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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.
Maybe then people will finally come to realize what the iPhone really costs.
If a trade war occurs with China, consumer prices will significantly inflate. Tech company stocks will fall significantly, as a large amount of gear is sourced internationally. For those with an interest to keeping your 401(k) safe, I suspect the first thing is to consider which companies source to China, as opposed to countries that use Taiwan, Korea, Japan, etc. Hmm. I wonder if anyone has made just such a list; e.g. "How to prepare your 401(k) for a trade war with China"!
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...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
Because he will extract concessions. That's what you can do when you have a persistent trade deficit. The Chinese only understand force.
Americans already make cars. Even "Japanese" (Honda, Toyota) cars sold in the US are usually made in the US.
iPhones and other smartphones being made here will probably up the prices slightly, but most of the estimates I've heard are absurd. I'd also suspect that the increased wages (higher demand for employees = fewer minimum wage jobs) would more than offset the price increases you'd see.
(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.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
China has absolutely no appreciation for how much of the Republican base and the blue dog democrats are at a total ZFG attitude toward free trade now. What are you going to do, China? Make my LG G5 that was made in South Korea more expensive? Make it harder for Hyundai, Kia, Honda and Toyota to produce their parts in South Korea and Japan and then assemble them in the American South for millions of Americans? Ford management is probably saying "yes, more please" as this will primarily hurt GM and Chrysler since Ford mainly outsources to developed countries and Mexico.
Our trade partners are probably splitting their sides over this. South Korea's response will simply be "we see China is acting like a crybully bitch. You want to trade with someone who ain't a bitch?"
Anonymous coward online calls billionaire president a naive fool. Film at at 11.
Forget the 401k - make a list of vital necessities that are currently only sourced from China (e.g. much of consumer electronics) so we can stockpile those and build up alternate sources.
iPhones going up in price would hardly constitute the economy going down. They're a top-end luxury item. Besides, they are famously high-margin as it is, so the price needn't necessarily even rise if production cost goes up.
Its not just products made in China, its Raw material also which China disallows to export in raw form.
Buick should have died when GM killed Pontiac instead. Buick can still die easily. It's just a brand badge they stick on the car body.
However, experts say officials in Beijing are still battling to untangle what a Trump presidency means...
Yeah, well that's pretty much everyone who wants more detail than "make America great again".
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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
You forgot the step where everything we buy costs 50% more for several years, but there are no additional wages to help pay for it.
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.
Do not threaten a trade war with your biggest customer who can source elsewhere.
It's a win, win , win for everyone.
Sure, as long as you're ready for the next iPhone model to cost twice as much as the previous one and be capable of less.
There are reasons why manufacturing and assembly line jobs have moved out of the USA, you know.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I don't know why people didn't see this coming. I suspect a lot of Americans have a rude awakening in store regarding our position in the world.
You forget that those additional 50% would flow into federal budget, which can spend it (bring it to you) just fine.
It's just that you will buy less from China.
PS
I wonder, how China can really retaliate. I mean, normal retaliation is to impose similar import tax, but... what do they import from USA anyhow?
I think it's pretty obvious that American citizens are profiting a lot from cheap Chinese imports. They may be angry that some of the manufacturing jobs are disappearing, but they'll be a lot angrier when everything suddenly costs three times as much, works half as well, and takes twice as long to be manufactured, simply because the infrastructure required to do what China does is not there.
And... none of the jobs will come back anyways, because everything will be manufactured by robots.
You missed the point. China buys large numbers of cars made in the US. The Chinese market is so large that if the US is restricted we will suffer loss of jobs as well as income. Apparently I phones are also popular products that we export to China. China has enormous economic power these days. If we get into a disagreement over tariffs the chances are that China will win.
So that's what the i stands for.
idiotPhone.
genius...
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I'm not entirely sure you fully understand supply and demand.
Nobody is going to pay 2x the price for an iPhone, so now the competitors get a chance to take a whack at the 'big dog' exploiting low cost labor.
I think it was a bad google translate.
I think they meant if these trade rules were to take place. Chinese will cut purchasing these popular american products.
Granted most of these products are made in China.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
From the aritlce:
"A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US."
If limiting the number of students studying in the US is on their threat list then the list must represent the entirety of their leverage against the USA because that's a pretty insignificant threat to include.
iPhones and other smartphones being made here will probably up the prices slightly, but most of the estimates I've heard are absurd.
No they are not. For one many/most of the key components for smartphones (and laptops and desktops and...) are made in China too. Where do you think you are going to get parts? The supply chain for these does not exist in the US or EU. Worse China has a monopoly on rare earth minerals without which you cannot build many modern electronics. The US has reserves of these but re-opening the mines for these would not happen overnight.
Trump starting a trade war would drive up prices dramatically on a huge amount of goods and would almost instantly trigger a recession or depression. It would be catastrophically stupid of him to do that. A trade war would benefit no one and it sure as hell would not increase net jobs in the US.
I'd also suspect that the increased wages (higher demand for employees = fewer minimum wage jobs) would more than offset the price increases you'd see.
No it would not. The number of extra people who would be employed by this wouldn't offset the extra cost of production. That is why it is being produced in China now. If that were not true then we would already see production happening here in the US. Furthermore having a few people making higher wages doesn't help the millions who would have to pay more for the product itself. I don't work for Apple or a smartphone manufacturing company so someone else having higher wages doesn't help me one bit.
That wasn't ChrisW's point, so I didn't miss it, but for what it's worth I agree with you, which is part of the reason why I said I don't welcome a trade war with China.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Americans already make cars. Even "Japanese" (Honda, Toyota) cars sold in the US are usually made in the US.
iPhones and other smartphones being made here will probably up the prices slightly, but most of the estimates I've heard are absurd.
iPhones could be made completely in the US and Apple could charge the exact same price for them as they do now and the only difference is Apple's profits would go from ridiculously obscene to only slightly obscene.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
We can make it or buy from somewhere else. China is totally dependent on us and they are scared sh*tless. It's why they will never go to war against us and will negotiate with Trump and he knows it. China has no cards to play.
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.
And just think about how much money you could save if you grew all your own food and sewed all your own clothing!
Sure at the national level you get specialization and multi-tasking that doesn't work with an individual.
But China gives you things for very cheap, and it's hard to help the economy as a whole by stopping people from giving you really cheap things.
I stole this Sig
If China were to do such a thing it might... reduce unemployment in the US.
This sort of drivel is why we have Trump in the White House. Idiots who think a naive sound bite is a valid substitute for sane trade policy and economic reality. A trade war with China would do no such thing. In fact it would almost certainly result in increased unemployment and significantly increased prices on a wide variety of goods. China and the US depend heavily on each other economically. A trade war between China and the US would probably result in at minimum a global recession in the best case scenario.
Because the US is such a small economic power?
He will spin the whole thing as being *their* fault, and a consequence of *their* choices, and not his, liken their position to being that of blackmailers, and encourage the US public to perceive it in the same way.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you really think the fucking Chinese need any outside help to shit on their own citizens' lives and health, have I got something to tell you about fucking China...
That's a myth or fear mongering. US produced most of their items in the 1900's. Sure the big companies weren't able to profit 100 billion dollars a year from it. But the work was local.
Great idea. Can we give them more technology and help them with their military too ? How about we allow them to ignore the climate change accords while we kill off our energy production too. Maybe let them manipulate their currency and buy influence in the west. Let them buy US industry... in ways we could never reciprocate in their country... yes... let's all do what China wants...
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
The rich would pay more for their iPhones and the poor would get jobs.
How much would that suck? Right?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
This vote and the calls for protectionism in the USA and UK strike me as odd. Back in my day... it was the Conservatives and Republicans and similar parties defending trickle-down, supply-side, trade leads to growth, which leads to prosperity for everyone.
Now there's support for reducing freedom of movement in the UK (and other places in Europe), and for the USA to erect trade barriers. All this time, the official explanation was that international trade was not a zero-sum game, that if there's more trade, everyone eventually gains and that protectionism was BAD. I can't remember if state investment on infrastructure was even worse than protectionism, but in any case it was something that Chicago school/Republican politicians just would not have.
Sounds like now In Republican America, state interventions Trump China?
Yes, the Americans could start producing iPhones and cars.
The US makes millions of cars and commercial vehicles every year. Auto manufacturing is alive and well in the US. However high labor costs in the US necessitate a high level of automation in US auto assembly plants so increases in auto production in the US won't result in higher wages or substantially increased employment in the auto assembly plants.
So, basically the economy would go up because of lower unemployment, and down from higher prices..
Faulty analysis. A trade war with China would cause short term unemployment in both the US and China to rise because prices would immediately rise. It would take substantial time for alternative supply chains to be built and high costs would result in fewer product sales and thus fewer jobs. Virtually all economists agree that protecionism is a net negative for the economy as a whole even if it positively impacts select industries. This is economics 101 stuff. Protectionism is almost never a net benefit to a society.
The trade deficit with China last year was $365 billion. With an all out 100% trade war, China loses $365 billion more than we do. How is that winning?
We have the upper hand since currently we are the ones giving them net money.
(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!
Hahahahahahahaha.
We in American buy far more products from China than China does of our products. China would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Net worth 3.7Billion. US. That puts him pretty firmly in the billionaire club. Whoever you are I understand why you post as AC.
Any smartphone manufacturer who employs cheap (foreign) labor ends up with a competitive advantage over a domestic manufacturer, while still benefiting from the domestic manufacturer's decision to build in the US and employ US workers.
That is correct. As long as the US has wages that substantially exceed those of other countries there will be a strong pull to locate labor intensive jobs in places where labor costs are low. That is why most US based manufacturing is capital intensive instead of labor intensive.
It would be a very good thing if electronics makers were to start building in the US, but without being forced to as a group, it's not going to happen because while all of them building in the US together would have no negative impacts, any of them choosing not to participate would negatively impact those that do.
It would (probably) be a good thing but trade barriers will NOT accomplish that goal. Those industries will only come back to the US for one of three reasons. 1) Technological advancement, 2) Labor costs falling in the US relative to elsewhere or, 3) advances in automation turning labor intensive production into capital intensive production. But since the supply chains for electronics production have spent the last 3-4 decades moving to Asia they aren't going to come back quickly even if they ever do. Asian manufacturers have a currently insurmountable cost advantage so production will stay there until that is overcome. Trade barriers will not in any way erase the cost advantage.
How does the DMCA stop manufacturing from returning to the US. You really need to explain the logic of that claim. I could understand EPA regulations since electronics manufacturing can be dirty but I am not sure where copyright comes into it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Debt is only an asset if you can collect it. There's no debt collector out there big enough to muscle up on the USA at the moment, so who is China going to call? And if they ruin our credit rating, what's that do to theirs? Nothing positive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The key word is: eventually.
In the short term during a trade war, everyone who works selling Chinese made stuff loses their jobs. Everyone who works making things which require Chinese made parts loses their jobs. Anyone who works making stuff that is exported to China (about eighteen billion dollars of manufactured goods) loses their jobs.
Meanwhile you can't conjure all that manufacturing capacity we had in the early 90s back overnight. It took China over ten years to replace that, and that was with government support. It's reasonable to assume it'll take us roughly as long, and with equal government support. The new factories, however, will be far more automated than the factories that closed in the 90s, so don't expect to get all those jobs back.
The unpleasant truth is that you can't make such a huge change in your economy and then just take it back because the change hurts. Undoing the change will hurt almost as much.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
All over Asia these days. The pricest components, eg SoC, RAM, and storage, are fabbed somewhere in Asia, if I recall the location of TSMCs foundries correctly.
Because of American minimum wages, most oversees work that gets forced to be done domestically will just get automated instead. If Apple and the like have no choice but to spend more money, they'll spend it in automation development. Instead of 100 Chinese low wage jobs, you'll get 5 American techs to maintain the equipment.
"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.
Considering 15% is considered amazing profits and is more then twice the average for all industries, I would say 35-40% is the definition of Famously High.
Now for the bad news, Apple has never had 35 to 40% profits, 20 to 25% if you want to be generous. But that still fits the famously high mark.
https://ycharts.com/companies/...
