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China Hits U.S. With Higher Tariffs on Soybeans, Cars, Oil
- YinglingLight 7y agoDidn't know China bought $75 billion worth of American exports to begin with.
- aswanson 7y agoWell, that escalated at an intermediate pace.
- jaimex2 7y agoThey're scared of whats coming next I guess.
- bilbo0s 7y agoJust Devil's Advocate, but if they're scared, why didn't they back down? I sincerely hope someone is in the room on our side who has seriously considered the possibility here that we may have miscalculated. There needs to be some contingency in place so that we don't get stuck in round and round of barrier escalation.
- eznoonze 7y agoThey need to appear "tough" for their internal audience, even though they are miscalculating at every twist and turn.
- todipa 7y agotariffs or Tarrifs?
- mtmail 7y agoBloomberg corrected the headline now. In my option commenting on typos doesn't add much value to a discussion.
- alexpetralia 7y agoOpinion* (Sorry)
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- seren 7y agoThis is strategically released just before the G7, to make sure that this will be discussed, or maybe to put some pressure on the US before negotiating with its allies.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoChina is grasping at straws with this. They are really out on a limb.
- tzfld 7y agoPretty sure both sides have a b-plan to avoid massive damage, but someone definitely going to lose.
- stefano 7y agoMost likely, they're both going to lose.
- jaimex2 7y agoAs an Australian I'd say yay but our economy is going down with China.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoIf it reduces the export of Australian coal to China, not a bad thing.
- jaimex2 7y agoTrue, though its clean coal were told.
- Balgair 7y agoReally? Hanlons Razor would indicate that the US president doesn't have an A-Plan to start with.
- adrianN 7y agoChina should just start a carbon tax and apply tariffs on imports from countries that don't have an equivalent system in place.
- selimthegrim 7y agoIf Trump had more than a five second attention span we’d have the Border Adjustment Tax right now and be done with it. Maybe make it carbon based later.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoFor more details on this excellent idea by Nobel Prize winning William Nordhaus: https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/ https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/ This idea is one that has me slightly less pessimistic about the chances of the world actually doing something about climate change. We don't have to have 195 countries agreeing to a plan and have huge advantages accrue to cheaters who don't follow the plan. We can start with a small but significant number and it's the cheaters that lose out.
- JamesSchriver 7y agoChina is the world's biggest carbon polluter ... and thats just based on the highly inaccurate and falsified information provided by the CCP augmented by western surveillance. I don't think you understand how China or the CCP works, my friend. But don't despair, for whatever reason you are in good company as many in the western world today are under a communist propaganda magic spell, which of course make you hold up China as some sort of ethical standard ... an utter delusion.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI don't think you understand how China or the CCP works, my friend. There is no need to be condescending.
- rrggrr 7y agoChina is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. So its a cute idea, but countervailing tariffs would be swift and deserved.
- jhpriestley 7y agoTrump's whole schtick is to come in with an incredibly aggressive posture (cancel NAFTA!), extract some concessions, then take a victory lap. When the concessions don't come he gives up quickly (see the government shutdown). He has no real plan or capacity for a protracted and painful trade war. He hasn't made the case to his people or his allies for what the goal even is, and whatever support he has will evaporate when the pain becomes serious, assuming he doesn't just fold first.
- disease 7y agoYou are right on everything except his support. His followers will support him unconditionally.
- WillPostForFood 7y agoFirst China tariffs were in January 2018, when do you start to consider the trade war protracted? I’d say it is already painful and protracted.
- jhpriestley 7y agoPainful would be the 35 percent GDP contraction that Cuba endured, without regime change, after the USSR fell, under continuing US sanctions. Or the hyperinflation and food rationing that Venezuela has endured, without regime change, under US sanctions. Do you think Trump could lead the USA through that kind of pain?
- jaimex2 7y agoChina is more or less out of options already though. Their economy is trashed to the point they are already devaluing their currency. HK situation certainly isn't helping either. In the meantime every tariff they add just serves Trump's goal of keeping jobs in America ( or at least that is how he will pitch it). Were already seeing plenty of companies pack up shop in China.
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- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoWhy not apply a value added tariff instead of purely import tariffs? China actually buys more from the US from a value added perspective than the other way around: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/the-1-4-trillion-u-s-surplus-that-trump-s-not-talking-about https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/the-1-4-t...
- rrggrr 7y agoUSD shortage. Chinese tariffs and past import restrictions conveniently decrease pressure on their declining USD reserves (see link to article below). https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012460/does-china-have-enough-us-dollars-trade-war-escalates https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012460/d...
- lota-putty 7y agoBig bucks Poker game played in public.
