9 ms·

I am Chinese, I want to try to understand why this is happening? You People often criticize our political system, why don't I feel it?

by tenwz1 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
crazygringo 1y ago
Around the tariffs broadly, there is no reason. Americans don't want the tariffs either, Trump is acting like a madman but sadly nobody can stop him currently because the law gives the president power over tariffs. The people who voted for Trump mainly voted because he promised to lower prices. Now he's raising them instead. Our country is as confused as yours.
- Ancalagon 1y ago
  Uh, no? Trump discussed tariffs as part of his campaign platform. Anyone who voted for him should have known these were coming.
  - mdhb 1y ago
    I know what you’re saying here and in some academic sense, sure, you’re right. Back in the real world though, trump voters are explicitly not the kind of people who read, let alone vote based on policy. They are literally the group of people that people point to in order to say the idea that an economy is actually based on rational actors is one of the most flawed assumptions in the entire field of economics.
  - ElevenLathe 1y ago
    I think most voters probably assumed, as has been the case for the entire life of anyone alive today (including during Trump's first term!), that "Republican" meant "good for business" and small-c don't-rock-the-boat conservatism. There were pre-tremors of this going back decades, but they always seemed far-fetched: surely the business interests in charge of both parties don't wanna fuck up the bag? It turns out that some of them do.
    - krapp 1y ago
      >I think most voters probably assumed, as has been the case for the entire life of anyone alive today (including during Trump's first term!), that "Republican" meant "good for business" and small-c don't-rock-the-boat conservatism. Were they just not paying attention during Trump's first term? Did they just assume everyone shouting from the rooftops really did just have Trump Derangement Syndrome? Did Trump's conspiracy laden post-electoral twitter rampage or Jan. 6th really not clue anyone in? I mean, the economy improved under Biden but I guess the meme about egg prices just kind of short circuited people's brains.
      - ElevenLathe 1y ago
        The sky didn't fall in during the first term, so why would it during the second? I didn't vote for him but slightly less than half the voters did (according to best estimates -- one thing MAGA is right about is that our election security is a joke, with a few private voting machine companies and an army of partisan local officials having unauditable sway over a good chunk of elections). In any case, it's not productive to blame voters. The point of a democracy is to court voters. Shaming them and calling them idiots only pushes them away.
        krapp 1y ago
        >Shaming them and calling them idiots only pushes them away. I'm not a representative of any political party, nor am I running for office. I'm just another woke libtard cuck who has to live with the consequences of Trumpist malice. So I'll shame them and call them idiots all I like.
        ElevenLathe 1y ago
        Feel free! I'm just a lone left wing lunatic trying to make common cause with the libs, but it's tough. Hopefully we can at least get together on trying to defeat Trumpism but unfortunately your attitude also persists in the Democratic party apparatus itself.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Trump said a million contradictory things on the campaign trail. Even the smartest businessmen who donated money to him didn't think this was coming. After his election, the market didn't expect it at all either. If you look at polls and read interviews, the #1 reason voters gave for voting for Trump was that he was a businessman who would lower inflation after Biden had raised it. Now he's doing the polar opposite. This is not what Trump supporters voted for.
    - silverquiet 1y ago
      My coworkers and I have been discussing how to prepare our company for tariffs since last November. I didn't realize that we were smarter than then smartest businessmen. Perhaps that is no great feat. Trump promised his voters "vengeance"; that is what they voted for.
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        That's fantastic for you. But yes, you can clearly see from the market that you have been much smarter, if your company was confident enough to take action to spend a lot of money to hedge against this. You'll make out like bandits if the tariffs remain, so congratulations. Truly, anyone who saw this coming and shorted stocks appropriately is now rich. That's how unexpected this was. But Trump was promising vengeance on cultural issues and immigration. Not on prices. Again -- voters expected him to follow through on his promise to lower prices. Not to raise them massively.
        disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        The global 10% tariff was mentioned repeatedly. As was the constant focus on trade deficits. But he's been saying crazy stuff for a decade now, and didn't implement stuff like this before so I can see how people were surprised.
        Marsymars 1y ago
