Will using tariffs against China give us leverage in negotiations?

Author: bmdrocks21

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#31
Mopac
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@zedvictor4
Considering they lock people in reeducation camps and do not allow them to have freedom of belief, that accusation isn't sticking with me. You seem to be defending something indefensible for the sake of expressing your own hatred of Christians.
#32
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@Mopac
I have grown to lack hatred, not that I was ever particularly hateful.

I simply have a different set of data output relative to what is broadly known as theism, which obviously includes Christianity.

I debate because I enjoy it and I output data relative to my acquired knowledge/conditioning, as do you. Neither of us is right and neither of us is wrong.

The population of China is approximately 1.4 billon individuals and you (Inadvertently perhaps) regard them all with equal disdain. Which as I see it is wholly unchristian.

I am therefore happy with my conclusion that conditioned self righteousness and insular arrogance suitably describe the particular type of U.S. mindset that you display.
#33
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@zedvictor4
This topic is not about me.


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#34
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@zedvictor4
Yeah, but what about putting tariffs on the commies?
#35
HistoryBuff
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If the US had come together with their allies and had a unified front towards China, then tariffs might have worked. But Trump decided to start trade wars with everyone. For god's sake he said Canada's steel industry was a national security threat. He burned any good will and co-operation he might have had. 

As a result China is just getting their raw materials elsewhere. The US has the biggest economy of any country. But the rest of the world is a lot bigger than they are. The US has caused a bit of a slowdown in China's growth, but the chinese don't have to worry about elections. They can ride out any difficulties the trade war causes for the next 10 years with no problem at all. The US is already having to spend huge amounts of money to keep farmers afloat as the trade war destroys the US markets. 

The bottom line is that the trade war will hurt both sides. But China can keep this up a lot longer than the US can. A few years of rural america being in full recession will shift the electoral map away from the republicans and then the trade war will end having accomplished very little. 
#36
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@HistoryBuff
But China can keep this up a lot longer than the US can.
Under a non-global market, I would agree.

But markets and supply chains are already starting the permanent shift to other competitive pacific rim nations, and China won't be able to have a competitive advantage to get those markets back the longer negotiations drag out.

I'd say China has about 3 years before they start to permanently start losing a good chunk of the market share of key electronic components. That's about the point where manipulating Chinese currency won't allow China to effectively maintain its market share and competitive advantage. The USA is a huge source of their income.

Once the markets shift, the damage will already have been done and dropping the tariffs won't help China at that point, and China knows it. Those markets shift to appease the strongest consumer...and the other nations will also follow suit when they can get the same products for a similar price without dealing with China's bullshit trade policies.
#37
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@Greyparrot
Even if everything you said was true, which I dispute, you would still be wrong. China doesn't have elections. Even if you did massive, catastrophic damage to China, which you are not, they would still be able to hold out longer than the US can. 

Once the US enters a recession in the next year or so and farmers start going bankrupt, it will be politically untenable for the trade war to continue. Republicans will have to cave to prevent a catastrophic shift in their support. Whereas china doesn't need to worry about people going bankrupt. Because those people don't get a say in anything. 

The fact that the US government needs to fear the anger of it's people means that you can't win in a game of roshambo (look it up on urban dictionary if you are not familiar with the term). They will outlast you. Trump will fall and no matter who replaces him, republican or democrat, the trade war will end. 

#38
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@HistoryBuff
Oh no, I am certainly not saying it will permanently damage China, I am just saying when the supply chain markets relocate, as they often do in a global economy, China will have a very hard struggle getting them back. Currency manipulation won't cut it.
#39
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@HistoryBuff
Once the US enters a recession in the next year or so and farmers start going bankrupt, it will be politically untenable for the trade war to continue.
This is really wishful thinking of the worst kind. All the economists have been wrong about the growth of the country in an era of relaxed government attacks on entrepreneurship. I would put about much stock in that prediction as the world ending in 12 years. The people who dropped out of the stock market in 2016 in protest of Trump have lost amazing amounts of wealth.

#40
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@Greyparrot
But that still doesn't give you any leverage. I agree that the trade war will hurt China. But the trade war is hurting the US as well. China knows they can weather the storm longer than the US can for the reasons i already said. 

