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Trump Suggests US Could Slap 10 Percent Tax On iPhones, Laptops From China (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump suggested he could place a 10 percent tariff on iPhones and laptops imported from China, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday. He also said it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay an increase in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on Jan. 1, just four days before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Maybe. Maybe. Depends on what the rate is," the president said to The Wall Street Journal about the possible iPhone and laptop tariffs. "I mean, I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily."
Sure, everyone could handle a 10% tax very easily. Oh unless you're super rich, then you need a tax cut.
Either that, or just secure a small million dollar loan from your daddy.
Our President is a stuck up, toffee nosed, elitist twat.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
There isn't any tax that a Republican doesn't like.
Perhaps you missed the obvious, but he's already bailing out US farmers to the tune of $12 billion to compensate for lost sales to China.
Worse, he's paying it to Chinese owned companies like WH Group:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/chinese-owned-pork-producer-qualifies-for-money-under-trumps-farm-bailout/2018/10/23/154764da-d3ce-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html
And if he slaps a big tarif on Apple, they'll demand compensation too. Either directly or through the courts, since he's not within the Executive branches *limited* powers to kill ratified trade treaties wholesale. Apple can sue if they don't get compensated.
Also imagine how it would be if Apple does not get compensated, yet Chinese companies do get compensation from Trump?
IMHO, the US $ nearly collapsed after Bush did his 2004 monetary inflation. Here they're doing a 10% increase in money supply, gifted as tax cuts to rich people (around $1.5 to $1.9 trillion). That needs to be anchored in trade since you need China to need to buy US bonds to soak up the debt and force the retained $ value.
IMHO2: Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia, and we'll get a lot of distraction like this.
If you're wealthy enough to purchase an iPhone, you're wealthy enough to pay this tax. If not, I guess Apple is going to lose a number of customers.
Plus, this effectively also serves as a corporate tax given that iPhones are fairly common for commercial use.
This may end up being a fairly progressive tax.
So, what does GM do - start the process of eliminating ~15,000 jobs and closing factories. I know, it's more complicated than that in that competition for foreign car makers, most of whom make cars in the US with likely higher quality products, changes in customer preferences to SUVs and trucks, and the availability of hybrid and electric vehicles from other companies. Another example is Ford's decision not to make a car for import to the US from China and rejecting the suggestion that it be made in the North America because it would cost too much.
No one wins from a trade war.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Good. Fuck Apple and their "designed in California (made with child labor in China)" bullshit.
Apple could easily manufacture their phones and laptops in the US. Their products are easily marked up at least 100%. They have a trillion dollars they're just sitting on.
They don't because they hate American blue collar workers, it's that simple.
Not that easily -- most of the components they use to make the phone are also made in China. Coordinating parts from hundreds of suppliers to all converge in the USA exactly when needed is time consuming and expensive. Even moreso since Apple would be paying for those components to sit a container for weeks on its way to the factory, and since the factory is so far away, they need to order weeks early just in case there's a transportation issue, so they end up owning components for months before they even start building the phone.
Those suppliers don't want to move here because then they become a high-cost supplier than can only sell in the USA, the rest of the world will buy from cheap chinese factories, so instead of a Chinese factory that makes 100 million resistors a year, in the USA there'd be a factory making 10M resistors a year, so they'd be much more expensive.
But even if Apple did bring the jobs on-shore, don't expect many blue-collar jobs to come, the whole factory will be automated, staffed mostly by relatively few highly skilled robotic technicians.
So, the end result is, Apple would earn less money on iPhones, consumers would pay more money for iPhones, and few jobs would result. So the increase in the cost of the phone is essentially a very expensive job-creation tax.
Hey Little Rich Boy
What makes China your enemy? I can appreciate if you don't consider them friends, but have they done anything which you would consider targeted against you?
... well pretty much everything?
If you want to blame someone for exporting American jobs, it wasn't China... it was Walmart.
Walmart actually forced their suppliers to move manufacturing to China and threatened that if they didn't, they would make a competing product themselves in China and undercut their prices. Walmart also bullied Chinese companies into working faster and cheaper. Walmart also manipulated oil subsidies by exporting small amounts of things to China on American tax payers money and used the fuel paid for by the Americans to transport massive chunks of cargo back from China on the return trip. Walmart also manipulated the American social services system to provide welfare to their employees to avoid paying them themselves... the savings are paid as dividends to their shareholders.
