6 ms·

What exactly did people expect to happen with this bizarre trade war? Instead of pressuring 'bad actor' countries with more free trade and something like TPP,

• losteric 7y ago
  It's also domestic corruption, trading tariff waivers for corporate political support (or at least silence)
  • kortilla 7y ago
    Do you consider it corruption to offer free money in exchange for votes (I.e. many of the contenders for the Democratic primary in the US)?
    • corporate_shi11 7y ago
      “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” - Alexander Fraser Tytler
      • eru 7y ago
        Switzerland has been around as a (relatively) small government democracy for quite a while. There are regular direct democracy polls on spending and taxes.
        • corporate_shi11 7y ago
          Switzerland also doesn't have many poor people.
          • newyankee 7y ago
            classic understatement but yes it helps to have a population that is well off, educated and can wisely make the decision.
          • winter_blue 7y ago
            Switzerland used to be quite poor until not long ago. It was a mostly subsistence farming country, and throughout the 1800s, it was a nation that people emigrated from.
          • nutjob2 7y ago
            7% doesn't sound insignificant and is roughly comparable to other highly developed European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Switzerland Also, local reporting on Swiss poverty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yI4ygNr5Mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yI4ygNr5Mg
          • pjmlp 7y ago
            Switzerland does have quite a few poor people, the difference being that someone on the poverty limit in Switzerland still happens to look quite alright from the outside. The problem is that one cannot just look at income, rather what someone has to pay for as well, and in Switzerland you pay for everything. I think that many Swiss can relate to this, when I lived there we used to joke that only breathing is free.
          • anoncake 7y ago
            Democracy seems to be working quite well.
      • anoncake 7y ago
        That doesn't make sense. The voters already collectively own the treasury of their state. And how exactly is it a requirement for a democracy to exist that it implements your favorite policies?
        • eru 7y ago
          > The voters already collectively own the treasury of their state. The situation is bit more complicated than that. The voters aren't one monolithic entity. So government has lots of principle-agent problems. Check out Public Choice theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice).
    • rawburt 7y ago
      lol. give me a break
    • aidenn0 7y ago
      There is no offer of money for votes. In fact, many of the poorest areas of the country are more likely to vote Republican.
      • knolax 7y ago
        I think he's referring to UBI.
        • kazagistar 7y ago
          UBI also isn't money for votes, its money regardless of votes. I can vote for UBI and lose more in taxes then I gain, and I can vote against it and still benefit. That sounds like about as non corrupt as it gets.
          • aidenn0 7y ago
            I'm still not sure where I stand on UBI, but it's interesting that I've seen some economic liberals that are huge fans, other economic liberals that dismiss it as people "voting themselves money" and I've seen socialists that are huge fans of it and socialists that dismiss it as "an attempt by Capital to bribe the proletariat." Meanwhile most moderates I know seem to think it a pipe dream.
          • kortilla 7y ago
            The funny thing is that you’ve also described exactly how tax breaks and deregulation for industries works. Google got massive benefits of Trump being president despite not donating to him. A politician promising tax breaks for an industry is no different than a politician promising tax breaks for low income people.
    • kevingadd 7y ago
      Who else is in your "many" other than the one person (polling at absurdly low numbers) offering handouts, Andrew Yang? It's not even clear whether his offer is legal.
    • eru 7y ago
      Two wrongs don't make a right.
• deogeo 7y ago
  Corporations have only themselves to blame for the failure of the TPP. Instead of limiting the agreement to trade, it was filled to the brim with anti-consumer, anti-worker, and anti-environment clauses. Negotiated entirely by industry and kept secret from even senators, laundering legislation they could never get through any parliament. If there was any justice in the world, the TPP would not only have failed, but everyone involved would be executed for treason. Instead, they'll just try again in a few years.
  • eru 7y ago
    The bigger criticism I heard about the TPP was extending America's Intellectual Property laws even further across the globe. And the secrecy was annoying as well. What anti-consumer, anti-worker and anti-environment clauses are you referring to? Of course, from the standpoint of mainstream economic theory, trade agreements are moot for their stated purpose: everyone is better off just opening up to unilateral free trade. No need for an agreement. (Trade agreements can still be useful in practice to organize political coalitions for trade.)
    • ajdlinux 7y ago
      > The bigger criticism I heard about the TPP was extending America's Intellectual Property laws even further across the globe. The IP issues were the big criticism within the tech community, because we care a lot about IP laws, but AFAICT not the big issue for unions, left-wing orgs, right-wing populists, etc who were much, much more concerned about tariffs, workers rights, etc and had barely anything to say about IP.
