China Could “Rough Up” Japan Over Tariffs
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A lot is going on, especially with the whole tariff war going on. And you had a recent article in Japan Forward. Will Xi Jinping start a war over Trump's China tariffs? What do you think? Well, what I'm saying is that it's on the menu.

You know, when we think of... Yeah, you know, you've got, you know, hors d'oeuvres and main course and desserts. It's definitely on there somewhere. Well, have we had some of the hors d'oeuvres already? We've been having hors d'oeuvres for about 30 years. I was going to say like fentanyl is a delicious hors d'oeuvre. Yeah, you know, if you could have a war that kills 70,000 of us every year and nobody does anything about it. Leading cause of death of American men, 18 to 35 or...

I might be getting that slightly wrong. Anyways, a lot of Americans are dying because of this. But what I'm talking about in the article, of course, is, you know, is he going to do something as a result of the pressure the American tariffs are putting on the Chinese economy? And most people would say no, just because you can't.

Nobody can imagine a shooting war. It's just not something we do. We're at the end of history. It's in the past. I can't think of any country anywhere in the world that's been in a shooting war recently. Oh, well. We got out of that. Remember, history ended. As long as countries trade, then they can't go to war, right? That's the idea. That idea has been around for a while. The no war between countries with McDonald's.

oh that's right right but that that definitely failed with russia's uh invasion of ukraine i'm not loving it well then russia nationalized mcdonald's so then it was true again yeah so there you go but so will will this lead to a actual shooting war well i'm saying it could it could yeah i would say that the likelihood is not going to have the russians attacking new york city excuse me the chinese attacking new york city

anytime soon, but you could see something at the edges, say going after Taiwan, going after the Philippines, maybe even roughing up one of America's friends like the Japanese. And what you're doing is you're changing the dynamic completely.

if you use force. Because as it is now, it's sort of a tit-for-tat tariff fight where we raise our tariffs, they raise theirs, and then it's to see who can wait out the other. That's how we would do it, and we would eventually come to an agreement, and then nobody would be quite happy, but both sides would declare they won. And then we would go back to doing business. But maybe the other side sees things differently.

And maybe he does see this as a way to really say, put the Americans on the back foot just by using force. It doesn't have to be against the U.S., but Philippines, Taiwan, Japanese, or say, shoot down an Australian airplane over the South China Sea. And then you have put the Americans in a position where do they risk World War III or do they say, hey, hey, wait a minute, we didn't really mean this tariff stuff. Let's go back to normal.

And if you look at it from Xi Jinping's perspective, he has got so many friends in the United States who...

are going to do his bidding. Look at Wall Street, the business class, and already you saw the reaction when the tariffs were first put on. They must have had phones ringing at the White House like every six seconds. Yeah, I was going to say, like even a lot of conservative or Republican supporters probably aren't too happy that their investment portfolio has taken a hit. And that's it. And you saw the pressure that was being put

the Americans and then you at the same time you have the Chinese saying well, this isn't hurting us at all We can handle anything you throw at us when an actual fact they know they've got a problem But they have got their proxies, you know They're basically their front people in the United States pressuring the Trump administration to back down and if the Chinese say were to shoot does they do something violent and

in Asia, for example, you can bet that there would be a lot of people blaming all of this on Donald J. Trump. It's his fault. He's the one who pushed China into this. It's not true, but you're going to have a huge constituency in that part of the United States that matter, or the influential part, saying, oh, look, President Trump, you've brought us into a war. World War III is coming. And you can see the headlines. The news

the news shows right now. And Xi Jinping just might look at things that way. And once he's done that, he's forced the Americans to back down. And he has probably, as he would see it, improved his position in Asia. One, by grabbing some territory, striking a blow at his adversaries, the people who have the stuff he wants, and to be seen as getting away with it. Could he over...

like, could he make an over-calculation and that could actually turn more of the world against the CCP if he does do something like, you know, sinks a Filipino boat in the South China Sea or does something, like, where he thinks that it'll be a calculated gray zone type of thing where people will just kind of try to ignore it, but it

ends up making people realize we're not at the end of history. Yeah. You know, it could be. And generally, when these kind of dictators do this sort of thing, they always miscalculate. They always get the reaction wrong. And you never quite know. You know, it could, of course, be that we just roll over and say, sorry, let's not do this again. But it could be... It doesn't sound like Trump, though. It's hard to imagine a guy from Queens...

saying, yeah, okay, my mistake, but rather I think you would get a stronger response than the Chinese might expect. And they don't quite know, but they may be willing to roll the dice on this. But what I'm saying is that this is a possibility and that it's something that we need to be ready for. And so allowing our military to lapse over the last 30 years on the assumption that

If we're nice to China and accommodate them, that they'll become like a giant Canada.

That was wrong 20 years ago, at least. But because of that, our military is not nearly what it should be. And we've got to do something about it. And it's not just the military response, of course. It's the economic, financial, and even just the psychological response to the threat we face. And our defenses have just lapsed to the point where you don't quite know who would win if things did come to blows. I mean...

some some people have been comparing the U.S tariffs uh on China to the U.S embargo on Japan in like the 1930s and uh oh people saying that that's what caused that's what caused World War II or that's what caused Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor uh so what is your take on that

Well, it makes you think. Now, certainly in the case of Japan, they were put into a position where they either agreed to everything the Americans were telling them to do or else they went to war.

because of the threats to cut off their, well, the cut, the cessation of oil sales to Japan, but also the financial pressure which was put on Japan, which doesn't get all that much attention. That was immense. So Japan felt they had no choice. They did, of course, have some responsibility for getting themselves into that position in the first place. But nonetheless, they

They say we couldn't help it. They couldn't help but launch an aerial attack on Pearl Harbor.

Like they could have not done that, right? If they hadn't done it, then the US might not have entered the war with Japan, let alone Europe. Yeah, we probably wouldn't have. Or if they had just gone after, say, the British and the Dutch holdings in Asia, we might have said, well, it's not our fight. But they miscalculated. But now when it comes to China these days, is it that bad?

If you listen to the Chinese media, listen to what Chinese spokesmen say, oh, they're having no problem at all. You know, life's never been better. They can, as I said, handle anything you can throw at us. The Chinese people will eat bitterness, as Xi Jinping says. So no problem, which means when the Chinese are telling you this, as a rule of thumb, if you look at the opposite, you'll pretty much have the reality. And this is causing people

People's Republic of China a lot of trouble just by the tariffs that have been put on. And these tariffs actually come on top of

of other trade pressures, other economic sanctions, if you will, that the Americans, the previous administration and the one before that have put on. But now it's just been tightened up a lot. And this is causing them a lot of problems. And they know it. And it's not as if the Chinese economy is one the world has never seen. You would think that if you listen to people, some experts that

The Chinese have invented some way, figured out some way to run an economy that nobody else in 5,000 years has managed. And they're not subject to the kind of pressures that a normal country would face. Well, they are facing it. And when they cannot export, they're not getting dollars, and the dollars are what keeps them afloat. Their economy is basically just a big Ponzi scheme. So they've got some problems, and they know it.

Thank you for watching this clip. There's a lot more, including what the U.S. and other countries can actually do about all this. So I invite you to watch the full hour-long interview by going to our website, ChinaUncensored.tv. The link is below.