Trade War Has Damaged U.S. Chip Industry

> I am curious how you justify your position by looking at few members of the team.

If you review my comment carefully, you may notice (especially prior to my edit) that I haven't stated a particularly strong or distinct "position". Rather, I was asking a specific question about the specific literal words of someone else's stated position/belief.

I suspect that what has happened here in both cases is that subconscious heuristics have automatically crunched massive amounts of data and formed an evaluation in the asker's mind of a particular state in the other person's mind - something that is obviously epistemically unsound if you actually stop and think about it.

And I'm not asking these questions to troll - I believe the prevalence of low-consciousness in public participation in democracy is what makes these sorts of problems possible in the first place. I strongly believe that if people, even some people, were more harshly critical of listening to the words/promises/assurances of politicians and corporate leaders, we wouldn't find ourselves in many of these positions in the first place.

> Trade is a complex issue and Trump single handedly is jeopardizing this sensitive topic by openly declaring trade wars with multiple nations in open platform like Twitter.

It is indeed a complex issue, far more complex than most people are able to comprehend.

EDIT: It's a shame that the implementation of post throttling (claimed to be based on rate of posting) seems to have the side effect of not allowing those who've posted substantive but dissenting opinions are prevented from defending what they've posted, while those who post low quality but popular opinions (often stated as facts) seem to suffer no such restriction. I wonder if lowering diversity of opinions might sometimes lead to insular thinking both within individual forums as well as in our overall democracy. I wonder if anyone cares, more than they care about winning an argument.

> You are suggesting Trump is doing this based on recommendation of his team or in depth analysis of the topic.

Technically speaking, no. I am asking for an explanation of the thinking of someone who has claimed (with no stated evidence) that Trump and his team do not understand: "The logical conclusion would be that if you are a global company and want to keep selling to China (or to whoever will get a trade ban or sanction), you should not incorporate any US tech, or have US development teams. This seems to be quite counterproductive from the US point of view, it means that investing in the US expose you to additional risks."

> Your proof being members of his team.

I've made no assertion, or offered proof. I am asking a question.

I believe my comment above on heuristics is worthy of some consideration.

> Even though trade is complex issue, people will understand careful diplomacy.

They often will yes, no disagreement from me.

> What Trump is doing is like carrying a sledge hammer and out in full swing against trading nations.

A sledge hammer. Oh, ok. If that's the case, then is it clearly logical how incorrect my simplistic interpretation is, and downvotes are well deserved.

> There is no pattern or logic to it, other than scare tactics.

Is this a fact or an opinion?

> If you can point out to why you think he is doing this in more convincing manner then I think you might not have been downvoted.

So, the first person who makes a comment is now considered correct until someone can offer a substantive rebuttal? Does popularity of a statement play into this at all? Is this covered in the HN guidelines or somewhere else I'm not aware of?

Consider this possibility: might I be trying, although perhaps not successfully, to forcibly inject a bit of objectiveness into these conversations?

Might that be possible?

If person A is 3 steps away from a goal and person B is 6 steps away and they want to negotiate to get to the goal together, the fair negotiation is that person A takes one step for every 2 steps person B takes. If person A says "I'll walk as fast as you once you catch up to me", person B has no assurance person A is arguing in good faith or ever has any intention of actually taking those steps.

The global steel industry is also in a slump regardless last time I checked. I've seen articles about plants idling in other nations as well.

IP is largely a tool of oppression. The only ones who can usually practically take advantage of it are incumbents with the financial capital to use the legal system as a weapon against competition. We see case after case of small time creator content being sued for having similar names or similar characters to some large media franchise and them being crushed under the weight of a hundred strong legal team from corporate regardless of what laws are actually applicable or not.

Its government guaranteed monopoly for a reason, and has no real human good. It has economic good, for the companies that use it for extravagant profit (and presently that includes almost all top 10 companies due to the value of software IP). But that economic boon to a few investors in dominators of the global IP market costs all of humanity in spades of lost innovation and rent seeking for culture or technology decades old at this point. Perhaps a few independent artists or authors in the last century would have elected to not produce their masterwork without state monopolies on reproduction and distribution. But billions of dollars change hands every year as corporations buy one another for IP portfolios to sue one another and those small time creators who might have made a masterwork without the looming threat of weaponized corporate IP overshadowing entire industries.

On the other side of the pond China has entire cities dedicated to tinkering, shopcraft, and the sharing of ideas and innovations because they don't have this heavy burden upon all their creative minds. Until now we could not see the flip side, the true costs of maintaining a regime of IP control overshadowing the economic realities of information and the human benefits of its liberation. China's government is a disgusting abomination of human rights abuse and genocide, but its people will hopefully show the working class of the world that there are alternatives to being under the creative boot of the wealthiest men on the planet.

I understand that and I agree China's trade practices were unfair and needed to be addressed. The way to do that is with co-ordinated and concerted international pressure based on consensus. Up against a united international front, China would have little option but to concede.

However Trump is a nationalist and a unilateralist so he's simply incapable of doing it. Incidentally this is why nationalists are almost universally also climate change deniers - because climate change is a global problem that requires global collaboration and agreement, which Nationalists can't stomach. It's useful to understand the political forces behind a lot of these policies and therefore the connections between them.

Instead of working with allies, the US is lashing out at both China and the tech companies trading with it as a group. This is forcing the tech companies to ally with China and start tech collaboration and transfer projects with them in order to save themselves. The Hygon Dhyana and Zhaoxin projects are examples of this. So instead of the non-Chinese international community being rallied against China, they are being forced in bed with them. Doing so also involves tech companies withdrawing investment and resources from the USA in order to limit their exposure to US trade sanctions.

Long term, it's probably the single biggest and most counter-productive trade and technological development own goal in history. Pulling out of the Iran deal might beat it though. The way it's pushed Europe into collaborating with Iran on financial and trade links, sidelining the US payments systems, while also giving Iran the freedom to breach enrichment limits is definitely up there.