So it doesn't matter what damage you do to them. You will still lose. You have gained no leverage and have only managed to hurt everyone. The tariffs were simply never going to work. 
#41
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@HistoryBuff
I guess we will have to see as the markets react. So far, the markets seem to favor Trump.
#42
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@HistoryBuff
Also, it's really nice to see a well-informed poster on the left. This site hasn't had one for a while.
#43
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@Greyparrot
The markets have started sending warning signals of a national recession. if you look at specific states that focus more on agriculture, they are already in a recession. The numbers from states less affected by the tariffs are balancing them out so nationally things are still looking ok if you don't look too closely.

There has also been increasing reports of corporate insiders selling off huge amounts of stocks. The market is going to go into recession. It could be next month, 6 months from now, or maybe next year. But given how many insiders are selling off, my guess would be sooner rather than later. 

Also, even if somehow a recession didn't hit the rest of the country, Trump desperately needs rural america to vote for him. if they are getting wiped out by his trade war, and they are, it doesn't matter if Wall Street is doing fine. If he loses rural voters, he is done. 
#44
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All the economists have been wrong about the growth of the country in an era of relaxed government attacks on entrepreneurship. I would put about much stock in that prediction as the world ending in 12 years. The people who dropped out of the stock market in 2016 in protest of Trump have lost amazing amounts of wealth.

Correction, all the contracted economists being paid by the MSM.
#45
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@Greyparrot
Large chunks of the US are already in recession. Corporate insiders have started selling off their stocks at a considerable rate. 2 months ago we saw an inverted yield curve. I don't pretend to be an economist, but this has predicted virtually all recessions for decades. 

These are all bad signs. The only question is will the market hold on until the election, or is the recession going to be earlier than that. 
#46
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@HistoryBuff
I agree, and this was debated by many non-partisan economists, but the retooling of the economy doesn't correlate to a recession when consumer confidence has been so high. In actuality, we have never seen such a mixture of conditions like this, so you have to take the dire predictions with a serious grain of salt, while objectively observing how the relaxation of the government's war on success affects the on the economy.
#47
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@Greyparrot
What exactly is a war on success? I am not aware of such a thing ever existing. Every politician who has held office for the last few decades has been selling out to companies and giving them virtually everything they could want. 

If anything, removing the guard rails preventing companies from doing stupid, stupid things only increases the risk of a recession. It wasn't government regulation that caused the crash in 2008. It was the market doing stupid, stupid things in order to earn a quick buck. They ended up crashing the economy and needed the government to bail them out. 
#48
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If anything, removing the guard rails preventing companies from doing stupid, stupid things only increases the risk of a recession. It wasn't government regulation that caused the crash in 2008. It was the market doing stupid, stupid things in order to earn a quick buck. They ended up crashing the economy and needed the government to bail them out. 

If you want to call the government bailing out the banks and encouraging the banks through incentives to provide loans to people who could never pay them back a guard rail....
#49
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@Greyparrot
No, bailing them out was to prevent the recession from becoming a full blown depression. I don't necessarily agree they should have been bailed out. 

By guard rails I mean things like the Dodd-Frank act that helped to improve financial stability and consumer protection. These sorts of laws and regulations are now under attack by trump. It's barely been 10 years since the banks crashed the market and he wants to roll back the laws that were put in place to prevent them doing it again. 
#50
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@HistoryBuff
The partisan government shouldn't be in the business of dictating how banks or any other investment group should be run. We have tort lawyers and independent SEC rules to manage that. It's too much of a temptation for corruption as we saw with Barney Frank attempting to purchase the votes of minorities with risky loans.

If you have done any research into Dodd-Frank it was a collaborative program between the large investment firms and government to squeeze out the competition, as most crony regulations often do that have the support of large monopolies paired with the government. You can be sure there was plenty of quid-pro-quo for that.

Every politician with the exception of Trump seemingly "scores big" in the stock market to the tune of millions of dollars in exchange for their support in crushing smaller competition with cute sounding funny misnamed regulations.

The only way to get big money out of D.C. is to keep the politicians from partnering up with them and passing crony regulations that hurt the middle class and the poor.

