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Tech Group Urges US To Recruit Allies To Take on China, Not Tariffs (venturebeat.com)
A trade group representing top technology companies on Monday told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that it opposes the Trump administration's focus on tariffs to try to change China's unfair trade practices. From a report: The Information Technology Industry Council said in a letter to Mnuchin that it supports the Trump administration's "Section 301" investigation into China's abuses of intellectual property, but instead of tariffs, it advocates a U.S.-led international coalition to put pressure on Beijing. "Our opposition to tariffs is pragmatic. Tariffs do not work," wrote ITIC President and CEO Dean Garfield. "Instead of tariffs, we strongly encourage the administration to build an international coalition that can challenge China at the World Trade Organization and beyond," Garfield added. "Numerous countries share the United States' concerns about China and its unfair trade practices. The United States is uniquely well-situated to lead that coalition."
we strongly encourage the administration to build an international coalition that can challenge China at the World Trade Organization and beyond
That's worked so well in other places.
It would be insane expecting help from the WTO.
then why does China have tariffs on the US? And why was the slashdot hivemind so pro-tariff a couple of years ago?
So who is implementing tariffs? Is it government or companies? Please enlighten us.
And in that lies the main problem with international trade as presently constituted: it is all about the specific individual good and never about the common good.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
China has no unfair trade practices.
Actually trade is not done between nations, but between companies.
Do you wake up every day and actively look for opportunities to be dumber than you were the day before?
Weak troll is weak. Almost all of the relevant industries are either government owned or government controlled.
There is nothing in capitalist pursuits that pertains to the greater good. It's ALWAYS about the profit for the individuals involved. The greater good can go fuck itself.
I think that it is already dumb enough and now just looks for opportunities to demonstrate already achieved dumbness.
Only I can judge you.
China has no unfair trade practices.
Actually trade is not done between nations, but between companies.
True, but irrelevant. There simply is no such thing as unfair trade practices, only winners and losers. The United States thought it could win, they were wrong.
I absolutely loathe drumPft, everything about him, from his absurd "hairstyle" to his voice, diction, "policies", etc.
However, I favor sanctions. We should sanction smartly though to protect our high tech manufacturing industries. So we could be a powerhouse like Germany, which protects its industries. China protects its acquisition of technology, why shouldn't we also work to help our industries?
This "Tech Group" sounds like they favor inaction and ineffective whining because, apparently, they have more to gain by importing Chinese goods than by helping strengthen the American middle class. Damned blood-sucking corporatist vampires.
Only I can judge you.
You have to look at the metagame.
China is essentially Alphabet Corp, and every other corporation in the country is a subsidiary. If you are trying to take on a monopoly without being in a position to break it up, like the US once did to Ma Bell, then your only alternative is pressuring the company (in this case the whole of China) economically and weakining them by bleeding off their profit.
Furthermore if you actually look at who influences most of the taxes, tariffs, etc, you will find it is lobbyists from various industries, many of whom may lobby the favorable nature of a particular tariff or tax not because it benefits their own company, but because it harms their competition. While you will very rarely get a wildcard in the government/political arena who will go against this, by and large it is the companies that dictate policy, rather than the government, since without the companies the government will have less income, and with less income it will have less influence it, making it vulnerable to changing political winds both within and without the country.
Yeah they've been saying the same thing about China's Currency Policy. The fact is, there's nothing anyone can do to force China to stop manipulating their currency. Same with trade practices. Other than go to the WTO if China is in violation of a trade agreement and then good luck.
Tariffs do work, ask Japan.
when you have an industry to protect. We don't really. Even the Steel industry is almost entirely recycling at this point. We'd have to completely rebuild our manufacturing base. And even if we do Automation means we wouldn't see very many jobs.
tl;dr; Barn Door's open, animals are gone.
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Even the ones that are forced to work together (like china).
The main difference and quintessentially the reason that the US will lose in this economic warfare is because the US and most of the west focuses on individual greed and believes that through our own individual greed we will all work together to make the world a better place. This falters because it fails to take into consideration that people are not benevolent overall and would much rather destroy someone else instead of creating something new to get ahead. This will always be much weaker than a group of people working together, even if they are being forced to by an authoritarian regime.
The only way to beat china in this economic war is for people to work together to a greater common good, this idea flies against the ideas of personal profit and wealth. It means that in order to catch up to china's lead and start surpassing them, we need to start sharing technology and build upon each others work. Unfortunately due to copyright and patents that is a possibility that is hard to achieve with in the current legal framework.
Make no mistake about it, China is the economic powerhouse in the world no matter what anyone wants you to believe. They are a country rich in raw materials and a cheap labor force, also due to their isolation and continuing ridicule they have become isolationists and rarely trust foreigners (except maybe the Russians). For the past few decades they have been sending out their population to invest in many other aspects of the world (property, resources, and businesses) and have done so mostly under the radar. Did you know that it actually is possible for a Chinese citizen to hold a dual citizenship? well as long as the secondary citizenship is only an economic one. Most countries offer such a deal to multi-nationals with lots of money and the Chinese take advantage of it so that they can gain more access to the levers of power that sit behind the curtain of politics.
