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All this nonsense, this sturm und drang – the Liberation Day tariffs, threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, sending migrants to prison in El Salvador, crushing state capacity with DOGE, laying siege to elite universities etc, etc – is Trump speed-running all other possibilities because he, and the rest of America, knows that the right thing is too little, too late, too difficult and might not work even if attempted.

The smartest thing America can do is skip to the right thing without going through this destructive trial and error. But like those 20 pounds you mean to lose, those cigarettes you mean to give up and those websites you mean to stop visiting, the right thing is easier said than done – especially when one has serious doubts that it can be done at all.

America is facing a China that planted its tree at the best time – 30 years ago – with the panicked realization that the best it can do is plant its tree today. China's universities now produce ~1.7 million engineers per year, an eightfold increase since the turn of the century and approximately 6.7 times the ~250,000 engineers graduating from American universities.

All of China's achievements are downstream of education. What did people think would happen when Chinese universities increased student enrollment tenfold? Adult education programs quadrupled China's literacy rate under Mao, setting up the nation's workforce for Deng's market reforms. It's human capital all the way down.

And, of course, Trump's exploration of all possible follies includes rampaging through the crown jewel of America's education system – its world-class research universities. Eradicating the woke mind virus from higher education may be a justifiable political goal, but to do so by holding research funding hostage and demonizing international students is the height of madness.

The bond vigilantes can immediately force a President's hand. The international graduate student mob can cause far more damage to America's long-term economic viability. International students make up half of America's STEM graduate students. This is a testament to both America's superb universities and the decrepit state of its public education system.

The pain of increasing 10-year Treasury yields is instantly felt by all borrowers. The loss of international PhD students will fly under the radar, but the loss of economic dynamism as American science and technology withers could not be more calamitous.

China has pulled ahead of the US in science and technology – probably by a significant margin. This is already difficult for many Americans to accept, but the data is clear. Among the top 20 global research universities ranked by Nature, 14 are Chinese and four are American.

Graphic: Asia Times

According to a recent report published by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), out of ten major research fields, China leads in seven (chemistry, agriculture, environment and ecology, electrical engineering and computer science, engineering and materials science and earth science). The US leads in three (clinical and life sciences, physics and arts and humanities).

According to the report, China is now producing more top 1% papers with fewer total papers published than the US in fields such as chemistry, agriculture, environment and ecology, and electrical engineering. China's Ministry of Science and Technology has spent the past decade tweaking incentives like phasing out government payments for publications to improve efficiency.

All of this is confirmed downstream as China rockets up the value chain to lead industry after industry (e.g. 5G equipment, shipbuilding, cars, solar power, batteries, nuclear power, high-speed rail) and create new ones along the way (e.g. consumer drones, cashless economy, super apps).

So what is this all about? As crazy as things are, Trump's second-term nuthouse is just an absurd magnification of the China anxiety carried over from the first Trump term with continuity through the Biden interregnum. Trump's second time around just has fewer guardrails on his lunatic imagination.

This is all about an America that knows it cannot win but will not go down without a fight. There is no way any economist can look at energy consumption and industrial output charts and honestly believe the US can close the China gap.

There is no way Pentagon strategists can look at China's 250x shipbuilding capacity advantage and honestly believe that the US can maintain its forward military position in Asia. There is no way that National Science Foundation wonks can look at the trajectory of China's tertiary education and honestly believe that the US will not be a distant second in science and technology.

Graphic: Asia Times

Unfortunately, there is a difference between losing and losing even worse. There is a price to pay for not going down without a fight. Trump's economic war with China is a blunder of historic, perhaps civilizational, proportions.

Because a second-place America is so distasteful to certain parts of the US psyche, Trump is obliged to choose losing even worse. On some level, America rationally understands that it cannot win with the hand it holds and because of that, the only option is to chimp out, throw everything at the wall – chip sanctions, tariffs, alliances, libelous accusations – and lose spectacularly, irrationally and cathartically.