6 ms·

Huawei, Foreign gambling sites were banned on dubious reasons in 2006 (in reality American companies weren't as competitive and las Vegas needed to be protected

Huawei, Foreign gambling sites were banned on dubious reasons in 2006 (in reality American companies weren't as competitive and las Vegas needed to be protected), Japanese electronic tariffs in the 80s/90s ... US never exactly believe in full on 'free trade'.

smallmancontrov 4mo ago
The US believed in free trade precisely when the politically connected needed labor arbitrage, and protectionism exactly when the politically connected needed protection. The pretense of underlying ideals was never more than a political tool - political economy was always political.
- coffeemug 4mo ago
  It depends on whether you believe US action is overdetermined, but I think if Trump didn’t get elected we would have continued on the path of free trade. His election wasn’t predestined. He had just the right mix of features to win at the time, but if this basket of features didn’t exist it’s not hard to imagine the country going down a very different path.
  - smallmancontrov 4mo ago
    If we had continued on the path of free trade without "dealing in" those displaced by free trade, the pressure would have continued to grow. It certainly could have exploded in a different direction, at a different time, with a different champion, but so long as it was repressed instead of addressed it was always destined to explode.
    - coffeemug 4mo ago
      Another plausible future is AI reshuffling the economic hierarchy. In a technological civilization the pressure valve need not be political. As an aside, you made me curious if Trump made this constituency materially better off. Here's what Claude thinks (tl;dr: it's a wash): https://claude.ai/share/36233694-3729-4758-b2e6-c2058791ab1a https://claude.ai/share/36233694-3729-4758-b2e6-c2058791ab1a
      - smallmancontrov 4mo ago
        Explosions are rarely productive. Populists are notorious for delivering lots of chaos and few results. It's easier for everyone to just deal in the economic losers, but we didn't do that, and now they are burning the house down. This will not get them what they want, but they will continue doing it anyway. Globalization was the test, AI is the final exam.
        eru 4mo ago
        > Globalization was the test, AI is the final exam. I'm not sure history will end so soon.
        smallmancontrov 4mo ago
        True, and we've been here before. The industrial revolution got rid of the need for most labor, which at the time was overwhelmingly agricultural and textile. We came out the other side OK. But there was a lot of pain. Living conditions got worse and stayed worse for entire lifetimes before they got better, and they didn't get better because the people who won decided to deal in the people who lost, they got better because the world went to war and incinerated most of its capital, literally and metaphorically, and the regrowth happened under conditions of scarce labor rather than abundant labor, allowing the people on the bottom to strike a decent deal the second time around. That, uhh, won't happen the same way again. Now we have robots and nukes. But it's true that without the benefit of hindsight I'd have had an apocalyptic view going into the last kerfuffle, I'd have been wrong, and it would have been due to a failure of imagination. Let's all hope that I am wrong again, but the mechanism will again have to be a failure of imagination, and it takes a lot of optimism to fit my hope squarely inside my blind spot.
        eru 4mo ago
        > But there was a lot of pain. Living conditions got worse [...] No, living conditions did not get worse. Yes, livings conditions were pretty bad during the early industrial revolution. But they hadn't exactly been rosy before. > [...] they got better because the world went to war and incinerated most of its capital, literally and metaphorically, and the regrowth happened under conditions of scarce labor rather than abundant labor, allowing the people on the bottom to strike a decent deal the second time around. Which war are you talking about? There's been more than one, you know. And the decades after the second world war were probably the nadir for humanity: we never had as many dirt poor people as then and will hopefully never have as many. Remember, that's the time when there were genuine fears of global starvation. Things have been looking up a lot since perhaps around the 1980s and even more so in the following decades. Mostly thanks to PR China and India and South East Asia graduating from dirt poor to merely poor or even middle class. You also seem confused. You seem to say that a relative capital scarcity is good for labour ('incinerated most of its capital') but also that relative labour scarcity is good for labour? Which way is it?