Pretty much every nasty thing in your head about China is actually Walmart. Walmart started it, now Amazon is continuing it, but Amazon will replace what few Americans are left in retail with robots instead allowing them to undercut Walmart and kill their business.
No... you're really hating in the wrong direction. You should be hating on opportunistic Americans who proactively destroy American lives in order to make a quick buck. And BTW... many of these great Americans who are exporting everything to China to make a buck... they are registered voters and supporters of the Republican party.
No China is not your enemy. They simply became rich while America became poor because American insisted on paying them to make stuff for them. Now that they're rich, they decided to buy the American dream but not export it back to the US.
P.S. My daughter and I take Chinese lessons every week and she's preparing to study in China instead of the U.S.. She wanted to go to MIT or Berkley, but is heading to Bejing instead because now China has built top notch universities.
What do you think it means when Europeans are looking east instead of west for
I hope Trump's tariffs help you out. I know that I just working towards shifting one of Europe's oldest and biggest Cisco partners to being a Huawei partner too. The dollar is too high and Cisco just isn't that good anymore... their latest generation of.. well pretty much everything is about as good as what we used to call "Cheap Chinese Shit" and the so called "Cheap Chinese Shit" has gotten about as good as Cisco claims to be.
Poor people aren't buying them as it is. Rich people can handle another $100. Or they can just go with a Korean phone.
If your daughter has any Chinese blood in her, I'd be very careful about these statements. China treats all people with ethnic Han roots like Chinese citizens when they're in China, which includes all of the relevant responsibilities. Something quite a few naive Westernern born and raised people with Han roots have been finding out over last decades with everything from detention and fines to blocking of leaving China just because their relatives have something Chinese state has interest in.
Here's the latest example which has gotten too big for Western media majors to ignore:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world...
that people get all sideways about a 10% tax on imported phones, but when we lower corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, which will lower the price of AMERICAN goods, then its supposedly a "tax cut for the rich." What's rich about millions of phone buyers that could get an American phone for less money because the company is not sending so much $$$ to Washington, and can therefore lower the price on their phones and cause more people to choose their phones instead of the Chinese phones? Taxes are taxes, whether they're tariffs or income taxes, and no corporation has ever, does now, or ever will pay corporate income taxes. They simply COLLECT them, from us, when they raise prices of their goods, lower their workers' pay, or cut stock dividends in order to have the $$$ to send to Washington. Duh... of the 2, I'll take tariffs, since it benefits American companies by keeping the gov't from coming after corporate income to get the tax money.
How much will China have to funnel to the Trump Crime Family “organization” or Trump regime’s interests to make this go away, I can’t help but wonder.
Won’t hurt Apple, it’ll just mean that your next iPhone will be made in Indonesia, or Malaysia, or some other place with little or no environmental regulation or protections for workers, laws against modern slavery / human trafficking, etc. SURE as hell it’s not going to cost APPLE money... it’s Apple. They don’t pay taxes, or follow laws, or whatever. They just find ways around it, like parking money in a fake subsidiary in Ireland. Since we all found out about that one, they had to pay some small part of what they owed, or may one day have to, and meanwhile, things will get rearranged to some OTHER tax haven or dodge.
They’re all a bunch of goddamned fucking crooks, all the way around.
Sent from my iPad.
Oops... shit.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
I mean, it just needlessly increases the cost of a good without giving anyone an incentive to move manufacturing into the USA because it's less expensive to just pay the tax than build entirely new domestic infrastructure that would in the long run, cost more anyways because of the costs of recovering those infrastructure costs.
Of course, the problem with all of this is that long before you've applied any tax high enough to create such an incentive, you will have already created another incentive for a black market that will present its own problems.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In summary: fuck American workers, I wanna save a couple bucks on my iCrap!
It takes many years of study to achieve a level in Chinese that is high enough to study at university. You sure you're not just making that up? China offers a bunch of programs with instruction in English.
Degrees from Chinese universities are problematic because everyone knows that the students cheat. Ask any American who has taught at a Chinese university, there are lots these days.
