5 ms·

Will sanctions need to broaden to include China or other countries supporting Russia?

lisper 5y ago
Sanctions only work when imposed by a stronger country on a weaker one. Ecuador, for example, cannot impose sanctions on the U.S. For this reason, it is quickly becoming unfeasible to impose sanctions on China. Imposing effective sanctions on Russia is already hard enough, and Russia's economy is much smaller than China's.
- pydry 5y ago
  China has hinted before at imposing sanctions on the US. It's the first country that has been able to make that threat credibly in.... ohhh, a long long time.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    They've imposed sanctions on US weapon companies recently. Soon once their domestic airplanes are semi-competitive with Airbus, they may even sanction Boeing.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    This is what I suspected would happen once the US sanctioned Russia.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    What would that even mean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa... China is heavily dependent on trade with The West, in a way that The West is not dependent upon China. And that doesn't factor in Asian economies like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam that are generally likely to side against China.
- lazide 5y ago
  That ship sailed awhile ago - as was quite clear during the Trump admin, the US can't effectively apply sanctions to China, and even moderate trade disagreements didn't actually go the way the US wanted it to. Additionally, if you want to see a crushing economic situation, imagine if China started to raise prices during already high USD inflation.
bombcar 5y ago
If the EU is unwilling to stop gas shipments from Russia, so much more is the USA unwilling to stop shipment of everything from China.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  Why would China be willing to stop gas shipments from Russia? USA is also not willing to stop oil shipments from Russia, although Russia is the third-biggest oil exporters to the USA. Independent states usually don't do anything that would harm them directly, they force their colonies and vassals to harm both themselves and the enemies. In this case, it's the EU harming themselves and Russia with sanctions, while the USA and China being relatively unaffected.
  - AniseAbyss 5y ago
    The EU isn't harming itself it is protecting 70 years of peace on the continent that is now threatened by a paranoid Russian Czar. I would argue that this is less of a problem for the US than it is for Europe. China is an American problem Russia is ours.
- mortehu 5y ago
  Isn't it far more important to ensure that they can't use dollars, than avoiding giving them more? They already have dollar reserves. If we can make dollars worthless for them, they will have given us the gas for free from their perspective.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > Isn't it far more important to ensure that they can't use dollars... It's in America's National Interest to maximize the usage of dollar reserves. Denying China the use of dollars would have a (relatively small) detrimental direct effect, and will set a precedent and likely accelerate the popularity of other reserve currencies.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    That's like using high-velocity lead to remove an ingrown nail.
LatteLazy 5y ago
The more countries you cut off, the less you hurt them and the more you hurt yourself. If you sanction every country you're effectively sanctioning yourself, not that that is what you're suggesting :).
throw_m239339 5y ago
How do you sanction China when a good chunk of western industries rely on Chinese factories? Without a collapse of western economies? Maybe the people who outsourced all our manufacturing and know how to China should have thought about all that... We're still in the middle of a chip crisis and haven't still figured out that relying on the region constitutes a threat to our way of life. Are we bringing back all these plants to the west? We aren't...
- mountainb 5y ago
  Yes, this is the problem with sanctions and blockading without actually going to war. The chip crisis will pale compared to the steel etc. crisis in magnitude and importance. A severe reduction in size of the global economy is not necessarily a "collapse," it's just that -- a severe reduction under either direct or indirect war conditions.
  - throw_m239339 5y ago
    > A severe reduction in size of the global economy is not necessarily a "collapse," it's just that -- a severe reduction under either direct or indirect war conditions. We have crazy levels of inflation right now among other economic problems and the FED or the EU central bank are running out of instruments to "tamper with". Anything at that point could trigger violent unrests across the west. Whatever the consequences of "sanctions" are, they won't be happening in a vacuum.
    - cudgy 5y ago
      The Fed’s tampering is the main reason for the inflation and the corner that they have painted the US economy into. Raise rates to proper levels to fight the inflation they created and risk recession; allow inflation and risk eventual revolt. Which choice will they make? Should they alone have the power to make these decisions is the true question.
      - mountainb 5y ago
ksec 5y ago
They wont, Which is why I said in the last sentence the west are clearly losing. US Food and Agriculture are already beholden to China. From corn, soy beans, potatoes to Pork ( Smithfield is owned by China ), Tyson has 25-30% of their business in China. If you buy Beef or Lamb from AUS you have a 25% chance buying it from Chinese Owner. Or To Tech from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, where the growth are in E-Sport or PC Gaming in China. Manufacturing or assembly where they have a contingency plan to Foxconn as ICT or more commonly known as Luxshare. RISC-V ( Nearly all Chinese startup getting on RISC-V gets much better funding ) and IMG PowerVR, ARM China. YMTC against Samsung and Micron on NAND and DRAM, BOE against Samsung and LG on OLED. If you exclude Apple and Samsung, the rest of Smartphone market are 80% Chinese Brands. Solar Panel is partially all Chinese. NBA. ( And English premier league which seems to have some following in US, they will be targeting F1 soon ). Even Amazon clothing are losing to SHEIN. Unless someone make a revolutionary leap in battery otherwise the current trajectory would be China winning the price / Whr. ( Not even Tabless Battery from Tesla / Panasonic ). They are gunning for electric car manufacturing and are also the largest customer of Boeing and AirBus. But are working on their own JET. The increasing percentage of patents on 5G to Video Codec from China. To inside influence on tech companies via employees. We have another thread about Reddit and Youtube moderation, that happened already in 2019 during Hong Kong protest. And Tik Tok I mentioned in [1], expanding financial services like AliPay and WeChat Pay via tourist influence. And all these circulate back to SWIFT and US dollar as dominant currency. I could talk about it for hours and this list is just for US, there are whole lots of other things from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and SEA perspective. For a long time I try not to be blunt but I am sorry I have to write this out so clearly. I hope Ukraine is enough of a woke up call. I have been wondering if start up linked to certain political agenda will ever get accepted. We cant sit just here and watch. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30463767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30463767