  - boelboel 4mo ago
    Biden wasn't a free trader at all, more alike to Trump in trade than many would like to admit.
  - hollerith 4mo ago
    George Friedman disagrees with you: he's been saying for years that US trade policy towards China had to change no matter who won the 2016 election (because an economy cannot rely on a trade partner it might go to war with, among other reasons). When last year the Trump admin started interdicting oil shipments out of Venezuela, it left shipments heading to China intact. Then during Trump's visit to China, the two parties made a lot of progress on trade and other issues (in part because Beijing's attitude improved because the first Trump administration's restrictions on trade underlined to Beijing how dependent China is on trade with the US).
tehjoker 4mo ago
"Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective by Ha-Joon Chang" "How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used." https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279 https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Persp...
wwalexander 4mo ago
> Japanese electronic tariffs in the 80s Also motorcycles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_motorcycle_tariff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_motorcycle_tariff
- doublerabbit 4mo ago
  Taking that political scenario as an example. Was the decline caused simply because Harley kept to the same working formula refusing to innovate for competition? As to the likes of Honda and Co? Manufacturing is cheaper if you have access to resources and such. Japan may of had abundant of but in this case I don't feel it's was all about manufacturing costs. Was it a cash cow situation, where their one formula was working but as well as where Harley were reluctant to invest in a different avenue, to innovate causing cow to dry up. And that is when they called in the government to settle? That is always the impression I seem to receive. Excluding manufacturing costs was it because they were scared of an innovation being a failure? The same cash cow formula can be seen with the likes of Disney Pixar and Toy Story 5, a pointless movie plot at this point where if money was invested, a new creation could be born.
  - smallmancontrov 4mo ago
    A current account deficit is a capital account surplus, assets and exports compete in the balance of payments, an asset windfall kills exports by increasing the currency hurdle and embedded asset price. What you are seeing is "the bar" for a successful manufacturing business increasing until only the most profitable are left -- things like chips, things like shell companies that exist to monetize a brand. "New growth" isn't highly profitable so it never has a chance to get started (unless a recipient of an asset windfall is willing to finance it all the way to "the bar" -- see: Elon Musk).
    - doublerabbit 4mo ago
      Ah. I get it now. A established economic model is provable and that in five years you can forecast that if you follow X guide you'll end up on top with Y. If competition is on the scene then how can you assure me that myself taking the risk of investing will return me the sum I wish for in return. Production has already been established but the threat is in that an another forecastable model exists and that to catch up to their market will require more investment and expenditure which could lead in less chance of a return. And even if the model is copyable; as like the trope of Chinese knockoffs to of Japanese products, you're still at a lower advantage. It's not they don't want to innovate but the risk to gamble on innovation is high enough that you could stifle competition cheaper via governmental means. This slows their forecast and where you can then strategise to overcome the competition rather than risking expenditure via innovation. Crafty, cheers.
oblio 4mo ago
The entire US auto industry is predicated on protectionism. Without it the Japanese would have wiped out GM/Ford/Chrysler in the 1980s, and now the Chinese in the 2020s-2030s.
thesmtsolver2 4mo ago
US never championed free trade if by free trade you mean "anything goes." Really strange that rest of the world can tariff and put up barriers, but once the US does that, all free-trade warriors step out of the wood work.
hollerith 4mo ago
Also, radar technology has been under export controls of various kinds by Washington continuously since WWII.

