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To steelman it, the US has a far lower dependence on trade as a percentage of GDP than just about any other country, so if any country will be likely to (raw-ec

To steelman it, the US has a far lower dependence on trade as a percentage of GDP than just about any other country, so if any country will be likely to (raw-economic-numbers) survive a shock like this, it's the US. Of course this is a generalization, there could be critical single/multi item goods that make this not a thing (note: it's not lithium or "the rare earth"). It's worth asking and doing a deeper analysis on the question: Are the goods not being traded to the US "things that Americans can do without"? I think for a large portion of that, the answer is "yes". No, you do not need dropshipped junk or an electronic device with a 50% chance of working from amazon. Even for bulk conumer goods american alternatives are not substantially more expensive. I was shopping for cookie cutters recently and a US cookie cutter is $2 more than the chinese cookie cutter. Without even amortizing over the number of uses I'll get out of this, the marginal increase in cost is ~0, but I am certain that the way that online retailers sort sales by price, the number of buyers of the american good is way lower. I think more likely problems are small electronic PCBs used for semi-bespoke controls in whatever manufacturing that actually {happens in/moves to} the us, hvac controls etc.

threeseed 1y ago
It’s going to be similar to Brexit. It won’t cause the economy to collapse with alarms going off everywhere. It will instead be a quiet, slow and sustained shrinking of the economy.
- throwawaymaths 1y ago
  > It’s going to be similar to Brexit. Agreed, this is the most likely outcome in the short term. In the long term there are going to be unexpeted knock-on effects. Even a modest definancialization of the American economy makes it more robust to demographic changes and the end of the population-driven growth era. Lowered imports from abroad (especially china) and decreased consumption writ large means lower carbon footprint. Maintenance of airplanes getting more expensive means people fly less (already happening), again, lower carbon footprint.
  - jajko 1y ago
    You sure like whats happening now to keep making up excuses for why its actually good, all over this thread.
    - throwawaymaths 1y ago
      theres a lot to hate about this administration right now.
- GardenLetter27 1y ago
  Where is the shrinking? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370599/g7-country-gdp-growth/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370599/g7-country-gdp-g... The UK was the hardest hit by COVID, but it has recovered well.
  - selectodude 1y ago
    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=GB https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... Per-capita GDP has been rough in the UK post-brexit.
    - GardenLetter27 1y ago
      https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2023&locations=GB-FR-IT-ES&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2023... But compared to neighbours it's pretty close? I was against Brexit, but I don't think the apocalyptic predictions have been borne out at all.
      - selectodude 1y ago
        Trade is bi-lateral. The UK’s trading partners were also harmed by their decision to leave. Short term, it’s just simply a net negative for everybody. Long term (decades), the UK will have a long run growth rate lower than the rest of the EU. Granted, our lack of a crystal ball means that we can just debate outcomes ad nauseum.
  - mmarq 1y ago
    If I recall correctly, the UK changed the way in which they compute the government contribution to GDP (going from G being just cost to some estimate of the output). This caused both the COVID drop and recovery to look steeper.
austin-cheney 1y ago
Surviving is hardly a desirable outcome. Surviving is akin to a Pyrrhic victory (which is net negative). The loss that follows is greater than the profit from the win even after the most desirable of outcomes. In the case of the US the result is isolation. That means loss of economic strength as well as loss of political influence. Those are more expensive than they sound because the second and third order consequences are security concerns and more powerful coalitions in opposition.
- throwawaymaths 1y ago
  > [isolation] means loss of economic strength as well as loss of political influence. Could be. In the long term, the world needs to reckon with the fact that our implementation economic systems (capitalist, socialist, fascist) depend on population growth, and isolation could also mean removal from the chaos that ensues when the existing political systems can't cope. Assuming the US improves its situation, which believe it or not is oh so slightly better as a result of what's going on now.
  - Tadpole9181 1y ago
    We're making nobody want to immigrate to the US. We're also not at all addressing the reason people aren't having kids anymore and taking rights away from women that's further scaring them away from it. We're not reforming to a post-scarcity, low replenishment economy here. How does losing a compensatory supply of labor across both low and high skill markets, cutting off ourselves from backup, discouraging fertility rates, and kneecapping any incentive to invest in manufacturing domestically AT ALL help the situation?
    - throwawaymaths 1y ago
      > We're also not at all addressing the reason people aren't having kids anymore and taking rights away from women that's further scaring them away from it I'm on your side on the political issue, but the data do not agree with you: The states with the most restrictive reproductive laws have higher fertility rates. I'm not claiming there is a correlation -- but rather fertility is not at all governed by reproductive laws (or even motherhood support, because those states also have shit motherhood support systems). To answer your question: Surviving into an non-population-driven-growth regime requires primarily two factors: - reducing reliance on financialization - reducing reliance on pure consumption I'm not saying the US is good at either of those two (it's not) but it's better than it was, say, in 2019. I would even look at your retort -- it used the word invest. That suggests a heavily financialization-dependent mindset. If you are looking through those lenses, it is difficult to imagine what the future needs to look like.
