31–40 of 814 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If iphones were charged with US labor costs then nobody would buy them
iPhones are already heavily overpiced considering how other companies regularly release phones with similar specs at lower prices.
Functionality sure maybe but competitors are not hot on apples heels or anything.
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It seems great until those imaginary numbers become worthless overnight. Then you might have a bit of an "oh shit" moment as you realize that the industrial ecosystem required to substitute those imports would take a decade and a half to build even if your money were worth something, which it now isnt. Lots of countries collapse due to overreliance on foreign imports. Argentina never recovered from its peak in the 19…
Why would they become worthless? The entire world is forever beholden to Microsoft Windows, Office, AWS, X, iOS, Google Play, whether people like it or not. People have made free or cheaper or local or better alternatives and they have never succeeded at dethroning these
It would collapse in value overnight if there were a run on the dollar (treasury holdings were sold off). Then hyperinflation would set in and import dependence would become existential.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If iphones were charged with US labor costs then nobody would buy them
Or we would have automated assembly faster—the investment in which would’ve been counted in domestic investment offsetting the trade deficit, right? I’m trying to verify my mental model of what’s going on.
The only conclusion you can draw is that the automated assembly will still be more expensive compared to the current manual one.
Too much consumption versus production. One component is the ever ballooning government debt. Essentially in 'trade deficit' the thing that is not taken into account is one very big export article of the US. Pieces of paper with 'IOU' written on them. The whole Trump trade war is the completely preposterous thing of spending more in the shop than you can afford and then blaming the shop for taking advantage of you. T…
We don't really know why the US savings rate is low, but we do know more explicitly why the savings rates of those "shops", aka surplus countries is abnormally high, with weak social spending, financial repression, currency manipulation etc. Their manufacturing capacities exceed their domestic consumption to absorb, that is to say, they need export markets to stave off unemployment. Is there not an argument that by t…
Uncap the housing market, free up cash, which will force the Fed to tighten the money supply, freeing investment from the housing market into industry.
No one else can manufacture USD's, so other countries have to acquire them by shaping their economies to supply goods and services demanded by the US. They can then use these earned dollars to transact with other countries, as the US itself insists they do.
For the US, this is a simple trade off - gain massive political influence (and market intelligence - all USD transactions go through US institutions regardless of where those transacting partners are located), at the expense of hollowing out domestic industry and running a deficit in physical goods traded.
The solution is a non-national global reserve, calculated on a basket of national currencies. This was Keynes argument at Bretton Woods, but the US would not have it then, and does not want it now.
> The saving gap framework helps clarify what trade policies can and can’t do. For example, a free-trade agreement encourages exports, and an industrial policy can foster a re-shoring of production to replace imports. Such policies influence the size and composition of cross-border trade, but the difference between imports and exports is only affected if these policies also change the gap between domestic saving and…
> I’d also be curious why the EU doesn’t consistently run trade deficits. Some EU countries probably do, but because they are smaller economies it seems less critical. Combining the EU economies can hide a Spanish deficit within the German surplus fairly easily. e.g. the German surplus are 10 times higher than the Spanish deficit (if I recall correctly). The EU viewed as a whole, I don't know, maybe due to a very div…
But I also think that EU producers are more competitive. The US has a strong tendency towards local monopolies which are bad for export competitiveness.
Using a national currency as the de facto global reserve guarantees a trade deficit for that country. No one else can manufacture USD's, so other countries have to acquire them by shaping their economies to supply goods and services demanded by the US. They can then use these earned dollars to transact with other countries, as the US itself insists they do. For the US, this is a simple trade off - gain massive politi…
Too much consumption versus production. One component is the ever ballooning government debt. Essentially in 'trade deficit' the thing that is not taken into account is one very big export article of the US. Pieces of paper with 'IOU' written on them. The whole Trump trade war is the completely preposterous thing of spending more in the shop than you can afford and then blaming the shop for taking advantage of you. T…
Because of this, USD 's power is fading and its value slowly plummeting.
One way to limit damages that could come with a weak $ is for the USA to bring back manufacturing capacities. That could be why Biden already put some protectionist measure in place in 2024. (2)
Yes Trump is who he is, but I think the tariffs stuff is part smoke and mirrors to hide that inconvenient truth.
Or as the Super cool ski instructor might say : "If your money is weak and you rely on foreign countries for the majority of your physical stuff, you gonna have a bad time."
(1) https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/saudi-arabia-ends-8... (2) https://publicseminar.org/2024/09/bidens-green-protectionism...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If iphones were charged with US labor costs then nobody would buy them
Higher end Motorolas were mfg in the US in the early 2000s. It’s possible. Top of the line were ~$700, with inflation that’d afford iPhones. They were top sellers and not niche models.
Using a national currency as the de facto global reserve guarantees a trade deficit for that country. No one else can manufacture USD's, so other countries have to acquire them by shaping their economies to supply goods and services demanded by the US. They can then use these earned dollars to transact with other countries, as the US itself insists they do. For the US, this is a simple trade off - gain massive politi…