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Trump Officials Planning Escalation of US-China Tech Trade War (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration is looking to widen its trade war with China by restricting Chinese access to U.S. technology, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. "The Treasury Department is crafting rules that would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying companies involved in what the White House calls 'industrially significant technology,'" the Wall Street Journal says. A separate proposal would institute beefed-up export controls preventing Chinese companies from buying these technologies from U.S. firms. The policies could be announced as soon as this week, the Journal says. In the past, the Trump administration has blocked multiple attempts by Chinese companies to buy U.S. semiconductor firms and imposed a sweeping export ban on Chinese smartphone maker ZTE after ZTE was caught selling U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea -- though the administration recently lifted the ban.
It remains to be seen who will bear the brunt of it.
I'm sick and tired of governments fucking around with with business of private individuals and entities. It's nobody else's business what two private parties do. I don't care if it's in someones bedroom or between companies of two different countries. This idea that a government owns you is bull shit. I don't care if we are talking the EU and GDPR or Trump and his stupid trade war. Neither the EU nor the US nor China should be interfering in the private affairs of others. I own me. Not someone else. I do not wish to be a slave just because some elite(s) have a financial interest in some action and have convinced a percentage of the population to go along (or otherwise do without the populations consent). No person has any right to to intervene in another business or affairs who isn't hurting anyone. Violence (government action) is never justified on the basis of social or political objectives where there is otherwise no violence by the interests of whom they are interfering.
Protectionist trade policy is the knee-jerk reaction of the weak. Retaliation by not just the Chinese, but America's traditional allies in Europe, Canada, and Mexico will cost US jobs, not create them.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
when you have an industry to protect. China has leverage because we've let them take over virtually all our manufacturing. We've kept a few of the heavy duty stuff in case we need to spin up for a war.
Thing is, Trump's base wants action and they want it now. Given that wages keep falling (inflation's 3%, wage growth's 2.5%, do the math) and 40% of Americans don't have $400 bucks in the bank I can't blame them.
This is what happens when you ignore a sizable portion of the country. They find somebody who'll listen. If you happen to be doing pretty well in this economy and don't want the boat rocked, well, tough shit. If you don't want desperate people destabilizing the world then you need to do something about their desperation. You'd think we'd have learned this from WWI and II.
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Protectionist trade policy is the knee-jerk reaction of the weak. Retaliation by not just the Chinese, but America's traditional allies in Europe, Canada, and Mexico will cost US jobs, not create them.
There were originally 6 good reasons for the tariffs:
1) Chinese manufacturers take our designs, make extras, and sell counterfeits as if they were original(*)
2) Chinese manufacturers steal our IP and trade secrets for other products
3) The Chinese violate licensing agreements (ie - hacked copies of software) and the government does nothing about it.
4) Chinese working in the US commit industrial espionage and send the information back to China
5) The Chinese government subsidizes certain industries so that they can sell goods under cost, driving industries from other countries out of business
6) (I forgot what the 6th big item was. Maybe allowing companies to do business with N. Korea?)
On #5 above, China has been subsidizing their steel production, pushing US foundries out of business. The US has only one foundry left that can make the steel plates needed for ships, so this is a national security risk. You can't make battleships without steel plates. See Canadian Aluminum subsidies.
Everyone who has taken Econ 101 will parrot the old saw "trade sanctions are bad", and everyone will wail and moan about how the sanctions have hurt *them* (so they must be bad - ya!).
China violates their trade agreements in every possible way, so much so that it would *almost* be better to not trade with China at all.
Note that for the first time in ever we have a businessman leading the country. This was not a capricious decision, it came from a long history of abuse. It's intended to fix the many and long-term existing problems, it's good for the majority of domestic businesses, and it was a campaign promise.
Take the long view.
(*) This has happened so frequently, it's a meme. Make your monitor or VCR or other electronic device in China, and see eBay flooded with counterfeit copies overnight. Does no one remember that?
Not with that attitude!