The Europeans are welcome to buddy up to China instead of America. They said they were going to do it after Trump pulled us out of the Paris deal. They'll find out real fast that China aren't easily fooled chumps like America is. You think China is going to pay 80% of a defense "alliance"? No way, they're not idiots. You think they're going to have hugely unfair trade agreements that function as gigantic bribes to the tune of $150 billion a year? Hell no. Good luck with the Chinese. I hope they help you out, but I know that won't be the case.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
In summary: fuck American workers, I wanna save a couple bucks on my iCrap!
No, in summary: The globalization and automation genies are already out of the bottle, no matter how much you try to shove them back in, you can't.
So you can either realize and accept the current situation (by training well educated workers that are capable of doing more than what a simple pick and place robot can do), or you can pretend globalization doesn't exist and tell uneducated workers that you're bringing jobs "back" to them, when reality those jobs aren't coming back.
You think this kind of stereotype that might have some truth 30 years ago would scare anyone who has spent any time actually trying to understand what’s happening in China?
So what if Americans won’t recognise a degree from Beijing University? When GP’s daughter graduated she will probably land a better paying job in China and anywhere she could find in America.
What you did is only to reduce her competition by scaring away other ignorant Americans.
On the matter of destroying vs. saving the car industry, for the record, I am opposed to both actions.
Since all of time up until about the iPhone 6.
Whatever message that video was meant to convey got lost because I didn't click on it.
And I remember when Democrats at least pretended to care about the interests of working people.
Washington's public policy was to offshore our entire industrial base and utterly neglect our infrastructure. Thereby impoverishing our working people, severely hampering our ability to fight a defensive war against a symmetric enemy, and fostering a culture of despair. Apparently the Establishment - President Trump's political enemies - considered that a "win".
Except of course, instead of reversing that neglect Trump has lowered the tax rate of the very people who got rich offshoring while at the same time increased the cost of goods that ordinary people buy, increased the cost of raw materials like steel to US manufacturers and increased the cost of US exports to some markets.
Bingo. If I had mod points I'd up you instead of commenting... I worked in industrial automation for 6 years and have a very good understanding of this. Tech has advanced sufficiently now that we can make long term, very robust solutions for significantly cheaper than the labor costs. No matter how you slice it, that will not change.
There would literally have to be an automation tax applied to companies doing it and that will never happen. If it did they would have to take the money from the tax and give it out as a UBI (which the Republicans would call an entitlement) to keep the economy from collapsing. It probably wouldn't even stop the automation because the technology will likely advance much too quickly for them to keep an effective tax on it. Then on the Democrat side, they won't tax it because they are fine with the globalization drive and the only way we can keep up in the US is to allow for new job TYPE creation (such as skilled technicians and such).
I've tried to explain this again and again to people, but they don't seem to WANT to grasp it.
Because so many US based iphone assembly jobs will be lost??? lol libtards know nothing.
The only country he's making 'great again' is Russia. I see you're repeating Russian trolls with your "American troops out of Europe" trolls.
Europe provided Ukraine with 1.2 billion euros, but US will only sell them $50 million in hand guns. Trump literally blocking sales of weapons to aid Russia and undermine its European military allies.
You'll probably end up sending troops to fight Ukraine alongside Russian troops, and trolls like you will pretend its in Americas interests.
Puppet states don't work without puppets and trolls like you.
Remember Helsinki? Trump promising US troops would cooperate with Russian troops in Syria.. which would see US troops attacking US allies to prop up Assad.... and this just three months after Russian troops attacked US troops in Syria.
https://nypost.com/2018/02/13/russians-attacked-american-troops-on-putins-orders/
If you read more carefully, you'll find that many of those people are visiting China, and while there trying to exercise a dual nationality that the PRC does not recognise. The PRC recognises two citizenships: "Chinese" and "Other". Pick one.
Iran does the same sort of thing, and folks who insist on retaining their Iranian citizenship and then travel there often find themselves in the same sorts of trouble.
The US State Department makes it very clear that A dual citizen may be subject to the laws of the other country that considers that person its citizen while in that country's jurisdiction... Dual nationality may hamper efforts to provide U.S. consular protection to dual citizens in the foreign country of their other nationality. (See page 7 of your US passport.)
