I did n’t intend to write a second post about Trump and China. However, Luke Radel, a pupil journalist, inquired from the House of Representatives whether Trump and him would overturn the CHIPS Act if Trump won the election. Johnson responded by saying yes.
Johnson eventually appeared to , move again his reply, but Trump has already , denounced the CHIPS Act, so it’s possible that Johnson— who usually does Trump’s bidding —was telling the truth. My response to all this is: What on Earth?! Are you joking with me? ?
The CHIPS Act was  , a nonpartisan act, whose sole purpose was to maintain or restore US manufacturing capacity in the all-important semiconductor industry in the face of a large Chinese , press for supremacy. The bill’s success has so far resulted in smaller-scale personal funding initiatives:
Original conceits that CHIPS Act projects would become entangled in regulation or labor disputes have so far proven to be unfounded. The TSMC lovely in Arizona, perhaps the highest-profile initiative funded by the rules, is now in operation and is , achieving better quality , than the company’s companies in Taiwan.
This announcement was immediately praised by a number of British technicians as a significant victory for the country:
It’s not just that one mill, nevertheless. After losing market share for many years, the US is now expected to regain it through the CHIPS Act:
And the bulk of these opportunities are going to red or purple state, with Arizona, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, and North Carolina , among the participants:
The developing that the CHIPS Act is reinvigorating is helping some of the same areas that were hardest hit by the China Shock of the 2000s.
But to reiterate: Why on earth do Donald Trump and Mike Johnson revoke a bipartisan law that is stifling private investment into a crucially important, proper manufacturing sector that is mostly benefiteding purple states?
I do not know the answer to this question, but it ca n’t be good.
In my best efforts to be as open-minded with my audience as possible, I often speak out very openly about what my main concerns are. I’m somewhat concerned about climate change, we’re making major improvement against it, but , we may go faster.
I’m somewhat concerned about US turmoil and institutional conflict, I think we’re on the path to national cure, but I think Trump did  , pause that process. I’m somewhat worried about bioweapons, about government imbalances, and about people aging.
But I am , very , worried about the People’s Republic of China. For one simple reason, the US steered the world’s future in the early 20th centuries: It may produce the most goods. The Axis places were overtaken by British output in World War 2.
The US had a clear benefit over the Soviet Union in terms of production, which meant that, if there was a nuclear conflict, the result of a conflict between the socialists and the free world was never in doubt.
But in the decades since the turn of the century, this irrefutable benefits vanished. In two short years, China took the US ‘ mantle as the factory of the world, zoomed past us, and always looked up:
China’s manufacturing skills inspires awe and horror. It is unmatched and unheard in the history of the world. In just a few short decades, China , built a high-speed road network , bigger than the whole rest of the world combined:
Now consider the potential benefits of that kind of developing for military applications. Now China is , building ships at an incredible rate. And it has large companies pumping out high-tech weapons:
Americans may find comfort in knowing that their missiles are a little higher-tech ( even though that edge is quickly diminishing ). Current high-intensity conflicts are often short and decisive, as the Ukraine war has so brilliantly demonstrated. In general, they drag on for a while and require much more ammunition than nations have at the start of the conflict.
In other words, China’s great developing skills gives it , increase dominance , over the US. Xi Jinping and his commanders knows that in any battle, even if China loses the original activities, if it just keeps fighting, America may run out of arms fast. That will give America two choices: Give up, or launch nukes and be nuked in return. And this conflict might occur sooner than later:
If you’re not frightened of that, you should be.
Not even close, this capability gap is n’t being corrected by the CHIPS Act. But it’s an important first step.  , Chips are the essential input , into all modern precision weapons, all planes, all ships, all tanks, all drones.
They are crucial for AI training and operation. They are the most important industry of all, and the majority of them are currently produced by a tiny island off the coast of China that China has pledged to conquer. That’s an incredible, gaping security vulnerability for the United States, and the CHIPS Act is an essential first step toward fixing it.
And now, Trump wants to repeal the CHIPS Act and all other industrial policies, giving us a slim chance to stand up for China.
A new Cold War is taking place between the United States and its allies right now. This is not hypothetical, it is , the present reality , in which we live. China is also the primary antagonist of that recent Cold War.
Not Russia, North Korea, or Iran— these are much smaller states with far weaker manufacturing capabilities, and without China, they would be no threat to the US. They are a part of a New Axis that rivals the US and all of its allies and is known as , which makes them stand out from the rest.
If the US loses this Cold War, the long-term results will probably be very bad for Americans. China’s leaders, knowing that the US might one day rise to challenge them again, will do everything in their power to make sure this does n’t happen.
They will use every tactic in the book to divide and divide our society politically while developing a military capable of stoking our country militarily and using their economic dominance to weaken the US.
The oceans will be no barrier. Due to the People’s Republic of China being more vengeful and less generous than the USSR, we will experience the same fate as the USSR after the first Cold War.
Already, we can see the first glimmers of this strategy. China just , put export controls on Skydio, the leading US commercial drone company. Because China makes most of the world’s batteries, this may end up crippling a substantial portion of America’s drone manufacturing capacity.
And the US may be poised to , lose this new Cold War by default. Trump may use tariffs to weaken China’s economy or to elicit sporadic bellicose rhetoric, but he has shown no desire to grow US manufacturing to the point where it can effectively fend off Chinese rule.
Biden did start to build up US industry, and now Trump wants to cancel Biden’s efforts. Trump has also , declared his opposition , to the bipartisan TikTok divestment bill. Meanwhile,  , Trump constantly denigrates , and threatens to pull out of US alliances.
This is also a way of voluntarily forfeiting Cold War 2, since China is so big that without allies like Japan, Germany, South Korea, France, the UK, and hopefully India, the US has no hope of matching it. If those allies fall and become satellite states of China and Russia, the US will be isolated, alone, and utterly outmatched. If you do n’t believe me, just look at the map because Eurasia is simply much bigger and stronger than North America.
All this is , not , to say that Trump is some kind of Manchurian candidate, planted by China and Russia to weaken and destroy the US. I make no such claim, of course. And yet it seems possible to predict almost everything he does in relation to China and Russia by asking,” What would China and Russia want him to do?”
Trump is the ideal stooge of hostile powers; he is so focused on defeating internal enemies that he refuses to intervene in any way to stop them. Rush Doshi , put it well in an recent op-ed. It’s little wonder that China’s social media bot army has been , strongly in favor of Trump , this election cycle.
Note that I’m not saying Kamala Harris would be perfect on China policy, I have  , a few worries , there too. However, I am aware that she will fall under the bipartisan consensus that China is a threat that needs to be confronted. And I know she’ll have advisors who take this seriously, just as Biden did — in many cases, they’ll be the same people. So I ‘m , far , less worried about Harris than Trump.
A second Trump presidency would be detrimental for a number of reasons. It would stress American society by amplifying the unrest of the 2010s. It would promote , many of the country’s worst actors , to positions of power and influence. But this is what Trump would do, and it would be the same risk.
The US would be in greater danger than anything else he would do by deliberately putting him in danger by defeiting both America’s waning manufacturing industry and its long-standing alliances. Most voters in this election are likely not focused on this issue at all. However, it’s the aspect that worries me the most.
This article was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion , Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original , here  , and become a Noahopinion , subscriber , here.