China Is Losing the Tariff War

To win the trade war, the 
CCP just needs one thing. 

Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell. 

The US-China trade war has been going on for 
three weeks now, and you know what that means. 

It’s time to panic!

If you go on X, you’ll see posts with millions 
of views claiming that US ports are empty.

That there are zero cargo ships. 

That you should panic buy rice and toilet paper.

Yes! Finally! My time has come! I’ve 
been hoarding toilet paper since 2020.

It’s made living in New York 
City slightly challenging.

But it’s all worth it now. 
Time to sell it all for profit!

Wait, what’s that, Shelley? 

None of that is true? 

Ports are not empty, and there are 
definitely cargo ships heading to the US.

And people should not panic buy 
rice, which is grown in America,  

or toilet paper, which is made in America.

Fine, fine. 

I guess if you start seeing toilet paper 
shortages, that’s not because of the trade war,  

that’s because people got freaked 
out by stupid social media posts.  

The vast majority of food 
shouldn’t be affected, either. 

If you panic buy anything, 
it should probably be things  

like back-to-school supplies 
and Christmas decorations. 

I’m not saying there won’t be shortages of 
made in China stuff. There probably will be,  

but we won’t see that in stores 
for weeks, or even months down  

the line. Chinese products will also get more 
expensive. But we don’t know how expensive.

There’s a lot of uncertainty right 
now, and a lot of fearmongering. 

Which is great for the Chinese 
Communist Party. Because they need  

the Trump administration to back down on tariffs.

And if the CCP can convince Americans they 
should hate the tariffs, they might have a shot. 

I’ll tell you why the CCP wants this so badly 
in a minute. But first, you know YouTube has  

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Ok, so the CCP wants the US to lower their 
tariffs. Because if the tariffs continue  

at this level, China is going to 
be much worse off than the US. 

Yes, US consumers will feel some pain. But 
like I explained in a previous episode, 

China now more than ever depends on exports to 
keep its economy going and people employed. 

That’s because the Chinese real estate market 
has already collapsed. And that’s the other  

major driver of the Chinese economy. So they 
NEED to export stuff. That’s all they have.

Now, Goldman Sachs estimates that US tariffs 
could endanger 16 million export jobs in China.

And that’s probably on the low end.

In a trade war, the country 
that’s the bigger exporter  

will generally be hit harder. And that’s China.  

Chinese workers are in even more trouble because 
China’s been fighting deflation for years.

China’s economy is in a deflationary spiral. 

That’s when prices fall, which means 
companies can’t afford to pay people as much,  

so wages fall. And that means 
people don’t want to buy stuff,  

so consumer demand falls, which means prices 
fall even further. And it keeps on going.

China’s been fighting deflation ever since 
their disastrous Zero Covid policy. Turns  

out it's hard for businesses to survive when 
everyone is locked inside their apartments. 

The real estate crisis also made deflation worse,  

because people’s savings were wiped out. 
And a bunch of people lost their jobs, too.

The New York Times talked to a guy who 
was a construction worker and a plumber. 

“When times were good, Mr. Wang said,  

he could make as much as $13,600 a year. 
Now he’s lucky if he can make half that.”

Think about that for a second. Even during 
the good times, his income was several  

thousand dollars below the poverty line in the 
US. Now he’s not even making half of that. 

So China’s economy is on shaky ground. 
And tariffs are making things worse,  

by endangering more Chinese jobs.

But the Chinese Communist Party is digging in. 
And they’re really good at narrative warfare. 

I’ve shown you why China is going to be hit 
harder by tariffs than the US. So the trick is,  

the CCP needs to make Americans THINK they’re 
the ones who will be hit harder instead.

And to do that, the CCP is relying on the  

perception that Chinese people can 
eat bitterness, but Americans can’t.

Eating bitterness is the Chinese term for 
enduring hardships. Basically, suffering. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly told  

the Chinese people that they need to eat 
bitterness for the good of the nation. 

I talked in a previous episode 
about how young Chinese people  

don’t seem quite as willing to eat 
bitterness as previous generations. 

But in narrative warfare, that doesn’t matter,  

as long as Americans THINK Chinese 
people are willing to suffer more.

Which is why China’s Foreign Ministry is 
releasing propaganda videos like this. 

“History has proven compromise won’t earn you  

mercy. Kneeling only invites more 
bullying. China won’t kneel down.”)

The rest of the video calls America 
an arrogant imperialist, and shows  

China leading the world in solidarity 
against America over some heroic music.

The message is clearly that America is the bad guy 
and it better give up, because China never will. 

That same message is being repeated 
in the CCP’s domestic propaganda.

Earlier this week, Beijing Daily 
published an article called “Today,  

it is necessary to revisit On Protracted War.” 

On Protracted War was a series of speeches made by 
Chairman Mao during the Sino-Japanese War in 1938.

This Beijing Daily article is very 
Marxist. It blames America’s problems  

on the capitalist system, it talks 
a lot about dialectal materialism,  

and it repeatedly refers 
to the “US-China struggle.”

I’ve talked before about how “struggle” 
or “douzheng” is the communist concept of  

designating an enemy and mobilizing the 
entire society to “struggle” against it.

