US Holds Off On Huawei Licenses As China Halts Crop-Buying (bloomberg.com) 131
After China said it was halting purchases of U.S. farming goods earlier this week, the White House retaliated by postponing a decision about licenses for U.S. companies to restart business with Huawei. "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department has vetted the applications to resume sales, said last week he's received 50 requests and that a decision on them was pending," reports Bloomberg. "American businesses require a special license to supply goods to Huawei after the U.S. added the Chinese telecommunications giant to a trade blacklist in May over national-security concerns." From the report: President Donald Trump said in late June after agreeing to a now-broken trade truce with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Japan that some restrictions on Huawei would be loosened. But that promise was contingent upon China beefing up its purchases from American farmers, which Trump has complained the country has failed to do. In the past week tensions have escalated further as Trump said he would impose a 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports as of Sept. 1 and his Treasury Department formally labeled China a currency manipulator. Still, Trump said last week there were no plans to reverse the decision he made in Japan to allow more sales by U.S. suppliers of non-sensitive products to Huawei. He said the issue of Huawei is not related to the trade talks.
They have no wealthy lobbyists (Score:2)
Wake me up (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wake you? Munches popcorn... This is as good as streaming gets this summer.
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As long as you aren't a farmer.
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Thanks for that, I like to practice my browser scrolling
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allegedly
[Yawn] Call me when there's a verdict. Malicious prosecution is an old political tactic.
Which of those hasn't the USA done? (Score:1)
None.
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I'm setting an alarm for 2024... Because apparently half the damn country voted for this guy. And he only got more stupid since then, so he's sure to win in 2020.
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After that there will be the Ivanka Trump years.
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before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
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Oh please, let him rest. He's never gonna dance again.
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It will end when humanity goes extinct. This is normal intersocietal competition. Current state of relative peace and stability where trade is current form is massive exception in human history.
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Don't go around saying that world owes you a living. World owes you nothing. It was here first.
-Mark Twain.
P.S. I'm not american. I'm just sane and aware of realities of the world, unlike coddled morons such as yourself, who think that world is a nice place where empathy towards those not a part of your immediate family is a norm rather than an extreme exception.
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Someone wake me up when all of this idiotic dick waving ends.
Trump is the only President so far to publicly defend the size of his penis.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Donald Trump's penis is what makes America great.
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The Chinese have very small penis, very small.
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The Chinese have very small penis, very small.
Yes, but their Gross Domestic Penises (by weight) far exceed those of the USA.
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It was a reference to the comedy show called "South Park"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTboGG7DMwU
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Dude, these are growing pains. What; you thought bringing industry back to the US was going to be painless??
just the setup.. (Score:1)
to buy votes from rural america via a 'bailout' of farmers... and those who still can't make it, get bought up by the wealthy ag and food production corporations. those companies will then throw money at the "president" and his congressional accomplices.
grocery prices at retail are already affected by the loss of exports to china. farmers are gonna get shit on... hard, as will everybody else that relies upon agriculture directly or indirectly for their livelihood, before this is all done. and then they'll t
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I work with farmers every day. I talked to a soybean farmer a while back about the issues with China.
Did you know that China has a swine flu epidemic [vox.com] they are fighting and they've had to slaughter millions and millions of pigs? A good amount of the American soybeans that have not been sold to China this year were destined to be fed to the pigs that now no longer exist. A farmer told me this, not a politician or media pundit.
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China also has an armyworm epidemic. The Chinese are keeping a tight lid on it but their population is about to go hungry unless it can buy foreign food imports (which is primarily US-sourced).
It's a dictatorship though so it's likely the leadership just won't care about what its population thinks (see Hong Kong protests) and let them die like the Soviets did and places like Venezuela and North Korea still does.
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https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
They're currently dealing with it, but who's to say how effective their efforts will be. It's nice to see they're looking into introducing/reinforcing natural predators and GM crops, rather than just flooding the fields with poisons.
I mentioned this elsewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
What this means is their profits are down. This cannot continue. Sooner or later it'll impact CEO salaries. And that cannot be allowed to happen.
Right now stock buy backs from the Trump tax cuts are keeping them busy, but that won't last forever. Barring a change of administration (and maybe Congress) hose tax cuts are permanent. That means they're already counted on the balance sheets. Remember, profits have to go up. Always.
