Trump's Tariff on Cheap Chinese Imports Will Cost Big Tech Billions
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Add to that the role of U.S. universities in driving innovation and attracting international capital, and it starts to look like this whole engine is powered by the very things that Trump’s tariffs and restrictions are pushing back against. Doesn’t that make his actions — while ostensibly protecting U.S. jobs — potentially anti-university and anti-investment in the longer term?
I’m genuinely asking this as someone without a background in economics and curious how others see it. Does anyone else think this crackdown might undercut the very ecosystem that’s funded a huge part of American tech?
In any potential scheme like what you describe there would be on a time lag delay, with holdovers (tit for tat), and no real visibility.
The crackdown will undercut this ecosystem without a doubt, but that was bound to happen anyway because of the loss of the petrodollar agreement, and the money printing which has been nonstop since 2012, when we abandoned the sound dollar policy.
The money pool we inflated to meet demand for the petrodollar mandated reserves of other nations is now returning to the US domestic market (driving inflation, a 5 decade delayed debasement).
There are critical junctures where monetary properties in money no longer hold, and we are coming up on one of those junctures with the USD. Most economists I know don't appropriately consider monetary impacts on their econometric models.
In the private sector, money printing through non-reserve debt issuance has already surpassed this juncture but hasn't yet been actualized. This cycle of printing debt fuels the boom bust cycle, and when enough bad investments occur the boom bust cycle becomes the bailout cycle once every 8-10 years. So this has already occurred but its largely off the public ledger.
The public deficit will breach it also in 2030, sooner if more spending occurs. Generally it is the same behavior as what happens in a 3-stage ponzi system. Benefits are front-loaded, diminishing returns, outflows exceed inflows (and collapse of perceived and real value, stable store of value and medium of exchange will have then failed as a whole shortly after).
The short rundown is, Adam Smith has two requirements needed for any participant to continue operating in a market economy.
They must make sufficient profit to cover expenses (in purchasing power), and in individuals that includes the expense of 3 children and wife. These both have largely failed, being edged out, and out-competed by companies that have attached themselves to a money printer and removed their loss function constraints as opaque state-run apparatus forcing the trend towards consolidation through leveraged buyout, merger, and bankruptcy. This is silent nationalization.
That critical juncture at stage-3 basically collapses any market to a non-market socialist economy. The point at which production is exceeded by 'debt growth'. First order producers tend to calculate those loss constraints in a more rigorous way.
This is unsustainable because we know non-market socialism as a system fails long-term. They fail to chaotic distortions that occur in part from cooperative decision-making which violates requirements for economic calculation (it generally must independent and adversarial as a participant). This usually occurs within 50 years at the latest, sometimes within 2, and as a result of the 6 problems Mises touches on in his book from the 1930s on Socialism.
So this is actually a much more dire situation than at first glance because we can no longer print money, and the transition from fractional-reserve in 2020 to no reserve (0% reserve) is what nailed the coffin shut. Basel 3 as the capital reserve system they transitioned to fails because it assumes objective value, and that simply violates known economic principles as covered by Carl Menger in his paper on Subjective Value.
PS: If you are thinking AI driving the labor value of time in a factor market to 0 basically breaks this cycle too you'd be right.
The danger is that when economic exchange fails, food production fails following models put forth by Malthus/Catton which are to put it lightly apocalyptic, but appear to be soundly reasoned and fall under socio-economic collapse.
> but that was bound to happen anyway because of the loss of the petrodollar agreement
The agreement was informal and it "ended" about a year ago. Last I checked, most oil was still priced in USD.
> Basel 3 as the capital reserve system they transitioned to fails because it assumes objective value
citation needed.
I'm worried about the long-term value of the US$, but perhaps not as much as you ... are you putting your money where your mouth is on that?
Yes, the agreement is informal, but it was highly important in driving demand for the currency, demand which is no longer there. We largely produce very vew things aside from global currency which allowed us to export our inflation through that agreement. The fact is that it no longer offers value to other countries who have been de-dollarizing. They can now join BRICS and transact for those goods in local currencies and goods. The downstream effects will be less trade because the high seas will become unsafe as we pull back our peace-keeping role, its entirely possible piracy or a more modern form of privateering returns once that is scaled back.
