Author: Redactor

In the pages of The Independent a week ago, Michael Sheridan contemplates an irony of ironies, the “Chinese Communist Party, apostle of free trade.”

What?

If people start saying seemingly crazy things, the subject is usually Trump.

In this case, the Trump tariffs. “In a strange new world, that was the strangest thing, as shares crashed in reaction to President Donald Trump’s opening salvo of tariffs in a global trade war.

“The market has spoken,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, writing in English on Facebook — which is, by the way, banned in China. No double standards there, then. Beijing can always keep a straight face when it matters.

Politically, the Chinese government can scarcely believe its luck. It has stepped forward as a voice of reason and stability in a chorus of discord to promote the false narrative that it has been a model of good behaviour since it joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on 11 December 2001, a date that seems destined to live in the textbooks as the peak of globalisation.

The Trump tariffs “are a typical act of unilateral bullying,” complained a spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry.

Of course, that is not how Trump and his supporters see it. The tariffs are a reaction (so the story goes) to China’s bad business practices. Consider the words of Kevin O’Leary: “One hundred and four percent tariffs on China are not enough. I’m advocating 400 percent. I do business in China. They don’t play by the rules. . . They cheat; they steal; they steal IP; I can’t litigate in their courts. . . .”

The tariffs are retaliatory and regulative — can that be true?

Many believe it.

What is not believable, though, is China’s free trade stance. “Here’s the new thing in China’s post-latest-Trump-tariff propaganda: nothing,” writes Scribbler at StoptheCCP.org.

Whenever anybody objects to or seeks to counter CCP bullying, the Party is apt to complain about being bullied and to sternly lecture its victims about the importance of peace and good will among men. So what? We know what the propaganda is. Yes, the regime is serious, very serious. And the Party’s propaganda should be answered. But the flow of it will never cease no matter what the U.S. or anybody else does.

If you are looking for how China will weather the trade barrier, consider the words of the videographer linked to, above, for the O’Leary quote. China, he says, is “a dying autocratic regime that is trying (and failing) to imperialize the world.”

The China tariff is likely primarily political, intended to de-stabilize the Xi regime. Trump has been complaining about China taking advantage of trade with the west. He appears to be sticking to his guns.

The coronavirus pandemic panic — called by Michael Knowles the “Dem panic” for the Democrats’ opportunistic obsession on the subject, using it to unseat Trump from power in 2020 — has been covered extensively by Paul Jacob on this site. But it’s not Paul’s main focus, so most stories just have to be left unnoticed.

But every now and then it’s good to check in on the developing story. Here is an interesting update: Ryan King, at the New York Post, offered us “CDC doctor monitoring bad COVID vaccine reactions may have deleted files, alleges Sen. Ron Johnson,” yesterday.

“Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) struggled to find records belonging to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, the director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office,” writes Mr. King, “while trying to comply with a subpoena from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for vaccine safety data.

In January, after becoming chair of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Johnson blasted out a subpoena for records on internal COVID-19 vaccine safety communications, which led to HHS discovering the potential discrepancies with Shimabukuro’s emails. 

“Any attempt to obstruct or interfere with my investigatory efforts would be grounds for contempt of Congress,” Johnson wrote Wednesday. 

Contempt of Congress is punishable by up to a six-figure fine and 12 months in prison.

The deleting of files is a common accusation, as has crossed the mind of anyone contemplating the JFK assassination or the weird world of UFOs. As the pandemic panic moves from news to history, we can expect many such accusations.