For sometime China has been sending students to study at US and European universities, obtaining bachelors and higher degrees. Some have brought this expertise back to China and established world class university programs in STEM areas and now produce outstanding home grown graduates. Eventually, if not now, these folks will develop home grown technology which may be as good as that being developed in western universities and private corporations. Sure, it might be easier and cheaper to steal needed tech from elsewhere, but restrictions on exports may turn the tables resulting in China becoming a technology power house. How long will this take? Time will tell.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Whether it's "logical" to accept trade imbalances is moot in politics. Large imbalances will often be blamed for various problems, such as the shrinkage of various local industries. Whether such is fair blame or not doesn't matter: it makes a great political scapegoat and eventually somebody will use it for political gain. You have to work with humans as they are, not as they should be.
Therefore, it's best to avoid large imbalances. I propose the WTO change their approach such that countries be able to raise tariffs to correct aggregate balances.
Each nation will probably end up protecting certain industries, but it will more or less balance out over time as each give and take until an equilibrium is reached. The US may protect 30% and China may protect 30%, for example. It's a civilized compromise.
However, the rule should gradually kick in rather than all at once to avoid shocking the markets. Trump doesn't do "gradually" very well.
There are too many ways to "micro-cheat" such that the current way of bringing up complaints of artificial barriers to WTO is not practical. Suppose each city in China gives red tape to outside firms out of nationalistic feelings or subtle pressure from the central gov't. One would have collect data from almost every cheating city when presenting evidence to the WTO court (or whatever they call it). That's not practical. An aggregate trade number is easier to monitor. Not perfect, but better than micro-monitoring and micro-suing.
Table-ized A.I.
rules that would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying companies
What if the official owner is in a fiscal heaven where the real owner is completely hidden?
What is wrong with protecting US jobs?
Why is it a good thing to transfer all of our technology to the Chinese Communist Party?
How is the average non-college educated US citizen better off after 20 years of globalism?
Try to think bigger than the price of your iPad.
that fast, right? These people lost ground for 8 years under Obama, 8 years under Bush and 8 years under Clinton. The older ones lost ground before that too. These trends have been going on for over 40 years. They've been ignored that long. There was a brief respite during the .com boom and an even briefer one during the housing boom.
It's kinda hard to shoot yourself in the foot when somebody else already cut you off at the knees.
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I'm not saying what they're doing is going to help, but I _am_ saying it's not likely to make things much worse for them. You're underestimating how bad off 40% of America is. Like the man said, what have you got to lose? For a lot of people there really isn't anything. That's what 40 years of declining wages means.
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It was good for Bezos and Jobs and all the other tech robber barrons.
I notice you don't want to blame the Waltons and Walmart for any of our country's ills. Not only did they help flood the market with cheap chinese crap for decades, they helped gut wages at the low end, shifted the cost of feeding their employees to the rest of us, while filling their own pockets. Now they hide in gated communities where they don't have to deal with results of their handiwork.
But sure, blame Bezos and Jobs. Amazon and Apple employ 10s of thousands of highly compensated employees who don't need "food stamps" in order to eat. Can you say the same for Walmart?
And Trump won't even pay Americans. His resorts bring in hundreds of foreign workers on temp visas because they'll work for even less than Americans. That's #MAGA for you.
(Not sure who the barrons are. Did you mean robber barons?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EigIujKxDcE
> Small problems can be quietly negotiated. T lacks a sense of proportion
I've kept an eye on Trump for 20 years, and I'd say that's a fundamental part of his personality, his psyche. Parodies of him always have him talking about "yuge" because that's Trump, he always wants to go big, the biggest.
There is good and bad about "go big or go home" in a president.
IP theft is a problem, but if Trump wants to confront China effectively, he would need Europe and the rest of the world on our side to confront China as a unified block. Any trade expert would advise Trump the same and Trump may even know this. But I don't think Trump cares about results. He's more interested in motivating his base to turn out in November. So this is really a non-event. I just wish the media would finally wise up that 99% of Trump is hot air and stop covering him or his antics. We need to De-Trump our selves.
He's not protecting jobs. Metal transformation jobs are now leaving: Harley Davidson moving manufacturing, Mid Continent Nail Corporation shutting down and dozens more to come. Don't worry, the rest of the world is more than happy about it! We'll gladly take your jobs!
The Chinese however have a vested, large monetary interest in a stable and prosperous USA. The failure of the US economy will have a huge detrimental effect on China. One could see Xi Jinping phoning Putin to tell him to knock it off, lest Russia face a combined Chinese+American block...
