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the US also are curious as to why China is using its vast foreign exchange not to lift about a quarter of its population out of third-world-level poverty. Instead, it is frantically building 3-4 nuclear bombs a month, a 700-ship navy, and 2,500 combat aircraft as it ratchets up pressure on Taiwan.

Putting on my Oz disguise I look at the whole world and would you believe that when you say NATO, EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the United States what China sees is a sea of enemies that have repeatedly attacked and invaded China for centuries and have, for the last 30 years since the Cold War ended, seen the US leading the pack trying to ramp up China as the new ne plus ultra enemy to be feared and demonized. What exactly did you expect China's rulers to do faced with this existential threat?

    The complexities of trade and tariffs present all sorts of minefields. But the Trump administration is beginning to navigate them, and its trajectory is rather simple. In the next 90 days, it will likely conclude trade deals with our allies and third parties that bring either tariff parity or no tariffs at all that will reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

Perhaps. I'm still curious about these allies you keep mentioning. In just what way have they proven to be allies of ours as opposed to, say, very troublesome freeloading moochers who have been gouging US since 1941?

    Of course, our allies and neutrals still use stealth tariffs to ensure advantage by money manipulation, VAT taxes, and pseudo-health and security impediments to free trade. And they deeply resent the Trump administration’s loud denunciations of their surpluses and asymmetrical tariffs. But those machinations can be addressed later in round two after tariff reciprocity or elimination is finalized.

Honesty compels me to point out that we have rigged the whole entire world so thoroughly in our favor it is hard to see around the bend to where these guys are really getting away with all that much. It cuts both ways all this talk about manipulating markets, gold supplies, the $ and little things like the FED gaming it all for its own benefit.

    For now, Trump should persuade our allies that if they were not so subject to Chinese mercantilism, they would have more flexibility to ensure fair trade with the U.S. And thus, they should not do something self-destructive and side with China but instead join the U.S. to force China to keep its long-broken promises and play by international rules. A reduced import footprint from China in the U.S. could make room for increased imports from the EU, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—if they strike parity deals with the Trump administration. Barring that, they should simply get out of the way and not opportunistically cut reformist trade deals with China.

Perhaps you recall when President Trump warned Europe 4 years ago to stop subsidizing Russia and relying 100% for its Energy supply on Russia? How'd that work out? 

I was not there but I can guarantee that nobody left that meeting of the WTO all those years and thought for even one microsecond that China was going to play by the WTO rules. 99% of them left after voting for China entry because they were unforgivably stupid, unforgivably corrupt or pushed really hard by the United States ruling entity at that time to admit China. Nobody thought that China would play by rules none of them were playing by either. Srsly, Airbus?

    If China really does reduce most of its exports to the U.S., America will have to scramble for a year or so to establish new supply chains and some alternate importers of U.S. products. But after a year of gradual dislocation, China will begin to hemorrhage, and then quite suddenly, given the U.S. has almost all the advantages—if it chooses to use them.

On Pen in Korea, those of us from CONUS got used to the IC and USFK and 8th Army and Combined Forces Command telling us that what they feared when North Korea inevitably collapsed was that the ruler would give way to the impulse to "USE IT OR LOSE IT" and take us down when North Korea inevitably went into the Dark. What do you think they all have to say there and in Hawaii about China going down into the Darkness if/when their economy is wiped out?

Seriously, did all the Pol/Mil and Geo-strategists just all dry up and blow away?