- ourmandave 7y agoAssuming the Chinese economy can hold up, Xi Jinping doesn't have an election coming up in 2020.
- baybal2 7y agoTo everybody raising this question I answer this: "A dictator faces election every time he shows his back to anybody." And being a head of a giant country, the man just can't avoid doing that from time to time, unlike the head of some tiny banana republic.
- baybal2 7y agoI'm still baffled why Beijing is still goes THAT easy on USA. It is fully in its capacity to make Washington to capitulate. If they were to go with embargoes and not tariffs, things would be dramatically different, especially if they can nuke holiday season sales. Just a plain clothing embargo would send all and every American retailer scrambling. There will be not enough merchandise in all India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam combined. And it will be even worse if Chinese factories in those countries would also join the embargo. For things like regular household goods will also be no real alternatives as even export oriented economies like Vietnam import god knows how much plasticware from China just because it is often cheaper than manufacturing locally. Just thing of how many "dollar goods" you buy every month, and what would you do if there would simply be none. I instantly remember my childhood in early nineties Russia. We were one of richest families in the city or likely the entire Russian Far East, with father's business and mom's salary making few hundred thousand bucks a years, but from time to time we had to subsist on millet for months in a row for a simple reason that there were physically no other food in the entire region.
- asdf333 7y agothe issue is it would also wreak serious havoc on china's economy and while xi is president for life, he doesn't want to risk mass unrest in his own country.
- baybal2 7y agoTrade with USA is just 2% of China's GDP. Were it to take a short, controlled dip into recession to teach US a lesson, it would not be really noticed domestically. And it will be a much better alternative than to let China to slowly bleed as manufacturers leave the country just to be able to sell to US in long term.
- fspeech 7y agoTotal Chinese export is still going up. You only need 35% local content to be labeled “made in country x”. This trade war will reduce headline bilateral deficit with the US which China knows to be at an unhealthy level. There’s additional cost compared to the past but US is sharing the burden.
- dragonsh 7y agoI hope this trade war finishes quicker. Everyone playing this game will lose. Global supply chains are much more complex and complete impact is difficult to understand. Hope sense prevail at the end.
- theseadroid 7y agoConsidering the huge understanding gap between regular Americans and Chinese, I unfortunately suspect the trade war will not be over soon.
- whatshisface 7y agoThe strangest thing about this event is how nobody can agree on what has already happened. US consumers are being hurt, US consumers are doing fine, the US economy is teetering on the brink of recession and China is steady, China is teetering on the brink of total collapse and the US doesn't feel a thing... all of these contradictory claims have been made to me by internet commenters and media outlets. Shouldn't the effects of the trade war be objective and easy to measure with typical macroeconomic indicators? It beats me as to why there are so many contradictory claims.
- asdkhadsj 7y agoAgreed. It's why I think we (and I'm slowly working towards some ideas there personally) need to prioritize (micro) information sharing, sourcing, referencing, and etc. I feel like there is too much misinformation out there for any person to be informed these days. Any effort to wade through that should be a currency worth more than gold in my mind, and easily sharable, reference-able, tamper-proof (immutable/signed/etc), and easily remembered. Information is tough these days. We need to find ways to adapt, because misinformation seems to be winning by leagues.
- baybal2 7y agoI also agree, that's very true. China looses more money to FUD, than to genuine industrial decline at the moment. Industrialist cashing out their factories and running for good life in America not because they can't make sale now, but because they have an expectation of "hard times to come" (even if such are nowhere to be genuinely seen.)
- dragonsh 7y agoAs I mentioned in my earlier comment. I feel the difficulty lies in understanding the extent of global supply chains and its impact. With successive globalization more and more nations got interconnected with multiple layers of mutual import/export of raw material, parts or finished goods and services. If its made in USA or China does not mean it's completely made in USA or China, the components or raw material for it might come from multiple nations. This trade tariffs and war is taking us to old century where we had closed borders and middle man charge a premium to get products and services in and out. Eventually it will be a loss for everyone not just for any specific nation.
- tomohawk 7y agoChina's been conducting a trade war for several years. US finally woke up and now China's trying to nip any resistance in the bud. I guess they couldn't buy off the current president like they have others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_fi...
- Balgair 7y agoPer The Washington Post [0]: > A 25 percent tariff on automobiles and a 5 percent levy on auto parts take hold Dec. 15. That means your car's transmission replacement goes from ~$3k to ~$3200 (due to the additional markup on parts for time, labor, insurance, etc). Not too too bad for the end user, but actually bad for the parts companies, mechanics, tool and die makers, and others in the supply chain. This will be hurting your local repair shop very directly. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/23/china-hits-us-with-tariffs-billion-worth-goods-reinstates-auto-levies-state-media-report/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/23/china-hit...