White House Announces Tech Tariffs, Investment Restrictions on China (axios.com) 248
The White House announced this morning a plan to levy a 25% tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese tech goods -- with the exact list to be announced next month -- as well as tech investment limits for Chinese nationals and entities. From a report: It also plans to pursue litigation at the World Trade Organization relating to Chinese intellectual property abuses. The big picture: It's a show of force that has surprised some sources close to the White House who believed Trump would defer any aggression towards China until after the North Korea summit. A source close to the White House who has a keen understanding of the internal dynamics on China told me that this is an "initial move in a long negotiation that shows the Chinese Trump is very serious -- and a move to balance the criticism that he was soft on ZTE."
"a move to balance the criticism that he was soft" (Score:5, Insightful)
And "with the exact list to be announced next month "
China don't have to worry, next month they will list what and when is going to be effectif hten, China will buy another hotel to Trump and every sanction willbe drop !
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That wasn't a typo, it's covfefe's brother.
Seriously, though, T is confusing and confounding other nations because of his flip-flops, surprise "temporarily exemptions", vagueness, etc. Today's proclamations maybe be irrelevant tomorrow via a new Tweet. Most world leaders are relatively careful, systematic planners and don't know what to make of his style.
I'm not going to even say T's unpredictable style "doesn't work"; for it's too early to judge. I'm merely saying that it's b [washingtonpost.com]
Re:"a move to balance the criticism that he was so (Score:5, Interesting)
It's confounding only because most business negotiations are done in secret. When it leaks out it makes a lot of sense.
Trump has done a few things differently than most presidents. First, he's refused to divest himself of his businesses - usually a president puts their business in a trust so any decisions they may won't have potential conflict of interest.
It's why Russia is a big deal - it's one of the few countries where his businesses have done really, really, really well.
Or why ZTE suddenly deserves a lot of support (China dumps a half billion into a Trump hotel).
Next thing you know, Mexico will build a Trump hotel and it'll be "wall? what wall?" or if Mexico wants to build stuff using American equipment, "NAFTA GOOD!"
The problem is, these negotiations are done in private and under the privy of no one, so what looks erratic really turns out to be negotiation tactics to get a better deal.
Trump bends the way the dollars flow.
Leveraging Insanity? (Score:2)
Here's an example of T's "negotiation" style. When he formed Trump Airlines, a dispute arose with a competitor airline. When T didn't like their proposed compromise, he started bad-mouthing their safety record, using arguably questionable statistics.
Normally the airlines don't advertise based on safety records because it hurts the entire industry by spooking customers. It's like reminding grocery shoppers what's in hot-dogs. Sales of all brands would take a hit.
So the other airline looked at T's real-estate
Trump the accidental environmentalist. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm no lover of Trump's policies. He's an authoritarian ass and enabler to state violence (i.e. "rough them up a bit").
But I can't bring myself to be upset about this tariff, and think it's a shame that it can't be 100%. Yes. 100%, full cost of the item. People throw too many things out -- I've seen perfectly good electronics on the street due to a damaged power cord or similar minor issue.
We've become a throw-away society where "used" and "repair" are dirty words, and which produces an unsustainable amount of toxic, poorly recyclable e-waste. Trump may not mean to be an environmentalist, but raising the cost of dirt-cheap disposable electronics is ultimately an environmental good.
Remember the 80s and 90s, where people kept their TVs for 10-15 years, then handed them down to their college student children?
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We do need a much better electronics recycling program. Part of which would take those devices that are repairable, fix them, and then sell them at low cost of give them to people that don't have, and can't afford to buy ne
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Disagree. Modern electronics are also more reliable than the TV sets of yesteryear. Failures are typically:
(1) Broken connectors/cords.
(2) Broken solder joints to the connectors.
(3) Loose internal cables.
(4) Power supply issues (fried capacitors, etc).
All of which can be easily fixed.
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Not only is your list incorrect, but vendors don't want to fix even the most miniscule problem. They'd much rather replace than service. This leads to a whole supply chain of secondary returned-items refurbishers but also a huge pile of waste. User-serviceable equipment is nigh impossible. SMT-mounted electronics, crammed to the gills, are hideously difficult to service.
People are seduced in this over-consuming economy, to buy the latest greatest stuff. Who cares that there's only a scant amount of 4K media
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Go ahead, wave your magic wand.
