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Comment by carsongross | Hacker News Reader

This is where, and bear with me on this HN, Donald Trump is right.

We in the west, especially us smart folks, cherish our environment, and we think it is shameful to force people to work in inhumane conditions. How fair is it, then, to force our fellow westerners who didn't win the intelligence lottery to compete with labor in countries that don't care one whit about either?

It isn't right. The multinationals will shriek bloody murder about it, because they've made a killing engaging in moral arbitrage, but it's time to tariff the hell out of products produced in ecological and human conditions we would find deplorable in our own countries.

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Trump is beating a populist drum to pander for votes from the disenfranchised Republican base. As a textbook narcissist there is no way he actually cares about the downtrodden and would leap at the opportunity to offshore labor if it was ever to his advantage. Witness today's flip -flop on taxing the wealthy. He's cribbing from Sander's playbook to try and attract more left leaning voters. There's no way he would ever push for such tax reform if he were actually put in office.

Trump may be a raging narcissist, but he has a long history of kindness to strangers. Probably the most famous example is his 1986 rescue of a widow's family farm in Georgia, about to be sold after the husband had killed himself in despair:

http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/a-66-year-old-widows-farm...

Thirty years later, the daughter appeared at a Trump rally in South Carolins to thank him, probably one factor behind his decisive win in that state.

http://youtu.be/dRoX9BTu8Ew

If you check the web you can find many other such accounts of his acts of generosity.

He clearly doesn't believe in his positions but is saying what he thinks people want to hear. His faux pas on punishing women who have abortions makes that crystal clear. It's what pro-choice people think pro-life people say. Pro-life people don't actually think that way.

I suspect it's the same deal with globalization policy. This is a man who manufactures his clothing outside of the U.S. If he cared about American workers or inhumane conditions, he'd at least do it kicking and screaming instead of acting like he's inculpable.

Actually, his positions on important issues have remained quite consistent over time.

Donald Trump's anti-NAFTA position in 1993: https://i.sli.mg/0HYlvv.png

His assertion of the need of Japan and Saudi Arabia to contribute for the U.S. defense of them, in 1987: https://i.sli.mg/joqU4W.png

Do you think that by using tariffs for political pressure, we can force China to raise their standard of living to developed-country levels? Otherwise, this just amounts to a transfer from the Chinese poor to the American poor, which seems like a big net loss morally.

It seems pretty clear that China would like their standard of living to be higher, and in fact it is rising at almost unprecedented rates [1] which have been sustained for over a decade. I'm sure they could do an even better job but I'm not sure I see how tariffs would bring that about.

[1] https://www.eca-international.com/news/november-2015/chinese...

I'm curious why you would label the transfer from the Chinese poor to the American poor as a net loss morally? Is the transfer from the American poor to the Chinese poor also morally suspect?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just genuinely curious about your statement. Is it a moral loss because the American poor are still relatively better off than their Chinese counterparts or something else?

Yes, the typical Chinese factory worker (who would not even be particularly poor by Chinese standards) is quite a bit poorer than the typical displaced American factory worker, so there should be a strong presumption against transferring wealth from the former to the latter.

In practice, it's done the opposite way. The implementation of work condition standards is a standard feature of trade liberalisation agreements, including the TPP. Manufacturing tariffs are, indeed, a wealth transfer from foreign producers and domestic consumers to the owners and workers of domestic production. Of course, this is a highly inefficient way to do this transfer, and you'd be better off redistributing the broad gains from free trade.

You'd be hard pressed to find a Trump supporter admit that they are looking for government handouts, though.

Tariffs are not profitable. Deadweight losses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss

And if we're really lucky, Trump or Bernie or even Clinton will Smoot-Hawley-tarriff us into another Great Depression.