The best thing to do if you are a citizen of either country, you become naturalised elsewhere, and your original citizenship is not revoked (China does this customarily to its nationals living overseas who take on a foreign citizenship, I've no idea about Iran), is to renounce your former citizenship, and make sure it's official under the laws of your original country. Do not attempt to return to your native country as a citizen of that country. Use your US passport, obtain a visa as a US citizen, and do not mention anything about dual nationality or previous nationality to any official of the other country. If you do--see above.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You wave your hands about a genie and a bottle, but the actual situation is merely that it would take time to ramp US production back up, and time for inventories to build to desired levels? There is no fucking genie in or out of your bottle, the situation has no genie.
Supply chains are not magic. They are not powered by genies.
..with it's throttle stuck wide open.
For fucks' sake, I fully understand that China is so corrupt and screwing us (and other countries) over, in more than just trade (militarily, human rights [comma, lack of], and so on, and so on) but there's got to be a better way to handle this than this.
Of course you also have to admit: we're like spoiled-assed kids in this country. Our overall high standard of living is because everything has been so damned cheap for so many decades. You all complain about the cost of an iPhone, but if it was produced 100% here in the U.S. (from the smallest component on up), it would cost several times as much I'm sure, assuming they'd produce them at all (might be too expensive to produce in any quantity). Before anyone jumps my shit for that: without U.S. companies using Chinese companies for production, Chinas' economy would probably be absolute shit. So it is a two-way street -- but still there's got to be a better way to deal with this than what Trump is doing. He keeps trying to run a country like it's a business -- and he's not a good businessman to start with (vis-a-vis, all his bankruptcies and failures), and it's just a bad idea to run a country like it's a business anyway. He's achieving the opposite of what was intended: he's costing Americans money, he's destroying American jobs, and he's running American companies out of business. Do I have a better idea? No. If I did, I'd run for office. But someone else must have a better way to do this, and they're not stepping up -- or maybe they've been told to shut up.
Canada's not trying to pry Maine loose from the US.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I live in Europe. If the US wants to charge more for iphones I'll happily buy direct from China. Bye bye Apple, Hello Xiaomi
That wouldn't just be iphones you plonker, it will be any phone that is built outside the US. It really is an idiot tax if you don't understand that ;)
Except it is called capitalism. Csout a list means sending production where it's cheapest .
Are you a capitalism or socialist? Your rant is socialist. You want to force companies to build in high cost area where they make less profit.
Also it has been 40+ years if offshoring Nixon started it when he opened up China trade.
I am sorry our Republican education system failed you so badly
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If your daughter has any Chinese blood in her, I'd be very careful about these statements. China treats all people with ethnic Han roots like Chinese citizens when they're in China, which includes all of the relevant responsibilities.
Not quite true. If you have any foreign blood in you, you are considered 100% foreigner. I am 1/2 Chinese, I can assure you of this fact. It applies from how you are treated by government officials to street scammers (unfortunately).
Also, if you look Chinese and cannot speak Chinese, it simply does not compute for your average Chinese person. My friend has a malaysian Chinese wife and they lived in China for a while (he is half Chinese). He spoke Chinese but his wife didn't. He said even after telling people his wife didn't speak Chinese (and they had recovered from the shock) they would continue to address his wife for the rest of the conversation because such a possibility did not compute for them.
the actual situation is merely that it would take time to ramp US production back up, and time for inventories to build to desired levels?
The next administration can press the "undo" button on all of Trump's bullshit. No one with half a brain is going to invest a cent in increasing domestic production. All tariffs accomplish is hitting average hard-working Americans right in their wallets.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I remember when Republicans were against tax
Judging by the shit I've seen "deplorables" post, I very much doubt many of them understand that it's a tax they'll have to cough up. I think they imagine Trump is just going to send a bill to China.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Maybe pissing off the iCrowd will be the last straw.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Trump has lowered the tax rate of the very people who got rich offshoring while at the same time increased the cost of goods that ordinary people buy
And anyone with a functional brain realizes now is a good time to buy whatever Chinese-made crap you had your eyes on, because soon it's gonna cost more.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Unless we go back 500 generations, itâ€(TM)s unlikely she does. She as mentioned earlier is European.
...it was about time. The reason RCA isn't making anything in the US anymore is because China slaps a tarrif on anything imported from the US but the US doesn't slap a tarrif on Chinese imports.