Then don't bitch when you get socket dioding, chips falling out of the freaking socket, corrosion, poor sinusoidal vibration fall-outs, and worse.
This stuff was NOT DESIGNED TO BE FIXED OR RECYCLED. The whole CE industry is focused this way, because: Wall Street, who is fed by Trump's demons.
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Tell that to moms pacifying their kids with back-of-seat video players, or all those integrated dashes, or people that move from place to place, trying to keep their electronics working.
No, you've got other problems: fingers in your ears.
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I don't like them either, but see: "magic wand". You and I don't have control over this stuff. It's what the CE people design and sell to the automakers, the airlines, etc etc.
The fact is that there's lots of stuff out there that isn't recyclable! Lots of it! Not gonna change unless people understand what kind of mess it makes!
Today, on the screen of your laptop, you can design tons of SMT gear from your chair, and have it built and UPS'd to you, all in a couple of days. There are NO MORE solder jockeys in
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Power to tax is granted to permit civil infrastructure and common good. The long term environmental impact is important, but don't forget that this isn't about US jobs, it's about US BRANDS.
Trade wars are mostly a fiction, because government accounting isn't transparent, and therefore is an oxymoron. The US subsidizes more industry than China does, especially the military, but the military isn't the only segment-- just look to agricultural supports if you had any question. You should be paying $6+ for a gal
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easy with the words. (Score:2)
If you keep calling everyone a "nazi" or "authoritarian" then everybody will get the idea that nazis and authoritarians were not that bad really.
Btw you will know what authoritarian means when the state starts confiscating succesfull businesses and politicians/journalists get some exotic poison or just plain old get killed in their elevator.
And also, quite true a
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Except that the US is bad by (developed, democratic) world standards. We jail 1% of our population. We retain the barbaric death penalty. We jail people for things like UNPAID PARKING TICKETS instead of sending them to civil collections. Apparently, you can't even have a beer on a beach without being harassed by cops, in some states.
The US is authoritarianism disguised as democracy. They tell us the laws are for our own good.
And a large proportion of Americans like it that way. Respect the cops! They
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That doesn't have anything to do with Trump, though. We were still jailing 1% of our population when Obama was president, too.
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As someone who lives in a country where electronics have import taxes that are 100% and up, you really have no idea what you are asking for, and all the things you listed that it would be good for really are just fantasies. That's not how it works.
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The problem becomes that China still manipulates their money, subsidies/dumps, and have one of the worse environmental/labor laws. But we really should be dealing with that as well. America needs to bring our environmental laws up to the rest o
No suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of tech people and engineers tend to actually lean conservative and "law-and-order" vs being freewheeling liberals.
The liberals tend to be the scientists, professors, and artists for some reason.
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A lot of tech people and engineers tend to actually lean conservative and "law-and-order" vs being freewheeling liberals.
The liberals tend to be the scientists, professors, and artists for some reason.
And since the conservatives give us the tarriffs and wage and price controls, who is the liberal in the end?
Re:No suprise (Score:4, Informative)
It's highly linked to a personality trait called openness. People who are high in openness are interested and emotionally get benefit/happiness from new ideas, thoughts, and concepts. People with this personality are generally very interested in becoming scientists and professors. Likewise, high openness correlates strongly with liberal political views. Therefore, it makes complete sense that there's a strong correlation between scientists/professors, and liberal political viewpoints.
Just imagining it makes sense -- conservatives generally want to embrace tradition and liberals want to change the world to make it a better place. Somewhere in the middle is good for society--too much change is chaos, and too little is stagnation.
Sources:
https://www.chicagoreader.com/... [chicagoreader.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Oblig. car analogy: Cars have both a gas pedal and a brake pedal. Without one you don't get anywhere, without the other you get there dead.
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Let's look at American political history:
Most of us would agree that slavery and civil wars are both bad. In the 1800s, conservatives wanted their values and traditions (which avoids societal collapse), while liberals wanted to free the slaves as quickly as possible. The ideal would be to free the slaves without unrest, but societal constraints meant that these two goals were at odds with each other. As it were, w
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Engineers used to, but not any longer.
At this time, Trump's backers are uneducated whites, along with old whites.
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The liberals tend to be the scientists, professors, and artists for some reason.
So ... people who aren't real world and live off the government.
