America's Never-Ending Farce: Time and Energy All Spent

China has just staged the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. The spectacle stunned the world.

Look at Japan. It produced the world's first full-size humanoid robot back in 1973. Today China has left it far behind. Japanese media have given heavy coverage to Chinese humanoid robots outsprinting human records. The tone is admiring, yet with a touch of resignation.

Japan sent just one team, fielded by GMO Internet Group. Even that robot's hardware came from China's Unitree Robotics. GMO merely developed the control software. The robot fell in the 400-meter semifinals and failed to finish. In the 1,500 meters, it managed no better than third in its heat.

Then there is America's Boston Dynamics, the developer of robot dogs. It was already working with the US military back in 2005, and once enjoyed its moment in the spotlight. Today it too has faded into silence. Look at where Americans spend their time, and you will understand why the world has shifted so dramatically.

1. US-Canada Mud Wrestling

US President Donald Trump is bogged down in the Iran war, with no outlet for his frustration. So he turned on the neighbor. He renamed Lake Ontario, the lake bordering Canada, as "Lake America," and launched a trade war against Canada. The dispute between the two countries keeps escalating.

The latest development: Canada has hit back. Dozens of ships that declared themselves bound for "Lake America" have been refused passage at the entrance to Canada's Welland Canal.

The Welland Canal sits on Canada's Niagara Peninsula, a man-made waterway about 43.4 kilometers long. From America's Lake Erie, vessels pass through it into Lake Ontario. The entire canal and all eight of its locks lie within the province of Ontario.

American freighters must transit this Canadian canal to enter Lake Ontario, then sail on to the Atlantic. Roughly US$26.3 billion of American trade each year depends on this canal for export, including vast quantities of grain, iron ore and coal.

With one stroke of Trump's renaming pen, a paperwork trap snapped shut. American ships filing "Lake America" as their destination were stopped by Canada. To pass through, they would have to rewrite their documents as "Lake Ontario." Yet the US government has already renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America." So if a transiting ship still calls the lake "Lake Ontario," is it breaking American law?

Caught between the two, a large fleet ended up jammed at the canal entrance, unable to get in.

Trump was, predictably, displeased. On August 29 he reposted an AI-generated video. It shows heavily armed geese, topped with his signature hairdo, gripping machine guns and marching in formation, heads held high. His message was plain: he intends to defend Lake America.

The two countries are now locked in this spiteful squabble. Could it snowball into an armed clash?

2. The WNBA Gender Controversy

Several former NBA men's basketball stars have recently announced, one after another, that they now "identify as women" and intend to enter the WNBA draft. The saga began with the league's rule that only "female players" are eligible, without defining "female" or spelling out a transgender policy. Word then spread that a transgender player wanted to play in the WNBA.

Then the league's well-known star Sophie Cunningham spoke out publicly. Young female players should be protected, she said, and should not have to compete on court against "biological males." Her remarks triggered both support and controversy.

Enes Kanter Freedom, an 11-year NBA veteran, weighed in. "If simply self-identifying as a woman is enough to qualify for the WNBA, then I feel like a woman right now," he declared. "I meet the standard, and I hereby officially declare for the 2027 WNBA Draft." He even filmed himself in WNBA gear and signed the draft papers. Another former NBA player, Royce White, then announced outright that he is transgender and plans to enter the draft as well.

Their statements read as deliberate satire of the league's ambiguous stance on "biological males" competing in women's sport. Some accuse them of attention-seeking grandstanding. But their challenge had a direct effect. Word came from the WNBA that the two were ineligible for the draft. That effectively sets a precedent: "biological males" cannot play in the league.

Such is Western politics: nothing was amiss in the world until busybodies made trouble for themselves. Trump stirs up disputes out of thin air. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," and Lake Ontario "Lake America." He has even talked of renaming the Pacific and Atlantic as "American Oceans," like a stamp collector completing a set.

And this president was produced by America's democratic system. He was elected twice, so no one can blame a one-off blunder by voters. The wrong system elected the wrong president, who makes the wrong decisions and throws the world into chaos. The surge in oil prices alone has left the whole world footing the bill.

