Dont forget Nvidia technology was condsidered too sensitive to be exported to China....until the Trump administration decided they could export it if they paid a 10% export tax.
The part of this you're missing is that China doesn't want it [1].
Why? Because China will make their own. This has been obvious to me for at least 1-2 years. The US doesn't allow EUV lithography machines from ASML to be exported to China either. I believe the previous export ban on the most advanced chip was a strategic error because it created a captive market of Chinese customers for Chinese chips.
China will replicate EUV far quicker than Western governments expect. All it takes is to throw money at a few key ASML engineers and researchers and the commitment of the state to follow through with this project, which they will.
I'm absolutely reminded of the atomic bomb. This created quite the debate in military and foreign policy circles about what to do. The prevailing presumption was that the USSR would take 20 years to develop their own bomb if it ever happened.
It took 4 years.
And then in 1952 the US detonated the first thermonuclear bomb. The USSR followed suit in 1953.
this is inacccurate, tesla was the first mover in china's EV market and held by far the largest market share for over a decade. obviously that was in large part to elon hiring chinese systems engineers to build out the first super factories and using chinese robotics tech. but ever since losing those key early leaders, tesla has completely fallen behind.
Under normal circumstances this would end up in court, but when this administration ignores court orders it doesnt like Anthropic would effectively have no legal recourse.
Netflix win this by losing. Paramount has massively overpaid for Warner Brothers, and taken on a crippling amount of debt. It was existential for them, they had a failing studio and streaming service which they hope Warners IP and HBO can compensate for.
Let's not forget that Warner Brothers has been a bit of an albatross and never made money for anyone, that's why it's passed through so many different hands. Time, AoL Discovery to name a few.
Now Paramount are going to be sitting there with a mountain of debt, while Netflix and Disney are relatively debt free and very profitable and cash generative.
The US will be able to keep issuing as much debt as they like as long as the Dollar is the global reserve currency. Its when that stops being the case they'll be in trouble with hyperinflation being the most likely outcome.
The US will keep issuing debt as long as people are willing to buy its debt at a reasonably low price. Which people keep doing.
For a long time that was because people were justifiably convinced that the US would honor those debts, which it could do because it kept producing even more stuff every year, and would never even think about threatening to default. Here in 2026 I cannot imagine why they are continuing to, except inertia.
> in 2026 I cannot imagine why they are continuing to, except inertia.
Because there is no where else for that debt to go. No one else wants to take on so much debt.
Meanwhile there are a bunch of asset managers who are paying the mortgage on their beach home in the Caribbean with the bonuses they earn by investing in US debt. If the US defaults on that debt 10 tears from now that means they still earned 9 years of million dollar salaries, and anyways they won’t be blamed for something the entire industry suffered from at that point.
If they do the prudent thing and ask for a higher price they will end up investing fewer dollars which reduces their 2% commission on invested capital, money that might go to their international equity golfing buddy instead.
Entities where the money is managed by the investor itself (for example, foreign national governments) do indeed appear to be cutting back.
Because everyone has a lot of dollars and they need to earn a return, so its either the Eurodollar market or US debt. US debt is safer. But its true to say that people are more and more reluctant to buy longer dated bonds and are turning to shorter and shorter maturities which is another problem for the US government.
And that's the interesting question - how long will the dollar remain the global reserve currency? Apparently the recent spike in Gold prices is partly because of de-dollarisation:
Or move it to Canada. One of the advantages of the US was that it was far from Europe and safe in case of invasion or war. The US clearly cant be trusted anymore , but Canada can, and it also across the atlantic.
An invasion from who? I agree with you that Canada couldn't defend against an invasion from the US, but I also don't think that any country without nuclear weapons could defend against an invasion from the US. But I think that Canada could probably defend itself from an invasion from most other countries—the Canadian military is generally competent, and NATO and NORAD would almost certainly offer assistance.
Even then, who would want to invade Canada? Despite the recent political blustering, it seems incredibly unlikely that the US would invade Canada, and the only other plausible invader that I can think of right now is Russia, but their military isn't doing very well at all right now.
If the threat model is "the US goes rogue and does crazy stuff", Canada is a prime risk of suffering from such madness, so moving your resources there doesn't really change anything.
Agreed, but I'd argue that there's a big difference between the US making it difficult to access gold reserves stored there and invading/blockading Canada to the point where gold reserves stored there are unusable. The first seems unlikely but possible, while the second seems almost unimaginable, and even if the second does happen, I'd be more concerned about access to food/medicine than access to gold reserves.
(Although I'm Canadian, so this may perhaps just be wishful thinking on my part)
It's not going to be replaced any time soon, there's no realistic replacement at the moment, but there is a slow movement away from it. We've already seen a stampede into gold from central banks. And pimco have said they're going to relocate funds out of dollar debt.
After the nonsense with Greenland no one really wants to give anymore financial power to the US so we'll see more assets kept in local currency or different reserves currencies like the Euro, Yen, Sterling, or ChF.
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