Live data from Hacker News

The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

noahpinion.blog

71–80 of 252 posts

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#71
post #3

> This will take time. Decoupling is not an instantaneous process. China spent two decades becoming the workshop of the world; the rest of the developing world isn’t going to mirror that accomplishment in one or two years. It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China. This reminds me of my day-to-day work so much; especially w.r.…

In order for automatic switching to work though, you'd have to propagate everything between all 3 services, at all times, no? Isn't that cost prohibitive?

That’s exactly it. It’s not that hard to store files on x number of cloud services.

It’s very hard to convince the money people that we should double our cloud storage bills in case all of AWS goes down.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#72
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till you hear about Saudi Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

> The United States was told last year that Saudi security forces were shooting, shelling and abusing groups of migrants, but it chose not to raise the issue publicly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-ki...

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#73
post #18

If there’s one broad consensus in American policymaking circles today, it’s that global supply chains need to become less dependent on China. I agree, and the other way, in many BRICS and other countries, there is a broad consensus that global economies need to become less dependent on US Dollars. Both efforts at decentralization and lessening concentration of power are probably going to lead to new good results, as…

Also aggregating the entire situation is Wall Streets unhealthy laser focus on each Quarter's profits.

Because we all know if a company needs to spend 100mill and a year to bring up a new supply source, their stock price will plummet due to analysts negative ratings.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't unfriendly, but they were always brutal oppressive regimes. By trading with them, we became complicit in that. Also, I take issue with the idea that we "made" them unfriendly. I'm pretty sure China and Russia can take responsibility for their own foreign policy.

Wait till you hear about Saudi Arabia.

I mean, this is just the inevitable outcome with autocracies/absolute monarchies. I think we should just assume that countries that are not liberal democracies are poor trading partners and not aligned with the interests of oter liberal democracies.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#75

> Biden’s “friend-shoring” initiatives What's CRAZY to me is why this hasn't always been the case. Who thought it was a good idea to depend on unfriendly countries like China? Right, I know who thought that. Those who also claimed "if we trade with them enough, they'll like us" did. Fuck depending on China, or Russia, for that matter. The West should have all its critical dependencies within it. At most we could get…

The whole existence of EU is to prevent war between countries within the union through making all depend economically on each other. So far it's been quite successful (0 wars so far AFAIK), but of course it's quite early to say.

Many of the countries in EU have quite the war history with each other.

It's easy to forget that countries like Denmark and Sweden, France and Germany, etc etc used to be bitter enemies with so many conflicts and wars between them that it's difficult to keep track.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#77
post #21

> Biden’s “friend-shoring” initiatives What's CRAZY to me is why this hasn't always been the case. Who thought it was a good idea to depend on unfriendly countries like China? Right, I know who thought that. Those who also claimed "if we trade with them enough, they'll like us" did. Fuck depending on China, or Russia, for that matter. The West should have all its critical dependencies within it. At most we could get…

It was Bush Senior, Clinton (with PNTR), Bush Junior. The story of why the US thought PNTR was a good move is long, and has to do with the events of 1989. Also... Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were both very different from who we have today. China was not necessarily friendly, but they thought there was a good chance of them becoming friendly, especially if their market opened up. For several years after Tiananmen, the D…

I'd blame the prevailing economic mantra that "profits are the only things that matter" more than any set of UD presidents.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#78
post #3

> This will take time. Decoupling is not an instantaneous process. China spent two decades becoming the workshop of the world; the rest of the developing world isn’t going to mirror that accomplishment in one or two years. It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China. This reminds me of my day-to-day work so much; especially w.r.…

> It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China. This is already happening with more than ~80% of products that are "Made in Vietnam" and at least ~40% of products that are "Made in Korea." Not only do the raw materials come from China, but most of the work is done in China. The product is shipped overland from a Chinese factory t…

Isn't Vietnam labor cheaper? also even if these countries are just giant warehouse of Chinese crap wouldn't that mean if Chinese supply did go down there's more stuff in the pipeline which helps buffer shortages and price spikes etc.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#79
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

> The United States was told last year that Saudi security forces were shooting, shelling and abusing groups of migrants, but it chose not to raise the issue publicly. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-ki...

So? I'm talking about unfriendly countries. The fact that the Saudis abuse and kill migrants doesn't make them unfriendly to the West.

Are you trying to make a point? Make a point.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#80
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till you hear about Saudi Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

The point is the U.S. never cared about Democratic countries, and often destroyed them(CIA backed coups and so on.
Post reply on HN