So they can't raise prices and the buy backs are running out of steam. Can you guess what's next?
Layoffs. And Mandatory unpaid overtime. Just about everyone reading this is in IT. Obama gave you a host of protections from unpaid overtime by executive order. Trump rescinded those protections. Mitch McConnell's Congress did not act, except briefly when Obama enacted the orders to denounce them.
So everyone reading this right now, get ready for one of two outcomes: a layoff with a 50% paycut if you're lucky and losing your house if you're not (think 2008 x 1000) or 80+ hours a week for the same pay you make now. Well, not the same... there'll be no pay raises (austerity, after all) but just 'cause your pay is frozen doesn't mean inflation is. Expect a 2-2.5% paycut every year.
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Mnuchin help strip Sears of assets. Then he led IndyMac after the last financial meltdown and brought it back to solvency...by screwing homeowners at every turn on their mortgages. So he was a natural for the Administration.
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In the meantime though, Trump got corporations to pay taxes (by eating the cost of the tariffs) and he got money redistributed to the lower tiers (because as you say, consumers aren't paying the tariffs). In other words, the progressives like what he's doing. They just don't like the way he's doing it.
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They just don't like the way he's doing it.
They don't like who is doing it. But that works both ways. This isn't about doing good for the country. It's about earning Brownie points for the respective parties.
Re: I mentioned this elsewhere (Score:3)
So consumers are paying the same, corporations ate laying people off... and Liberals want this why?
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Anyone sane has said as much. "consumers end up paying the tariffs" is the old "every cost increase just increases cost for consumers" argument that is brought out to oppose anything that would increase expenses for business but reality is more complicated than that.
For starters, the tariffs are 25% but Goldman Sachs didn't demonstrate a 25% increase (or anywhere near it) so while it is true that consumers are paying more they clearly are not paying all or even most of the cost. Further, the actual tariff m
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're misunderstanding something (Score:2)
I'm not saying protectionism couldn't have helped, but it would have needed to be comprehensive from day 1, with trade rules that punished China (and Mexico, and Vietnam) for abusing their population. Also, we need to stop prison labor, which has become a 3 million strong army of slaves...
Spot o
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They did it with reckless disregard for the safety of their people and their environment. Google "Cancer Villages" sometime.
That is exaggerated. Their time having 1800ds conditions like in England or Germany is also 100 years ago. They might not have the pollution standards - yet - that e.g. Europe has, but they are moving towards it.
USA got industrialized the same way China is now, or had recent 50 years. Now they are already shifting to clean energy and clean factories.
with trade rules that punished Chin
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In other words, Trump gets to feel what it's like to be on the other end of his own business practices?
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He won't - he's too old, too rich, and too obsessed with himself.
But his fanbois certainly will.
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"For those that do not know how "trade" with China works its very simple, they can sell all the good they want here with no strings, if a US company wants to sell there? As Henry Hill said in Goodfellas "fuck you pay me""
And it is that way in many places throughout the world, including India. Not just for business but limitations put in place to prevent us from investing in their businesses/real estate/etc. Almost universally everyone else has substantially higher tariffs in place as well.
That those nations
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For those that do not know how "trade" with China works its very simple, they can sell all the good they want here with no strings,
That's patently not true. Just ask Huawei.
if a US company wants to sell there? As Henry Hill said in Goodfellas "fuck you pay me" as the US company HAS to set up offices there or sign with a Chinese company AND/OR has to have significant business holding or investment in China so frankly the mob would be better to do business with than the Chinese government.
This practice (of setting up joint venture) is explicitly permitted for developing countries under WTO agreement which the US of A has signed up to. (Of course, the US has tendency to pull out its international commitment when it finds them inconvenient.) For example, China agreed to set up joint venture in Pakistan [indiatimes.com] when it sold its fighter jets there, just like Lockeed Martin agreed to the same when selling F-16 to India. Why is such practice allowed? Because it is
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That makes totally no sense. Corporations don't "eat" the tariffs, they pass it on because for most companies profit margins are extremely tight. The only reason prices aren't going up is because the economic value of the dollar is going up, especially abroad, because the market has bounced upwards.
Consumers aren't broke, they're investing (once again) in mortgages, you wouldn't see people buying houses if they were broke.
