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Anti-China Bill Being Softened After US Companies Complain (reuters.com)
Proposed legislation in Congress aimed at preventing China from acquiring sensitive technology is being softened after protests by big U.S. companies who fear a loss in sales, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Two bills in the House of Representatives and Senate would broaden the powers of the inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in hopes of stopping Chinese efforts to acquire sophisticated U.S. technology. The bipartisan legislation has the support of President Donald Trump's administration. "We are concerned that it vastly expands the scope and jurisdiction (of CFIUS)," said Nancy McLernon, chief executive of the Organization for International Investment, a group that represents global companies with U.S. operations. Given the alarm that the legislation has caused, Senator John Cornyn's staff is drafting changes to address industry concerns, according to three sources. Cornyn's office did not respond to a request for comment.
If you look objectively and strategically at the moves Trump has made regarding China, he has done nothing but help them.
Whether getting out of TPP, his erratic behavior towards allies, cutting overseas funding, radically dividing the US politically, etc, etc.
Trump has created a huge power and influence vacuum that the Chinese are rapidly asserting control over.
The isolationist view of those who put Trump into power will inevitably lead the US closer to conflict with China, or even Russia.
For all his anti-China bluster, Trump is the lap dog of Xi.
Well, not officially. Yet.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Must be a hard thing to balance the corporation's interests with the paranoia machine from the extreme right and military patriots.
Notice how the public interest is nowhere to be found in that equation.
How are they supposed to compete if they aren't permitted $2/hr labor? Why should corporations pay a fair wage? What they really need is a resurgence of slavery in the American south. Think about the poor stockholders trying to send their children to college while owning 3 SUVs commuting 60 miles a day, a $250-500K house, and a nice fishing boat. Those poor stockholders need more profits from $2/hr labor provided by totally uneducated people who have no idea how economics works and are banned by law to represent themselves! THINK OF THE POOR STOCKHOLDERS!
The Chinese technology sector is rapidly catching up to the US. All a ban like this will accomplish is to make China more self sufficient.
The current draft of the bill would allow the committee to review certain deals related to handing over "critical technology" or a "critical infrastructure" company. Two potential changes have been suggested. Congress could define more precisely what those terms mean, limiting the committee's review power more specifically. Congress could also delete those provisions as they relate to transactions other than China buying a US company. Transactions in which China buys the "critical technology" output from US companies could then be regulated by other agencies which handle export controls.
There is no such thing as free trade. The liars that push that narrative are just sock puppets for the rich. They continually try to float the Great Depression as being due to trade wars rather than their casino market games in the 1920's and *still* referring to discredited idiots like Irving Fisher. You ever notice that when the rich tell us through their media puppets that "the USA is the biggest marketplace in the world." they also push this irrational dichotomy that we are powerless to control trade in *our* own fucking backyard. Bullshit. Fuck that. We are anything but powerless and that's what they are afraid of. America has nearly every natural resource and most of the rest of the world is literally dying to trade with us. Trade is currently optimized for rich-asshole profits, not good jobs and high standards of living for everyone. Anyone who says different is willingly or unwilling selling the rich-guy narrative "Oh noes, without trade we'll all get poor. Some Economist article says so, see?" Naval blockade the ships from China and see how fast Wal Mart fails and Joe's Corner Mart starts back up. It's less efficient to have a zillion independent stores versus a few thousand Wal Marts you say? Yes, but it's much more job-intensive. So, only the rich-leeches and lawyer class will howl via their media shills.
Is this bill anti-China or is it Pro-America?
Why are we hurting people again?
The shortest lived super power status in human history.
USA is still A -but not THE- "super power", as it was for the last couple of centuries, and probably remain in the future (until the end of history...?!).
As a Greek (i.e., descendant of a former "super power" -Hellenic/Byzantine-, some time ago...) i understand/feel history and this "super power status" time scale differently than most people - since you mentioned them, Chinese people can understand/feel me in this way a lot better than USA citizens.
USA (as any other "super power" country/nation, in any historic period) was never THE "super power", but surely there are many examples of shorter lived "super powers" (of which USA still remains, i repeat) - just in Europe, in the last couples of centuries (while USA was also A "super power") i can count a couple or more. I think much of the problem with your thinking is that you believe that there can be only one "super power" at a time. And since you mentioned China: it was already a "super power" long before USA even existed, and, after a short (in the time scale a Greek like me, or a Chinese, understands/feels by instinct) break, returns in it's formal status. For Greece it is unlikely to become again a "super power" (we, like the Jews, have some other role in history - unlike the Jews, we had to become a "super power" to accomplish some part of this role) - but history (a great Greek word), in it's full Greek meaning, is about not only the past but also for the present and future.
This is insanely stupid WE (the US) import critical infrastructure and technology from China. They are, or will be soon, taking or the lead in everything tech ... robotics, machine learning, computing, etc..
