Comment by hunglee2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hunglee2 | Hacker News Reader

UK has no place to lecture anyone else on economic management.

The country has one of the lowest growth rates in Europe, has crashed exports to its biggest market, maintained imports by simply waiving customs checks opening up the domestic market for all kinds of fraud, has signed one-sided free trade deals for the newspaper headlines, introducing competition to those domestic producers for no equivalent gain for exporters, whilst failing to sign a symbolically important free trade deal with US - despite the special relationship - and also deciding to escalate hostilities with China, the world second largest economy, as a 'pick me' demonstration of loyalty to the aforementioned US.

No need to mention pandemic mismanagement which managed to put billions onto the national debt, crashing multiple business sectors with its confused lockdown vs let it rip oscillations and still end up with one of the highest infection rates / case fatality rates from Covid-19. Latest figures from IFS additionally suggest up to 500,000 UK workers are 'economically inactive' due to long covid, a massive loss of workers, increasing the cost of employment for those employers who do need to hire.

The way to treat UK prognostications on economic matters is 'precisely the opposite'

> also deciding to escalate hostilities with China, the world second largest economy

After what Russia has done to Ukraine, I sincerely hope more democracies put values before trade. UK is doing what everyone else should be doing, but don't have the courage to. Not something to be ashamed of.

Do you think breaking all trade with Saudi Arabia is a priority?

Democracies never put values before trade - UK is at this very moment selling arms to Saudi Arabia, who are currently prosecuting a genocidal war against Yemen. China has been remarkably uninvolved in military conflict for the past 50 years, unlike many democracies

I can think of a large democracy that fairly recently started two wars for bullshit reasons and fucked up two countries that, admittedly, were already well fucked up. But probably a large number of people died that wouldn't have died otherwise.

indeed, UK riding sidecar with no qualms whatsoever

As others have pointed out, Liz Truss has no qualms about calling Saudi Arabia an important ally[1]. Statements against China are a way to pander to the Tory base.

1 - https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1541894205274030080

While im no fan of Saudi Arabia, I wouldn’t go calling this pandering. China has long considered the West an enemy, and has been an abusive trading partner. It’s high time the UK stands up for itself.

this is projection - the hostility is pretty much one way from West to East. You can even see when the mood changed, post GFC, when China stopped buying US T-bills

Abusive trading partner in the strict sense of goods trading, not sure. But China requires or used to require (some / interesting / all?) foreign countries operating in the country to create joint ventures with Chinese companies. Probably done to transfer know-how, possibly profits, and to keep control. Volkswagen had the foresight to enter China early (as it did decades earlier in Brazil), and it had to do that.

protectionism of this sort is basically how all the East Asian tigers developed from being as impoverished as Africa in 1950's to where they all are now. It's a problem now because the unbroken period of 400 years + pf Western hegemony might finally be under challenge by a country who is big enough not routinely bend the knee

*foreign companies

Well maybe the UK has a higher sensitivity regarding China because of Hong Kong, but realistically, if the West would really boycott all states with human rights issues, we would be starving soon. Not to mention that we would need to look at ourselves first before criticizing others...

This "democracies vs dictatorships" spin is just that, a nice story for the public. But this is not how countries operate and they have no values when it comes to international relations, only interests. You'll also notice that it's only some authoritarian countries that are 'problematic' otherwise are 'good friends'...

China is becoming powerful, so it is a threat to the established, Western, order and especially the supremacy of the US. That's the real issue. If tomorrow China became a democracy it wouldn't be any less of a threat, and in fact it might become a more formidable threat.

> and also deciding to escalate hostilities with China, the world second largest economy, as a 'pick me' demonstration of loyalty to the aforementioned US.

Agreed on the rest of your comment, but not on this one. The hostilities were instigated by China occupying Hong Kong despite a binding treaty. HK was a former British territory, allowing its unilateral takeover without at least some form of payback would be utter idiocy.

And the Treasury is refusing to publish the economic forecast for the mini-budget...

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