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
rule #1 is actually:
Those with the gold make the rules
We are the ones buying things, therefore negotiations favor us. China isnt even close to the only country with cheap labor and a willingness to pollute.
"His name was James Damore."
Sadly, we made them that way in no small part because of the issue with their currency Trump is making. He is just decades too late.
Heh, yeah. Although the petty property damage doesn't bother me all too much, I worry much more about the people getting beaten and dragged behind their vehicles like in Chicago because they were the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood. And people burning effigies of Trump in the streets. By goodness, grow up!
Being pissed because your candidate lost is one thing (even if the irony of their lack of self-awareness is lost on them), but trying to start a civil war because you've been mislead by the media is quite another, and it's one lesson everyone has to learn the hard way at some point in their lives or you never truly become an adult. Starting fires and killing people only gives the media whores what they want.
That's just it, it won't be an "all out" trade war. The summary mentioned two products, iPhones and cars, China will pick the products that hurt the US the most. What the counteraction will be, I don't know.
Foreign students can pay a lot more for their education than domestic students, and hence they are quite a cash cow for educational institutions. Don't under estimate this threat, as those same educational institutions will have to replace that income somehow - most obviously by either receiving more subsidies or by increasing the cost of education for domestic students.
And the loss of the worlds largest market wouldn't hurt US companies at all? The loss of billions in revenue wouldn't cause cutbacks or layoffs? This isn't about manufacturing, this would be blocking the Chinese market from US companies. No one would import American products into China because the tariffs would be too high.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Do you relish the day when no American products are sold in China (what the article is actually talking about)? When US profits tank due to the loss the world's largest market?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Which is just fine. That is a 5 well paid job gain, everyone else in the world who wants those iphones will have to buy them from us which will reduce our trade deficit.
Global economics is massively more complicated than this. And ramping up America's manufacturing capabilities would take over a decade.
At its core the reason Trump is going to be #45 is that most of this countries liberals and bunch of people who normally consider themselves conservatives consider the wealth distribution to be a problem.
I suspect its an optimization problem. Globalism and free-trade policy optimize for maximum economic output but not necessarily for equitable distribution. So they leave you with two options heavy handed policy of direct redistribution, which America has never been about or potentially looking at a return to some form of mercantilism abroad.
The reality is Apple isn't going to get out of the iPhone business if they can't make them in China they will either find somewhere else like Vietnam to do (depending on how the trade policies get implemented) it or they will make them here. The cost of a iPhone (or any smart phone) probably goes up, and therefore the median standard of living probably declines somewhat. On the other hand some jobs come back to the states and the mean distribution of income levels out a little.
The truth is China isn't actually in all that great a position when it comes to trade war. We can tariff imports but not exports (Constitutionally) an import tariff on our side had a similar economic impact as an export tariff on theirs it makes their goods more expensive for the American consumer, and in theory American goods or American alternatives more competitive at the margin. The only difference is to which government the tax revenue flows. We have a trade deficit with China today, yes they can negatively impact some American industries and favor some of their domestic industry but not as broadly as we can that in reverse.
China does not currently have the domestic sink for their economic outputs we have either, that is changing but its not there today. My guess is if we really shut down the China trade today it would trigger a recession here and depression deflation driven death spiral there. The reality is China will quickly learn they have to keep the doors open to sell into the American market as much as possible or they are really screwed.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
OK, apparently there is a reading comprehension fail on this. What the Chinese government said is that they will respond by not allowing Apple and American car companies to sell their products in China, NOT that they would stop selling stuff to Apple and American car companies.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, US manufacture would move iPhone production to robots.
But China gives you things for very cheap, and it's hard to help the economy as a whole by stopping people from giving you really cheap things.
Short term vs long term thinking.
You would probably agree that things like "dumping" -- flooding the market with below-market-price items in order to harm domestic industry -- are not good, even though technically dumping just gives people really cheap things. The loss to domestic industry is immediate enough that people can put it together. It gets harder for some reason when you have to think 10-20 years down the road, human nature I guess, or at least Western nature.
But the best schools are already heavily oversubscribed so they wont be left wanting for students if China stops sending theirs.
Oh man that would be horrible. If only we had some equivalent thing to threaten China with, only even bigger since we have a $365 billion trade deficit with them, meaning their loss will be much larger than our loss.
a contingency plan for this. I wouldn't be surprised if Tim himself isn't touring foundries in the USA and other countries that will fall outside of Trump's embargo.
i am so very tired....
Economically it's a losing proposition for China. There's a good chance they will do something anyway out of pride, a show of strength for the citizenry, or even a national security concern... but I just don't think it'll be that major. If they choose cars and iPhones because those are big, the retaliation from the US would be severe and much much bigger, because they have so much more to lose, and so many specialized industries that don't even have a US counterpart anymore due to decades of outsourcing. If they just want to make a point, I think they'll pick some minor things to save face while agreeing to reduce the overall deficit.
But who knows. Interesting times.
Right, they will purposely tank their economy instead. Failed Econ 101 did we?
Remind the Democrats that burning effigies emits carbon.
Donald is about to learn that running the USA is much more difficult than pretending to be a successful businessman on reality TV.
iPhones could be made completely in the US and Apple could charge the exact same price for them as they do now and the only difference is Apple's profits would go from ridiculously obscene to only slightly obscene.
Whoa, buddy. You're talking about affecting America's first class citizens: shareholders. What next? A decent wage increase for the middle class? You're mad!
Heavily oversubscribed by students willing to pay the same amount for that place, or heavily oversubscribed by students who would pay a lot less for that place?
Sure it would hurt some companies, but it would decimate China's economy. Grab your popcorn and watch how fast they negotiate.
Doesn't a market disappearing look the same as having a lower demand for the product, and thus drive costs *down* as companies need to offload surplus?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
with a combination of technical innovation and forced labor through the private prison system, we could probably reclaim quite a bit from our landfills?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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.
A bit of understatement. At these prices they could manufacture them in orbit and still stay marginally profitable.
Really, though, even if Trump cuts off China completely, any increase in employment here will be offset by an increased cost of living as we pay for much more expensive labor than we had been. It's probably also worth noting that most economists believe that if China stops buying US bonds it'll lead to a recession. The simple fact is our economies depend on each other, and that's what this threat is about. Trump said "We're gonna screw China!" and China responded with, "Well we're gonna screw you right back!"
The U.S. is the largest exporter of Pork, Beef, Almonds, Cherries, Ginsing, Soybeans, and misc Grains/Seeds to China. They screwed their farmland for manufacturing and have run out of room to go back which is why they're trying to lay claim to the south china sea to rape and pillage that also. They're not in a very good position to negotiate with the best deal maker on the planet. Both Japan and Korea would smell blood in the water and make a possible move on China if they don't deal with the U.S. and we severely weaken them and there's no doubt Trump would turn a blind eye because he's focused on the U.S. first.
Focusing on iPhones means you're really not paying attention.
China buys about 50% more of EVERYthing than the US does.
If you think the US can win a war like that, you're seriously self-deluded.
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.
Bullshit. China has the capacity to replace all the manufacturing they buy from the US, if they want. Remember they have whole cities sitting empty.
We don't have an extra billion people to replace those purchases.
It's a very lopsided war, and we will lose if China wants us to.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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**
We can manufacture all the cheap shit they do, too, we just need to give up clean air, clean water, spacious homes, etc...
Well, two other options.. raise the prices, or use more automation.
any increase in employment here will be offset by an increased cost of living as we pay for much more expensive labor than we had been
That really depends on how well the locally produced goods continue to compete internationally. Apple sells phones all over the world, not just here. Because of current tax structure they don't bring back the money from international sales to the US, nor do they pay taxes on it. If they suddenly produced all their phones here, they would have to pay taxes on every single one sold around the world. (Their current argument and legal basis is that "a company in China makes the phones, a Greek company ships them to Germany, a German retail company sells them to Germans.. the US division of Apple isn't even involved..." that would obviously no longer work.)
Even ignoring the taxes, we wouldn't just be bringing back "$X that used to go to China." It would be bringing back "$X that used to go to China from the US, plus $Y that used to go to China from the rest of the world."
Of course if iPhones can no longer be sold internationally that would fail. But it just doesn't seem likely to me.. after all there are LG phones made in South Korea and HTC phones made in Taiwan and they have comparable hardware to an iPhone but don't cost 2-3 times as much.
Apple doesn't manufacture in China for the price. It manufactures for the flexibility. When Apple says people have to work 24 hour shifts so that the iPhone 7 can meet its launch date people in China do that whereas people in US would not. Labor laws. Apple will bring back factories if forced to but will automate them instead of using humans. Heck during launch time even Apple Employees with masters degrees sleep at the office. How tolerant are they going to be of high school graduates refusing to work late because they have a daughters soccer match to attend
**Life is too short to be serious**
Fun fact: nearly all Android phones are made in places just like China...
But please continue.
In other news, that is curious that the Chinese would call out the iPhone, since a few of their own corporations make some not-insubstantial cash from manufacturing the things...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
China doesn't have the people to replace purchases either, at least not at the same price. They are poor remember? And they are too frugal to spend any amount of money on most of the cheap disposable crap we buy from them.
Look the math is simple and incontrovertible. We send $X worth of goods to China. China sends $(X + 365,000,000,000) worth of goods to the US.
A trade war hurts China more than it hurts us. Can you tell me what specifically you're disagreeing with? I really just don't understand. Give me some numbers to show that the US would be hurt more.
It's very high if you compare them against hardware manufacturers. It's not so high if you compare them against software companies. If you take the combined per unit profit of Dell and Microsoft, for example, then it's in a similar ballpark.
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When ever trade is more than 10% difference, the nation being hurt is allowed to put tariffs on imports from that nation. As such, W and O SHOULD have this as well but did not. Hopefully trump will do this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
More importantly those educational institutions publish policy papers and mould public opinion. They can publish paers which convince Trump is the next coming of Hitler and have the people riot in the streets. Oh never mind they are already doing that.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The trade deficit with China last year was $365 billion. With an all out 100% trade war, China loses $365 billion more than we do. How is that winning?
We have the upper hand since currently we are the ones giving them net money.
You really have no idea how economies and trade wars work, do you?
If you think that it's simply a matter of "net money", I have some very sad news for you my friend.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Lots of well-paid jobs setting up and maintaining the robots. Better than nothing.
love is just extroverted narcissism
If China were to do such a thing it might... reduce unemployment in the US.
Precisely! The main reason to manufacture in China, aside from their vast pool of skilled but cheap labor, is their vast market. If the companies that manufacture there can't sell there, then they are just riding a high cost of shipping from there to their end destinations. Already, Apple is trying to get investments in India for manufacturing of iPhones and Macs, but for the US, it would make most sense for them to make stuff if not in CA itself, maybe in nearby states where taxes & regulations are less punitive.
Companies like Foxconn, Asus, et al would also have to set up manufacturing in the US, or risk going out of business. Only thing - they would probably prefer Right to Work states to Unionized states in the Rust belt that put Trump over the top, so he'd still have to figure out how to get jobs back there.
Keep scuffing your feet and being mad about it, that always works.
Even if Trump could throw a magic switch and have Apple decide in Februrary 2017 to produce all of the iPhones in the US, have you given any thought to how long it would take to tool up something like an iPhone factory in the US? Foxconn has literally thousands of engineers just to design the production process and around 1 million employees. I'm sure you're thinking, "Great! That's a million new jobs for the US." How long will it take to interview and hire a million people? How long will it take to design the assembly lines? How long would it take to build a factory where those people work? You're probably thinking that we could use all of those closed factories all around the country, but I think most of those probably had a few thousand workers, so you'd probably need around a hundred of those. That's not great for scaling to the production volume of the iPhones. You're probably looking at 5-10 years before something like this is even possible. All in all, getting Apple to make the iPhones in the US makes a great sound byte, but 5-10 years is not a practical timeframe for a competitive market segment.
I'm sure that China would love to see their factories idle while production of low-cost goods for the US market place shifts to indonesia, bangladesh, etc.
When US profits tank due to the loss the world's largest market?
