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Recently, we have talked a lot about things between China and the United States, in fact, the final struggle between China and the United States is about to begin!
Yesterday we were here late at night, and all of a sudden, it finally came!
On April 17, local time in the United States, the Office of the United States Trade Representative announced that it would launch a "Section 301 investigation" against our maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries!
Everyone should be familiar with the term "301 investigation".
Here's how it came about: In 1974, the United States created a Trade Act of 1974, section 301 of which provides that the USTR may investigate the trade practices of foreign governments to "determine whether they impose an unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory burden on U.S. commerce."
But these rules are false, and the truth is: Americans say you are, you are, and even if you are not, it is!
It is a tool for the United States to rectify other countries!
How serious is this? Just by looking at these two events, it is very clear.
First, it is the seventh "Section 301 investigation" launched by the United States against us in decades.
In the 1990s, when George H.W. Bush was in power, there were twice;
After that, Clinton came to power, and he did it twice;
In 2010, Obama did it again;
After that, in 2018, Trump did it, and we all know what it was called!
Trade war!
At that time, when Trump was announcing, he coaxed and said: The trade war is a good thing, and it is easy to win!
The result?
It's now in its sixth year, and the trade war is still going on!
There is another thing that is also worth mentioning: the six "301 investigations" launched by the United States in the past, including the trade war initiated by Trump, all have the same reason, saying that we have violated the intellectual property rights of Americans!
The second is that in the past two days, Biden has been "going deep into the enemy camp" and breaking into the so-called "rust belt"!
These places are the concentration of blue-collar workers in the United States!
Trump's main vote base!
Everywhere he went, he desperately said to these workers: Every one of you is very good, and the American factories are also very good, but why are the factories closing down and you are unemployed?
After that, let's say it's because of us!
Typical American politician style!
If there is someone in the United States who can't poop, it must be our fault!
Yesterday, he said this publicly: China's tariffs on steel and aluminum, which are now 7.5%, I will double them!
After that, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced at the speed of light: launch of the Section 301 investigation!
Typical sin of desire, there is no excuse!
I just want to make a whole person!
So what methods and how do the Americans plan to rectify us this time?
To put it simply, it was more or less installed before, and now it is not installed directly!
All 301 investigations need a proposer, and this time, there are a total of 5 proposers:
United of American Steelworkers;
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers;
AFL-CIO U.S. Department of Trade;
International Brotherhood of Boilermakers;
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers......
Do you see what's weird?
The United States is conducting a "301 investigation" against us, but in the fields of maritime, logistics and shipbuilding!
What kind of organization are you proposing?
Steel;
Electric;
boiler manufacturing;
Even aerospace is coming!
Peers don't count, they don't even pretend to be installed, and they don't even have a grass platform team, so they rush directly!
But the request made by this group of insects is super against the sky!
It can simply make the WTO cry, the UN sighs!
They said: As long as every Chinese ship berths at an American port, not only will we in the United States have to charge a fee, but we will also charge a Chinese ship that calls for berth!
What is the money used for?
They said: Whether it is the United States or its allies, the money received should be handed over to the United States and put into a shipbuilding industry revitalization fund to invest in the shipbuilding industry of the United States!
To put it simply: they want to use the money they pay for our ships to build the shipbuilding industry in the United States!
At this point, I have to say why we call them "worms".
In their heads, these guys probably feel that in this world, no one dares to say "no" to the United States. The United States can do whatever it wants, we will only accept it silently, and will not launch reciprocal countermeasures!
What is even more contrary to this requirement is: Why should your allies risk being countered by us to collect this money for the sake of your American interests, and after receiving the money, they have to hand it over to you in full America?
What do you mean by that?
Their brain structure is definitely different from ours!
The world we live in is certainly different from ours!
But here's a question: Although you want to rectify me, I know you want to rectify me, and you also know that I know you want to rectify me, after all, you are still a country, at least on the surface, you have not publicly waved the skull pirate flag, you are engaged in a "301 investigation", you have to come up with a reason to be on the stage, right?
As a result, the reason that the Americans came up with this time made those who know how to laugh after listening to it!
Here's what they say: because we give the shipbuilding industry "hundreds of billions of dollars in unfair government support", stifling "all competitors", including them, and threatening the "national security" of the United States.
Why do people who know how to hear it laugh out loud?
Here we have to talk about the history of shipbuilding in the United States!
Many people think: Since the United States claims to be a sea power, its shipbuilding industry must be very good in the past, even if it is not very good now!
Because in the Pacific War, the U.S. Navy was full of warships, aircraft carriers everywhere, and planes covered the sky!
With so many ships, it is natural to deduce: the American shipbuilding industry must be very good!
But in fact, this is not the case at all!
The U.S. shipbuilding industry has indeed had a very good time, and it has also sat on the throne of the world's first.
