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What is “fair”? We believe in a free market economy. There is no way to “game” it because by definition a free market has to be free and what arises from it is

What is “fair”? We believe in a free market economy. There is no way to “game” it because by definition a free market has to be free and what arises from it is what is supposed to be. China has a planned economy. They pick and choose what happens economically and they have a heavy hand in manipulating it. It honestly sounds like we want to have our cake and eat it too. The free market is the best way to develop a healthy economy, and it does not require the generosity of foreign players to function. Fundamentally we’re just being rattled by the economic rise of China which is shaking the beliefs of some free market capitalists.

jchw 6y ago
It would not be having our cake and eating it too to show the CCP the door. They don’t need to give us access to their market and we don’t need to give access to ours. American companies need to go though Chinese entities to do business in China. Why not the reverse?
whoevercares 6y ago
China “planned” its tech industry? You gonna be kidding me
- sidlls 6y ago
  China has its fingers deep in the pie of every tech company there, especially the ones with even minimal foreign ownership. It might not be planned in the quaint sense of the old Communist 5 year plans, but it’s certainly a modern iteration of the concept.
albacur 6y ago
The U.S. doesn't have purely free market economy; it's regulated to prevent abuse from bad actors and it enters into trade deals to advance its strategic interests. This is true of all countries. I have mixed feelings about TikTok, but the claim that the U.S. can't protect itself from a hostile trade partner or a security threat because it "believes in a free market economy" is utterly baseless.
- chrischen 6y ago
  As a believer in more free than planned market economies, I don't think it's necessary for the US to stick its fingers in places to ensure things fail, just as I don't believe it was necessary to sabotage the USSR to ensure their inevitable failure. I believe our system is superior to what China has, and frankly if we meddle with it it de-legitimizes our claims to our superior system. We do in fact have a more free market economy, and we definitely do not do retaliatory trade policies to other countries with unequal trade imbalances like we are doing to China. In fact, in a free market, which is the default, there is no such thing as a trade imbalance. We buy cheap labor from China, but they are paying the price on the higher margin parts (IP, technology, brands). They buy the silicon that merely gets assembled in China, they make the iPhone for maybe $100-$150 in labor, and then pay Apple the remainder just to ship the item back to itself (that's why luxury goods are heavily taxed in China). If you ask me China's getting the crappy end of the deal. The reason why we've been getting push back is because the lower-skilled workers in America are in fact losing out, but the information and technology jobs have been gaining against China. But frankly, cheap Chinese workers are just a temporary stop gap to automation (if you didn't lose your job to cheap foreign labor, you'd be losing it to a cheap domestic robot).
manfredo 6y ago
The US being a free market and China tightly controlling it's markets is precisely what's unfair. Think if it like a tariff. When a country establishes a tariff, most other countries set up their own tariffs in response. This is fundamentally the same thing. China banning Facebook, Twitter, et al. is effectively a tariff on US tech companies. Now the US is setting up its own tariffs in response.
- chrischen 6y ago
  It wasn't fair to begin with. Countries by default have tariffs (EU, Japan). Crying unfair is just playing to the capitalists that want access to a disadvantaged market with little to no developed competition. If you've been to China you know how developmentally challenged they were, and with over a billion people developing a strong local economy will inevitably play into the "unfair" trade policy accusations. The US chooses to open its markets up to foreign players, and generally does not demand reciprocal market access for it unless there's a political motive, which, in this case with China there is (the US wants to curb the rise of a competing world power).

jchw 6y ago

It would not be having our cake and eating it too to show the CCP the door. They don’t need to give us access to their market and we don’t need to give access to ours. American companies need to go though Chinese entities to do business in China. Why not the reverse?

whoevercares 6y ago

China “planned” its tech industry? You gonna be kidding me

sidlls 6y ago
China has its fingers deep in the pie of every tech company there, especially the ones with even minimal foreign ownership. It might not be planned in the quaint sense of the old Communist 5 year plans, but it’s certainly a modern iteration of the concept.

albacur 6y ago

The U.S. doesn't have purely free market economy; it's regulated to prevent abuse from bad actors and it enters into trade deals to advance its strategic interests. This is true of all countries. I have mixed feelings about TikTok, but the claim that the U.S. can't protect itself from a hostile trade partner or a security threat because it "believes in a free market economy" is utterly baseless.

chrischen 6y ago
As a believer in more free than planned market economies, I don't think it's necessary for the US to stick its fingers in places to ensure things fail, just as I don't believe it was necessary to sabotage the USSR to ensure their inevitable failure. I believe our system is superior to what China has, and frankly if we meddle with it it de-legitimizes our claims to our superior system. We do in fact have a more free market economy, and we definitely do not do retaliatory trade policies to other countries with unequal trade imbalances like we are doing to China. In fact, in a free market, which is the default, there is no such thing as a trade imbalance. We buy cheap labor from China, but they are paying the price on the higher margin parts (IP, technology, brands). They buy the silicon that merely gets assembled in China, they make the iPhone for maybe $100-$150 in labor, and then pay Apple the remainder just to ship the item back to itself (that's why luxury goods are heavily taxed in China). If you ask me China's getting the crappy end of the deal. The reason why we've been getting push back is because the lower-skilled workers in America are in fact losing out, but the information and technology jobs have been gaining against China. But frankly, cheap Chinese workers are just a temporary stop gap to automation (if you didn't lose your job to cheap foreign labor, you'd be losing it to a cheap domestic robot).

manfredo 6y ago

The US being a free market and China tightly controlling it's markets is precisely what's unfair. Think if it like a tariff. When a country establishes a tariff, most other countries set up their own tariffs in response. This is fundamentally the same thing. China banning Facebook, Twitter, et al. is effectively a tariff on US tech companies. Now the US is setting up its own tariffs in response.

chrischen 6y ago
It wasn't fair to begin with. Countries by default have tariffs (EU, Japan). Crying unfair is just playing to the capitalists that want access to a disadvantaged market with little to no developed competition. If you've been to China you know how developmentally challenged they were, and with over a billion people developing a strong local economy will inevitably play into the "unfair" trade policy accusations. The US chooses to open its markets up to foreign players, and generally does not demand reciprocal market access for it unless there's a political motive, which, in this case with China there is (the US wants to curb the rise of a competing world power).