6 ms·

The age of globalism and unfettered free trade is over, and good riddance.

jojobas 1y ago
Too little too late. China will catch up on everything of importance, and we're on the hook for pretty much everything else.
cies 1y ago
Only they will not admit it. The capitalist propaganda, "freedom", is so ingrained that we cannot easily paddle back on it. So we will become helplessly hypocritical instead.
globalnode 1y ago
free for me but not for thee
- motorest 1y ago
  > free for me but not for thee That's rich, coming from a country which outright bands foreign corporations from even operating within their borders, and those who they allow have to operate through a state-controlled corporate minder.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    >That's rich, coming from a country What country do you know Globalnode is coming from? Just interested in the high level of assurance.
    - yvdriess 1y ago
      He was talking about china because that's the subject in this story, not the poster's residence.
      - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
        OK, it just seemed like it was a response to the comment and not the story. on edit: thanks for pointing it out.
  - ulfw 1y ago
    Don't know any of these things for Tesla.
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    And then you actually go to China and are shocked to realize that Western companies and brands are everywhere. Starbucks and KFC on every other corner. Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW cars clogging the roads. Rich people wearing Italian luxury brands, middle-class people wearing Nike and Adidas athleisure wear. China is nothing like your paranoid fantasy.
    - andsoitis 1y ago
      China’s foreign investment framework is formally open (especially after WTO accession), but: - Certain industries are restricted or prohibited for foreign investors. - The “Negative List for Foreign Investment” explicitly bans or limits foreign participation in many areas (e.g., media, education, data services, telecoms, mining). - Some sectors require a Chinese joint venture (you can’t have 100% ownership). So even though the law allows foreign entry, policy barriers and regulatory discretion make it hard in practice. To use your example of Volkswagen, their ownership in China is structured around several joint ventures, where it shares ownership with Chinese companies like SAIC Motor, FAW Group, and JAC Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC_Volkswagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC_Volkswagen
      - lossolo 1y ago
        > The “Negative List for Foreign Investment” explicitly bans or limits foreign participation in many areas (e.g., media, education, data services, telecoms, mining) That's a very good for them, by looking at the list. Look at how big a problem the EU now has with its reliance on US tech and military. Sovereignty is very important in strategic industries and in those that allow foreign powers to influence your population. > of use your example of Volkswagen, their ownership in China is structured around several joint ventures Volkswagen is a cherry picked example, look at Tesla, which isn't a joint venture. BMW still uses a JV but now holds 75% of BMW Brilliance etc. And it's no longer required for car companies to use joint ventures, that rule was lifted in one of the recent years and more industries were actually opened in the same time.
        andsoitis 1y ago
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  I know how China operates and I'm not at all sympathetic to their cause
pjc50 1y ago
People are going to miss it in the age of fractured, paranoid isolation.
ulfw 1y ago
Yes let's go back to times where marrying a girl from a neighbouring town would raise eyebrows. So much better than "globalism"
- noobermin 1y ago
  You should realise this is quite the conflation. Might as well say we are going back to the age before penicillin because that was also "back then." I personally don't advocate for a return to the past for its own sake. perhaps the US is doing that for other reasons (RFK Jr.) but the good news is that in the post US hegemonic order, that country can go ahead and collapse into flames and the rest of the world won't be taken down with it.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    When has that happened?
vladms 1y ago
Some will win and some will loose without free trade as well. Or do you think without free trade everybody will be great? For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements. Sure, now in some countries we can associate free trade with consumerism, but it's not everywhere the same.
- williamdclt 1y ago
  > For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements. I don't believe in putting the responsibility on individuals. Billions upon billions of whatever currency are being poured into ads, marketing, influencing, lobbying, propaganda (and whatever other manipulation mechanism I'm not thinking of), employing some of the most brilliant mind of this generation, to ensure that individuals are consumerist. Because that's what will make companies the most money, and "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place. Show me the incentive and I show you the outcome: the outcome is enormous externalities. We need to fix the incentives, not expect individuals to somehow act against them en masse.
  - vladms 1y ago
    Not sure what you are arguing for, if it is that something should be done about consumerism/externalities, I definitely agree. People are not "act against free trade en masse" either, it is a policy choice with various impacts, which I doubt will be "great" for most, just different. > "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place Which society? I lived in 3 different societies (more than a couple of years), and while it is true that money is one of the incentive I think there were fundamental differences that were not obvious about what makes people tick. And by looking at the political situation around the globe - my impression that people care about many more things than their bank account. That does not mean I propose specific solutions, I am just very skeptical that without free trade things will be better on average for more people than without, if anything is just a red herring so that nobody deals with the more complex issues.
Hendrikto 1y ago
I feel like I profited a lot as a consumer. Maybe not as an employee, but overall it wasn’t bad.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
Let's have a quick recap of two of the things we've already tried: Isolationism sucks. You have a domestic industry but it's not allowed to sell to other countries in retaliation for you doing the same to them, so it's small and consolidated and when the domestic providers are correspondingly terrible the trade barriers inhibit you from using the foreign ones. "Free Trade" (but not actually) is even worse, because you take down your own trade barriers nominally in exchange for others doing the same, and then some of them don't. They subsidize their industries so that the global industry consolidates into one country and then if that country sucks you're in even worse shape because it's also a single point of failure and subject to foreign political forces. What we should be doing isn't going back to trade barriers, it's creating sufficient tax incentives to sustain a domestic industry for strategically important products and then letting other countries do the same and consumers choose which company they want to buy it from. Because then you don't have trade barriers but you do have both domestic production and competition. The price is that companies in those industries would essentially be paying lower taxes than they currently do or receiving some subsidies in order to make them competitive with the other countries doing something equivalent. But maybe that's not the worst of the three options.
- mightyham 1y ago
  I don't see what the meaningful difference is between trade barriers (assuming by that you mean tariffs) and tax incentives for specific industries. Moderate, targeted tariff policies, especially ones that gradually decreased over time, can achieve the same effect of bolstering domestic industry while still allowing a healthy amount of foreign competition.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    If a domestic industry is only surviving because of tariffs then it will lobby to keep the tariffs high and for the tariffs to be effective in sustaining the domestic industry they'll have to be enough to deter domestic consumers from patronizing foreign competitors when domestic producers are lacking. That means domestic customers get screwed and domestic companies don't have the incentive to improve as long as they can successfully lobby for continued tariffs. If you only provide subsidies then consumer prices go down rather than up because the mechanism of operation is for the subsidies to make the domestic supplier more attractive rather than for tariffs to make foreign suppliers less attractive. Meanwhile the subsidy is paid by the government and then the legislators will be trying to keep it down rather than raise it because it reduces the money they have to spend on other things rather than increasing tariffs which do the opposite.
Braxton1980 1y ago
When was there unfettered free trade? There's always been tariffs in some form and the WTO exists
wkat4242 1y ago
Yeah globalism is what got us into this dependency on China (and on the US as well). I'm very much a proponent of limiting international investment.

