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Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

Funny how things change.

In the 90s the U.S., EU and Japan were the champions of free trade for industrial products and services.

However, when it would come to agricultural goods they were the champions of tariffs and protectionism. Why? Easy: because 3rd world countries were very competitive on agriculture. Egypt had better cotton, Argentina had beef, Brazil had orange juice, Cuba had sugar, etc, etc.

3rd world countries would complain about the hypocrisy and the rich would reply that they should just shut up and give up on protectionism.

Now the whole Southeast Asia is competing with rich countries in industrial goods and protectionism is not protectionism anymore, is "decoupling".

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"decoupling" tends to be how it's described in media, but every day people know exactly what it is which is "protectionism" (as if that's necessarily a bad word).

I'm also unsure about your comment about Southeast Asia competing with rich countries on industrial goods. It seems to me it's more specifically about China and not so much other countries in Southeast Asia.

I wouldn't disagree with your offhand comment about the 90s and such and the US, EU, and Japan. But I'm not really sure what the point of it is given that countries such as China (not the only one) have maintained protectionist policies. Since many didn't go along with the idea of free trade and the theory that free trade would open up global markets and raise everyone's living standard (which was probably just marketing from those who stood to profit) you can't then blame the US, EU, Japan, or others for reverting back to more protectionist policies to be in line with how most other countries tend to operate.

Hey we should all do this thing that stands to benefit everyone, but we all have to do it

Starts doing it

Hey we all have to do it or it won't work

No change

Ok fine we're not going to do it then

Repercussions/results/etc.

It's not protectionism. Most of that manufacturing is not moving back to the U.S., it's moving to U.S. allies like Vietnam or Mexico, that would also be called third world countries.

It really is what it says on the tin. It's a risk for the U.S. to be economically dependent on a state whose government does not share American values, and that is threatening its neighbors with invasion.

Vietnam and Mexico are not "US allies"

What's your definition for an ally

What definition are you using of ally? Normally countries are considered allies when they have formal agreements (treaties) between each other to cooperate for mutual benefit. By this measure, the US and Mexico are definitely allies.

Mexico is the USA's second largest trading partner worldwide. Exports of goods and services to Mexico support an estimated 1.1 million jobs (Department of Commerce). Mexico is also the second largest source of foreign crude oil to the USA, and the top export destination for US petroleum & natural gas. The US-Mexico-Canada agreement (USMCA) entered force in 2020, replacing NAFTA. The countries have a variety of complex ties. There are other treaties and areas of cooperation too, such as the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). A security cooperation agreement called the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities went into effect in 2021.

As for Vietnam, the US and Vietnam established a bilateral trade agreement in 2001. The US provides maritime security assistance to the country through the Maritime Security Initiative, Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, and through foreign military financing. US transferred Coast Guard cutters to Vietnam in 2017 and 2020 to bolster its law enforcement capabilities.

Those sound like alliances to me, but I'm interested to hear what other definition you're using.

Those two countries aren't on the verge of taking away the economic and technological dominance away from the US.

Therefore psychologically and in terms of US foreign policy, those countries are more allied to the US then China.

It's not black and white. It lives on a gradient.

You are either in an alliance, or you are not. You are either an ally, or you are not. It is a binary classification.

The entire point of formal alliances is that they are sworn, binding guarantees that can be relied on, not wishy-washy resolutions.

Your just using the word alliance to define your reality.

Think about it. It's the other way around. Reality is not defined by the word alliance, clearly there exists a gradient of countries who are more friendly than others.

Stick with the intention of the word by the person using it not the absolutist pedantic definition.

Hate to break it to you, but modern IR is based in the legal tradition and as such ascribes precise meaning to words. It is pedantic by necessity.

This isn't a legal court. There is no necessity in the context of this thread.

I actually mostly agree with you! Ally has a formal meaning and usually means a mutual defense pact. I was using "ally" informally, to refer to countries that are roughly in the U.S. camp.

Ally derives from "alliance". US is not part of any alliance with Vietnam nor Mexico.

If you want to redefine ally to mean something closer to "partner", then Vietnam is also a "China ally" because it has a good partnership with China. Mexico could also be called a China ally by this loose definition.

But if you follow Vietnamese IR, you would know they take geopolitical neutrality very seriously, due to drama of 20th century. Both US and China separately invaded Vietnam because they thought it a Soviet proxy. No chance of Vietnam becoming an actual ally of either in the short term.

Similar for Mexico. US-Mexico relationship is extremely complicated right now. Right-wing US calling for invasion of Mexico on "drug war" grounds. Mexico purchasing and nationalizing Texas oil company, etc.

You're right that I'm using "ally" informally, to mean that the country would be in the U.S. camp if there is a direct confrontation between the U.S. and China in the future. The U.S. doesn't have mutual defense treaties with either. I'm basing that claim on public opinion - the publics Vietnam loves America and distrusts China. The public of Mexico like both nations, though geography means manufacturing in Mexico can be relied on.

Vietnam: 84% have a favorable opinion of the U.S., 11% have a favorable opinion of China https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2023/07/19/vietna...

Mexico: 60% favorable of U.S., 30% unfavorable. For China, 57% favorable, 33% unfavorable https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/overall-opinio... https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/07/27/views-of-china...

> You're right that I'm using "ally" informally, to mean that the country would be in the U.S. camp if there is a direct confrontation between the U.S. and China in the future.

The government of Vietnam has emphasized that it will not "choose" between US or China. ASEAN nations in general feel this way. They oppose war itself, and can't be tricked into taking sides in one instigated by Washington (or Beijing).

