Stevenson’s army, May 7

-US banks overwhelmed by volume of economic sanctions.

– Afghans still dependent on US air power.

– WaPo reports on Iran talks.

– New Yorker reports on Lee Atwater confessions of election dirty tricks.

– G7 criticizes China over Taiwan.

– China & Australia halt talks.

– US News says hope has become the strategy in Afghanistan.

Here, in my opinion, is misleading quantification of political analysis. The professors want to compare US and Chinese influence in Africa, and they count as equal impact each of five areas: trade, aid, diplomacy, military, social-cultural. Sure…

From Politico’s China newsletter:

The trade statistics are a simple and powerful guide.

Roughly two-thirds of the 190 countries in the world now trade more with China than they do with the U.S., with about 90 countries doing more than twice as much trade with China as with America, according to the Lowy Institute in Australia.

Despite all the noise about America’s economic dependence on China, the U.S. actually relies much less on trade overall, and trade with China in particular, than most of the rest of the world — including the countries Biden hopes will be linchpins in his anti-China coalition.

Today, global trade amounts to about 60 percent of the world’s GDP. But trade is only one-quarter of GDP for the U.S. The U.S. is also less reliant on China trade than most countries — with roughly as much American trade with each of Canada, the European Union and Mexico as with China.

This means that the potential economic costs of confronting China are simply lower for the U.S. than they are for many other countries. That is one reason Biden seems in no hurry to end Trump’s trade war and why China policy is a rare instance of bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).