6 ms·
The madness is the total reliance on cheap Chinese products, with very few or zero US alternatives. But building knowhow and sourcing rare metals will be a very
by sharken 1y ago
The madness is the total reliance on cheap Chinese products, with very few or zero US alternatives. But building knowhow and sourcing rare metals will be a very tough challenge.
It seems that China has the upper hand for now, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
- dtech 1y agoThat's a valid argument, but a 125% tariff with basically zero notice - on manufacturing and shipping timelines - is not the solution.
- LPisGood 1y agoGlobal trade is goodness, not madness.
- jl6 1y agoThere is surely a balance to be struck to get some of the benefits of global trade, without creating a dependency that can be exploited to create leverage against you.
- collingreen 1y agoThere surely is and there are many paths toward that and many options for timelines that make it more or less impactful on businesses and consumers.
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoI struggle to comprehend this viewpoint, echoed by many, with respect to: what possible benefit of global trade is the United States (well, previous to tariffs anyway) already not receiving? We can buy goods by printing money, which no other nation can lay claim to, because the U.S. Dollar is the default world currency. Everyone accepts USD, and wants USD. Every other nation on Earth in fact is always looking to buy dollars, because dollars are what everything is purchased in. Further, our standing in the globe and favorable geographic location means we can import anything from virtually anywhere, but most especially China, Korea, and Japan. Yeah we don't "make things" here anymore, the pundits say, apart from dozens of product categories over hundreds of industries. "Everything comes from China!" Okay, and? I don't want a job in a factory and I suspect a shitload of other people here also don't, and my source for that is every factory and logistics center near me is constantly trying to hire people and seemingly being unable to.
- PKop 1y agoThere's no permanence here, and you don't understand history or even business if you think this imbalance and dependence doesn't equal weakness at some point in the future. Just because we want China to always work for us and give us what we want doesn't mean completely ceding control of the decision means it will work out. Does any business (operating in much less cut throat stakes than great-power geopolitics) even bank all their supply on external sources, let alone one, let alone that one being their biggest adversary? Madness.
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoBut we have every reason to believe China will continue working for us because China benefits from that work. And insofar as the U.S. and China are adversaries at all seems to be purely culture war nonsense. China is not setting out to destroy the United States, they're setting out to sell the United States shit and we are setting out to buy it. The only reason there is even contention in this at all is that many pundits and analysts see the collapse of the American manufacturing sector as somehow the devious plans of a foreign adversary, and not the result of American business people seeking cheaper labor that works more efficiently overseas. If we assume China is an adversary, then I would say it logically follows that the vast majority of American executives are in fact collaborating with the enemy, because they played critical roles in getting China to where it is today.
- monero-xmr 1y agoIf your trading partner is an authoritarian dictatorship that has publicly stated they are in a thousands-year struggle for global supremacy, then maybe we should shift some key imports away from them
- foogazi 1y agoI thought this was about fentanyl and getting rich enough to remove the income tax Have not heard anything about 1,000 years fight for global supremacy
- kragen 1y agoIt's 100 years, not 1000 years, and it's a fight for Chinese well-being, not global supremacy, though it's understandable that people who believe Chinese well-being is incompatible with US hegemony would confuse the two: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-gran...
- catlover76 1y ago[dead]
- betterThanTexas 1y agoI don't see how the us is supposed to be any better. Why can't we use this energy to fight the rich people making this country a shithole rather than starting a beef we can only lose.
- LPisGood 1y agoMaybe USA should do that, but what’s been attempted is a horrible way to do that.
- exe34 1y agoWhat exactly were you importing from the penguins?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- breakyerself 1y agoChina has the upper hand and the US is being run by morons. With the US cutting itself off from the largest supplier of electronics while simultaneously destroying the basic research infrastructure that keeps America on the bleeding edge you can expect a brain drain towards Europe and Asia. The damage from this administration will last generations.
- x0x0 1y agoWe are being run by abject morons who will never be able to understand simple truths, one of which is China is in a far stronger position: their factories are missing dollars. We are missing goods. One of those is easy for a central bank / government to replace. Watching these people discover where the world's rare earths come from is equally amazing and terrifying.
- nickff 1y agoRare earth metals aren’t very rare, they’re just messy to extract and refine. There are reasons that the Chinese (government) want so many dollars, and the external funds are not easy to replace (or they would have done it already). This is not to support the current trade ‘war’, but just to point out that it’s a bit more complicated than you can describe in a pithy comment.
- seanp2k2 1y agoDon't worry, we'll just mine everything we need ourselves in the active warzones in Ukraine! I bet Yosemite has tons of the rare earth we need, we just have to dynamite everything in there to find it! /s
- monocasa 1y agoI swear to god, if we set off the Yosemite supervolcano from heavy mining there...
