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Comment by tossaccount123 | Hacker News Reader

no shit, this is what everybody with a brain has warned about

China's MO is to subsidize Chinese businesses, restrict foreign competition internally, and steal foreign companies IP until they are bankrupt, while simultaneously being allowed to export their goods to those same countries with no penalty. Then they jack up the prices when all the competition is gone

Everybody criticized Trump for the steel and solar tariffs because they don't think beyond next quarter earnings report. What happens in 20 years when China has a monopoly on steel, solar, and other key industries and they decide to jack up prices? The rest of the world won't be able to do anything about it because they are junkies and China is the supplier

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Lots of people profit short-term by trading with China. It's easier to make a profit as a middleman with China than as a manufacturer in a western country. I'm definitely left wing, but I applaud Trump for the tariffs. Tariffs are a must for the western world if we want to maintain our standards of living and survive long-term.

Germany is also a predatory exporter in Europe, but fewer people seem to care about that. The US definitely doesn't want to end up having the same relations with China as Southern European countries ("PIIGS") have with Germany. You can't win if you have zero leverage left to negotiate.

Germany is the prime exporter of the EU. It has the benefit of the Euro in the internal market for buying power due to its size and it has the benefit of the Euro in the external market because German bonds denominated in Euros are cheaper for it than the other EU states.

I'm a democratic socialist, but tariffs are not the way to control trade and standards of living. That is a mercantilist attitude from the 19th Century. Tariffs are paid by the consumers in the country that has the tariffs (ie Tariffs on China by US is paid by people in the US). It primarily hits those that spend most of their income on consumption, which is those that are poorer.

What is needed is the power of Labor (ie unions etc) to be applied in the foreign country, by having restrictions on goods and services that are not provided by Labor with fair conditions.

That's not the same as pay or money, there are comparitive advantages in things like the supply and demand on local food production etc.

> Tariffs are paid by the consumers in the country that has the tariffs (ie Tariffs on China by US is paid by people in the US). It primarily hits those that spend most of their income on consumption, which is those that are poorer.

But consumers are already paying for the current situation in Germany. Instead of tariff, Germany decided to put downward pressure on salaries via the Hartz reforms. The effects are not far from tariff in that it shifts money from consumption towards savings/investments. That's why Germany has such a large trade surplus. And like tariff, it's a losing solution. In the end, your currency should reevaluate. Germany is just lucky to have the euro.

For a long time, I was really puzzled by why the German European partners stuck with Germany in the currency union were so tolerant of pretty much being spoiled. But after Macron, I think it's pretty clear: the richest are far too happy to be able to present lowering salaries and degrading work conditions as an inescapable part of modern economic competition. They are after all on the right side of the rising inequality.

>What is needed is the power of Labor (ie unions etc) to be applied in the foreign country, by having restrictions on goods and services that are not provided by Labor with fair conditions.

Although this would generally negate the need for tariffs, there are serious issues:

-You can't enforce this. It's a very different country on the other side of the globe.

-You can't properly observe working conditions for the entire supply chain (and conversation on what constitutes "fair conditions" can enter the realm of philosophy very quickly)

-Even if labor was in control of production, they could still act maliciously as a group

-Small transient fluctuations in efficiency are magnified without a hard cutoff to stop them from using the extra capital to become too big and undercut competition

And on top of that, rich countries have to face a sharp recession while the poor countries catch up. That's not a small amount of time. In much of Europe we already have 1-2 generations that faced very harsh economic conditions because of this. Generosity has limits. Yes, free trade (generally, not always) allows poor countries to develop faster, but they grow asymmetrically and the working/middle class of rich countries suffers too.

> I'm definitely left wing, but I applaud Trump for the tariffs.

I thought tariffs are leftist proposition. At least in Europe it is.

Tariffs are supported by both left and right for different reasons. People like Trump represent national/regional industrial interests so they want local production and less competition from abroad. Leftists (in the european, non-neoliberal sense) want to empower the local workers and economies. The resulting action is the same. And it makes sense from a geopolitical perspective too.

There are valid reasons not to implement tariffs too, but having completely unrestricted trade imbalances is a bad idea no matter how you look at it.

The opposite of tariffs is not "completely unrestricted trade imbalances".

The opposite of tariffs is common quality, safety, labor, ecological impact requirements.

Tariffs are just a tax on one part of the local population to subsidise another part. Tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter.

For the exporter, not being able to export to a particular country, if there are other markets available, is a hindrance, not a killer.

The US is a big market for Chinese solar panels, but so is the rest of the world.

China was a big customer for US soybeans, now it buys none. This has ruined US farmers, but the global soybean market has taken up that slack.

Tariffs are dumb, clunky, 19th century tools for a global, multinational world. We need to accelerate not just the flow of capital, but also of labor, we need to make sure that the benefits of development are shared, not "trickled down".

We need to bring the 3rd world to the level of the 1st, not drag the 1st down to the 3rd. It's not a zero-sum game.

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