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In China, nobody's allowed to complain about mercantilist policies. In the US, nobody noticed until the US government started employing stronger mercantilist p
by apotheon 7y ago
In China, nobody's allowed to complain about mercantilist policies.
In the US, nobody noticed until the US government started employing stronger mercantilist policies, then started complaining about it at home because they don't like that their own government is employing such policies.
That's probably why.
It's worth noting that punitive tariffs, in the end, are taxes on businesses in your own country, because it just raises the price of US businesses doing business (and often gets passed on to consumers, when demand for the product is strong enough to pass the cost on to consumers; otherwise, businesses just suffer and have to start cutting costs in other areas, such as by laying off workers).
Mercantilist policies hurt the local economy as much as they hurt foreign economies. Every act escalating a trade war hurts both sides.
- deogeo 7y ago> That's probably why. Pretty much the entire media participated in the narrative that it was Trump that started the trade war - both in the US, and here in Europe. That's what I was referring to, not Chinese media. > Mercantilist policies hurt the local economy as much as they hurt foreign economies. So economists keep repeating. Yet China doesn't seem to have been hurt by their mercantilism. Because yes, in the short term, tariffs hurt, but they let local industry develop without being crushed by foreign competition. In fact, " ... none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." [1]. But economic consensus remains untainted by contact with reality. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticis...