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Alibaba's Jack Ma Backs Down From Promise To Trump To Bring 1 Million Jobs to the US (cnbc.com)
Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, has abandoned a promise to create one million new jobs in the US, in a sign of the threat that rising trade tensions with China pose to some of US President Donald Trump's key economic goals. From a report: "The promise was made on the premise of friendly US-China partnership and rational trade relations," Ma told Chinese news site Xinhua on Wednesday. "That premise no longer exists today, so our promise cannot be fulfilled." Ma, who recently announced that he will step down as Alibaba chairman within a year, added that the company would "not stop working hard to contribute to the healthy development of China-US trade." Ma's comments come on the heels of a new round of tariffs this week from both China and the U.S. that will affect billions of dollars worth of goods as the two countries have failed to reach a deal to resolve the Trump administration's concerns about China's trade practices.
What was the last high-profile promise you can remember actually being fulfilled?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Wow, the promise of 1 million jobs selling cheap consumer products. Now that's a recipe for a healthy economy.
As a person who prefers to spend a little more to buy solidly built items that last, I don't really see any harm it would have if cheap imported crap was more expensive than it is now.
Generally people who disfavor the trade scenario with China want less trade, because they do not see any chance of getting China to offer reciprocal rules for foreign businesses. Without that, without China allowing US businesses to operate in China with the freedom that Chinese businesses have to operate in the US, then reducing trade is the whole goal.
In that sense it is very "winable." Many of the European conflicts have already been resolved.
What I find funny is that a lot of people think it is only Trump supporters who want decreased trade with China, but I've been hearing the same thing from the left for 30 years about how "Free Trade" will ruin our economy for the little guy, and destroy the environment too. And on the right, the little guy has at least the same economic concerns. Neither party actually votes to support American workers or small business in trade negotiations, so it shouldn't really be that surprising that the little guy supports an anti-trade policy. Meaning, we want Trump to do a bad job dealing with trade with China! LOL
Not every bad job pushes things in the wrong direction, once in awhile you slip on a banana peel and get saved from getting run over by car! Actually, in other cases he wanted to so something evil, but wasn't allowed by the courts merely because he did a bad job at implementing it. So, maybe even 35% of the screw-ups are useful.