Yeah, govt or a patron of some sort. People that are good at that type of thing tend to not be so good at the making money part of things. Rich folks used to support these types. Back in the last millenium they helped to produce the Renaissance. After WWII, the US govt, generally with the support of the voters, made a big push for science & engineering (and arts) to compete globally, which produced a period of Pax Americana.
Supporting a Pax is very expensive: we are seeing the pendulum swing back to the
His daughter's business must need something (Score:4, Insightful)
3D Printers (Score:3)
Oh man, think about the cheap 3D printers!
Did he forget we don't have the infrastructure? (Score:2)
Outside of military equipment, big-ticket specialty/precision items, airplanes and cars, the US doesn't manufacture many consumer goods anymore, especially tech goods. Unless his next announcement is a nationalization of what little manufacturing infrastructure we have left and a shift to something like war production to force the electronics industry to come back, I don't think the President is thinking this through.
Even if factory work came down to minimum wage, it would still be too expensive to compete
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THIS! (Score:2)
Quick quiz - Who was the president that put in wage and price controls?
https://www.cato.org/publicati... [cato.org]
That's right, Another fine honest Republican, the honorable Richard Nixon.
On Aug. 15, 1971, in a nationally televised address, Nixon announced, “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.”
Wow...... Wage and price freezes. Hey - how'd that work out? Probably as go
give me a break (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure how to deal with their subsidies, dumping, and manipulation, but even this would be a good start.
Then allow China to deal with it as they see fit. If CHina removes an items, so do we.
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Hey, he's a better negotiator than that. He waited for China's 500MM dollar check to clear (to Trump Org.).
I'm getting dizzy... (Score:2)
No problem (Score:2)
We'll just switch to the Russian-made routers [slashdot.org].
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He's going to tax you 25%! [youtube.com]
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Yes, he wants to be the exporter--the one threatened in the trade relationship by the capacity of the importer to just go to the next country over and pull the plug on your economy--so he's willing to harm America by reducing the benefit we get from lower-cost goods.
Mostly, he and Bernie Sanders don't understand economics [fee.org], and they're projecting their failed grasp of macroeconomics onto a nation.
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That link somewhat works against your point if you read into it-
The Chinese aren't simply shipping us cheap stuff. And at times it seems like they're doing less to lower production costs and invent new stuff than they are simply circumventing licensing costsâ" hence the intellectual property complaints.
If inventing new things is a boon, then creating a disincentive to invent new stuff (through not respecting intellectual property law) is a detriment.
What does or doesn't constitute sane intellectual pro
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True, although we prohibit the sale of pirate IP here, so they can't export their stolen IP to America (and other countries operating under certain international treaties). Strengthening these international IP agreements was one of the big things for which people attacked the TPP: we don't like the Berne Convention (I'd rather limit copyright to 14 years, or some such).
My point is importing cheap stuff from China actually makes our economy more-powerful and raises our standards of living. People think
Re:Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a hoarding/bunker mentality versus a focus on quality of life.
On one side, there's the folks who want to keep economic and physical resources on hand and maintain and develop manufacturing capability to ensure self sufficiency.
On the other, you've got the folks who want to enjoy as many of the available ancient vises and modern conveniences as possible.
Both sides have good arguments supporting them. On one side, what happens if international trade goes to hell? And on the other, why live like a Great Depression survivor when that crisis may never come?
As with most things, the most successful strategy is probably a middle ground between the two extremes.
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The problem is that the population does not remain static. And with more mouths to feed (and house and clothe and educate so that they aren't a drag on the economy) year over year, you *need* that productivity increase just to keep things the same.
And don't forget, to have anything to buy used, someone at some point had to have bought it new.
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Simple, enact policies to keep population static domestically. Invest heavily in economic development programs abroad that encourage and provide birth control as well. Earth is overloaded as it is. Perpetual growth is an illness, not the solution.
Investing in a wall would do the most to keep the population static domestically. Without immigration the US population is slightly dropping over time. Mass immigration is the ultimate example of socializing the losses as our schools, infrastructure, and cost of housing all work against the 99%.
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Simple, enact policies to keep population static domestically.
It's anything but simple. If you curb births, you end up with a population tilted toward aged non-working citizens. These people are expensive because of their healthcare, generally don't buy a lot of things because they are on fixed incomes, do not contribute to the work force, and pay little taxes because of it. If you don't have a healthy population of younger taxpayers the system falls apart.
