Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 20 2018, @12:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the but,-but,-I-promised dept.

The United States Senate has passed an amendment that reinstates the ban on Chinese telecoms concern ZTE doing business with US-based companies.

President Trump said he’d secured a reversal of the ban as a personal favour to Chinese president Xi Jinping in the hope that the show of good faith would ease trade negotiations between the two nations. ZTE was banned from dealing with US firms for flouting laws about exporting to Iran and North Korea. The ban cut ZTE off from critical component-makers like Qualcomm and led to it shuttering production lines and resellers dumping its products.

Trump's plan to have his friendship with Xi ease tensions appears not to have worked, in the short term at least, because the Trump administration today issued a statement that said “China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology” and therefore threatening tariffs on US$200bn of Chinese goods.

The threat came after Trump last week announced tariffs on $50bn of Chinese goods, sparking retaliatory tariffs on about $35bn of US-made goods from China.

All of which doesn’t look like that personal favour worked out as planned.

Back to the ZTE vote, as it saw US Senators from both sides of politics decry the removal of the ban on grounds of national security. A joint statement from senior Republican and Democratic senators read: “We're heartened that both parties made it clear that protecting American jobs and national security must come first when making deals with countries like China, which has a history of having little regard for either. It is vital that our colleagues in the House keep this bipartisan provision in the bill as it heads towards a conference.”

And there’s the rub, because the US House of Representatives has passed a version of the same bill without the ZTE ban. Reconciling the bill may yet see ZTE given a lifeline, although the Senate vote passed 85 votes to 10 so there’s clearly not much will for a reversal.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @04:36AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @04:36AM (#695451)

    USA doesn't have a Left.
    The Dumbocrats are only slightly less Right.[1] [politicalcompass.org]
    Don't believe me? Ask a bigwig. [google.com]

    [1] ...and that chart is skewed to the left.
    Nader hardly ever mentions worker-owned cooperatives[2]--and then only in passing.
    I have NEVER heard Kucinich mention worker-owned cooperatives[2].

    [2] ...the fundamental unit of Socialism.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +5  
       Insightful=2, Informative=3, Disagree=1, Total=6
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 20 2018, @02:29PM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 20 2018, @02:29PM (#695590) Journal

    I'm well aware of that. I've been on the internet since the turn of the century, and then some. I've been talking to real lefties, mostly from Europe, for a lot of that time. But, at least five other people found your post informative. Maybe you need to keep on preaching that part of your sermons.

    Meanwhile - socialism hasn't really worked out anywhere yet, on a macro scale, has it? Certainly not full-blown communism.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @08:08PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @08:08PM (#695746)

      You're falling back into Cold War bullshit.

      First, from 1917 until 1924 (when Lenin died and Stalin grabbed power), USSR had a successful form of both. [google.com]
      N.B. A soviet is a council: workers council, consumers council, town council, whatever.

      It was aggression (not competition) from Capitalist countries that hindered their efforts in those years.
      Since just after its birth, USSR has had to deal with USAian aggression.
      Immediately after WWI was over in Europe, USA and that bunch didn't bring their forces home but instead used them in a criminal invasion of USSR.

      short version [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [counterpunch.org]
      s/not provide/not providing

      detailed version [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [criticalenquiry.org]
      (The Japs didn't break off that thrust and leave USSR until 1922.)

      .
      Next, there's the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned cooperatives in Italy.
      In this one region [wikimedia.org] alone, there's over 8000. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
      ...and that hasn't been updated in a while.
      N.B. The co-ops account for about a third of the commerce in the region.

      ...and, of course there's Mondragon, which started with 5 worker-owners in 1956 and is currently on 5 continents. [google.com]
      Presence worldwide [mondragon-corporation.com]
      Some images of some things Mondragon does these days [google.com]
      N.B. That 1 cooperative is more wealthy|successful than a lot of countries are (Capitalist countries, BTW).

      .
      not full-blown communism

      USSR had "communism" from 1917 to 1991.
      That's 74 years by my count.[1]

      Let's compare to the Capitalist "Democratic" things:
      -Germany's THIRD Reich
      -France's FOURTH Republic
      -The Confederate States of America 1861 - 1865
      -USA's confederation of 1776 - 1789 failed and was replaced with an even more oligarchical "democracy".
      (Currently, with the majority of USAians doing worse than their parents, that's a failure.)

      [1] Granted, the feedback loop between The Workers and gov't wasn't so good once Stalin took over and decided he wanted to be dictator.

      Now, we might compare that to what's been going on with USA's Capitalist "democracy" since the Powell Memorandum of 1971 and see how Joe Average has been doing.
      ...in particular, how Trump views himself as Fuhrer.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 21 2018, @01:08AM (2 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 21 2018, @01:08AM (#695907) Journal

        There isn't a single communist government that can boast the US' age. Not one. Keep trying. And, you don't get to define failure, or success. The US is more than 200 years old. Find a communist nation that can boast 100 years. Can't do it.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:50AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:50AM (#696043)

          That's 1 metric.
          It's not the (Trumpian) one that I would choose to dwell on.

          With the conversion of Russian serfs to Soviet citizens, folks in USSR got universal education, universal healthcare, and a guaranteed roof over their heads.
          ...and everybody had a job to go to.

          As I already mentioned, USA has a declining standard of living.
          I see "success" as Joe Average doing better than his parents.
          In 2015, 55 percent of USAians couldn't weather a $400 emergency without selling something or taking out a loan.
          In 2016, the number went up to 60 percent.

          This doesn't even include, with the financialization of USA's economy plus worker compensation flat since the early 1970s while costs constantly increase, that most folks have had to live on credit for well over a decade.

          You clearly think that an increase in inequality [google.com] is not something to worry about in a "democracy".
          I do.

          ...and USA's Labor Non-Participation Rate has stayed at a near-constant 23 percent for a decade.
          (Unlike the New Deal years and the USSR's system, actual employment in the 21st Century Neoliberal USA isn't even keeping up with population growth.)

          That's not what I call a successful system.
          It is, in fact, a failure.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:32PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:32PM (#696194) Journal

            China seems to be a success then. They've kinda put communism on a back burner, and joined the rest of the world in capitalistic ventures. Communism is a failure, and even the Chinese have tacitly admitted as much.