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The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

noahpinion.blog

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Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#161

Post by csomar »

Jupe wrote: 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.…

Let's say you have a dependency A from China. But all the software developers that work and specialize in A, live in China. If you ban dependency A, what you'll have is a dependency B from Mexico that is calling dependency A.

In order to really replace A, you'll need to hire, train and form software developers specializing in A. This is both time consuming and expensive.

This falls in the same line of some people (economists) who think that printing money will generate wealth. Sounds familiar?

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#162

Post by somenameforme »

dotnet00 wrote: post #149
nradov wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that can't be done without some sort of political monetary union. India and China will never agree to join the same monetary union. Their interests aren't aligned. Russia has to maintain good relations with both India and China, and can't afford to piss off either one. And South Africa is rapidly collapsing into a failed state with a dysfunctional economy; lately they can't even keep the lights on. It's all just…

That's the funny thing about all the BRICS bluster, so many of the countries in (or soon to be in) the "group" either hate each other, are barely functioning or are just direct competitors in general. It's amazing anyone thinks they'll do anything that requires cooperation and mutual trust beyond making empty promises.

There were centuries of organizations that tried to prevent war by trust and cooperation. Before the UN was the League of Nations, before the LoN was the Concert of Europe and there were undoubtedly countless efforts prior. But they all failed completely abysmally. Do you know the one thing that actually worked? Countries having nuclear weapons. Suddenly there was a strong self-interest in avoiding war, and "real" war essentially disappeared - at least between nuclear powers.

And I think that's generally true in everything, everywhere. The reason you can walk down the street safely in most places is not because of an implicit agreement of cooperation, but simply because we're all working in our best interest. You don't even consider messing with other people, because you'd just end up in prison for negligible gains. And indeed as soon as that threat and imminence of harsh consequence disappears, it suddenly becomes much less safe to walk down those streets.

BRICS is not united in some ideological conformity, but instead in self interest. They don't want to be dominated by a single hegemon. And I think this form of cooperation based solely on self interest - is far more likely to persist and yield fruitful results. I also expect this is why agreements will, and should, take much longer. Instead of just bum-rushing some virtue filled "Treaty of Whatever" that'll get scrapped by any participating government when it becomes inconvenient, they want to ensure there are implicit self-interest motivated systems driving cooperation through any foreseeable circumstance.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#163

Post by compiler-guy »

reisse wrote: post #24
throwawaymaths wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory. Can we really know that anymore? China has stopped publishing a majority of economic indicators.

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.

One need only compare the official Beijing air quality number against what you see on the ground to know that you simply cannot trust official Chinese reports.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#165

Post by couchand »

csomar wrote: post #157

> The Economist does present one other piece of circumstantial evidence — a working paper by Caroline Freund of the IMF that finds that countries that have been increasing their exports to the U.S. tend to be countries that trade more with China. But this is a very far cry from showing that China’s value-added exports to the U.S. have remained constant. It is not a "very far cry". It's almost a direct link. Industrie…

These two articles are fantastic examples of The Economist's journalistic style. We have all the facts, and we use them to come to whatever conclusion is most relevant at the moment.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#166

Post by influxmoment »

26fingies wrote: post #164

China's middle class has become reasonably wealthy. There are poorer countries yet to be exploited so this seems like a natural next step.

"China's middle class has become reasonably wealthy." I wonder how

"There are poorer countries yet to be exploit" exploit is it. The contortions involved in being anti capitalism

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#167

Post by [deleted] »

dgb23 wrote: post #25
EGreg wrote: 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…

What's the rationale behind this? Why specifically China?

[deleted]

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#168

Post by 26fingies »

influxmoment wrote: post #166
26fingies wrote: post #164

China's middle class has become reasonably wealthy. There are poorer countries yet to be exploited so this seems like a natural next step.

"China's middle class has become reasonably wealthy." I wonder how "There are poorer countries yet to be exploit" exploit is it. The contortions involved in being anti capitalism

There's no contortion. A unit of labor in India is as valuable as a unit of labor in the United States, but the capitalist pays less for it.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#169

Post by throwaway290 »

Jupe wrote: 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.…

Every new level of dependency is an opportunity to refactor and swap deeper dependency out. There is a big diff between using library A and using your own frontend B that now depends on A but can swap it out easily for X.

Re: The global trading system is starting to rearrange itself

#170

Post by playday »

Noah has become a political pundit who tends to straw man the opponents to his preferred political ideology of centrist us democrat. That’s not to say he isn’t worth reading, it’s good to know what kinds of arguments that group is making because they are extremely powerful. But it’s important to keep in mind when reading articles like this where he’s hitting an extremely reputable magazine that isn’t politically aligned to him. It’s worth reading the article he’s attacking, as while it isn’t perfect it goes into much better detail on the facts than he makes it out to be- especially in something like re exporting where by the nature of the business it tends to be disguised from the public and the personal contacts a paper like the Economist has may be close to the truth.
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