China

By free trade wt China, did we supply the rope by which they will eventually hang us with economical

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No

    Votes: 4 33.3%

  • Everything goes in cycles. It may be China's turn to be top dog.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The USA is just too storng and balanced economically and will remain the prime economic power in the

    Votes: 8 66.7%
  • Total voters
    12
ZRod said:
So, what exactly are we supposed to do about China? Anyone who works in industry knows that they regularly steal IP. We know that they routinely violate trade laws and circumvent current tariffs. So why can't we slap tariffs and penalties on them? Are we just supposed to sit back and take it while it kills our own businesses here at home?
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I have lots of different things to say about it.

#1, when Trump is making a decision, I don't believe he's making the decision for the correct reasons, and I don't think he's doing it the right way. He doesn't even understand simple concepts.

There are lots of concepts I don't understand, but I'm not the President, and if I was, I wouldn't hire a bunch of yes men and then do whatever the hell I wanted it, thinking I'm the smartest person on earth.

So to the actual question, I don't know the answer but I'm going to think out loud here, just talking about steel and not the new tariffs and pretending China and America are the only countries on earth.

Let's pretend American steel and aluminum cost 120% what Chinese steel costs, and currently 99% of the steel manufactured in the U.S. is being sold (they wouldn't make more than they need to, right?). Let's say the tariff makes it so American steel costs 95% of what Chinese steel costs, so it's the best deal there is. That's nice, but we don't have nearly as many steel plants as we used to because China started selling it cheaply quite awhile ago. I'm assuming we can increase production at the plants we have but that we would have a shortfall if every American company was forced to only buy from America. It has to be a long-term project to start up a manufacturing plant again.

So eventually, maybe 5-10 years from now, we might be able to open up some new plants and make up for that shortfall, now that there's more demand because of the tariffs, and then the plants would be doing well which would, at least in a small way, help the economy. That's great.

But doing a big tariff immediately might put a bunch of companies out of business, because they can't handle the sudden increase in cost. We likely CANNOT produce enough steel for them. We don't have the plants now. These companies will HAVE to buy some from China for awhile and it will cost more. The U.S. steel already costs more, obviously. There are likely smart ways we can introduce tariffs that will not put steel-buying companies out of business, and will increase the chances that we can increase our steel production in the coming years. A 25% tariff risks putting companies out of business which will reduce the demand. OR, if they don't go out of business, they raise prices on all of us.

An example I will use, that I've already used, is a company in Omaha that uses a lot of steel and creates a crapton of products for Wal-mart. They are either going to have to raise their prices, or make less $. Maybe if they raise their prices Wal-mart goes elsewhere. Maybe Wal-mart buys the product directly from China because it's not on the tariff list! Maybe Wal-mart can't go elsewhere, so they raise prices on their products to make up for the $ lost, which means the consumer pays for it directly. But if this was a gradual thing it would have less chance of being damaging, imo. That sounds logical to me, anyhow.


Finally, back to Trump. He doesn't understand trade deficit. Americans have the ability to consume more products than other countries, which increases our need for imports. There is also such a thing as supply and demand. If Americans love chocolate more than other countries and it's in high demand, South American countries will charge us more than they charge other countries - pretty simple concept. It doesn't mean they are duping us. And I read the other day that they have trouble calculating electronic transactions when it comes to import and export $. Their most accurate counts are for customs - so we're talking physical items entering harbors. Think about that for a minute... which countries sell the s#!t people buy electronically? I'm talking software, movies, video games, online services. Those exports are underrepresented, and they're American exports. Without looking, I'm pretty sure America and Japan are the top exporters of that kind of stuff. and I bet other countries are very far behind.

Ok I looked. I guess Japan just has a lot of video games.

Largest software companies according to Forbes are:

1. Microsoft, USA
2. Oracle, USA
3. SAP, Germany
4. Symantec, USA
5. VMware, USA
6. Fiserv, USA
7. CA Technologies, USA
8. Intuit, USA
9. Salesforce, USA
10. Amadeus IT Group, Spain

 
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Moiraine said:
I have lots of different things to say about it.

#1, when Trump is making a decision, I don't believe he's making the decision for the correct reasons, and I don't think he's doing it the right way. He doesn't even understand simple concepts.

There are lots of concepts I don't understand, but I'm not the President, and if I was, I wouldn't hire a bunch of yes men and then do whatever the hell I wanted it, thinking I'm the smartest person on earth.

