The U.S. has decisive advantages over China: 11 aircraft carriers versus China's reliance on imported oil (80%) and food (70%), plus $54 billion in chip funding to control semiconductor technology. Naval dominance, geographic strength, and economic leverage make American superpower status secure.
Chapters
So I actually disagree a little bit. I think the US-China relations, I think the US is in a lot stronger spot than we kind of discuss and think. So for example, take us to last August when we had the Taiwan conflict. The United States parked an aircraft carrier between China and Taiwan. Now China wanted to take over Taiwan. They were doing all these military drills. So we go and park an aircraft carrier there. Now let me tell you about aircraft carriers for a second. Okay, aircraft carriers. The United States has 11 aircraft carriers with 2 more coming online of the Ford class the next couple years. The combined world deck space of aircraft carriers is half. Of the United States, literally half. I mean, having a navy is a luxury, and because we have a navy, we can project power all over the world. And the reason we do that is because you go back to 1945, the Bretton Woods Agreement said we will pay for a navy. It's a luxury item, but you have to use U.S. dollars around the world. That was the agreement. So everyone started using U.S. dollars. That's how we became the world reserve currency and still are today. So what happened with Taiwan and China? So China is going to take over Taiwan. We parked an aircraft carrier there. And by the way, when an aircraft carrier leaves port, it leaves with like I think it's like. 14 or 15 other ships. So, they leave port together. There's like a submarine, there's battlecruisers. It's like an aircraft carrier fleet that leaves, okay? So, we park one there by China. China keeps doing their stuff. They're doing crazy stuff. So, we park a second aircraft carrier there between China and Taiwan. They're still kind of ruffling feathers. They're doing all this kind of stuff. We then park a third aircraft carrier. It's all public information. We parked 3 aircraft carriers off the coast of China last August. Whole carrier fleets. And then guess what happened? Everything kind of settles down because everyone's like, I don't know if I want to deal with 3 aircraft carriers off my shores. Additionally, it was funny to see the United States then bans all chip imports into China, anything with super chips. If you were a worker, a U.S. worker in China, you were told you either have to renounce your citizenship or your job. You had to come back home. They then dropped the CHIPS Act, which is $54 billion to manufacture chips in the United States. They have another $280 billion that will be unlocked here pretty soon. It looks like they're going to be building all chip manufacturing in the United States. What they're kind of saying is the new gold, there's these super active of ships, this puts China back immensely in weapons development, all this kind of stuff across the board. And so it's interesting to see this pullback. There's a great guy, Peter Zeihan, that has written a ton of great books about this, talking about the United States is a superpower compared to China. China imports something like 70% of their calories. They import like 80% of their oil. The United States, all we would do if we wanted to go to war with China, we'd park an aircraft carrier below India. It would block— 80% of their oil supply comes on barges from Saudi Arabia. We would block their oil supply. Within 120 days, they would be out of oil. All their trucks would stop running. They import 80% of their calories. I mean, what you do is just put a trade embargo. We have a navy. I know China has more ships, but we have a vastly stronger navy. You just put a trade embargo on their shores and ta-da, everyone's starving to death. I mean, it's pretty bleak. That's why China just a few weeks ago flew to Russia. They're trying to build pipelines because they realize they have these weaknesses of an economy. In the United States, on contrary, we have 2 oceans. We have a grain in the center of the country. It's pretty immense how just geographically located the United States is.
