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>And obviously it's not so great for the US. There's a lot of confusion, I think, about how you "win" a trade war; as far as I can tell, autarchy is pretty ba

by lsc 7y ago

>And obviously it's not so great for the US. There's a lot of confusion, I think, about how you "win" a trade war; as far as I can tell, autarchy is pretty bad for all involved; trade wars seem like a thing where everyone loses and the 'win' comes from winding down the trade war and trading again.

FpUser 7y ago
I would say that the "winner" is the one who got hurt less and can recover faster/better but it is all relative. While 2 sides are busy killing each other the third one might get the benefits
- lsc 7y ago
  I'm just saying, from where I stand (and I'm first to recognize I'm not an expert here) it sure looks like my country is trying to make things harder for China, and is paying the price of making things harder for workers in my own country. Even if the Chinese worker is hurt more than the American worker, the American worker is still being hurt, and as far as I can tell, all involved would be better off if we traded in a more free way.
  - onepointsixC 7y ago
    Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? Fundamentally it's time to wake to the fact that the CCP views the very existence of Liberal Democracies as a threat to itself [1]. It will work to undermind or extinguish then where ever it can. Facing the Soviet Union had a cost. Facing Nazi Germany had a cost. And facing the CCP will have a cost. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine
    - lsc 7y ago
      >Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? so you are saying that a trade war is successful if there are fewer barriers at the end than at the beginning? That's a reasonable definition, but that would benefit both parties, so it still doesn't really show a "winner" > And facing the CCP will have a cost. But if you define a successful trade war as one where there are fewer barriers to trade at the end than at the beginning, that will benefit both parties. I mean, one could argue that free trade (well, more trade) is going to make your society more free in general, is going to introduce more ideas and things like that, I suppose, and you could also argue that trading more with a country makes it less likely you will go to war with them, but these things aren't really about crushing your competitor.
      - onepointsixC 7y ago
        >I mean, one could argue that free trade (well, more trade) is going to make your society more free in general, is going to introduce more ideas and things like that, I suppose, and you could also argue that trading more with a country makes it less likely you will go to war with them, but these things aren't really about crushing your competitor. One who would argue something like that in the face of the decidedly not free CCP run society that is modern China is fooling themselves. And their mode of operation is most certainly about crushing competitors.
        lsc 7y ago
        I freely admit that I don't know a whole lot about China, and even less about the government of China. But I do know a fair number of people who are or were Chinese citizens who either now work here or do a lot of business with the US. That's what I mean by trade spreading ideas. These people clearly have learned a lot from American culture (and I have learned a lot from them) - I personally think that when trying to get things done, the more people you have from different backgrounds, the more different ideas you have, and the more likely you are to come up with a good solution. (And further, this trade war, as I understand it, isn't about talking the CCP into treating it's citizens better, it's about tariffs and subsidies, matters with far less moral force.)
  - phkahler 7y ago
    >> it sure looks like my country is trying to make things harder for China, and is paying the price of making things harder for workers in my own country. Not sure if you've noticed, but manufacturing is starting to come back in the US. Industrial automation and skilled trades jobs are starting to be a thing again. These are solid middle class jobs that often dont require a degree. Its coming at the expense of some pain in other areas, but it might be an overall positive. The path we were on was not sustainable. The US lost a LOT of capability over the last 20 years. Getting that back is critical and will not be painless.
    - lsc 7y ago
