171–180 of 361 posts
[0] https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-sensetime-announce-effort-adva...
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And under Trump, the steel tariffs have basically forced Ford and GM to stop making sedans in the USA and instead make them in Mexico. Ford Focus: moved to China (Ironically). Ford Fusion: Cancelled. GM Volt: Cancelled. Harvey Davidson: moving to Europe. Things aren't exactly simple, and I am not convinced that the tariffs + tax cuts have helped the American worker at all. US Manufacturing is down for two months in a…
It's too early to tell. Wars of any kind, including trade wars, are a short term cost hoping for a long term gain. If the Chinese economy is hurt more than the American economy that is one level of success. Then, if manufacturing moves back to the US and other Western hemisphere nations that's another level of success.
On the contrary, if the US economy was hurt, then its a failure. The point of "America First" is to care most about America, not about hurting others.
> Then, if manufacturing moves back to the US and other Western hemisphere nations that's another level of success.
No. The only success is if manufacturing moves back to the USA. For example, Ford moved to Mexico. This is NOT a win for USA.
One thing that I really like about the Trump administration is that finally the WH has decided to act against the systemic threat posed by China. Can someone who is well versed in politics shed some light on if this is a trump specific phenonemon or had there been a sea change and the dems are now on board too ?
Trump ran on the economic policy ideas popularized by "liberal" economist Paul Krugman. I posted a comment on HN a while back with links to Krugman's various columns, with a header above each group that included the rhetoric used by Trump to tout those policies.
Krugman has been calling for trade policy changes against China for quite some time, and in spite of running as a Republican, Trump adopted Krugman's economic populism whole hog.
So the ideas have been around for a long time, but have heretofore only been taken seriously by a populist fringe of economists. Such economists are viewed by the mainstream economics profession the way the general public views anti-vaxers. There just isn't science supporting the views, but they are compelling to a niche group of zealots.
Economic populist rhetoric certainly sounds good to laypeople and hits on many emotionally potent hot buttons that mirror the jingoism that Trump uses across all of his rhetoric.
Just as vaccines (a small bit of the virus being injected into a healthy person) are highly counter-intuitive to laypeople, trade policy is similarly counter-intuitive. The idea that the US could be made worse off by retaliating against China's one sided tariffs seems unheard of and bizarre to those who do not understand the science.
To be blunt, there is zero economic or welfare justification for Trump's trade policy toward China. It is a tax on Americans and is making Americans poorer. No economist would disagree with that.
To your point, there may be some broader strategic sense to Trump's stance toward China, namely viewing China more as an adversary than as a third world country to whom we can outsource our polluting industries and whose government tolerates toxic pollution and (by our standards) backward labor practices.
But the important question to arrive at is why China is suddenly (reasonably?) viewed as an adversary to the US.
Sure, China has stolen some IP, but what developing nation (including the US) hasn't? Sure, China has one sided tariffs to protect some of its firms from competition, but so have many countries in the midst of rapid growth.
The answer is that the US has dramatically slowed its innovation and growth due to the massive investment in foreign wars and occupations. The amount invested in these wars is in the many trillions of dollars, and there has been significantly negative ROI. The result of this happening for 20 years is that "poof", China is now a competitor to the world superpower.
But contrary to Trump's rhetoric, this is not due to China cheating, or Americans being out negotiated, it's due to a much simpler problem, Americans allowing our leaders to flush such vast sums of money on wars that had negative ROI.
Consider how much better funded the lobbying arms of defense contractor firms are now than they were 20 years ago. Consider how our major tech firms (Google, Amazon, Facebook) are now defense contractors. Consider that neocon hawk Condi Rice was the first choice for the board at Dropbox.
The defense sector is eating the US alive, eating our future.
Be that as it may, China has managed to avoid making similar malinvestments, and is now (in relative terms) leapfrogging.
It is possible that Trump is the only one who is woke to the true threat posed by China, but keep in mind that the US is losing the trade war as China begins settling Africa and manufacturing moves from China to Africa, India, etc.
Rust belt jobs are never coming back to the US. Under Trump most farmers are now welfare recipients and the US economy is on the verge of major collapse.
One day soon we will view the world in which China and the US were major peaceful trading partners as a golden age of international cooperation.
Your comment uses the word finally which accurately describes Trump's policies as majorly outdated. Maybe if the US had been a bit more tough on trade 20 years ago a better agreement would have been reached. But maybe not. We can be sure that in today's world the US is destined to lose the trade war and also lose much more in the process.
