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China Threatens To Cut Sales of iPhones and US Cars if 'Naive' Trump Pursues Trade War (theguardian.com)
US president-elect Donald Trump would be a "naive" fool to launch an all-out trade war against China, a Communist party-controlled newspaper has claimed. From a report on The Guardian:During the acrimonious race for the White House Trump repeatedly lashed out at China, vowing to punish Beijing with "defensive" 45% tariffs on Chinese imports and to officially declare it a currency manipulator. "When they see that they will stop the cheating," the billionaire Republican, who has accused Beijing of "the greatest theft in the history of the world", told a rally in August. On Monday the state-run Global Times warned that such measures would be a grave mistake. "If Trump wrecks Sino-US trade, a number of US industries will be impaired. Finally the new president will be condemned for his recklessness, ignorance and incompetence," the newspaper said in an editorial. The Global Times claimed any new tariffs would trigger immediate "countermeasures" and "tit-for-tat approach" from Beijing.
Yes, the Americans could start producing iPhones and cars. At local wages, I guess, driving up the prices of those items. So, basically the economy would go up because of lower unemployment, and down from higher prices...
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And we could kill off useless idiot-friendly devices like the iPhone which specifically enable American incompetence at the cost of Chinese citizens' lives and health, because they wouldn't be economical to produce anymore.
Trump is saying China is manipulating it's currency rate, keeping is low (like 4 times lower than "real") hence being much more attractive for investors (low costs).
As South Korea is not accused of anything like that, it shouldn't affect it, at least not directly.
Thank you Paul Krugman Jr. He wrote a story Tuesday night that the stock market would NEVER recover from Trump being elected.
I had to wait an ENTIRE 15 hours to see him proven wrong when the stock market closed to a record high. Last week was its best week in over 5 years, and Trump was only elected, not even in office yet, and only affected the market 3 days not a full 5.
Glad to see you following in the clown shoes Krugman is now wearing.
Reality has an anti-Krugman bias.
Wow... This would actually drive manufacturing back to the United States or other areas if there is fear of state withholding shipments. This could be a very big benefit not a detriment.
1. Force Apple to bring profits back
2. Create manufacturing centers here which are robot/automated
3. Hire middle class to manage and maintain robots/design line
4. Stamp made in america
It's a win, win , win for everyone.
FTFY
Considering that Foxconn is firing their workers for robots, it wouldn't change prices or employment dramatically. It would however wreck the already precarious Chinese economy, and quite possibly the country as a result, especially with the 20+ million extra young men and exploding older population.
(This is not to suggest that I welcome a fascist in the White House, or a trade war with China, obviously. I just wish we hadn't lost most of our electronics manufacturing capacity with the end of Commodore in the early nineties.)
It's OK. You're allowed to (even loosely) agree with something Trump has said or an idea he's had without a qualifier at the end to signal your virtue. Remember, this is America, and your first amendment guarantees you the right to free speech.
Hillary lost, so these kinds of "signing statements" are no longer necessary unless maybe of course if you have a liberal boss who also reads Slashdot and knows your handle. Otherwise, rejoice in the fact that you can speak your mind without reservation!
Agreed. I'm guessing that the average Trump voter has never heard of Comparative Advantage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
"Otherwise, rejoice in the fact that you can speak your mind without reservation!"
Been seeing a lot of that recently and I am not too sure it's all that good for society, especially if its being scratched into cars and spray painted on buildings.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
We have sources of materials in our own country, we don't need the Chinese materials. Our mines for them are currently closed because the prices of those materials in the currency-manipulated China are so cheap that our raw materials are too expensive when mined here. Lowering the corporate income tax to 15% is likely to change that, and see those rare earth mines opened up again, and... presto, no more problem with raw materials in the USA.
With the pro-business administration that is coming into Washington, and the vow to "Make America Great Again", I'm expecting that much of what is made in China is going to be made in America after a while. It won't be 1000's of Foxxcon workers standing for hours at tables assembling them by hand for a dollar two nintety eight an hour, it'll be American workers tending 30 - 50 automatic machines, keeping them in raw materials, keeping them adjusted, lubricated, supplied with power, and checking for scrap, and they'll be well-paid, and the iphones shucking out the conveyor belt will be every bit as desirable as the ones from China, and about the same price. That's what I expect, anyway. There's lots of ways for America to compete if we stop allowing the foreigners to have the huge advantages of lower taxes and currency manipulation.
Comparative advantage is only useful when both countries are at full employment.
Comparative advantage has nothing whatsoever to do with "full" employment. Comparative advantage explains why it can be useful for two countries to both engage in production of a particular good even though one of the countries has an absolute cost advantage over the other. If comparative advantage did not exist neither would much international trade.
Nope a country with 4 times the population will always be a larger market unless they are dirt poor. And countries stay dirt poor only so long. Eventually they have a revolution, kill the incompetent leaders and get competent leaders. So in the long run population always wins. China had its civil wars and then got the communist party leadership (that they were communist is pointless , the point is they became leaders after a period when incompetence was punished with revolutionary death)
The current batch is probably the first generation who havn't experienced the civil war and they may get sloppy but for China to become dirt poor again is not really possible.
