Hacker News Reader

> This administration messed up any opportunity to curtail China

Companies are stepping over each other to move factories out of China. Just check chinalawblog. Any sane COO is de-risking right now. And what about Pompeo's speech? tariffs? banning wechat? supporting Taiwan? There's an endless list of this administration actions trying to curtail China.

> dropping TPP.

TPP was still an IF still when 2017 rolled around.

> Chinese know what a joke this administration is which is why they basically captured Hong Kong, are trying to destroy Vietnam, extracting as much from Australia and India

China is making stupid mistakes after mistakes. It managed to piss off almost every surrounding neighbors: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, etc. It is basically at war with India right now. And US, Canada, UK, France, and some EU countries are in conflict with China as well. Just recently, even Germany, one of its last ally in Europe has condemned China publically for the czech republic situation

China is so knee deep in trouble, with internal top leadership conflict, coronavirus, job losses, suffering trade, flooding, food shortage, that it has no choice but to establish internal "order" with inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet. But it is messing up there too.

> Also, comparing to Germany, a country with a population less than 20% of the US

That's just dishonest hand waving. Everyone knows Germany leads the EU.

> Why don’t you compare to India

China literally killed Indian soldiers - an act of war. There's no comparison here. And again, this is election year. This US administration cannot piss off every US companies by an absolute economic sanction on China.

Companies are moving their manufacturing out of China, they were before covid and it’s accelerating now. However companies are definitely going to want to sell the the gigantic and growing Chinese market, if they can. This is especially true the longer covid keeps western economies shit down.

> companies are definitely going to want to sell the the gigantic and growing Chinese market

Tons of companies have had that same dream in the last 40 years, before China gets old in 2050, before China became nationalist in 2018. Companies like KFC, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Samsung, Nintendo, Home Depot, Mattel, Ebay.

Mind give an estimate when China will collapse?

> with internal top leadership conflict

Source? My understanding is Xi has pretty effectively consolidated power, and such internal struggles would be pretty opaque to everyone who doesn't have access to a well-connected CCP member.

It does look like they're expecting a period of increased isolation in the future though: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/business/china-xi-economy...

sinoinsider

A lot of your complaints could have been the US at various times. And we're still here.

The US basically owns the printing press that they can run for free that other people need to earn for with hard labor. So comparing any country to US is not right - US can make a lot of mistakes and still feel zero repercussions.

This administration is “tough” on China only because the Chinese haven’t agreed to illegally help them with their re-election efforts, and because blaming China for Covid19 is a convenient diversion from the abject failure of the US federal response, and plays nicely to its supporters’ racism and xenophobia.

According to Bolton’s book, when Trump met Xi he praised the Chinese treatment of Uighurs, and begged Xi for help (to borrow Trump’s favorite description, “he begged him like a dog”).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-x...

This goes along with Trump’s at-least-monthly private phone calls and meetings with Putin where he gets his next instructions, his (as he personally described them) “love letters” to and from Kim Jong Un, his praise for Balsonaro, Erdogan, Orbán, Duda, Prince Salman, Netanyahu, and so on.

The idea that the administration wants to stick it to the Chinese as a way to defend human rights and democracy is ludicrous on its face.

^ wherein @jonathannat discovers that the US liberal establishment lives in an impenetrable bubble inside which no one can say that the Trump administration is doing something right.

The TPP was also a deeeeeee-saster, it amounted to a mega-corp giveaway and one of the most egregious things to the HN crowd at the time was imposing America’s draconian copyright laws on all signatory countries. Frankly I was surprised Obama wanted it as part of his legacy.

> This administration messed up any opportunity to curtail China by dropping TPP

All major candidates of the 2016 election intended to end TPP, so it was dead either way. Only Obama sought to pursue it. To act like it wasn't dead is misinformation

This is very disingenuous.

I went back and read Clinton's position, which was that the concept of the US pivoting to the Pacific Rim vis a vis trade was critical but that TPP lacked some additional measures she wanted (ex. stronger measures against currency manipulation).

I don't think Trump ever articulated a cogent policy position on TPP at all. He did have plenty of his usual free association ranting, though, like:

> "And the Obama Trans-Pacific Partnership and fast track are a bad, bad deal for American businesses, for workers, for taxpayers. It’s a huge set of handouts for a few insiders that don’t even care about our great, great America."

My statement was not disingenuous. She opposed it after they finalized the text, so it doesn't matter what she wished it had before it was finalized. It also matters when you're researching that you look at the date, because she was pro-TPP under Obama but anti-TPP as a candidate

> Then, last fall, once the 12 participating nations announced they had finalized the text after years of negotiations, Clinton said she opposes it -- citing its lack of a crackdown on currency manipulation and provisions to extend pharmaceutical drug companies' patent protections in poorer countries.

And in here words during a debate:

> "I did say, when I was secretary of state, three years ago, that I hoped it would be the gold standard," Clinton said at an October debate with Sanders. "It was just finally negotiated last week, and in looking at it, it didn't meet my standards. My standards for more new, good jobs for Americans, for raising wages for Americans. And I want to make sure that I can look into the eyes of any middle-class American and say, 'This will help raise your wages.' And I concluded I could not."

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/27/politics/tpp-what-you-need-to...

> This administration messed up any opportunity to curtail China by dropping TPP

Do you really think 5,600 pages of fresh red tape would have been beneficial long term for the US? The TPP was essentially locking the US into an agreement where a bunch of smaller countries could mooch off of the US economy of scale.

The other countries in the negotiations have a similar population to the US (hell, just Japan, Mexico and Vietnam combined do). Having that many people prefer trade with the US, with a legal framework written by the US (instead of China) probably wouldn't have hurt the US.

The treaty would have tended to favor larger US corporations and not US people (because that's what US "IP" laws do), but it wouldn't have been bad for the US economy.

The difference is that we buy all the crap they make, not the other way around. Not to mention we spend more on the military than China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil - combined[1]. That can be a very compelling negotiation tool.

Also, I don't think globalization is a good thing. I agree it would be good for the US economy short term, but really would just lead to turning the world into the equivalent of this pic: https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-american-culture-fast-food...

[1] - https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison

Biden also called Xi a “thug” in the debates. This is definitely as strong a rhetoric as the current administration. However, like you mention, countries like India have a better response and more teeth than US.