jsnell 1y ago
> To steelman it, the US has a far lower dependence on trade as a percentage of GDP than just about any other country, so if any country will be likely to (raw-economic-numbers) survive a shock like this, it's the US. The reason this line of thinking doesn't work is that these measures affect all the trade that the US does with anyone, but for any other country they affect only the trade with the US. The US relative dependence on the entire world is larger than any individual country's relative dependency on just the US. To illustrate: US imports seem to typically be about 15% of the US GDP. EU exports to the US are only 3% of the EU GDP. So we'd kind of expect the shock to the US to be 5x larger than the shock to the EU.
- blipvert 1y ago
  The US’s Brexit moment.
llm_nerd 1y ago
>To steelman it, the US has a far lower dependence on trade as a percentage of GDP The US being the centre of trade is basically the entire foundation of its GDP. It is the reason the US $ is the global reserve. It is the reason the world holds t-bills. It's the reason silicon valley is in San Francisco and the centre of the music and movie industry is in LA. It's the reason the financial capital of the world is in NY. It's why science revolves...revolved...around the US. If you're living in the richest large country in the world, it's worth contemplating why that is. Is it US exceptionalism? No, it's that the US came out relative untouched from two world wars that seriously harmed most of the world, so it become basically the central hub. The geographically-safe, still wealthy friendly power. That is all dissolving at an astonishing pace, and the reality will be a harsh one. Like the other post said, the US isn't going to suddenly be poor, but instead it's just going to be an endless drain as the world reorients. And I mean you can say "oh well we'll do without!", and...okay? I guess it's just the new minimalist world! As to the "the US will be harmed less than others", while I actually believe the US will be one of the hardest hit countries of all, because most of the US economy relies upon an illusion, it's a silly self-comfort anyways because the US is the cause of all of this. It's like salting the land and then gloating because your crops weren't grow well anyways.
- throwawaymaths 1y ago
  > It is the reason the US $ is the global reserve That may have been the design case, but the reason it is now is just TINA. No other currency can absorb the volumes necessary. Let's go over the alternatives: - Euro - has less than half the volume of the US. A possible contender, but remember each member state does get to dictate its own printing rules, so the - Yen - one tenth the reserve volume, but pegged to a country that has been in several "lost" decades. - Yuan - country has massive capital controls and you could get completely fucked if the government fears revolt and lets people move their money out of china. And yet, international reserves are LESS than the CAD. > it's worth contemplating why that is. Is it US exceptionalism? No, it's that the US came out relative untouched from two world wars that seriously harmed most of the world, so it become basically the central hub. I think you've got the causal arrow wrong on this. The US is geographically well situated. It touches both oceans, and has a huge gap between it and most of the rest of the world. It's ~energy independent, and has robust agricultural center. That's why it was untouched from both world wars and that's why it became the central hub of commerce in the postwar era. The US can afford to fuck up a lot of domestic and international policy and still generally speaking not worry about existential threats.
toss1 1y ago
Yup Heard an interesting analysis by a Bloomberg Radio guest, running down the advantages/disadvantages between US and China. They came out mostly balanced, but the big imbalance is the population. The US population is a LOT less tolerant of disruption, and the Chinese population is more tolerant, and less informed, e.g., no one there even knows the rates are ~145%. I'm inclined to agree. I see the US population as fully and multi-generationally accustomed to the luxury of comfortable living with a decent safety net. When things start to get really hard, the US population will get rapidly un-governable, while the Chinese will be both more ignorant, more controlled, and more willing to take some suffering for the country's good, while the US has been all about "ME" for quite a while.
- throwawaymaths 1y ago
  Nah, the US has gone through plenty of crazy social shifts without totally collapsing. Since the civil war, historically, difficulty tends to galvanize the US public (for better or worse). You'll have to do a better job explaining why this time is different, that isn't just "vibes". American culture is full of inherent contradictions in individual/social balance. The biggest one recently is identity politics, and the swing to and from this movement is indicative of how malleable the US relationship with individualism is.
  - azinman2 1y ago
    What’s different is the US is wayyyyy richer and more comfortable than any time previously in history, or at least was until recently (in terms of PPP of the avg person). When you grow up in those conditions, it’s like you’re the kid of a rich person who made all the money, and you now feel entitled to it without any of the work it took to get here, and without experiencing the pain without it or the lessons learned along the way. Instead you start to complain that you can’t do XYZ (buy a home, have a family, pay for healthcare), but because you didn’t create these conditions or experience life before, you just blame others without any of the tools to correct it for yourself.
    - toss1 1y ago
bumby 1y ago
>Are the goods not being traded to the US "things that Americans can do without"? I think for a large portion of that, the answer is "yes". How does one reconcile this with the fact that 2/3rds of the US economy is based on consumer goods? I agree with the general premise that we probably don’t need so much frivolous junk, but like it or lump it, that’s what our economy has been based on for decades. It would potentially take just as long to remake the economy into something else.

