cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51530808
German exports to China fall 13.5%, imports rise 8.3%
Exports to China fell even more sharply than those to the United States, dropping 13.5% year-on-year to 54.7 billion euros in the first eight months of 2025.
By contrast, imports from China rose 8.3% to 108.8 billion euros.
When you’re an even bigger piece of shit than China, you know you’ve got problems
Of course, I know Germany’s reason for this change is the monetary cost of trade, rather than the ethical cost, but still
And a serious question how reliable as a trading partner the US is. China is not the best choice, but they are at least somewhat reliable.
As terrible as the Trump administration is, China is still worse. Think freedom of speech is under threat and reduced in the US? Go to China and criticize Xi publicly. Think the Republicans are rigging Congressional races with gerrymandering? Try one party rule. Worried that you could be disappeared and show up in a prison hundreds of miles away or in another country altogether? How about just disappearing forever?
If we are going to talk about stuffs like democracy and human rights. The US is the number one promoter of coups and supporting a worse genocide than the Uyghurs genocide. Germany isn’t any better regarding the genocide in Gaza
None of that matters, what matters is engaging up to the level of trust. To german eyes, as most European eyes, both are now interchangeable ethically. So commerce has to be done on the basis of numbers, not ethics.
On climate change China is way better than USA, and Climate change regards the survival of the human race.
Also criticizing the president of USA is no longer without danger. Especially for immigrants and tourists, that we have examples of are thrown out for it, and public people are harassed and lose their jobs.
USA may still be slightly better, but it is not by much, and USA is trending in the wrong direction.
“Nothing could ever make me want to gouge my eyes out with a ballpoint pen”, I said to myself just before reading this comment.
You describing China is different from the US how? You can’t make jokes about our admin with the wrong people without it being catalogued if not just outright “getting” you for it. People are turned away from entering for memes literally. One party rule is no different than having Dems and Reps. Different colors, same flavor of shit. Even if some people on the lower end of the Dems are trying to “make things better”, which is mostly trying to go back to pre Covid status quo. And being disappeared isn’t something that doesn’t occur in the states. Especially if you are a service member in the military and you go against whatever is happening administratively. Fort Leavenworth isn’t the only place to have you thrown away.
What’s the point of being able to criticise someone publicly, if nothing’s going to change to your material conditions? Sounds like yelling at clouds: feels good, but doesn’t achieve much
China is worse at home (for now, give it a year and it’ll flip), but abroad the US no-diffs.
Germany be like:
Fascists to my left!
Red fascists to the right!
Neither US or China are good options. Germany should have ideally focused trade on anyone but the two.
Germany itself is facist
to what extend is china fascist in your opinion?
china doesn’t have centralized power, china is democratic on a grassroots level, china doesn’t screw it’s workers for max profit.
i fail to understand this label, as china is not following the core tenets of fascism
There’s something like 450 Chinese billionaires. That alone should tell you how naive your notion of them not screwing workers for max profit is. The exploitation of labor is alive and well in China.
yet china has 10x less billionaires per capita than the US. china is also not known for putting billionaires in the spotlight or letting them dictate policy. also: in the context of how china developed through the 20th century until today it´s more than impressive how china advanced the material conditions of regular workers. i am not denying that exploitation of labour happens to an extend, but it is neither encouraged nor as rampant as in western countries. china claims to be socialist “with chinese character” but they are capitalist after all, this includes all the failings of the system. but with extra guardrails.
So what? China curtail civil liberty. They’re communist in name only. China is a red fascist. Deal with it.
define “fascism” and tell ne how this term applies to china.
you won’t convince me if we have two completely differing definitions of that term
Red fascist.
By democratic on a grassroots level you mean that if you try democracy, you can see the roots of the gras growing above your grave?
ok… but do you have more substantial arguments with less polemics?
I’m not sure what your point is here, you’re just describing the exact same thing. I mean it’s clearly not worse all of your examples apply equally. I’m really not sure where you were going with this.