The EU trading bloc is actually the world's largest market. It's got a comparable GDP to the US (whthin measurement error, pretty much), which is still substantially larger than China, and trades as a single entity.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
good and you will let use deal with North Korea as well.
Also time cook next time we want a iPhone unlocked do it or it's gitmo for you.
What is "tat" and where can I exchange it for tit?
Seriously.
Are we THAT terrified of not getting luxury goods?
Of having to actually do some of that heavy labor in-country here?
The way we're going right now, China's going to eventually own this country. Lock, stock and barrel.
If we want to prevent this from happening, this country's going to have to bite the bullet at some point.
I'd rather do it now, where it's only going to hurt a LOT. As opposed to 20-50 years down the road, when we're so deeply upside-down that China just forecloses on the country, and the REAL pain begins.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Within the US, there will be a race - it won't necessarily be manufactured in CA - they may choose something like AL or MS or LA (the costs alone would veto Tim Cook's SJW activist objections on doing it there). But there are no laws in the US banning automation, which is where a bulk of manufacturing is these days, whether in China or here. So local wages would probably be something above minimum wage that can cover COLA. It would still be cheaper than imported goods w/ tariffs.
One thing about tariffs - if charged, they should be charged at point of entry, not point of sale. If it's the latter, it's just a case of screwing the US consumer, but if it's the former and the product doesn't sell, the company is forced to either consider ways of getting it made in the US, or not selling here in the first place
Start looking at how much they spend on advertisement and you'll find where a big chunk of the profit goes.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Apple doesn't manufacture in China for the price. It manufactures for the flexibility. When Apple says people have to work 24 hour shifts so that the iPhone 7 can meet its launch date people in China do that whereas people in US would not. Labor laws. Apple will bring back factories if forced to but will automate them instead of using humans. Heck during launch time even Apple Employees with masters degrees sleep at the office. How tolerant are they going to be of high school graduates refusing to work late because they have a daughters soccer match to attend
You are aware many companies that require 24/7 uptime just run multiple shifts, right? They could easily run production for 24 hours a day here in the US but it would require 3x the manpower to do so. Again, they could easily afford it without raising prices.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"Let's not forget the regulatory difference. Some of that manufacturing is unprofitable to bring to the states because it is so dirty."
Its dirty the way they do it. I am not convinced that we can't figure out how to do it cleanly. We're already making much of our electricity with natural gas, solar, and wind, which is likely to only continue to get better since we have absolute oceans of natural gas, and the Dakotas are the Saudi Arabia of wind. Solar is everwhere, and these interruptable sources will, if we _ever_ get the magic battery that will store that much electrical energy, take over completely. Then things will be _really_ clean. We only then have to manage the various chemicals we use in our processes. I think we can, with the gov't aiding us instead of hindering us.
Sure, as long as you're ready for the next iPhone model to cost twice as much as the previous one and be capable of less. There are reasons why manufacturing and assembly line jobs have moved out of the USA, you know.
Damn those OSHA requirements and labor laws, I want my cheap iPhone now!
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Fun fact: nearly all Android phones are made in places just like China...
But please continue.
In other news, that is curious that the Chinese would call out the iPhone, since a few of their own corporations make some not-insubstantial cash from manufacturing the things...
True, but the iPhone's prime contractor happens to be Foxconn which is technically a Taiwanese company. Relations aren't great between Taiwan and China at the current time (due to the election of a pro-independence President in Taiwan).
Of course many of the subcontractors are Chinese companies and they would be of course be impacted...
Apple cannot manufacture in the U.S. without replacing most of their supply chain. While Apple may make a lot of profit, even they are not rich enough to do that.
Actually, GM and Ford cars sell better abroad, since they don't have the reputation that they had in the 70s of selling overpriced but inferior cars. In the US, where things like market demand dampen the resale value, in countries like China, where there are enough people to buy anything that works, GM or Ford do fine on their own
Not without a new supply chain which they would have to build from scrap. That won't happen over-night if it is even possible.
"Everyone who doesn't agree with me is a nazi!" Film at 11.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Or are you saying that Trump supporters are opposed to the free market?
I think Trump supporters (primarily though not exclusively working class rural white people) are absolutely terrified of a free market and a great many of them don't understand international trade at all. Sound bites are a lot easier than macroeconomics. Xenophobic sound bites that make foreigners scapegoats for their own failings and those of their country even more so.
Or maybe there coalitions that support candidates for a variety of reasons - and that not all the positions held by the supporters are in common?
Of course plenty of Trump supporters supported his lunacy for reasons other than protectionist sabre rattling. Some for reasons of racism, some for sexism, some for tribalistic loyalty to the republican party, some for pure amusement, some for unreasoning hatreds (KKK etc), some for misplaced fears ("2nd amendment people"), and plenty of other reasons besides. Most of them wrongheaded and ill considered but reasons all the same.
Therefore you agree that not all Republicans are for the free market.
Republicans have NEVER been for a free market. They just want a particular version of a capitalist market. Republicans have routinely been against "free" trade. If you recall during the most recent Bush administration they imposed steel tariffs which had the perverse outcome of reducing domestic steel production, increasing the cost of steel, and reducing employment in associated industries (like automakers).
By the NAFTA is not an example of free and open markets. Neither is TPP.
True but there is no such thing as a pure free market. In actual fact a pure free market would be a VERY bad thing. But those trade agreements DO reduce net trade barriers. Whether or not that is a net benefit to society is a separate question endemic to the particulars of the agreements in question.
You would probably agree that things like "dumping" -- flooding the market with below-market-price items in order to harm domestic industry -- are not good, even though technically dumping just gives people really cheap things.
The main victims of "dumping" are those who practice it. If you naively try to compete with dumping on price then you'll lose for sure, but if you're smart you'll just wait it out while focusing on R&D, expanding into different areas, or even just "hibernating" to minimize operating expenses—eventually they'll run out of funds, leaving you perfectly poised to reenter the market in an even stronger position than before. Meanwhile, everyone gets cheap goods at the dumpers' expense.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Random inane post.
Keep saying they're poor. While they destroy our economy.
If China wants, they can replace the $X worth of goods we send them with local manufacturing. If we do the same, our prices double. Theirs won't. Guess who wins & who loses.
It's that simple.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
All over Asia these days. The pricest components, eg SoC, RAM, and storage, are fabbed somewhere in Asia, if I recall the location of TSMCs foundries correctly.
SoC are mostly fabbed in Taiwan
RAM is mostly fabbed in Korea and Malaysia
TSMC has some fabs in china through SMIC "investment", but none are leading edge (which is needed for advanced smartphones).
Although many folks think all trade is bad, mostly Trump has been talking about punishing a currency manipulator: which is basically China, not Taiwan nor Korea (at least recently, although they have both done so in the past).
Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Brazil etc are all manufacturing/export economies.
Granting not as big as China, but it's not like there are only two players. India might even pull itself together someday.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No, there will be no government support. Republicans do not believe in a national economic polity. These are the same bozos who would have gladly sold the car industry down the river during the Great Recession in a bid to rival the Great Depression. Their grasp of economic reality is about as tight as their grasp of zephyr.
That's not a million new jobs in the US, but probably 50,000 new jobs in the US, maybe less. We will automate what they have people standing at tables by the 1000's to assemble by hand. They have cheap labor, so cannot afford to automate. We can. Still, 50,000 new American jobs which may cost the company, say, $70,000 a year with all the benefits and such is still a good deal when compared to a million Chinese costing them maybe $5 / hr, or $10,000 / yr. These of course are not real, researched numbers, but probably aren't all that far off either. That would be 10 billion dollars for the 1 million Chinese workers and 3 billion, 500 million for the US workers. Don't know how much for the additional costs of the machinery, but the machinery works 24/7 and doesn't get tired or sick. Apparently we need more US workers, or the machinery costs are sufficient to keep us from doing this here now, but I think if the taxes are lowered on US manufacturing, and a lot of costly regulations that don't benefit in proportion to their cost are eliminated, we can get this done, and the jobs back here.
5. Raise prices by 25-50%
#DeleteChrome
Talking about Saudi Arabia's military is laughable - they showed it in 1991, when they were begging the US to send in troops to prevent Saddam from rolling in. They have a population of 30M, and are a 'power' only wrt their much weaker neighbors like Bahrein or Yemen. Forget the US - they are shit scared of Iran toppling their monarchy or pulling off a Shi'ite revolution which would end in Mecca & Medina under Shi'ite control. Also, the Arabs have not had a good fighting military since the 13th century, when Baghdad was leveled by the Mongols, except for those in Egypt under the Mamluqs, and then Saladin.
While I may be wrong on this assumption, I think that having to spend more money on their own people, and less money overall as a result of oil prices tanking has resulted in them having less cash to splurge either on Sunnite Jihadists in Syria, or in building mosques and spreading Islam overseas. Just wondering how many more years of oil do they have in their reserves. If either they run out, or we find an oil alternative that makes our current generation of cars obsolete, those Arab countries will end up as empty as countries like Rwanda or Burundi.
5x more people doesn't magically make for any sort of wealth. It means you have a massive labor pool. In order to get people to use that labor pool you need to keep it cheap. Undervaluing your currency means you can cheat and make it cheaper than it really is, growing internally while remaining dirt cheap on the global market. Without that cheat, your labor along with all hassles of dealing with your poor infrastructure, poorly regulated quality standards, and the massive costs and delays of transporting goods produced by that cheap labor start being much more expensive and aren't such a great incentive for other nations to give you their wealth. So they cheated, they cheated hard, they are still cheating but now the cheat isn't needed nearly so much because they've already siphoned trillions and trillions of dollars worth of wealth from our economy and used it improve infrastructure, steamline shipping, improve quality standards, steal billions upon billions of dollars worth of technology from people who took the bait and produced goods there, etc.
20 years ago we could have strong armed the Chinese into playing fair and offset any advantage they had on labor because we were the only sizable market. This would have kept more manufacturing local and we'd have a much stronger economy today. The size of the market is NOT defined by how many people you have, it is defined by how much those people collectively have to spend on goods and services. Where would you rather a niche must have product that only you make, a market of 100 people with $20 to spare, or a market of 5 people with a billion dollars to spare.
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.
Keep saying they're poor. While they destroy our economy.
You're the one who wants to let them destroy our economy by putting our heads in the sand and not reacting. You CANNOT sustain a $365 billion trade deficit. It will destroy your economy.
If China wants, they can replace the $X worth of goods we send them with local manufacturing. If we do the same, our prices double. Theirs won't.
Guess what, even without a trade war, China IS replacing that $X of goods with local manufacturing, slowly but surely. That's why their manufacturing increases every year. They do more and more stuff. That's why our trade deficit with China grows every year. And they're transitioning from manufacturing cheap crap to more complex stuff.
Your "down side" to a trade war is already happening. I mean open your eyes. Check out this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...
The American 1880s electric components manufacturer is turning to China. Even if that requires partnering with their nuclear scientists who may one day eat Westinghouse’s lunch not only in China, but in the U.S. and the rest of the world too.
[...]
In 2008-09 it signed a technology transfer agreement with the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp (SNPTC) to build the AP1000 and its Chinese spin-off called the CAP1400.
According to the World Nuclear Association, that tech agreement is what got them the contract to build the reactors in China, the latest and greatest in Westinghouse nuclear technology.
[...]
Jack Allen, then president of Westinghouse for Asia, told the Financial Times in 2010 that the company had no guarantees of its role in China after the four AP1000s were built with their Chinese partners. That was the year they handed over 75,000 documents to SNPTC, which might as well have been titled How to Build an American Nuclear Power Plant.
“We don’t know what will happen. We don’t expect to walk away after the completion of those units and not participate in (China’s) nuclear program,” Allen says. “But there are no guarantees.”
So please, tell me more about how we have a wonderful mutually beneficial trading arrangement with China currently, and only a loony trade war will ever make China produce the stuff that we currently produce. Please.
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
They did give something up, it's called quality of life. We can manufacture all the cheap shit they do, too, we just need to give up clean air, clean water, spacious homes, etc...
I am not even sure about that.
Many companies find themselves forced to go to China for manufacturing. The US and Europe simply don't have the production capacity to meet the goals in a timely manner.
