Quora: Is this another stunt by Donald Trump for his election campaign?

Quora: Now that Trump has all but declared war on China, demanding China be held accountable for unleashing COVID-19 on America, is this just another stunt for his election campaign or does Trump truly want a war with China?

Donald Canton replied:

Yes, Trump has too many exceptionally excellent ideas and expressions to make many countries mad. His only one accomplishment was counted in killing an Iranian general successfully. He continues bashing China and the best Chinese high tech companies like Huawei, Tecent, TZE, TikTok, …, etc. with national security, virus, …, etc. to no avail.

The Trump administration has been banning all the companies to partner with Huawei and provide Huawei the parts. However, in the end, only some foreign companies like TSMC and MediaTek, catering to the US imperial sanctions against China, were hit, but the US companies will get the licenses to trade with Huawei to save jobs in the USA and stop the looming unemployment. That is to say, the U.S. ruled out the other business competitors that cooperate with China, leaving only those American companies like AMD, Intel, …, etc. allowed to trade with China. Thus, ASML will also start speeding up their layout in the huge profitable Chinese market.

As to TikTok, Washington’s methods are extreme pressure, blackmail, and the temptation of frontline vitality. The United States has a joint operation in which the government, congressional forces and American companies actively respond and cooperate, and the American media are also happy to see the results of this dirty hunt and help beat the side drum.

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, are too thin, obviously unable to deal with the almighty institutional plunder on their own. The Chinese government stepped forward in time, and first included the "personalized information push service technology based on data analysis" in the "China's Export Prohibited and Restricted Technology Catalog" on August 28, 2020, which dampened the arrogance of the United States. When the United States expressed "agreement in principle" to the agreement reached by ByteDance with Oracle and Wal-Mart, and wanted to confirm this agreement in one go, China again sent a clear signal against the agreement, thus rewriting the plot moving direction in this struggle. Any single Chinese company is too weak, but China as a whole will not accept blackmail from the United States, nor will it hand over control of an outstanding high-tech company in China to the United States in accordance with a script written by the United States.

The success of the Chinese high tech companies such as Huawei and ByteDance proves that China’s overall business environment has the ability to incubate the Chinese high tech companies with its own core technologies and global competitiveness. The Chinese can’t let these exceptional companies in China become fat sheep arbitrarily slaughtered by the United States or the lifeline of China's future technological development fall into the hands of Washington.

The Chinese hope to maintain fair and mutually beneficial cooperation with the American, but the Chinese are also ready to wage a resolute struggle against US bullying and robbery logic. The choice is open for both sides. Peace will benefit both and fight will hurt both. This is a philosophy that the Chinese have long believed in. It is no longer a luxury to hope that big countries will face each other in the 21st century.

What an accomplishment! It is not a stunt but a disguise for Trump. No wars are needed but simply words of mouth. Calm down and enjoy the show.

Foreigners with fake degrees

 I give this suggestion on how local graduates can compete with foreigners with fake degrees.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=3557

Abuse of Job Support Scheme

 I do not like the approach used to give Job Support Scheme based on contribution to the CPF. The employer could make fake contribution to earn the financial support.

The abuse is obvious to me. I wonder how our highly paid ministers and civil servants went ahead to implement this scheme.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=3556

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

 Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. Will covid-19 cause much harm to President Trump?

Vote in
https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/vote.aspx

WOTC - Safe Entry operations

 Wisdom of the Crowd: Should we continue with the Safe Entry operations? 41% said it should be streamlined and improved. 35% said that it is a waste of time and should be discontinued. 19% said that it is working well.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2094

WOTC - Loyal citizens

 Which country has most loyal citizens? 66% chose Japan, 25% China, 6% Singapore.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2095

Bad practice - do not enforce a law

 It is a bad practice for the government to pass a law and then decided that they will not enforce it.

This leads to confusion and could result in corrupt practices.

Do you agree?

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=3553

Sell Tesla shares and buy Temasek bonds?

 Someone suggest that I sell Tesla shares at $450 and buy Temasek bonds.

I have a better option.

https://fisca.sg/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ID=766

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. How do your rate the performance of Trump and Biden in the first debate?
2. Is it practical for companies to allow workers to work from alternate offices?
3. What is the challenge for employers to allow workers to work from home?

Vote in
https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/vote.aspx

Work from Alternate Offices

 A company in Jakarta is implementing an innovative concept to allow their employees to work from alternate offices. They called it WFAO - Work From Alternate Offices.

