Trump's Trade War

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

The problem with Trump and his awful negotiating skills is he approaches every table as an equal or less to the other side.  

He doesn’t engage with the gravitas of the United States because he probably believes he’s bigger and more important than the United States.  People like Xi, Un, Bibi, and Putin are his equal in Trump’s eyes.  In other words, he’s approaching these situations from a much weaker position than he should be.  We are the United States and he doesn’t know how to act like it or leverage that power appropriately.

[retread 2951]

2 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

 The Chinese government wants to save face in front of the rest of the world and other governments.

and there's no way Cheeto will brag about how he got the better end of a prospective deal

Edited May 11, 2019 by retread

[happyfunball 481]

lol The Chinese government doesn’t worry about saving face in front of its citizens - as you said, the citizens know what the government wants them to know.

The Chinese government wants to save face in front of the rest of the world and other governments.

Internal politics still exist

PM sent

[American Swindle 102]

NSIAP lol

 

 

[ChiTownDoc 21101]

4 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

China needed to be confronted hard. Anyone who disagrees with that hasn’t spent time in China and doesn’t understand what they are systematically doing.

With that said, Trump’s execution on the issue is abysmal, just like North Korea. He should have gotten other world partners to take them on with us, while at the same time providing special incentives for U.S. companies to start building products in countries besides China. Hard ball is all the Chinese understand. Period.

Most importantly he should have done all this behind close doors.  As many are saying, dotard is screwing the pooch on this one.  Shocker.  

[happyfunball 481]

Beijing is going to wait until the next administration and hope it is Biden since he is sympathetic to China

[HenryJames 65890]

Tax American consumers and then give it to farmers telling them it’s from China. 

Not hard to see the con.

[happyfunball 481]

Internal politics still exist

PM sent

[Mojo Hand 4580]

Is that suggesting that China is under pressure to give in and cut a deal, or be as tough as possible in the trade talks and demonize the US internally as a common enemy?   I'd think the latter is more likely. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

15 minutes ago, happyfunball said:

 

 

 

 

As in most totalitarian states, preventing the domestic population from overthrowing you is always priority #1. 

[Dbeasy 14966]

The common view on China is that it is a country that undergoes a revolution periodically and that the country is about due for another. I don’t share that view at all. The populace is seeing small steady improvements in living standards. All of the people I talk with there care more about seeing improvements in their standard of living than they do about the repressive actions of the government.

What is always at risk are changes at the top of the regime. The people in charge may change but the repressive govt won’t anytime soon.

[Parliament 14134]

When things were good, we were told China is no longer run by despots, and the new, growing middle class would no longer tolerate a new Cultural Revolution and such.  I'm not sure I agree or not.  

[Francisco 2.0 32331]

[Francisco 2.0 32331]

[4th&Five 41459]

 

[JimmyJames 12271]

My God. He is such an idiot. 

[happyfunball 481]

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

1 minute ago, happyfunball said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just to be clear, there are winners in this trade war...like Brazil, Canada, Australia, and anyone not named the United States or China.  

[WBT 20420]

Econ 101, tariffs distort the market and hurt both producers and consumers.  No surprise that both sides are trying to spin.

[Ted Lange 16048]

Now let’s imagine a world where China decides to dump several hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign to elect a democrat.  And that Democrat openly screams for Beijing’s support.  And uses information illegally obtained by Chinese spies to help win the electoral college by 70k votes.   When that happens, I’m sure the fucking moron trump sycophants on here will rush to say, no big deal. 

[WhatTheBuck 28711]

4 hours ago, happyfunball said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Xi is never running for reelection again and can imprison anyone who complains. He can also green light more and more N. Korean missile tests to make Trump look foolish. Especially now that Trump's busy playing tough guy with Iran. 

Don't like the way the Chinese do business? Then don't do business with them. Wait, can't do that. There's too much money to be made. 

Seems like they have all the leverage. 

Edited May 12, 2019 by WhatTheBuck

[happyfunball 481]

Just to be clear, there are winners in this trade war...like Brazil, Canada, Australia, and anyone not named the United States or China.  

[happyfunball 481]

Xi is never running for reelection again and can imprison anyone who complains. He can also green light more and more N. Korean missile tests to make Trump look foolish. Especially now that Trump's busy playing tough guy with Iran. 
Don't like the way the Chinese do business? Then don't do business with them. Wait, can't do that. There's too much money to be made. 
Seems like they have all the leverage. 

Businesses have complained privately for years of theft and issues with China but won’t say publicly because of the profit. Businesses can’t get past their short-term which is why the government must enact policies to protect US long term interests.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

4 minutes ago, happyfunball said:

 

Businesses have complained privately for years of theft and issues with China but won’t say publicly because of the profit. Businesses can’t get past their short-term which is why the government must enact policies to protect US long term interests.