        > But Trump was promising vengeance on cultural issues and immigration. Not on prices. Again -- voters expected him to follow through on his promise to lower prices. Not to raise them massively. This is easy to reason through if you just remember that Trump and his cronies are not smart or competent. They have basically no concept of how to follow through on a promise if there’s any complexity to it. Take a look at the list of kept promises from the first term: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?promise_group=trumpometer&ruling=promise-kept https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?prom... And the list of broken promises: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?promise_group=trumpometer&ruling=promise-broken https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?prom... The kept promises are trivial, while the broken promises include everything that can’t be accomplished by executive diktat. (Such as lower prices, unless he directly puts a price limit on goods in an executive order.) Basically the only value in reading into his non-trivial promises is in considering “how could he make things worse if he follows through on attempting this?”
  - rstuart4133 1y ago
    > Anyone who voted for him should have known these were coming. Every time I read a comment like this, it tickles my "someone on the internet is wrong" neuron. In countries whose political systems have devolved into a 2 party system, this isn't true. The two choices will both be a curates egg - some things they want to vote for, and some they want to vote against. Someone people will agonise over it, trying to weigh every policy. I suspect that strategy is more common among the HN crowd. It's tilting at windmills. It's a huge multidimensional problem, politicians will change their mind or the fine print, and some outright lie. It isn't solvable in any real sense. At the other end of the scale people will pick the most important issue and vote on that. The issue is nearly always the same, as it how they measure it: it's the economy stupid, do I feel better off now than I did under the previous guy? Because of inflation triggered by the COVID bazooka the answer for Biden was no, so Trump got elected. Most countries had a COVID bazooka, all them subsequently suffered from the inflation hangover, those that then had elections did the same thing as the US voters - they threw out the incumbents. It had nothing to do with right or left, as nations flipped both ways. Personally I used to weigh policy. It took me decades to recognise the futility of it. Now I try to gauge the character of the people I vote for, which seems impossibly nebulous but we humans aren't too bad at reading others. The downside is: it seems a lot of other have done the same thing, which is how we got tribal politics - the other kind of voting hell. If you want to a different outcome, you need a different political system that doesn't yield a barren 2 party choice. MMP does that by giving the voters a range of view to choose from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
  To be clear: the law DOES NOT give the president power over tariffs. It gives him some ability to massage them, but Congress has this power. To do this, Trump declared a national emergency so he could use emergency powers that are designed for events like war. Congress is supposed to check this power, but Republicans are bowing to Trump as their all-knowing ruler.
beardyw 1y ago
It seems a lot of people, though it sounds idiotic, believe "the way we do it" is obviously the right way and any other is the wrong way. Most have no knowledge of history or appreciation of cultural differences. Every country has the right to run itself as it wishes
- rayiner 1y ago
  I agree. The Chinese seem happy with their government. And it’s done amazing things for the Chinese people. But the point isn’t to hurt China, it’s to reduce US dependence on China. Americans should proceed with the assumption that the Chinese are a co-equal great power. As we are seeing in areas like AI and electric cars, China isn’t cheap foreign labor. They’re at the leading edge or close in our heels in many technologies. Given that, it’s imperative to reduce American dependence on China. In a world where the average Chinese is as prosperous as the average American—which may happen in our lifetimes—isn’t a good idea for China to have 200x of America’s shipbuilding capacity without America trying to rebuild its own? It’s precisely because China inevitably will become America’s equal economically and technologically that America needs to ensure its own independence and sovereignty.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    >The Chinese seem happy with their government. Given how much effort Beijing exerts in suppressing dissent and managing the public conversation about China, how would you or I find out if most Chinese were unhappy with their government?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - tenwz1 1y ago
      In fact, there are many college students and employees in China who use VPN to view foreign networks, just like what I am doing now. I can tell you responsibly that we understand the government's suppression of dissent, although many of us are dissatisfied with this, but there is a consensus that we need a harmonious, stable and positive society. Chinese people are not fools, we will also complain to the government, we have many channels, and in fact we have seen that the government is changing. In recent years, the efficiency of the province where I live has been very high, and we are quite satisfied. Many times foreigners will misunderstand the Chinese government as a high-pressure dictatorship, but if you really live in China, you will find that things are not like that.
rayiner 1y ago
