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What did the US even get out of it's relationship with China? Cheap labor to make cheap things that we never really needed. Should've just injected tons of capi

What did the US even get out of it's relationship with China? Cheap labor to make cheap things that we never really needed. Should've just injected tons of capital into South America and Mexico. Scholarships for the best and brightest of Latin America to come to Harvard and stuff.

sudosysgen 5y ago
You got a win in the Cold War which was far from settled otherwise. If China instead had a détente with the USSR and they both made the transition to their current economies together we'd have a very, very different world, to the American detriment.
dragontamer 5y ago
We pretty much only got the Moscow State Circus from Russia during the cold war nominally. But that very well could have improved relations just enough to prevent a nuclear war. Remember: the reason Kyoto wasn't nuked was because one general had a honeymoon in Kyoto. He put forth the idea that Kyoto (despite being a valid military target), was the cultural center of Japan, and nuking it would prevent the war from ever ending. Japan (probably) would never forgive us, and he proposed Hiroshima ... an important city but less culturally relevant than Kyoto. That kind of thinking is needed in a hypothetical war. Even if you're 100% warmonger with China, the benefits of open dialog and open trade are huge. ------- I'm not naive enough to think that trade prevents wars. But there is a "soothing" effect of trade for sure.
1270018080 5y ago
20% of US imports are from China. Even through the idiotic tariffs.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Yeah but how much of those imports are actually important? Like some crappy electric lawnmowers, cheap plastic toys, crappy electric scooter that fat americans don't really need. Crappy smartphone, when someone could just buy a low end apple made in india or something. Probably the most important are medical devices.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    You mean cheap Chinese-made crap like the iPhone and Lenovo (everything)?
    - randomopining 5y ago
      And what % of total imports are those?
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo... > The top import categories (2-digit HS) in 2019 were: electrical machinery ($125 billion); machinery ($92 billion); furniture and bedding ($27 billion); toys and sports equipment ($25 billion); and plastics ($18 billion). > U.S. imports of agricultural products from China totaled $3.6 billion in 2019, making China the United States’ 6th largest supplier of agricultural imports. Leading categories included: processed fruit and vegetables ($787 million); snack foods ($172 million); spices ($170 million); fresh vegetables ($136 million); and tea, including herbal tea ($131 million). -------- #1 item imported from China is electronic machinery. #2 item is non-electronic machinery. Your "cheap toys" comment is #4 at only $25 billion, a fraction of the amount of electronics we import from China. So yes, "iPhones / Lenovo" is far more representative of our imports from China than whatever you're thinking. ---------- This is probably important to note: but the USA has no equivalent to the Shenzhen electronics marketplace. Yes, China has leapfrogged us in cheap and effective electronics manufacturing. No, its not the "high-tech" stuff. But a lot of electronic assembly: from power supplies, to iPhones, to motherboards, happens in Shenzhen for a reason. The nuts-and-bolts of resistors, capacitors, motherboard manufacturing and the like are important. USA holds the capability to make these things in smaller runs, but not as efficiently as Shenzhen. The closest we had was Silicon Valley, but that turned into software and the hardware/electronics component has basically disappeared. Yes, we have a "maker" movement, but over there, they have Shenzhen: a "maker city". Its like an entire city that's filled with 1980s / 1990s style "Radio Shack" parts. https://ledpixelart.com/shenzhen/ https://ledpixelart.com/shenzhen/ For a small sample of what's available: https://www.seeedstudio.com/ https://www.seeedstudio.com/, seeedstudio is one Chinese company that caters to US makers.