Make no mistake about it, the Chinese are in control and this is just trump beating his chest and trying to look tough. They could crash all of the markets in the west if they felt like it. China has been working with a national strategy for a long time now while the US was focusing on personal greed and power via short term goals with out any long term planning. It also helps that China's main ally also has an authoritarian leader who has been able to work a long term national strategy with his country while the US has pretty much been following a bipolar trajectory by routinely switching between one of two parties.
The government sets the business environment those companies live in dummy.
Regulations, taxes, etc.
No EPA and things get cheep!! Add tariffs on foreign goods and you're laughing.
What the US needs to do is get together with the UK and a couple of other allies and create an effective 'hacker' team and ddos the crap out of the palace in Beijing. After which we could do the same to the Kremlin, and maybe the entire country of Syria. It is time we started fighting on the third front in the virtual world, We have the technology, we have the personnel and we certainly have cause.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Should we be working with our allies to combat unfair trading practices? Of course!
Should we do so in a calm and collected manner? Of course!
Was the president warned about retaliation a thousand times before the first tariff? Of course!
Does he think he's smarter than everyone else and nothing can dissuade him from taking the more perilous actions? Of course!
This is the bed people have made, it's time to sleep in it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Found the kulak.
China has no unfair trade practices.
You mean except for currency manipulation, import/export restrictions, forex controls, foreign ownership restrictions, government subsidies, government ownership of businesses, and a fistful of other shady practices?
While I wouldn't claim the US is pure as snow either let's not pretend that China the nation state doesn't act on behalf of Chinese companies.
Actually trade is not done between nations, but between companies.
A) Governments purchase goods too and a lot of them, both foreign and domestic. B) Nation states are HEAVILY involved in international trade. If you think otherwise you don't understand the topic adequately.
As it should.
Whenever someone is put in charge of 'the greater good' they define it as their personal good.
Never trust anybody who says: 'We're all in this together'. No we're not! People that say that never mean they are taking on your problems, they mean their problems are going to land on you and your resources belong to them. Fuck them!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No one in that region other than North Korea is cool with China. For all of the white progressive derping about "American imperialism," it's rather telling ain't it that even Vietnam is seeking to build a real relationship with us. Let that sink in--a country whose northern half we treated about on par with how the Soviets treated Afghanistan--prefers us to China.
China is colonizing Africa. Look it up if you don't believe me. There are quite a few million Chinese who have moved there in the last few decades and a lot are moving there every year.
The world is going to bitterly regret not standing up to China and aggressively asserting its interests against them.
As you likely know: governments.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
For something that doesn't work, China sure has made good use of them to build the #2 economy in the world. I think it's more like, "they don't maximize GDP but certainly do sacrifice a small part of it to give a better life to our people." To say they don't work is to ignore the big picture in favor of a single metric - GDP growth - by which all is measured.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Imports reduce the amount of American labor spent on obtaining a thing (i.e. you work 3 hours for American-made pants, 1.86 hours for the same exact quality of Chinese pants, and more than 3 hours for American-made pants at a higher quality, assuming the American manufacturing industry has equivalent or better experience and expertise in manufacturing compared to China). That reduces American poverty and frees up American labor to do things like build great new technology industries.
Wow, what an insightful comment!
If we make everything overseas, it would eliminate US poverty altogether!
Because Big Giant Orange Head is so willing to listen to people!
Yes, I know the letter was actually written to the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Doesn't matter; we all know that when BGOH takes an interest, the specific people in charge of those portfolios no longer matter. Only the BGOH matters.
Thus you get meandering statements that reverse direction at least six times. Then 6 am rage Tweets. Then an apparent policy choice that catches the entire Administration off guard. Then BGOH insisting that "there is no trade war" despite his having initiated a trade war. Statements like "tariffs are good!" and "economic sanctions are easy and very easy to win!".
Meanwhile the entire Republican Party looks like a bunch of doofuses, trying get the President to reverse course without criticizing him. Business leaders and business organizations line up against the current policy position. Economists try to say something positive and spectacularly fail.
And the only mildly supportive comments come from the Democrats and various personalities (Fox & Friends, Conway, Sanders, Carlson, etc.). Most of these people are either paid shills, or they are so far up BGOH's ass, they wouldn't see daylight if they tunneled for a month.
This letter is sure to work (no it won't).
Why not now? Or do they mean, not worked for the exploiters only for the common man and countries as a whole? Then they are correct, parasites always suffer from tariffs.
we strongly encourage the administration to build an international coalition
Has the author of this memo been in a coma for the last two years?
And when the companies really have no choice but to do what a nation's government tells them to do, what does that imply?
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Chinese troll says China is doing nothing wrong. Are you even allowed to speak out against your own country? The answer is no, unless you want to go jail . Here you are posting on chinese help forums. https://ask.helplib.com/java/p... on a Chinese site https://whois.icann.org/en/Loo... .