      >Not sure if you've noticed, but manufacturing is starting to come back in the US. Industrial automation and skilled trades jobs are starting to be a thing again. These are solid middle class jobs that often dont require a degree. Its coming at the expense of some pain in other areas, but it might be an overall positive. My understanding is that most of the really good paying manufacturing jobs aren't coming back; the manufacturing that is coming back is non-union and pays worse than a union job (and much worse, say, than the better IT jobs that don't require a degree.) I personally think it's super weird that people (especially in the USA) seem to think that manufacturing jobs are inherently better than other jobs, when my impression is that most of the pay advantages are simply that it is a class of jobs that unionized while it was in high demand, preserving some of the benefits of being a high demand job through a time when demand had fallen.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mcphage 7y ago
        > people (especially in the USA) seem to think that manufacturing jobs are inherently better than other jobs I don’t think they’re inherently better, but I do think the person who invents the next big thing will necessarily be a person who knows how to manufacture the current big thing, so the more people we have who know how to do that, the more likely we are to lead the next wave.
      - 7y ago
- ummonk 7y ago
  A pyrrhic victory if you will.
account73466 7y ago
There was a trade war between US and Japan. What happened to Japan? The same will happen to China but it will take longer because China is more powerful than Japan at the time. All the hatred on China is similar (but stronger) to the one we had on Japan.
- latch 7y ago
  Are you saying China can look forward to one of the highest qualities of life?
  - account73466 7y ago
    The trade war with Japan started in the mid 80ies and finished by the mid 90ies. The quality of life in Japan (as well as their GDP per capita) didn't improve since then. However, the quality of life in Japan was pretty good even before the 80ies.
    - latch 7y ago
      Well, according to (1) life expectancy is up ~6 years, (2) infant mortality rate is down by ~2.5x, (3) homicides are down and (4) unemployment is down; all in the period of time that you mention. Seems like objective improvements. (1) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location... (2) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2018&locations=JP&start=1960&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2018... (3) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... (4) https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate
      - account73466 7y ago
        From wiki: "With 15.7 percent of people in poverty, Japan was above the average percent of 11 among the OECD member states." "Japan has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world, according to a Unicef report."
Retric 7y ago
The winner is decided in the details. It’s not obvious at 30,000 feet, but changing tariffs before and after a war can make a clear winner in these situations. At the extreme end involving actual fighting, the opium wars where actually about trade with China.
esqqfskaw 7y ago
This seems more like an issue with people being out of touch with the theoretical side of war. War, as a concept, has been treated as simply being another means of compelling cooperation since as far back as Sun Tzu. Although western war philosophy has been equally influenced by more recent figures like Carl Von Clausewitz. The US military even acknowledges similar thinking through modern concepts like the DIME model that are oriented towards forming a theory of war that acknowledges itself as part of a larger political environment. From this perspective, where war is just a tool for compelling cooperation, a trade war is simply a trade and economy based conflict which seeks to compel cooperation towards some particular goal like not putting people in concentration camps or buying more USA made rice.
- lsc 7y ago
  I... think that in the modern era, "real war" is a different sort of thing from "trade war" - a difference in kind, not degree, in a way that just wasn't so when Tzu wrote. The fact of the matter is that both the US and China could survive (albeit with a lower standard of living) without external trade entirely. I don't think the same could be said for an all-out war. An all-out war between the two countries would likely kill most of us and put the standard of living of the few survivors below what you and I would call 'civilization' - one side might lose harder than the other, sure, but the consequences would be essentially unthinkable for both.
Animats 7y ago
