Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

When Trump was complaining about North Korea, South Korea and China last week, I was at my in-laws house.  They were watching a soap opera on a Chinese station when it was interrupted by special reporting from Xiamen.  This was the location of the BRICS summit.  Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are the nations of BRICS.  This year, China invited five other countries to attend, among them were Mexico and Egypt.  The Chinese station showed the leaders of these countries, including Putin, arriving at the convention center.  When each got out of his car, he would walk a long red carpet, perhaps 50 yards or so by himself, to the door.  There were no high up officials to greet anyone of them.  They were greeted, finally, at the meeting room by Xi Jin Ping.  It reminds me of the ancient history where foreigners would come to the Middle Kingdom and walk quietly to kowtow to the Emperor.  This seems to me what Xi had in mind when he greeted the leaders this way.  And they all went along with it, including Putin.  Can you imagine Trump tell Putin to walk from the gate of the White House to the inside before greeting him?

There was no response to Trump's rants from any of the leaders there.  It is as if they don't care what he says anymore.  It is all about economic cooperation.  I don't think they are going to follow China in the future all the time.  But consider India was just in a border dispute with China the week before and Modi showed up to take the long walk, you get the idea that they all feel the need to deal with China.  Mexico is significant due to the border wall dispute with Trump.  Egypt gets lots of aid from the U.S. because it had made a peace deal with Israel.  So there is some strategy on Xi's part with those invites.  Along with the Belt and Road Initiative and heavy investment in Africa, China is increasing its soft power in the world.

So while all this is going on Trump is ranting not about our enemies but our allies such as South Korea and NATO.  While China is working on BARI and BRICS, Trumps is trying to get rid of NAFTA.  He is being outplayed in world politics by a dictator.