Proposed legislation in Congress aimed at preventing China from acquiring sensitive technology is being softened after protests by big U.S. companies who fear a loss in sales
This portion of the summary conflicts with the facts:
Nancy McLernon, chief executive of the Organization for International Investment, a group that represents global companies with U.S. operations
The truthful facts of this issue is that China is stealing or being given sensitive technology that harms US companies and interests. An organization representing the non-US companies that benefit from IP theft and noncompetitive quasi-legal corporate espionage practices says stopping that flow of technology will harm sales.
Of course it will harm their sales. That is the point!
Do we run news articles about prisoners that believe harsher penalties on crime will harm their freedoms and claim law-abiding citizens made the claim?
Of course not. For that would be, at best, propaganda of a narrow interest group.
Reuters knows better. Msmash knows better.
200 years ago was 1818. The U.S. had successfully fought off a half-hearted attempted by the British to snuff it out. The U.S. was in no way a super-power. It was weak, disunited and had little foreign trade. In 1919, the U.S. had successfully finished entering and leaving Europe for WWI. Wilson couldn't have gotten in sooner than 1917 because the U.S. was too weak. Even then Pershing spent so much time training in Europe that the Europeans were complaining it was all for show. After the war, the U.S. cut its military, the Republicans turns isolationist, and the U.S. entered the Depression along with everyone else. When Germany invaded its neighbors, Roosevelt wanted to help but the best he could muster was lend/lease to the Brits and a few others, the Republicans were against any entanglement in Europe as it would have interfered with their business interests in the U.S. The U.S. was still not a very big economic power except domestically, and after the Depression, that too was suspect.
After WWII, the U.S. again disarmed to the point of getting its ass kicked in the Korean war by the Chinese of all people, that country had been destroyed by the Japanese. Only the 50s and 60s could the U.S. be considered a superpower.
>. 'Its less efficient to have a zillion independent stores versus a few thousand Wal Marts you say? Yes, but it's much more job-intensive.
You're exactly right, that would be less efficient, needing more people to work to produce the same amount of stuff.
I wonder what you're estimates are to fill in these blanks:
If it takes 1 person to produce and sell $100,000 of value, that person can be paid a maximum of $__________.
If it takes 10 people to produce and sell $100,000 of value, each of those ten people can be paid a maximum of $_______.
Let's take as an example my job. My job requires one person to produce $200,000 of stuff. So the maximum amount my employer could pay me, without going out of business, is $200,000. It also takes other things that cost money, such as an office, computer, etc, so that reduces how much they can pay me and stay afloat. If it took ten people to do the same thing ("more job intensive"), the company can still afford to pay no more than $200,000, so that's $20,000 each, maximum.
"Job intensive" (labor intensive) is generally considered a BAD thing, because more people working to produce the same revenue means the revenue has to be divided between more people. As an example, picking $10,000 worth of corn by hand takes 50 times as many people as picking it with a mechanical harvester. That's why the manual pickers got paid $1/hour and harvester operators make about $50/hour.
The ideal is generally considered to *reduce* how labor-intensive tasks are. Most people would rather make $50/hour rather than $1/hour. Also, the lower production costs per unit mean lower prices per unit. Normally we'd say we'd rather have high wages (due to higher efficiency per working hour) and low prices (due to low labor cost per unit).
This isn't anything new.
The chinese have been spying and their espionage ranges from military to commercial.....and we really used to be cognizant of it and fight it back in the earlier days.
However, back then (60's and earlier), china wasn't the econmomic powerhouse they have become in recent decades....and while we like the money, we've let our guard down and let them take the upper hand in negotiations, etc.
The thing is, China thinks waaaay ahead with their plans, whereas we in the US seem to do well to see past 5 days, much less a year at a time.
I'm not a huge Trump fan, but one thing that the administration seems to at least be doing, is trying in some ways to address chinese aggression, which IS going on, has been going on, and trust me, they have long term laid plans to KEEP being aggressive.
They spy on everyone (not just the US)....and look how they are trying to encroach on international waters off their coast with the building of artificial "islands" and militarizing them.
Yes, we have to work with them, but we need to be wary of them and WILLING to stand up to them and say "no" from time to time.
If we only think of the commercial all mighty dollar in short term plans and actions, we'll lose the fight more than we already are doing currently.
We're letting them have too much leverage on us and the world as it is....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I"m not the biggest Trump supporter in the world, but I think you might have misread things:
It appears that the Trump administration supports sanctions and restrictions on the Chinese and the export of US tech to them....
Their support of this policy is raising objections from the private companies trying to see this stuff to the chinese.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It is already common knowledge that the PRC gets access to bleeding edge US technology by pumping its citizens through higher ed. and into R&D of major firms. It would also be naive to think that the PRC would not miss a back door opportunity since it manufactures most communications and computing equipment of not all of it.
This is why the concern over Huawei and ZTE is puzzling as many/all mobiles are already made in the PRC, why would these be any different. It has also been shown before that the PRC or jsut about anyone with the right numbers can buy their way through to getting anything they want from the US government. One need only look at the quagmire created by Hillary Clinton selling rubber stamp approval and access as SOS.