 

So you’re saying bitch ass big business is using the government to protect their long term business interest at the expense of the short term interest of the little guy consumers and farmers in the United States? 

How very, American. 

 

[Royalfan5 2348]

41 minutes ago, happyfunball said:

 

Businesses have complained privately for years of theft and issues with China but won’t say publicly because of the profit. Businesses can’t get past their short-term which is why the government must enact policies to protect US long term interests.

 

Yeah, just look at what happened to the British when they failed to crack down on US IP theft.

[WhatTheBuck 28711]

18 minutes ago, happyfunball said:

 

Businesses have complained privately for years of theft and issues with China but won’t say publicly because of the profit. Businesses can’t get past their short-term which is why the government must enact policies to protect US long term interests.

 

Easy to say but we're addicted to that cheap Commie labor, and now an emerging market in a population roughly four times our size. We can bitch all we want. They know we're not walking away. As long as there's more money to be made by doing business in China than there is by not doing business in China, we'll do business in China. 

We're doing business with an authoritarian Communist country. We're probably foolish to think it's going to be fair. It's probably less fair to their people than it is to us. Maybe Nixon never should've gone to China. But there's so much money to be made. They're like a drug dealer who has the best stuff but always sells you short. You'll bitch and moan but you'll keep going back for that sweet China White. 

[HenryJames 65890]

 

[Nivek 16859]

Tax American consumers and then give it to farmers telling them it’s from China. 
Not hard to see the con.

Wait I was promised the GOP didn’t support wealth redistribution!

[Nice Guy Eddie 13412]

13 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

I doubt we see kudlow on a non -trump friendly network, who would push to get him to say the presidents statments are false.  

[tucker 238]

13 hours ago, happyfunball said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

But completely ineffective. A good thread on the stupidity of the strategy even if you argee that China must be curtailed. 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2019 by tucker

[6th Street 6357]

4 hours ago, happyfunball said:

 

Businesses have complained privately for years of theft and issues with China but won’t say publicly because of the profit. Businesses can’t get past their short-term which is why the government must enact policies to protect US long term interests.

 

Bro you're forgetting China is a massive export market for many of our large multi national companies like Intel and Applethat generate 20-30% of revs in domestic China. The trade war and resulting macro slowdown in China has wreaked havoc on our US MNCs. 

[F250 28682]

A long but interesting article on how China is rolling back market liberalization under Xi Jinping. What is also interesting is that China is also jailing Marxists for advocating Communism. China is just going for that straight up authoritarian vibe.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-11/china-s-latest-crackdown-target-is-liberal-economists

[Francisco 2.0 32331]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/08/i-employ-hundreds-american-workers-id-hire-more-if-not-trumps-tariffs/?utm_term=.6fcc10e60a77

 

Quote

My family has been in the bicycle business since 1907, when my grandfather opened a bicycle-repair shop on New York’s Lower East Side. Eventually, in the 1950s, my father started a bicycle and bike accessories wholesaler, and today Kent International, Inc. is one of the largest suppliers of imported and American-made bicycles in the country. Over the generations, we’ve weathered all kinds of turns in the industry. But we’ve never dealt with anything like this: heavy tariffs on key commodities, announced with barely any notice.

Quote

Though the bulk of my business comes from imported bikes, I also own and operate a factory in Manning, S.C., which produces one of our lines, BCA Bikes. When we opened our doors in 2014, initially hiring 47 employees, we were bucking a trend: More than 95 percent of all bicycles sold in the United States are manufactured in China. But with high employee turnover and labor costs there rising, we decided to make an investment in our long-term growth. Today, our factory is responsible for more than half of the roughly 500,000 bicycles produced in the United States each year. Before President Trump’s trade war, we had plans to grow even further.

 

Quote

Almost all of our parts are made in China: Saving money on their manufacture has enabled us to hire American workers and offer them good wages and excellent health benefits. We were already paying duties of 4 to 10 percent when the Trump administration announced in June 2018 that it would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. We couldn’t simply shift and buy from makers in other countries. Our Chinese partners have decades of experience making the parts we need. We source very carefully, and we can’t afford to gamble on quality or safety.

 

Spoiler

My company specializes in providing affordable bicycles, retailing for between $80 and $200 at outlets including Walmart, Amazon, and Academy Sports and Outdoors. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The new tariff raised our overall costs by 7.5 percent, which we were forced to pass on to our customers and, ultimately, to American consumers. Because it typically takes several months for large retailers to accept a price increase, we couldn’t offset our extra costs for much of our busiest shipping season, in late fall. When the holidays arrived, consumers were put off by the higher prices. Sales dropped, ending up 5 to 10 percent lower than our projections.

