8 ms·

Fascinating. I've always wanted something to be done about China's trade abuses, particularly dumping, but also the human rights issues. I really don't know en

Fascinating. I've always wanted something to be done about China's trade abuses, particularly dumping, but also the human rights issues. I really don't know enough about trading tariffs but I am very curious: do these tariffs have any chance of improving China's behavior?

hrktb 8y ago
Arm chair economist here as well. Historically trade abuses are resolved throught the WTO. That's what happened when the US had a dispute with Brazil over cotton tarifs protection [0], or countless other trade disputes countries have with each other. Even recently there was a chicken dispute case with China [1]. That's not perfect in any way, and that's crazy slow, but doesn't seems worse than playing chicken run through twitter announcements. If the point was really to do something about China's trading behavior, I think it would be done through the WTO, and in particular it would need more buying from the other main countries. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil–United_States_cotton_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil–United_States_cotton_di... [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wto-chicken/united-states-wins-wto-chicken-ruling-against-china-idUSKBN1F722C https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wto-chicken/uni...
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > If the point was really to do something about China's trading behavior, I think it would be done through the WTO China’s devolution to dictatorship makes it abundantly clear their acceptance into the WTO was a mistake.
  - gonvaled 8y ago
    Why? I thought the WTO was a trade organization? It does not need to make value judgement about the internal politics, for those issues we have other international bodies.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > I thought the WTO was a trade organization? It’s also a rules-based organisation. China breaks the WTO’s state-owned entity rules, its access around domestic market rules, its freedom of navigation rules, its IP protection rules, et cetera. China was admitted when it was non-compliant, with the belief that admission would drive opening and compliance [1]. That hypothesis is not sustained by evidence. [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/how-the-west-got-china-wrong https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/how-the-west-go...
      - gonvaled 8y ago
        How many rules does the US break? Is causing havoc in the global and regional economy of the Middle East / Europe not relevant for international trade? The rules of the World Trade Organization must be set by the world trading countries, not by the US. Maybe China violates so many rules because they are tailored to (made for and by) the US. Said another way: who says that the western way is the only or the best way? Is our system working so well? We need rules which allow for different economic systems to trade with each other. Once you have world-wide acceptable rules, you enforce those rules. Breaking the rules is part of being in the system, and exactly the reason why a WTO is needed: to arbitrate.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > The rules of the World Trade Organization must be set by the world trading countries, not by the US The rules I described are the rules of the WTO. They are a reasonable precondition for being treated as a free trading nation, a designation which comes with tremendous economic benefits but also risks to other trading nations. > to arbitrate The last time China was taken to international arbitration (by the Philippines) it ignored the rulings. China is presently brazenly breaking WTO rules. If you’re playing a board game with someone who continues to break the rules, the solution isn’t to talk about it while continuing play.
      - hrktb 8y ago
        My layman understanding is that the WTO is not an executive organisation, but an independant arbitor that decides on basically who’s right and who’s wrong. From the decision, each party can discuss a settlement, and if no agreement is reached the wronged party is free to apply whatever retaliation it judges fair to the wrongdoing party. The WTO’s decision would serve as a backing of the retaliation, to prove they are not just arbitrary. In that sense China breaking the rules is a issue with the “victim” country who needs to retaliate if no other means is available, with eventually help from ally countries if they want to make an example.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Sometimes the best way to get a problem dealt with properly by the people who's job it is to deal with it is to do a terrible job dealing with it unilaterally without consulting them. It seems like this is one of the possible routes the tariff issue will take.
- 394549 8y ago
  > Even recently there was a chicken dispute case with China [1]. > That's not perfect in any way, and that's crazy slow You're right about how slow the WTO process is: Per your Reuters link: China's chicken tariff was enacted in 2010. The WTO ruling against it was in 2018, 8 years later, but it's unclear if the dispute has actually been resolved: > [China's Ministry of Commerce said] that China would assess the WTO report and carry out “follow-up work” in accordance with WTO rules. That sounds extremely non-committal to me, and I couldn't find any more recent updates the first several pages of Google News results. However, I doubt anything has actually happened based on prior precedent: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/business/us-china-trade-endgame.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/business/us-china-trade-e... > The United States could press its argument with the World Trade Organization, which oversees global trading rules and prohibits big loans from government-controlled banks at artificially low interest rates. But the W.T.O. requires many contracts and government documents to prove cases, evidence that can be hard to get in a tightly controlled country like China. > Even when the W.T.O. rules against China, persuading the country to comply can be challenging. One such ruling, involving China’s restrictions on foreign electronic payment systems, was issued nearly six years ago. China is still mulling how it will comply — despite numerous complaints from the Obama administration and more recent nudges from the Trump administration. If the current trade dispute is really about the "China 2025" program, attempting to resolve it through the WTO could take until 2032 or later, which seems a bit late.