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- haswell 1y agoI think the total reliance is a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed. I still think this approach to addressing that issue is complete madness. Not only is there no coherent plan for how that reliance will be reduced, but we’ve now crippled ourselves in the meantime.
- justin66 1y agoYeah. One thing among many that some in the US don't seem to get: only one side in this war needs to completely rearrange their economy in order to survive, and it's us.
- PKop 1y agoI think the people attempting to do that understand it
- justin66 1y agoOn the contrary, they give the appearance of simply assuming "the market" will solve the problem they've created.
- mullingitover 1y agoThe people who believe government intervention can't do anything good are arguing that we're in an existential crisis because the Chinese government is executing too well. And their approach is to cripple our own government.
- nickff 1y agoI have no idea what the administration’s plan or thoughts might be, but I suspect that one part of it is that they’ve seen how many governments (including their own, as well as allies like the EU) delay and defer as negotiation strategies. The EU even used delays and uncertainty against its very closest ally (the UK) in trade negotiations. As a result, sudden and ‘violent’ shifts are the only way to get things done in the current environment.
- melenaboija 1y agoNot sure why people keep insisting that goods from China are “cheap,” which always seems to carry a negative connotation when in reality, “cheap” is exactly what we seem to want as consumers in wealthier western countries. And in many cases, these products are neither cheap nor expensive, they’re simply the only option, because no one else in the world manufactures them. So, what exactly are we comparing them to? And if the assumption is that producing the same goods in Europe or the US would be more expensive then that’s likely true but only because we still expect to earn a living wage, even in factory jobs
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago> these products are neither cheap nor expensive, they’re simply the only option, because no one else in the world manufactures them. This is exactly it. And even if an item can be US-supplied, it's components are only available from China. Tariffs are how we get it to stop being built in the US.
- aborthn 1y ago[flagged]
- seanw444 1y agoI agree, and I am in favor of protectionist tariffs. But it does seem to be poor strategy to rush into high tariffs without the pieces put in the place for American industry to grow and benefit. That said, I don't believe Trump is that stupid (despite the trendy opinion to the contrary), and I think he knows this is doomed to fail if the goal is immediate American industry bloom. Which is why I don't believe these are intended to be long term. Based on how the other tariffs have gone, it seems to be more of a negotiation tactic to reduce tariffs on both sides, not protectionism. China has just put up more of a resistance to it than other nations have, so now it's turned into a game of chicken.
- alabastervlog 1y ago> That said, I don't believe Trump is that stupid Do you think he's acting when he does things like keep preventing an interviewer from moving on because he wants to make extra sure everyone knows he entirely believes that obviously-photoshopped, not-trying-to-look-like-anything-but-an-overlay letters and numbers on a picture of someone's hand were in fact real tattoos?
- seanw444 1y ago[flagged]
- anonymars 1y agoIt sure is easy to have an opinion if you don't care about evidence to the contrary
- Moomoomoo309 1y agoThey're trying to tell you that Trump is as stupid as he seems. For many people, they're faking being stupid. Trump, like George W Bush, is not. There's no 4D chess going on here, whatever seems like the simplest explanation with Trump is almost always exactly what's being done. Keep it simple. Trump likes simple.
- 1y ago
- iancmceachern 1y agoWait till this person finds out he can't have his mandarin orange segments in his nightly Jello salad anymore and then I expect they'll have a different opinion.
- jermaustin1 1y agoI get what you are saying, but the U.S. BUYS goods, because we are "too rich" to make them. We SELL services, because other countries are "too poor" to offer them. When this administration focuses solely on one side of that (Goods vs Services), they miss the forest for the trees. I'm not saying we shouldn't bring back manufacturing, because we should, but we can't pretend that we get the short end of the stick in this trade partnership. China makes the cheap shit that isn't economical here, and the only way to make it economical here is to pay a tax on the cheap shit we want if it isn't made here, but the crazy thing is we could do a 400% tariff on Chinese imports, and it is still too expensive to buy American for most goods. Not even getting to the point that we don't have the infrastructure here because that also costs money, which would rise the price for American goods even higher. Does Bill Gates mow his own lawn? No! Does Donald Trump grill his own Big Mac? No! Because when you hit a certain "wealth bracket" you stop doing things that are below that and hire them out. We hired China because we were too rich.
- more_corn 1y agoWait, so is the solution to make ourselves poor?
- jermaustin1 1y agoThe solution is to not care that we've hired people to mow our lawns, because we don't want to mow our own lawns (as a society). But if you do want to mow your own lawn, then do it, just expect that it will cost you more to mow your own lawn than to hire it out. Replace "lawn mowing" with any other industry of your choice.
- evantbyrne 1y agoThe only way for China to lose influence in this fight is by playing ball. They can simply continue to trade with the rest of the world and be totally fine when it is US consumers paying the bill.