This is not an ideological issue, though American politicians will try to spin it that way. It’s that Americans have realized that they have given up core industrial capabilities in a way that threatens American national security. It’s not China’s fault, but it still requires America to slam on the breaks.
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago
  Industrial capabilities could be on shored with various other incentives without risking a global recession with far greater economical & not costs. This is political incompetence fueled by social media polarization & former political incompetence.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    People have been talking that talk my entire lifetime. Nobody has done shit, because nobody wants to hurt their next quarterly profits. We just had a pandemic that was likely caused by China for which we had to buy PPE from China because we can’t make it. The best time for rebuilding our industrial capabilities in an orderly way was the 1990s. The second best time is now.
    - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
      I do not disagree with disentangling the hyper globalised world. We have evidence of how quickly things can go south (bronze age collapse, recent supply chain madness etc). The entire theory is also based on inequality. We build nothing and we ship all the low paid / environmentally disastrous industries abroad. What I disagree with is the methodology, which is simply idiotic.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        People who share this viewpoint have talked about this for decades and the entire time public policy went in the opposite direction. We’ll never get another chance before it’s too late.
afpx 1y ago
Here’s my hot take on a messy topic. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began implementing Neo-conservative / Neo-liberal policies in the 80s. This shifted the UK and US economies to high margin things like pharma, finance, technology, and services. Those things stayed in the US. Everything was outsourced to developing countries. It sounded great. Through free-trade, developing countries would improve their standard of living. Also, democratic countries didn't go to war with each other. So, this led to the conclusion that improved trade between wealthy nations and developing nations would lead to global harmony. Everyone's standards of living would increase, and we'd all be one happy globe. The US kept trying to push democracy, often through force and by destabilizing governments. But, for some reason countries weren't adopting it. The reason was that academics and political leaders didn't account for the impact of culture. That is, a lot of countries didn't want democracy and free-trade. A lot of areas of the US eventually got wiped out economically. But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Things stayed relatively stable for a few decades because prices kept falling from all of the incoming cheap goods. Meanwhile, they faced 'brain drain' - the next generation started getting college degrees and moving to the wealthy cities. Some areas became wealthy - the rest became poor. The US became a powerhouse of tech, services, and finance. But, they didn't have enough skilled labor in the cities. So, the US opened the door to immigration. As GDP increased, salaries went up. People started flocking to the US both for high-end jobs and also low-end jobs to support all of the urban areas. The poor areas of the US became enraged - new immigrants had more money than them, and they had less. Trump (and I assume the think tanks behind him) believes these tariffs are a last ditch attempt to fix the system. Otherwise, the US dissolves.
- lossolo 1y ago
  > But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Oh come on, everybody knew what was going on since the 90s but greed was just too strong. The next quarter's results were just too good to walk away from all of it. Everyone who needed to know, knew exactly what was happening, but they were getting rich in the process, so they didn’t care.
  - afpx 1y ago
    I agree.
BobaFloutist 1y ago
We elected an idiot. He's raising tariffs on America's greatest allies and ruining our credibility to the rest of the world too. China sells a lot more things to Americans than America does to China (because America is very wealthy), which is called a "trade deficit" (there's some old history here, back during the colonial era when Great Britain and France and Spain wanted gold and silver reserves, they came up with this theory that whichever country has the most gold and silver coming in and the least going out wins), and he thinks that that trade deficit means China is taking advantage of the US. A lot of people have pointed out that they have a similar "trade deficit" with their grocery store and don't feel even a little taken advantage of.
- ytpete 1y ago
  Even the gold & silver thing is a different argument: that's essentially saying a country should have a net trade surplus with the rest of the world in aggregate. You can have that while still running deficits with some/many individual nations. The personal-finance analogy would be that it's fine for me to have a "trade deficit" with my grocery store, just as long as I'm not spending more dollars than I have coming in, overall.
roflyear 1y ago
This specifically, no reason, Trump administration is just doing whatever they want moment from moment. Largely, China is a threat to the US politically, and they are a threat to our industry and global economic dominance.

