There was a lot of back-and-forth hostility between the government of China and the administration of Joe Biden in advance of Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. Some Chinese state media even suggested a possibility that Pelosi’s plane could be shot down. However, none of the threats materialized.
Yesterday it was obvious the White House was attempting to diffuse the aggressive grievances of Beijing when spokesperson John Kirby, technically the NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications, made a specific statement:
“The world has seen the United States government be very clear that nothing has changed — nothing has changed — about our One China policy, which is of course guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint U.S.-PRC Communiqués, and the Six Assurances. We have said — and we have repeatedly said — that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We have said that we do not support Taiwan independence. And we have said that we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.”
Those six words, “we do not support Taiwan independence,” was a very deliberate and public assurance to China. Essentially, the United States will not do anything to support the independence of Taiwan, do whatever you want. Joe Biden took a knee to Chairman Xi. As a result, Beijing dropped back their tone to traditional rhetoric saying in a statement Tuesday morning, the visit “seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The first quarter of 2022 started with a drop in U.S. consumer spending on non-essential durable goods like electronics. The net result of contracted consumer spending was a 1.6% negative GDP.

We have written about the conflicts {
Latin-America leaders are not stupid. It doesn’t matter whether the self-interested bully comes from the east or the west, they are not blind to the parasitic self-interest contained within the blackmail of any larger nations on the geopolitical stage; especially as the cleaving of the west and east is taking place with increased ferocity.