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American Disruption

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Re: American Disruption

#81

Post by h2zizzle »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

It reminds me a lot of Brexit. Politicians in the south of the country were warning that the financial sector (predominantly in London) would loose 100,000 jobs and people in the north were saying "oh, that sounds pretty good". A few years later when that didn't happen to that extent I remember an interview with someone from a fishing port which lost a lot of business that previously went to Europe. They were complai…

I'm trying to figure out what you mean. Experts forecast Brexit would hurt the financial sector, Northerners said they were cool with that, the forecast was wrong, Northerners were upset. Nothing about that sounds illogical. Vindictive and short-sighted, sure. But everything follows reasonably.

I say this as someone who's stomach sank when I'd heard that Brexit had passed and that there was a real chance that Donald Trump could be elected.

Re: American Disruption

#82

Post by emptyfile »

samtp wrote: post #50
clodushid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro. If you want to understand the tariffs today, just go read one of his many books. His goals are pretty simple: reindustriaize America No more free trade China is evil and the worlds enemy It should be no surprise to anyone observing trump since he took office that the end goal was always to decouple from China.

I believe the real architect of the strategy is Ron Vara [0] [0] In case you didn't know Run Vara is a fake economist that Navarro made up in his books and memos to justify his own deeply flawed policies.

Tha fact that he just shuffled around the letters of his own name for the fake economist is simply amazing.

Brave new world.

Re: American Disruption

#83

Post by sharemywin »

goatlover wrote: post #76
clodushid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro. If you want to understand the tariffs today, just go read one of his many books. His goals are pretty simple: reindustriaize America No more free trade China is evil and the worlds enemy It should be no surprise to anyone observing trump since he took office that the end goal was always to decouple from China.

> China is evil and the worlds enemy And what is the US under the Trump administration? China didn't start a trade war, accuse every other country of ripping it off, hasn't talked of acquiring Greenland and making Canada it's 51st state, or discuss bombing cartels in Mexico.

let's not forget about arguing against due process, prison without trials, weird interpretations of ancient laws, mercurial application of the law. or the free speech threats. the AP, threaten licenses from news orgs, threaten law firms, sue news orgs.

Re: American Disruption

#84

Post by giantrobot »

rqtwteye wrote: post #56
jonnat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than projecting one's values onto a rationalization of the new tariffs is to simply take the administration's rhetoric at face value. That other countries are "taking advantage of us" is just a talking point. We have to look at how the tariffs fit historical conservative programs. Republicans have long wished to replace our progressive income taxation with a flat tax system, but that's simply not achievable, ev…

That's my feeling too. The tariffs are just another variation for the plan to replace income tax with sales tax. You could argue tariffs are a little better because in theory they result in more jobs at home.

> You could argue tariffs are a little better because in theory they result in more jobs at home.

No serious person would argue this because it's ridiculous. Tariffs on components of finished items don't do anything to help manufacture those items. The only way to increase manufacturing with tariffs is to target them to very specific industries or segments of industries and use the proceeds to subsidize the industries you want to create.

Manufacturing just about anything at scale to make it affordable/desirable requires leveraging a deep efficient supply chain. Everything from raw material harvesting to manufacturing to warehousing to transport. It takes decades and a lot of investment and real estate.

Asinine tariffs won't do any of that. They're effectively just a regressive national sales tax.

Re: American Disruption

#85

Post by notatoad »

torginus wrote: post #67
Aurornis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's quite possible that they're intentionally irrational as a bargaining or maneuvering tactic This is the rationalization being projected onto the situation, but it doesn’t make logical sense. The administration launched a trade war with 100+ fronts and left no time to negotiate with all of them, let alone the biggest players. The biggest players are already calling the administration’s bluff with counter-tariffs…

I don't see how else they could've done that - if they decide not to tariff some countries, countries that did get tariffed could trivially reroute their goods to go through said exempt country - I'm not even sure goods would need to move physically to said country or they could get away with cargo ships registered under them and/or ports handed over to be the territory of said country.

tariffs are assessed based on the country of origin. you can't skip a tariff by routing your goods through another country. or maybe you can, but that's called smuggling and the only way to do it is outright fraud and lying on the import forms.

if your product is sourced from china, you pay the tariff on china whether you are importing it from a canadian supplier, a cambodian supplier, or a chinese supplier.