It supplements their current practice of WFH - Work From Home.

Do you think that this concept applies to Singapore as well?

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=3548

WOTC - Work from home - employer's perspective

 Wisdom of the Crowd: 82% of the respondents said, from the employer perspective, it is better for the employer to provide a laptop for the employee to work from home.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2092

WOTC - Open the borders

 Wisdom of the Crowd: 86% of the respondents said that we should open our borders to countries with low infection rates. 14% preferred that the border continue to be closed.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2093

Parliament plays a critical role

 Singapore faces gigantic challenges on the economy and the livelihood of the people.

It is critical that our Parliament comes forward to play its important role to find solutions to these challenges.

Here are my suggestions.

https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback2.aspx?id=3547

Quora: How did Trump lose the trade war with China so badly?

David W. Rudlin answered:

He went it alone.

He overestimated his strengths and completely ignored his weaknesses.

He misunderstood how tariffs work.

He underestimated the willingness of the Chinese people to suffer rather than give in to bullying.

He shifted gears so often the Chinese concluded his word was meaningless.

He doesn’t understand long-term business relationships.

He does not understand that a trade deficit is not the same thing as a HUMILIATING LOSS TO PEOPLE WHO ARE LAUGHING AT US.

This last one is probably the most important. China makes a lot of stuff we want to buy, at prices we want to pay. This is not necessarily a bad thing. About 80% of the products on Walmart’s shelves come from China, and Walmart makes it possible for people with limited resources to get what they need at very low prices.

It would be easy to shrink the deficit by blocking or raising — through tariffs — the prices of Chinese goods. But American consumers would suffer as a result. They would end up with fewer items in their grocery cart, for the same money, just to shrink a number that ultimately isn’t that meaningful.

A smart president would have focused on increasing our sales of higher margin services to China. That requires understanding more complicated issues like market access, theft of intellectual property, etc. trump can’t be bothered with that much detail.

Moreover, his business career is based on a series of transactional relationships that usually end up in court. It’s why no US bank will lend him money, and how he ended up in a still mysterious relationship with Deutsche Bank.

Most businesses don’t work that way. Agribusiness certainly doesn’t. Our soybean, corn and alfalfa farmers spent the better part of a decade building trust-based relationships with Chinese buyers. trump destroyed all of that almost overnight. That gave farmers in Russia and Brazil a chance to step in and build relationships of their own. Even if the trade deals finally get sorted, American farmers will be on the outside looking in.

I could go on and on, but I’ll finish with this: tariffs don’t work if the country you’re attacking has alternate sources of supply. If trump had worked with Russia and Brazil on agriculture, or with the EU on IP protection, China would have had little choice but to alter their position. But trump sees himself as Superman, flying in to save the day all by himself. He can’t stand having to treat other leaders as equals. He doesn’t want to share credit, and he seems incapable of understanding that it may be blame that gets spread around at the end.

So he did it on his own, and he did it wrong. And American taxpayers just shelled out ANOTHER $15 billion so he can buy the votes of the farmers whose lives he destroyed.

WOTC - What happens to gold when stock market crash?

 Wisdom of the Crowd: 62% of the respondents expect gold to move up strongly when global stock market crash. 19% expect gold to fall as investors sell gold to cover their stock losses.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2090

WOTC - Will global stock market crash?

 Wisdom of the Crowd: 45% of the respondents expect the global stock markets to be volatile but will not crash. 53% expect a big crash in 2020 or 2021.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2089

WOTC - Work from home

 Wisdom of the Crowd: 89% of the respondents prefer the employer to provide a laptop computer for them to work from home. 6% prefer to work from a remote office in the neighborhood. 5% prefer to use their own laptop.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2091

Wisdom of the Crowd - New Issues

1. If Malaysia holds a snap general election, who is likely to win?
2. Will work at home for 50% of office based work result in lower productivity?

Vote in
https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/vote.aspx

WOTC - How to deal with an economic downturn

 Wisdom of the Crowd: What is the best way to deal with an economic downturn? Give money to every resident - 29%. Reduce interest rate to 0% - 26%. Govt to give loan to every resident, free of interest - 26%. Govt to lend money to business - 18%.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2088

WOTC - Will the global stock market crash?

 Wisdom of the Crowd: 53% of the respondents expect the global stock market to crash in 2020 or 2021. The other 47% do not expect a crash.

https://tklcloud.com/Crowd2/chart.aspx?ID=2089