SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
President Trump has signed a presidential memorandum directing the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to draw up a list of Chinese products on which tariffs could be imposed. The list will be made public in 15 days, and tariffs will take effect after a 60-day comment period:
The US plans to impose tariffs on up to $60bn (£42.5bn) in Chinese goods and limit the country's investment in the US in retaliation for years of alleged intellectual property theft.
The White House said the actions were necessary to counter unfair competition from China's state-led economy. It said years of talks had failed to produce change. China said it was ready to retaliate with "necessary measures". Beijing also said it would "fight to the end" in any trade war with the US.
US stock markets closed lower on Thursday, as investors responded to the announcement. [...] The White House said it has a list of more than 1,000 products that could be targeted by tariffs of 25%. Businesses will have the opportunity to comment before the final list goes into effect.
Reuters portrays the action as "far removed from threats that could have ignited a global trade war". Bloomberg notes that many industry trade groups and companies are opposing the tariffs.
Related: US Government Puts Tariffs on Imported Solar Cells, Solar Modules, and Washing Machines
Major US Solar Company Blames Job Cuts On Trump's Solar Import Tariff
U.S. Steel and Aluminum Imports to Face New Tariffs
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dltaylor on Friday March 23 2018, @09:16AM (19 children)
If the People's Republic of China, simply outlawed all shipments to the USA, or to subsidiaries of US-headquartered (where the execs work, not where the money is hiding), the USA economy would collapse in months. The USA has two major exports: dollars, and expended ammunition, and doesn't really charge for the latter; add a boycott of minor exports, like farm produce and videos, and the damage would be total.
The USA does have a colonial relationship with much of the world, but not like its current leaders imagine. Countries that ship raw materials and farm goods and buy manufactured goods are economic colonies of the manufacturing nations. Wall street's hunger for ever-increasing share prices, due to the stupid Reagan-era preference for capital gains, has driven the movement of most manufacturing to low-wage countries, particularly those with few, or no, environmental protections.
A trade war with the country that keeps your retailers and military (no, the USA cannot currently make everything that its military requires) going is amazingly stupid until you can function without them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday March 23 2018, @10:07AM (16 children)
And the Chinese economy would tank, too. The Chinese probably won't be that stupid.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday March 23 2018, @10:55AM
With a new Mao-like figure at its head? It will take decades for the economy to collapse, in which time they may even recover based on the investments in Africa (grow some countries in there, have a market in them). Besides... BRICS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 23 2018, @05:00PM (14 children)
It would harm both economies immeasurably, and take most of the rest of the world economy down with them.
However, the United States and Europe would prevail. China has no civil society to buffer the effects. Its government is strong, but it is brittle. They'd pretty much have to start a war with Taiwan or Japan to unify the populace and keep them from eating Beijing alive. At this time, it's still a war that China would resoundingly lose. It would redraw the global map for the next 100 years, and China would remain a smouldering ruin for most of that.
China has been playing its cards right so far. They've been beefing up their lines of supply with Africa and agreements with Central Asia. They've been building up their military and catching up in technology. They have constructed the infrastructure that serves a country well in war. They also have a military doctrine ready to attach the West on all fronts simultaneously. In 15 years they'll be ready to win, if current trajectories remain the same.
So it's in their interests to avert a confrontation now to allow those plans to ripen to fruition.
It may not be up to them, though. It may be the timing in the United States that brings things to a head first. Americans may not realize it consciously yet, but institutions of all kinds have suffered a catastrophic loss of authority. DC may try to pick a fight with China to keep citizens from eating them alive.
We'll see.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 23 2018, @05:27PM (13 children)
However, the United States and Europe would prevail. China has no civil society to buffer the effects.
I don't know about that. China has weathered famine and uprising in the recent past on the back of that rigid society. You think the US won't collapse the first day Big Macs aren't available? Hell, our president would probably be the first one in the streets!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @05:59PM (1 child)
We don't have as many people but we could probably resort to cannibalism like the Chinese did.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 23 2018, @06:02PM
That's a good point, as Americans we have the largest strategic fat reserves on the planet!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:23AM (10 children)
The difference is that the US wouldn't have a famine to weather. Despite all the talk, I don't see either economy being all that susceptible. But if it comes to food security, the US has a glaring advantage with far more food produced than its local economy can eat. There would be a substantial decline and retrenchment on both sides, but nobody would collapse. While the US hasn't suffered through anything serious in a while (and probably won't even in the case of a trade war), parts of the US have so suffered through disaster, and they've turned out well. People pull through when they have to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:55PM (9 children)
China can also easily produce enough food for itself to eat. They export food too you realise?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:58PM (8 children)
They import [csis.org] (see graph which has the US exporting over $17 billion, while the largest Chinese exports to Japan are around $2.5 billion) a lot more food products by dollar value than they export, but yes, they're currently self-sustaining.
The US is a lot more than just self-sustaining however. From the above link:
It's also worth noting that 27% [worldbank.org] of Chinese workers currently work in agriculture compared to 2% of US workers. And that the US has about 50% more land area [cia.gov] (in link, "arable" means crops that have to be replanted each year like rice and wheat, "permanent crops" means plants that grow multiple years like fruit trees or olives) under cultivation than China does.