**Life is too short to be serious**
China has much more to lose in a trade-war than the USA does. Their economy is tightly bound to exports. China knows this and is bluffing.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I hope he pushes this issue, and encourages China to shift more to a consumer driven economy rather than an export economy. They won't do it without pressure, and Trump's bullheadedness may be just the recipe.
China will make a lot of noise and initial threats, but after a while they'll have to change or risk an economic hit.
Factory workers have protested and rioted in recent downturns. Thus, a downturn big enough could bring serious challenges to leadership. Tienanmen Square was merely a preview of what could happen.
The leaders are worried they'll be overthrown, Kadafi-style, if the population gets angry enough. Thus, they don't really want an actual trade-war, and that's why they are using threats and bluffs early on to try to prevent one. They saw how Kadafi got Shish-kebabed by his countrymen and know they could be next.
The thing is, they don't have to depend on exports. Grow a consumer base. It works. But exports have worked so well that Chinese leaders don't want to risk change. If Trump puts enough pressure on them, they may change to avert the even worse option: Shish-kebabing.
Table-ized A.I.
So, making it happen faster is the best option?
Or the stupidest option?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"Bringing back the manufacturing" would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and several years (probably on the order of 5-10). YOu also have almost no one trained in the US, so you would have to ramp up training programs to a massive degree, and it's not exactly clear with relatively low unemployment where you would get the people from.
Trump's declaration is fantasy. It's not going to happen. Maybe he can negotiate some better terms for US companies exporting to China, maybe, but the notion that manufacturing in Asia is going to be repatriated is pure fantasy. And let's remember here that the US is not China's only customer, and if the US starts putting on its big boy protectionist pants, it will likely piss off other trade partners like Europe. Even now Canada, the US's largest trade partner, is signing a trade deal with the EU, in no small part because it wants to diversify away from the US.
The US is a vast economy, but it isn't the only large economy, and if US companies become heavily disadvantaged in other markets, particularly huge ones like China, you will see a great deal of damage done to the US economy.
And for what, exactly? Do you think all those factories that would be built in the US would be major employers? In ten to fifteen years, a factory would be thousands of robots and some technicians. Even a best case scenario does little to restore all those high paying jobs to the Rust Belt.
Trump made a lot of promises he can't keep, and some that if he did, would be ruinous. And let's remember here, he is not an emperor, he would have to bring Congress along for a lot of this, and Congress isn't simply going to sign up for even short term economic suicide. A lot of those people are up for re-election in 2018, and how do you think they would fair if a trade war with China lead to huge leaps in unemployment?
If you voted for Trump to disrupt the system, then okay, but if you actually voted for the man because you thought he would or could keep his promises, well, that's just plain stupid.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not necessarily. Your scenario is only if it becomes a full-out trade war.
It doesn't have to become a wide scale trade war for protectionism to be a terrible and self defeating idea. Tariffs almost always cause more damage than they help. Put a tariff on steel and congratulations, you've just made every car, plane, and machine that uses steel more expensive and less competitive.
Trump can play chicken to scare them to make changes.
That is a very dangerous game to play with global consequences if the Chinese don't blink. It's especially stupid given that such negotiation tactics almost certainly are unnecessary and stand a high probability of backfiring.
Because they depend on exports far more than we do, a game of trade chicken is riskier to them.
And we depend on imports more than they do. They hold a sizeable amount of our debt which is a danger to both China and the US. Any trade war would hurt both sides and it's not an exaggeration to say that we have more to lose than they do. We're the ones with the higher than average incomes. We're the ones who are living on borrowed money. Yes any trade war would hurt China too but like any knife fight we wouldn't come out unbloodied.
Let's give it a try rather than live with the status quo.
Trying something that is clearly dangerous and almost certainly counterproductive just to disrupt the status quo is idiotic. Different just for the sake of different isn't a sane plan. That's what people do when they don't know what the fuck they are doing.
The cards are on our side. It's an area where Trump's brashness may work to our favor.
That's simply not true. What we have is something of a standoff with both sides able to hurt the other rather badly. Trump's arrogant demeanor is FAR more likely to backfire than it is to help.
No, there were internal disputes over single-payer versus public-option versus no-public-option.
And GOP's criticism of ACA is vague. Democrats have been perfectly willing to tune it, but GOP has blocked tuning. It's like complaining about a car that sputters but not allowing one to take it to the mechanic. Every other large program in history was allowed to be tuned.
Sorry, GOP are manipulative sabotaging sacks of you know what on the ACA. If there is an evangelical Hell, they will fry extra crispy, and Satan has no ACA to cure their burns.
The real problem is that technology is changing the work world and GOP has no solutions other than trying to force the clock back to the 1950's. The very definition of conservatism is trying to change the clock back. They are doing what conservatives are "supposed" to do.
But you cannot but technology genie back in the bottle. Bots will kill jobs in China also eventually. The Democrats' plan of retraining and college had a better shot at making a difference in my opinion because it assumes change rather than hide from it.
Table-ized A.I.