Sanctions only work when imposed by a stronger country on a weaker one. Ecuador, for example, cannot impose sanctions on the U.S. For this reason, it is quickly becoming unfeasible to impose sanctions on China. Imposing effective sanctions on Russia is already hard enough, and Russia's economy is much smaller than China's.

pydry 5y ago
China has hinted before at imposing sanctions on the US. It's the first country that has been able to make that threat credibly in.... ohhh, a long long time.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  They've imposed sanctions on US weapon companies recently. Soon once their domestic airplanes are semi-competitive with Airbus, they may even sanction Boeing.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  This is what I suspected would happen once the US sanctioned Russia.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  What would that even mean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa... China is heavily dependent on trade with The West, in a way that The West is not dependent upon China. And that doesn't factor in Asian economies like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam that are generally likely to side against China.
lazide 5y ago
That ship sailed awhile ago - as was quite clear during the Trump admin, the US can't effectively apply sanctions to China, and even moderate trade disagreements didn't actually go the way the US wanted it to. Additionally, if you want to see a crushing economic situation, imagine if China started to raise prices during already high USD inflation.

bombcar 5y ago

If the EU is unwilling to stop gas shipments from Russia, so much more is the USA unwilling to stop shipment of everything from China.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
Why would China be willing to stop gas shipments from Russia? USA is also not willing to stop oil shipments from Russia, although Russia is the third-biggest oil exporters to the USA. Independent states usually don't do anything that would harm them directly, they force their colonies and vassals to harm both themselves and the enemies. In this case, it's the EU harming themselves and Russia with sanctions, while the USA and China being relatively unaffected.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  The EU isn't harming itself it is protecting 70 years of peace on the continent that is now threatened by a paranoid Russian Czar. I would argue that this is less of a problem for the US than it is for Europe. China is an American problem Russia is ours.
mortehu 5y ago
Isn't it far more important to ensure that they can't use dollars, than avoiding giving them more? They already have dollar reserves. If we can make dollars worthless for them, they will have given us the gas for free from their perspective.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > Isn't it far more important to ensure that they can't use dollars... It's in America's National Interest to maximize the usage of dollar reserves. Denying China the use of dollars would have a (relatively small) detrimental direct effect, and will set a precedent and likely accelerate the popularity of other reserve currencies.
- eptcyka 5y ago
  That's like using high-velocity lead to remove an ingrown nail.