I am Chinese, I want to try to understand why this is happening? You People often criticize our political system, why don't I feel it?

by tenwz1 1y ago

I am Chinese, I want to try to understand why this is happening? You People often criticize our political system, why don't I feel it?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

crazygringo 1y ago

Around the tariffs broadly, there is no reason. Americans don't want the tariffs either, Trump is acting like a madman but sadly nobody can stop him currently because the law gives the president power over tariffs. The people who voted for Trump mainly voted because he promised to lower prices. Now he's raising them instead. Our country is as confused as yours.

Ancalagon 1y ago
Uh, no? Trump discussed tariffs as part of his campaign platform. Anyone who voted for him should have known these were coming.
- mdhb 1y ago
  I know what you’re saying here and in some academic sense, sure, you’re right. Back in the real world though, trump voters are explicitly not the kind of people who read, let alone vote based on policy. They are literally the group of people that people point to in order to say the idea that an economy is actually based on rational actors is one of the most flawed assumptions in the entire field of economics.
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  I think most voters probably assumed, as has been the case for the entire life of anyone alive today (including during Trump's first term!), that "Republican" meant "good for business" and small-c don't-rock-the-boat conservatism. There were pre-tremors of this going back decades, but they always seemed far-fetched: surely the business interests in charge of both parties don't wanna fuck up the bag? It turns out that some of them do.
  - krapp 1y ago
    >I think most voters probably assumed, as has been the case for the entire life of anyone alive today (including during Trump's first term!), that "Republican" meant "good for business" and small-c don't-rock-the-boat conservatism. Were they just not paying attention during Trump's first term? Did they just assume everyone shouting from the rooftops really did just have Trump Derangement Syndrome? Did Trump's conspiracy laden post-electoral twitter rampage or Jan. 6th really not clue anyone in? I mean, the economy improved under Biden but I guess the meme about egg prices just kind of short circuited people's brains.
    - ElevenLathe 1y ago
      The sky didn't fall in during the first term, so why would it during the second? I didn't vote for him but slightly less than half the voters did (according to best estimates -- one thing MAGA is right about is that our election security is a joke, with a few private voting machine companies and an army of partisan local officials having unauditable sway over a good chunk of elections). In any case, it's not productive to blame voters. The point of a democracy is to court voters. Shaming them and calling them idiots only pushes them away.
      - krapp 1y ago
        >Shaming them and calling them idiots only pushes them away. I'm not a representative of any political party, nor am I running for office. I'm just another woke libtard cuck who has to live with the consequences of Trumpist malice. So I'll shame them and call them idiots all I like.
        ElevenLathe 1y ago
        Feel free! I'm just a lone left wing lunatic trying to make common cause with the libs, but it's tough. Hopefully we can at least get together on trying to defeat Trumpism but unfortunately your attitude also persists in the Democratic party apparatus itself.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  Trump said a million contradictory things on the campaign trail. Even the smartest businessmen who donated money to him didn't think this was coming. After his election, the market didn't expect it at all either. If you look at polls and read interviews, the #1 reason voters gave for voting for Trump was that he was a businessman who would lower inflation after Biden had raised it. Now he's doing the polar opposite. This is not what Trump supporters voted for.
  - silverquiet 1y ago
    My coworkers and I have been discussing how to prepare our company for tariffs since last November. I didn't realize that we were smarter than then smartest businessmen. Perhaps that is no great feat. Trump promised his voters "vengeance"; that is what they voted for.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      That's fantastic for you. But yes, you can clearly see from the market that you have been much smarter, if your company was confident enough to take action to spend a lot of money to hedge against this. You'll make out like bandits if the tariffs remain, so congratulations. Truly, anyone who saw this coming and shorted stocks appropriately is now rich. That's how unexpected this was. But Trump was promising vengeance on cultural issues and immigration. Not on prices. Again -- voters expected him to follow through on his promise to lower prices. Not to raise them massively.
      - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        The global 10% tariff was mentioned repeatedly. As was the constant focus on trade deficits. But he's been saying crazy stuff for a decade now, and didn't implement stuff like this before so I can see how people were surprised.
      - Marsymars 1y ago
        > But Trump was promising vengeance on cultural issues and immigration. Not on prices. Again -- voters expected him to follow through on his promise to lower prices. Not to raise them massively. This is easy to reason through if you just remember that Trump and his cronies are not smart or competent. They have basically no concept of how to follow through on a promise if there’s any complexity to it. Take a look at the list of kept promises from the first term: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?promise_group=trumpometer&ruling=promise-kept https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?prom... And the list of broken promises: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?promise_group=trumpometer&ruling=promise-broken https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/list/?prom... The kept promises are trivial, while the broken promises include everything that can’t be accomplished by executive diktat. (Such as lower prices, unless he directly puts a price limit on goods in an executive order.) Basically the only value in reading into his non-trivial promises is in considering “how could he make things worse if he follows through on attempting this?”
- rstuart4133 1y ago
  > Anyone who voted for him should have known these were coming. Every time I read a comment like this, it tickles my "someone on the internet is wrong" neuron. In countries whose political systems have devolved into a 2 party system, this isn't true. The two choices will both be a curates egg - some things they want to vote for, and some they want to vote against. Someone people will agonise over it, trying to weigh every policy. I suspect that strategy is more common among the HN crowd. It's tilting at windmills. It's a huge multidimensional problem, politicians will change their mind or the fine print, and some outright lie. It isn't solvable in any real sense. At the other end of the scale people will pick the most important issue and vote on that. The issue is nearly always the same, as it how they measure it: it's the economy stupid, do I feel better off now than I did under the previous guy? Because of inflation triggered by the COVID bazooka the answer for Biden was no, so Trump got elected. Most countries had a COVID bazooka, all them subsequently suffered from the inflation hangover, those that then had elections did the same thing as the US voters - they threw out the incumbents. It had nothing to do with right or left, as nations flipped both ways. Personally I used to weigh policy. It took me decades to recognise the futility of it. Now I try to gauge the character of the people I vote for, which seems impossibly nebulous but we humans aren't too bad at reading others. The downside is: it seems a lot of other have done the same thing, which is how we got tribal politics - the other kind of voting hell. If you want to a different outcome, you need a different political system that doesn't yield a barren 2 party choice. MMP does that by giving the voters a range of view to choose from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...
Tadpole9181 1y ago
To be clear: the law DOES NOT give the president power over tariffs. It gives him some ability to massage them, but Congress has this power. To do this, Trump declared a national emergency so he could use emergency powers that are designed for events like war. Congress is supposed to check this power, but Republicans are bowing to Trump as their all-knowing ruler.

