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There are two things China has been doing for years that the WTO hasn't put an end to. The stated goals of the trade war include stopping those, which I can - a

There are two things China has been doing for years that the WTO hasn't put an end to. The stated goals of the trade war include stopping those, which I can - as anything but a fan of anything to do with Trump - actually agree need to stop. I'm far from certain the scale and breadth of tariffs involved are necessary to stop them, but I agree those two practices need to stop. One of those is outright IP theft. One especially egregious form of that is by OEM manufacturers in China getting specs from foreign firms in the US and Europe then manufacturing knockoffs under their own brand name on the same lines as the ones they're making under contract. China has agreed to curtail this in their industries. Another form of outright IP theft is paying industrial spies to go to other countries and leak government and corporate documents back to China in an elaborate espionage system. Another practice which China has already announced it is ending (and may have ended without the trade war eventually anyway) is forcing foreign companies to form foreign/domestic partnerships with Chinese companies in exchange for access to manufacture or sell goods in China. Often this involved cross-licensing agreements for IP, meaning companies like AMD had to license their patents and copyrights to Chinese companies or but shut out of the market.

roymurdock 7y ago
These are good points. Not sure why Trump would care about the first one, but could see how enough businesspeople were leaning on him to get the second point done. This seems like the most likely explanation to me as well (opening China to further foreign investment by accelerating the country's slowdown in growth).
theandrewbailey 7y ago
Navarro said it best [0]: Stop stealing our intellectual property Stop forcing technology transfers Stop hacking our computers and steal our trade secrets Stop dumping into our markets and putting our companies out of business Stop their state-owned enterprises from heavy subsidies Stop the fentanyl Stop the currency manipulation [0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/trumps-china-tariffs-not-affecting-us-consumer-prices-white-house-trade-adviser https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/trumps-china-tariffs-not...
- cestith 7y ago
  I'm not sure we can blame our fentanyl problems on China any more than our cocaine problems on Colombia or our heroin problems on Mexico. Currency control comes with being a sovereign nation. Our government and the Federal Reserve in the US issue more or less new money into the economy and raise or lower interest rates to control the strength of the US dollar all the time. I'm not sure dumping is a real problem for most products. Ones that are dumped are often cheaper in the first place because of the other problems, because it's easy to sell cheap when you didn't pay for research, development, design, or industrial engineering for the product. Other dumped products are often such low quality that they could be driven out of the market with consumer rights laws and lemon laws. The rest I can agree are real issues.
  - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
    The vast majority of fentanyl on the US black market is synthesized in 'clandestine' labs in China and shipped directly from there to dealers in the US via the post.
    - chillacy 7y ago
      Why is this different than the cocaine or heroin supply chain? Or why did mention this as a response to: > I'm not sure we can blame our fentanyl problems on China any more than our cocaine problems on Colombia or our heroin problems on Mexico.
    - cestith 7y ago
      I'm not sure how a trade war on legal goods with one current producer of an untracked import addresses the demand for the drug or the domestic dealers. Buyers change suppliers all the time. And you're not putting a tariff on what's shipped clandestinely from clandestine labs.
      - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
        China has been dragging its feet for years when it comes to banning fentanyl analogues when in the past they were quick to literally execute their citizens for manufacturing legal highs a decade ago. The scale of the operations suggest that the state is involved. It used to be the case that actual clandestine labs would produce a kilogram or drum of illicit substances here and there, which is what happens in some Canadian labs. However, we're regularly intercepting unprecedented amounts of fentanyl analogues from China. There's literally no where else in the world where both the manufacturing ability and severe lack of accountability both exist to produce novel fentanyl analogues in excess. Also, China is selling thousands of doses of fentanyl to individual American kids online, so there's that, too.
Izkata 7y ago
One of the things he campaigned on in 2016 was bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US for low-skilled workers. I can see that being a third thing this could possibly help.
- cestith 7y ago
  It's possible, but tariffs against only China won't do much of that. There are loads of countries with relatively low wages that already supply things to US markets. India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand from the top of my head produce lots of things in US stores. Much of it is lower tech stuff like produce or textiles, but the shipping and investment pathways are already there. A threat of general tariffs on some goods might do more for that, but that would involve Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Europe for electronics, appliances, and automobiles. Countries don't only impose import tariffs when trade wars get really ugly, either. Imagine all of OPEC hitting the US with export tariffs in their countries. Or imagine Mexico, Germany, Japan, and South Korea charging export tariffs on their car manufacturing for exports to the US. A 10% or 20% export tariff costs the consumer the same as an import tariff of the same amount, but the money goes to the exporting country's government, which if they want they can use to subsidize the industry being taxed. The target country can't credibly accuse you of dumping if you're intentionally charging them more than everyone else. The US does a lot of outsourcing of parts and subassemblies. Then US companies import those to make into other products or assemble them into more complex systems. Those import costs go up under tariffs, and much of the demand goes down for the finished product when there are tit-for-tat tariffs to sell those overseas. Meanwhile if some country neither party is in a trade war with starts buying the parts and doing the final assembly, they can undercut US manufacturers' prices because they have lower taxes in place on those products. It would take years to move all the vertical supply chains into the US and to do so would be extremely expensive. The low-cost labor from overseas would likely be replaced with factories with a much higher level of automation to keep the costs down. That's going to provide more professional jobs and highly skilled technical jobs and fewer low-skilled and trades jobs than people might like to imagine. All the while, the resources to build those new factories is higher from the tariffs unless we're building it all with domestic parts. There is no training program in place of which I'm aware to teach coal miners and steel mill workers to assemble things like motherboards and flat panel displays, either, which means the labor costs for those things is much higher than just the wages if those jobs aren't automated away.