And these days, with record unemployment and actually worker shortages especially acro
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"Investing in mortgages" is a nice euphemism for trying to pay off an overblown mortgage so you don't lose your home...
"People" are not buying houses. Investment companies do. That's the problem. Yes, it's not as critical in IT, for once, but just because we happy few are not going to be shit on for once doesn't mean that the economy is doing fine. Unemployment among low qualified people is going up. Quickly. And there is definitely no reversal in sight.
And unemployed, poor people are a bit like plutonium.
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"Unemployment among low qualified people is going up. Quickly. And there is definitely no reversal in sight."
Do you have anything to support that assertion? Perhaps low qualified people in the cities but there has been a big economic shift as a consequence of all these changes rebooting higher paying lower qualified positions throughout most of the country. That is a pretty big deal. Boosting the economy in California by a billion while killing the $250m of industry in Montana might look good for our econom
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'Corporations don't "eat" the tariffs, they pass it on because for most companies profit margins are extremely tight.'
That is the pervasive myth, it isn't really true though or not entirely. Most companies profit margins are actually huge, their profits less so but that is because corporations are tax shelters for the wealthy sort of like IRAs. They have to pay corporate tax on profits so the more you can grow without recognizing profit the better. But they are artificially tight in the sense that any loss
American economy much better than you say (Score:2, Insightful)
The economy sucks (Wall Street != Economy).
Wall Street is not the economy, but a host of other stats (like job creation and earnings) are all up [factcheck.org].
It amazes me that liberals just flat out refuse to admit this is so, because by doing so that absolutely guarantee they will continue to lose elections. They are running against a problem that for most people does not exist, so it ends up looking like Democrats are babbling and totally out of touch with reality when they say (as you do) that the U.S. economy sucks
57 million Americans are part of the "gig" economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, wages have risen slightly, even adjusting for inflation. But that come close to making up the ground already lost [usatoday.com]. And that's before we talk about the $1 trillion in student loan debt, not all of it held by Millennials [youtube.com]
Meanwhile that $15 minimum wage is working out just fine [gothamist.com]. Turns out trickle down economics doesn't work, but demand side does. Give rich people money and the horde it. Give poor people money and they spend it. The economy is all about the Velocity of Money. Who knew?
So no, the economy is not doing well except for about 10-15% of the highest paid professionals and oligarchs. How the hell do you think Trump got elected? Hilary was the most conservative candidate in since Bush Sr. People wanted change. Any change. And, well, they're about to get it, in the form of an economic crash that'll make 2008 look like a picnic...
Re:57 million Americans are part of the "gig" econ (Score:5, Insightful)
Trickle down works when you have a shortage of supply, when you need money on the investment side so you can produce and manufacture, but we're far from that. There is plenty of money running around on the supply side, investors are basically begging for sensible investment opportunities, what's lacking is a demand for, well, anything.
We (along with most of the "western" world) are a service oriented economy. Most of our workforce is not in agriculture or manufacture but in services. This is great when there is money on the demand side, because services are basically entirely labor with no or very low investment in raw materials, but you feel it really badly when the recession strikes because they're also the first thing people cut down when money gets tight. Think about it, what do you rather cut from your budget when the money isn't going to buy both: Food or a haircut?
And yes, people are broke. They cannot afford buying those services, and that's a really, really crappy situation.
There is a reason why those "socialist" countries in Europe are still doing fairly well while in the US you see more and more service based companies struggle. There is simply more people with enough money to still afford those services that drive the economy today. And it's terribly hard to export a haircut.
You're talking about the Laffer Curve (Score:3)
Remember, with our tax system we tax income and profits. That means the money you spend on investment doesn't get taxed.
As for being a service economy, that works for a while but sooner or later you need people who can afford to buy services. We have wealth inequality not seen since the 1920s, right before the Great Depression.
...those gig workers are mostly HAPPY (Score:1)
If you actually read your own link, the report actually shows that by and large gig workers are still more satisfied with their arrangements than not. It also depends on what type of gig work you do (again read your own link, it talks about there are at least two types of gig worker)
It might be surprising to you, but money isn't everything.
And that's before we talk about the $1 trillion in student loan debt
As pointed out by another AC, student debt has been around for longer than the recent economy. The fact it's not all held by Millenials should have gave that away!
Meanwhile that $15 minimum wage is working out just fine.