- bilbo0s 1y agoThis is what I don't quite get? What is the impetus for their government to want to play ball with us? The incentive for their companies is that they can access US markets. But their government is a bit different. That government has clearly been serious about 2 things for the past couple of decades, one is developing an internal market. (Which, prior to our imposition of tariffs, they were failing miserably at). The other is their pivot to the global south. (Which, prior to our imposition of tariffs, they were wildly successful at). Now that we started a trade war, they will be more successful at both. Especially the pivot to the global south. I guess I just can't see why the government of China feels more urgency to talk with us, than it feels to accelerate their pivot to, and development of, markets in the global south for instance? Why is talking to us the better choice for their government strategically speaking? I mean, if I were sitting in their shoes, I'd just be like, "Man, this is be the perfect illustration of why it was so important to pivot to the global south in the first place."
- betterThanTexas 1y agoWhat would an american upper hand look like?
- Johnny555 1y agoThe USA could bring manufacturing back, but not with tariffs. They can't tell businesses "Look, we've dramatically increased your cost of doing business, made your products more expensive (which will likely lead to lower sales) and we're forcing you to spend extra capital by paying tariffs on your products... Now all you need to do is come up with billions of dollars to build the factories that build your product and eat the high costs for the 5 - 10 years it will take to build the factories. We don't care if you're a small business that only sells $1M of product a year, if you want to reduce your costs, you need to build the factories." Of course, the question is whether Americans really want those factory jobs -- do parents aspire to have their children work in a factory assembling iPhones? There's only so many Robot Technician jobs to go around (despite the promise of unlimited high paid technician jobs, for the forseable future there will be plenty of menial factory jobs)
- datavirtue 1y agoThis has very little to do with "bringing mfg back."
- more_corn 1y agoExpand on that. Because the stated reason is to bring manufacturing back to the US. Perhaps you’re calling bullshit and proposing that something else is going on. Calling that out specifically would be beneficial.
- drysart 1y agoA stated reason is bringing manufacturing back to the US, just one of many various, contradicting reasons that have been thrown out there. The administration has been throwing so many different justifications at the wall that shift over time; there hasn't been a commitment to any actual stated goal. And indeed some of their actions don't even line up with bringing manufacturing back to the US as a goal; like the whole concept of 'reciprocal' tariffs being different country-by-country. And making a big deal out of 'making deals' with countries to lower tariffs. Not to mention that if bringing manufacturing back to the US was really a primary goal, there are better ways to accomplish it than forcefully and recklessly driving the US into a deep economic contraction -- because it'll mean investing a lot of capital in building a lot of manufacturing capacity, and business doesn't like investing huge amounts of capital during a downturn, and we're on the cusp of the mother of all downturns because even if capital gets sank into rebuilding domestic manufacturing, it's going to take years before it can come online. What I think is really going on is that a lot of wealthy people got wealthier by exploiting opportunities that arose from the 2008 crisis; and they want another bite at the apple, so one is being manufactured.
- RiverCrochet 1y agoSomething my half-brother said ... "Cheap foreign products are a necessity when so-called American companies don't love Americans enough to pay them what they're worth. It's the whole reason things went overseas in the first place. It's gonna be nice if we can finally get American companies to actually support America and pay citizens what they're worth." The above sounds nice, but it's oversimplified, like a lot of political rhetoric recently. Now, if this does end up making real living wages for the American worker a commonplace thing, that's awesome, but I'm pessimistic given the history of things, how money can influence politics, and how corporate lawyers can find loopholes.
- onesociety2022 1y agoI'm not sure if it would pan out like how your half-brother wants it to be. Let's assume the manufacturing jobs return here and you are getting paid American wages. But if you try to turn around and spend it on anything, it will just be more expensive because everything else you want to buy is also being made in US factories and those workers are also getting pay similar to yours? You might have a manufacturing job finally but now you are paying $350 for a Nike shoe that used to be $150 when it was made in China. You want to buy a new TV? It costs more now. You want to upgrade your old iPhone? It costs more now. So will the American manufacturing wages actually translate to living wages or will you just be getting paid more on paper but you still feel poor because the things you want to buy are all more expensive now?
- throwaway69123 1y agowhat if the manufacturing is largely automated and state side ?
- ModernMech 1y agoIf everything is automated then where do people work? If only some things are automated, then yes those places will have an advantage when it comes to labor costs, but they will use it to pad their profit margin. Factory X employs humans ands sells widgets for $100, but their costs are $90, so profit is $10. Factory Y is automated and they have costs of $10. Do they sell their widget at $30, thus earning a handsome profit of $20? No, they charge $90 and earn an obscene profit of $80. The worker gets screwed, the shareholders get richer. This whole thing only works if workers have ownership in the corporation, but that's gasp socialism and we can't have that.