You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. This is a current goal of the government of China. It's called "Made in China 2025", and was announced in 2015.. "The goals of Made in China 2025 include increasing the Chinese-domestic content of core materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025.[5] The plan focuses on high-tech fields including the pharmaceutical industry, automotive industry, aerospace industry, semiconductors, IT and robotics etc, which are presently the purview of foreign companies." There's been some backing off on this from the government of China for PR purposes, but the big goals seem to be on track. Key items include a leading position in semiconductors and in aircraft. Semiconductors seem to be coming along well. In aircraft, the COMAC 929 is a medium-sized airliner with five prototypes flying. The engine is still imported, but an engine to replace it has been developed to the prototype level. China already has the world's largest auto industry, so that's covered. Also the largest robot industry. Don't know about pharma.
- lsc 7y ago
  >You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) I mean, certainly, both the US and China could survive without trade. hell, there are a bunch of people who could pull it off just by themselves. But... in all cases, all involved would be a lot poorer; they'd work a lot harder for a lot less.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever. That is why countries cling desperately to domestic steel, shipbuilding, arms and other industries. Once the institutional knowledge is gone and the infrastructure is gone it’s never coming back. And other countries whose interests may not align with your own have you over a barrel.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
It's seems uncommon for people to consider if our trade with China before this "war" was fair. It seems like most people just parrot: "War. Bad." I'm not saying this administration is doing everything right on trade, or that it's even doing anything right on trade. It just seems like people think that what was before "the trade war" was the default, and that the default was fair.
- lsc 7y ago
  >It's seems uncommon for people to consider if our trade with China before this "war" was fair. So, I'm not an expert, but... my understanding is that China is accused of subsidizing domestic manufacturing. Analogous to the sort of dumping that uber and lyft do, really; Much like how Softbank subsidizes my ride to work in the hope that they can jack up prices once I get really used to it, the Chinese government is subsidizing my consumer goods purchases, with the hope that manufacturing will decline elsewhere to the point where they can some day jack up prices to market-clearing levels. I mean, is that fair? no. Is this something the market does on the regular, even without government having a hand in it? yes. Is this bad for the USA? If we lose manufacturing ability, probably... but this has been going on for a generation now. How long would it take us to re-gain or move the manufacturing of our consumer goods? (we already keep manufacturing of defense goods in the USA, for exactly this reason. My own guess is that if there was economic reason to move more high-touch human labor intensive manufacturing in-house, we'd make like BMW and build plants in South Carolina and similar places with fewer unions, and we already do a bunch of automated manufacturing here.) - the implication here is that just like Uber and softbank, I am not sure this is a long-term profitable thing for China to do, and I have the (controversial) opinion that the market in the USA is healthy enough that if we needed to build more manufacturing here, we could do it pretty quickly) (I mean, the other side of this, the complex part that I personally don't entirely understand is that the USA subsidizes a lot of domestic industry, too... most famously the agriculture sector. As a us citizen, I totally support my tax dollars being used to make sure that we overproduce food. That seems like an extremely reasonable thing to do. (it does get more complex when that food is sold elsewhere, but I am not an expert) - My understanding is that the US also subsidizes a lot of US manufacturing... I mean, my feelings on that are more mixed... but I personally don't see subsidies as inherently evil or incompatible with doing lots of trade with another country.) >It seems like most people just parrot: "War. Bad." We're talking about a trade war here, which is a different sort of animal. Please understand that I'm saying "Trade: good" - a subtle difference. And I do think that trade is usually good, even trade with someone who is subsidizing their goods. (I have... very different feelings about trade sanctions, about restrictions on trade as a way to get a country, say, to respect human rights. But I don't think that's what the trade war with China is about; the trade war with China, as I understand it, is about tariffs and subsidies)
londons_explore 7y ago
I think OP refers to "winning" in an economic sense, trade war or no trade war. The key goal is "my country will have more global influence than yours in 100 years". Taxes, tariffs, import/export bans of goods or technology, etc. are all just tools in the arsenal of both sides they will use when it seems to give them an edge over the competition.