It's wo
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"So no, the economy is not doing well except for about 10-15% of the highest paid professionals and oligarchs."
Consider this another way. Automation and globalization is killing the labor model. There won't be jobs soon enough. EVERYONE needs to be hoarding wealth and building up our ownership interests in these emerging markets and globalized companies or they'll be stuck begging for handouts from a wealthy class that doesn't need most of them anymore for all time. That or they'll have to try to immigrate.
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The Yuan is being devalued so that China and lower the cost of their exports. /.ers does not like it if I call people like you: idiots. Anyway, it slipped out of my fingers.
And that is wrong and stupid propaganda. Unfortunately one of the old school
https://exchangerate-euro.com/... [exchangerate-euro.com]
The value of the Yuan is relatively stable since decades and has at the moment a high
If you would not babble stupid things (can happen to everyone) but false things that are easy to check and verify I would not be urged to call yo
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Well, ... since decades.
FYI: the Yuan is bound with a fixed rate to the USD.
There is no fluctuation at all
Then again software for finances don't require the developer to have any clue about finances. Wow, that was easy again.
Actually my post above has a mistake, and as smart as you are: you failed to see it :P
E.g. the link displays EUR versus RMB, not RMB versus USD, what I googled for.
E.g. if you google for "china RMB versus USD" the first hit is a graph (supplied by google) that shows that the exchange ra
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So: you just confirmed: the exchange rate did not change much.
Thank you!
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Over the course of 5 years, rofl ...
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China doens't give a fuck about Trump. It would treat anyone like that, please get off that high horse, you might break something when you fall off.
A former (VERY conservative and even more controversial than Trump) Bavarian minister-president [wikipedia.org] once sent more than 3 billion German Marks to the former communist East Germany with the idea to "make them dependent on our money like a druggy from heroin". It worked. China learned well from that lesson and is now pretty much doing the same with their goods to the
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What are the Chinese going to eat? China imports more food from the US than from any other country. They've gotten used to eating more meat lately, and most of the increase is coming from here. We're a major source of soy, too. China's farmland is not up to the task of feeding its people, even as vegetarians. They have polluted over 20% of it to the point of uselessness, for example.
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Unpaid overtime, ha! More time to read and post on /.!!
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So everyone reading this right now, get ready for one of two outcomes: a layoff with a 50% paycut if you're lucky and losing your house if you're not
The thing is, the people bankrolling Trump's re-election campaign aren't going to lose their homes. They're going to get a great opportunity to buy up everything that goes under, for pennies on the dollar.
As the saying goes “If you're not at the table, you're on the menu”.
Passing on the costs (Score:2)
But American companies aren't raising prices in response to tariffs. So far they're eating it.
Speaking as someone who has to buy stuff made in China for my day job I can say definitively that is NOT true. I routinely see tariffs of 12-18% on components we buy to make our products and the companies we buy them from have been quite clear in saying which products are being taxed courtesy of the orangutan in the white house. No we cannot get the products elsewhere. Likewise my company isn't eating the tariffs. 18% is greater than our entire profit margin. We can't eat that amount of increase in mat
You're in the supply chain (Score:2)
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"Just about everyone reading this is in IT. Obama gave you a host of protections from unpaid overtime by executive order."
Actually you have protections from unpaid overtime by court ruling in IT. The only exemption is for developers. If you aren't being paid overtime working IT (including OT for on call periods where you can't safely go about the same activities you'd perform if you weren't on call) and you don't have direct reports you have a solid basis for a lawsuit. Verizon got nailed for billions on th
What I find interesting about this situation (Score:5, Insightful)
is the utter lack of any defensible legal or policy pretext for either nation's actions.
If Huawei is a security threat, China buying American soybeans isn't going to change that. The very offer to loosen restrictions on Huawei in return for more agricultural purchases shows our government doesn't take its own accusations seriously.
China's moratorium on US agricultural purchases is tit-for-tat, plain and simple. In a tit-for-tat situation where neither side can afford to back down for domestic political reasons, you have what game theorists call a "death spiral". There is simply no way out where each side feels it absolutely must gain advantage with the next move.
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Good. Let the relationship with China die. We should not be doing business with an ethnostate planning world domination.
We know how this story ends.
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Sure. What could possibly go wrong?
People don't seem to grasp that decisions can't be easily and instantaneously undone. This is particularly true of bad decisions. Often that's what makes them bad.