Re: American Disruption

#86

Post by acdha »

renewiltord wrote: post #80
acdha wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, Uber is recognized as the high prices option. Once VCs stopped subsidizing rides prices went up and availability went down - it was a running joke for years that at DCA you’d see people waiting in line for 20 minutes to spend $20 more than hopping in a waiting cab.

That makes sense for me. I would easily pay $20 more to take an Uber over a cab in SF. The prices are the other way around which is convenient for me. The last time I took a cab from the airport the guy asked me which cross streets and how to get there. That's not my Uber experience. I don't want to be telling this guy how to do his job. I want personal transportation and we can chat about something else if he likes…

Yeah, there are real regional variations. I think the problem Uber has is that they’re valued like a high-end tech company (with locked in overhead like compensation) but they don’t have much of a competitive moat. They can have a better app and global reach is a plus for frequent travelers, but at the end of the day their profit is anchored by how much a taxi costs – even if the service is better people only value that so much, especially in a down economy like the one just created.

Re: American Disruption

#87

Post by cowpig »

kjksf wrote: post #75
cowpig wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and I find this totally bizarre. The Trump administration's power is based in the Russian propaganda machine and xenophobia. Blanket tariffs (except towards Russia and Belarus, not mentioned in Ben Thompson's article of course) are in service of those two power bases.

US is still sanctioning Russia, meaning there's zero trade between US and Russia. It's illegal for US people and companies to buy from Russia. That's why there are no tariffs on Russia: there's no trade, there's nothing to tariff. I don't see how you concluded that US is currently "in service of Russia".

The tariffs undermine US-Europe alliance, and US hegemony. These are core goals of Putin's Russia.

Re: American Disruption

#88

Post by const_cast »

cyberax wrote: post #78
Jochim wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Uber example is also an outright lie. They acquired those customers by burning billions of dollars to deliver rides below the cost of providing them. Then they raised prices beyond their competition to account for their ridiculous overheads.

> They acquired those customers by burning billions of dollars to deliver rides below the cost of providing them. That is exaggerated. Uber was losing something like $0.50-$1 per ride in 2018. Uber/Lyft were (and still mostly are) just _better_ than taxis.

It’s not exaggerated. Uber was losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year operating. That’s billions.

I don’t know if I trust Ubers numbers on this. I don’t know what they’re counting as “cost per ride”. Does engineers salaries factor into that? What about data centers? Advertising?

If you factor all of it in, then they’re losing billions.

Re: American Disruption

#89

Post by h2zizzle »

inerte wrote: post #47
mjevans wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're more likely to 'on shore' with 3D printer like automated fabricators (think next baby step between CnC machines and Replicators). As far as any mention of jobs? Those are long gone and never coming back. Trade still makes sense for raw inputs and any outputs though.

And since when the US has a “job availability” problem? Unemployment is low. We have a jobs quality problem. Good pay, good hours, benefits. It doesn’t matter if it’s manufacturing or services. Somehow some people think their parents had it easier working for a factory, but a lot of blood and sweat went to get that. We can shed blood and sweat to get better barista jobs too. It’s not about where jobs are performed.

Agreed. I'd go so far as to say that the compensation/job quality balance has been out-of-wack for years. It has never been about skill, either, but leverage. And even "unskilled" workers can conjure leverage by creating chokepoints that they can toll, if they're able to organize and hold out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604145

Re: American Disruption

#90

Post by adriand »

clodushid wrote: post #17
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro. If you want to understand the tariffs today, just go read one of his many books. His goals are pretty simple: reindustriaize America No more free trade China is evil and the worlds enemy It should be no surprise to anyone observing trump since he took office that the end goal was always to decouple from China.

> The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro.

He's also a complete and utter liar. I happened to come across him speaking on Fox News when he stated that "Canada has been taken over by Mexican cartels". [1] As a Canadian and as someone who isn't living in some bizarre alternate reality, I can assure you that Canada has not been taken over by cartels. The claim is insane. The fact that his interviewer did not challenge him on this insanity is unsurprising yet also insane.

I bring this up first because it made me angry, but secondly because I think it's relevant to this discussion: of course things are going to turn out badly when the architects of policy are either liars, are living in an alternate reality, or both.

1: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-adviser-insists-canada-has...

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