Slashdot Mirror
Trillion-Dollar World Trade Deal Aims To Make IT Products Cheaper
itwbennett writes: A new (tentative) global trade agreement, struck on Friday at a World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva, eliminates tariffs on more than 200 kinds of IT products, ranging from smartphones, routers, and ink cartridges to video game consoles and telecommunications satellites. A full list of products covered was published by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which called the ITA expansion 'great news for the American workers and businesses that design, manufacture, and export state-of-the-art technology and information products, ranging from MRI machines to semiconductors to video game consoles.' The deal covers $1.3 trillion worth of global trade, about 7 percent of total trade today. The deal has approval from 49 countries, and is waiting on just a handful more before it becomes official,
So does that include a treaty binding agreement to allow an infinite amount of H1Bs to provide minimum slave-wage IT services?
That certainly smells like BS.
Because of course big business is going to eat this cost by dipping into profits and not employee wages
_sigh_
That list has some very specific entries on it.
What would be useful to know is what the end-consumer could expect to see in terms of savings from this tariff removal (should it be passed on at retail).
And all the other countries that actually make those tech products.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Ha ha ha! Very funny!
Ah, okay, not necessarily you and me. This so the industry can shift inventory around a little easier.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is "great news for American workers"? The multinationals have already moved a vast amount of tech manufacturing to China and southeast Asia. And we've been reading and seeing stories about how the US manufacturing is picking up... and it turns out to be a) not very much, and b) heavily automated, meaning far fewer jobs.
mark, considering firmware and hardware backdoors in chips, memory, and drives....
Will those savings be passed to us, the consumers? Nope.
Here the parasitic "eletronics industry" (in quotes because we do not have a real electronics industry) managed to keep the barrier of 60% (minimum) of import taxes on any and every electronic product. And that when the customs or the post office do not simply steal it.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You will see 49 trained seals performing, with more to come! And everyone knows the hard work it takes to feed a seal one more fish.
The one thing I've seen through the years is that if someone wants something, they get it. Computer hardware is at the top of that list. So we can dispense with the "good for everyone" litany. But lets ignore the obvious tax dodge and ramifactions. I wonder, "is computer hardware accessable to more people?"
For those of you who remember the 90s. That giant sucking sound is the last of our industry leaving the US.
What about the non-tariff barriers? https://www.wto.org/english/tr...
That's where they sneak in the provisions about intellectual property rights, "market pricing," "investor-state dispute settlement"?
Is this like the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Are they going to settle disputes by private arbitrators, whose decisions can't be reviewed by courts or changes by national legislatures?
I doubt, free trade with non-free countries is beneficial to humanity. Though one can argue, that it makes such non-free countries more free, it is not at all evident, that that's what happened to China, for example.
Meanwhile, the US is gradually losing freedoms as there appear more and more things we aren't allowed to do or even say, and the list of places requiring identification is growing.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Did anybody leak the "IP Chapter" yet? I mean, that can't be a US-involved Trade Agreement without the Hollywood-mandated obligatory IP chapter, right?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
When has any of these 'free trade' agreements actually benefited workers? or even been about real liberalisation of trade laws?
This is just another 'agreement' made behind closed doors, by unelected apparatchiks, to implement policies that allow more redistribution of wealth to the rich, and to large corporations.
...anytime they say it's going to be "great news for American workers", you know it's going to be the exact opposite. More like, "great news for multinational conglomerates who couldn't care less about individual workers".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
From my experience, no "Trade deal" ever actually lowered the cost of goods to the 'people'.. NAFTA saw the costs nearly double to purchase goods from the USA and was designed to allow the search/taxation of imported goods far in excess to the consumer... It did however let the corporations move goods more freely and without taxes(minor fees at border)..
IMO Free Trade= Not FRee, and not good..
$1.3 trillion! That's a lot of money! It's a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier every 30 hours, or about what the US borrowed every year just a few years ago zomfg that's alotta money!!!1!111
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I don't want cheaper, nobody does. We want better instead.
You know, a device that doesn't literally shatter when you drop it. Or doesn't get a scratch for every brush against your trousers, or a battery that actually lasts MORE than the warranty.
Because it seems to me, that without the law forcing them, the manufacturers are confusing device warranty with device lifespan. Before 2001, in my country, a term was coined, sounds a lot like "Chinoiserie" but with a different meaning, "Chinese POS" (antonym: German quality) because the items would look pretty and shiny, but fail after a short while, with no other use than the garbage dump.
With no idiots in power back then to force people into choosing one over the other, the Chinoiserie stayed in it's shitty corner for decades.
