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The U.S. position on the entire Chinese semiconductor industry is getting increasingly ridiculous. It's not just chips, since China is the one country that's de

The U.S. position on the entire Chinese semiconductor industry is getting increasingly ridiculous. It's not just chips, since China is the one country that's developed efficient monocrystalline silicon ingot production at scale, and solar panels made with that material are far superior to anything made in the USA currently. The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technological infrastructure capability, and China is now in the lead - so the response is, stop trading with China on all things silicon? This is the Tonya Harding team's 'let's try to win by kneecapping our superior competition' mentality, and it's doomed to failure, if not in the short term, than certainly in the long term.

londons_explore 4y ago
It's a move part of the bigger world picture. A large chunk of experts see China as the likely next world superpower. The USA, current world superpower, probably can't prevent that happening, but they can make moves to delay it. This move might delay it happening by a few months. Combine with lots of other small moves, and the USA might get another few years of world superpower status, even if the moves hurt both countries in the end.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > A large chunk of experts see China as the likely next world superpower. The USA, current world superpower, probably can't prevent that happening, but they can make moves to delay it. We'll see. Lots of people thought Japan would overtake the US as well, and that didn't exactly pan out. China has some real problems between the legacy of their one child policy and their current real estate investment crisis. It's certainly possible that they overcome those issues, but it's far from guaranteed.
  - victor106 4y ago
    I agree. I was of the view that China could be the next super power and overtake the US. But two things changed my view:- 1. COVID and their response to it. China still does not have a good vaccine and they still rely on lockdowns. That speaks a lot to how backward China is in basic sciences. 2. The move to remove term limits for the president. History tells us that one person can’t be relied on to make good long term decisions for a country specially a communist country. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991/china-removes-presidential-term-limits-enabling-xi-jinping-to-rule-indefinitely https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991...
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      > COVID and their response to it. China still does not have a good vaccine and they still rely on lockdowns. That speaks a lot to how backward China is in basic sciences. I think this was a policy move more than a lack of science understanding. In fact, leadership in China is very science-heavy. Time will tell, but it's actually looking like possibly a good move, now that 5% of the UK population is not working due to long term sickness, the highest ever[1], and covid is looking like a contributory factor. I could even imagine China extending their lockdown policy to other diseases which might have long term population-wide effects, like influenza. The main downside of such a policy is you need to have effectively closed borders forever, otherwise travellers re-introduce diseases from other countries into yours. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63204333 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63204333
    - rjzzleep 4y ago
      China's covid response was extremely damaging to China, but thanks to the US and their allies response to Russia, China has received plenty of intermediary free money to add to their economy. Cheaper energy, and arbitration returns from Russian goods to western economies for a premium. Ultimately China will find a way to cope without the products from the west. Europe however cannot cope without the cheap goods from China and the cheap energy from Russia. India is by the way the only major economy that is projected to grow over 6% next year. That's largely due to profiting off of resell of Russian goods. The problem is that people conflate their own moral standing with actual factual realities and unfortunately it will cost _us_ dearly.
      - adventured 4y ago
        India isn't growing (projected, un huh) at 6% due to profiting from Russian exports, that's a joke. Russia's economy is trivial in size, as are their non-energy exports. A $20-$30 gap in the price of oil via artificially cheap Russian oil isn't the difference between India's large economy (3x larger than Russia, nearly the size of Germany) growing at -3% vs growing at +6%. We need to put the hammer down far harder on Russia than we have so far.
  - pweezy 4y ago
    China overtaking the US seems a lot more likely based on sheer numbers. China’s population is over 4x larger than that of the US. So China “just” needs to reach a GDP per capita of 25% to have a larger economy than the US. This metric has been growing rapidly in the past decade or two and from a rough search, seems to currently stand around 17-18% of the US’s figure. Of course GDP isn’t the only factor in world power status, but it sure is a big one. Compared to the US, China also has a far larger labor force, a greater ability to manufacture things, and greater government control over its population. Access to natural resources is similar for many things, less for some (like oil and gas) but greater for others (like rare earth minerals).
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      > less for some (like oil and gas) If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. Whereas China has a huge amount of not-good-for-much desert and mountains which could become a solar powerhouse.
      - nordsieck 4y ago
        > If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. It may be worth less, but it won't be worthless. I have a hard time seeing another fuel source for long distance aviation (although we may move to synthesized fuel in the future). Companies will also need feedstock for plastics - that use won't be affected by carbon caps at all.
        rjzzleep 4y ago
        Those tariffs are also a joke in and of itself. As we can already from the oil price cap idea you can only enforce things when the world plays along, but looks increasingly like the global south is fed up by these dictates. So good luck enforcing carbon caps and tariffs when the majority of the world population doesn't play along. You can still have them, but ultimately it's the people in western societies that will pay the price with their own pensions and social services gradually degrading.
  - ren_engineer 4y ago
    >Lots of people thought Japan would overtake the US as well, and that didn't exactly pan out. not even comparable situations, Japan has a fraction of the population, natural resources, isn't a nuclear power, and is effectively militarily occupied by the US to this day. People using Japan as a comparison to China are either naive or just coping with reality to comfort themselves
