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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,
And all the other countries that actually make those tech products.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Will those savings be passed to us, the consumers? Nope.
Safe to assume that we'll see nothing and the corporations will rake in the savings.
Are you saying that my iPhone and Mac aren't made in the USA??????
Those are consumer devices that are nowhere near the level of a MRI machine - that is made in the USA, or at least most of it.
Apple, Microsoft and others are consumer commodity device and software makers.
But what kills me about these trade deals is that they benefit the multinationals. They now can arbitrage worker pay, import workers, etc ... and lower their costs, but yet increase their markets and keep prices the same.
If anyone thinks that "Comparative Advantage" exists in the 21st century, you need to get with the times. Those high tech whatevers have parts, design, assembly done all over the World. And it doesn't matter what industry it is. Your Toyota Camry is more American than the F-35.
The only comparative advantage any country has to offer is who has the cheapest and most educated workers.
Spiral to the bottom.
And the owners - the folks with capital - will be the winners.
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...
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.
I would prefer that you specify America assholes as the billionaires and government lackeys that support this shit. The American people have only lost jobs and experienced a lowered standard of living, except for those chosen to work 70+ hours per week. .
LOLOLOLOL. America is the most protectionist? That's a good one Chuckles. Try actually selling something in China you brain dead reject. You have to get in bed with a Chinese company to even exist. Christ you're an uninformed twat if you think America is the most protectionist. Are there some things wrong with America? Sure. But everyone does it. Germany taxes American chicken, one of the Scandanavian countries has a cheese cartel, Canada makes a killing on fine wool suits by buying from embargoed countries. If you think the U.S. is what's wrong with this world you're willfully blind to a lot of other terrible crap before it. So why don't you calm down there Chuckie, take another government provided happy pill and chill.