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> What will happen if they cut off the us entirely and force asian countries to cease trading with it What happens when we do it to them? China is powerful, sure. But they aren't more powerful than the western world. We'll win that fight. (Well, by "win" I mean suffer less damages). Western companies are also already pretty cut off from the Chinese market. Cutting them off even more so is unlikely to have as huge if…
Nah this is not true, we actually sell more stuff to China than the other way around. They've just not yet really tried to retaliate. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/the-1-4-t... Tariffs hurt yourself first before anyone else. But if shit really hits the fan they no doubt will.
You seem to be pretty uninformed on the matter. It is common knowledge that it is extremely difficult for Western companies to operate in China.
This "retaliation" has been going on for decades. China can't really make it much worse than what they have already been doing for decades.
One thing that I really like about the Trump administration is that finally the WH has decided to act against the systemic threat posed by China. Can someone who is well versed in politics shed some light on if this is a trump specific phenonemon or had there been a sea change and the dems are now on board too ?
The threat from China has been existent and ignored for the past 30 years, the same 30 years that China rose from 3rd world country to the superpower it is today. The change in attitude began with Trump. He was to first president to bring the threat of China to the mainstream political discourse. Since then, China is so objectively a threat to the U.S. economically, militarily and through their direct actions of mani…
The US has been facing the same problem that every superpower faces. We benefit from a stable global geopolitical climate, so any move that rocks the boat is bad for us. That's why every president until Trump has been reluctant to truly bring out the big guns with China. Those guns hurt us as much as China, and Trump is feeling that now. His trade war with China has wiped out most of the economic benefits of his big tax cut legislation.
Previous presidents weren't hapless morons on this issue. They just realized that we don't have many strong cards to play here. The TPP was the best card we had, but frankly I was pretty skeptical of how effective it would be. I'm similarly skeptical that Trump's strategy will be effective. China can easily afford to wait him out.
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I love this idea; it plays strongly into American strengths. However, I don't know if China would be more successful in convincing it's top talent to stay with their families, and I have no idea how to sell this idea politically to American voters. The stereotype of Chinese culture is that they tend to be more collectivist, and the stereotype of the general population of American voters would most likely rather spend…
We were basically doing that via universities until the anti-Chinese sentiment shot up drastically in the past few years. You can't turn the clock back. The anti-Chinese sentiment is very high now in America.
One thing that I really like about the Trump administration is that finally the WH has decided to act against the systemic threat posed by China. Can someone who is well versed in politics shed some light on if this is a trump specific phenonemon or had there been a sea change and the dems are now on board too ?
Obama was manufacturing the pivot to Asia. The TTP would have given a lot of power to corporations to combat China. This presents its own set of problems though. Clinton was adamant that her grandchildren would not be speaking Chinese. China has been acknowledged as a threat since 2008 really, by everyone really, just, sometimes people need a very visual and visceral demonstration of action (no matter how less-optima…
Legitimate question: at what point does censorship become something more benign such as blacklist or sanctions? If we do it?
Censor: Highly targeted and specific, usually along the lines of communication. Like Xi and Winnie the Pooh. The US doesn't censor(?) Blacklist: Broader, usually applied to products and companies. China blacklisted Facebook. The US blacklisted Huawei.
US blacklisted Chinese companies from buying US products.
It's a subtle difference.
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Obama was manufacturing the pivot to Asia. The TTP would have given a lot of power to corporations to combat China. This presents its own set of problems though. Clinton was adamant that her grandchildren would not be speaking Chinese. China has been acknowledged as a threat since 2008 really, by everyone really, just, sometimes people need a very visual and visceral demonstration of action (no matter how less-optima…
would have given a lot of power to corporations to combat China How? Apple and the NBA just bent to China's wishes. How would that have worked out?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's too early to tell. Wars of any kind, including trade wars, are a short term cost hoping for a long term gain. If the Chinese economy is hurt more than the American economy that is one level of success. Then, if manufacturing moves back to the US and other Western hemisphere nations that's another level of success.
> If the Chinese economy is hurt more than the American economy that is one level of success On the contrary, if the US economy was hurt, then its a failure. The point of "America First" is to care most about America, not about hurting others. > Then, if manufacturing moves back to the US and other Western hemisphere nations that's another level of success. No. The only success is if manufacturing moves back to the U…
We don't want jobs just to come to the US. We want to help build the economies of the people scrambling across our border too. So jobs in Mexico is great, as long as there's also new jobs in the US.