People don't compare to folk half the world away, they compare to their immediate neighbors. That is why they elect fascist populist politician : because they want to get a better living and see the other 60% getting it. Not saying they are right, but simply that your remark is stupid.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Indians and Chinese are smart and hard working enough to come up with their own tech.
China can still cheap goods outside the US. The rest of the world will always favor cheap Chinese products over overpriced American products.
It remains to be seen who will bear the brunt of it.
You and I will. That much is self evident. Tariffs pretty much always benefit a few at the expense of the many. Trump is doing nothing more than pandering to a political base and costing all of us in the process. If he really wanted to solve trade issues he's going about it entirely backwards.
China has a much bigger stick than not buying US bonds.. they could sell some.
The Bank of China has something like 3 trillion US dollars in reserves. Imagine what would happen if they announced that they were going to sell ten billion dollars of US government treasury bills every month until the tariffs were rescinded.
it's from the working class of one country to another. The extremely rich are still extremely rich. Even more so now. Having reliable access to food, shelter, healthcare, education and transportation as well as retirement when you're too old to work does _not_ make you "extremely rich". It makes you Middle Class. The ground is being lost by the American Middle Class. Also, the losses the American Middle class have suffered are nearly 1 to 1 gains for the top 1%.
The American working class doesn't have to give ground so the rest of the world can be lifted out of poverty. That's one way to do it, but not the _only_ way. We could just as easily take it from the extremely rich. If we were willing to, that is.
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Read the Reuters article https://www.reuters.com/articl...
"Under Made in China 2025, unveiled by China’s State Council in 2015, China wants to catch up with rivals in sectors including robotics, aerospace, clean-energy cars and advanced basic materials. "
"The strategy is at the core of China’s efforts to move up the value chain and achieve Xi’s vision of turning the country into a global superpower by 2050. "
"Under the plan, Beijing wants Chinese suppliers to capture 70 percent of market share by 2025 for “basic core components and important basic materials” in strategic industries."
"Other targets endorsed by senior Chinese officials include ensuring 40 percent of smartphone chips are domestically made by 2025. "
Bending over while suckling and being stabbed in the back -- all at the same time! You Trumpkins certainly have a penchant for vivid imagery. Albeit stolen without attribution from Nazi predecessors sore about losing WWI. Your spiritual, political and moral predecessors too.
What is the best way to survive the eminent Trump recession? Will the recession happen in time to affect his re-election in 2020?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
More importantly, fuck all the people who say fuck you about anything. Fuck you!
Better stop or you'll go blind.
they're looking to maintain. To hang on. Remember 40% don't have $400 in the bank. They're one car accident or one health problem away from disaster and they know it. 40 years of declining wages means we've got millions of people on the edge.
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It also highlights the main issue, how can you have a rationale discourse and negotiate a workable agreement, when the other side is willing to just make shit up. At the core of negotiations is the concept of "meeting of minds" to understand and discuss interests. If one side is telling you that the sky is red and clouds are orange, and that yes means no and no means yes where do you go? You can't negotiate with crazy
I don't quite understand that, they claim to love America, yet they want it to fail, and they're cheering it on it seems..
I don't quite understand that, they claim to love America, yet they want it to fail, and they're cheering it on it seems..
Deception. Lies. If they came right out and said - we want to destroy America, do you think they'd get far? Yes, we want to increase your debt as much as possible so we can ruin your country and everything it stands for... probably wouldn't be that many takers. How did Hitler do it? I'm going to make Germany rise out our ashes. We're going to be something again! How did Stalin and the Russians do it? Same way. Hell, how did Castro do it? Same way. He was a buddy of the US until he got power. He was a vicious killer. So was Che Guevara. It is kind of funny that Obama was like a movie villain. Telling us what he wanted to do before hand.
So look at what Obama did. He more than doubled our debt from 7 to 21 T and set entitlements up to around 100T. Nobody can pay that off. That's more than all the money in the world. Civil strife. When GW Bush left office, sure we had a shooting here, incident there, mostly nothing. After he left we had Trayvon Martin - a kid that tried to kill a man and was a known local thug and was killed. He sent people down to stir things up. It kept happening. He started packing ideologues into judges jobs, prosecutors, etc. Sotomayer - yea, she shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. That was a payback. Then there is what Obama did to other countries. Took out Libya and kicked countries below it so they crapped many thousands of next to no education Muslims that looked like an invading army sans the military gear into Europe. By law they were supposed to be taken back to Africa, not Italy. He tried to topple Egypt and fortunately they stood up and put the muslim brotherhood mad dogs down. He hurt us big internationally to the point China snubbed him and Greece rioted when he showed up on his farewell tour. Hardly a word of any of this in the press. He tried to tie everything up in regulations. Thousands and thousands of them that would have meant he wouldn't have been re-elected if they saw the light of day before 2012. Every day he tried to find a new way to screw us.