threeseed 1y ago

It’s going to be similar to Brexit. It won’t cause the economy to collapse with alarms going off everywhere. It will instead be a quiet, slow and sustained shrinking of the economy.

throwawaymaths 1y ago
> It’s going to be similar to Brexit. Agreed, this is the most likely outcome in the short term. In the long term there are going to be unexpeted knock-on effects. Even a modest definancialization of the American economy makes it more robust to demographic changes and the end of the population-driven growth era. Lowered imports from abroad (especially china) and decreased consumption writ large means lower carbon footprint. Maintenance of airplanes getting more expensive means people fly less (already happening), again, lower carbon footprint.
- jajko 1y ago
  You sure like whats happening now to keep making up excuses for why its actually good, all over this thread.
  - throwawaymaths 1y ago
    theres a lot to hate about this administration right now.
GardenLetter27 1y ago
Where is the shrinking? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370599/g7-country-gdp-growth/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370599/g7-country-gdp-g... The UK was the hardest hit by COVID, but it has recovered well.
- selectodude 1y ago
  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=GB https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... Per-capita GDP has been rough in the UK post-brexit.
  - GardenLetter27 1y ago
    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2023&locations=GB-FR-IT-ES&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2023... But compared to neighbours it's pretty close? I was against Brexit, but I don't think the apocalyptic predictions have been borne out at all.
    - selectodude 1y ago
      Trade is bi-lateral. The UK’s trading partners were also harmed by their decision to leave. Short term, it’s just simply a net negative for everybody. Long term (decades), the UK will have a long run growth rate lower than the rest of the EU. Granted, our lack of a crystal ball means that we can just debate outcomes ad nauseum.
- mmarq 1y ago
  If I recall correctly, the UK changed the way in which they compute the government contribution to GDP (going from G being just cost to some estimate of the output). This caused both the COVID drop and recovery to look steeper.

austin-cheney 1y ago

Surviving is hardly a desirable outcome. Surviving is akin to a Pyrrhic victory (which is net negative). The loss that follows is greater than the profit from the win even after the most desirable of outcomes. In the case of the US the result is isolation. That means loss of economic strength as well as loss of political influence. Those are more expensive than they sound because the second and third order consequences are security concerns and more powerful coalitions in opposition.

throwawaymaths 1y ago
> [isolation] means loss of economic strength as well as loss of political influence. Could be. In the long term, the world needs to reckon with the fact that our implementation economic systems (capitalist, socialist, fascist) depend on population growth, and isolation could also mean removal from the chaos that ensues when the existing political systems can't cope. Assuming the US improves its situation, which believe it or not is oh so slightly better as a result of what's going on now.
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
  We're making nobody want to immigrate to the US. We're also not at all addressing the reason people aren't having kids anymore and taking rights away from women that's further scaring them away from it. We're not reforming to a post-scarcity, low replenishment economy here. How does losing a compensatory supply of labor across both low and high skill markets, cutting off ourselves from backup, discouraging fertility rates, and kneecapping any incentive to invest in manufacturing domestically AT ALL help the situation?
  - throwawaymaths 1y ago
    > We're also not at all addressing the reason people aren't having kids anymore and taking rights away from women that's further scaring them away from it I'm on your side on the political issue, but the data do not agree with you: The states with the most restrictive reproductive laws have higher fertility rates. I'm not claiming there is a correlation -- but rather fertility is not at all governed by reproductive laws (or even motherhood support, because those states also have shit motherhood support systems). To answer your question: Surviving into an non-population-driven-growth regime requires primarily two factors: - reducing reliance on financialization - reducing reliance on pure consumption I'm not saying the US is good at either of those two (it's not) but it's better than it was, say, in 2019. I would even look at your retort -- it used the word invest. That suggests a heavily financialization-dependent mindset. If you are looking through those lenses, it is difficult to imagine what the future needs to look like.