> Vietnam: 84% have a favorable opinion of the U.S., 11% have a favorable opinion of China

Please actually read the articles you link. This is for Vietnamese American citizens, not citizens of Vietnam. It is utterly unsurprising that immigrants have a overwhelmingly favorable opinion of their new home country, and reveals next to nothing about the PRC-SRV relations .

Yikes, silly mistake, thanks for noting that.

The numbers for Vietnamese citizens are similar. Vietnam one of the most pro-American, anti-Chinese countries in the world. 76% favorable for the U.S., 78% unfavorable for China, though the dataset is older. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/07/14/chapter-1-the-... https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/07/14/chapter-2-chin...

We've gotten a bit far from the original point - for the purposes of the U.S. supply chain, Vietnamese government neutrality and strong public support is plenty to negate the risk that the country suddenly cuts off the supply chain. My original point is that de-coupling from China is a national security decision, not protectionism, and production is moving to Vietnam because it's a friendlier country than

Informally, I do think Vietnam can be considered a U.S. ally. China is signaling a desire to expand, and most of its neighbors consider it the biggest threat to their security. There's a reason that Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all among the countries that have the highest opinion of the U.S. It's not a trick - they are acting in their own security interests.

Vietnamese neutrality makes perfect sense, and I don't think they'd get involved in a war that didn't involve them. But the country is certainly friendly enough to rely on for the U.S. supply chain.

Also with interesting timing, Vietnam is going to bump the U.S. up a level to a "comprehensive strategic partner" within their diplomatic framework: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/09/01/...

define: obey order like Japan

More correctly be economically controlled by the US. See the Plaza accord and the subsequent Louvre accord. Japan never would have signed either if US wasn't able to strong arm them into sinking their own economy. Guns are a hell of a thing, especially when you ban other parties from having them.

I can think of few places that embrace less "American values" than Vietnam. I say that as someone that lived there and now lives in Thailand, ie I'm aware of the tradeoffs of such places.

Having better beef doesn't translate to building weapons or global communication networks. Spinning up a new cattle ranch if supply is cut off is trivial. They are not on the same level. The movements we are seeing now are matters of national security.

It takes time and it has cascading effects.

Having access to food is most definitely a matter of national security. If you get your ports cut off you can't increase local food production before mass starvation.

I think decoupling is the right word. These south East Asian countries were unindustrialized nations before the hundreds of billions of foreign direct investment and hundreds of billions of intellectual property that transferred from the West to the East.

America exported its manufacturing know how for decades, and now it is taking it back as the trade is no longer as favorable. Seems rational to me. SE Asia came out a huge winner in the process, and now the time has come to stand up their tech and manufacturing in their own.

Much ado about nothing imho.

"Decoupling" mostly involves increasing investment in South and Southeast Asia to set up alternatives to Chinese suppliers. America is hardly going to take back much of the low-skill, low-wage, long-hours manufacturing of cheap consumer products that was offshored decades ago.

It doesn't have to be for cheap stuff aka textiles and other plasticky things. But for tech, modern electronics and so on it could go in another directions.

And maybe we stop using these cheap things anyway since they're garbage anyway. Perhaps it's time to re-start building things to last, or at least that's my wish...

Not only that, but the US made a trap for themselves: Theres no know how and capable people to replicate the tech. This take decades, 2 or even 3 to build.

I have the impression that the China today is the result of the planning made in the 90s, implemented in the 00s. What planning the west did last 20 years? I think the west already lost and this is the tantrum. :(

If you had ever lived and worked in the countries that are the public boogeymen for world domination, or even just with people and companies from those countries, you wouldn't be quite so down.

I think it's quite telling that the "workshop of the world" does not export high precision CNC equipment made by domestic companies in any meaningful amounts. Similarly, even before any export controls and sanctions really kicked in, their domestic chip makers had huge problems with yield and quality even though they bought tried and tested machines (and sometimes whole departments) from established chipmakers.

"Decoupling" refers specifically to economic disengagement with China, not Asia in general or the developing world.

This hypocrisy is why BRICS is so inviting to those countries that have suffered from the status quo for a long time.

Call it whatever you want, if freely trading with liberal democracies is protectionism then I am a big fan.

> Now the whole Southeast Asia is competing with rich countries in industrial goods and protectionism is not protectionism anymore, is "decoupling".

Just like bribery in 3rd world is corruption but here, it's called lobbying ( cost of doing business ).

Good thing you mentioned Japan. It was a huge competitor to the US in 80s and 90s in industrial products, yet nobody considered restricting the trade with it.

LOL

Trade issues with Japan dominated relationships, especially the threat that American automobile and high tech industries would be overwhelmed. Japan's economic miracle emerged from a systematic program of subsidized investment in strategic industries—steel, machinery, electronics, chemicals, autos, shipbuilding, and aircraft.[118][119] During Reagan's first term Japanese government and private investors held a third of the debt sold by the US Treasury, providing Americans with hard currency used to buy Japanese goods.[120] In March 1985 the Senate voted 92–0 in favor of a Republican resolution that condemned Japan's trade practices as "unfair" and called on President Reagan curb Japanese imports.[121]

Plaza Accord -> Louvre Accord.

The Japanese real estate bubble was directly caused by the former and the latter put the nail in the coffin by massively tightening the Japanese economy, bursting the huge debt bubble and robbing the BOJ of any and all tools to try contain the explosion.

US architected Japan's downfall and there was nothing Japan could do because they weren't allowed to have their own guns anymore so couldn't stand up for themselves and refuse to sign/implement aforementioned accords.

Those of us in the 3rd world have always known this.

US mandates on removing protectionism were never for them; they are for others. Their recommendations on how to run our economies are always like this; they are never for them, it's always for us.

They sometimes use fancy speak like "decoupling" in hopes we won't be able to tell.

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