With these type of agreements it takes time for the effects to unwind and then be seen simply as a matter of contract expiration's some which are several year terms out. We should be seeing more of the effects by the 3-5 year mark, enough to show the definitive trend.
Depending on where you get your news, you may not have seen the fact that roughly 44% of global oil are now members of BRICS which are settling oil now in local currencies. Exchanges still have contracts in USD but there are a number of issues with loadout of contracts which are presenting financial contagion problems as well, trust has been lost, and for example the failures to deliver of gold and silver contracts now have a estimated delivery date of 16 weeks that seems to keep getting extended out, given how many of these faux commodity contracts are naked its not surprising.
Naked paper trading by GSIBs in these markets far exceeded the physical commodities (300%+ in volume), and the risk was offset through options, but options aren't perfect protection. Capital flight to gold, silver, and other commodities is happening with people opting for loadout which deplete the physical to paper, but that's not really being covered in the news in any effective way.
The Trusted News Initiative has been suppressing news on a variety of subjects including BRICS.
Regarding Basel 3 using objective value, you can get to that point just by reading the published framework at BIS, and examining the definitions that they redefine. The link for the framework is here: https://www.bis.org/baselframework/BaselFramework.pdf .
The Basel 3 system used in the US varies from that because it is a GAAP modified variant (with the GAAP loopholes and the issues inherent in the original framework). I'm not aware of a Fed document available to the public that includes a description of the changes in this variant implementation.
In a fractional reserve system, the published material by the Fed in their publication "Modern Money Mechanics" walked through how the rates limit the amount a bank can loan leaving a fractional percentage of assets for any given expansion based on those rates.
There is no such similar publication for the Basel 3 modified system, at least as far as I am aware of. The reserve requirements are limited by risk weighted assets, which are one indirection to the objective value of an asset they use as capital (they define a few but include shares/equity of the bank).
This is clear when you see how the banks are treated as a grouping, under the title of the section "Consolidation", which is misused. Consolidation is being used here so as to not set off any alarm bells about valuation, because consolidation for the tasks required must naturally require a valuation to occur first on the capital. You can't do anything in the consolidated group without first having a valuation of the assets.
If you go to the definitions under CAP you'll see that they've redefined capital very carefully. If you mark the indirect references and then followed through to the objects in question, and how they vary in valuation dramatically from time to time that's a problem. This changeover was largely adopted without any public announcement at the start of the pandemic.
Who values these, and how they are valued is left unsaid, it would seem the banks themselves do this in part, and some of the assets may include market exposure (something a systemic bank should never have as a security issue).
The fact that the market is no longer functioning as a result of price discovery failing with >50% of the volume of transactions occurring in dark pools off exchange, should give people pause and inspire great concern. Price discovery fails when around a quarter of the market transactions are invisible.
Upon careful consideration of what's read, you'll see that they are no longer limited by regulatory rates, the central bank has no effective lever to pull to hold back their debt issuance.
As long as the fiat-based asset valuations(prices) inflate with the currency they can keep issuing more debt, and this drives consolidation of the market into non-market territory taken to its logical conclusion. They'll do so right up to the point where people abandon the currency.
When you have a positive feedback system, these type of systems are prone to runaway failures. A general principle in engineering is safety, systems with safety-critical features require a higher duty of care. The food system is dependent on exchange which is dependent on money. The required duty of care is wholly lacking given the existential threat touched on by Catton/Malthus related to that.
Also importantly, there doesn't appear to be any public disclosure when the bank fails to meet the requirements (as would happen in a stock market crash regardless of weighting). If you examine the FRC failure two years ago you'll see this all happened behind the scenes, and the background process is not public (as far as I can tell), it seems they get a private notice and if they can't correct it in 30 days they get seized and the bad debt consolidated in one of the remaining dealers. Eventually only one remains, but they all operate on unsound and unsustainable principles. They are called banks, but this isn't banking in the classical sense of the term.
> I'm worried about the long-term value of the US$, but perhaps not as much as you.
I'm not worried about the long-term value of the dollar because I know there is no long-term value, and yes I've moved my assets accordingly (put my money where my mouth is).