That is actually a very good example of attitude I'm talking about. To a mainstream chinese person, ethnicity comes first and foremost. If you look Chinese, you are Chinese, papers be damned.
Now if your pedigree is diluted to the point where you don't really look Chinese, you're a foreigner. That is true. But officials may still treat you as a Chinese national. It varies regionally. T1 cities will probably have officials who understand this perfectly.
I guarantee you we'll be better off having those nice new automated factories here in the States rather than in China.
Up the tariff! Create domestic jobs!
Huh? No, not in production. In repairing and second hand sales. Because when a new phone costs about 2000 bucks, repairing your old one for 100 suddenly becomes very compelling.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In a trade war both sides raise taxes/tariffs. These, at least in the US are collected by the Treasury and go into the general fund.
So:
* Citizens purchasing foreign goods pay more (tariff is a tax)
* Companies importing raw materials (for example, steel and aluminum) pay more (tariff is a tax), and will have to charge more for products (indirect tax)
The goal of course is to move manufacturing into the US.
But wage disparities cripple this in many cases. We could probably handle things like chip manufacturing competitively, but putting things together via humans is far more expensive in the US. Maybe robots are the answer (they are).
The problem to me is timing. It takes a long time to move the product and processes the tariffs are targeting. And raw materials? Wage disparity again.
Anyway, the tariffs are just a way to increase Federal income, from March through July it was about $1.4 billion from steel and aluminum:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/1...
And per the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Review, "Other Income" was up by $1 billion (includes tariffs), about 1%. Corporate taxes dropped by $92 billion, about 31%.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/fil...
Anyway, corporate tax rate drop was a gift to the already wealthy ($92 billion!) and the tariffs are a tax on the citizens and revenue for the Federal government.
BlameBillCosby.com
While technically true, gym at least paid back the bailout with interest.
This is what happens when you put a billionaire in the White House. He has no idea that 10% is a huge amount for many people (let alone 25%!).
Next time, guys, put a poor person, or even a homeless person, in there. Someone who has some concept of the value of $1.
I would like to know more information. Primarily is it true that the detainees are Chinese citizens by choice (either their own or their parents).
With so many things coming from China basically everything would become more expensive and this wouldn't exactly be a popular thing. Sticking it just to the elitist iPhone owners (although I fear Trump may be wrong here, but whatever) is more limited. Those who buy $200 China smartphone anyway will say "serves them right!" and love Trump even more. At least I'm fairly sure that Trump thinks this way.
It seems obvious to me that the term "iPhone" is being used here to include all mobile phones. In fact the phrase "iphones and laptops" basically means all tech. This isn't an "Apple tax", this is "China tax". This will affect the cost of a huge number of items, not just expensive ones, and not just specific brands. All tech, right down to that cheap calculator you saw in Walmart last week.
This will increase the cost of your weekly shopping cart too, as the tech costs for your local supermarket chain is now going to rise, so they'll raise prices to compensate.
Our trade deficits are hardly deficits at all. They primarily exist due to the way we tax corporate profits.
Companies routinely develop software/hardware/drugs/machines...etc in the US. Many companies run those companies here in the US at break-even or a loss. The designs developed here are then "transferred" to an over-seas subsidiary (located in a low tax area of the world) to produce the actual product. The subsidiary then sells the product into other markets and never repatriates the profits.
Many of the things you buy are built this way.
The development costs stay here - at a loss which reduces or eliminates tax liability in the US. For many years GE received far more in tax credits than taxes it paid.
You can "fix" this one of two ways - you can change the tax structure to not penalize profits generated here to encourage the profits to stay here or you can tariff the goods on the way back to this market.
Reducing taxes on corporate profits raises the ire of many on the left and tariffs on foreign made products raises the ire of everyone who benefits from cheap overseas production.
Drop corporate taxes to something less than what most of the world charges and you'll see production come back to the US.
As if Trump and his corrupt administration isn't part of the Establishment. His daughter, a government employee due to nepotism, is getting Chinese trademarks left and right. He appointed big business executives to official positions so that they can keep helping their prior industries. Look at Scott Pruitt or Ajit Pai. The $1 trillion tax cut to the corporations and super-wealthy? Trump doesn't give a fuck about the working class.
