Slashdot Mirror
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"!
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.
Wow... This would actually drive manufacturing back to the United States or other areas if there is fear of state withholding shipments. This could be a very big benefit not a detriment.
1. Force Apple to bring profits back
2. Create manufacturing centers here which are robot/automated
3. Hire middle class to manage and maintain robots/design line
4. Stamp made in america
It's a win, win , win for everyone.
FTFY
Considering that Foxconn is firing their workers for robots, it wouldn't change prices or employment dramatically. It would however wreck the already precarious Chinese economy, and quite possibly the country as a result, especially with the 20+ million extra young men and exploding older population.
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.
recycling and other places are comming online for sources. Everybody with a clue has been looking at china's export ban and going yea lets make sure we have a fallback plan.
No sir I dont like it.
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
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.
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
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.
yeah, cause "hope and change" was so clear?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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!"
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**
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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.
"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.
GOP Congress tied his hands. Trump doesn't have that limitation ... at least not yet.
Table-ized A.I.
yeah, cause "hope and change" was so clear?
False equivalence. Obama always stated his policies and they were consistent. Trump is nothing but soundbites and he denies what he is on tape saying the day before.
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.
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.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
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 :)
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.
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.