- qubax 8y ago
  The WTO is only 20 years old. It was founded in 1995. And china only joined in 2001. There isn't much history to the WTO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization Historically, trade disputes were settled with freezing of trade, reciprocal trade abuse or war.
NamTaf 8y ago
I'm an arm-chair economist but here's my take on it. Trade is like water: it takes the path of least resistance. These tariffs aren't aimed at hitting China, they're aimed at preventing the steel that China used to sell to the US instead being sold to Canada, crashing Canada's market of steel. Essentially, if China can't sell the steel directly to the US, they'll price it such that Canadian (in this example) steel consumers purchase it instead. Then, Canadian steel producers wind up getting punished by the US tariff on Chinese steel, because their prices are driven down due to the flood of excess product. The WTO allows this as an exclusion to the 'most favoured nation' rules of the GATT, specifically under the anti-dumping agreements [1]. That is, whilst normally a country must present the same tariff on a given product to all other countries in the world (it cannot favour or punish any particular nation), if the nation believes it is going to suffer the effects of dumping from a particular market then it is entitled to raise tariffs equivalent against that specific market to protect against that. This whole response to Chinese steel is largely due to their significant oversupply. They really rapidly expanded their steel production well above global requirements when they entered the WTO, well above what global demand dictated. In 2000, the worldwide industry was about 800 MT. Today, China alone does more than that and accounts for a full half of total worldwide production. As a result, Western steel production has buckled under crashing prices [2]. My take is that these actions are therefore largely politically protectionist in nature. They're aimed at protecting domestic industries rather than punishing China for any human rights issues. I highly doubt that this will cause the CCP to approach their human rights differently. Instead, I suspect they will redirect their attention to some other labour-intensive industry and try to gobble that up, as it will be their best way to offset the significant job losses that'll come from a cooling Chinese steel market. Specifically for the HN crowd, I think this will be the tech industry, as China talks about wanting to move up the tech chain - see their "Made in China 2025" policy [3]. If you are interested in this stuff, there's a very good podcast called "Trade Talks" [4] which discusses precisely this - the economics of global trade. Several episodes are about the US tariffs and their likely effects. They look back to previous examples, not just from the Great Depression but also more recently agricultural tariffs and how they affected South American exporters for example. I would highly encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to listen to at least a few of the episodes about tariffs. Yeh, I've cited Wikipedia. It's late and I'm lazy [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Anti-dumping_actions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Anti-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 [4]: https://twitter.com/trade__talks https://twitter.com/trade__talks
nicktelford 8y ago
I know probably as little about tariffs and international trade as you, but my guess is that it might, but only if there's no viable customers left to export their steel to. My guess is that Canada's action here, along with the EU, will be pretty influential, as China won't just be able to dump all their US-bound steel on those markets. I don't necessarily disagree with the Trump administration's moves against Chinese economic behaviour here, but I do think that exemptions should have been made for Mexico, Canada and the EU at a minimum. If this had been about getting China to play fair, and co-ordinated well with other major economies, I think this could have worked out pretty well. But it seems Trump's main goal here is domestic protectionism at any cost.
- adventured 8y ago
  To that point, the EU (along with the US obviously) has taken note of China's 2025/2050 type plans to accumulate technology in a roach motel style (tech goes in, they try to buy up the world, but you can't buy their companies or get level access to their market). China has noticed: they've ordered Xinhua to entirely stop talking about 2025 [1]. After 140 mentions of 2025 in the first five months of the year, there have been zero since June 5th. Having violated Deng's hide your strength (and bide your time) premise, they're clearly looking to be more clever about their plans again. Trump's trade war with China would work extraordinarily well, if he'd just coordinate properly with allies on it. As you say, he's pursuing a broad brush trade conflict with numerous fronts simultaneously, difficult to manage to say the least. The overall positive of what's going on, is China's scheme is over. There's no going back to the free ride approach that has allowed China to play by entirely different rules than every other major economy. [1] https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1JL12U-OCABS https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1JL12U-OC...