So you can either realize and accept the current situation (by training well educated workers that are capable of doing more than what a simple pick and place robot can do),
Great, so we can have a lot of highly trained people competing for the last handful of jobs. That will really help.
Spend the money you'd have spent on training on setting up UBI instead, because those jobs aren't changing, they're going away. See, every job producing something requires resources, and we're already using more resources than the planet can supply. As worker productivity increases, but the planet's ability to supply resources decreases, we literally need to do less work if we are to avoid spoiling our biosphere. The future of the species literally depends on less people working.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What makes China your enemy?
Like all superpowers, they want to rule the world. And if you've seen what's going on in China with death vans, organlegging and social credit scores, it should be intuitively obvious that you do not want to live under Chinese rule.
As evil as the US often behaves, and it certainly does, it's a million billion times better than China.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There was a phone built in America: The Motorola MotoX 2013.
I own two. How many do y'all own?
I don't know, I've been to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York over the last 6 months and the number of native Chinese seems to growing, not shrinking. I'm pretty sure they didn't come to the US to find worse paying jobs.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Yeah, no, Russia spends 3x what Canada spends. Roughly the same as Saudi Arbia, sure, but Canada, no. source
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Your question makes very little sense to an average Chinese official. You may as well ask him if your garglers are blue.
We moved from a manufacturing to a service based economy. This was not something that "just happened." It was planned, and for good reason. Those manufacturing jobs you are crying about are nothing anyone in their right mind would miss. It's too bad you don't get a basic education, and instead repeat the bullshit you hear in Fox News without understanding what you are even saying, which is basically "Make America Great Again! Bring back the long hours working in dangerous situations with low pay!".
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
ROTFL. You have no idea about China. Cheers from Beijing
Yep. You could argue that the left had as much of a stake in globalization as the right - but from a different perspective. I think, when pressed, Nick Kristof would admit that to some extent offshoring some jobs and raising the standard of living in poor parts of the world is a desirable thing. But the difference is that Democratic globalists acknowledge the potential for disruption and the need to use regulation to mitigate it. Whether their attempts at mitigation have been successful or not is an open question, but at least there's some moral basis for their support for the likes of NAFTA.
Republicans are so reflexively anti-government, that when they take the reins, it's all "do whatever you like". I don't have any statistics on the relative movement of jobs offshore under D and R administrations, but I'd be interested to see them. Meanwhile, you get low taxes as the blunt instrument answer to everything - when it answers very little.
Okay, if American businesses need a low tax environment in order to compete with similarly low tax foreign regimes - and we have no effective way of keeping them from moving offshore to avoid taxes (leaving aside that certain corporate fictions could probably be challenged), then maybe we need to fund our Government in other ways. There's not much difference between taxing money when it gets paid out to individuals rather than as it is earned by corporations, so okay - capital gains, receivers of dividends, inheritance (perhaps only upon actual sale of inherited assets). Whatever works. But if the Trump 'tax relief' bill is any indication, it's all "starve the beast" all the time. With a little vindictiveness thrown in for good measure (take that, blue state SALT deductions). There's no attempt at governance there - or effective policies. It's all "government is the problem" sloganeering. Well, sometimes government is the only solution - propaganda aside.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
you are a fool saved the car industry with out money while today GM is fucking still doing away with jobs how is Trump destroying it when cars are dumped here at prices local cars manufactures can't compete... you really do not know economics!
Trump needs to pick his words more carefully.
Just because HE thinks ALL Cellphones are "iPhones" (nice for brand-recognition), doesn't mean he should be SAYING that in a Public Statement!
Obviously, this has ALREADY caused great economic harm to Apple (stock down 2%), JUST because Trump can't be BOTHERED to choose his words correctly.
And if he DID mean just iPhones, then Apple has a good cause to sue to get the action reversed.
With so many things coming from China basically everything would become more expensive and this wouldn't exactly be a popular thing. Sticking it just to the elitist iPhone owners (although I fear Trump may be wrong here, but whatever) is more limited. Those who buy $200 China smartphone anyway will say "serves them right!" and love Trump even more. At least I'm fairly sure that Trump thinks this way.
Um, I'm rockin' an iPhone 6 Plus, a mid-2012 MacBook Pro, and an iPad 2.