So to the actual question, I don't know the answer but I'm going to think out loud here, just talking about steel and not the new tariffs and pretending China and America are the only countries on earth.

Let's pretend American steel and aluminum cost 120% what Chinese steel costs, and currently 99% of the steel manufactured in the U.S. is being sold (they wouldn't make more than they need to, right?). We don't have nearly as many of these plants as we used to because China started selling it cheaply quite awhile ago. I'm assuming we can increase production at the plants we have but that we would have a shortfall if every American company was forced to only buy from America.

So eventually, maybe 5-10 years from now, we might be able to open up some new plants and make up for that shortfall, and then the plants would be doing well which would, at least in a small way, help the economy. That's great.

But, and I've probably spent way too many words explaining my thoughts, doing a big tariff immediately might put a bunch of companies out of businesses, because they can't handle the sudden in crease in cost. We likely CANNOT produce enough steel for them. We don't have the plants now. These companies will HAVE to buy some from China and it will cost more. The U.S. steel already costs more, obviously. There are likely smart ways we can introduce tariffs that will not put steel-buying companies out of business, and will increase the chances that we can increase our steel production in the coming years. A 25% tariff risks putting companies out of business which will reduce the demand. OR, if they don't go out of business, they raise prices on all of us.

An example I will use, that I've already used, is a company in Omaha that uses a lot of steel and creates a crapton of products for Wal-mart. They are either going to have to raise their prices, or make less $. Maybe if they raise their prices Wal-mart goes elsewhere. Maybe Wal-mart can't go elsewhere, so they raise prices on their products to make up for the $ lost. (I don't like Wal-mart anyway but that's another topic). But if this was a gradual thing it would have less chance of being damaging, imo. That sounds logical to me, anyhow.


Finally, back to Trump. He doesn't understand trade deficit. And I read the other day that they have trouble calculating electronic transactions when it comes to import and export $. Their most accurate counts are for customs - so we're talking physical items entering harbors. Think about that for a minute... which countries sell the s#!t people buy electronically? I'm talking software, movies, video games, online services. Those exports are underrepresented, and they're American exports.
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I wish the blubbering idiot would understand that. 

 
I mean, Moiraine, your logic is sound but it still doesn't address the fact that China routinely violates trade rules and no one seems to care. It like the North Korea problem, past administrations have let it fester too long and it's become a major issue. I know that myself and others at my work routinely talk about how a counter part in China asks for a drawing on a patented part, and we refuse to give it to them because they don't need it and we know exactly what will happen. We aren't playing on a level playing field.

 
ZRod said:
I mean, Moiraine, your logic is sound but it still doesn't address the fact that China routinely violates trade rules and no one seems to care. It like the North Korea problem, past administrations have let it fester too long and it's become a major issue. I know that myself and others at my work routinely talk about how a counter part in China asks for a drawing on a patented part, and we refuse to give it to them because they don't need it and we know exactly what will happen. We aren't playing on a level playing field.
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It kind of does address it. I don't know what I, personally, would do, but introducing a tariff, let's say 5%, does not necessarily sound like a bad idea to me. Then increasing it over time if that seems like a good idea. Can you tell me more about China routinely violating trade rules that other countries don't violate? I don't know much about it.

TheSker said:
Time will tell, but maybe....just maybe....getting a little tougher on unfair trade might not be a bad deal in the long run.
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I think it's possible it will be better in the long run, too, but I don't know why it can't be gradual. That seems a hell of a lot less dangerous. I've often been annoyed we didn't introduce tariffs on Chinese goods back in the 1980's when China was basically producing them in sweatshops. My opinion is that we should have tried to avoid buying things from countries that were doing things in creating those things that are illegal here. E.g. having child workers. I just think the timing is 30 years too late. Saving a company or industry sounds a lot cheaper to me than starting it over.

 
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ZRod said:
I mean, Moiraine, your logic is sound but it still doesn't address the fact that China routinely violates trade rules and no one seems to care. It like the North Korea problem, past administrations have let it fester too long and it's become a major issue. I know that myself and others at my work routinely talk about how a counter part in China asks for a drawing on a patented part, and we refuse to give it to them because they don't need it and we know exactly what will happen. We aren't playing on a level playing field.
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I’ve had personal experience with issues like this that cost us thousands to fix. 

I do do think the US government should be very heavily involved in fixing this issue. 