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Trump would say he doesn't need coordination; he has "leadership".
    - influx 8y ago
binarray2000 8y ago
It's fascinating, indeed... when the US Americans see the fallibility of others but, somehow, forget to see the fallibility of themselves or of their allies: (1) Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay torture prisons or the persecution of whistleblowers (to name just a few). (2) US ally Saudi Arabia waging a war in Yemen (to name just the recent one). Should "something to be done" about these "human rights issues"? I am very curious: Would sanctions on US and its allies have any chance of improving their behavior? Or are the US Americans "the exceptional" nation? Just like the Germans under Hitler?
- api 8y ago
  This is whataboutism. The fact that America has done awful things doesn't mean China hasn't or that we can't improve China's behavior. I sort of wish someone (EU?) would have put trade sanctions on America for those abuses and others. It might have improved things here.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  Or perhaps the reason they didn't mention the USA is because they just weren't talking about the USA? Not every discussion is about comparing things to America.
  - binarray2000 8y ago
    We weren't talking about "human rights issues" either, yet OP started talking about it. And when the OP moved the discussion in the other direction, one must also look at the track record of the USA in that particular area.
    - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
      Why? And why the USA? The only countries mentioned were China and Canada. I myself happen to be British. Why do all roads have to lead to the US?
      - binarray2000 8y ago
dghughes 8y ago
Some may say the same about human rights in the US. Edit: rights
- frockington 8y ago
  On what level? I've been living here all my life and have never seen nets on a building to prevent workers from committing suicide
  - dghughes 8y ago
    Healthcare, pharmacare, police brutality, brtual border services, racial tension.
    - frockington 8y ago
      If you stop watching the 24/7 news and actually visit America, you'll have a much different opinion. Most of the outrage is amplified by the news in order to get viewers
      - dghughes 8y ago
        I don't watch 24/7 news. And I'm Canadian I've been to the US.
gotdangloch 8y ago
Xi Jing Ping is running scared. The stock market has fallen 25% this year. Yuan has fallen 10%. There's a 400 billion tariff coming his way, and because of 'saving face', there's no way he will back down. He has to also unwind China's 12-18T shadow banking, China's version of subprime loans similar to 2008 crisis (but way bigger). He has to figure out how to steal IP to move up the chain when US and the rest of the world has upped their defense, restricting Chinese tech investments and resisting hacking attempts. He also needs to deal with the tariffs encouraging manufacturers to leave China and go to southeast asia or back home via reshoring or automation. There is also the matter of a lack of consumer market in China, after it gets shut out of US and europe. Not much Chinese consumers can buy after $800/month income, after paying most of it to mortgage and inflated food prices. He also has to prop up the real estate bubble: "price rose 31 percent to nearly $202 per square foot. That's 38 percent higher than the median price per square foot in the U.S., where per-capita income is more than 700 percent higher than in China." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china-can-t-fix-its-housing-bubble https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china...
- fwdpropaganda 8y ago
  > Yuan has fallen 10% Weak Yuan is good for Chinese trade, which has an enormous surplus.
  - gotdangloch 8y ago
    China export will decline significantly after companies finish their move out of China due to the tariffs. no one is going to stay when tariff rates starts at 10% and may end up way higher (50%?) depending on how the trade war goes "the share of Nike shoes made in China fell off a cliff, going from 32 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2017." https://www.gq.com/story/nike-adidas-shifting-production-asia https://www.gq.com/story/nike-adidas-shifting-production-asi... In 2015, the U.S. reached parity between offshoring and returning jobs, and 2016 was the first time since 1970 that the United States reshored more jobs than were lost to offshoring. https://blog.thomasnet.com/manufacturing-reshoring-2018-update https://blog.thomasnet.com/manufacturing-reshoring-2018-upda... Why so Many Foreign Businesses are moving to Vietnam https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-so-many-foreign-businesses-moving-vietnam-alberto-vettoretti https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-so-many-foreign-businesse...
jaredklewis 8y ago
I’m not optimistic. Look at Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, and pre-WWII Japan. How did, in many cases decades long, trade tariffs or embargoes work out? Well it certainly crippled the targeted economies and impoverished their citizens. But I am not aware of any historical case where trade penalties have curbed human rights abuses. On the other hand, if you look at south east Asia, you see a different pattern. As wealth and trade have increased, so have the lives of the people there improved. Not at all at once, and there are plenty of aberrations, but on the whole, little by little, things are getting better.