beardyw 1y ago

It seems a lot of people, though it sounds idiotic, believe "the way we do it" is obviously the right way and any other is the wrong way. Most have no knowledge of history or appreciation of cultural differences. Every country has the right to run itself as it wishes

rayiner 1y ago
I agree. The Chinese seem happy with their government. And it’s done amazing things for the Chinese people. But the point isn’t to hurt China, it’s to reduce US dependence on China. Americans should proceed with the assumption that the Chinese are a co-equal great power. As we are seeing in areas like AI and electric cars, China isn’t cheap foreign labor. They’re at the leading edge or close in our heels in many technologies. Given that, it’s imperative to reduce American dependence on China. In a world where the average Chinese is as prosperous as the average American—which may happen in our lifetimes—isn’t a good idea for China to have 200x of America’s shipbuilding capacity without America trying to rebuild its own? It’s precisely because China inevitably will become America’s equal economically and technologically that America needs to ensure its own independence and sovereignty.
- hollerith 1y ago
  >The Chinese seem happy with their government. Given how much effort Beijing exerts in suppressing dissent and managing the public conversation about China, how would you or I find out if most Chinese were unhappy with their government?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - tenwz1 1y ago
    In fact, there are many college students and employees in China who use VPN to view foreign networks, just like what I am doing now. I can tell you responsibly that we understand the government's suppression of dissent, although many of us are dissatisfied with this, but there is a consensus that we need a harmonious, stable and positive society. Chinese people are not fools, we will also complain to the government, we have many channels, and in fact we have seen that the government is changing. In recent years, the efficiency of the province where I live has been very high, and we are quite satisfied. Many times foreigners will misunderstand the Chinese government as a high-pressure dictatorship, but if you really live in China, you will find that things are not like that.

rayiner 1y ago

This is not an ideological issue, though American politicians will try to spin it that way. It’s that Americans have realized that they have given up core industrial capabilities in a way that threatens American national security. It’s not China’s fault, but it still requires America to slam on the breaks.