Then there's Europe. Where you can't tell what the muslims are doing in Germany or your somehow racist. England has gone nuts bashing their own citizens to cater to muslims. Hear about the nazi saluting dog? You can't make this stuff up. Hitler himself didn't have a problem when it was done during his time, yet England found a guy guilty of making fun, of Nazis. Really. You have to read it to believe it.
It's like - WTF happened to sensible people? Did electronics turn all of our heads into mush? Seems like for a large portion of the world the answer is yes.
I have to wonder, maybe 2012 was the wrong end of the world date. Maybe it's really 2022.
Lots of interesting stuff you said there. Too bad you keep getting modded down to telling the truth. Can't talk bad about their lord and savior obama. You however bring up one really interesting question.
It's like - WTF happened to sensible people? Did electronics turn all of our heads into mush? Seems like for a large portion of the world the answer is yes.
I often wonder if the internet has ruined people as a group. It turns people toxic, the worst part is so many people buy into things said on the internet like it has to be true. Just like how TV used to be, before the internet.. I grew up at the same time the internet did, I started on it in the mid 90's as a kid thanks to my father, and it quickly became my favorite "toy" because I could learn things, and I could make things!! The internet was a wonderful place then... And then in 2000 it started to go down hill, computers were becoming more common, and easier to afford. The large influx of "common" people helped ruin the internet. That's when companies saw the flow of money the internet produced and they worked hard to dumb it down. But I guess that's just like, my opinion man..
I often wonder if the internet has ruined people as a group. It turns people toxic, the worst part is so many people buy into things said on the internet like it has to be true. Just like how TV used to be, before the internet.. I grew up at the same time the internet did, I started on it in the mid 90's as a kid thanks to my father, and it quickly became my favorite "toy" because I could learn things, and I could make things!! The internet was a wonderful place then... And then in 2000 it started to go down hill, computers were becoming more common, and easier to afford. The large influx of "common" people helped ruin the internet. That's when companies saw the flow of money the internet produced and they worked hard to dumb it down. But I guess that's just like, my opinion man..
I go way back. 1970s. Modems, bbs, computers I had to dial into. I remember when they merged a whole bunch of networks into the internet. In college we had network news. We had what we called the flame. Someone would say something and someone else would pound them, being a jerk. That's where Godwins law came in. Seemed like everything ended up - you're a nazi. It was just how fast that happened. "I fixed the bug in Make. It wasn't written that well right here. It works well now" -> "You're an asshole, I wrote that code and you have no idea what the hell you're talking about! Why don't you go back to your mama you Neanderthal." If you were female, it could get a lot worse.
Professionally e-mail could be a problem. You don't know if the person is joking or really did call you an ass. I remember a woman in England wrote a letter that I thought I was going to get fired over. I checked in code that had a bug in it. OMG she ripped me. We called up and she said - no big deal, just wanted you to know there was a bug in it, honey! My boss and I looked at each other like WTF? Ok, thanks, good bye. One of her people did the same thing a week later. Bill simply changed the names and sent it back to her. It was 1992, just before George HW Bush signed the internet over to the public. Since then we see more stupid people on the net. Now any one, even an idiot can get on. I know because I know someone that really is an idiot IQ wise and they're online. Facebook mostly and of course they're liberal. Insert joke here. Look it up sometime. There really is a definition of idiot, imbecile, moron. I know people that are actually diagnosed as crazy, they're on as well.
Being modded troll gets me sometimes. I think there is one individual doing it, mostly. Bad part of /. You can look for posts from certain people and persecute them. I try to just mod up. Sometimes when I see someone really is a troll, have to mark them as a troll. I used to worry about it. However my karma is still good. So troll away... I wish more people would tell the truth. We really need to do that. Don't let them win because people will believe them. Lincoln used to say a lie is already around the world when the truth is still putting on its shoes.