U.S. and Chinese tech companies have discovered that fighting each other at home was cutting into margins. So they took the rivalry on the road. Vietnam gets to host the world's most expensive corporate dick-measuring contest. Lucky Vietnam.
The newsletter calls this "pursuing opportunities outside their home markets." That's what we call it when two drunk guys agree to fight in the parking lot because the bar won't let them break sh*t inside anymore. Except the drunks are governments. And the parking lot is every country too poor to tell them both to f*ck off.
Government policy support means subsidies. Subsidies mean your taxes are funding American companies to build factories in Malaysia while Chinese companies build competing factories in Malaysia with Chinese subsidies. Malaysia gets two factories. Both governments get to pretend they won something. You get to pay for it twice when you buy the products.
Retail traders are scanning their brokerage apps right now trying to figure out which emerging market ETF captures this trend. They will buy the one with the worst expense ratio because the name sounds more aggressive. They will check the price every four hours and panic-sell after Indonesia changes a regulatory policy they cannot pronounce.
The technical analysis here is clean. When two rivals export their beef to neutral territory, the neutral territory always ends up as the supplier to both sides until one side wins or both sides get bored. The chart pattern is called a geopolitical squeeze. It resolves when someone runs out of money or patience.
The real trade is selling infrastructure to both teams while they burn through their budgets trying to out-build each other in countries that will nationalize the assets in fifteen years anyway.
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