They didn't give up quality of life. It was already low to begin with and it is improving. Soon enough, if the trend continues, China will have sucked all the mass-production industry from the west and can start increasing the prices to improve their quality of life over ours. And once our means of production are gone, it is hard to get back.
This is your opportunity to make good on one of your campaign promises, to curb China's abusive trade policies. Your response should be an immediate announcement of a trade war with China, as deliberate provocation. Yeah, we'll have to pay a bit more for phones that do everything but make phone calls, sure, and we'll lose access to their restrictive and heavily manipulated market, but their economy will go from being a house of cards to a smoking crater, and they'll never fuck with you again.
Plus, by doing this immediately, Obama gets the blame, as it happens on his shift, and the worse of the fallout will be settling by January 20, and you can take credit for the make up. Win/win.
There is something called a static and dynamic economy. Like take taxes. It's assumed that if you raise taxes, you'll raise revenue, and vice versa. But that only works initially. After being hit by taxes, people would adjust their economic behavior so that they get hit w/ less the next time around. Whether it is downsizing, offshoring, whatever
The same thing applies to trade. Let's say tariffs are increased. Initially, they would result in higher costs for those goods, and less sales. But the companies in question ain't gonna just eat those lower sales numbers. Also, they (not Apple itself maybe, but certainly the Samsungs and others) are likely to face competition from domestic manufacturers, who now have a window of opportunity. And these companies would also determine if they want to continue to participate in the US market. If yes, they would want to be competitive w/ those domestic manufacturers and have some operations in the US.
The other thing to note is that a lot of the labor intensive processes are now automated - whether in China or Taiwan or US. So that's not where there will be a cost differential. The cost differential will be in COLA, but that's where they have to see whether China COLA + Tariffs > US COLA or not. And there will be other factors that affect those ultimate prices.
Impossible to compete with China in the manufacturing sector because they can do it cheaper. The most obvious reasons are their labor force is paid far, FAR less than ours. Manipulating your currency to ensure you can undercut the world in manufacturing is another. Other factors like those silly environmental laws and making sure the products we're selling aren't tainted with lead, zinc and other crazy things isn't something they take very seriously.
That will eventually come back to bite them in the ass because if your own population doesn't have the funds to buy your product, then you're forced to sell them overseas. Which is pretty much the case here. Once someone in a major market gets tired of your bullshit and places tariffs on all imported goods from your country, which side is going to feel the greater sting ?
The buyers who want all their electronics based gear as cheaply as possible ?
Or the Chinese Economy whose entire EXISTENCE relies on exporting cheap materials and goods for the aforementioned gear ?
Yes, everything will become more expensive for a time, but China will quickly realize their economy will absolutely implode if they refuse to play ball. If you want to play on the World stage, you are required to play by the World's rules. If you don't like it, too bad. Sell your shit to your own citizens and stfu.
It's like a game of chicken. Just have to see who flinches first.
Russia and China gave done it numerous times. They will be happy to lose 25% of their economy if they believe they can hurt the west. Keep in mind that from Chinese leaders pov, they are in a cold war with the west
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nope. That can be kept clean. It was dirty because companies cheated.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And how much idling in the US would you like to see. A trade war rarely has winners. If Trump wants to play economic protectionist, he will damage key sectors of the US economy
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I work for a company that designs automation, I still design automation from time to time (IT manager now) There are still A LOT of tasks that you simply can not automate cost effectively. I am not sure why a lot of people on slash dot assume you can just automate everything for low costs.
I think you missed the lecture on economies of scale.
Well, in the end, it will be countries other than the US and China that win.
To take your example, there would then be 2*$X in goods seeking buyers in other markets. This flood of supply would reduce the costs that Europe, etc. pay. So, even if the US "won", we would be worse off.
"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."
.1% who own them will move along with them leaving the US behind.
This is no more true of countries than people. People who are dirt poor don't stay dirt poor because they are incompetent, they stay dirt poor because they lack the resources to get ahead. Those who have the resources use those resources to bribe/strong arm everyone into giving them so much advantage over those with few that the uphill battle to get resources is nearly impossible to climb. Some trickle will manage it but the vast vast majority of those who try will fail and have lost most of the little they had to begin with ending up even more dirt poor.
Having 4 times the population meant China had a large labor pool. They could have exploited that legitimately to produce goods domestically but they had no industry, no technology, no modern designs/blue prints, no expertise, no infrastructure and were half way across the world making transport of goods expensive. So the Chinese cheated, they massively undervalued their currency relative to countries that had all these things to make it so tempting we built the industry and just enough infrastructure for them, we gave them our expertise, they stole our designs/blue prints, they used everything we gave them especially the wealth they were siphoning to build domestic versions of everything we were foolish enough to teach them about and manufacture there, they've used our wealth to build an infrastructure. Now Trump is probably too late, China could have been 4x as many of us but malnourished, with rickets, and slingshots while were healthy, strong, and armed with assault rifles. Now they have AK-47's vs our pretty and polished M16's, it is debatable how much better our weapons even really are and there are 4x as many of them.
We are being just as stupid with regard to India as well. They are sending more or less untrained and uneducated workers with "degrees" to us, while "devaluing" in the form of domestic inflation/ridiculously favorable investments only open to people from India. Even if those workers stay their money still goes back to and stays in India building that country up. Eventually we will have funded yet another country with a massive population we can't compete with. We need to let go of this backwards thinking that we somehow win because "American corporations" are winning... the corporations gaining the benefits may have started here but they aren't American anymore, they are global and when the US has given away all it's wealth to China and India it will no longer be a useful market and they'll just close their offices here. The wealthy top
We have more leverage right now to do something positive than we will if we endure another 20-30 years of steady erosion and status quo because we're afraid of starting a trade war.
Realistically, we can impose tariffs on China and start recalibrating our manufacturing industries without triggering a trade war. It will probably have to include some things that we've been philosophically opposed to in the past, like state support of industry.... just like China has done for decades to give themselves a competitive advantage.
And how much idling in the US would you like to see. A trade war rarely has winners. If Trump wants to play economic protectionist, he will damage key sectors of the US economy
And he gives ZERO fucks. He will do it if such an action pleases him.
Holy smokes you've smoked WAY too much Trump crack.
Well, two other options.. raise the prices, or use more automation.
Um, raising the prices is exactly what would increase the cost of living, it's another option it's what I described... And if automation were cheaper than Chinese labor, business would have already gone that route, so again this leads to an increase in the cost of goods which is an increase in the cost of living.
That really depends on how well the locally produced goods continue to compete internationally.
Right, and with the cost to manufacture guaranteed to increase, the retail price will increase as well. There's not a lot of room for radical improvements in most products that can be implemented cheaply to increase the value of locally produced goods alongside the price. They will not be competitive in an international market where folks can continue to get cheaply made items from other countries. Stopping American companies from producing goods as cheaply as possible will not do anything to stop foreign companies from doing so. If there were room for an increase in quality that wouldn't just be matched by foreign companies cheaper, it might be a different story, but even if there were it would mean that while manufacturing costs increase companies also need to increase R&D spending to come up with some new breakthrough that'll give them an edge, all to make buying more expensive products worthwhile.
Now, I'm assuming this would go alongside a total ban on consumer goods imports from all countries, otherwise there would be nothing stopping even Americans from just buying the cheap imports (which is what we've already chosen to do, no reason to stop) from some other country. There won't be a lot of motivation left for anyone to sell us the raw materials we need to make any of our high quality goods and there's only so much you can dig up here... You see where this is going, right? A total shitshow. The US does not exist in a bubble, our economy does not survive without other countries. I don't believe in any sort of world government type of thing, but we'd all do well to realize that the economy is a global thing, we measure statistics by country but no first world country's economy is independent, what's bad for one of us is bad for all of us.
But automation means you have factories with relatively few people working in them. And that is the problem. No matter how this plays out, you don't employ all those angry Rust Belters, because manufacturers won't need them. Whether it's low-paid Chinese building those phones or robots in the US, the effect would be the same; no great surge in employment in that sector. But really, even now, Chinese factories are investing heavily in automation, so probably in the next ten years or so, a lot of Chinese workers will be in the same boat.
The game is up. Manufacturing is no longer going to be a major employer, no matter how many low-wage countries the US tries to punish. If those Rust Belters think Donald Trump can get them their jobs back, well, then, for lack of a better word, they are naive.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Perhaps they'll figure out they're on the wrong end if they haven't already.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If dumping fails to eliminate some competitors, then yes. If it does, then no. Simple as that.
When the dumper has the support of a government like China that is willing to reallocate resources to protect an industry of strategic interest, the chances that you'll outlast them without some government intervention of your own are zero.
Oh man that would be horrible. If only we had some equivalent thing to threaten China with, only even bigger since we have a $365 billion trade deficit with them, meaning their loss will be much larger than our loss.
I wonder what impact our different political and social structures would have?
Can the Chinese leadership just declare new policy and have it rubberstamped by the legislature while the USA takes months or years debating particular responses? Can the Chinese leadership handle the loss of that $365 billion for a longer time, starving their own population to save face while the USA might have more difficulty sustaining resolve, even if the losses are lesser?
I think the Chinese leadership has some concern about the population as a whole and probably needs to continue to maintain some broad support or they risk revolt, but the US population is already pretty divided, and it seems unlikely that a "trade war" would be universally supported.
Just because it might be objectively worse for one side compared to another by some measure, does not mean that they won't think that they will come out ahead in the end.
I am not even sure about that.
Many companies find themselves forced to go to China for manufacturing. The US and Europe simply don't have the production capacity to meet the goals in a timely manner.
Their production capacity is a result of their long-term status as a manufacturing hub. If labor in the US were as cheap as it were in China for the past couple hundred years, all those factories could have been built here instead. To suggest production can't be brought back into the USA is pessimistic nonsense, it can, it's just not cost effective. Do I think it'll be good for business? No, absolutely not. I'm just saying it's possible.
What about the non-fucking Chinese? Certainly in their vast country there have to be people not fucking despite their yuuuuge population.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
your logic is flawed.
In the current trade war China is a clear winner.
The trick is the US can and does feed itself. Very few populous nations can actually do that independently.
You'd need about 2 decades of dustbowl-level disaster for the US to actually need anything from any other nation.
that you simply can not automate cost effectively
What is not cost effective in a low wage country quickly becomes more cost effective in a much higher wage country. The point is, 100 jobs in China will never equate to 100 jobs in the US. The US environment has a lot more pressure towards automation.
The US unskilled labor market just needs to understand/learn that they aren't worth what they feel they're worth in a global economy. On a global scale, it's a "get skilled, or get bent" situation. I'm not saying it to be mean, but that is the reality.
Stop sales of cars and iPhones? The aftermath: tens of millions of Chinese are suddenly out of work, in big cities where they can cause trouble. Chinese currency flatlines. Financial panic, uprisings, revolution.
Go ahead, China.
And those jobs will be outsourced to H1B visa holders. Still no jobs for Americans.
Magically re-creating the entire lost supply chain for every single good China produces would probably be similar to what would happen if we were actually involved in a World War III style scenario with them. If the country had to, immediately and overnight, consider China a dead country in terms of production capacity, some pretty serious interventions on our side would have to happen. During World War II, the military basically requisitioned the entire production capacity of the country because they couldn't build equipment and supplies fast enough. Good luck getting a divided country to get behind government intervention and possible rationing of goods. You couldn't buy a car during most of the war years, let alone fill it up with gas on your schedule...all of GM, Ford and Chrysler's production was redirected to making tanks and Jeeps. Food, rubber and other products were also rationed because there was just no way to satisfy the war demand and it wasn't safe to ship things across the ocean.
Remember, we have almost no native capability to manufacture small, cheap items anymore...that went away ages ago. We make lots of cars and airplanes, but not too many (if any) consumer electronics or appliances. I would imagine it would take a lot of intervention and incentives to get rare earth metal mines reopened, steel mills reactivated, and goods manufacturing basically force-restarted. It would be a very interesting experiment if it worked, but I highly doubt everyone would sign on unless there was a direct threat to our existence. It would be very strange -- iPhones for America and all that, complete with the patriotic posters.