by lsc 7y ago

FpUser 7y ago

I would say that the "winner" is the one who got hurt less and can recover faster/better but it is all relative. While 2 sides are busy killing each other the third one might get the benefits

lsc 7y ago
I'm just saying, from where I stand (and I'm first to recognize I'm not an expert here) it sure looks like my country is trying to make things harder for China, and is paying the price of making things harder for workers in my own country. Even if the Chinese worker is hurt more than the American worker, the American worker is still being hurt, and as far as I can tell, all involved would be better off if we traded in a more free way.
- onepointsixC 7y ago
  Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? Fundamentally it's time to wake to the fact that the CCP views the very existence of Liberal Democracies as a threat to itself [1]. It will work to undermind or extinguish then where ever it can. Facing the Soviet Union had a cost. Facing Nazi Germany had a cost. And facing the CCP will have a cost. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine
  - lsc 7y ago
    >Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? so you are saying that a trade war is successful if there are fewer barriers at the end than at the beginning? That's a reasonable definition, but that would benefit both parties, so it still doesn't really show a "winner" > And facing the CCP will have a cost. But if you define a successful trade war as one where there are fewer barriers to trade at the end than at the beginning, that will benefit both parties. I mean, one could argue that free trade (well, more trade) is going to make your society more free in general, is going to introduce more ideas and things like that, I suppose, and you could also argue that trading more with a country makes it less likely you will go to war with them, but these things aren't really about crushing your competitor.
    - onepointsixC 7y ago
      >I mean, one could argue that free trade (well, more trade) is going to make your society more free in general, is going to introduce more ideas and things like that, I suppose, and you could also argue that trading more with a country makes it less likely you will go to war with them, but these things aren't really about crushing your competitor. One who would argue something like that in the face of the decidedly not free CCP run society that is modern China is fooling themselves. And their mode of operation is most certainly about crushing competitors.
      - lsc 7y ago
        I freely admit that I don't know a whole lot about China, and even less about the government of China. But I do know a fair number of people who are or were Chinese citizens who either now work here or do a lot of business with the US. That's what I mean by trade spreading ideas. These people clearly have learned a lot from American culture (and I have learned a lot from them) - I personally think that when trying to get things done, the more people you have from different backgrounds, the more different ideas you have, and the more likely you are to come up with a good solution. (And further, this trade war, as I understand it, isn't about talking the CCP into treating it's citizens better, it's about tariffs and subsidies, matters with far less moral force.)
- phkahler 7y ago
  >> it sure looks like my country is trying to make things harder for China, and is paying the price of making things harder for workers in my own country. Not sure if you've noticed, but manufacturing is starting to come back in the US. Industrial automation and skilled trades jobs are starting to be a thing again. These are solid middle class jobs that often dont require a degree. Its coming at the expense of some pain in other areas, but it might be an overall positive. The path we were on was not sustainable. The US lost a LOT of capability over the last 20 years. Getting that back is critical and will not be painless.
  - lsc 7y ago
    >Not sure if you've noticed, but manufacturing is starting to come back in the US. Industrial automation and skilled trades jobs are starting to be a thing again. These are solid middle class jobs that often dont require a degree. Its coming at the expense of some pain in other areas, but it might be an overall positive. My understanding is that most of the really good paying manufacturing jobs aren't coming back; the manufacturing that is coming back is non-union and pays worse than a union job (and much worse, say, than the better IT jobs that don't require a degree.) I personally think it's super weird that people (especially in the USA) seem to think that manufacturing jobs are inherently better than other jobs, when my impression is that most of the pay advantages are simply that it is a class of jobs that unionized while it was in high demand, preserving some of the benefits of being a high demand job through a time when demand had fallen.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcphage 7y ago
      > people (especially in the USA) seem to think that manufacturing jobs are inherently better than other jobs I don’t think they’re inherently better, but I do think the person who invents the next big thing will necessarily be a person who knows how to manufacture the current big thing, so the more people we have who know how to do that, the more likely we are to lead the next wave.
    - 7y ago
ummonk 7y ago
A pyrrhic victory if you will.

account73466 7y ago

There was a trade war between US and Japan. What happened to Japan? The same will happen to China but it will take longer because China is more powerful than Japan at the time. All the hatred on China is similar (but stronger) to the one we had on Japan.

latch 7y ago
Are you saying China can look forward to one of the highest qualities of life?
- account73466 7y ago
  The trade war with Japan started in the mid 80ies and finished by the mid 90ies. The quality of life in Japan (as well as their GDP per capita) didn't improve since then. However, the quality of life in Japan was pretty good even before the 80ies.
  - latch 7y ago
    Well, according to (1) life expectancy is up ~6 years, (2) infant mortality rate is down by ~2.5x, (3) homicides are down and (4) unemployment is down; all in the period of time that you mention. Seems like objective improvements. (1) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location... (2) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2018&locations=JP&start=1960&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2018... (3) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... (4) https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate
    - account73466 7y ago
      From wiki: "With 15.7 percent of people in poverty, Japan was above the average percent of 11 among the OECD member states." "Japan has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world, according to a Unicef report."

Retric 7y ago

The winner is decided in the details. It’s not obvious at 30,000 feet, but changing tariffs before and after a war can make a clear winner in these situations. At the extreme end involving actual fighting, the opium wars where actually about trade with China.

esqqfskaw 7y ago

This seems more like an issue with people being out of touch with the theoretical side of war. War, as a concept, has been treated as simply being another means of compelling cooperation since as far back as Sun Tzu. Although western war philosophy has been equally influenced by more recent figures like Carl Von Clausewitz. The US military even acknowledges similar thinking through modern concepts like the DIME model that are oriented towards forming a theory of war that acknowledges itself as part of a larger political environment. From this perspective, where war is just a tool for compelling cooperation, a trade war is simply a trade and economy based conflict which seeks to compel cooperation towards some particular goal like not putting people in concentration camps or buying more USA made rice.

lsc 7y ago
I... think that in the modern era, "real war" is a different sort of thing from "trade war" - a difference in kind, not degree, in a way that just wasn't so when Tzu wrote. The fact of the matter is that both the US and China could survive (albeit with a lower standard of living) without external trade entirely. I don't think the same could be said for an all-out war. An all-out war between the two countries would likely kill most of us and put the standard of living of the few survivors below what you and I would call 'civilization' - one side might lose harder than the other, sure, but the consequences would be essentially unthinkable for both.