And of course, the US only has to feed a little over a quarter the population of China in order to achieve food security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:16AM (7 children)
They import more expensive food because they are becoming wealthier and like more and varied stuff. They would be unhappy maybe if you told them to stop.(Unless there was a good reason like a trade war.) But they are far from dependent on food imports like you tried to imply..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 25 2018, @05:30AM (6 children)
I quite agree which is why I noted that China is self-sufficient. But there's two important points to make here. First, the US has enough land under cultivation that they probably could feed both the US and China - it's 50% more than China has (keep in mind also that the US wastes a huge amount of food). And they're doing it with more than an order of magnitude less labor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @02:31PM (5 children)
Congratulations, your agriculture sector is equivalent to a first world one and China's is equivalent to a developing world one. (no surprises there.)
The 2 key points are, China is self sufficient. China is easily rich enough to buy any food it wants from any other country it wants to if America decides to take it's ball and go home.
How much food America can or can't produce is irrelevant.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 25 2018, @03:56PM (4 children)
Exactly - which is quite relevant to talk of food security.
No, the 2 key points are that China is barely self sufficient using a much larger fraction of its population as a workforce and that the US can do all the same things on an even greater scale, in the even more unlikely event that they need to.
Thus, when someone boasts
They are basically talking out their ass. Let us also keep in mind that China had said famine and uprising due to a level of incompetence and tyranny that the US has yet to stoop to. This could of course change in the moderately long term future. China is definitely getting its act together and the US, well, is kind of regressing at present. So what is true today need not be true (and probably won't be) in the future.
But if tomorrow, food were to become scarce enough that even the US were facing collapse, China would go first.
My view is that the tariff war of the story would harm both sides, but it wouldn't result in a threat to their societies. Sorry, we're all dependent on trade, but not to that degree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:23PM (3 children)
This is idiotic. Neither country is going to starve. So China can make enough food to eat. And all those widget makers can go grow more food when the US stops buying their widgets. Yay, now they can throw even more food straight into the bin.
Quickly tell me how the mighty US of A can already throw even more food into the bin, I'm sure everyone will be super impressed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 25 2018, @11:12PM (2 children)
Ok, if it's so idiotic, then why are you agreeing with me?
Keep in mind that I was responding to someone who claimed the US would fall to pieces, if Big Macs were no longer available while China would somehow soldier on, ignoring that most such situations which would do that to the US would do far worse to China due to its considerably weaker food security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @02:13AM (1 child)
The difference is China will happily boycott American everything for the good of the country. And Americans will happily ship all their jobs overseas to make that widget a tiny bit cheaper, screw their neighbour. Which country is living on the edge with no safety margins when prices rise even a tiny bit from a trade war. Those people won't be able to afford big Macs any more and quickly fall to pieces.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 26 2018, @04:26AM
So what's supposed to be the difference again? You can find both categories of people in both countries, for example, people who deliberately "buy USA" or who knowingly sell [wikipedia.org] poisonous fake protein merely because it's cheaper.
The other AC was saying that no one was living on the edge. So why do you disagree with him?
But to follow the implications of your claim, Big Macs are a well-known US food and pretty damn cheap. I've already discussed why it's laughable to claim that US food security is somehow worse than Chinese food security. For example, there are such things as the US producing several times as much food as US citizens eat and doing so with a vanishingly small portion of its population. And most things that would wreck US food security would have Chinese dying in droves.
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:50PM
Which is simply not going to happen. Why entertain fantasy scenarios?
The U.S. already has a terribly lopsided trade imbalance with China -- almost $400 billion in 2017. Despite that terribly lopsided trade imbalance, China still smacks the U.S. with plenty of tariffs.
The tariffs the Trump administration are enacting impacts a pretty small amount of trade with China, maybe 10% to 20%. This isn't the end of the world, and frankly, China has been cheating the U.S. for years. These tariffs are long overdue. If China wants free trade, then maybe they should consider dropping their tariffs on U.S. goods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:23PM
Apparently comrade, you were absent when they discussed the concept of economic dumping at the University of Moscow. No worries, I will enlighten you.
The Yuan has been kept trading at an artificially low exchange rate for decades. The Chinese government also subsidizes shipping for finished goods to the U.S. This has resulted in a slow bleeding to death of U.S. manufacturing, and a dramatic growth in Chinese manufacturing.
The problem with this, is that having a functional domestic manufacturing base is actually important for a lot of reasons that are not emediately apparent to those whose realities are defined by what they watch of TV.
Yes, prices are going to rise for consumer goods. But they are really just catching up to an existing disproportionaitely high inflation rate for durable goods and materials. We are going to suffer for a few years. The state will probably report 9% inflation, but we will probably see something closer to 13%. Note that this is just public debt being paid off by inflating it out of existence. This inflation has already happened, it just hasn't been booked yet. This correction has to happen, and sooner is better than later.
The great American pimping experiment is over. Hustlers and drama queens (the banking at media sectors) are going start seeing less money, and people who actually do things are going to start seeing more money. But over the next few years, we are all going to take it in the ass. Or more to the point, we already have, we are just going to realize it.
If the Chinese were smart, they would negotiate. And what you would see it as a result is either the Yuan float, or the exchange rate change in our favor slightly. But really, I think the trade war is the way to go. We need market stability for our manufacturing base, and that is never going to happen as long as the Yuan is state managed. Even if they changed the exchange rate, they would just change it back in 6 years, when some new enron or AIG style banking scam is operating under the colors of the executive branch. (both parties can be relied on to support whatever scam that happens to be)
China is to manufacturing, what OPEC is to alternative fuels.
Of course we could talk about more important things, like the latest whitehouse beavergate.