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The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

noahpinion.blog

101–110 of 252 posts

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#101
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit. I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.” I don’t think the US is perfect, but economic indicato…

Export data has a counterparty though, so I don't see how it's anything more than a thought terminating cliché.

Right, in this case I like using the counterparty and US imports from China in place of what we want.

But I think the complaint was more to say why they weren’t looking at other data they would like, and other countries provide reliably, and instead must limit to what the US and other countries report.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising" This line is so wrong. You can't have 22% (at least) youth unemployment rate, and 19th straight month collapsing land sales revenue https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-landsales/chin... (which is how local government get most of its money), and your biggest and second biggest real estate developer going bankrupt, and still support a 5%…

Land sales down 20% YoY is why growth is 4-5% instead of 8% - the effects of 3RL / crushing RE is built into cost of CCP targetting modest growth. Western reporting getting useful idiots to think PRC RE collapse is going to crush PRC growth to 0% is retarded, RE maybe large it's but not even close to plurarlity of economy - many other sectors, increasingly intermediate / high value like auto exports outperforming and…

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Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#103
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total 2023 Chinese exports are projected to be fairly close to what they were in 2021, which is not that bad given macroeconomic trends across the world. The risk for companies to build supply chains that completely avoid China is that they will be outcompeted by competitors who won't and who will make use of these loopholes.

Wouldn't that be extremely bad, given that 2021 was a year with many lockdowns and COVID related disruption especially in China? Surely 2023 should have experienced a rebound?

No it would be stupid good.

PRC export value went from 2.5T in 2019 to 3.4T in 2021, to 3.6T in 2022. It increased more during 3-4 years of covid than previous 10 years combined (1.4T in 2009). Primarily because 0covid left most of PRC undisrupted, most of the time, which setup PRC to export to most of world, especially global south. Currently everyone's exports down due to global slow down, but PRC exports down from stupid high peak. It's more surprising how much of exports PRC is holding onto due to artificial conditions caused by covid. Reverting back to 2021 (3.4T) would be a 5 steps forward 1 step back situation vs, reverting back to 2020 (2.6T) which would be status quo.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land sales down 20% YoY is why growth is 4-5% instead of 8% - the effects of 3RL / crushing RE is built into cost of CCP targetting modest growth. Western reporting getting useful idiots to think PRC RE collapse is going to crush PRC growth to 0% is retarded, RE maybe large it's but not even close to plurarlity of economy - many other sectors, increasingly intermediate / high value like auto exports outperforming and…

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Why do I need to waste effort to reference 101 material. If you don't possess basic subject matter knowledge, that can be done by trivial research, i.e. PRC export value by year, or graduation rates relative to urban youth unemployment rate, all of which has been referenced in western media, and apply figures to basic analysis that PRC % of global exports is increasing, or PRC net high skill workforce increasing faster than youth unemployment, then you're the kind of "useful idiot" (not pejorative, just term for people who fall for / or go beyond propaganda narratives) not worth effortful engagement and I leave my comment/analysis/rebuttle as service for benefit of other readers.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#105
post #60

From the article, wrt how the economist claims that decoupling is phoney because the underlying export by china in the process remains the same: > Startlingly, however, The Economist provides no actual data to support this claim. Ha! This was a reason I unsubscribed from the economist. A lot of times it makes broad claims and then leaves out the details to support said claim. Almost like it expects the reader to trea…

> This was a reason I unsubscribed from the economist. A lot of times it makes broad claims and then leaves out the details to support said claim. Almost like it expects the reader to treat the economist like a first hand source and therefore no citation needed. This is kind of the point of The Economist; its intended audience is busy executives who are on board with its ideological bias and don’t care much about foo…

Is that really all the Economist aspires to be?

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#106
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If china declared Puerto Rico to be it's ally and started building military bases there without US permission, the US would do more than threaten to invade Puerto Rico, it'd do it immediately

Dude, this is blatant whataboutism. Puerto Rico is in no way equivalent to Taiwan, and I suspect you know that. Taiwan is a sovereign, independent, democratic nation. The Chinese Communist Party has never had political control over Taiwan. It just claims the right to overrule the right to self-determination of 23 million people because it feels like it. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territ…

of course, forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan. forget that the US props it up to maintain a military enclave where it has no right to be, in order to threaten China. it's just an innocent independent democratic people that China seeks to assimilate for no legitimate reason!

Even _without_ the historical context it is completely justifiable from a national security perspective to push out the military presence of the most aggressive nation in the past century.

Lastly - the gall for an American to invoke "self-determination" after its track record.. simply incredible. We are what, one week removed from the leaks re: Imran Khan?

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#107
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't believe Chinese statistics, you can check that US import from China is back to pre-COVID volumes and rising. Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.

> US import from China is back to pre-COVID volumes and rising. Source?

Can’t respond to this other user but their source confirms that there is a consistent drop in imports from China since late last year (goes down each month.). Saying “we’re back to pre-Covid levels” is a strange thing to say when Covid clearly saw a huge spike in imports, which are now decreasing. Their framing of this entire conversation seems incredibly dishonest.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#108

> 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…

> 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?

This was a complaint from the beginning and it was brushed aside as xenophobia and not understanding modern economics. Its been a legitimate complaint from the beginning that has been completely ignored, even now whike we are trying to move away from China.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#109
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM traces all their dependency trees down to the mines or other sources of raw materials. This is often 6-7 levels deep. However they know what to watch for in the news and so when something happens they can jump to find an alternate, which often gives them 3 months before the production lines stop. They also do this so that they know nobody is using slave labor.

Yeah, I'm not convinced, given GM's (and most automakers) reaction to Covid and the continuing chip shortage. Maybe things have changed; I'd certainly be glad to hear it. But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory.

When all countries shut down, it does matter? There is no alternate or backup. What could you have reasonably expected GM to do, even if they had perfect information?

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn’t true, they always preferred them. They did a number of misguided things in the name of containing communism but all of that was

1. over fifty years ago or more at this point

2. Unpopular with the public

so it doesn’t seem like a good faith stance to pretend that’s current Us doctrine. It’s an ignorant whataboutism used by defenders of brutal regimes.

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