You mean hillbillies like Peter Thiel? The only person sounding like a dumb fuck right now is you.
No, he doesn't. Peter Thiel won't be one of the people in unemployment lines blaming the results of Trump's trade war on Obama.
Actually it's better to say "Japanese...etc" cars sold in the US. are usually made in North America (really saying USA is just wrong).
These companies like to brag to US citizens about how their cars are made in North America because people in the USA don't understand there's more to North America than just the USA.
thats high for a high volume product
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"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.
iPhone, since a few of their own corporations make some not-insubstantial cash from manufacturing the things...
The labor cost of an iPhone 7 is estimated to be about $5. About $220 is parts. The rest is marginal profit. If Apple is forced to shift production to America, and Chinese buy Xiaomi phones instead, it will hurt America far more than it will hurt China.
Americans already make cars. Even "Japanese" (Honda, Toyota) cars sold in the US are usually made in the US.
iPhones and other smartphones being made here will probably up the prices slightly, but most of the estimates I've heard are absurd.
iPhones could be made completely in the US and Apple could charge the exact same price for them as they do now and the only difference is Apple's profits would go from ridiculously obscene to only slightly obscene.
But where (in the USA) would you make them? Industry is "dirty"... we only do clean businesses.... like McDonalds.
The Trans-Pacific deal was all about hemming China in. It's death is of great relief to China.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Those same students bid up the tuition costs for our own citizens. And aren't the leftist universities supposed to be non-profit? To heck with asian students. Send them home.
No, that is not how it works. The increased prices "out of state" and "out of country" students pay are the result of institutions being able to raise those rates because (1) there is little political downside to raising the price for non-locals and (2) those students are willing and able to pay it. If we dumped the foreign students, the institution's income would be lower, which would put more rather than less upward pressure on local fees.
Education is not a perfect free-market system. There are a relatively small number of "elite" institutions who do not really compete against each other based on price - students generally do not choose Harvard or Cambridge or Oxford or Stanford or CalTech (or Toronto which I see made the top 20 - https://www.timeshighereducati... ) based on differences in tuition fees, and the institutions do not base their acceptance purely on some sort of intellectual ability. Those places that managed to attract and retain students who later become successful alumni are the ones that end up doing well in the long run in terms of world reputation. Hopefully it is because they taught their students to be successful, though there seems to be a lot of data indicating that they mostly managed to pick the students most likely to have been successful in any case.
Only if China accepts our tariffs. And they seem very unwilling to do so.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
https://www.ivycoach.com/2016-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/04/the-most-chinese-schools-in-america-rankings-data-education-china-u/
Doesn't a market disappearing look the same as having a lower demand for the product, and thus drive costs *down* as companies need to offload surplus?
No. Classical supply and demand apply only when supply is limited and marginal costs go up with more demand. So if you are growing corn, and the demand goes up, then farmers will put marginal land into production, increasing costs and driving up prices. For mass produced items, increased demand may cause a short spike in prices, but in the long term push prices down as costs are lower through increased economies of scale.
Do we have a trade deficit with China? If so, then it does not seem obvious that we'd come out the losers.
GOP Congress tied his hands. Trump doesn't have that limitation ... at least not yet.
Table-ized A.I.
They did give something up, it's called quality of life. We can manufacture all the cheap shit they do, too, we just need to give up clean air, clean water, spacious homes, etc...
...and jobs that pay a living wage, which many people already do not have. But that's okay, the long-term economic depression, high unemployment levels and the massive increase in the homeless population will make America great again.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That China will reduce the sales of iPhones, that are manufactured in... China
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Yes. Because as arrogant as I am, I'm not stupid enough to confuse being different from me with being stupid.
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there is a thriving urban middle class... heck
Price per Square Feet to Buy Apartment in City Centre
Shenzhen New York, NY
9,858.02 ¥ 8,505.93 ¥
(1,443.02 $) (1,245.10 $)
-13.72
Price per Square Feet to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre
Shenzhen New York, NY
5,118.91 ¥ 5,442.65 ¥
(749.31 $) (796.70 $)
+6.32 %
(source: Numbeo)
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
Show me where we have significant rare earth mineral mines in the US? They are one of the principle reasons we invaded Afghanistan.
China is the largest producer of rare earth based semiconductors. They have no desire to share the raw material with anyone.
If they boycott iPhones it will only feed Trump's vindictive streak since he doesn't like Cook. They have to pick products that would hurt his cronies. (I'm sure they realize this; iPhones make for good headlines).
I wish I were writing this as a flippant comment but one of the few Trumpisms that isn't hyperbole ("I'll build a wall". "He's a Nazi") is that he bears and escalates petty grudges.
Obama's party controlled both houses of Congress the first 2 years, with a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. Even with that, it took an illegal trick to pass Obamacare. All his budgets were rejected without detailed consideration, by Democrats. Very little happened while he was in total control, and what did happen was bad.
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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.
Looks like the communist came up with a new weapon: A rapid-fire footgun.
Lets compare both countries and the effect this trade war may have:
At stake for the USA: the low prices of electronic gadgets. Yeah Im sure there will be gallons of hipster tears if the Macs get higher prices
At stake for China: Absolutely everything! No more sales to the US (you dont actually believe that the US will not retaliate if the communists try something funny?), means that suddenly they have millions and millions of unemployed people. People who tend to riot. In fact with anything less than a double-digit growth per year China is already struggling to place all the university graduates into the workforce, not to mention the uneducated country side population migrating after the simple manufacturing jobs. Right now this growth is at 6.5%. And their idea of replacing US made goods with European ones is just brilliant. As if most of the NATO states would not follow the same sanctions the US imposes... Just like theiy did with Iran.
So now we have China in deep shit, and the US or rather the US companies have every reason to get back manufacturing to the US, probably helped by subsidisies from senators beating each other up to get the factories built in their state to claim the job growth for their reelection.
Now some may believe that the USA has no manufacturing capacities anymore, this is plain and simple wrong. It is still number 3 worldwide in gross manufacturing capacity. Even if the specific plants to build electronic gadgets may not exist anymore, they can be quickly rebuilt or refurbished.
I bet that in 3 years tops, assuming the right conditions, 80% of the manufactuing jobs are back in the USA and probably permanently too.
This is a situation that would fuck China harder than if the Opium wars were fought by imperial Japanese soldiers.
China is a currency manipulator.
So is the USA. Or hadn't you heard about quantitative easing, also known as "printing money".
And won't somebody PLEASE think of the executives? Some of these folks have multiple yacht payments, ya know!
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I rather thought it was elitism and looking down on the other side that got him elected.
I find the term "elitism" perplexing. So we are supposed to celebrate ignorance and stupidity rather than pointing out dumb ideas and insisting on intelligent and informed discourse?
Robots have the potential to be 1000's of times more productive and cost 1000's of times less than human laborers. In the race to the bottom, a country which relies on cheap human labor is doomed to fail.
This is nothing against rich people, but it's important to remember just how much your ability to adapt to change is tied to your wealth. If you're a billionaire and the mill moves overseas, your stock goes up; or if it takes a hit, you rebalance your portfolio. If you're a high school dropout and your dad and grandad spent their entire lives working in that mill, you're screwed -- especially if all the mills are closing down across the country.
The thing is in Clinton era everyone knew those southern and midwestern mill towns were doomed. Nobody expected the Republicans to care, but the Democrats were worse than indifferent. They betrayed the working class.
Here was how they excused what they did: we're going to retrain you for new, high paying jobs. Really? Why would anyone locate a whole bunch of jobs that can be done by someone with a few weeks of training in a high-wage area? No, the new, high paying jobs were always going to requires years of education; a Bachelor's at a minimum.
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And if automation were cheaper than Chinese labor, business would have already gone that route
Well, businesses are going that route, but it's a long process. I think it's pretty obvious that the speed is directly proportional to the potential market. Look at restaurants... when activists and politicians started making noise about a $15 minimum wage nationwide, in a short time you got development of ordering/checkout tablets at restaurants, even though the minimum wage hike hasn't happened outside of a few places. Restaurants could have automated 10 years ago.. the technology was there. It just wasn't packaged up as an off the shelf product for restaurants. So Red Lobster would have had to say "Hey Company X, could you develop this for us?" and it would have cost a million bucks. Now, the market is there waiting for innovators, so Company X went ahead and did the development for free and lots of restaurants are buying it.
If an industry was facing a mandate to move back to the US or face huge tariffs, you'd see a big increase in investment towards automation for the same reason... right now there's no market for "machine to automatically manufacture hammers", but if there are suddenly 20 hammer manufacturers that come back to the US, there will be.
That means not all of the jobs come back, obviously... but if we can take 10 million Chinese jobs and trade them in for 1 million more expensive US jobs (so 90% automation), that's still a big win for our economy.
They will not be competitive in an international market where folks can continue to get cheaply made items from other countries.
It's not quite that simple.. if you want an iPhone you have to buy it from Apple, you can't say "Oh I'll get this cheaper iPhone from China." But yeah, for generic products you're right. Theoretically that will result in devaluing the US dollar to make our goods more competitive. Right now you have countries like China that have a massive trade surplus with us, but they take any excess dollars and just invest them in Treasurys, taking them off the market, which props up our currency. In a trade war that would go away... even if they didn't redeem their existing assets they would at least stop.
There won't be a lot of motivation left for anyone to sell us the raw materials we need to make any of our high quality goods
You'll have to elaborate on that. I don't get it. Why would Peru stop exporting zinc to us because we stopped buying Chinese goods?
Hey...you gotta start somewhere.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think you are being somewhat optimistic that electronics prices would only double or triple. My money is on 10X. And if things get crazy and china takes over taiwan (you know TSMC) figure 100X or worse while we try to build a fab to replace it. Good times for Intel and Sammy though.
Then don't buy our shit.
I see some handwaving, but no actual pertinent remarks. Yes, you're right, I don't know how economies and trade wars work. Give me a brief overview. If you can't, then you're probably not an expert either so join me in handwaving.
2013 figures: US GDP is $16.7 trillion, Chinese GDP is $9.2 trillion
2013 US exports to China $122 billion, Chinese exports to US $440 billion
In the event of a 100% trade embargo, explain to me how if China loses a bigger percentage of their GDP and a net surplus of money they actually come out ahead? I'd like to see the math.
You are contradicting yourself. You claim he had nearly a blank check to do what he wanted, YET claim he had to use an "illegal trick" to pass ACA. If he had a blank check he wouldn't need any tricks. (I dispute your "illegal" claim, but it's a side topic.)
Surviving the Great Recession was priority of that time, and trade-pressure talk would have rattled the fragile markets.
I agree such negotiations will create some grumbling in the markets. But sometimes you have to accept a short-term hit to get longer-term benefits.
Table-ized A.I.
The USA is hundreds of years old (since it was discovered). China is thousands of years old.
I don't think this argument holds up.
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Really? Food is the answer to everyone's livelihood?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Or Apple starts to shrink it profit margins because people would be unwilling to pay an inflated price over an already inflated price.
How? Not with our present minimum wage. The amount of risk capital needed is too high. The price of things will go up, less things will get sold. Robots will do most of the manufacturing. That's a better economy?
i kinda saw this as a win win too
Yup, we're in for a rude awakening if we do engage in a trade war with China. But, better to wake up now than later.... I dislike Trump, didn't vote for him, and the thought of his pending presidency is nauseating, but might as well let Trump be Trump. A trade war with China will leave Trump with little free time to tinker with the domestic issues. We may end up getting some of our manufacturing jobs back, or at lease shift them toward more US friendly countries.
I bet Putin will support a trade war with China. A chance to take down both US and China.
So, let's push for a trade war with China to save our nation from both Trump and China. I am for it :)
Doubt he will do any of this. It's just posturing so his followers will think he tried, when he didn't, and never had any intention of doing so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
>If you're a high school dropout and your dad and grandad spent their entire lives working in that mill,
If you went to school and became an engineer, millwright, or toolmaker or machinist (which you /also/ need besides just machine operators to run a manufacturing business) or a computing professionals (Database admin, IT, and probably a couple of programmers, some of whom are probably the aformentioned millwrights, toolmakers, machinists and engineers) or accountant, you were also SOL.