Slashdot has just enough of the old Slashdot in it for me to stick around, it's still the definitive tech site. I have to say however the latest sale/purchase has really disappointed me. Any and all stories of a controversial nature are not by default slanted to a pro-globalist narrative wording. It was incredibly obvious with gamer gate, the repeated beating it into my head I should feel guilty that more women don't even want my job, and now pro TPP (which basically includes SOPA and PIPA in the text) and related treaties disguised as trade agreements.
I'm all for less taxes in nearly every instance, but these treaties are incredibly dangerous.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
In electronics manufacturing, there is only one nation that matters: CHINA. Notice that China is on the list of nations. Therefore, the nation that really benefits is China. Another example of corporate America screwing America to benefit China. Just like in the 90s.
Electronic widgets and their tariffs are not the problem with global trade. Severely protectionist tariffs and policies on agricultural commodities and large manufactured goods are the problem.
Free trade is like the free market: it's a complete fucking lie.
There is no free trade. Americans keep yowling about free trade, but when it comes down to it, Americans believe in a protectionist version of free trade.
When America stops having corn subsidies, or adheres to a single WTO ruling against them, we might start to believe you.
Until then, shut the fuck up you asshole. There is no fucking free trade. There is no fucking free market.
Moron.
The elephant in the room is.. What's the trade off?
I think you really drive your point home more effectively if you would just get past your parochial concern about avoiding F-bombs. I think a few more sprinkled throughout your post would bring everyone in line.
So, Americans, be sure to vote next year either for Hillary Clinton or Any Republican if you want to have the benefits of free trade. That is to say, you have a choice of the puppet on my left hand or the puppet on my right hand.
Who remembers NAFTA?
It looks like at least half the categories are semiconductor manufacturing equipment and parts. That industry is dominated by American (Applied Materials, LAM Research, KLA-Tencor) and Japanese (Tokyo Electron) companies. It's going to be great for them.
Free trade works and protectionism is still loser economics, no matter how much nativists might wish it otherwise.
First to market or risk becoming obsolete is an incentive. So is, because it's there. Remind me why we play games again?
...the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which called the ITA expansion 'great news for the American workers and businesses that design, manufacture, and export state-of-the-art technology and information products, ranging from MRI machines to semiconductors to video game consoles.'"
Uh-huh. Right.
You know what would be even better news for US tech hardware exporters?
If they didn't have a huge boat anchor attached in the form of NSA built-in backdoors and vulnerabilities.
Really, if you're a foreign corporation that competes in any way with US corporations/interests/research, or any government/organization/individual that US TLAs could possibly even tangentially term "of interest", would you buy stuff from US makers/manufacturers despite what's been revealed publicly over the last 20 years to present concerning US TLA activity within the US tech manufacturing/exporting industries?
Particularly in light of the recent revelations of so many unlawful and/or unconstitutional programs and activities engaged in by US intelligence organizations courtesy of the courageous whistle-blower Edward Snowden, which keep revealing new programs that violate constitutional principles and prohibitions with every new dump from the trove.
US tech companies have to overcome all that (quite understandable and logical) mistrust (good luck!), and *then* compete against other corporations that don't have that perceived millstone around their necks.
This will not turn out well for the US tech industries that need/rely on exporting their goods, and with cheap imports flowing into the US, even those who were national/regional in nature will find themselves priced out of the market.
1. Mining/Drilling - Offshored
2. Steel mfg - Offshored
3. Heavy Industries/Factories - Offshored
4. Artificial politically-motivated limits on energy production and artificially-created increases in cost.
5. ...?
I'm not liking the direction this is trending.
If it roughly parallels past similar historical scenarios, it doesn't end well for anyone in the US (well, except those 'too big to starve'), neither Left nor Right, nor atheists, Christians, Muslims, or whatever "ism" or party you favor.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
i want country of origin so I can avoid food made by chinks and the associated lead & shit contamination.
ya right, like that will happen.
A friend of mine has and uncle who is a big wig at a U.S. company. They manufacture doors for large industrial appliances. It is cheaper to ship raw materials to China, made the door, ship it back to the U.S. and then deliver to the customer than it is to manufacture the door in the US
Where was this treaty visible to the public during negotiations?
This treaty may be horrible. But just like more well-known free-trade treaties, it seems like we are just now finding out about it, after it is too late to do anything to change it.
*THAT* is what has to change.
I thought the problem with computers, phones, lightbulbs etc was that the items had crappy quality, and in the case of computers some of the apps suck