rmk 5y ago
It’s not clear whether America has benefited from the massive uncontrolled immigration from Mexico, and it is far from clear the free trade agreement with Mexico has been a huge plus. Companies have simply used trade agreements with Mexico to avoid complying with strict regulations in the US. It’s also not clear if Mexico and Latin America could have suitable infrastructure, even with massive investment. Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. The midwestern US is an industrialists dream come true: plenty of land, plentiful food, navigable waterways, excellent roadways, massive market on the coasts accessible by air and rail on top of ocean, river, and road. The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself?
- helen___keller 5y ago
  > The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself? America stopped investing in itself because the ROI was much higher in countries with monumentally lower quality of living (and thus, lower worker wages and so on). On a long enough timescale, this hopefully becomes a self correcting problem: technology and money flows out, improving the standard of living and wages elsewhere, until one day investing in the US makes the most financial sense.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    America does invest into itself. But Americans generally don't want the investment. * No one likes welfare. At best, Americans begrudgingly accept it when necessary, but many people (even poor people) refuse to accept it at all. * Investments into Education are fraught with political issues. Spend $1 billion bucks on a new Math program and everyone loses their collective minds. Buy a new teacher and people think you're indoctrinating them with Critical Race Theory. * Improve local land, and the leftists yell "Gentrification". Oh, I'm sorry I wanted to improve this area with parks and metro stations and bus stops. Yes, that increases rent prices in the area but what else did you expect to happen? * Try to build low-income houses elsewhere and people stonewall you with NIMBYism. People don't like their property values declining, which happens when low-cost housing is made. ----- At some point, its just not worth the political hassle. Americans largely don't want the money or things to change. It doesn't matter if they're right-wing or left-wing, changing cities for the better is change and scary.
ren_engineer 5y ago
we crushed the USSR which was Nixon's plan when he reopened relations. Problem was that our leaders got addicted to the money they made from China and kept the relationship alive to line their pockets at the expense of America. Once the USSR collapsed we should have gone back to almost no trade with China
vkou 5y ago
> What did the US even get out of it's relationship with China? According to economic orthodoxy as old as Adam Smith, trading with a large trading partner makes both countries more prosperous. It also reduces the odds of a shooting war. A shooting war between nuclear powers is likely to escalate to the point where it ends the world. Also, the most important benefit of the current relationship with China is that warhawks can always grouse about it to distract the American public from domestic problems.
cyberpsybin 5y ago
They shifted all the factories that turn nature into dystopian wasteland to China. On top of it got cheap labor and Americans enjoy their insatiable desire to consume.