Manufacturing doesn't just employ "high school dropouts." It employs a bunch of people with 2 and 4 year degrees and 4-5 year apprenticeships.
And all that shit has gone to China.
That's why people cheered when Trump said he was against TPP and that NAFTA was a raw deal and why people like me (a toolmaker) who are /liberal/ saw Clinton's pick of Tim Kaine as a giant middle finger. (I couldn't bring myself to vote for Clinton. I wound up voting for Stein instead. Because, what the hell, I may as well contribute to a possible 5% vote for the greens instead of wasting my vote).
And with all that manufacturing going to China, so will the management. All those people /also/ with 4 year degrees are SOL.
And all the "free trade" assholes don't see /any/ of this as harmful.
Free trade isn't fair trade, and the election of Trump is "calling bullshit" on the whole concept of "free trade" because it was never "free" in the first place and the neoliberal fuckfaces like the Clintons never bothered with fair trade because it didn't line the pockets of their donors. If you can't have actual "free trade" then "fair trade" is what you should strive for, but according to the globalist neoliberals, we should /never/ have that. Because it cuts out arbitrage. Because arbitrage what matters most in society.
*spit*
--
BMO
"Free Trade" doesn't exist. It is a mythical construct like a unicorn or like a friction-free inclined plane in physics.
1) China manufactures for the whole planet not just the USA. China and the EU are both close to the size of the US economy. Not that China wouldn't be hurt if 1/3 of their customers disappeared; but at least 2/3 of their business is not to the USA. (Obviously, ripple effects would cause a global depression.) China can handle millions of their own starving if they want to do so. It's a long time one party authoritarian system over there. The US is more fragile and volatile.
2) Capital will always invest in NEWER factories which cost more upfront when they move factories to the USA. This means MORE automation and far less jobs. On top of that, due to the higher labor costs in the USA there will be more incentive to invest more heavily in automation. Germany isn't forcing corporations to in-source but some are and they are going nearly 100% automation when they do. The result of making manufacturing come back to the USA is going to be growth and advancement in automation and the progress that accelerates will reduce jobs across the board.
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I'm old enough to remember that we stopped having trade wars because the only winners were the bankruptcy lawyers and the people who could afford to buy foreclosed properties.
On the iPhone, are you not aware that it competes with other smartphones? I'm not sure why you think it won't sell less when the price goes up. There's nothing that people don't have any choice in. Besides that, without trade agreements, what exactly would stop China from making their own iPhones? They could do it just to spite us, and we'd have no recourse.
You'll have to elaborate on that. I don't get it. Why would Peru stop exporting zinc to us because we stopped buying Chinese goods?
You're right, as long as you ignore the rest of that paragraph. I said we'd need to stop imports from all cheap labor countries, because unless we do that Americans will just continue to choose the cheaper imports over the American made goods. This isn't a theory, the whole reason everything is made offshore is that we choose to buy the cheap stuff every day. That means Peru, which exports about $8 billion in goods to the US every year including a lot of high end clothing made by children, would have their economy negatively impacted. They might even enjoy cutting us off, since they have a trade deficit with us and our deficit with China is such a bad thing, right? If that's not enough, you'd be interested to know that China currently supplies the vast majority of rare earth elements, stuff we need for our beloved iPhones. I'm sure we can find other sources, but at the very least we're going to need to raise prices to cover it. And those sources probably won't be other cheap labor countries, since we can't be buying their stuff any more.
It's obvious there's problems with our trading relationships with some folks, China included, the thing people need to realize is that we can't just demand what we want and expect our trade partners to hand it over without getting anything in return.
Jeez -- you're a toolmaker? Isn't that like being a wheelwright or a swordsmith these days?
Anyhow my point is that Democrats have squandered their credibility with working people. Which was too bad, because there were elements to Clinton's plans that actually made sense -- like retraining coal miners to do wind power installations. It's one thing to train workers for jobs that aren't going to be there, another thing altogether to train them for the jobs that are replacing theirs.
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alien Simple Definition of alien : not familiar or like other things you have known : different from what you are used to : from another country : too different from something to be acceptable or suitable
According to the law and Webster Dictionary, they are Illegal aliens, so stop trying to make them something they are not.
Besides it just seems odd to call them Undocumented Immigrant votes. It almost seems that they are allowed to vote but are not documented. Oh wait that is what they want!!!! Stupid me, for calling a book a book, a dog a dog, a pig a pig, etc.....
It is much easier to associate them with the fact that they are NOT in the US legally thus illegal and alien (from another country).
Did they miss the part about there being a huge trade deficit in their favor? That basically means that in any kind of real trade war they'll automatically be on the losing end. This is nothing more than preemptive grandstanding and a skilled negotiator like Trump sees it for what it is. He will aim to narrow or eliminate the trade deficit, which is what we should have been aiming for all along.
Re-read my post. There are no illegal alien VOTES. They cannot vote. They did not vote. Any claim to the contrary is just right-wing delerium. First case of voter fraud this year was a woman who tried to vote Trump twice.
And the money goes to...China!
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
I think something like this only happens because people still cannot understand how much of their own stuff China manufactures.
I stlil see in threads like this a whole lot of racism and ignorance tied to a complete misunderstanding of the role China plays in the international market.
The relationship between US and China is of extreme dependancy, and imposing tariffs will only make both sides crash. This isn't a joke.
Most people who dismiss the importance of this trade think about iPhones, cheap badly made clones, about big finished products like cars, and about stuff that they might not be so dependant of, without realizing the hole is much deeper and wider than they might think.
It's not only about finished products - it's about industrial tools, specialized technology, parts of all sorts, components, stuff that you'll find inside almost everything your life depends on. Even for stuff that has the made in USA label, if it's an electronic part, this mostly means it was assembled in the US. Chances are, there are still components in there that were made in China. There is an estabilished limit of how much of the product was actually completely made in the country stated, and it's not 100%. Even worse, China holds dominance of a whole bunch of raw materials. There is no sector of the economy that will be left intact if a wide ranging tariff is imposed. When chinese labor isn't directly involved with production of whatever you are thinking about, it indirectly is - apart perhaps from few raw materials and base stuff. Even for basic things like food production it's likely that some machine with parts made in China is involved in the process. People have no clue.
If US were to completely cease commercial relationships with China, China would end up broken, no questions about it. The country would have to cut down the vast majority of production, re-route it to European, Latin american and Asian countries, and do a whole lot of restructuring. Companies would relocate, tons of lives and jobs would be lost, it'd be a huge step back. They'd be losing their biggest clients by far, and intellectual owners of several products made there. It could cause the country to turn into something closer to Africa, at least vast regions of it with tiny pockets of modern civilization.
But the US would find itself back into the middle ages. US would have to go after relationships with other cheap(er) labor countries... Malaysia, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, South Korea, India and whatnot. And even if they could keep relationships with all these countries - since a whole lot of them are also dependant on China, it would never get near to closing the gap of current supply and demand chain. Not even if current lawyers, doctors, celebrities, CEOs and whatnot started working in factory floors, which is a bit unlikely.
There is a reason why China is basically the factory of the world, and this has to do with cheap labor, but specially about manufacturing capacity. Lots of people don't seem to realize this, but a whole ton of advancements in tech on all areas are also being developed in China these days.
I don't know what Trump will really do regarding China, but it might be a good lesson for people who undererstimate China's role in the worldwide market. Nowadays, it's as important if not way more important than the US. I imagine that tons of big companies in the world would first severe ties with US rather than China, given the choice... because no company would want that. But you'd have to think about it... is it more work to find places to build your stuff relatively cheap and with a huge output capacity, or to find people willing to buy it?
It's a harsh reality no one wants to hear or admit. Those horrible conditions we had back in the industrial revolution never really went away. Welfare, cushy jobs, family planning, and all that sort of stuff happened because all the nasty parts of the industrial revolution era were simply relocated overseas. The reason why people have access to so ma
Actually, the higher the wages you pay, the fewer net jobs you create. My calculations on Men and Boys's Cotton Trousers and Shorts (MBCT) imports suggest an $18/hr average wage for the entire chain (factory workers, power company supply chain, engineers, machinists, managers, etc.) with an 18% benefits cost (benefits should range 18%-25% of salary, but often range 25%-40%) is break-even against a $3.50/hr Chinese labor cost (wage plus social insurance taxes) and a $14.97 average retail price across all imports in that class.
That is to say: if you pay more than $18/hr, you net lose American jobs; if you pay less, you net-gain American jobs. This actually doesn't matter in the long-run, and I'll cover the mechanics below just for completeness.
A GM factory line worker makes $21/hr. At that rate, you would lose around 8,500 American jobs. The $14.97 average price would rise to $50.57, based on $6.12 labor share for MBCT--that's derived by dividing the import price by the number of units. Note that importing a 40-foot shipping container with 40,000 jackets or trousers from China costs under $1,300 or 6.5 cents per unit. If we assume $8.50/hr American minimum wage, the new price of trousers is just over $25.
So that's all interesting, but I said the jobs don't matter.
Malthusian growth: in abundance, population expands; when abundance ends, population growth slows. I had derived this behavior from an examination of scarcity, which I defined as a condition where the labor required to make proportionally more of a good in a certain time frame would increase by a greater proportion. As a simple example: if you grow your population by 10%, you need 10% more food. Food prices stay the same if the number of people in your population making food increases by 10% (so if it's 100,000 farmers, now you need 110,000). If that increase is more (e.g. 112,000--a 12% increase), food is scarce.
My scarcity model above essentially means we can definitely make enough e.g. food for everyone, but increasing food production increases the total percent of all of our labor (and income) spent on food, decreasing what other things we buy. That means more poor people--people who can afford food, but not as much of other things (luxuries)--as well as current poor people struggling to afford food, and some outright failing. We can make it to fill demand, but it's getting pricier.
So imagine jobs become scarce or abundant. Malthusian growth means more or fewer early retirements, higher or lower birth rates, changes in immigration, death by poverty, and so forth tends to eliminate all those extra jobs or all those extra job seekers. Give it a few years (not even a generation) and it no longer matters.
What does matter is those pants costing more. That rise in per-unit cost and thus price is scarcity in practice. Trade is... annoying, when you want spherical cows. Everything I outlined about scarcity holds true over decades; and the short-term instead has dissimilar labor rates. Yes, you can definitely produce more if you need fewer labor-hours to do it; but if you have $20/hr labor vs $10/hr labor, spending the cheap labor for less than twice the time will get you lower prices. It's not strictly-optimal.
More-expensive pants does mean we spend more of our total income on pants.
Income is a rate function: there is only so much income in a given time. Raising a subset of wages concentrates that income in fewer hands, destroying jobs; raising all of those wages requires more money (inflation). Wages essentially pay for a quality-of-living based on a certain amount of time; and revenue pays wages, so higher wages require higher revenue, thus higher prices per product produced using a certain method (technology). That means money's purchasing power is tied to wages and technology; money isn't wealth, and tweaking the amount of money without changing anything else doesn't create wealth.
So we're stuck in the inescapable situation of
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Three hundred years ago China hadn't been overrun by Colonialists. In the middle of the 19th century, the British military was in the practice of defending foreign opium sellers who would bring their drugs into China to sell for Chinese silver. The western powers with gunboat diplomacy sucked the wealth out of China.
Can you imagine how it would be if the meth dealers were the Russian mafia and Russian soldiers were in the US to keep them from being stopped?
Study the Opium Wars in China.
Just more silly scare mongering from Trump haters. Trump will not impose a 45% tariff, and China will not stop all trade with the US.
And there will be no 30 foot wall, and Trump's tax plan won't happen either.
Just more pointless posturing.
So who got cheated?
Buick-Olsmobile-Pontiac (in order of high price to low) were the middle of the GM passenger car lineup. It's reasonable that one middle-class line survived, and Buick was the only one making money at the time.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Net worth isn't something that shows up on tax return...and someone had the nerve to mod me troll? geez.
It would more than just hurt some companies, it would likely devastate large portions of the tech sector. The price of electronics would go through the roof, which would have severe effects on virtually every other industry, which rely heavily on computers, mobile devices and other electronics components. With no real supply chain in the US, any tariffs would lead to huge price increases.