Hardly "elitist" fare, Slashtard.
That wouldn't just be iphones you plonker, it will be any phone that is built outside the US. It really is an idiot tax if you don't understand that ;)
Citation? Because ALL I have read says "iPhone, iPhone, iPhone".
Clearly it made little sense to you. Let me ask it this way: did the children (as adults) or their parents (when they were still children) take any positive steps to assert Chinese citizenship? For example, by applying for the Chinese version of a social securty card, or by registering the birth, or any other means?
It's irrelevant whether or how a Chinese official views them, my moral indignation, and any justification for the U.S. state department to act, turns on whether the children or parents made a move toward citizenship
In other words, these folks and the United States itself is suffering from violated rights if these children/their parents never did anything to indicate they considered themselves to be Chinese nationals. The article you linked indicated that the parents at least held dual-citizenship, and maybe also the kids. If under Chinese law a child born of a citizen is also a citizen, and the parents took no act to renounce their Chinese citizenship, then those kids are in fact Chinese citizens in my view (and probably the view of most international tribunals). Now, China might be violating their human rights by holding them without just cause, but that's another matter. If they are Chinese citizens, they are subject under any analysis to Chinese law.
Again, it is irrelevant what makes sense to me. In China, what will be relevant is what local official working under their ministry of interior will think.
And your Western concept of citizenship make as much sense to such people as question "are your garglers blue" makes to you. The fact that you seriously just referenced "human rights" as relevant underscores just how deep the cultural chasm is.
No problem with Death Vans here so long as they're picking-up those damn Republicans
I don't want them killed, I want them educated. I don't even want them indoctrinated, I want them taught critical thinking. This is not about donkeys versus elephants. This is about whether we're going to try to have human rights, or go straight to third world shithole.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
China is renowned for manipulating currency and closing off their markets, and the US has HUGE trade deficits with them as a result. Does anyone disagree with this?
So, then the question becomes, "How do we correct this?" China isn't going to give up the treasure willingly. Whoever the President is won't get results by asking politely. You'll never win by trying to negotiate from a point of weekness. What other tool does the President hold to negotiate a trade agreement other than the threat of tariffs? How effective is a threat once you demonstrate that you are unwilling to use it?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Yeah, those Tariffs sure showed China that we are willing to screw ourselves to screw the world.
For whoever is keeping track:
Bush / Obama - Saved the car industry
Trump - Destroying the car industry
China's two biggest stock markets are down 22% and 29% over the past year.
GEE, I WONDER WHY!
The US is one of the few nations in the world that can feed itself. I think we're fine.
Why should the U.S. state department care what a chinese official thinks when deciding whether to try to get these people out?
Well I suppose it was presumptive of me to assume no one would want to implement it, but its misguided at best and downright dangerous at worst. It'll drive the tech companies out of the country just like the general manufacturing. The difference is a tax would be government driven for no real reason other then poorly understood protectionism while the manufacturing was driven out because worker cost for such simple tasks became far too expensive. I'm all for making sure people are paid a good living wage, but forcing people to use antiquated practices is idiotic and runs counter to most economic philosophies except a command economy (which we all know can't compete on a global scale).
Retraining people to work in new sectors that have high labor demands is the only real solution to make sure the general population can maintain economic stability in the long term. Short term, higher minimum wage standards are needed definitely, but if that is all we rely on it will only drive inflation through the roof and erode the established groups of lower upper class and middle class workers. True upper class won't be hurt because they have the capital and diversification to keep their wealth invested outside currency stores.
Sovereignty backed by MAD.
"This was not something that "just happened." It was planned"
Yup, we agree on this: The gutting of America's industrial base, and the concomitant impoverishment of the working class, was not an accident. It was public policy for decades under both faces of the Establishment Party.
"long hours working in dangerous situations with low pay"
Pay was not low. You're right that no one wants to go back to a bad caricature of pre-union "satanic mills" dangerous factories and inhumane hours. Fortunately that's not the only way to run industry.
What people are calling for is rebuilding our national industrial base. Yes, it will most likely be more automated and less labor intensive than in the past. That is not any sort of argument against it.
Yes, the American people demand environmental protections. Which means our manufactured products will cost more than those is countries that despoil nature to save a few bucks. Environmental equalization tariffs will be needed when trading with pollution-happy partners. Sorry if that interferes with your liberturdian fantasy of "free" trade at any cost.