sudosysgen 5y ago

You got a win in the Cold War which was far from settled otherwise. If China instead had a détente with the USSR and they both made the transition to their current economies together we'd have a very, very different world, to the American detriment.

dragontamer 5y ago

We pretty much only got the Moscow State Circus from Russia during the cold war nominally. But that very well could have improved relations just enough to prevent a nuclear war. Remember: the reason Kyoto wasn't nuked was because one general had a honeymoon in Kyoto. He put forth the idea that Kyoto (despite being a valid military target), was the cultural center of Japan, and nuking it would prevent the war from ever ending. Japan (probably) would never forgive us, and he proposed Hiroshima ... an important city but less culturally relevant than Kyoto. That kind of thinking is needed in a hypothetical war. Even if you're 100% warmonger with China, the benefits of open dialog and open trade are huge. ------- I'm not naive enough to think that trade prevents wars. But there is a "soothing" effect of trade for sure.

1270018080 5y ago

20% of US imports are from China. Even through the idiotic tariffs.

randomopining 5y ago
Yeah but how much of those imports are actually important? Like some crappy electric lawnmowers, cheap plastic toys, crappy electric scooter that fat americans don't really need. Crappy smartphone, when someone could just buy a low end apple made in india or something. Probably the most important are medical devices.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  You mean cheap Chinese-made crap like the iPhone and Lenovo (everything)?
  - randomopining 5y ago
    And what % of total imports are those?
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo... > The top import categories (2-digit HS) in 2019 were: electrical machinery ($125 billion); machinery ($92 billion); furniture and bedding ($27 billion); toys and sports equipment ($25 billion); and plastics ($18 billion). > U.S. imports of agricultural products from China totaled $3.6 billion in 2019, making China the United States’ 6th largest supplier of agricultural imports. Leading categories included: processed fruit and vegetables ($787 million); snack foods ($172 million); spices ($170 million); fresh vegetables ($136 million); and tea, including herbal tea ($131 million). -------- #1 item imported from China is electronic machinery. #2 item is non-electronic machinery. Your "cheap toys" comment is #4 at only $25 billion, a fraction of the amount of electronics we import from China. So yes, "iPhones / Lenovo" is far more representative of our imports from China than whatever you're thinking. ---------- This is probably important to note: but the USA has no equivalent to the Shenzhen electronics marketplace. Yes, China has leapfrogged us in cheap and effective electronics manufacturing. No, its not the "high-tech" stuff. But a lot of electronic assembly: from power supplies, to iPhones, to motherboards, happens in Shenzhen for a reason. The nuts-and-bolts of resistors, capacitors, motherboard manufacturing and the like are important. USA holds the capability to make these things in smaller runs, but not as efficiently as Shenzhen. The closest we had was Silicon Valley, but that turned into software and the hardware/electronics component has basically disappeared. Yes, we have a "maker" movement, but over there, they have Shenzhen: a "maker city". Its like an entire city that's filled with 1980s / 1990s style "Radio Shack" parts. https://ledpixelart.com/shenzhen/ https://ledpixelart.com/shenzhen/ For a small sample of what's available: https://www.seeedstudio.com/ https://www.seeedstudio.com/, seeedstudio is one Chinese company that caters to US makers.

rmk 5y ago

It’s not clear whether America has benefited from the massive uncontrolled immigration from Mexico, and it is far from clear the free trade agreement with Mexico has been a huge plus. Companies have simply used trade agreements with Mexico to avoid complying with strict regulations in the US. It’s also not clear if Mexico and Latin America could have suitable infrastructure, even with massive investment. Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. The midwestern US is an industrialists dream come true: plenty of land, plentiful food, navigable waterways, excellent roadways, massive market on the coasts accessible by air and rail on top of ocean, river, and road. The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself?

helen___keller 5y ago
> The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself? America stopped investing in itself because the ROI was much higher in countries with monumentally lower quality of living (and thus, lower worker wages and so on). On a long enough timescale, this hopefully becomes a self correcting problem: technology and money flows out, improving the standard of living and wages elsewhere, until one day investing in the US makes the most financial sense.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  America does invest into itself. But Americans generally don't want the investment. * No one likes welfare. At best, Americans begrudgingly accept it when necessary, but many people (even poor people) refuse to accept it at all. * Investments into Education are fraught with political issues. Spend $1 billion bucks on a new Math program and everyone loses their collective minds. Buy a new teacher and people think you're indoctrinating them with Critical Race Theory. * Improve local land, and the leftists yell "Gentrification". Oh, I'm sorry I wanted to improve this area with parks and metro stations and bus stops. Yes, that increases rent prices in the area but what else did you expect to happen? * Try to build low-income houses elsewhere and people stonewall you with NIMBYism. People don't like their property values declining, which happens when low-cost housing is made. ----- At some point, its just not worth the political hassle. Americans largely don't want the money or things to change. It doesn't matter if they're right-wing or left-wing, changing cities for the better is change and scary.

ren_engineer 5y ago

we crushed the USSR which was Nixon's plan when he reopened relations. Problem was that our leaders got addicted to the money they made from China and kept the relationship alive to line their pockets at the expense of America. Once the USSR collapsed we should have gone back to almost no trade with China

vkou 5y ago

> What did the US even get out of it's relationship with China? According to economic orthodoxy as old as Adam Smith, trading with a large trading partner makes both countries more prosperous. It also reduces the odds of a shooting war. A shooting war between nuclear powers is likely to escalate to the point where it ends the world. Also, the most important benefit of the current relationship with China is that warhawks can always grouse about it to distract the American public from domestic problems.

cyberpsybin 5y ago

They shifted all the factories that turn nature into dystopian wasteland to China. On top of it got cheap labor and Americans enjoy their insatiable desire to consume.