hrktb 8y ago

Arm chair economist here as well. Historically trade abuses are resolved throught the WTO. That's what happened when the US had a dispute with Brazil over cotton tarifs protection [0], or countless other trade disputes countries have with each other. Even recently there was a chicken dispute case with China [1]. That's not perfect in any way, and that's crazy slow, but doesn't seems worse than playing chicken run through twitter announcements. If the point was really to do something about China's trading behavior, I think it would be done through the WTO, and in particular it would need more buying from the other main countries. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil–United_States_cotton_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil–United_States_cotton_di... [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wto-chicken/united-states-wins-wto-chicken-ruling-against-china-idUSKBN1F722C https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wto-chicken/uni...

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> If the point was really to do something about China's trading behavior, I think it would be done through the WTO China’s devolution to dictatorship makes it abundantly clear their acceptance into the WTO was a mistake.
- gonvaled 8y ago
  Why? I thought the WTO was a trade organization? It does not need to make value judgement about the internal politics, for those issues we have other international bodies.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > I thought the WTO was a trade organization? It’s also a rules-based organisation. China breaks the WTO’s state-owned entity rules, its access around domestic market rules, its freedom of navigation rules, its IP protection rules, et cetera. China was admitted when it was non-compliant, with the belief that admission would drive opening and compliance [1]. That hypothesis is not sustained by evidence. [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/how-the-west-got-china-wrong https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/how-the-west-go...
    - gonvaled 8y ago
      How many rules does the US break? Is causing havoc in the global and regional economy of the Middle East / Europe not relevant for international trade? The rules of the World Trade Organization must be set by the world trading countries, not by the US. Maybe China violates so many rules because they are tailored to (made for and by) the US. Said another way: who says that the western way is the only or the best way? Is our system working so well? We need rules which allow for different economic systems to trade with each other. Once you have world-wide acceptable rules, you enforce those rules. Breaking the rules is part of being in the system, and exactly the reason why a WTO is needed: to arbitrate.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > The rules of the World Trade Organization must be set by the world trading countries, not by the US The rules I described are the rules of the WTO. They are a reasonable precondition for being treated as a free trading nation, a designation which comes with tremendous economic benefits but also risks to other trading nations. > to arbitrate The last time China was taken to international arbitration (by the Philippines) it ignored the rulings. China is presently brazenly breaking WTO rules. If you’re playing a board game with someone who continues to break the rules, the solution isn’t to talk about it while continuing play.
    - hrktb 8y ago
      My layman understanding is that the WTO is not an executive organisation, but an independant arbitor that decides on basically who’s right and who’s wrong. From the decision, each party can discuss a settlement, and if no agreement is reached the wronged party is free to apply whatever retaliation it judges fair to the wrongdoing party. The WTO’s decision would serve as a backing of the retaliation, to prove they are not just arbitrary. In that sense China breaking the rules is a issue with the “victim” country who needs to retaliate if no other means is available, with eventually help from ally countries if they want to make an example.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Sometimes the best way to get a problem dealt with properly by the people who's job it is to deal with it is to do a terrible job dealing with it unilaterally without consulting them. It seems like this is one of the possible routes the tariff issue will take.
394549 8y ago
> Even recently there was a chicken dispute case with China [1]. > That's not perfect in any way, and that's crazy slow You're right about how slow the WTO process is: Per your Reuters link: China's chicken tariff was enacted in 2010. The WTO ruling against it was in 2018, 8 years later, but it's unclear if the dispute has actually been resolved: > [China's Ministry of Commerce said] that China would assess the WTO report and carry out “follow-up work” in accordance with WTO rules. That sounds extremely non-committal to me, and I couldn't find any more recent updates the first several pages of Google News results. However, I doubt anything has actually happened based on prior precedent: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/business/us-china-trade-endgame.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/business/us-china-trade-e... > The United States could press its argument with the World Trade Organization, which oversees global trading rules and prohibits big loans from government-controlled banks at artificially low interest rates. But the W.T.O. requires many contracts and government documents to prove cases, evidence that can be hard to get in a tightly controlled country like China. > Even when the W.T.O. rules against China, persuading the country to comply can be challenging. One such ruling, involving China’s restrictions on foreign electronic payment systems, was issued nearly six years ago. China is still mulling how it will comply — despite numerous complaints from the Obama administration and more recent nudges from the Trump administration. If the current trade dispute is really about the "China 2025" program, attempting to resolve it through the WTO could take until 2032 or later, which seems a bit late.
qubax 8y ago
The WTO is only 20 years old. It was founded in 1995. And china only joined in 2001. There isn't much history to the WTO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization Historically, trade disputes were settled with freezing of trade, reciprocal trade abuse or war.