- tempe1h1 4y ago
  what a dumb way to redefine winning... if your rival loses more than you means you have won. they act as if with that assumption, but in fact what really happens is everyone loses. it's a lose-lose scenario
- sonotathrowaway 4y ago
  This is one of those opinions that sounds smart but doesn’t make any sense to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with it. A large chunk of experts do not see China as the likely world next superpower, many experts are debating if China will survive as a unified nation in the next decades. China has finally admitted to lying about their population for decades, they have some of the worst demographics in the world, along with the single worst food security and greatest debt load in recorded history. No serious person outside of anonymous online forums would ever describe any of these things as ingredients to success, and this is k my a small sampling of their long term problems. This is even ignoring India, a country with much better strategic advantages and an actually growing population. The idea that China was next was popular by experts in 2005.
bfgoodrich 4y ago
FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
This interest in bringing manufacturing back to the US doesn't really seem compatible with the Fed's current policy of making the dollar really, really strong.
xiphias2 4y ago
It's everything but ridiculous. China is developing its military at incredible speed and currency wars usually lead to economic and then real wars. It's a terrible thing that none of us wants, but happens anyways.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
  [dead]
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I imagine the Raytheon/Lockheed/etc. crowd does want increased military tensions with China to justify bloated MIC budgets into the foreseeable future, and of course that's one of the few manufacturing centers in the US that hasn't been heavily outsourced to sweatshop labor zones. It's not very productive in the long run, however - for example, a tank is only 'economically productive' if your economic model is based largely on raiding other country's resources. A tractor, or construction crane, however gives added economic value because it can be used to improve agricultural production, build better infrastructure to facilitate trade, etc.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    War is a general consequence of monetary system problems, so just blaming it on the military wanting to be bigger (which is true for every organization) doesn't look totally at the big picture. I love Shelling out: The origins of money blog post from Nick Szabo as it's a great explanation of how having a hard monetary system with small inflation shared by everybody the parties to be more peaceful. US had a trade relation with China where China was buying US bonds, but as US was issuing lots of new bonds China lost trust, and started selling it thereby opting out of the US bonds based monetary system.
    - itsoktocry 4y ago
      China has reduced some of its holdings of treasuries (<10%), but still have a trillion dollars worth. They are diversifying, but they still hold a ton of USD.
Seanambers 4y ago
China just out subsidized all the competitors, so by removing them from the market, the market will realign and new production will come online.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Not if the fossil fuel sector has so much power over the US government that they can squelch renewable competition via control of funding for R&D and spending projects. Anyone who looks into actual DOE R&D budgets since Reagan will see this playing out in practice. China notably has no domestic gas/oil to speak of, and coal has so many obvious drawbacks that they've decided to push money into renewable R&D as part of their long-term strategy.
xadhominemx 4y ago
Respectfully, there is so much that is just factually incorrect in your comment that I don’t want to bother to even respond. Please just save us the hassle and delete, and in the future refrain from speaking confidently about topics of which you have zero clue.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  How do you think you are adding to the discussion with this comment? If you want to interject into a discussion with some new, interesting argument, that's one thing. Interjecting into a discussion which you weren't involved in in the first place, just to say that you don't want to respond to it, is frankly bizarre.
cptskippy 4y ago
You speak as if the security and strategic concerns of the state are shared by the businesses that exploit the state while simultaneously influencing policy. It seems naive to think that the state is always working in it's own interest when all of the money that flows into our political system is designed to keep the state from functioning efficiently or at all.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
  I mean these latest set of restrictions are all bad for US companies. This was an example of US strategic/security concerns just completely running over corporate interests.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    Yes. What's good for big business is NOT what's good for America. Sometimes you need a market correction.
majormajor 4y ago
> The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technological infrastructure capability, and China is now in the lead - so the response is, stop trading with China on all things silicon? "Force people to try to come up with alternatives rather than rely on that single external source that short-term thinking created" seems a lot smarter than you give it credit for.
- as300 4y ago
  Hmm, and wouldn't that work both ways? What's stopping this from being an impetus for China to stop being dependent on US-allied countries for semiconductor fabrication?
- jacobr1 4y ago
  This is one advantage of tariffs. Increase the costs. For some applications there are easy substitutes, for others it is harder which incentivizes the creation of alternatives. Of course the downside of tariffs are also well-known. Retaliation tariffs that damage your own industry. Increased costs being passed own downstream in the economy resulting in less value creation. The overall deadweight loss of not utilizing comparative advantage. It still might be worth it, but you don't get that "force" for free.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  You normally do that using a University, a national lab, an SoE, or subsidies. Not using export control and sanctions .
arisAlexis 4y ago
China is going the Putin way. Maybe it's better they don't develop first an AGI

londons_explore 4y ago

It's a move part of the bigger world picture. A large chunk of experts see China as the likely next world superpower. The USA, current world superpower, probably can't prevent that happening, but they can make moves to delay it. This move might delay it happening by a few months. Combine with lots of other small moves, and the USA might get another few years of world superpower status, even if the moves hurt both countries in the end.