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What's wrong with having 4 kids by 5 baby daddy's. Some people want no kids some want 37. It's their choice to have the kids. I see nothing wrong with that so long as they can support them on their own.
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You don't need any productivity increase just because you have more people, because productivity is defined as output per something, and absent indication to the contrary that something is an hour of labour.
tl;dr every mouth that needs feeding comes with two hands to work.
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No you don't. Productivity is the amount produced per person (or per working-hour, depending on context). Population growth to carry capacity is unchanging productivity; population growth stops at carry capacity because productivity decreases when you exceed your maximum technological production rate and start pulling excess labor per unit produced.
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Nothing at all.
The only *real* trouble with that is that's not what mainstream culture values. It's a marketing machine, and as soon as you opt out of the lifestyle of constantly buying shiny new crap you're worthless to advertisers and therefore irrelevant.
There are some good resources for those who think in those terms. One of my favorites is the Mr. Money Moustache blog.
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The tradeoff from living cheaply won't be hoarding of money or stuff, it will be the ability to have a one-parent, 40 hour a week working family. Trading free time for stuff that doesn't enrich your life anyway.
I don't think that even the economic ability to have a single-parent, 40-hour work-week family means it is a good idea. If you look at the statistics, children coming from single parent homes are over-represented in just about every category for negative life outcomes whether it's crime, suicide, teen pregnancy, drug use, etc. The economic growth that we've seen has allowed us to support this without collapsing in on ourselves, but it's not a good thing. All of the labor being devoted to dealing with those
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I didn't say anything about single parents.
I was talking about two parent families with one working parent and one stay-at-home parent. Or two parents working short enough hours to be able to spend time with their children.
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I think this was more about having the ability to have one parent work and the other stay home.
This is a problem because if gets wrapped up in so much religious conservatism/nostalgia for the 50s where a woman's place is in the home. Why couldn't it be both parents having to work less overall so they had more time to actually raise their kids?
Kids from two-parent homes do end up doing better, but they do way better when both parents actually have time to spend with them. If both parents could work a flexibl
Re:Trump (Score:4, Interesting)
there's the folks who want to keep economic and physical resources on hand and maintain and develop manufacturing capability to ensure self sufficiency.
That's not quality-of-life; that's your local economics market. Back before manufacturing was big, America had this huge dialogue about how evil manufacturing was encroaching on the good American way of life where 90% of the workforce was in agriculture.
Quality-of-life is how people live, not how your nation's means of production are composed. It's about the people. It's about being able to eat, about being secure and not becoming homeless, and about having access to hygiene and medical care and social mobility.
On one side, what happens if international trade goes to hell?
Your nation has already fallen.
If we lose stable electricity for a day or two, our entire logistics system falls apart. We rely so much on communications and on shipping from town to town--much less across the states or to other nations--that we can't even keep stores stocked without trucks showing up every single day. After five days of high-speed communications being down across the nation, this nation isn't recovering; it's already over, the Constitution is no longer and shall never again be in force, and there is no capacity to maintain order and domestic tranquility.
Trade with other nations is a mechanism of stability. It gives us allies who are vested in helping us stay in one piece, and severely reduces the likelihood of war because neither side could sustain it.
why live like a Great Depression survivor when that crisis may never come?
In which case your isolationist nation is getting invaded by someone with the military prowess of Canada.
As with most things, the most successful strategy is probably a middle ground between the two extremes.
That assumes either side is an extreme, rather than that we're simply not leveraging mechanisms we should use. Holding your breath every 60 seconds could be said to be a middle-ground between breathing and not breathing when faced with, for example, air pollution.
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You make some very good points there. Good food for thought.
Can you phrase some of your ideas as positives (do X, Y, and Z) instead of negatives (this means you've failed, it's already over, X isn't Y).
What mechanisms should we leverage that we're ignoring or underutilizing?
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Sometimes, I really just like to point out that a question was in similar vein to "what if your stomach ruptured? You still need a way to get nutrition into your body." A nutrient IV might do that; however, if your stomach ruptured, you'd be dead.
In Nordic nations, they use collective risk sharing--generally social insurances like unemployment and disability insurance--to handle structural change.
Basically, you get wealthier by improving technology or trade, which means you expend fewer resources (ul
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If I were in Maryland I'd vote for you.
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You need us more than we need you.