It's actually possible for there to be no winners, and we'll probably get to see that.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
That may have worked if the US itself had not been employing unfair trade practices against its own allies for decades.
If only there was some way we could create some sort of "Cross Pacific Collaboration"; a coordinated block of pacific countries with free trade agreements and aligned tariff rules. That would be an amazing way to counter China. Too bad nothing like that was ever negotiated...
And your silly notion of "The Collective" doesn't fucking exist: human beings -are individuals.
Well, if you truly believe that, then the only strategy is straight up theft. The reality, however, is that free trade (not rigged markets) allow both sides to win. If I have more beef than I can eat this year, and you have more beans than you can eat this year, we can trade and both come out winners, because now we both have a much healthier diet.
China add tariffs to US soybeans has done nothing but harm China. Europe bought up all beans China would have been buying. LOL https://www.reuters.com/articl...
We are the Borg.
I think that this whole tariff circus misunderstands the economic relationship between the US and China. US corporations have exported much of their manufacturing to China, which offers poorer working conditions, more human rights violations, a sufficiently skilled workforce, and good transport infrastructure. These conditions help to drive down the cost of manufacturing and ensure a robust and reliable supply chain for the US market.
This arrangement is of enormous benefit and profit to US corporations. Unfortunately, while the cost of production has gone down, so has the income of most US households, pushed down by higher rates of unemployment, in real terms, decreased salaries, and degraded jobs (e.g. more service jobs). In other words, trade between the US and China makes the rich richer and the poor poorer in both countries.
Tariffs don't do anything to address these issues because it's trivial to get around tariffs, e.g. the Chinese can use intermediaries to get their goods into the US.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
From the land of sugar taxes... they are saying tariffs won't work? I can't keep up with the left anymore
Seriously, it is long past time for WTO to do the right thing and tell China to quit cheating. They continue to manipulate their money, subsidize and dump on the market. And worst of all, China is now destroying 3rd world nations. Venezuela is a good example. And nation that China works with, comes at a very high costs in the future.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
All of this was predicted in the early 90s when trade started to be liberalised. Free Trade doesn't work unless the countries trading are of equal or near equal standards of living. Otherwise the richer countries are outsourcing their wealth/jobs to poorer countries in exchange for more lax environmental/worker protections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://blog.peerform.com/top-t...
"human beings -are individuals." which is most people live in cities, to take advantage of the things that communal living gives.
Ask any US company that processes or stores private data.
LOL. Europe didn't buy all the soybeans. They bought merely a small portion, and likely at a cheaper price. China imported about 5.8M tons of soybean from the US. The article states only about 450K were imported by Europe. A mere drop in the bucket.
Keep whining snowflakes. We are too busy winning.
Another idiot that doesn't understand what socialism is. Denmark isn't socialist. Their PM came out and said it after Bernie Sanders claimed they were. Socialism is government control of the means of production.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yeah, because win/loss is determined by one single factor...
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Lets just follow the program and accept that even the most profound thinkers in the US no longer understand the meaning of words. Or they redefine the meanings to suit their political purposes. If an USian understand the post-war societal structure as socialism, then let them have it. They were a primitive society last time they fought for their homes.
And it can only be voluntary and at a local level with significant trade barriers protecting the local level.
Feudalism is the point- the desired end result.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Only this time it's happening at a far faster rate.
No. Centralizing everything (whether in the name of "capitalism" or "communism") with the power in the hands of fewer and fewer people who are able to monetize every fucking aspect of our lives ...is how we return to feudalism.
I fumbled the italics... there was actually some sense to it...
Hahahahaha - tell us another one, Comrade Like Feng!
Much better to *decentralize* to the point that you can punch the commisar or the king in the nose.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Mod up informative!
From 2015-2016 (Jan-Apr 1 each year), the total exports of soybeans went down by 4 million. It's down 4 million again from 2017 to 2018, so there is no known effect showing that that tariffs have done anything to effect exports. https://apps.fas.usda.gov/esrq...
Also the pork tariffs are a joke because one of the largest pork exporters is a Chinese company.
Then why do you get upset about Universal Healthcare because its socialism ?
You have no issues spending the most money on the military by taxing everyone to cover it.
Universal healthcare would see a REDUCTION in costs, it has everywhere else.
Mod up hypocrite!
That's communism, actually. Thank you for playing.
Or in the case of New Zealand, throw a dildo into the face of a government politician.
http://www.konbini.com/en/ente...
Bugger throwing shoes, nothing says "Fuck off" like a sex toy to the face.
I like it. Too bad in most countries, you'll never get that close to a politician without facing down a goon with an uzi.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Nothing except all the tears of American soybean farmers...
I only can read about 200 Chinese "characters" no idea why you sent those links ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Any examples for that?
Probably they are not companies then, but parts of the state?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Nice to know that somebody still cares enough to be angry about it. I had lost hope already, with that cancerous Russian alternative reality existing right beyond our border. It's almost similar to those American religious movements, who expand their curious values and behavioral patterns among the local believers.