LatteLazy 5y ago

The more countries you cut off, the less you hurt them and the more you hurt yourself. If you sanction every country you're effectively sanctioning yourself, not that that is what you're suggesting :).

throw_m239339 5y ago

How do you sanction China when a good chunk of western industries rely on Chinese factories? Without a collapse of western economies? Maybe the people who outsourced all our manufacturing and know how to China should have thought about all that... We're still in the middle of a chip crisis and haven't still figured out that relying on the region constitutes a threat to our way of life. Are we bringing back all these plants to the west? We aren't...

mountainb 5y ago
Yes, this is the problem with sanctions and blockading without actually going to war. The chip crisis will pale compared to the steel etc. crisis in magnitude and importance. A severe reduction in size of the global economy is not necessarily a "collapse," it's just that -- a severe reduction under either direct or indirect war conditions.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  > A severe reduction in size of the global economy is not necessarily a "collapse," it's just that -- a severe reduction under either direct or indirect war conditions. We have crazy levels of inflation right now among other economic problems and the FED or the EU central bank are running out of instruments to "tamper with". Anything at that point could trigger violent unrests across the west. Whatever the consequences of "sanctions" are, they won't be happening in a vacuum.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    The Fed’s tampering is the main reason for the inflation and the corner that they have painted the US economy into. Raise rates to proper levels to fight the inflation they created and risk recession; allow inflation and risk eventual revolt. Which choice will they make? Should they alone have the power to make these decisions is the true question.
    - mountainb 5y ago

ksec 5y ago

They wont, Which is why I said in the last sentence the west are clearly losing. US Food and Agriculture are already beholden to China. From corn, soy beans, potatoes to Pork ( Smithfield is owned by China ), Tyson has 25-30% of their business in China. If you buy Beef or Lamb from AUS you have a 25% chance buying it from Chinese Owner. Or To Tech from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, where the growth are in E-Sport or PC Gaming in China. Manufacturing or assembly where they have a contingency plan to Foxconn as ICT or more commonly known as Luxshare. RISC-V ( Nearly all Chinese startup getting on RISC-V gets much better funding ) and IMG PowerVR, ARM China. YMTC against Samsung and Micron on NAND and DRAM, BOE against Samsung and LG on OLED. If you exclude Apple and Samsung, the rest of Smartphone market are 80% Chinese Brands. Solar Panel is partially all Chinese. NBA. ( And English premier league which seems to have some following in US, they will be targeting F1 soon ). Even Amazon clothing are losing to SHEIN. Unless someone make a revolutionary leap in battery otherwise the current trajectory would be China winning the price / Whr. ( Not even Tabless Battery from Tesla / Panasonic ). They are gunning for electric car manufacturing and are also the largest customer of Boeing and AirBus. But are working on their own JET. The increasing percentage of patents on 5G to Video Codec from China. To inside influence on tech companies via employees. We have another thread about Reddit and Youtube moderation, that happened already in 2019 during Hong Kong protest. And Tik Tok I mentioned in [1], expanding financial services like AliPay and WeChat Pay via tourist influence. And all these circulate back to SWIFT and US dollar as dominant currency. I could talk about it for hours and this list is just for US, there are whole lots of other things from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and SEA perspective. For a long time I try not to be blunt but I am sorry I have to write this out so clearly. I hope Ukraine is enough of a woke up call. I have been wondering if start up linked to certain political agenda will ever get accepted. We cant sit just here and watch. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30463767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30463767