Yeah, you just keep thinking that.
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Things will be more expensive, but there will be more jobs
No. There will not be "more jobs". Look, protectionism isn't a "new" idea. It has been tried over and over throughout history. In fact, it has been more the norm than the exception. It hurts the economies of both importers and exporters, and leads to job losses and lower living standards.
Re:Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, protectionism isn't a "new" idea. It has been tried over and over throughout history. In fact, it has been more the norm than the exception. It hurts the economies of both importers and exporters, and leads to job losses and lower living standards.
Tell that to the Chinese as they've been using protectionist policies against the US for decades and engaging in tactics like flooding Western markets with super-cheap goods by "dumping" products at artificially-low prices subsidized by the Chinese government at a loss with the sole purpose of destroying US industrial and commercial sectors.
The Chinese have in effect been waging a trade and economic war against the US for decades. This response is long overdue and relatively mild in comparison.
Strat
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My grandparents were in the second world war (like within range of a He111) and my parents were born just after. Even though rationing ended before I was born, I was brought up as if "make do and mend" was the eleventh commandment. Eleventh and twelfth, maybe.
I'll come in again.
Try telling that to kids[1] today, the vacuous, whiny, materialistic little shits.
[1] Which is anyone under 30.
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Bernie Sanders similarly doesn't understand the macroeconomics of trade and thinks a trade deficit is your economy falling apart.
Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier. They raise the standard-of-living and cause economic growth.
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Owning things doesn't improve your standard-of-living, unless you base the quality of your life on how many material things you own.
You work 40 hours. You trade that labor for things. You can get a limited amount of stuff in trade--that's purchasing power.
Food. Housing. Clothing. Your car. High-speed Internet. Healthcare. These are things for which you need buying power.
Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: instead of choosing between a car and healthcare, you can have both.
Literally nothing else is standard-of-living except what you can buy for your time worked.
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So you don't buy a new TV and instead buy a new pair of shoes to replace your worn, failing ones. You buy nicer food. You insulate your house better (and save more money, thus able to buy nicer things).
I still have a OnePlus One. I wish the 5t didn't have round corners and the 6 didn't have round goofy corners and rabbit ears.
I also wish it wasn't so expensive to pay people to clean and maintain my lawn--or that I had more money and cared more about paying people to do that than about buying anything
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During the time electronic toys and what not have fallen in price, what's happened to the price of food? Construction costs?
Ohhhh.
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what's happened to the price of food
Generally represents lower of our consumer expense share each year; caveat: we eat more out-of-home, and food out-of-home is food plus paying for a time-share of servants to cook and serve and clean for us, which is more than just food.
Construction costs
Screwing around with international trade and making oil more-expensive has been a part of it; the bigger part has been running down mortgage interest prime rates, causing home prices to run up so the monthly mortgage payment is the same (which pins consumers to their mortg
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Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: ...
Unless what you end up getting is crap, then you'll just have to buy it again, which doesn't help you but the sellers.
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Sure. The main problem with the fallacy is it costs more to produce crap at exactly the same quality in the domestic nation than in the foreign trade partner; and producing at a higher quality is also cheaper in the trade partner nation than doing so domestically. You get cheap crap because people buy cheap crap and sellers are trying to undercut each others's prices in a world where consumers don't care about quality comparisons.
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You work 40 hours. You trade that labor for things. You can get a limited amount of stuff in trade--that's purchasing power.
Food. Housing. Clothing. Your car. High-speed Internet. Healthcare. These are things for which you need buying power.
Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: instead of choosing between a car and healthcare, you can have both.
Literally nothing else is standard-of-living except what you can buy for your time worked.
You forgot to mention that while some goods can be bought more cheaply you also see your wages fail to keep pace as has been the case since the 70's. It's a race to the bottom wage wise so it's not nearly as rosy a picture as you paint. Moreover economists agree that they duped us and the impact was far worse than estimated. Opps, their bad but our loss.
Citations:
http://prospect.org/article/de... [prospect.org] https://www.economist.com/node... [economist.com]
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You forgot to mention that while some goods can be bought more cheaply you also see your wages fail to keep pace as has been the case since the 70's.
Working 40 hours and being able to buy more means your wages are keeping pace with your cost-of-living increase.