Animats 7y ago

You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. This is a current goal of the government of China. It's called "Made in China 2025", and was announced in 2015.. "The goals of Made in China 2025 include increasing the Chinese-domestic content of core materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025.[5] The plan focuses on high-tech fields including the pharmaceutical industry, automotive industry, aerospace industry, semiconductors, IT and robotics etc, which are presently the purview of foreign companies." There's been some backing off on this from the government of China for PR purposes, but the big goals seem to be on track. Key items include a leading position in semiconductors and in aircraft. Semiconductors seem to be coming along well. In aircraft, the COMAC 929 is a medium-sized airliner with five prototypes flying. The engine is still imported, but an engine to replace it has been developed to the prototype level. China already has the world's largest auto industry, so that's covered. Also the largest robot industry. Don't know about pharma.

lsc 7y ago
>You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) I mean, certainly, both the US and China could survive without trade. hell, there are a bunch of people who could pull it off just by themselves. But... in all cases, all involved would be a lot poorer; they'd work a lot harder for a lot less.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever. That is why countries cling desperately to domestic steel, shipbuilding, arms and other industries. Once the institutional knowledge is gone and the infrastructure is gone it’s never coming back. And other countries whose interests may not align with your own have you over a barrel.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

It's seems uncommon for people to consider if our trade with China before this "war" was fair. It seems like most people just parrot: "War. Bad." I'm not saying this administration is doing everything right on trade, or that it's even doing anything right on trade. It just seems like people think that what was before "the trade war" was the default, and that the default was fair.

lsc 7y ago
>It's seems uncommon for people to consider if our trade with China before this "war" was fair. So, I'm not an expert, but... my understanding is that China is accused of subsidizing domestic manufacturing. Analogous to the sort of dumping that uber and lyft do, really; Much like how Softbank subsidizes my ride to work in the hope that they can jack up prices once I get really used to it, the Chinese government is subsidizing my consumer goods purchases, with the hope that manufacturing will decline elsewhere to the point where they can some day jack up prices to market-clearing levels. I mean, is that fair? no. Is this something the market does on the regular, even without government having a hand in it? yes. Is this bad for the USA? If we lose manufacturing ability, probably... but this has been going on for a generation now. How long would it take us to re-gain or move the manufacturing of our consumer goods? (we already keep manufacturing of defense goods in the USA, for exactly this reason. My own guess is that if there was economic reason to move more high-touch human labor intensive manufacturing in-house, we'd make like BMW and build plants in South Carolina and similar places with fewer unions, and we already do a bunch of automated manufacturing here.) - the implication here is that just like Uber and softbank, I am not sure this is a long-term profitable thing for China to do, and I have the (controversial) opinion that the market in the USA is healthy enough that if we needed to build more manufacturing here, we could do it pretty quickly) (I mean, the other side of this, the complex part that I personally don't entirely understand is that the USA subsidizes a lot of domestic industry, too... most famously the agriculture sector. As a us citizen, I totally support my tax dollars being used to make sure that we overproduce food. That seems like an extremely reasonable thing to do. (it does get more complex when that food is sold elsewhere, but I am not an expert) - My understanding is that the US also subsidizes a lot of US manufacturing... I mean, my feelings on that are more mixed... but I personally don't see subsidies as inherently evil or incompatible with doing lots of trade with another country.) >It seems like most people just parrot: "War. Bad." We're talking about a trade war here, which is a different sort of animal. Please understand that I'm saying "Trade: good" - a subtle difference. And I do think that trade is usually good, even trade with someone who is subsidizing their goods. (I have... very different feelings about trade sanctions, about restrictions on trade as a way to get a country, say, to respect human rights. But I don't think that's what the trade war with China is about; the trade war with China, as I understand it, is about tariffs and subsidies)

londons_explore 7y ago

I think OP refers to "winning" in an economic sense, trade war or no trade war. The key goal is "my country will have more global influence than yours in 100 years". Taxes, tariffs, import/export bans of goods or technology, etc. are all just tools in the arsenal of both sides they will use when it seems to give them an edge over the competition.