nordsieck 4y ago
> A large chunk of experts see China as the likely next world superpower. The USA, current world superpower, probably can't prevent that happening, but they can make moves to delay it. We'll see. Lots of people thought Japan would overtake the US as well, and that didn't exactly pan out. China has some real problems between the legacy of their one child policy and their current real estate investment crisis. It's certainly possible that they overcome those issues, but it's far from guaranteed.
- victor106 4y ago
  I agree. I was of the view that China could be the next super power and overtake the US. But two things changed my view:- 1. COVID and their response to it. China still does not have a good vaccine and they still rely on lockdowns. That speaks a lot to how backward China is in basic sciences. 2. The move to remove term limits for the president. History tells us that one person can’t be relied on to make good long term decisions for a country specially a communist country. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991/china-removes-presidential-term-limits-enabling-xi-jinping-to-rule-indefinitely https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991...
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    > COVID and their response to it. China still does not have a good vaccine and they still rely on lockdowns. That speaks a lot to how backward China is in basic sciences. I think this was a policy move more than a lack of science understanding. In fact, leadership in China is very science-heavy. Time will tell, but it's actually looking like possibly a good move, now that 5% of the UK population is not working due to long term sickness, the highest ever[1], and covid is looking like a contributory factor. I could even imagine China extending their lockdown policy to other diseases which might have long term population-wide effects, like influenza. The main downside of such a policy is you need to have effectively closed borders forever, otherwise travellers re-introduce diseases from other countries into yours. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63204333 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63204333
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    China's covid response was extremely damaging to China, but thanks to the US and their allies response to Russia, China has received plenty of intermediary free money to add to their economy. Cheaper energy, and arbitration returns from Russian goods to western economies for a premium. Ultimately China will find a way to cope without the products from the west. Europe however cannot cope without the cheap goods from China and the cheap energy from Russia. India is by the way the only major economy that is projected to grow over 6% next year. That's largely due to profiting off of resell of Russian goods. The problem is that people conflate their own moral standing with actual factual realities and unfortunately it will cost _us_ dearly.
    - adventured 4y ago
      India isn't growing (projected, un huh) at 6% due to profiting from Russian exports, that's a joke. Russia's economy is trivial in size, as are their non-energy exports. A $20-$30 gap in the price of oil via artificially cheap Russian oil isn't the difference between India's large economy (3x larger than Russia, nearly the size of Germany) growing at -3% vs growing at +6%. We need to put the hammer down far harder on Russia than we have so far.
- pweezy 4y ago
  China overtaking the US seems a lot more likely based on sheer numbers. China’s population is over 4x larger than that of the US. So China “just” needs to reach a GDP per capita of 25% to have a larger economy than the US. This metric has been growing rapidly in the past decade or two and from a rough search, seems to currently stand around 17-18% of the US’s figure. Of course GDP isn’t the only factor in world power status, but it sure is a big one. Compared to the US, China also has a far larger labor force, a greater ability to manufacture things, and greater government control over its population. Access to natural resources is similar for many things, less for some (like oil and gas) but greater for others (like rare earth minerals).
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    > less for some (like oil and gas) If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. Whereas China has a huge amount of not-good-for-much desert and mountains which could become a solar powerhouse.
    - nordsieck 4y ago
      > If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. It may be worth less, but it won't be worthless. I have a hard time seeing another fuel source for long distance aviation (although we may move to synthesized fuel in the future). Companies will also need feedstock for plastics - that use won't be affected by carbon caps at all.
      - rjzzleep 4y ago
        Those tariffs are also a joke in and of itself. As we can already from the oil price cap idea you can only enforce things when the world plays along, but looks increasingly like the global south is fed up by these dictates. So good luck enforcing carbon caps and tariffs when the majority of the world population doesn't play along. You can still have them, but ultimately it's the people in western societies that will pay the price with their own pensions and social services gradually degrading.
- ren_engineer 4y ago
  >Lots of people thought Japan would overtake the US as well, and that didn't exactly pan out. not even comparable situations, Japan has a fraction of the population, natural resources, isn't a nuclear power, and is effectively militarily occupied by the US to this day. People using Japan as a comparison to China are either naive or just coping with reality to comfort themselves
tempe1h1 4y ago
what a dumb way to redefine winning... if your rival loses more than you means you have won. they act as if with that assumption, but in fact what really happens is everyone loses. it's a lose-lose scenario
sonotathrowaway 4y ago
This is one of those opinions that sounds smart but doesn’t make any sense to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with it. A large chunk of experts do not see China as the likely world next superpower, many experts are debating if China will survive as a unified nation in the next decades. China has finally admitted to lying about their population for decades, they have some of the worst demographics in the world, along with the single worst food security and greatest debt load in recorded history. No serious person outside of anonymous online forums would ever describe any of these things as ingredients to success, and this is k my a small sampling of their long term problems. This is even ignoring India, a country with much better strategic advantages and an actually growing population. The idea that China was next was popular by experts in 2005.

