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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

> In many ways Trump's aggressive trade practices may be the only answer to this if Trump focused on China.

That's circular, US "aggressive trade practices" (which means unilateral tarrifs, let's not spin, please) came first, so making them "the only answer" is sort of self-fulfilling.

Frankly it's much more likely that Chinese trade shenanigans like this are the result of the escalating trade war. The volatile climate makes "big steps" like enjoining a whole foreign company more attractive as the relative threat of retaliation is less. If you think your opponent is going to pull the trigger, you shoot first.

Now we just have to wait for more, ahem, "aggressive trade practices" to be announced by the White House, and we'll escalate further.

This is what a trade war looks like, folks.

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> US "aggressive trade practices" (which means unilateral tarrifs, let's not spin, please) came first

This just isn't true. China has not played fairly against the US in modern history. Putting aside problems like currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, and putting up barriers for foreign companies, they also haven't played fair with regards to tariffs.

Take Elon Musk's word for it if you don't believe me: "an American car going to China pays 25% import duty, but a Chinese car coming to the US only pays 2.5%, a tenfold difference"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/08/elon-musk-sides-with-trump-o...

No one plays fair in international trade. I mean, we've literally installed dictators in countries to get better trade consideration. And recently thanks to Snowden, we know that the NSA hacked AirBus to give Boeing an edge, and appears to believe that the "economic security" of the US is a component of their SIGINT domain.

I'm not really sure why we expect others to "play fair".

Do you have a source about that NSA/Airbus/Boeing comment? Would be interesting to read.

nsa spied on airbus along with german intelligence to see if they were violating embargoes

And then passed that information to Boeing.

The mainstream US media discourse on this is dishonest too, to say the least. Remember Politifact's 2012 lie of the year, the Romney campaign's claim that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China? After it turned out that Chrysler was in fact setting up a Jeep factory in China, pretty much the entire US media insisted that the claim was still a lie because they were only building Jeeps there because of tariffs, as though those tariffs were some inevitable fact of life rather than an example of Chinese protectionism.

Romney's claim was after the news story about setting up a factory, not before (your chronology is wrong).

And he said they would move all production to China based on a mis-interpretation of the story:

"I saw a story today, that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China,"

He said all production, not some of it. He was riffing on a public news report that didn't say what he said it did.

The most unfair thing is the slave labor wages being paid to Chinese workers to make the stuff that Americans enjoy daily. In trade you obviously trade off things you need for things they need, and you don't reach an agreement unless it was ultimately beneficial to you. And let me tell ya, I'd much rather be the side that has to deal with some tariffs than be the side that has millions of my population mired in slavery to service your nation.

This makes it sound like the US was just a small country mislead by powerful China. In fact every agreement between Chinese and American companies was signed because of it was beneficial to both sides. It was the US that allowed American companies to setup shop in China and transfer their technology for what it looked like a good deal. Now the US wants to recant on its decades old policy as if this was a big surprise.

Well it is a little more complicated then that. Although it wasn't explicitly listed ( and I have no idea why it wasn't given most other countries had ), China would have to open up its market "more" to allow proper competition. Those deals, were signed after WTO, where it was beneficials to both in the long term. China gets to learn about the tech, and have US companies hiring there people, making investment into China under some partnership conditions. After 10 years it was suppose to be loosen. Instead US was trapped with investment money that cant be easily transferred out, and a market so big that they cant ignore.

> After 10 years it was suppose to be loosen.

it is childish at best to selectively focus on WTO agreements only. when China is banned from purchasing most high tech stuff from the US, even some intel Xeon processors and DELL computers, how could you possibly expect to have easier access to the Chinese market?

The US government should also become more consistent when it comes to international treaties and agreements, if those WTO agreements are indeed so bad to the US, why not just follow America's own paths in the Iranian deal, the Paris Climate deal and the UN human right commission case? Rather than keep crying on whether WTO is fair or not, maybe it is time to pack up and leave WTO? Trump mentioned it recently but didn't have the balls to actually make it happen, so sad.

And I agree. There are LOTS of moving parts so it is hard to single out. And US hasn't exactly been playing "decently" either.

I just wish China would open up just a "little" more. To shut everyone up.

Are you saying that Trump's aggressive trade policy is the reason why China is stealing American IP?

I genuinely thought I'd been pretty clear, so that question seems like you're trying an unhelpful "gotcha" instead of reading what I wrote.

I'm saying that Trump's "aggressive trade policy" (senseless surprise tarrifs) was the impetus for this particular action (senseless surprise import ban). Absent that, the IP theft would have continued quietly (as it always has, everywhere) and the destabilizing trade war wouldn't be happening.

You seem to be taking an absolutist perspective: IP theft[1] must not ever be tolerated and any action to prevent it, however destabilizing, must be taken. And that's how you get trade wars (real wars too, FWIW). This was a nice modern economy we had while it lasted.

[1] I mean, come on. It's ?!@#! DRAM and flash. There are a half dozen manufacturers all over the world making exactly this same junk. It's not like sudden "Chinese" threat to Micron was going to introduce competition in any way that Samsung and Fujitsu were not already providing. Please.

> half a dozen

No, the market has concentrated and is very largely dominated by just 3 companies: Samsung and SK Hynix in Korea and Micron. I don't think China has a whole lot of choice as regards memory chips in the volumes that they need. And getting new supply up and running is a yrs long process.

> There are a half dozen manufacturers all over the world making exactly this same junk.

Not in the densities required for modern uses.

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