In this case, the enemy is obviously the US.  

According to the article, “The 
Party Central Committee had  

already anticipated the long-term 
nature of the China-U.S. rivalry  

and proactively laid out plans for 
future major power competition.”

In other words, the CCP is in it for the 
long haul. The gist of the article is  

warning that the US-China struggle will 
not be over quickly, but that the CCP,  

sorry, “the people” will ultimately 
win over the imperialist Americans. 

So that’s what the CCP is saying. But what’s 
actually happening in China right now? 

Well, since it’s an authoritarian state 
with total control over its domestic media

 and a huge online censorship apparatus, we’re 
not going to get a totally clear picture. 

But we do know some things. And it 
looks like the CCP is saying one thing,  

and doing another. What a surprise!

First, you know that earlier this month, the 
CCP put additional tariffs on US imports,  

in retaliation for US tariffs. But now, 
it looks like the CCP is going to exempt  

some US products from those tariffs, 
because they really really need them.

“Those products include certain semiconductors and  

chipmaking equipment, medical 
products and aviation parts.”

They could also exempt chemicals like ethane, 
which China uses to make a ton of plastics. 

Does that sound like a compromise, even though 
the CCP swore they would never do that? Yeah,  

they’re going to be flexible with their 
tariffs on US goods when they need to  

be—but they don’t want people to know about it.

In fact, Caijing Magazine, which was 
the first to report that China was  

going to exempt semiconductors, 
seems to have been censored. 

Meanwhile, Chinese export companies 
are trying to survive the US tariffs. 

Some smaller factories are temporarily pausing 
operations or even completely shutting down. 

(Others are trying to get around tariffs by using 
transshipment—for example sending products to  

be assembled in countries like Cambodia and 
Vietnam, which then get re-routed to the US.

There are even reports of Chinese companies asking  

Indian exporters to fill their 
orders for their US customers. 

The idea is the Indian companies 
would fulfill the orders,  

and pay the Chinese companies a commission. 

And foreign companies are trying to move 
their manufacturing out of China, too. 

For example, Apple is trying to 
source all of its US iPhones from  

India instead of China. And they’re 
looking to do it as soon as next year.

The CCP isn’t a fan of that idea though.

CCP officials are trying to stop Apple 
from moving their iPhone manufacturing  

equipment out of China. Yeah, they’re 
kind of taking machines hostage.

Well, that’s awkward.

Foreign clothing manufacturers are 
also trying to get out of China.

Or even sending Chinese workers to 
factories in the Philippines or Vietnam.

And factory owners from Hong Kong and Taiwan 
are trying to avoid physically being at their  

own factories in China, because they’re worried 
about being kidnapped by Chinese authorities.

Ok, so forget taking machines hostage. People 
are worried China will take people hostage. 

Wouldn’t be the first time. 

So doing business in China is like 
staying at the Hotel California.  

You can check out anytime you 
like, but you can never leave. 

Side note: I don’t know if it still is, but in 
the early 2000s, Hotel California was one of the  

most popular Western songs in China. You could 
not get away from it. And I have no idea why. 

Anyway, the point is, Chinese factories are 
trying to get their products out of China,  

and foreign companies are trying to 
get their factories out of China.

Which means, the US tariffs are…actually working.  

At least in terms of decoupling 
US manufacturing from China.

And that’s good news for Americans. Because 
we don’t want our economy to be held hostage  

by a regime that will…literally hold 
people hostage to get what they want.

Especially since the CCP also sees 
America as a threat to its survival. 

And it’s not just me saying that. Here’s 
Cold War historian Professor Stephen Kotkin.

“The existence of the American 
system ipso facto threatens the  

survival of the Communist Party because it's a 
freer—it's an open, successful alternative.”)

Kotkin goes on to say that it doesn’t 
matter what US policy is toward China,  

the CCP will always see the 
US as standing in its way.

That’s pretty clear from their 
latest propaganda narrative.

“China won’t kneel down”)

So what happens now? The CCP refuses 
to back down, at least publicly. But  

companies are actually leaving China 
and China’s economy is getting wrecked. 

Can the CCP actually force people to eat 
bitterness and ride out the trade war?  

Yes they can, because they’re an authoritarian  

state. But that doesn’t mean there 
won’t eventually be consequences. 

Look at what happened during 
the Zero Covid lockdowns. 

Eventually Chinese people reached a breaking point  

and started to protest. Which is the 
Communist Party’s worst nightmare.

The best case scenario for the CCP is that 
the US simply backs down from all the tariffs,  

under pressure from various interest groups.

To do that, the CCP needs to convince 
Americans that China is too strong to  

get hurt, and America is the one getting screwed.

In other words, China needs 
to win the narrative war. 

Which means these posts 
are exactly what it needs. 

And unfortunately the Trump 
administration doesn’t seem to be  

doing a good job of telling Americans 
why tariffs on China are important.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we 
should have a country that sees America  

as its enemy making everything from 
our children’s toys to our medicines.

But you know what they don’t make? 
Our toilet paper. USA number…2!!!

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Thanks for watching. I’m Chris 
Chappell. See you next time.