smallmancontrov 4mo ago

The US believed in free trade precisely when the politically connected needed labor arbitrage, and protectionism exactly when the politically connected needed protection. The pretense of underlying ideals was never more than a political tool - political economy was always political.

coffeemug 4mo ago
It depends on whether you believe US action is overdetermined, but I think if Trump didn’t get elected we would have continued on the path of free trade. His election wasn’t predestined. He had just the right mix of features to win at the time, but if this basket of features didn’t exist it’s not hard to imagine the country going down a very different path.
- smallmancontrov 4mo ago
  If we had continued on the path of free trade without "dealing in" those displaced by free trade, the pressure would have continued to grow. It certainly could have exploded in a different direction, at a different time, with a different champion, but so long as it was repressed instead of addressed it was always destined to explode.
  - coffeemug 4mo ago
    Another plausible future is AI reshuffling the economic hierarchy. In a technological civilization the pressure valve need not be political. As an aside, you made me curious if Trump made this constituency materially better off. Here's what Claude thinks (tl;dr: it's a wash): https://claude.ai/share/36233694-3729-4758-b2e6-c2058791ab1a https://claude.ai/share/36233694-3729-4758-b2e6-c2058791ab1a
    - smallmancontrov 4mo ago
      Explosions are rarely productive. Populists are notorious for delivering lots of chaos and few results. It's easier for everyone to just deal in the economic losers, but we didn't do that, and now they are burning the house down. This will not get them what they want, but they will continue doing it anyway. Globalization was the test, AI is the final exam.
      - eru 4mo ago
        > Globalization was the test, AI is the final exam. I'm not sure history will end so soon.
        smallmancontrov 4mo ago
        True, and we've been here before. The industrial revolution got rid of the need for most labor, which at the time was overwhelmingly agricultural and textile. We came out the other side OK. But there was a lot of pain. Living conditions got worse and stayed worse for entire lifetimes before they got better, and they didn't get better because the people who won decided to deal in the people who lost, they got better because the world went to war and incinerated most of its capital, literally and metaphorically, and the regrowth happened under conditions of scarce labor rather than abundant labor, allowing the people on the bottom to strike a decent deal the second time around. That, uhh, won't happen the same way again. Now we have robots and nukes. But it's true that without the benefit of hindsight I'd have had an apocalyptic view going into the last kerfuffle, I'd have been wrong, and it would have been due to a failure of imagination. Let's all hope that I am wrong again, but the mechanism will again have to be a failure of imagination, and it takes a lot of optimism to fit my hope squarely inside my blind spot.
        eru 4mo ago
        > But there was a lot of pain. Living conditions got worse [...] No, living conditions did not get worse. Yes, livings conditions were pretty bad during the early industrial revolution. But they hadn't exactly been rosy before. > [...] they got better because the world went to war and incinerated most of its capital, literally and metaphorically, and the regrowth happened under conditions of scarce labor rather than abundant labor, allowing the people on the bottom to strike a decent deal the second time around. Which war are you talking about? There's been more than one, you know. And the decades after the second world war were probably the nadir for humanity: we never had as many dirt poor people as then and will hopefully never have as many. Remember, that's the time when there were genuine fears of global starvation. Things have been looking up a lot since perhaps around the 1980s and even more so in the following decades. Mostly thanks to PR China and India and South East Asia graduating from dirt poor to merely poor or even middle class. You also seem confused. You seem to say that a relative capital scarcity is good for labour ('incinerated most of its capital') but also that relative labour scarcity is good for labour? Which way is it?
- boelboel 4mo ago
  Biden wasn't a free trader at all, more alike to Trump in trade than many would like to admit.
- hollerith 4mo ago
  George Friedman disagrees with you: he's been saying for years that US trade policy towards China had to change no matter who won the 2016 election (because an economy cannot rely on a trade partner it might go to war with, among other reasons). When last year the Trump admin started interdicting oil shipments out of Venezuela, it left shipments heading to China intact. Then during Trump's visit to China, the two parties made a lot of progress on trade and other issues (in part because Beijing's attitude improved because the first Trump administration's restrictions on trade underlined to Beijing how dependent China is on trade with the US).

tehjoker 4mo ago

"Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective by Ha-Joon Chang" "How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used." https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279 https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Persp...

wwalexander 4mo ago

> Japanese electronic tariffs in the 80s Also motorcycles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_motorcycle_tariff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_motorcycle_tariff

doublerabbit 4mo ago
Taking that political scenario as an example. Was the decline caused simply because Harley kept to the same working formula refusing to innovate for competition? As to the likes of Honda and Co? Manufacturing is cheaper if you have access to resources and such. Japan may of had abundant of but in this case I don't feel it's was all about manufacturing costs. Was it a cash cow situation, where their one formula was working but as well as where Harley were reluctant to invest in a different avenue, to innovate causing cow to dry up. And that is when they called in the government to settle? That is always the impression I seem to receive. Excluding manufacturing costs was it because they were scared of an innovation being a failure? The same cash cow formula can be seen with the likes of Disney Pixar and Toy Story 5, a pointless movie plot at this point where if money was invested, a new creation could be born.
- smallmancontrov 4mo ago
  A current account deficit is a capital account surplus, assets and exports compete in the balance of payments, an asset windfall kills exports by increasing the currency hurdle and embedded asset price. What you are seeing is "the bar" for a successful manufacturing business increasing until only the most profitable are left -- things like chips, things like shell companies that exist to monetize a brand. "New growth" isn't highly profitable so it never has a chance to get started (unless a recipient of an asset windfall is willing to finance it all the way to "the bar" -- see: Elon Musk).
  - doublerabbit 4mo ago
    Ah. I get it now. A established economic model is provable and that in five years you can forecast that if you follow X guide you'll end up on top with Y. If competition is on the scene then how can you assure me that myself taking the risk of investing will return me the sum I wish for in return. Production has already been established but the threat is in that an another forecastable model exists and that to catch up to their market will require more investment and expenditure which could lead in less chance of a return. And even if the model is copyable; as like the trope of Chinese knockoffs to of Japanese products, you're still at a lower advantage. It's not they don't want to innovate but the risk to gamble on innovation is high enough that you could stifle competition cheaper via governmental means. This slows their forecast and where you can then strategise to overcome the competition rather than risking expenditure via innovation. Crafty, cheers.

oblio 4mo ago

The entire US auto industry is predicated on protectionism. Without it the Japanese would have wiped out GM/Ford/Chrysler in the 1980s, and now the Chinese in the 2020s-2030s.

thesmtsolver2 4mo ago

US never championed free trade if by free trade you mean "anything goes." Really strange that rest of the world can tariff and put up barriers, but once the US does that, all free-trade warriors step out of the wood work.

hollerith 4mo ago

Also, radar technology has been under export controls of various kinds by Washington continuously since WWII.