 
More on the leverage China has on us.

http://theweek.com/articles/765276/how-china-win-trade-war-1-move

Compared to the scale of the U.S. economy, the numbers are still relatively trivial and mostly theoretical. But if things do spiral into all-out trade war, it's worth noting China has a nuclear option.

I'm referring to rare earth metals.

These are elements like dysprosium, neodymium, gadolinium, and ytterbium. They aren't actually rare, but they do play crucial roles in everything from smart phones to electric car motors, hard drives, wind turbines, military radar, smart bombs, laser guidance, and more. They're also quite difficult to mine and process.

It turns out the United States is almost entirely dependent on foreign suppliers for rare earth metals. More importantly, it's almost entirely dependent on China specifically for rare earth metals that have been processed into a final and usable form.
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Trump is an idiot and China knows it and they know he is arrogant and will make foolish decisions because of it.

If the U.S. goes through with an additional $100 billion in tariffs, China will not hesitate to fight back and is already prepared to, a Ministry of Commerce representative said.

"We will immediately fight back with a major response," the representative said during a Chinese-language briefing with reporters Friday in Beijing. "We have no other choice."

"We feel America is very arrogant. They have taken a wrong action. The result is that they will hurt themselves. If they release the list of $100 billion tariffs, China is prepared. And will not hesitate," he added.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/china-will-not-hesitate-with-major-response-to-new-tariffs-ministry-of-commerce.html

 
China is falling back into Maoist territory in it's repression of its people and religions. 

https://apnews.com/a2e4a0436fba4146a156daef77885945/For-God-or-party?-China's-Christians-face-test-of-faith

Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, believers are seeing their freedoms shrink dramatically even as the country undergoes a religious revival. Experts and activists say that as he consolidates his power, Xi is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.

The crackdown on Christianity is part of a broader push by Xi to “Sinicize” all the nation’s religions by infusing them with “Chinese characteristics” such as loyalty to the Communist Party. Islamic crescents and domes have been stripped from mosques, and a campaign launched to “re-educate” tens of thousands of Uighur Muslims. Tibetan children have been moved from Buddhist temples to schools and banned from religious activities during their summer holidays, state-run media report.

This spring, a five-year plan to “Sinicize” Christianity in particular was introduced, along with new rules on religious affairs. Over the last several months, local governments across the country have shut down hundreds of private Christian “house churches.” A statement last week from 47 in Beijing alone said they had faced “unprecedented” harassment since February.

Authorities have also seized Bibles, while major e-commerce retailers JD.com and Taobao pulled them off their sites. Children and party members are banned from churches in some areas, and at least one township has encouraged Christians to replace posters of Jesus with portraits of Xi. Some Christians have resorted to holding services in secret.
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“Xi is a closet Maoist — he is very anxious about thought control,” said Willy Lam, a Chinese politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “He definitely does not want people to be faithful members of the church, because then people would profess their allegiance to the church rather than to the party, or more exactly, to Xi himself.”

Various state and local officials declined repeated requests to comment. But in 2016, Xi explicitly warned against the perceived foreign threats tied to faith, telling a religion conference: “We must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means.” And in April, the religious affairs department published an article saying that churches must endorse the party’s leadership as part of “Sinicization.”

“Only Sinicized churches can obtain God’s love,” the article stated.

The government is even cracking down on Christians more aggressively through legal means. In March, a prominent Chinese house church leader with US permanent residency was sentenced to seven years in prison after he built Christian schools in Myanmar. And half a dozen Christians were sentenced last month to up to 13 years in jail for involvement in a “cult,” according to U.S.-based Christian non-profit ChinaAid.

The pressure has pushed several dozen pastors and their families to flee to the United States in recent years, ChinaAid says. The wife of one pastor under house arrest left for Midland, Texas about a year ago, after authorities warned that their children might have trouble getting an education in China. She said members of their church in China were barred from being baptized, and even a simple Christmas service was interrupted.
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Xi had Christopher Robin banned in China because people were saying he looked like Winnie the Pooh. That is exactly the kind of thing Trump would do if the law was behind him.

 
Moiraine said:
Xi had Christopher Robin banned in China because people were saying he looked like Winnie the Pooh. That is exactly the kind of thing Trump would do if the law was behind him.
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Have you seen the pictures? They're pure gold. I have no idea if they were pre-existing or drawn specifically to imitate Xi (I think one with Shinzo Abe probably was), but they're good for some laughs nonetheless. 

kInIile.jpg

Scxr35e.jpg


 
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