Too little too late. China will catch up on everything of importance, and we're on the hook for pretty much everything else.

cies 1y ago

Only they will not admit it. The capitalist propaganda, "freedom", is so ingrained that we cannot easily paddle back on it. So we will become helplessly hypocritical instead.

globalnode 1y ago

free for me but not for thee

motorest 1y ago
> free for me but not for thee That's rich, coming from a country which outright bands foreign corporations from even operating within their borders, and those who they allow have to operate through a state-controlled corporate minder.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  >That's rich, coming from a country What country do you know Globalnode is coming from? Just interested in the high level of assurance.
  - yvdriess 1y ago
    He was talking about china because that's the subject in this story, not the poster's residence.
    - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
      OK, it just seemed like it was a response to the comment and not the story. on edit: thanks for pointing it out.
- ulfw 1y ago
  Don't know any of these things for Tesla.
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  And then you actually go to China and are shocked to realize that Western companies and brands are everywhere. Starbucks and KFC on every other corner. Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW cars clogging the roads. Rich people wearing Italian luxury brands, middle-class people wearing Nike and Adidas athleisure wear. China is nothing like your paranoid fantasy.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    China’s foreign investment framework is formally open (especially after WTO accession), but: - Certain industries are restricted or prohibited for foreign investors. - The “Negative List for Foreign Investment” explicitly bans or limits foreign participation in many areas (e.g., media, education, data services, telecoms, mining). - Some sectors require a Chinese joint venture (you can’t have 100% ownership). So even though the law allows foreign entry, policy barriers and regulatory discretion make it hard in practice. To use your example of Volkswagen, their ownership in China is structured around several joint ventures, where it shares ownership with Chinese companies like SAIC Motor, FAW Group, and JAC Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC_Volkswagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC_Volkswagen
    - lossolo 1y ago
      > The “Negative List for Foreign Investment” explicitly bans or limits foreign participation in many areas (e.g., media, education, data services, telecoms, mining) That's a very good for them, by looking at the list. Look at how big a problem the EU now has with its reliance on US tech and military. Sovereignty is very important in strategic industries and in those that allow foreign powers to influence your population. > of use your example of Volkswagen, their ownership in China is structured around several joint ventures Volkswagen is a cherry picked example, look at Tesla, which isn't a joint venture. BMW still uses a JV but now holds 75% of BMW Brilliance etc. And it's no longer required for car companies to use joint ventures, that rule was lifted in one of the recent years and more industries were actually opened in the same time.
      - andsoitis 1y ago
insane_dreamer 1y ago
I know how China operates and I'm not at all sympathetic to their cause

pjc50 1y ago

People are going to miss it in the age of fractured, paranoid isolation.