Yes, China would be fucked, but the US would be in a pretty damned bad way as well, and while it's unfortunate that the Rust Belt isn't the manufacturing center of the US anymore, the kind of economic damage of a tariff war with China would put a lot of other people out of work as well. And for what, so those companies that do survive start building automated factories in the US?
The US is moving into the post-industrial age, and the real irony is that so is China. Believe me, China will have its own rust belts in the not so distant future.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The iPhone profit margin is estimated to be over 69%. Costs can go up a great deal before retail prices have to climb.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I take it you haven't seen the video with the robot that doesn't require programming?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/robot...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Well, hey! Yours was one of the three insightful-moderated comments that actually struck me as slightly insightful. You hit a couple of key issues. Not deeply, but brevity is supposed to be wit's soul, eh?
None of the funny ones were funny. Didn't waste the time with informative or interesting, though I did some browser-level searches for the key terms related to what I would regard as actual insight on this issue. Came up completely dry. And of course the entire article and discussion have effectively timed out now, so making any comment is moot, eh?
What I was looking for was some discussion of how the international force vectors have been changed by this election. Seems obvious that Russia's international leverage will be greatly increased, and Iran benefits, too. If Trump delivers on a small fraction of his promises, then America's influence will drastically decrease, but I suppose we can hope he's just lying, as usual.
That sets the stage for considering China's response to the election. Insofar as the Chinese have any international ambitions (and I am certain they do), then their economic ties to America are now a disadvantage. They would much prefer to redirect their focus towards growing economies and perhaps even do what they can to push America into recession.
But what about the economic damage to China? If you think about it for a second, you'll realize it is NO problem now. They'll just blame Trump for any and all problems and gladly stoke the nationalistic fires within China. The better not to buy your inferior American goods.
Time to rethink your investment strategies. Obviously makers of wife beater t-shirts, anti-anxiety meds, and for-profit prisons should be hot stocks. However the big word is not "plastics". How can I get in on the ground floor of big poverty?
Will the Chinese even bother to compete in those areas? Maybe, but I bet they demand hard cash, and they probably won't even accept dollars.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Because Taiwan has biological and chemical weapons?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If things get really crazy and China tries to take over Taiwan, you can count on prices being the least of our worries.
Taiwan and south China being largely smegged. Mainland China's navy sitting at the bottom of the Pacific. Japan with their newly assembled Atom bombs, watching nervously. Who the fuck knows what Un would do?
Taiwan may not have nukes, they definitely have biological and chemical weapons.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's about the price of a new Fighter Jet built in the USA...
How much do those apartments rent for?
The one in NYC will more or less pay the mortgage with the rent, in China no chance. Chinese real estate is in as bad a bubble as Chinese stocks.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What does America have to do with Apple's profits?
Tariffs aren't something you accept or not. I suppose they could abandon the market.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What does America have to do with Apple's profits?
"Profit" and "marginal profit" are not the same thing. Lower profit will hurt everyone that has AAPL in their pension fund. Lower marginal profits will hurt anyone that contributes to Apple's NRE, including all their American engineers and designers.
Economies of scale only go for so long. Once you're producing a lot of something there are only tiny margins left to squeeze. Your cost structure is complicated. Deviating from plan is what raises costs at that point.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In CA they can register to vote with a utility bill.
At least 3 million voted in CA alone. To say nothing of the dead vote.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It will get tuned now.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Most members of the Republican party are not really Republicans. In fact we gave them their own name "RHINO" quite a while back because the leftist tactic of stacking both sides of the deck was pretty obvious.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Maybe once, in your grandfather's day.
Generic motors doesn't need additional brands. There were once 'Olds drivers', no more. Everybody knows Buick-Olds-Pontiac are just Chevies with a plastic badge. Interiors were uniformly crappy, only the ads were different.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If they dump those their banking reserves will be truly hollow.
As bad as US bonds are, they are the quality in China's bank asset book. Crooked economies do that. Non performing loans (for Ferraris) made to children of central committee members etc etc etc.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
At least 3 million voted in CA alone. To say nothing of the dead vote.
Citation badly needed.
Give me a brief overview. If you can't, then you're probably not an expert either so join me in handwaving.
I'm not an expert, and I won't even attempt to do a "brief overview" on a complex subject like that, sorry. I have better things to do. Perhaps others here would be willing to spend their time explaining it to you.
With that said, you're free to deny the reality of my statement because you don't understand the complexities of the subject, but suffice it to say that there's more to economies and trade wars than a simple tally of cash on hand.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'd say at this point it is as close to insurmountable as one can imagine. The amount of capital would be huge, and if private investors can't be found, that means tax dollars in the hundreds of billions will be sunk in a ten year project of building capacity and training people, either as direct subsidy or through massive tax incentives. Not only does this mean Congress will have to be on board (last time I checked, while Trump may have no problem blowing the debt through the roof, his compatriots in Congress may not be such big fans), but in the end how is this any different from the planned economies that so many Republicans, and more than a few Democrats hate?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Western culture is about as old as Chinese culture regardless of what the Chinese claim. Western civilization is based on ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Phoenician culture.
It's not like the historical capital for China was always Beijing either.
It's basically the same thing they did with the high speed trains. The Chinese bought a couple of each design and got licenses to manufacture all them in China. Then they started making their own versions with increasingly more Chinese content until they don't need to the licenses any longer. The Chinese bought basically all nuclear reactor designs that mattered and built them in China (Canadian, Russian, French, American, etc).
It will basically make them focus more on self-reliance. One point against it is that the less interconnected both economies become they more likely it is that war might happen between them.
You do realise that $18 billion is chump change right? Like seriously, the USA buys a shitload more goods than 18 billion worth from China. They would be much better off if they cut China out of their economy. The manufacturing which China does, they are not the sole provider of. The USA would be quite able to continue importing from Korea/Japan/Vietname/Taiwan until they are up and running again with Made in the USA.
tl:dr = American manufacturing never left, it just leveled up. Allocate your skill-points accordingly.
I am a nerd, not an economist. I'm gonna get modded into the dark-side for this but I gotta speak-up. I have no idea WTF I'm talking about in terms of arcane economics.... BUT..... I do a *lot* of business in *GASP* American manufacturing plants (The mythical American places that just about everybody in this thread claims not to exist anymore) I build and maintain *GASP* Automated manufacturing and robotic tools! Shit the bed, automation and manufacturing took my job and gave me better one! Hows that for way oil in your eye!?
From where I stand, the price of those $250.00 jeans and $1000 handbags looks like it has very little to do with where or how they are manufactured, and very much to do with WHAT WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR THEM. Look no further than your local second hand store for the REAL VALUE of products VS corporate PERCEIVED VALUE at the mall. High priced consumer goods has not brought us to our knees yet. In fact, we don't even take the stickers off our baseball caps anymore, presumably so everybody KNOWS we paid way to much for em. IKNOWRIGHT?
To put it another way-
If Nike needs to pay a little extra tariff money to move those products back into the US from China, I don't see all the Nike fans suddenly switching to made-in-the-USA workboots over another 20%-50% increase in cost, and if they do, Nike can certainly afford to take the price down in order to compete. Or maybe, just maybe, avoid the fees all together and have the American workforce build and maintain an automated factory for it. (which I think is the point)
I bet Facebook could employ the entire city of Detroit for years retrofitting and automating some of those sprawling factories to produce their rift gizmo, and still come out of it with crazy profit. Maybe not record bonuses for the suits, but well into the black. See where I'm going with this?
American manufacturing today means CNC machines, automation, and highly staffed quality departments. More skilled labor for sure, I see grey-hairs working those machines every day. Those guys can't operate a windows box to save their lives, but they can make those robots dance to any tune they please. Plenty of blue-collar labor available as well. Jobs still need raw stock to be cut, Floors need sweeping, product needs to be packaged, shipped and received. Sales positions need to be filled, the list goes on and on. Today is the future, if you want to be employed, you will have to learn SOMETHING. If all you can do is stand on the line and mindlessly assemble things, McDonalds is always hiring. Manufacturing is alive and well in the US, we just don't make the shiny plastic neatoes and bullshit our politicians and upper class keep buying their kids at the mall.
When my robot replaces your manufacturing job, or service job, or tech job, leverage your skills in another department, specialize, or go to trade school and learn to repair robots. There is PLENTY OF WORK, but only if your not smoking weed all day, or spending it bitching about social injustice on the net, but instead choose to take your job seriously, and actually show up.
I know, I sound like my father, and yes, he's an asshole. He is also an employed metal worker in the manufacturing sector who hates computers, and has been for 30+ years.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Also Apple was already thinking about building a massive manufacturing plant in the USA using 99% robots.
And Korea will obviously still play ball with the US and take over manufacturing of iPhones.
If the United States decided to it could ramp up and reinvent manufacturing within a decade. It will mostly be robotic. Only trouble is environmental laws.
The "blue dog" Democrats, sometimes called DINO's, prevented public option and single-payer. ACA had barely enough votes to pass as it did. Public option and single-payer wouldn't give it enough votes.
Several presidents have tried to get health insurance passed and failed. You have to give Obama credit for finally getting one to pass. Too bad politics mucked it up.
That can be done with the existing system. Or increase the estate tax. Solutions exist, they just can't be passed in the political climate. We'll see what T and co. do now.
Table-ized A.I.
Let's see how long it'll take /. commenters to figure out econ 101: Restrictions in trade will hurt both parties.
Given the current skill levels in the workforce, and available automation technology, the idea that you could bring back the kind of manufacturing jobs that went away in the eighties, doesn't even pass the laugh test.
No, I understand what a toolmaker is. It's just that there aren't so many as there used to be.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That was 20 years ago. Try to understand how technology has changed combat since then - you don't have any fucking idea.
Demonizing the best US trading partner on whom the US relies for everything that makes it function on a daily basis, and destroying all the foundations of America to cozy up to a Russian dictator.
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
1.5: Apple simply relocates to another country.
1.6: Apple passes on extra taxes to consumers.
1.7: Trump becomes the most unpopular president in history.
No need to complete steps 2, 3 and 4.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Silly people, if China won't manufacture iPhones Vietnam will, or India or Indonesia or some other similar place where you can open shop and hire 1000 people per day to work as a biorobot. Manufacturing these things in USA or Europe is flat out not viable, especially USA what with workers unions and all.
Thats pretty good typing with a blindfold over your eyes. What software do you use?
I bought a framing hammer at Home Depot, made in the USA. Was maybe a buck more than a made in China hammer.
Still waiting for actual information instead of claims pulled directly out of ass.......
Changes in technology do squat to address a country's shortcomings, if they are not capable of something themselves. If you think they've progressed much since then, look at them today. They sure looked tough in sending troops into Bahrein, and are now knee deep in a civil war in Yemen, but at the same time, they are shaking in their boots at the ascendency of Iran, which has been encouraging a Shia insurrection in the south of their country. To answer the GP AC, if the US needed to go to war w/ Saudi Arabia, then they'd just have to target a few cities - Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Mecca and Medina. Of course, if they go in the stupid way Bush went into Iraq - trying to win hearts & minds, it would be a quagmire. But if they go in w/ just the objective of pulverizing them, that would happen very easily
I understand it perfectly. Trade balance is exports minus imports. When you export stuff, no matters if it gets dumped into the sea or actually used, it doesn't matter, it counts towards your exports.
I have better things to do
Yeah, okay lol. You have better things to do, like come and make vapid comments explaining how you don't have time to make comments.
With that said, you're free to deny the reality of my statement
You've already admitted you don't know much about it. Let me think how much your statements and your version of "reality" are worth...
I suggest you google how much China depends upon America. Their economy would tank if they stopped trading with the US.
Just another day in Paradise
Their "market" isn't larger...having a larger population doesn't mean you have a larger market.
http://www.visualcapitalist.co...
Just another day in Paradise
Where are all the minorities in these riots? Oh yeah, not there. As Dave Chappelle said on SNL...I watched a white riot in Portland, Ore., on television the other night. News said they did a million dollars’ worth of damage. Every black person was watching that like, “amateurs.”