The administration’s abrupt policy shifts alone have caused damage. When Trump first threatened in September to increase tariffs to 25 percent, everyone — including our competitors — wanted to get their products to the United States before the levies took effect. Ocean freight companies lifted their prices dramatically. The administration eventually backed off, but we’d absorbed more than $1.5 million in additional freight costs, which we couldn’t recoup. Running a business requires adapting to adversity; these sudden changes came like a punch to the gut.

Then, last Sunday, Trump renewed his threat to increase tariffs to 25 percent in five days — a ridiculously short time frame that left us little time to react. The higher tariffs went into effect on Friday, after a last round of talks failed on Thursday night. I don’t belong to either political party, and I’ve voted for candidates from both. I understand very well that China has been cheating in all kinds of trade situations, from state subsidies to cybertheft. But when the government levies tariffs, we Americans are the ones who end up paying. In fact, the U.S. economy suffered a net loss of $7.8 billion last year because of the trade war, according to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study. Workers in Republican counties have shouldered most of those costs, mostly in the form of retaliatory tariffs against the agricultural sector.

The volatility caused by the trade war has thrown a wrench in my company’s domestic ambitions. Ever since our factory opened, I had planned to bring more phases of the manufacturing process home. We’d start by importing steel tubes and welding the bike frames ourselves; from there, we’d buy American steel and make the tubes. Our factory employs 125 people, but that could grow to 300, I thought: Eventually, we could build 1 million bicycles, right here in the United States. But Trump’s protectionist measures are getting in our way. We don’t plan to lay anyone off, but until the situation stabilizes and we have some clarity about our future, we’ll just continue buying bike frames from China.

The tariffs could last for a few months or take hold permanently. Trump could be dead serious, or this could be a heavy-handed negotiating ploy from which he’ll have to back down. There’s no way for us to know — we’ll just have to endure the upheaval. My company has created hundreds of good, steady jobs in South Carolina and at our headquarters in New Jersey, but, despite the president’s promises that he would help American companies grow, his sanctions are hurting us badly. These measures punish American businesses that have done nothing wrong. We play by the rules. Why does this administration keep changing them?

 

[4th&Five 41459]

Our president is a moron. 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the Chinese War Room as these tweets are translated for Xi. 

They are probably laughing their asses off. 

Edited May 12, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20344]

So Kudlow admitted that U.S. citizens pay the costs associated with the tariffs that Trump has imposed and a few hours later Trump tweets that we will be taking in 10s of billions of dollars from China.

Yup. Idiocracy. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

Trump loves the poorly educated. 

[6th Street 6357]

That last one about feeding "starving" nations even has Texags baffled.

https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3035730

[tx 3 putt 76368]

3 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

Trump loves the poorly educated. 

that's his base 

[Fudge Nuggets 19151]

"Great Patriot Farmers" has a certain ring to it.  Oh yeah...

[HenryJames 65890]

 

[4th&Five 41459]

 

[Aqua Buddha 14508]

Between this and the shutdown, we're getting an inside look at how he ran his businesses over the decades.  He doesn't understand the concepts or details and consistently overestimates his own position.  No wonder how all of the failed businesses and bankruptcies occurred.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

So tired of winning 

[Celery Man 20886]

 

[Js1 85108]

8 hours ago, 6th Street said:

That last one about feeding "starving" nations even has Texags baffled.

https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3035730

I mean, why are sending food to these shit hole countries?  Doesn't seem very bootstrappy.  "People can go a little bit hungry" 

[6th Street 6357]

Some quick one liners from this AM:

- US LNG hit wit 25% tariffs

- China may stop Boeing orders

- China may stop purchasing US ag products

- China considering dumping US treasuries

 

[horncyclist 1386]

Some quick one liners from this AM:
- US LNG hit wit 25% tariffs
- China may stop Boeing orders
- China may stop purchasing US ag products
- China considering dumping US treasuries
 

Boom. And we're extra vulnerable cause the moron ripped up the TTP. China can use this to expand it's influence in the Pacific so they're kind of in a no lose situation. They also don't have to worry much about populist unrest but on our side there's a good chance the Dotard will be gone in 20 months. So much winning.

[Francisco 2.0 32331]

16 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

Some quick one liners from this AM:

- US LNG hit wit 25% tariffs

- China may stop Boeing orders

- China may stop purchasing US ag products

- China considering dumping US treasuries

 

But those lib tears though.

 

 

[6th Street 6357]

4 minutes ago, horncyclist said:

20 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

Some quick one liners from this AM:
- US LNG hit wit 25% tariffs
- China may stop Boeing orders
- China may stop purchasing US ag products
- China considering dumping US treasuries
 

Boom. And we're extra vulnerable cause the moron ripped up the TTP. China can use this to expand it's influence in the Pacific so they're kind of in a no lose situation. They also don't have to worry much about populist unrest but on our side there's a good chance the Dotard will be gone in 20 months. So much winning.

The last point is also interesting - Xi was elected to a life term while Trump is probably gone in 18 months