A Prisoner of Trade War

Both sides of the American-Chinese trade war are now declaring a temporary cease-fire and trying to calm the global stock markets, but the arrest of someone named Meng Wanzhou, who is the chief financial officer of some Chinese company called Huawai, seems likely to complicate the armistice negotiations.

We’re embarrassed to admit that we’d not previously heard of of Huawai, which has only a tiny share of America’s lucrative “smart phone” market, but it’s apparently such a major player in the even more lucrative global market that it’s often called “China’s Apple.” Of course we’d also not previously heard of Meng, but apparently she’s the daughter of the Huawai’s founder and its presumptive next chief executive officer, so her arrest on charges of violating export controls and sanctions on Iran and other countries is being likened to China locking up Steve Jobs’ daughter and the presumptive CEO of Apple, which we figure would be a pretty big deal here.

Meng was arrested by Canadian authorities while on business in that country, but it was at the request of American authorities, and her extradition to this jurisdiction will likely be quickly expedited, so the metaphorical ball is now literally in America’s courts. So far as we can tell the charges meet the prima facie standard for an indictment, but most of our allies and President Donald Trump himself also stand credibly accused of playing fast and loose with international sanctions, so we’ll hold to faint hope that America’s judicial branch properly sorts out all the legal issues.

As for the geopolitical and international economic implications, those seem too complex to calculate and too much to hope for. Meng might prove such a formidable bargaining chip that the Chinese fold, to borrow a poker metaphor, but it’s also possible those inscrutable Chinamen will gladly sacrifice a mere daughter to save face, to borrow a grotesquely racist stereotype yet undeniably plausible outcome. Chinese dictator Xi Jinping doesn’t have to worry much about a pesky free press and an independent judiciary and public opinion, and perhaps cares even less about some capitalist pig dog’s daughter, while Trump can only wish for such freedom from constitutional restraints. All of Trump’s casinos went bankrupt despite house odds, and this Xi fellow seems an inscrutably wily Chinaman, if you’ll forgive the poker and racist metaphors, and we don’t expect this Meng woman’s fate to figure too significantly in the outcome.

The American stock markets dropped alarmingly on Tuesday, then took a day off on Wednesday to honor the funeral of President George H.W. Bush and his bygone era of American greatness, and then dipped deeply again on Thursday after the news of Meng’s arrest. By the end of the day the stock markets were reassured by some carefully reassuring language about the generally healthy economy from both XI and Trump and the heads of the Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund and the rest of the globalist financial establishment, and two of the major indices were largely unchanged and the third was ever so slightly up, so for now the smart money is holding out hope.

We’re holding out hope that things will muddle along, too, but we don’t expect that anyone ever will claim a complete victory.

— Bud Norman