What happens when the *president (and a certain political party) doesn’t believe in making America great again? Our foreign adversaries take note.
Under President Trump, world leaders respected and feared the US, as they knew he would take action if they didn’t. Under Biden, America is laughed at.
A new shift in global power dynamics has been reflected in Saudi Arabia’s approval of partial membership in a security, economic, and political bloc led by China.
In 2001, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Saudi Arabia has been initially admitted as a “dialogue partner” to the organization.
Two more traditionally ‘U.S. sphere of influence’ countries are also on board as dialogue partners: Qatar and Egypt. Iran is on track to become a full member later this year. A joint “counterterrorism exercise” will be held in August in the Russian Chelyabinsk region, north of Kazakhstan.
Wow! Another Saudi-China-Russia integration. Saudi Arabia decides to join the SCO — Shanghai Cooperation Organization — as a dialogue partner.
Iran also recently joined SCO as a full member.
Asia is uniting as one big but diverse family, while Europe is destroying itself. pic.twitter.com/wDiL2THt63
— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) March 29, 2023
“By engaging with these U.S. rivals, it really does seem like this multipolarity is in full-bore here now,” Jonathan Fulton, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The Wall Street Journal.
“Saudi Arabia’s decision comes three months after China President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia, and just days after state-owned Saudi Aramco made two world-surprising announcements signaling a huge push into China: The Saudi petrochemical giant will build a $10 billion refinery in China and acquire a 10% stake in a leading Chinese oil refinery,” Zero Hedge reports.
China recently brokered a rapprochement between longtime Middle East rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two countries announced they will restore full diplomatic ties, and the kingdom credited China for serving as a “bridge” that made it possible. Xi said the dialogue will “play a major role in strengthening regional unity and cooperation.”
Saudi Arabia has joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a #China-led security bloc, as a 'dialogue partner' amid deepening ties between #Riyadh and #Beijing @CNBCMiddleEast @_HadleyGamble @CNBCi pic.twitter.com/CpnUAbK2Iq
— Sam Vadas (@sam_vadas) March 30, 2023
With regards to regional cooperation, Saudi Arabia is also on the verge of re-establishing diplomacy with the Syrian government, which was targeted for regime change by the United States with the help of Saudi Arabia, and which is now facing a continuing presence of US soldiers at the moment.
These developments are all indicative of the fact that the United States is losing influence, and China is growing in power. In a darkening turn of events, the growing membership of the SCO has paved the way for the next phase of de-dollarization, resulting in the obliteration of one of America’s most important institutions.
Officials in the United States have warned their Middle East allies that certain forms of cooperation with China may damage US relations. However, these warnings from an aging US empire seem increasingly unconvincing.
Another example of American power waning under socialist Democrats, It has been reported that China and Brazil have reached an agreement to trade using their own currencies, eliminating the use of the United States dollar as a middleman altogether.
“The deal, Beijing’s latest salvo against the almighty greenback, will enable China, the top rival to US economic hegemony, and Brazil, the biggest economy in Latin America, to conduct their massive trade which amounts to $150 billion per year, and financial transactions directly, exchanging yuan for reais and vice versa instead of going through the US dollar. In doing so China extends its bilateral, USD-exempting currency arrangements beyond countries such as Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to now include the Latin American exporting powerhouse,” Zero Hedge reported.
“The expectation is that this will reduce costs… promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment,” the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) said in a statement.
China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, with a record US$150.5 billion (S$200 billion) in bilateral trade last year.
The deal, which follows a preliminary agreement in January, was announced after a high-level China-Brazil business forum in Beijing.
It was initially planned that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would be present at the forum as part of an important China visit, but the pneumonia he contracted on Sunday caused him to postpone his trip indefinitely.
Transactions will be executed by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Bank of Communications BBM, according to officials.
“To be sure, we are still a long away away from the yuan replacing the USD as global reserve currency, or maybe not so far if one reads the recent reports from Zoltan Pozsar. And yet, even such foaming Bretton Woods III skeptics as Rabobank’s Michael Every is starting to realize that he may have been wrong,” ZH added.
From Every’s note on March 30:
We showed in ‘Why Bretton Woods 3 Won’t Work’ (2022) that an anti-US BW3 bloc does not balance its trade internally by value or structure: BW3 can sell commodities to China; but unless they absorb the exports China now sends to the West, or China runs trade deficits like the US, then it can’t happen. Instead, we all just return to global mercantilism – which is happening, is inflationary, and ultimately suits the US – just not Wall Street (either in terms of mercantilism or monetary policy). When BW3 players no longer hold their official and unofficial savings in USD assets (if not Treasuries, then agencies or stocks, or property), and want to stash cash in Moscow and retire in China, then things are changing.”
Alas, at the rate the current US ruling regime is destroying the world’s faith and confidence not only in the dollar but in what was once truly a superpower and is increasingly a third world banana republic – the latest news of Trump’s indictment for political reasons being the third world cherry on top – we won’t have very long to wait.
Elections have consequences.