"the bullshit you hear in Fox News"
Sorry, broham, you're the only one here who watches TV news.
I've tried to explain this again and again to people, but they don't seem to WANT to grasp it.
The reason why the average person does not want to understand that reality is because, by definition, it turns the average person into a liability in a society where there are no jobs/uses for people who are unable to think at a higher level.
Seriously, when things settle down and most everything concerning production is automated, what is there left for the average and below average person to do? They can't participate in society because they have nothing of value to offer. They can't go off in the woods and subsist. Too many of them, not enough woods, and, someone else already owns those woods.
I am, demonstrably, above average... and yet this situation threatens my own existence too! How? Competition for jobs. The less skilled person will fluff their resume, lie, abuse nepotism, etc in order to get a job that I can legitimately and competently perform while they can not perform it... but it takes time to realize they can't perform the job and by the time it is realized, I have starved to death.
Ultimately, around 20% of all humans will have to be executed, year after year, in order to maintain the new automated society. They are dead weight (from the point of view of the owners of the land and productive machines).
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
This is horribly bleak and way hyperbolic. Right now we can EASILY retrain the vast majority of the displaced workforce to perform in another industry. Hell, the automation creates more jobs doing different work, often times more than it displaced. Mechanics to maintain the equipment, frabricators and installers just to put it together, data analysts to look at the high level information the system generates, engineers to design it and build the logic, and the list keeps going.
This isn't even a new concept in human history. Technological advances have displaced workers for centuries and guess what, society didn't crumble. When they started making field plows to make planting easier I'm sure the farmhands wondered what they would do to survive and they found work in stores selling the extra produce and making the equipment. When Henry Ford came up with the assembly line, individuals that did the entire process of building something again started making the equipment for the lines, people moved on to selling the new surplus equipment, and they again kept designing. Each instance of a major technological advancement also had people shrieking about the end of days and the collapse of society. It still hasn't come and isn't likely to any time soon. We still have a lot of technology advancements to come.
There are only two reasons I see for people to fight it. One, fear of not being able to adapt, and two, no DESIRE to change. I understand a fear of not being able to adapt. There was a good article about imposter syndrome on Slashdot not long ago that gave a good perspective on some of that. With good retraining programs (which are to the country's benefit) this could be curved though. On the second point, I get people don't want to change, but unfortunately that is reality. Progress requires change and if we think about it on a societal and species level, it is necessary to survive. Humans are made to need change even though we fear it and sometimes hate it. I understand trepidation, but it has to be put to the side.
Whatever. This isn't a private conversation. Other people clicked on the link. You missed out.
Right. Establishment Democrats and Republicans are solidly opposed to the United States having any sort of industrial base at all. They hate deplorable rednecks THAT much. So much that they'll willingly commit national suicide just to fuck over the deplorables. Maybe out of a secret nagging fear that they, too, might be deplorable rednecks? It's about spite, not greed: we would have way more and way richer rich people if we still had an industrial base.
Or maybe the Chinese have just bought both parties outright.
If this is a terrorif on iPhones alone there is a much greater need to place friendly justices in the courts.
In targeting Apple the doors to courts will push wide open to protect the $10billion that is at stake.
Other brands of phones and computers are obviously under control of AT&T, samstung, Microsoft, Verizon, U.S. Cellular,
Google as much as Apple does just differently. Samsung makes darn nice hardware but systematically obsoletes that hardware
vastly quicker than the hardware wears out. It is possible to buy a factory new devices and in the first 24 hours after
getting it home recieve the LAST update/upgrade planned for the device. Production can continue for two or three
years but the software clock can begin at introduction not even first customer ship.
Ten percent is a rather big tax... enough to be a disincentive to Apple re their pulling cash back into the US
when it can borrow from itself at 4% or less and not pay %15-38.91+% income repatriation tax.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Q: How many nukes does Canada have again?
A: bombs or nuclear capability? http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
"About 15% of Canada's electricity comes from nuclear power, with 19 reactors mostly in Ontario providing 13.5 GWe of power capacity."
They do have stuff going on that politics here ignore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Some think this is safer, I suspect they are correct.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.