bfgoodrich 4y ago

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago

This interest in bringing manufacturing back to the US doesn't really seem compatible with the Fed's current policy of making the dollar really, really strong.

xiphias2 4y ago

It's everything but ridiculous. China is developing its military at incredible speed and currency wars usually lead to economic and then real wars. It's a terrible thing that none of us wants, but happens anyways.

newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
photochemsyn 4y ago
I imagine the Raytheon/Lockheed/etc. crowd does want increased military tensions with China to justify bloated MIC budgets into the foreseeable future, and of course that's one of the few manufacturing centers in the US that hasn't been heavily outsourced to sweatshop labor zones. It's not very productive in the long run, however - for example, a tank is only 'economically productive' if your economic model is based largely on raiding other country's resources. A tractor, or construction crane, however gives added economic value because it can be used to improve agricultural production, build better infrastructure to facilitate trade, etc.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  War is a general consequence of monetary system problems, so just blaming it on the military wanting to be bigger (which is true for every organization) doesn't look totally at the big picture. I love Shelling out: The origins of money blog post from Nick Szabo as it's a great explanation of how having a hard monetary system with small inflation shared by everybody the parties to be more peaceful. US had a trade relation with China where China was buying US bonds, but as US was issuing lots of new bonds China lost trust, and started selling it thereby opting out of the US bonds based monetary system.
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    China has reduced some of its holdings of treasuries (<10%), but still have a trillion dollars worth. They are diversifying, but they still hold a ton of USD.

Seanambers 4y ago

China just out subsidized all the competitors, so by removing them from the market, the market will realign and new production will come online.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Not if the fossil fuel sector has so much power over the US government that they can squelch renewable competition via control of funding for R&D and spending projects. Anyone who looks into actual DOE R&D budgets since Reagan will see this playing out in practice. China notably has no domestic gas/oil to speak of, and coal has so many obvious drawbacks that they've decided to push money into renewable R&D as part of their long-term strategy.

xadhominemx 4y ago

Respectfully, there is so much that is just factually incorrect in your comment that I don’t want to bother to even respond. Please just save us the hassle and delete, and in the future refrain from speaking confidently about topics of which you have zero clue.

bee_rider 4y ago
How do you think you are adding to the discussion with this comment? If you want to interject into a discussion with some new, interesting argument, that's one thing. Interjecting into a discussion which you weren't involved in in the first place, just to say that you don't want to respond to it, is frankly bizarre.

cptskippy 4y ago

You speak as if the security and strategic concerns of the state are shared by the businesses that exploit the state while simultaneously influencing policy. It seems naive to think that the state is always working in it's own interest when all of the money that flows into our political system is designed to keep the state from functioning efficiently or at all.

xadhominemx 4y ago
I mean these latest set of restrictions are all bad for US companies. This was an example of US strategic/security concerns just completely running over corporate interests.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  Yes. What's good for big business is NOT what's good for America. Sometimes you need a market correction.

majormajor 4y ago

> The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technological infrastructure capability, and China is now in the lead - so the response is, stop trading with China on all things silicon? "Force people to try to come up with alternatives rather than rely on that single external source that short-term thinking created" seems a lot smarter than you give it credit for.

as300 4y ago
Hmm, and wouldn't that work both ways? What's stopping this from being an impetus for China to stop being dependent on US-allied countries for semiconductor fabrication?
jacobr1 4y ago
This is one advantage of tariffs. Increase the costs. For some applications there are easy substitutes, for others it is harder which incentivizes the creation of alternatives. Of course the downside of tariffs are also well-known. Retaliation tariffs that damage your own industry. Increased costs being passed own downstream in the economy resulting in less value creation. The overall deadweight loss of not utilizing comparative advantage. It still might be worth it, but you don't get that "force" for free.
sudosysgen 4y ago
You normally do that using a University, a national lab, an SoE, or subsidies. Not using export control and sanctions .

arisAlexis 4y ago

China is going the Putin way. Maybe it's better they don't develop first an AGI