That said, so long as you're not arguing that wages (other than the minimum wage, which needs government support) are falling or remaining stagnant, you're not wrong; with a 10% increase in average purchasing power, you can have everyone's purchasing power go up by 5% and they're all still...well, richer. They're also lagging behind.
I've actually suggested a completely-new approach to tax a [google.com]
That is why I'm rich! (Score:2)
Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier.
Yeah, instead of investing my money on making things to sell, I blow all my money on cheap plastic shit from China! Just like Warren Buffet. That's why I'm so rich!
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You can buy the same low-quality trash made by an American, but for a 20%-40% higher price, and so can work longer hours and buy fewer things.
Alternately, you could buy a higher-quality American-made good--although many companies have China make those higher-quality goods as well, and they also cost less than an American manufacturer can achieve at the price point.
Really, there's so much low-quality trash because people see two can-opener-shaped objects, one for $3 and one for $15, and reason they're th
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On the subject of there being a lot of cheap imported stuff, I give you Sturgeons Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And on buying the $3 one instead of the $15 one, the Boots Theory:
https://moneywise.com/a/boots-... [moneywise.com]
And to pick at nits, I woudn't trust a cast can opener. Would seem to have to be too brittle for the job. Forged or gtfo.
And on the subject of can openers, my favorite is the kind that breaks the lid's seal instead of cutting the metal below it: https://www.amazon.com/Kuhn-Ri... [amazon.com]
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Yes, Vimes's theory of boots applies. Also, Oxo makes a can opener like that and it's magical.
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Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier. They raise the standard-of-living and cause economic growth.
Isn't something like 90% of everything at Walmart imported from China? Not sure how that squares with the above as a positive.
[ Not trolling you, just saying something that is anecdotal, but probably actually wrong. ]
On the other hand... Seems Trump is trying very hard to prove that trade wars are "easy to win."
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No, you're right; it's just that things like Cordoba Guitars are made in China, Fender Guitars are often made in Korea, high-end bicycle frames are made either by Trek or in China, high-end bicycle components were made in China or Japan until SRAM moved from China to Taiwan in 2016, and so forth.
Logitech? China. Apple? China. CISCO? China. Intel? USA. Oxo Good Grips, some of the best-made kitchen tools I've seen? China. Breville, some of the best kitchen appliances? Designed in Australia; manu
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Hasn't worked for 40 years. Explain that. We've tried your system, and it has systematically sucked the wealth out of the country that was created in no small part due to protectionist trade policies in the beginning half of the 20th century.
Or you've been seeing the consequences of a tax policy that's insufficiently progressive to stop the wealthy from using their wealth to accumulate an even larger share of the wealth.
Oh wait, your guy just signed a bill that transferred a massive amount of wealth to the already wealthy... I hope you're ready for another 40 years of the rich getting richer and the rest running in place.
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Hasn't worked for 40 years. Explain that.
The US economy has more than doubled in the last 40 years.
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shush!! since when the reality is important! when trump says that he is getting poor... err... sorry, ignore that! the USA are getting poor, it must be true!!
The sad part is that while the US economy increased, most of the profit went to the top 1%
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the wealth out of the country that was created in no small part due to protectionist trade policies in the beginning half of the 20th century.
Right, because massive destruction of infrastructure and manufacturing capacity in Europe had nothing to do with it.
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Why would a 25% tariff be a 100% increase in retail price, considering that the tariff is on value, and value is less than value + retail markup? If anything, the increase would be less than 25%, since the tariff is not charged on the markup.
But yeah. Cry me a river. God forbid if people are forced to fix their electronics, keep them longer, buy used on Craigslist, instead of sending more e-waste to the landfill or to poor countries that burn it to remove valuable metals.
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Tell him you're not paying sticker (sucker) price (Score:3)
Trump didn't insult Xi Jinping's mother. What he said is that he's not going to let us be screwed over by unfair trade practices. I don't think the car dealer salesman is necessary, but if one insists in that analogy it would be more like letting the salesman know that unlike the last guy, you don't intend to lay sticker price.
What the timing does is it frames the negotiation, allowing US negotiators to "give" something to China during the negotiations, to relent on something, by easing the tariffs and res
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That would be it exactly. Xi will now instruct Kim to capitulate to a reasonable peace compromise with SK/Trump in exchange for Trump not raping them at the WTO. So, China, how many hundreds of billions of dollars a year are the Norks' nukes worth to you?
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FTFY.
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