China trade escalation unfortunate, loss for them, US Treasury secretary says | Hacker News Reader

China trade escalation unfortunate, loss for them, US Treasury secretary says

reuters.com

11 pointssuraci11 comments

But what at the polls when Americans can no longer buy lots of cheap crap online and have to go to work in a factory...

All great in principle, but we humans aren't actually principled beyond fanciful proclamations that we are, and are in fact a mere step or two above a dog growling when you touch its bowl.

It’s worse than that: most of those hypothetical factory jobs will go to people “higher” on the economic chain who lost their jobs and are shifting “down”, not to “lower” workers shifting “up”. Reduced retail volume will indeed put Wal mart workers and such out of work, but they simply won’t have other jobs. Maybe meat packing and fruit picking, if Trump gets around to deporting those workers instead of college students.

Nobody is going to dump millions of dollars into a factory when the tariffs could be revoked at any minute, and definitely will after the next Democratic administration. Plus, the coordination problem is bigger than any one widget factory- China has diligently moved the entire world's industrial supply chain onshore. There's nowhere else to get your feedstock.

Seems like the bit at the start of your paragraph is the cause of the bit at the end of it.

Perhaps the only solution is Democrats never get back into power lol

Opening up trade with Red China was supposed to make them more democratic. It didn't. (This talking point has long been forgotten of course).

If it's bad for the PRC it's fine with me.

But did it make them more capitalist?

I would argue more mercantilist. YMMV. It did drag them out of subsistence agriculture.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/the-best-fights-betwee...

Cohn starts assembling every piece of economic data to try and convince Trump that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories. “See,” he says to Trump at one point, “the biggest leavers of jobs – people leaving voluntarily – is from manufacturing.”

“I don’t get it,” replies Trump.

Cohn soldiers on. “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or I can stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you rather do for the same pay?”

Trump still wasn’t buying it.

Eventually, exasperated, Cohn simply asks Trump: “Why do you have these views?”

“I just do,” Trump replies. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re right,” says Cohn. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football.”

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he. Could hardly say "sh...t, we got that wrong".

It's a loss for everyone, which is why it's so baffling that Trump and the Republican party has decided to engage in economic warfare against not just China, but the whole world.

Scott Bessent > "I think it's unfortunate that the Chinese actually don't want to come and negotiate, because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system"

Why are the Chinese labeled "offenders"? What court found them guilty beyond reasonable doubt? By what law? They do what everybody else does, except their game is more beneficial, not only for them but for everyone trading with them, otherwise they wouldn't be trading with them.

"The international trading system" consists of trade agreements overseen by the WTO. The Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) at the WTO is supposed to judge in case of disagreements. No such case has been lodged at the DSB, no judgements have been issued. Using an exception clause to impose tariffs does not make anyone an offender - no rules are broken, no judgment is passed.

The really disturbing part of all this is that both parties and the media prefer to repeat the narrative of the administration while hiding the simple fact that China didn't brake any trade rules - their way of doing business haven't changed at all since the time Wall Street was raging about outsourcing to China as the best thing after sliced bread.

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