jsnell 1y ago

> To steelman it, the US has a far lower dependence on trade as a percentage of GDP than just about any other country, so if any country will be likely to (raw-economic-numbers) survive a shock like this, it's the US. The reason this line of thinking doesn't work is that these measures affect all the trade that the US does with anyone, but for any other country they affect only the trade with the US. The US relative dependence on the entire world is larger than any individual country's relative dependency on just the US. To illustrate: US imports seem to typically be about 15% of the US GDP. EU exports to the US are only 3% of the EU GDP. So we'd kind of expect the shock to the US to be 5x larger than the shock to the EU.

blipvert 1y ago
The US’s Brexit moment.

llm_nerd 1y ago

>To steelman it, the US has a far lower dependence on trade as a percentage of GDP The US being the centre of trade is basically the entire foundation of its GDP. It is the reason the US $ is the global reserve. It is the reason the world holds t-bills. It's the reason silicon valley is in San Francisco and the centre of the music and movie industry is in LA. It's the reason the financial capital of the world is in NY. It's why science revolves...revolved...around the US. If you're living in the richest large country in the world, it's worth contemplating why that is. Is it US exceptionalism? No, it's that the US came out relative untouched from two world wars that seriously harmed most of the world, so it become basically the central hub. The geographically-safe, still wealthy friendly power. That is all dissolving at an astonishing pace, and the reality will be a harsh one. Like the other post said, the US isn't going to suddenly be poor, but instead it's just going to be an endless drain as the world reorients. And I mean you can say "oh well we'll do without!", and...okay? I guess it's just the new minimalist world! As to the "the US will be harmed less than others", while I actually believe the US will be one of the hardest hit countries of all, because most of the US economy relies upon an illusion, it's a silly self-comfort anyways because the US is the cause of all of this. It's like salting the land and then gloating because your crops weren't grow well anyways.

throwawaymaths 1y ago
> It is the reason the US $ is the global reserve That may have been the design case, but the reason it is now is just TINA. No other currency can absorb the volumes necessary. Let's go over the alternatives: - Euro - has less than half the volume of the US. A possible contender, but remember each member state does get to dictate its own printing rules, so the - Yen - one tenth the reserve volume, but pegged to a country that has been in several "lost" decades. - Yuan - country has massive capital controls and you could get completely fucked if the government fears revolt and lets people move their money out of china. And yet, international reserves are LESS than the CAD. > it's worth contemplating why that is. Is it US exceptionalism? No, it's that the US came out relative untouched from two world wars that seriously harmed most of the world, so it become basically the central hub. I think you've got the causal arrow wrong on this. The US is geographically well situated. It touches both oceans, and has a huge gap between it and most of the rest of the world. It's ~energy independent, and has robust agricultural center. That's why it was untouched from both world wars and that's why it became the central hub of commerce in the postwar era. The US can afford to fuck up a lot of domestic and international policy and still generally speaking not worry about existential threats.

toss1 1y ago

Yup Heard an interesting analysis by a Bloomberg Radio guest, running down the advantages/disadvantages between US and China. They came out mostly balanced, but the big imbalance is the population. The US population is a LOT less tolerant of disruption, and the Chinese population is more tolerant, and less informed, e.g., no one there even knows the rates are ~145%. I'm inclined to agree. I see the US population as fully and multi-generationally accustomed to the luxury of comfortable living with a decent safety net. When things start to get really hard, the US population will get rapidly un-governable, while the Chinese will be both more ignorant, more controlled, and more willing to take some suffering for the country's good, while the US has been all about "ME" for quite a while.

throwawaymaths 1y ago
Nah, the US has gone through plenty of crazy social shifts without totally collapsing. Since the civil war, historically, difficulty tends to galvanize the US public (for better or worse). You'll have to do a better job explaining why this time is different, that isn't just "vibes". American culture is full of inherent contradictions in individual/social balance. The biggest one recently is identity politics, and the swing to and from this movement is indicative of how malleable the US relationship with individualism is.
- azinman2 1y ago
  What’s different is the US is wayyyyy richer and more comfortable than any time previously in history, or at least was until recently (in terms of PPP of the avg person). When you grow up in those conditions, it’s like you’re the kid of a rich person who made all the money, and you now feel entitled to it without any of the work it took to get here, and without experiencing the pain without it or the lessons learned along the way. Instead you start to complain that you can’t do XYZ (buy a home, have a family, pay for healthcare), but because you didn’t create these conditions or experience life before, you just blame others without any of the tools to correct it for yourself.
  - toss1 1y ago

bumby 1y ago

>Are the goods not being traded to the US "things that Americans can do without"? I think for a large portion of that, the answer is "yes". How does one reconcile this with the fact that 2/3rds of the US economy is based on consumer goods? I agree with the general premise that we probably don’t need so much frivolous junk, but like it or lump it, that’s what our economy has been based on for decades. It would potentially take just as long to remake the economy into something else.