      • eru 7y ago
        Good points. I was also reading economists' opinions. Though as you can guess, they are quite in favour of lowering tariffs.
    • deogeo 7y ago
      > What anti-consumer, anti-worker and anti-environment clauses are you referring to? The mentioned IP clauses would be anti-consumer, criminal penalties for trade secrets, and the horrifyingly 'standard' investor-state arbitration, which can throw a wrench into any pro-consumer/worker/environment law, as they usually impact corporate profit, meaning lawyers can argue that this is an indirect form of expropriation. It has a chilling effect on legislation. E.g. Canada backed off cigarette plain packaging and pesticide registration due to the arbitration clauses in NAFTA: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141121/07460329216/corporate-sovereigntys-chilling-effects.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141121/07460329216/corpo... A law professor made the same argument specifically in reference to the TPP - that the government would basically have to pay a tax to corporations on any legislation that cuts into their profits: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/gord-miller/trans-pacific-partnership_b_9670458.html https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/gord-miller/trans-pacific-part... "Dean Baker argued that Article 18.78, under which countries should ensure that they protect trade secrets and impose criminal procedures for violators, could be used to enforce non-compete agreements.": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership And much of the TPP's more noble language, such as environmental and worker protections, is non-binding, and even explicitly subordinate to other parts of the agreement: "In the event of any inconsistency between this Chapter and another Chapter of this Agreement, the other Chapter shall prevail to the extent of the inconsistency.": https://theconversation.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership-poses-a-grave-threat-to-sustainable-development-50398 https://theconversation.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership-po... Basically, if it were remotely good, it would not have been negotiated in such secrecy. Think about who it was kept secret from - not the counterparties in the negotiations, so it cannot be argued the secrecy was to preserve some 'advantage'.
• corporate_shi11 7y ago
  That attitude certainly is encouraged by the DNC and mainstream media, but the reality is that China's economy is far more vulnerable to the trade war than ours and we have put ourselves in a great position of leverage over China as a result. What's truly brainless is thinking we can just bury our heads in the sand and ignore an ever expanding Totalitarian dictatorship bent on becoming the world's most powerful country. I was in favor of the TPP, but I am also in favor of the trade war. We must counter China now before it grows more powerful.
  • eru 7y ago
    > We must counter China now before it grows more powerful. Wouldn't that line of thinking also justify sending in the nukes?
    • corporate_shi11 7y ago
      No, we should counter them through economic and political pressure. Most sane people try to avoid nuclear war.
      • eru 7y ago
        Most sane people also try to avoid a 'trade war'.
        • indemnity 7y ago
          It’s the only language China can understand, they don’t care about any of the other levers.
        • roenxi 7y ago
          It seems pretty reasonable to say China has a plan to supplant the United State's values in the international order and surpass their military might. It makes sense to avoid wars, trade and otherwise, but it also makes sense to consider what China is going to do in the future. Turning a blind eye to the fact that they are showing no particular signs of liberalising as they get wealthier would be a mistake. Even if the trade wars themselves are a bad idea it is very comforting to see the US trying to focus on actual threats rather than the ghosts of the Soviet Union and blowing up brown people in the middle east.
• jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  TPP was cancer. Every rich nation in the world profited off of precisely the kind of IP theft which TPP aimed to punish. It was kicking away the ladder which the U.S. U.K. France, South Korea and others had climbed before anyone else could get up it. Liberal economics reeks of colonialism. "As above so below, everything in its rightful place. Let mexico grow avocados and let india make t-shirts and let the chinese build semiconductors. Lets's put all these people in their rightful places and engineer foreign policy to make sure they stay there forever."
  • ahmedalsudani 7y ago
    IP enforcement was one provision among many. No deal is perfect.
    • jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
      One provision among many which stack the deck in favor of the U.S. and other rich nations. Even something as seemingly uncontroversial as the anti-corruption provisions would be deal breakers for many states. Compliance with such would require the establishment of a government arm specifically to investigate and punish corrupt officials. Who is going to pay for all of those bureaucrats, in a place like Vietnam, where people are literally selling their children just to stay alive? And investor-state arbitration? The ability for some random joe schmoe to sue a foreign government for violating a trade treaty? We saw how that shook out with the tobacco industry; the experience was so unpleasant that tobacco was actually banned from making use of the ISDS system laid out in TPP. Interfering with a state's ability to make and enforce it's own laws is NO BUENO. TPP makes sense from the perspective of a walmart shareholder, but to the states which walmart exploits, it's complete and utter lunacy backed by big guns and fat wallets.