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Comment by tobias3 | Hacker News Reader

China does it, so it is okay for us to do it is just a very weak defense of this behaviour for us looking at this from outside of China and the US.

The US stood for free markets, democracy and human rights and (at least) pretended to make international decisions based on those values. Now the fig leaf is gone and it is clear that those are mostly used to make transactions to US benefit even if it comes at the cost to others.

If you value something like free markets, you stand by it even if it comes at a cost in the near future. If opaque TikTok recommendation engines are a problem, maybe regulate them in a way that solves the problem in general? That would hurt Youtube, Facebook and co. but it also would make the EU more comfortable in the negotiation for the Privacy Shield successor.

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This is how trade has always worked.

A free market doesn’t exist if a country wants to sell their products cheaply in your country completely untaxed, while taxing your goods to the point of being unattainable. Just like a country can’t reasonably say they deserve unrestrained, free access to your social media market while banning every single product from their country.

A free market means companies compete on their own merits without imbalanced restrictions. This is balancing the restrictions.

US banning Chineese apps is an anti-China move and not an anti-free market move.

An anti free market move would be protecting their own companies against all global competition, irrespective of country.

They are protecting their own companies against all global competition, irrespective of country. It just happens that only China represents a serious threat to US hegemony in this market.

Edit: This comment was being voted positively (+4) until the US folks started to wake up (now sitting at 0) :)

+4 to 0 is not THAT much of a difference to be called out tbh. So not sure if it tells you enough about US folks starting to wake up.

It is both, and in its arbitrary application, it's even worse than a purely anti-free-market move, because it's not even principled. Isolationism and domestic protectionism, if those were the given reasons, would at least be principled.

The principle is that if you are in support of CCP, you get what you preach, and should be treated according to Marxist norms. Free market is for those who respect and support free market and fair competition.

The principle is just whatever Mr. Trump personally sees and understands as being something that hurts him personally or allows him to make a move that projects his personal image of strong man.

The problem is not even the goal, but the shallowness of the approach. He doesn't appear to be surrounded by people who craft comprehensive strategies that he then understands and ponders deeply before hitting the tweet button.

He had plenty of time to organize a cohesive policy to redefine the relationship with China; this all looks like improvised reaction based on a hunch or worse based on rumors that the Tulsa rally was tanked because of a viral video on tiktok.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, please give me some stand of hope that we're dealing with a super smart 4d chess player that just behaves like an incoherent senile showbiz person. I might not agree with policies but I'd honestly prefer a competent person to this lunacy.

This whole thing is surreal. We have a chaos-monkey pulling the strings on global economy and order, and we're discussing whether he may or may not have a point on some things. He clearly has a point on something now and then. A random number generator would resonate with parts of the populace even more.

By that logic the US should ban transactions related to oil and gas supplies originating from OPEC countries.

The modern CCP bears zero resemblance to 19th-century Marxist theory.

This is how realpolitik works.

The U.S. was unique for a long time in that they did not ask for much in return for what they did, because they wanted the power (troop deployments in Europe, Hong Kong customs status, etc.).

Recently, Canada used tit-for-tat to deal with U.S. aluminum tariffs, but they're the "nice" country. This is how it all works.

It's a challenging situation a lot like freedom of speech and tolerance. The intolerant people who want to remove freedom of speech are given the freedoms to make those arguments.

I tend to think in the trade situation, it's best to play the long game and try and stay open. Once both sides start banning each other, then it's probably never turning around without some significant leverage gain by one of the parties.

> China does it, so it is okay for us to do it is just a very weak defense of this behaviour for us looking at this from outside of China and the US.

Hardly. Reciprocity is common place in all manners of international relations, be it trade, visas/travel, embassy restrictions, and even warfare. The fact that China has been allowed to conduct themselves this way with little to no retaliation is the outlier, not these new actions.

> China does it, so it is okay for us to do it is just a very weak defense of this behaviour for us looking at this from outside of China and the US.

This is how trade relationships work.

If china puts a tariff on us, for corn, or steel, or whatever, then the US is going to put the same exact corn/steel tariff on them.

Reciprocity is a foundational premise of trade relations.

> The US stood for free markets

We have tariffs against many countries for many different reasons... This is nothing new. That is just how trade relations work.

>We have tariffs against many countries for many different reasons... This is nothing new. That is just how trade relations work.

That's not trade, it's politics. Any economist would point out that tariffs hurt Americans by increasing the prices they pay. Yeah, let's teach those Chinese a lesson by making goods more expensive and reducing our standard of living!

> That's not trade, it's politics

Exactly the words you should be addressing to CCP, as the modern mainland China is not involved in fair trade, doesn't respect IP laws, and doesn't treat US companies equally on its territory.

I used to be on this train that tariffs are always bad, but when other countries have them I think there is a benefit to the US having them. It allows the US to capture some of the benefits that this other country is taking. Yes everyone is worse off than without tariffs, but the US is slightly better off from the world where only other countries have them. There is also the additional caveat of industries moving to other countries because of cheap export back to the US - there is a benefit to keeping people employed especially when other countries don’t have ethical labor laws. This results in more expensive goods, but prices in externalities like workers not working in sweatshops.

In this situation we would be taking one of their companies though, which benefits Americans.

A US company recieves this company, and we get it for cheap.

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