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Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#361

Post by Barrin92 »

oblio wrote: post #314
lostinquebec wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a counter factual? It seems to me too early to predict a lot about Eastern Europe. You could very well be correct, but I'd want to see some countries that tried this a lot longer ago.

It's hard to say, but... Almost all the cases of countries going from underdeveloped/developing to developed did it through various forms of protectionism: Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong. I'm trying super hard to think of a country that did it by liberalizing fully. Eastern European countries might be the examples you're looking for, but it's too early to say. If you think about any sport, or…

Neither Hong Kong or Singapore are or were particularly protectionist and largely utilized their location to be entrepôt economies and port cities. They both lack a domestic industrial base and heavily rely on being attractive location for multinationals.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#362

Post by 29athrowaway »

m12k wrote: post #15

I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can underc…

> So much like we allow children time to learn in school before we expect them to compete in the job market, we should allow developing countries to employ protectionistic policies like tariffs, in order to protect and build up their fledgling industries nationally, before fully entering the world market in a couple decades when they are ready.

Let X be an industrialized country, and Y be the one exporting raw materials.

There are many tea plantations in Y. Companies from X own those plantations. They take the tea that is produced for some few cents, process it, put it in teabags, put the teabags in a well designed box, and then sell it across the world for a much higher value than whatever the cost of producing the plants was in Y. Most of the money goes to people in X.

Now what is we do what you say? then, companies from Y would be selling the boxed tea bags themselves. None of the money would go to X anymore. X exchanges its money for Y's tea.

In fact, X exchanges all of its money for other products from other countries as well. X now falls into a trade deficit.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#365

Post by dnautics »

jorblumesea wrote: post #180
jfengel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to trust Chinese companies with things like 5G infrastructure and CPS, when they're all basically an extension of the CCP when it comes to security? They're going to try to compete on price and quality. If customers think that the Xiaomi phone is good and cheap, the governments will have a hard time banning it. Customers don't really care about turning over huge amounts of information to Tiktok as well a…

I think it's also fair to note that "Africa" is a huge place with huge income distributions. I can see South Africa and North Africa aligning more with the West, and East Africa going more to China.

I doubt it. There's already lots of african resentment towards china's particular brand of economic exploitation. There have been murders already.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#366

Post by r00fus »

dikaio wrote: post #347
haspok wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you compare China (population ~1.4bn) to any EU country (population average ~10mn - several orders of magnitude less, even in the case of the largest country)? Size is an advantage, not a disadvantage! Pretty much none of the tactics would have worked for a small country that China played successfully. If you are small you can choose to be independent and protectionist - and remain very poor, or join the part…

Unfortunately for us the US will first need to learn that it’s better to keep US citizens out of prison, being productive in the workforce than locked up.

Broken window fallacy rules US economic thinking. Just that the broken windows are the lives of the prisoners and their families while the profits go to privatized prisons and their investors.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#367

Post by Proziam »

klipklop wrote: post #308
Nimitz14 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uuh have you not heard of xiaomi or oneplus? They're already creating high value goods.

Indeed. My 4 year old Oneplus phone taught me that China can make a phone just as good as anyone else. It's a quality product and was at a great price. With that said, my next phone will be an iPhone. I am trying to de-china whenever I can when it comes to buying stuff.

> With that said, my next phone will be an iPhone. I am trying to de-china whenever I can when it comes to buying stuff.

I have bad news for you, friend.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#369

Post by neurostimulant »

barry-cotter wrote: post #50
m000 wrote: post #32

I really hope Ivory Coast will join Ghana on this, as they did for the LID bonus case. Together they account for over 2/3 of cocoa production. So, they can pretty much reshape the cocoa/chocolate market and break out of colonialistic trade agreements for the benefit of their people.

If the Swiss can buy from 1/3 of global producers that’s still plenty to satisfy the demand. And it’s not like the world is short of areas where cocoa would grow. It's not so long since Vietnam went from not growing coffee to being one of the world’s largest producers in under 20 years. I bet they could do it with cocoa too.

> It's not so long since Vietnam went from not growing coffee to being one of the world’s largest producers in under 20 years. I bet they could do it with cocoa too.

But there is a finite number of farmlands available. For asian countries to up their cocoa production, they must take a portion of farmlands from other crops, or burn more rainforest to make more farmlands, neither of which is good in the long term.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#370

Post by FpUser »

audunw wrote: post #119
killtimeatwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection, but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western capital…

I really think China is making a huge mistake actually. See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if they're just going to copy them? China also messed up big time by enforcing their 1 child policy, and taking so long to open up and industrialize. They're far behind economically compared to wh…

>"...Part of that is due to their rampant IP theft..."

IP is artificial construct supported and ultimately enforced by governments when it suits their purpose. For developing countries this IP just locks them forever into servitude as they can not afford to pay for IP. Never mind that. Even if they invent something themselves they'd still be breaking some patent. Personally I completely support a position where until country reaches certain GDP per capita they should be free from any IPO enforcements.

By the way the largest IP holder on this planet is also the largest thief of IP. This is how they've started.

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