I've been rewarded for that too, in the short time I made that change, post-pandemic, my personal capital has tripled. Its not nearly as liquid as I'd like, but its diversified sufficiently, and I'm taking other steps to hedge currency risk which is bound for despair and failure for the general market participants.
I've lost money of course, but the money I've lost were in the bucket of assets that normal people invest their retirement plans like a 401k in, where I couldn't take it out without a very large tax burden in such a short period of time. I've largely written that portion off and will be cashing that out soon to more suited investments.
I envision a time not far off where basic goods can't be gotten at any price. Not because I'm a doomer, as some might call me, but because when you have no visibility to recognize a problem, nor ability to correct underlying issues (the socialist calculation problem), the worst outcome is likely to eventually happen. Worst-case scenarios are independent of likelihood.
Trying to plot a safe path for one consolidated boat through chaos is an impossible task. People in many generations past understood enough to be humble in the knowledge that there were impossible problems that could not be solved and avoided systems that coupled their legacy's existence to the solution of those problems.
More recent generations, as consolidated in the ruling leadership (boomers) failed in upholding the generational contract, and blinded themselves through action (reducing visibility increasing corruption etc). Front-loaded benefits eventually must be paid back, but they've left their children to foot and pay the bill. This touches on Thomas Paine's writings in his Rights of Man, but I digress.
Minor shortages in key goods started about a year ago, and the grocery stores have been good at hiding it by putting things in front of the spaces so people won't notice empty shelves. That can't help but get so much worse with the tariffs in place now.
Update: Also, while I touch on market related things I didn't want to boil down into the details too much, there's a lot more. As a result I didn't even touch on the adoption of FASAB S-56 in 2019 during the Kavanaugh grilling which was used as a smokescreen. Catherine Fitts best touches on why this legislation is important and relevant to discussions of consolidation, she's done interviews.
The TL;DR is any bank that meets the requirements under this measure can legally keep separate books and modify the disclosed consolidation as needed without footnote. No measures will be available to track artificial distortions originating here except by lagging indicator (Mises, SCP, chaos).
No worries. fwiw, I didn't down vote you.
haven't read your response yet.. it's quite long and I prefer reading on a large screen... currently on my phone stuck in a doctor's office...
No worries, I'm sorry it couldn't be more concise, unfortunately that is the way of things, sometimes you can't simplify it more without losing important meaning without having a sound and reliable common reference and definition.
I tried to keep it as short as possible while preserving a unique meaning unambiguously. Given the adversarial and critical nature of much of the many participants on social media this has become a necessity when its technical. This problem is why communicating on this subject matter is so difficult today.
The state of education is also horrible. I could mention horror stories but it'd be another long paragraph, and not add much. Its quite hard to communicate technically without a good common vernacular and reference.
> currently ... stuck in doctor's office.
Hopefully nothing too serious, doctors can be a real pain, but often necessary.
Getting back to your response, If you are already familiar with the material that's covered rigorously (with historical footnote references) by Ludwig von Mises, in his book on the Theory of Money and Credit, then what's mentioned basically follows along similar lines of reasoning.
It takes the criteria he uses of the various forms/groups of money, and money substitutes, and follows along the same analysis framework. The failures logically follow when you treat fundamentally separate functional groups as the same.
There is often a fine nuance between the legal concept of money as debt settlement or obligation, and the economic concept of money which often gets ignored or conflated to what amounts to fallacy when examining these kind of documents, which is why unambiguous definitions are so important.
On a side note, many people today have never heard of Mises, and the material on this subject matter has not been aggregated appropriately anywhere else at least as far as I'm aware, in such an equivalent short form and aimed towards the common person.
I also try not to mention him by name because there is a coordinated effort on HN and other places to downvote any posts with keywords related to what he talks about to the point where the responses can't be seen.
Every post I've referenced him in the last 6 months, and with certain others, has been downvoted to the point of the content being removed from visibility; often within a day.
I take a karma hit every time, but he covers material that is sound and foundational.
I've also seen similar behavior when referencing Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Landes on Wealth & Poverty, and Carl Menger on subjective value. All well established and recognized works from great minds of the past.