NamTaf 8y ago

I'm an arm-chair economist but here's my take on it. Trade is like water: it takes the path of least resistance. These tariffs aren't aimed at hitting China, they're aimed at preventing the steel that China used to sell to the US instead being sold to Canada, crashing Canada's market of steel. Essentially, if China can't sell the steel directly to the US, they'll price it such that Canadian (in this example) steel consumers purchase it instead. Then, Canadian steel producers wind up getting punished by the US tariff on Chinese steel, because their prices are driven down due to the flood of excess product. The WTO allows this as an exclusion to the 'most favoured nation' rules of the GATT, specifically under the anti-dumping agreements [1]. That is, whilst normally a country must present the same tariff on a given product to all other countries in the world (it cannot favour or punish any particular nation), if the nation believes it is going to suffer the effects of dumping from a particular market then it is entitled to raise tariffs equivalent against that specific market to protect against that. This whole response to Chinese steel is largely due to their significant oversupply. They really rapidly expanded their steel production well above global requirements when they entered the WTO, well above what global demand dictated. In 2000, the worldwide industry was about 800 MT. Today, China alone does more than that and accounts for a full half of total worldwide production. As a result, Western steel production has buckled under crashing prices [2]. My take is that these actions are therefore largely politically protectionist in nature. They're aimed at protecting domestic industries rather than punishing China for any human rights issues. I highly doubt that this will cause the CCP to approach their human rights differently. Instead, I suspect they will redirect their attention to some other labour-intensive industry and try to gobble that up, as it will be their best way to offset the significant job losses that'll come from a cooling Chinese steel market. Specifically for the HN crowd, I think this will be the tech industry, as China talks about wanting to move up the tech chain - see their "Made in China 2025" policy [3]. If you are interested in this stuff, there's a very good podcast called "Trade Talks" [4] which discusses precisely this - the economics of global trade. Several episodes are about the US tariffs and their likely effects. They look back to previous examples, not just from the Great Depression but also more recently agricultural tariffs and how they affected South American exporters for example. I would highly encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to listen to at least a few of the episodes about tariffs. Yeh, I've cited Wikipedia. It's late and I'm lazy [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Anti-dumping_actions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Anti-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 [4]: https://twitter.com/trade__talks https://twitter.com/trade__talks

nicktelford 8y ago

I know probably as little about tariffs and international trade as you, but my guess is that it might, but only if there's no viable customers left to export their steel to. My guess is that Canada's action here, along with the EU, will be pretty influential, as China won't just be able to dump all their US-bound steel on those markets. I don't necessarily disagree with the Trump administration's moves against Chinese economic behaviour here, but I do think that exemptions should have been made for Mexico, Canada and the EU at a minimum. If this had been about getting China to play fair, and co-ordinated well with other major economies, I think this could have worked out pretty well. But it seems Trump's main goal here is domestic protectionism at any cost.

adventured 8y ago
To that point, the EU (along with the US obviously) has taken note of China's 2025/2050 type plans to accumulate technology in a roach motel style (tech goes in, they try to buy up the world, but you can't buy their companies or get level access to their market). China has noticed: they've ordered Xinhua to entirely stop talking about 2025 [1]. After 140 mentions of 2025 in the first five months of the year, there have been zero since June 5th. Having violated Deng's hide your strength (and bide your time) premise, they're clearly looking to be more clever about their plans again. Trump's trade war with China would work extraordinarily well, if he'd just coordinate properly with allies on it. As you say, he's pursuing a broad brush trade conflict with numerous fronts simultaneously, difficult to manage to say the least. The overall positive of what's going on, is China's scheme is over. There's no going back to the free ride approach that has allowed China to play by entirely different rules than every other major economy. [1] https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1JL12U-OCABS https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1JL12U-OC...
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Trump would say he doesn't need coordination; he has "leadership".
  - influx 8y ago

binarray2000 8y ago

It's fascinating, indeed... when the US Americans see the fallibility of others but, somehow, forget to see the fallibility of themselves or of their allies: (1) Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay torture prisons or the persecution of whistleblowers (to name just a few). (2) US ally Saudi Arabia waging a war in Yemen (to name just the recent one). Should "something to be done" about these "human rights issues"? I am very curious: Would sanctions on US and its allies have any chance of improving their behavior? Or are the US Americans "the exceptional" nation? Just like the Germans under Hitler?

