Donald Trump is right. America is not as great as it once was. He wants to make it great again, but he is going about it the wrong way. America manifests weakness. 

America may even become weaker. People won't buy products from a nation they consider a bully. Trump is the face of America. He is perceived as being a bully. US exports have been up, partly because of desires to beat tariff considerations. But the chart below shows they are declining in the face of tariffs and ill will generated by Donald Trump:

I don't see China deploying troops all around the world with bases around the world as we have. We should be happy that China is a mostly peaceful nation. We will possibly make it otherwise, if Trump has his way. It is amazing that America has had decades to promote world prosperity, yet Africa is not prospering, and much of Asia is not prospering. Latin America has problems.

Why do we want the world to remain weak? We have done little to develop many areas of the world. We now are disturbed that China wants to develop those regions? Why? Is it because we are also weak?

The world is weak because of lack of potential energy. Gail Tverberg, Talkmarkets contributor has nailed the energy problem with her own research.

Tverberg said:

Reading many of today’s energy articles, it is easy to get the impression that our energy problem is a quality problem—some energy is polluting; other energy is hoped to be less polluting.
There is a different issue that we are not being told about. It is the fact that having enough energy is terribly important, as well. Total world energy consumption has risen quickly over time.

She warns of this:

Whenever there is even a small drop in energy consumption per capita, it seems to have an adverse effect. On Figure 3, even the small dip in energy consumption per capita in 2008 and 2009 led to a serious recession in many countries of the world.The people who talk about getting along with less energy haven’t thought through the likely ramifications of this. There would be fewer jobs that pay well because jobs such as those for construction workers would disappear. The economy would shrink, because of the fewer jobs, in a much worse recession than the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

One wonders why the United States has such a fear of China. It is always couched in the realm of technology and that will be a collateral fallout as discussed down the article. But really, it could be energy that is the root of the fear. And that is too bad, since there are ways to increase energy and all humans should have the capacity to better themselves. Keeping China down, a nation that has low tariffs for a developing nation, is just born of fear of American weakness.

We now are in a situation where we will not cooperate with China, but instead create a new economic cold war. History has proven time and again this cannot work to create prosperity or safety.

People say that it worked on Russia. But did it? The cold war dispersed the Soviet empire, but it didn't stop Russia's ability to destroy the world as we can destroy the world. What is the point of having a cold war with China? I don't agree with all his views, but Jeffrey Sachs says we must redefine ourselves and shun this rogue nation path we are on. 

As Fred Kempe at CNBC points out:

The administration's clearest and most comprehensive broadside on China yet followed what one official called "thousands of hours" of study and planning. It will involve agencies across the U.S. government, from the Pentagon to the U.S. Trade Representative. The consequences will be both immediate and potentially generational for global economic and security matters.

It is amazing that Wall Street, retail small investors and others have ignored warnings from others and myself that Trump is not a deal maker when it comes to China, that he likely wants to punish our biggest creditor long term. 

Kempe says:

Senior officials in Beijing have increasingly worried that President Donald Trump, with his new tariffs on more than $200 billion of Chinese imports, wasn't just acting as a deal-maker seeking greater leverage for market openings. They suspected a shift was afoot in Washington to more fundamentally address the Chinese challenge.

Trump wants a meltdown of relations with China. This is a dangerous and unnecessary policy. Americans still don't believe how dangerous this course of action could be. 

Anyway, if there was abundant energy it would not be used as a weapon, and it would not be the object of war. There would be less weakness in the world if everyone had adequate energy.

It is amazing to me that America and China and the world cannot work to develop clean production of vast reserves of coal and other fossil fuels and alternative energy as well. It is amazing to me that science cannot work on cleaning coal up. The world spends trillions of dollars on defense and very little on clean coal research. Even Trump has jettisoned clean coal research.

We were spending 200 million dollars per year but Trump cut coal research by 80 percent. That spending should be in the billions, not the millions. What could be more important to world prosperity?

New ideas are needed for a more complex and dangerous world, or we are headed for either economic or armed disaster, or both.

Collateral Tech Damage

While energy is the real culprit, collateral damage of trade disputes will be technology. Apple and other tech giants and the consumers of these products are at great risk. The big scare of chips being put in motherboards to spy on America is much ado about nothing.

Amazon and Apple deny mass infiltration of their products as reported by Bloomberg. That Bloomberg article is not the final answer as to the seriousness of the spying. But we spy, everyone spies. And I don't see Apple or Amazon as being opposed to America. They should be believed until absolute proof is offered that they are not believable. 

The fallout of this mistrust on the part of the US government could be an escalation of that new economic war Trump wants. Cutting China out of supply chains to Apple products would certainly destroy the effectiveness of supply chains and may spill over to other supply channels. All this will hurt an already weakened US consumer.

Donald Trump has already misspoke about Apple before, saying plants are being constructed in the USA. Apple has denied starting construction on plants in the USA. 

While all espionage should be taken seriously, economic espionage can be remedied. Thousands of hours of government efforts to undermine trade with China appears to me as being irresponsible. The potential prosperity that the world could share is going to be snuffed out. Investors need to take this turn of events seriously. We already have a housing depression.

POTUS has proposed a government owned 5G network. While China is a threat to free speech and press, apparently our government wants to be more like China, more totalitarian and controlling. Americans should be alarmed. While we don't want to fear China in trade, and Trump fears China, we don't want to become China either.

But Trump has stated a love affair with despots. And this potentially violent and long lasting trade war coupled with Trump's ambitions is a very dangerous situation for the USA and the world. Ronald Reagan said "trust and verify". Donald Trump disdains essential trust among nations.