But only in the 12 years from 1845 to 1857: the total tonnage of ships launched in the United States at that time reached 3.4 million tons, far behind Britain, which ranked second!
But in the past 12 years, before and after, all the way to the 1950s, Britain was the boss.
Why is that?
The United States is full of primeval forests and white oak trees!
There are raw materials, so you can build a ship!
When the United States was the first in the world in shipbuilding, it built this kind of ship.
But the shipbuilding industry has a lot of very high requirements for trees, and not just any tree can come to shipbuilding!
At that time, the Americans were also a group of insects, and when they saw that there were trees in the forest, they patronized and cut them down, and then there were no raw materials!
The British have planted a lot of these trees for hundreds of years, and the water flows for a long time, so they have surpassed it again!
After that, the world's ships entered the ironclad age, and the United States did another stupid thing, resulting in it never being able to surpass Britain.
In 1920, the United States was already the world's largest industrial power.
At that time, the manufacturing industry, including shipbuilding, was still extremely strong in the United States. At that time, the United States had a developed economy! Therefore, the shipping industry, which shuttled through various ports in the United States, was also super developed, and shipbuilding and shipping companies from various countries wanted to get a piece of the pie.
The American shipbuilding company was annoyed: how can this kind of fat meat on the side of the mouth be eaten by the way?
They lobbied members of Congress and passed the Jones Act in 1920, which did what it said:
All vessels sailing between ports within the United States must be U.S.-manufactured, registered in the U.S., owned and operated by a U.S. citizen or habitual resident;
or at least 75% ownership of the vessel is controlled by U.S. citizens;
The crew must be U.S. citizens.
What if a foreign vessel violates this law? The cargo will be confiscated, a hefty fine will be imposed, or even the vessel will be confiscated outright.
After the passage of this bill, the shipbuilding industry in the United States basically belongs to the type of drought and flood protection. Until 2019, the results were still too good.
Here's the statistic: it would allow American workers to earn $41 billion a year in labor income, boost GDP by $156 billion, and solve the employment problem of 650,000 people.
It looks great, but it brings a problem: the shipbuilding industry in the United States has since become a flower in a greenhouse.
Since you can make money lying down, who would want to stand up, or even kneel and work hard, to make money?
Therefore, since the passage of the "Jones Act", the price of ships built in the United States has begun to rise, and in 1922, two years after the passage of this act, the price of building the same ship in the United States was 20% higher than that in the international market, and in 1930, it was 50% higher.
How did the United States build so many warships during the Pacific War?
In fact, the United States built this kind of high-priced ship at that time, but it was a powerful country and had money in hand, and Japan was too weak compared to it.
If it encounters an opponent of similar strength, it will definitely lose!
As soon as World War II ended, the high-priced ships of the United States were not competitive, so soon, the leader of the shipbuilding industry became the British again.
But at this moment, another country appeared: Japan, which had just been defeated by the United States!
Because the shipbuilding industry is actually a labor+technology-intensive industry, it needs a large number of skilled workers to engage in hard work.
After World War II, the European economy was doing well, the price of labor was rising, and the ships built by the British were not competitive.
The United States and Britain left this work to the Japanese.
At that time, there were things going on in Asia, especially two major wars: the Korean War and the Vietnam War!
War is to fight logistics, which requires a large amount of materials, and especially ships.
It is still the old routine of Japan's rise: the blood of the Asian people feeds Japan's industry.
By the 1970s, the world's shipbuilding industry was the leader of the Japanese people.
At this time, the Japanese began to brag: why can we become the boss?
Because we have three talismans!
First, segmented manufacturing!
It is to build the hull at the same time, piece by piece, and finally put it back together!
The second is the standardized series design!
Everyone understands this.
The third magic weapon, Japan is not very willing to say: low labor costs!
Just when Japan was crazy about bragging and thinking that he was really amazing, good news came from the United States: there was a pig teammate who gave it a divine assist!
Who is this man?
US President Ronald Reagan!
At that time, the U.S. shipbuilding industry had been uncompetitive since the Jones Act, so they were desperately active, saying that my industry was very important to U.S. national defense, and then a sum of government subsidies fell on them!
American shipbuilding, and therefore the rise did not?
No!
On the contrary, it is even less competitive, and they are arguing every day, asking the US government to increase the weight and continue to give subsidies!
After Reagan came to power, seeing that the American shipbuilding industry was so uncompetitive, he was angry and canceled the subsidy!
The U.S. shipbuilding industry was stimulated by this, so did it rise?
Not only did they not, but they took the opportunity to lie flat!
The blue line is for the U.S. civilian shipbuilding industry, the red line is for the military, and in the Reagan era, the blue line plummeted.
The result: Reagan single-handedly destroyed the civilian ocean-going shipbuilding industry that was already left in the United States!
After that, the shipbuilding industry in the United States was only left to build warships and luxury yachts.