You can argue that tying the US and Chinese economies together so intimately was a bad idea. I was dubious myself at the time. But having gone down that path, we can't just wish ourselves off it. Getting off is a long, costly and complicated business.
Consider this fact: As of today 75% of American tool and d
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Tool and die makers are a thing of the past. They have been replaced by CNC operators and CAD/CAM designers. An art replaced by engineering.
Let the profession...die.
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While I think time is definitely on the Chinese government's side, they are also paranoid about unrest and neurotically sensitive to unflattering public opinion. Things might not seem so advantageous from where they're sitting.
That could give us some leverage, but it also means they can't afford to be seen backing down. A smart player would drive a hard bargain with some face-saving measures. The thing is, I think what Trump wants is to be seen making the Chinese back down. But that's the one appearance
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Trump fired his bolt. China misread intent, did not see that one coming. Then Trump doubled down and had Japan and Korea put in some on the ground kicks. Never mind China is like a supertanker, and the inertia to change is only so much. Just like American companies are not scrabbling to bring back plants from Mexico. Europe and the Germans are watching - and will dive in the gap if China remains sidelined.
Like a chess game, the next moves have not been thought out. Currency movements made the pie smaller fo
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National Security? Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has always been 100% about a trade war, "national security" is just an excuse, and stunts like this prove that there is absolutely nothing to it.
I hope the rest of the world is watching closely, and that any allies who went along with the whole "security threat" thing without any proof are seeing how much of a threat the USA REALLY believes Huawei to be.
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It was obvious in the spring when Trump offered to sort out the Huawei issue out as part of the trade negotiations. At that moment he showed that the national security claims were BS. But if any of the other countries try to not implement the sanctions on Huawei because of this you can be assured that the US will still put pressure on them.
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It was obvious in the spring when Trump offered to sort out the Huawei issue out as part of the trade negotiations. At that moment he showed that the national security claims were BS...
It seems the best policies a president can have are
1. If your predecessor made a commitment, then keep it, unless you have previously campaigned specifically on not. In short, America keeping its words is necessary, and should be the default option.
2. Policies need to be infinite in nature with respect to time. I.E. Here are our goals in Afghanistan. We don't care how long they take or how much they cost, since they are based on principles. Now at the same time you don't set principles and goals that ar
Re:National Security? Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think "undermining" only matters if people expect policies to make sense.
Just think about this for a moment: China refuses to buy American goods (in that case food), and in response the Administration forbids American companies to sell other American goods (in this case electronics) to a China.
People seem to take it for granted that if you think about what they're saying and doing, it just doesn't make much sense.
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Trump wanted no such thing. He wanted to break NAFTA so he could have his own treaty with his name on it. Trudeau should have walked up to him, kicked him the balls, and tell him not to screw with Canada.
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It kind of undermines their position that this is due to Huawei being a threat to "national security"
On the upside, we have now identified all the shills posting anti-Huawei propaganda BS that has little basis in reality. Maybe I'll get around to publishing that list one day.
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It kind of undermines their position that this is due to Huawei being a threat to "national security", if they're willing to ignore that if China agrees to buy more farm goods.
You are assuming that Trump would be unwilling to sell out the U.S. if the price is right. I don't think that to be a plausible assumption.
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No.
There are real national security concerns... they just are not Trump's concern. He is focused on the trade war (that he started) as it is a high profile issue. If he needs to sacrifice our national security in order to "win" he will do so.
The national security issues, much like the violation of trade sanctions issue, existed before Trump became president, and were being investigated by various departments/agencies that exist to be concerned about such things. Trump may use presidential authority to en
This trade war (Score:3, Funny)
is headed the Wong Wei
National security (Score:3)
So the impact of (selling stuff to) Huawei on national security somehow depends on China buying soy or manipulating‘ their currency.
There will be no clout left to the US when Trump and the Republicans are finished.
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from the deport-the-bastard dept. (Score:2)
So USA is now a 3rd world country? (Score:2)
I recall how in a basic economics course they taught us how countries should specialize their production and exports according to their comparative advantage. Hence, most third world countries, which lack skilled labor, should export agricultural commodities and import manufactured goods. Now we see USA exporting soybeans into China and importing pretty much every manufactured item you can find at Walmart. What has the world come to..