Live data from Hacker News

New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

bunniestudios.com

341–350 of 357 posts

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#341
post #234
post #146

Anyone able and willing (and brave enough) to explain like I’m five why Trump’s decisions could possibly be rational and helpful as opposed to just reactionary and impulsive, as they appear to be?

Sure, I'll try. Keep in mind that I will only mention the benefits. Read other sources for the disadvantages so that you can make a decision. * America feels that caring for the environment is important so there are laws preventing companies from polluting "too much". In China they don't have as strict laws. Therefore manufacturing in America is more environmentally friendly than in China. Therefore, it is worth the…

I think you can replace US by EU and China by US and then justify that EU raise tariffs against US. I don't think it makes sense to have tariff. EU ask mostly US goods to follow EU laws and regulations.

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving the EU takes a few years which exceeds your presidents attention span by a few years. Nobody would trust he’d honor an agreement for that long.

North Korea seems to and I don't think Quitaly needs much more incentive

North Korea is not in the EU.

I think it’s unlikely Italy will actually leave but if it does it won’t be because of Trump. It probably depends on what happens to the UK and as the EU people know that, they aren’t likely to let the UK off easy.

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you believe that the US is a victim of protectionism in these countries without having protectionism of it's own? That's a pretty hard position to back with evidence. You need look no further than the USA's gaping trade deficits.

> You need look no further than the USA's gaping trade deficits. A “trade deficit” is just another name for a capital inflow surplus. If you want a smaller trade deficit, reduce the degree to which you systematically favor capital. Of course, what policymakers usually justify based on a trade deficit is increased support for domestically headquartered firms and other supports for capital invested in the country, whic…

You've said nothing wrong, and at the same time I'm not sure how that contradicts my point. A large trade deficit does indicate that one country's protectionism outweighs the other (i.e. larger tariffs result in a deficit).

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basing your current economic decisions on Adam Smith is akin to saying, "Why do we need traffic laws? No one wants to hit anyone else."

Dismissing history’s most recognized economist out-of-hand seems like you have already decided the answer before hearing the arguments. Edit to add: Michael Porter (one of the most influential living economists) made is career studying the economic theory of competitive advantage. "clusters: critical masses—in one place—of unusual competitive success in particular fields." Link: https://hbr.org/1998/11/clusters-and-t…

"...but The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith states that all country will have certain expertise they are just good at."

Weird that Porter doesn't cite Smith.

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US tried to do that for a long time in the Middle East and South America. China may be underestimating just how unstable these regions are. It's all fun and strategy until the Taliban starts blowing up your infrastructure because its haram

The difference is that outside China, Chinese leaders doesn't try to push for a model. They don't push for things like Human Right, Intellectual Right, Representative Democracy ...

I'm skeptical they'll be able to convince tribal Africa that cell phone towers are not haram. Islamic terrorist in Africa made cell site construction a very profitable business until they stopped all together in some areas

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing history’s most recognized economist out-of-hand seems like you have already decided the answer before hearing the arguments. Edit to add: Michael Porter (one of the most influential living economists) made is career studying the economic theory of competitive advantage. "clusters: critical masses—in one place—of unusual competitive success in particular fields." Link: https://hbr.org/1998/11/clusters-and-t…

" ...but The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith states that all country will have certain expertise they are just good at. " Weird that Porter doesn't cite Smith.

In fact, in this HBR article [1], he does the opposite of citing Smith:

==

According to standard economic theory, factors of production—labor, land, natural resources, capital, infrastructure—will determine the flow of trade. A nation will export those goods that make most use of the factors with which it is relatively well endowed. This doctrine, whose origins date back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo and that is embedded in classical economics, is at best incomplete and at worst incorrect.

In the sophisticated industries that form the backbone of any advanced economy, a nation does not inherit but instead creates the most important factors of production—such as skilled human resources or a scientific base. Moreover, the stock of factors that a nation enjoys at a particular time is less important than the rate and efficiency with which it creates, upgrades, and deploys them in particular industries.

==

Their disagreements aside, the two theories line up fairly well. Smith argues that competitive advantage is inherent based on natural factors, Porter says that it is a by-product of investment. I would argue that the reality falls somewhere in the middle.

Take the Chicago region, we have a commodities cluster. It includes institutions like CBOE, CME and the University of Chicago and companies like ADM, State Farm, John Deere and Caterpillar. Porter would say the cluster exists due to all of these institutions and knowledge. Smith might argue that those only exist in Chicago due to the natural factors of fertile land, centralized location, fresh water and navigable rivers. In this way, both Smith and Porter are correct.

[1] https://hbr.org/1990/03/the-competitive-advantage-of-nations

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not sure i agree with everything you wrote, but i do share this sense that US policy has tried to optimize for some over-simplified, short-term, dollar-maximizing measurement. it's not clear that we've been optimizing for something that's actually connected to what makes people happy and satisfied with life. some people absolutely need to be able to say "We're number one! We're number one!" but other people would…

> but other people would be happier to live in country number 17 if it meant they had a steady job with decent working conditions, reasonable health care, more predictability and a lower crime neighborhood. This is pretty much the essence of what I'm getting at, and to me is what post-secondary educated people on both the left and right seem to be very strongly opposed to on an ideological basis (but for completely d…

> It worries me that almost no one seems to be thinking about the range of possibilities that might lie at the end of this outsource & optimize for GDP/efficiency/profit, rinse and repeat ad infinitum approach

good point. and even when they do think about lost jobs the best solutions they come up with are feeble.

too often it's poorly funded government worker training wherein middle-aged washing machine plant workers who live in upstate Michigan are supposed to learn to code (or something equally likely to fail for the majority of retrained workers.)

another dubious aspect of this policy is that government officials are somehow supposed to both accurately predict the industries where the economic growth will be and what sort of training these industries will actually require from job hunters. that's really really hard. wall street investment firms are constantly trying to that sort of thing, and it's very difficult to get right.

this is where the globalization story unravels. the replacement careers don't materialize for the displaced workers. so the defense of the policy becomes a loud repetition of "it's great for consumers!"

but, somehow, it's "absurd and irrational" to ask if Walmart/Target/Amazon's massive quantities of cheap imported throw-away garbage (aka "consumer goods") are actually useful at all.

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#349
post #32

A repost of my comment from few months ago: When it comes to trade war topic these days, most Western commentators completely miss that a trade war is what China was preparing for the last three decades. They well expected somebody like Trump eventually coming, as well as economic pressure on a scale even bigger than what the West puts on North Korea and banana republics. They totally understood that the West will no…

Eh you can prepare all you want, trade war isn’t complicated (and has happened hundreds of times over the years) so it’s like preparing for tic-tac-toe.

Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will work as soon as we have a single currency. The EU is a really good example here of how a single currency puts everyone on the same economic accounting basis and so eliminates the ability of a country to 'fudge' the numbers through either internal subsidies or currency manipulation. The reason you need a single currency is that if you're going to sell barrels of wheat from country X to country Y, and country…

Say bye to Italy.

EDIT: Sweden and Hungary too.
Post reply on HN