Just another day in Paradise
Yeah that whole Tesla Gigafactory isn't being built in Nevada... you know, what will be the largest electronics factory in the entire world...
And their are reasons why they would come back. hint: The machine that builds the machine.
Well said! Mod up!
I love it when people say we can't manufacture anything anymore. Hello, Tesla Gigafactory? You know - what will be the largest electronics factory in the entire world?
But we can't build anything new anymore. Riiight. There is nothing China makes that we can't make. The 'machine that builds the machine' is going to change the balance of manufacturing power in the world.
Ever seen the state of the environment in China? Think Trump gives a damn about that here?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
A trick so illegal that the Supreme Court found Obamacare to be ... legal.
The best part about the Trump presidency will be that we don't have to hear "Thanks, Obama." every time a Democrat farts. Maybe we can at least get to some common ground where we can at least accept Obama as a decent human being, even if you disagreed with every single stance of his (hard to believe). Can anybody seriously picture Trump and Melania reading books to children and having a good time?!?!
http://cdn.newsday.com/polopol...
What "we" can "get this done"? The people who have enough money/capital to build new/refurbish US factories never were and ain't gonna be interested in America or American workers. This is obvious, right? Those people have zero interest in building America if it doesn't neatly coincide with making the _most_ profit, not just a good profit. So, they will simply look for wherever else in the world they can invest their capital. Seems to me this has been proven over and over again during the last four decades or so. You seem to be confusing corporations with patriots, not sure. Whatever hardship might arise from a trade war with China, it won't influence or touch the top. Claiming that reducing taxes will incentivize the rich here to once again renew manufacturing jobs is a lie that only benefits them. Widespread return of manufacturing to the USA is gone, and won't return unless some very major shift in attitude happens, and a trade war won't hurt the rich enough to make that shift. It's simply too easy to sling capital around.
So - China - your plan is to hold 2 industries at gun point and expect that to sway us over the loss of the entire US Manufacturing base? Take a long walk off a short pier.
The place with the most profit for a factory to be built, after the corporate income taxes are lowered to 15%, will be the USA, so they will build those factories here, in order to make the best profit.
You've already admitted you don't know much about it.
Yes, shame on me for admitting that, much like you, I don't have in-depth knowledge of a complex subject like international commerce.
-
Let me think how much your statements and your version of "reality" are worth...
You don't have to be an expert on something to understand parts of it, including some of the mechanisms in play or the overall effects.
You may or may not know how an internal combustion engine works but you probably know that mixing water into the gas isn't a good idea, or that letting it run out of oil is bad for it. You may know that spark plugs are important but not know how the spark is generated or why the electrode gap matters.
I've read enough about commerce, economies, and the effects of trade wars to have an idea what happens when things change, and I know enough to understand that a simple measure of "net money" is an oversimplification when it comes to measuring the actual worth or health of an economy.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Most of China's growth has come directly off the backs of US manufacturers and the US labor force. And other countries are now following suit! The world is using our economy to lift themselves up from the mud and filth. That's not a bad thing, until you realize just how many people our economy must support! We will go belly up before we lift the world out of the muck! China, and now other low-labor-cost nations, don't want to see the gravy train end! Just FYI - this is China's plan to rape the US people since the 1990s - and they've had this cash machine running day and night for decades: 1. Use Chinese low-cost labor to under-cut US production prices. 2. No tariffs = direct to consumer prices 3. Flood US Markets with low-cost goods that US Manufacturers can not compete against (because Chinese laborers work at a rate of $10 US per day, well below the US minimum wage - so - by US law - American manufacturers can not compete with Chinese imported products). 4. US Manufacturers go out of business because they can not compete 5. Collect and Export cash from US sales to China, draining cash from manufacturer profit and manufacturer expenses (loss of jobs) - which directly translates into a loss of government taxes, employee income taxes, and corporate income taxes, weakening the US government. The US people are trading more than 60% taxable income for 6% sales tax income. 7. China taxes and uses that incoming cash to invest in: * Chinese growth to make China more competitive - which drops price more - which cements export processes - which floods more US industries with Chinese goods - which forces more US companies out of business - starting the cycle all over again. * Loan money back to the US to buy up chunks of the US at a discount * influence elections to guide US laws and policies in favor of maintaining the gravy train. Wake up, folks! This is the new world war. The US taught the world how you win - which is through manufacturing strength. He who makes the goods, has the cash. He who has the cash, can afford the biggest sticks to whack people with. We are at war! And we finally have someone who will negotiate fair trade!
If Trump starts a Trade war, China will in fact reciprocate.
Duh.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
one of the daftest things I've read in a while...and there have been some pretty daft things posted here in recent times.. So you'd automate everything AND reduce corporate taxes...definitely a yuuuuge WIN for the average American trying to make ends meet, of course since the manufacturing process is now in the good ol' US of A now and everyone knows its MORE expensive to manufacture in the good ol' US of A, so the price of everything will get jacked up, that's another yuuuge WIN for the average American right there. Poor people protesting in the streets because they can't afford pretty much anything? Well we have already set up internment camps for those miscreants and with forced labour (and pennies in wages), we will make them productive members of our once-again-great-nation. Remind me, how's this vision of 'greatness' different from what was happening in sugar plantations in the not-too-distant-past?
From the aritlce: "A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US." If limiting the number of students studying in the US is on their threat list then the list must represent the entirety of their leverage against the USA because that's a pretty insignificant threat to include.
Go tell a University that. That's only one thing, but Universities charge top dollar for foreign students. P Anyhow, no, China and America have areal co-dependent thing going on that believe it or not, is helpful to both countries. Just see what happens if China demands the debt it is holding be paid back. They need us badly, and we need them badly.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Debt is only an asset if you can collect it. There's no debt collector out there big enough to muscle up on the USA at the moment, so who is China going to call? And if they ruin our credit rating, what's that do to theirs? Nothing positive.
This is of course a hypothetical situation, but if the US were to deploy sanctions against China, China could call the debt they hold. If the US refuses to pay it, We've defaulted, and every other country that holds US debt will have a big problem with us. China holds a bit over a trillion, and ther countries bring the total foreign owned debt to around 4 trillion.
This is what the boys down at the shop call an "oh shit" situation.
This is what we get when we demand one sentence solutions to War and Peace length issues.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Its not today but the trendlines are clear . As China gets richer sometime in the next 20 years the Chinese market will be larger and as they reach per capita parity sometime in the next 50 years it will be 3 times as large as the US market. They wont stay poor forever. In fact today they are at 13000 USD per capita ppp. US is at 54000 uSD per capita ppp and they have a 4 times larger population so in PPP they are already level. As their per capita ppp gdp goes up to 54000 and their population falls to 3 times US the market will jsut keep getting bigger
**Life is too short to be serious**
But the best schools are already heavily oversubscribed so they wont be left wanting for students if China stops sending theirs.
Just not foreign students, who pay by far the highest prices. By far.
It's like replacing students who pay 10 thousand a semester with students that pay 2 thousand a semester.
Oh wait. The numbers might be off, but that's exactly the situation.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
In a trade war, the USA would be the loser. Grain, aircraft, cars sold to China would stop. China would also stop selling cellphones to the USA.
Together, no cellphones means your salesman would have to run to the office or use wifi and a laptop to communicate with his customers. The USA is too dependent on Cellphone use. That cellphone drop in sales would impact the providers, resellers and even advertising.
China's internal market is 4 time the size of the USA market. They have alternate sources, as does the USA. Trump is trumpeting his stupidity.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You missed the point. China buys large numbers of cars made in the US. The Chinese market is so large that if the US is restricted we will suffer loss of jobs as well as income. Apparently I phones are also popular products that we export to China. China has enormous economic power these days. If we get into a disagreement over tariffs the chances are that China will win.
Its not chances are, it is more of "definitely China would win".
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The Answer to this is through most of history China has been richer and a larger market than Europe and recently the US. Its only in the last 100-200 years when they had bad leaders (who allowed the Westerners to get the nation hooked on Opium) that they fell behind. Now they are catching up and will be back where they were in the 1800s when they were the largest market in the world. US domination is only 70 years old since the end of WW2 and British domination is 150 years before that. In the 6000 year history of Human civilization 200 years is not that long a period.
**Life is too short to be serious**
At this point they actually want their currency to get stronger so their is really no point to fighting a fight which was valid 10 years back. At this point China does the manufacturing not because of cheap wages or manipulated currency but because of the ecosystem of suppliers which has also moved to China. If you tried to bring back manufacturing to USA you would find out you dont have the Industrial Engineers, Managers as well as supply chains. Most have retired on their severance bonuses and the supply chain has also moved. Just because you have unemployed people doesn't mean you can do manufacturing. India has a lot of unemployed people. Manufacturing is not shifting to India.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Trendlines change. You could have said the same about Japan or Korea, but at some point, they'll price themselves above other cheap labor, and the trend will change. That happened to both as their economies grew. Or possibly, the ongoing manipulation of their currency will bite them in the ass.
Just another day in Paradise
You are bringing facts to a zealotry-fueled, Fox-news-inspired diatribe? You, sir, are the reason for all our problems. Without people like you pissing on everyone else's parade, America would already be great again and all the Americans would be high on unicorn farts
I can tell you that the moment Trump puts a 45% tariff on Chinese imports, we will begin manufacturing an entire industry they stole from us. We will immediately hire back 40 workers that lost their jobs when China flooded our markets with cheap products. These new manufacturing jobs will pay 30% more than the retail jobs these people were left with.
The one possible flaw in your argument, is your assumption that China covets Dollars over Yuan. If anything negative happens to the USD, or positively to the Yuan - I don't think the 'deal' we have with China is going to carry on much longer, in any form.
The Trade War is just a natural symptom of the Currency War.
You totally missed the point.
Yes, food is the answer to "livelihood" as in "how you live" -- you need to eat to live.
In an all out global trade war, the countries that can feed themselves have a tremendous advantage over those that cannot feed themselves. I'm not sure how significant that would be for China... I believe they produce almost all of their rice for instance. I remember an NPR article a few years back that China imported a huge amount of soybean from the US and from Brazil, but I don't know how important that is as a dietary staple.
It could certainly be a factor in coercing other countries to join our side in a trade war. China may not be very dependent on food imports (I really don't know) but they aren't a huge food exporter either. The US is. That means there are some countries out there that actually need trade with the US to live. That means they don't have a choice about who to side with in a trade war.
Of course when a trade war starts getting into starvation territory, it would probably turn into real war pretty fast so I dunno how important it all is.
Raenex, I'm posting this as a reply to your old post so that you'll probably be the only person to see it.
I figure APK is an attention whore, and a troll. He actually stalks me a bit, and I competely ignore him, pretending I've filtered his posts with Tampermonkey, so I don't even see him taking all kinds of shit to me. Today I decided to have some fun.
I'm thinking that since he's an attention whore who has a thing for me, two things that would really bug him would be if people a) forgot he's even around anymore, and b) couldn't even remember his name.
Thus "that guy who used to post years ago, ABC or whatever", that should troll his dumb ass pretty good. :)
Japan and Korea are much smaller than USA in population so they were never going to be a bigger market than USA even if they were just as rich as USA. China and India on the other hand because of their population can become larger markets if their level of prosperity matches the US
**Life is too short to be serious**
Yes, shame on me for admitting that, much like you, I don't have in-depth knowledge of a complex subject like international commerce.
You first reply to me was quote "You really have no idea how economies and trade wars work, do you? If you think that it's simply a matter of "net money", I have some very sad news for you my friend."
Looking back on it, do you think that statement was honest? It implied that you knew what you're talking about, that you understood it beyond the simple matter of net money. It stated explicitly that I don't know what I'm talking about. Turns out you were just being arrogant while hoping you wouldn't be called on it, because you actually have no clue.
That's what you should be ashamed of.
There's no point continuing the original discussion. I think you probably know less than I do about the economy based on what you've said so far, and apparently you don't have time anyway.
Like I said earlier, you don't have to be an expert on something to understand parts of it, including some of the mechanisms in play or the overall effects.
Go ask any economist if a healthy economy is simply a matter of "net money" and they'll laugh. It's more complex than that.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...