api 8y ago
This is whataboutism. The fact that America has done awful things doesn't mean China hasn't or that we can't improve China's behavior. I sort of wish someone (EU?) would have put trade sanctions on America for those abuses and others. It might have improved things here.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
Or perhaps the reason they didn't mention the USA is because they just weren't talking about the USA? Not every discussion is about comparing things to America.
- binarray2000 8y ago
  We weren't talking about "human rights issues" either, yet OP started talking about it. And when the OP moved the discussion in the other direction, one must also look at the track record of the USA in that particular area.
  - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
    Why? And why the USA? The only countries mentioned were China and Canada. I myself happen to be British. Why do all roads have to lead to the US?
    - binarray2000 8y ago

dghughes 8y ago

Some may say the same about human rights in the US. Edit: rights

frockington 8y ago
On what level? I've been living here all my life and have never seen nets on a building to prevent workers from committing suicide
- dghughes 8y ago
  Healthcare, pharmacare, police brutality, brtual border services, racial tension.
  - frockington 8y ago
    If you stop watching the 24/7 news and actually visit America, you'll have a much different opinion. Most of the outrage is amplified by the news in order to get viewers
    - dghughes 8y ago
      I don't watch 24/7 news. And I'm Canadian I've been to the US.

gotdangloch 8y ago

Xi Jing Ping is running scared. The stock market has fallen 25% this year. Yuan has fallen 10%. There's a 400 billion tariff coming his way, and because of 'saving face', there's no way he will back down. He has to also unwind China's 12-18T shadow banking, China's version of subprime loans similar to 2008 crisis (but way bigger). He has to figure out how to steal IP to move up the chain when US and the rest of the world has upped their defense, restricting Chinese tech investments and resisting hacking attempts. He also needs to deal with the tariffs encouraging manufacturers to leave China and go to southeast asia or back home via reshoring or automation. There is also the matter of a lack of consumer market in China, after it gets shut out of US and europe. Not much Chinese consumers can buy after $800/month income, after paying most of it to mortgage and inflated food prices. He also has to prop up the real estate bubble: "price rose 31 percent to nearly $202 per square foot. That's 38 percent higher than the median price per square foot in the U.S., where per-capita income is more than 700 percent higher than in China." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china-can-t-fix-its-housing-bubble https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china...

fwdpropaganda 8y ago
> Yuan has fallen 10% Weak Yuan is good for Chinese trade, which has an enormous surplus.
- gotdangloch 8y ago
  China export will decline significantly after companies finish their move out of China due to the tariffs. no one is going to stay when tariff rates starts at 10% and may end up way higher (50%?) depending on how the trade war goes "the share of Nike shoes made in China fell off a cliff, going from 32 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2017." https://www.gq.com/story/nike-adidas-shifting-production-asia https://www.gq.com/story/nike-adidas-shifting-production-asi... In 2015, the U.S. reached parity between offshoring and returning jobs, and 2016 was the first time since 1970 that the United States reshored more jobs than were lost to offshoring. https://blog.thomasnet.com/manufacturing-reshoring-2018-update https://blog.thomasnet.com/manufacturing-reshoring-2018-upda... Why so Many Foreign Businesses are moving to Vietnam https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-so-many-foreign-businesses-moving-vietnam-alberto-vettoretti https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-so-many-foreign-businesse...

jaredklewis 8y ago

I’m not optimistic. Look at Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, and pre-WWII Japan. How did, in many cases decades long, trade tariffs or embargoes work out? Well it certainly crippled the targeted economies and impoverished their citizens. But I am not aware of any historical case where trade penalties have curbed human rights abuses. On the other hand, if you look at south east Asia, you see a different pattern. As wealth and trade have increased, so have the lives of the people there improved. Not at all at once, and there are plenty of aberrations, but on the whole, little by little, things are getting better.