ulfw 1y ago

Yes let's go back to times where marrying a girl from a neighbouring town would raise eyebrows. So much better than "globalism"

noobermin 1y ago
You should realise this is quite the conflation. Might as well say we are going back to the age before penicillin because that was also "back then." I personally don't advocate for a return to the past for its own sake. perhaps the US is doing that for other reasons (RFK Jr.) but the good news is that in the post US hegemonic order, that country can go ahead and collapse into flames and the rest of the world won't be taken down with it.
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  When has that happened?

vladms 1y ago

Some will win and some will loose without free trade as well. Or do you think without free trade everybody will be great? For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements. Sure, now in some countries we can associate free trade with consumerism, but it's not everywhere the same.

williamdclt 1y ago
> For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements. I don't believe in putting the responsibility on individuals. Billions upon billions of whatever currency are being poured into ads, marketing, influencing, lobbying, propaganda (and whatever other manipulation mechanism I'm not thinking of), employing some of the most brilliant mind of this generation, to ensure that individuals are consumerist. Because that's what will make companies the most money, and "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place. Show me the incentive and I show you the outcome: the outcome is enormous externalities. We need to fix the incentives, not expect individuals to somehow act against them en masse.
- vladms 1y ago
  Not sure what you are arguing for, if it is that something should be done about consumerism/externalities, I definitely agree. People are not "act against free trade en masse" either, it is a policy choice with various impacts, which I doubt will be "great" for most, just different. > "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place Which society? I lived in 3 different societies (more than a couple of years), and while it is true that money is one of the incentive I think there were fundamental differences that were not obvious about what makes people tick. And by looking at the political situation around the globe - my impression that people care about many more things than their bank account. That does not mean I propose specific solutions, I am just very skeptical that without free trade things will be better on average for more people than without, if anything is just a red herring so that nobody deals with the more complex issues.

Hendrikto 1y ago

I feel like I profited a lot as a consumer. Maybe not as an employee, but overall it wasn’t bad.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

Let's have a quick recap of two of the things we've already tried: Isolationism sucks. You have a domestic industry but it's not allowed to sell to other countries in retaliation for you doing the same to them, so it's small and consolidated and when the domestic providers are correspondingly terrible the trade barriers inhibit you from using the foreign ones. "Free Trade" (but not actually) is even worse, because you take down your own trade barriers nominally in exchange for others doing the same, and then some of them don't. They subsidize their industries so that the global industry consolidates into one country and then if that country sucks you're in even worse shape because it's also a single point of failure and subject to foreign political forces. What we should be doing isn't going back to trade barriers, it's creating sufficient tax incentives to sustain a domestic industry for strategically important products and then letting other countries do the same and consumers choose which company they want to buy it from. Because then you don't have trade barriers but you do have both domestic production and competition. The price is that companies in those industries would essentially be paying lower taxes than they currently do or receiving some subsidies in order to make them competitive with the other countries doing something equivalent. But maybe that's not the worst of the three options.

mightyham 1y ago
I don't see what the meaningful difference is between trade barriers (assuming by that you mean tariffs) and tax incentives for specific industries. Moderate, targeted tariff policies, especially ones that gradually decreased over time, can achieve the same effect of bolstering domestic industry while still allowing a healthy amount of foreign competition.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  If a domestic industry is only surviving because of tariffs then it will lobby to keep the tariffs high and for the tariffs to be effective in sustaining the domestic industry they'll have to be enough to deter domestic consumers from patronizing foreign competitors when domestic producers are lacking. That means domestic customers get screwed and domestic companies don't have the incentive to improve as long as they can successfully lobby for continued tariffs. If you only provide subsidies then consumer prices go down rather than up because the mechanism of operation is for the subsidies to make the domestic supplier more attractive rather than for tariffs to make foreign suppliers less attractive. Meanwhile the subsidy is paid by the government and then the legislators will be trying to keep it down rather than raise it because it reduces the money they have to spend on other things rather than increasing tariffs which do the opposite.

Braxton1980 1y ago

When was there unfettered free trade? There's always been tariffs in some form and the WTO exists

wkat4242 1y ago

Yeah globalism is what got us into this dependency on China (and on the US as well). I'm very much a proponent of limiting international investment.