roymurdock 7y ago

These are good points. Not sure why Trump would care about the first one, but could see how enough businesspeople were leaning on him to get the second point done. This seems like the most likely explanation to me as well (opening China to further foreign investment by accelerating the country's slowdown in growth).

theandrewbailey 7y ago

Navarro said it best [0]: Stop stealing our intellectual property Stop forcing technology transfers Stop hacking our computers and steal our trade secrets Stop dumping into our markets and putting our companies out of business Stop their state-owned enterprises from heavy subsidies Stop the fentanyl Stop the currency manipulation [0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/trumps-china-tariffs-not-affecting-us-consumer-prices-white-house-trade-adviser https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/trumps-china-tariffs-not...

cestith 7y ago
I'm not sure we can blame our fentanyl problems on China any more than our cocaine problems on Colombia or our heroin problems on Mexico. Currency control comes with being a sovereign nation. Our government and the Federal Reserve in the US issue more or less new money into the economy and raise or lower interest rates to control the strength of the US dollar all the time. I'm not sure dumping is a real problem for most products. Ones that are dumped are often cheaper in the first place because of the other problems, because it's easy to sell cheap when you didn't pay for research, development, design, or industrial engineering for the product. Other dumped products are often such low quality that they could be driven out of the market with consumer rights laws and lemon laws. The rest I can agree are real issues.
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  The vast majority of fentanyl on the US black market is synthesized in 'clandestine' labs in China and shipped directly from there to dealers in the US via the post.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Why is this different than the cocaine or heroin supply chain? Or why did mention this as a response to: > I'm not sure we can blame our fentanyl problems on China any more than our cocaine problems on Colombia or our heroin problems on Mexico.
  - cestith 7y ago
    I'm not sure how a trade war on legal goods with one current producer of an untracked import addresses the demand for the drug or the domestic dealers. Buyers change suppliers all the time. And you're not putting a tariff on what's shipped clandestinely from clandestine labs.
    - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
      China has been dragging its feet for years when it comes to banning fentanyl analogues when in the past they were quick to literally execute their citizens for manufacturing legal highs a decade ago. The scale of the operations suggest that the state is involved. It used to be the case that actual clandestine labs would produce a kilogram or drum of illicit substances here and there, which is what happens in some Canadian labs. However, we're regularly intercepting unprecedented amounts of fentanyl analogues from China. There's literally no where else in the world where both the manufacturing ability and severe lack of accountability both exist to produce novel fentanyl analogues in excess. Also, China is selling thousands of doses of fentanyl to individual American kids online, so there's that, too.

Izkata 7y ago

One of the things he campaigned on in 2016 was bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US for low-skilled workers. I can see that being a third thing this could possibly help.

cestith 7y ago
It's possible, but tariffs against only China won't do much of that. There are loads of countries with relatively low wages that already supply things to US markets. India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand from the top of my head produce lots of things in US stores. Much of it is lower tech stuff like produce or textiles, but the shipping and investment pathways are already there. A threat of general tariffs on some goods might do more for that, but that would involve Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Europe for electronics, appliances, and automobiles. Countries don't only impose import tariffs when trade wars get really ugly, either. Imagine all of OPEC hitting the US with export tariffs in their countries. Or imagine Mexico, Germany, Japan, and South Korea charging export tariffs on their car manufacturing for exports to the US. A 10% or 20% export tariff costs the consumer the same as an import tariff of the same amount, but the money goes to the exporting country's government, which if they want they can use to subsidize the industry being taxed. The target country can't credibly accuse you of dumping if you're intentionally charging them more than everyone else. The US does a lot of outsourcing of parts and subassemblies. Then US companies import those to make into other products or assemble them into more complex systems. Those import costs go up under tariffs, and much of the demand goes down for the finished product when there are tit-for-tat tariffs to sell those overseas. Meanwhile if some country neither party is in a trade war with starts buying the parts and doing the final assembly, they can undercut US manufacturers' prices because they have lower taxes in place on those products. It would take years to move all the vertical supply chains into the US and to do so would be extremely expensive. The low-cost labor from overseas would likely be replaced with factories with a much higher level of automation to keep the costs down. That's going to provide more professional jobs and highly skilled technical jobs and fewer low-skilled and trades jobs than people might like to imagine. All the while, the resources to build those new factories is higher from the tariffs unless we're building it all with domestic parts. There is no training program in place of which I'm aware to teach coal miners and steel mill workers to assemble things like motherboards and flat panel displays, either, which means the labor costs for those things is much higher than just the wages if those jobs aren't automated away.