...which depression will then be artificially extended for years by populist New Deal policies. (taxes, massive subsidies, Social Security / basic income)

Social Security is not a top candidate for extending the last Depression, though it could figure in this one. It's important to note that the real awesome things for prolonging the last Great Depression were genius moves like the Agricultural Adjustment Act (price supports and paying farmers to not-grow crops while burning crops deliberately in the midst of famine, plus laying the foundations for every modern lefty's favorite Big Agribusiness complex) and all the centralized economic planning under the National Recovery Administration (industrial collusion and price fixing on both the local and national levels).

True, at the time Social Security just wasn't big enough (yet) to make much of a difference.

It would be nice if you support that claim with some data.

Well, the New Deal started in 1933 with unemployment at 25%. Five years later, in 1938 it was still at 19%.

Most historians agree that the New Deal was mostly ineffectual at recovery, and that WWII effected real results. (WWII started in 1939, and within two years unemployment was in single digits.)

---

That the New Deal was actively harmful (not just ineffectual) in the recovery is a popular opinion, though admittedly not the majority one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Recession_of_1937_and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Harmful

---

A further opinion is that it wasn't WWII at all, but rather just the ending of the New Deal and excessive spending itself.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/11/30/the-grea...

Well consumers won't be able to buy their $30 jeans if they're produced locally... This problem is just as much about consumers wanting lower prices as it is about corporations wanting to make more money.

You can get USA made jeans for under $40. Round House and Union Line both have them.

Trump isn't against free trade because of environmental issues or or labor disparity. He's against free trade because he feels China is artificially deflating their currency.

Trump has absolutely no concern for America's labor force.

I recommend the book "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" which looks at how tariffs protect local economies. When economic networks flatten, single entities dominate.

I want to upvote this comment but I have no idea what "moral arbitrage" means. Is that like Apple being a green company but its factory works in Asia kill themselves?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I've read that Foxconn's suicide rates are actually lower than the rates of American college students. I understand that may not be a perfect comparison since college suicide rates tend to be fairly high and there may be many other reasons to be critical of Foxconn/Apple's labor practices but I'm not sure the highly publicized stories about suicides are necessarily a good indicator of working conditions.

Right, the notorious peak group of 14 Foxconn suicides was in 2010, but still being referenced as if they happened yesterday. This compares with a national suicide rate in China of 22 per 100,000. Given the ~ 1 million workers at Foxconn, statistically it's far safer to be employed there than not. And, having chatted with Foxconn workers from the Zhengzhou iPhone factory, the main problem is that it's mindnumbingly boring, though the pay is deemed relatively good.

What does "being green" have to do with suicide rates at factories that are, by and large, in line with rates in the U.S.?

Suicides are just the most sensational part. They repeated break labor guidelines set by Apple.

Again, what does that have to do with "being green"?

Yes.

Politicians say a lot of things, you're a chump if you actually believe them. Come on.

You claim to be "a smart folk", while supporting Donald Trump and referring to the working class as "people who didn't win the intelligence lottery". I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you sir, are clearly not a smart folk.

The economy follows the path of least resistance and offshoring jobs is that path in the short term. Many actors in our society get rewarded in a short-term basis, e.g: bonuses are given in a per-quarter or fiscal year basis. Short-term strategies are not necessarily good for the long-term.

Your comment is more ad hominem than helpful. Furthermore, being in agreement with Trump on a single issue does not mean OP supports him in general.

A blanket statement over an entire socioeconomic class ("people who didn't win the intelligence lottery") should not be the target for upvoting in a site appealing to modern people.

I don't think that the parent's comment regarding the possibility of Trump being right on this issue necessarily implies their overall support of him.

I doubt there are many politician who's stances you agree with 100% of the time. There probably aren't too many you disagree with completely either.

Please don't take this as an endorsement of Trump though. Also, I am certainly not one of the "smart folk" so I could be wrong in my interpretation of your comment.

I went to Cal for undergrad and Stanford for grad school.

I'm comfortable with my intellectual abilities.

China and the US conduct a lot of trade and have built dependencies on each other products and services. In this regard, economies are deeply interconnected.

A slight imbalance can cause negative effects for either economy.

The fragility of the situation requires some deep analysis and, leaving this matter to a person like Donald Trump is something that concerns me.

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