4gotunameagain 1y ago
Industrial capabilities could be on shored with various other incentives without risking a global recession with far greater economical & not costs. This is political incompetence fueled by social media polarization & former political incompetence.
- rayiner 1y ago
  People have been talking that talk my entire lifetime. Nobody has done shit, because nobody wants to hurt their next quarterly profits. We just had a pandemic that was likely caused by China for which we had to buy PPE from China because we can’t make it. The best time for rebuilding our industrial capabilities in an orderly way was the 1990s. The second best time is now.
  - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
    I do not disagree with disentangling the hyper globalised world. We have evidence of how quickly things can go south (bronze age collapse, recent supply chain madness etc). The entire theory is also based on inequality. We build nothing and we ship all the low paid / environmentally disastrous industries abroad. What I disagree with is the methodology, which is simply idiotic.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      People who share this viewpoint have talked about this for decades and the entire time public policy went in the opposite direction. We’ll never get another chance before it’s too late.

afpx 1y ago

Here’s my hot take on a messy topic. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began implementing Neo-conservative / Neo-liberal policies in the 80s. This shifted the UK and US economies to high margin things like pharma, finance, technology, and services. Those things stayed in the US. Everything was outsourced to developing countries. It sounded great. Through free-trade, developing countries would improve their standard of living. Also, democratic countries didn't go to war with each other. So, this led to the conclusion that improved trade between wealthy nations and developing nations would lead to global harmony. Everyone's standards of living would increase, and we'd all be one happy globe. The US kept trying to push democracy, often through force and by destabilizing governments. But, for some reason countries weren't adopting it. The reason was that academics and political leaders didn't account for the impact of culture. That is, a lot of countries didn't want democracy and free-trade. A lot of areas of the US eventually got wiped out economically. But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Things stayed relatively stable for a few decades because prices kept falling from all of the incoming cheap goods. Meanwhile, they faced 'brain drain' - the next generation started getting college degrees and moving to the wealthy cities. Some areas became wealthy - the rest became poor. The US became a powerhouse of tech, services, and finance. But, they didn't have enough skilled labor in the cities. So, the US opened the door to immigration. As GDP increased, salaries went up. People started flocking to the US both for high-end jobs and also low-end jobs to support all of the urban areas. The poor areas of the US became enraged - new immigrants had more money than them, and they had less. Trump (and I assume the think tanks behind him) believes these tariffs are a last ditch attempt to fix the system. Otherwise, the US dissolves.

lossolo 1y ago
> But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Oh come on, everybody knew what was going on since the 90s but greed was just too strong. The next quarter's results were just too good to walk away from all of it. Everyone who needed to know, knew exactly what was happening, but they were getting rich in the process, so they didn’t care.
- afpx 1y ago
  I agree.

BobaFloutist 1y ago

We elected an idiot. He's raising tariffs on America's greatest allies and ruining our credibility to the rest of the world too. China sells a lot more things to Americans than America does to China (because America is very wealthy), which is called a "trade deficit" (there's some old history here, back during the colonial era when Great Britain and France and Spain wanted gold and silver reserves, they came up with this theory that whichever country has the most gold and silver coming in and the least going out wins), and he thinks that that trade deficit means China is taking advantage of the US. A lot of people have pointed out that they have a similar "trade deficit" with their grocery store and don't feel even a little taken advantage of.

ytpete 1y ago
Even the gold & silver thing is a different argument: that's essentially saying a country should have a net trade surplus with the rest of the world in aggregate. You can have that while still running deficits with some/many individual nations. The personal-finance analogy would be that it's fine for me to have a "trade deficit" with my grocery store, just as long as I'm not spending more dollars than I have coming in, overall.

roflyear 1y ago

This specifically, no reason, Trump administration is just doing whatever they want moment from moment. Largely, China is a threat to the US politically, and they are a threat to our industry and global economic dominance.