Increased Shipping Rates from China

[lucretius]

On 5/21/2019 at 2:45 AM, MetalNuts said:

The trade war is mostly not for the welfare/benefit of the ordinary US citizen who will somehow suffer from the increased price of the imported products.  The trade war has one very important goal which is to suppress other country or countries to become economic strong enough that the politicians consider a threat and what else could be better than justifying it as national security which affords almost unquestionable power to the authorities. 

 

I don't see how another country becoming an economic threat/power is a bad thing, unless the US develops a dependency on one trading partner (or cartel of partners colluding against the US). Trade benefits both sides. Restricting trade for national security or human rights  reasons is another thing.

[lucretius]

17 hours ago, DuckToller said:

Ralf,
Which is your perspective on how France is running things???
2 bottles of Huet and everything is looking ok from your veranda? 
I'd say, for an example,  Switzerland or Netherlands are running (most) things ok, their economic/social/political coordinates are much less problematically than the same facts for France. La France has as well a presidential system, where parliament and goverment have effectivly only a small impact on decision making, which in turn feeds the need of other forces (like SNCF/Gilets Jaunes/Students/Farmers) to make their interest being heard/manifested in their particular ways. There is no effective social balancing by the state in F..
How should that France find an equilibrium for the world ?

Cheers, Tom

 

LOL!  It would seem that there is an election for which country should be in charge of a planet.

[lucretius]

On 9/25/2019 at 6:49 PM, John Dyson said:

I agree with what you say.   However, now lets talk 'climate emergency', and the huge CO2 decrease in the US without needing to make some kind of economy distorting agreement.   EU isn't coming close to their goals, and China doesn't have serious goals because they are an 'emerging economy.'  There is a huge asymmetry here -- whatever the EU and US does, China will still keep on leveraging their postion not needing to follow through with world environmental challenges.  China has enough money now to do their fair share EVERYWHERE -- no need for IP theft, effective pollution cheating, under paying the people, etc.  They have PLENTY of money for spying though.

 

Most of those issues -- I don't care.  I only care about proper trade policies, no IP theft, and their fair share of global environment contribution.  Most countries need binding agreements to follow through, some countries are just naturally good at adapting -- China isn' amenable to either.

 

I say, fix the IP problem, look for the worst polluters that are getting worse, etc -- China is not a good global citizen, and we (the US/major western countries in general) need to take care of ourselves first, and spend the money lost to China doing something actually productive about pollution.

 

We are 'nice guys' (I mean, the better developed nations), and need to quit being taken advantage of.  It IS an existential issue for the developed west.  WE ARE VULNERABLE to our own folly.  China will NOT be kind when/if they take over.  We (the developed west) need to carefully manage our bounty -- helping the rest of the world when we can.  China will NOT reciprocate.

 

John

 

 

Tariffs for Chinese goods makes sense for encouraging production to move away from China -- this should be a goal to address all of China's abuses including the violation of human rights and their support of "enemy countries", etc.  And the fact that China still has a despotic government leaves no hope of sustained positive change on China's part.

 

Production had already slowly been moving out of China but the tariffs are speeding it up.  The good thing is that once production is moved away from China, it will not return there. Eventually, there will be "cheap" goods again but made in India or Malaysia or Pakistan, etc.

 

The problem is that Trump and his administration have been characterizing the situation as a trade battle between the U.S. and China and trying to get a better trade deal.  It's not about trade.  It's about China's abuses and it's despotic government. Once production has moved away from China, a trade deal will be irrelevant in any case.