“Countries have the right to development, but they should view their own interests in the broader context. And refrain from pursuing their own interests at the expense of others.” - Xi Jinping
and the US owes them over a trillion dollars.
I'm not going to cherry pick any stats to point fingers at what is to blame, because our deficit (and debts) have been increasing for many years. A recession doesn't help, neither does funding wars. The reality is that we can never pay back our debts, and it's unlikely that those we owe money to can effectively collect it. But it can give them leverage against us, and there's not much we can do about it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Swamp" is just shorthand for "people [in Washington DC] who disagree with him." If he gains their approval, they're no longer the swamp. When he does something daft and they point out as much, they're part of the swamp again.
because much of this "U.S. technology" was invented and developed by HIGHLY EDUCATED CHINESE NATIONALS ON H1B VISAS. You should be thankful you have it, because they literally gave it to you, and they're certainly not stealing it when they apply it back home.
Our pride, greed, and soft feelings built a monster that will take all the resources we take for granted. It is too late to stop them now. We built their infrastructure while we let ours crumble. I doubt they will care when our country starves. They will likely celebrate.
They spy on everyone (not just the US)
Well, that just makes them like the British. And probably the U.S., too.
The discussion above was interesting and all, but you asked about solutions. For solutions, we can get down to the brass tacks and clearly see some obvious truths that often get lost in the complexity of economic theory.
Imagine 5 pioneer families arrive out West. It's just the five of families. They all want more food and cotton and clothes and "stuff". How can they all get "more stuff"? What method of dividing it up will make more stuff appear? None, of course. To have more stuff, they need to produce more stuff.
They have three choices:
A) work harder
B) work longer
C) work more efficiently (producing more stuff each hour)
What about if they use Monopoly money to buy stuff from each other? Will that help them all get more stuff? Nope. Now matter how you move the money around, there's still the same amount of stuff. They can only have more stuff if they produce more stuff.
What if, instead of five families, it's 100 million families? Still the same answer. To have more stuff, they need to produce more stuff. They still have three possible ways to do that:
A) work harder
B) work longer
C) work more efficiently (producing more stuff each hour)
Options A and B aren't much fun, in most cases. Many years ago, I used to be a pothead, so I had room to implement option A. Working harder might be important in the pothead states of Colorado and California, but generally we probably want our solutions to be ways of doing option C, working more efficiently, right? So that's what we should be looking at - how can our workers have more stuff by producing more stuff per hour, being more efficient.
You might feel good doing that, becoming protectionist and barring trade. It would absolutely, unquestionably, reduce your real income.
When and why would you and I trade two items? Would you ever trade something that's you think is worth $100, in order to get something that's worth $1 to you? Probably not; probably the other way around, right? You'd trade something you don't need for something you do need. If you had a ton of cucumbers growing all over your yard, so you had more cucumbers than you want, and could easily grow more, you'd trade away your cucumbers for something you couldn't easily grow - maybe citrus fruits or an iPad. Maybe you'd need a big, very expensive greenhouse in order to grow citrus where you live, so you don't want to grow citrus (too expensive), you want to trade for it. You wouldn't accept MORE cucumbers in trade. You'd only trade when you get something you want more, that would be expensive for you to create yourself.
Entire countries of people do the same. We trade things we have plenty of, such as gold, and things we can produce cheaply, such as corn, for things we can't produce cheaply, such as cocoa beans and bananas.
If we didn't trade our corn for cocoa beans, we'd either A) not have any cocoa beans or B) spend ridiculous amounts of money growing cocoa and bananas indoors, so it would cost us $6 to make a candy bar. That would mean we could all afford to buy less groceries, or less stuff overall since US-grown bananas would cost four times as much.
Here's the major claim against China:
Some say that China is *artificially* giving us lower prices buy selling us stuff at a cost lower than it costs them to produce stuff. So stuff that's worth $10, they sell to us for $5. Most people call that a "good deal". It's obviously self-limiting, if they kept doing that they'd soon run out of money making stuff for us and selling it at lower prices than it cost them to make.
I never said "stop trading". Ever. I'm saying stop trading with cheaters, liars, and bullies. Your patronizing trade explanations completely ignore things like subsidies. If China decides they want to dominate the world in the manufacture of carbon fiber they subsidize it with direct government funding. So, to put it in your terms, what costs $100 to make costs $50 as a finished product. The government just eats the $50 loss in the hope that dumping the product in the West will destroy the manufacture of carbon fiber everywhere else. Once everyone else is out of business, they can charge whatever they want and the free-traders will say "Oh we can't mess with trade or how else can we get carbon fiber!?" That's why I said there is no such thing as free trade. There is always some cheating factor which blows up the Adam Smith laissez faire free trader fantasy. Our government does it, too (farm subsidies that destroy small farmers in our trading partner countries - this is well documented). If "free trade" isn't closely watched at the border, your partners can abuse the arrangement to their benefit and your loss. That's what's happened to the USA, and politicians that took graft from the corporations to do it (and their rich puppeteers) need some guillotine fear to straighten that out. They are too comfy having their media outlets that "globalism is impossible to stop." Bullshit.