How did the wrong president get elected? Trump is a far-right politician who rose precisely by opposing the Democrats' "white left" (baizuo) politics. His platform boils down to two planks: first, anti-immigration; second, anti-"wokeism." His biggest business-world backer, Elon Musk, turned against the woke movement and its multi-gender rights agenda after his own son became a woman.

Many people sympathized with left-wing reformist ideas in their youth. But as the left grew ever more extreme, treating a small minority as the mainstream, we arrived at the absurd spectacle of the WNBA allowing men to compete.

Push things to the extreme and they rebound. Far-right politicians emerge to fight the far left, politics swings between the two poles, and society is ripped apart. Can a society this torn concentrate its energy on development?

Lo Wing-hung

Bastille Commentary

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

American politicians have a jaw-dropping talent for deflecting attention.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has cooked up yet another talking point.

On the eve of the Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers and central bank governors' meeting, Bessent said in an interview that America's direct trade position with China is "rapidly improving." But he added that China's current export surge is unsustainable.

"The world cannot have a China with a $1.2 trillion trade surplus," Bessent told Reuters. "In China, the economy is quite weak, and they are trying to export their way out of it, and they need to rebalance their economy."

Radio France Internationale reports that Bessent is pushing the G20 to adopt a coordinated trade response against China, hoping the bloc will issue a joint statement on reducing trade and current account imbalances. That will not come easily, because many countries simply do not share Washington's view. If anything, the G20 should skip that statement and issue one on the reckless abuse of tariffs instead. The United States has slapped tariffs on the whole world, even hitting a country like Australia with a 10% tariff despite running a trade surplus with it. Any country that still takes orders from Washington at this point is a fool.

Bessent's broadside against China is clearly an attempt to deflect attention from his own failures. His first recent flop was the futile intervention in the yen. To stop Japan from continuously selling US Treasuries to prop up the yen, Washington sought a one-off joint US-Japan intervention to stop the bleeding. On July 31, the United States and Japan jointly bought yen for the first time since 1998. The yen strengthened briefly, climbing to around 155 per dollar, but then came under sustained pressure. By August 28, the yen had fallen back through the 160 mark, and Bloomberg bluntly declared the US intervention ineffective.

Bessent's second flop was his failed attempt to rein in US Treasury yields. He doubled the size of each Treasury buyback operation, from US$2 billion to US$4 billion. The goal was to send the market a message: if Treasury yields climb too high, the US government stands ready to step in again. The hope was to intimidate the market into pushing down America's borrowing costs. But foreign media noted that the effect lasted only about 48 hours before Treasury yields climbed right back up.

Left with no other moves, Bessent has repackaged America's debt problem as a consequence of China's trade surplus.

Exports have always been part of any economy. Washington's claim that China is relying on exports to escape its difficulties is just talk for talk's sake. By the same logic, one could say the US economy is extremely weak and is leaning on finance and technology to dig itself out of trouble. Does that sound any more convincing to you?

The real reason America is complaining is that it faces an enormous predicament: its US$40 trillion debt pile is what is truly unsustainable. That mountain of debt stems mainly from runaway fiscal deficits and surging interest payments that the government can no longer bear. After its interventions came to nothing, Washington once again used China as a face-saving way out, claiming that every problem originates from Beijing.

US national debt grows by US$2.2 trillion a year. In fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025), total federal debt rose from about US$35.4 trillion to US$37.6 trillion. Of that increase, US$1.9 trillion went to plug the fiscal deficit, while the rest was "borrowing new to repay old," rolling over maturing debt.

Bessent calls China's US$1.2 trillion trade surplus outrageous. What really is outrageous is America issuing US$2.2 trillion of debt a year. It amounts to sucking up capital from around the globe to bankroll American consumption and prop up its stock market.

America's real problem is that it habitually paints its own problems as other people's problems. To borrow a Chinese saying: they know exactly what they are doing and are just playing dumb.

Lo Wing-hung