After that, the civil shipbuilding industry, although after that, Japan declined, and the throne was taken away by South Korea, and then it was taken by us.
But these have long had nothing to do with the shipbuilding industry in the United States!
Speaking of which, everyone can understand why the "301 investigation" carried out by the United States this time is aimed at our shipbuilding industry, and why it is a bunch of insects such as steel, boilers, electrical, and even aerospace that have jumped out, but no shipbuilding industry has come out!
As early as 40 years ago, there was no civilian shipbuilding industry in the United States!
Now a bunch of people have suddenly appeared, saying that our shipbuilding industry poses a threat to the same industry that the United States has long been dead and even rotten, which is simply nothing to say, and it is no longer even a "scam corpse", but a "scam skeleton"!
1,000 percent desire to add sin, no excuse!
At this point, we have to talk about why these insect organizations in the United States suddenly appeared and wanted to reorganize our shipbuilding industry.
Because Americans are discovering more and more: the situation is not good!
Our shipbuilding industry is on the rise: in 2023, our shipbuilding completions, new orders and hand-held orders have accounted for 50.2%, 66.6% and 55.0% of the global total, respectively.
The share of the shipbuilding industry of the countries of the world from January to September last year, the gray part is for us.
Our rise has made Americans feel frightened when they see it!
Because the United States has always regarded itself as a sea power country, a sea power country should have strong shipbuilding capabilities and a strong navy, but now its own shipbuilding industry is obviously not presentable!
The consequences of the American shipbuilding industry being left only for military shipbuilding, there are twofold:
Among the three East Asian countries, Japan has the highest cost of shipbuilding, but the cost of building a warship in the United States is five to seven times that of Japan, which is of course higher than ours.
The second is that its dock is limited, and the speed of shipbuilding cannot be improved.
The result is that since the victory of the Cold War, it has been almost 30 years or so, and despite the fact that US military spending has reached a new high every year, the US military has basically not purchased any major items.
Most of its main ships were built in the Cold War era, and now they are now in their 30s or even 40s, and they have long become rusty and old and broken ships.
The army has to think about how to fight, there are too many broken ships on hand to fight. Therefore, the US military has been clamoring for Congress to quickly and massively pay for the construction of new ships for them.
What about the US Congress? It is scolding the US military for not knowing how to economize, and it is so much that it is almost tempted to say even the old saying of China: three years for the new, three years for the old, and another three years for mending the seams.
In short, they resolutely do not agree to decommission the old warships on a large scale, as the US Navy wants, but are eager to ask them to sail the old warships until they sink.
How can you describe this situation?
It just knows that it urgently needs to buy a new ship, but it can only watch us make dumplings, and it has no way at all.
After all, millions of workers are tied to food and clothing!
It's been more than 100 years, how can the interest groups formed in the middle of it easily break through?
Since you can't do it yourself, then find a way to drag us down!
So what should the Americans do when they suddenly start this matter?
Let's take a look at this set of figures first: in 2023, China's shipbuilding exports will be worth 31.87 billion US dollars, of which ships exported to Asia, Europe, and Latin America will account for 55.6%, 9.1%, and 8.9%, respectively, and only about 5% will be exported to the United States.
If we look at the export alone, this number does not have much impact on us.
The United States wants its little brother to collect money from our ships together, and then hand over the money to the United States, this kind of action is actually quite difficult to operate, why should people risk being countered by us to do things for you, the United States?
It is now more than 40 years since the Reagan era, and the engineers of that year have long since gone to the grave, and even the youngest workers are now at least 60 years old.
There are not even people, what is there to talk about reviving the shipbuilding industry?
Even they can't even repair the ship, and now they have to borrow India's valuable experience and cooperate in repairing the ship.
Shouldn't we breathe a sigh of relief?
The answer is no, because from the fact that the United States launched a "Section 301 investigation" on the shipbuilding industry, it should be seen that it is no longer possible to expect the West, especially the United States, to act according to the laws of the market economy that they have been blowing for many years.
Even the civil shipbuilding industry, which was dead more than 40 years ago, can rely on a patchwork gang and a nonsense to conduct an investigation, what else do you dare not do?
Therefore, this matter is just the beginning, and the new energy vehicles or anything else after that may be used to talk about things, stumble, and make bad moves.
The only way to deal with such a country that does not pay attention to faith and righteousness is this: If they really don't understand what a market economy is, then in addition to a little understanding of fists and kicks, we also know what it means to "encircle the city from the countryside."
At the same time, we will establish closer ties with the 88% of the world's population except the West, and find our own space in the global industrial chain, currency and finance.
When the world's largest industrial power shows the world what real technology is, all the countries that have established stable channels with us will be bathed in the glory and start their own path to modernization, just like the European countries did 300 years ago, they will rise from it!
This is the last battle, and the process will be very hard, but after this victory, there will be no danger ahead!