SEC rules and tort lawyers are more than sufficient for oversight. We don't need a pathway to corruption by tearing down the separation between government and private business. Private business can only exert force over the competition and the poor through the government. Why would you want to empower cronyism? It's time to snip the balls off the 1 percent by cutting ties with the strong arm of the government.
#51
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@Greyparrot
I disagree with pretty much all of that. If capitalism is a game, then regulations are the rules of the game. Revoking all the rules will certainly make some players happy, but it doesn't improve the game. For example if soccer players were allowed beat each other up, really big players would probably like that. But most people would not. 

Removing regulations can, sometimes, be a good thing. But the vast majority of the regulations being removed are critically important environmental, economic or worker protections. Revoking these regulations is a very, very bad thing. It might help the market in the short term, but the long term damage these companies are now getting away with will only make it worse. For example, you remove the rules saying you can't dump industrial waste in the ocean. Big companies will save a fortune not having to actually safely dispose of their waste. But now everyone that uses the ocean is going to suffer. You save some money for a big corporation in one place, but you hurt everyone else and cost the economy a fortune somewhere else. 
#52
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@HistoryBuff
 For example, you remove the rules saying you can't dump industrial waste in the ocean. Big companies will save a fortune not having to actually safely dispose of their waste. But now everyone that uses the ocean is going to suffer. You save some money for a big corporation in one place, but you hurt everyone else and cost the economy a fortune somewhere else. 
I don't know why, but this seems like a really popular example amongst crony government apologists.

What do you think would actually happen to me if I, as a small businessman, walked out to the shore and dumped a barrel of waste into the ocean with a camera crew filming me do it. And there were no Federal regulations saying I could not do it. What do you think the real-world consequences of that would be?

#53
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@Greyparrot
If there were no regulations against it? nothing. You would get away with it and the world would be a worse place for it.

If the video happened to to go viral and caught alot of public attention there might be some blow back on your business. If it were a very small business you might go under. If it were a medium sized business you would suffer for a little bit, then people would move on and you could go back to dumping. Probably without the camera crews watching. 

But since dumping of waste is a regular occurrence and it rarely gets much coverage unless it is on a massive scale, you would almost certainly get off scott free. 
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#54
bmdrocks21
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@HistoryBuff
Two months after the BP oil spill, their stock was 55% of what it was prior to the spill.

#55
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@bmdrocks21
Of course it was. They lost 5 million barrels of oil. The spent over $3 billion on the cleanup. they created a $20 billion fund to pay for damages. They had headlines around the world as a colossal screw up of a company. 

That wasn't dumping, or at least not intentionally. They lost huge amounts of money on that. 

You are talking about a disaster on a massive, insane scale that was highly visible. The vast majority of dumping is done on a smaller scale. In which case they can get away with it without attracting national attention. You need strong regulations to prevent that kind of dumping because it won't attract headlines and get a community response.    
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#56
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@HistoryBuff
I was more referring to the dumping part and the negative attention it received. But people seeing all of that dead sea life gives really negative publicity. Companies can lose billions of dollars over issues like that, which is why BP puts stricter internal regulations on themselves.

You neglect that the market can self-regulate. Companies like Greenpeace are evidence of that. They put pressure on Apple to switch harmful chemicals out of their computers. 
#57
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@bmdrocks21
I don't disagree that that is possible. Sometimes, under specific circumstances, some companies will regulate themselves. But they don't ever do it for the public good. They do it for their own profit margin. So if spending a few million to pollute a little less will buy them some positive headlines then they might do that. But you are talking about 1 company out of a huge number doing modest improvements. What about the dozens of other companies that choose to keep polluting? What about the other ways that same company might be polluting that aren't getting attention? 

The market cannot be relied upon to self regulate because the market has absolutely no motive to act in the common good. You know what organization we created to act in the common good? The government. They are designed to act on our behalf and ensure that we are able to live our lives. In this case, to be sure we are free from massive corporations dumping poison into our environment. That is what the government is therefore, to regulate and legislate. 
#58
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@HistoryBuff
But they don't ever do it for the public good. They do it for their own profit margin.
You can't have a profit if the public isn't happy with your goods.

Not as long as competition is allowed to exist.

This is why companies are so eager to lock arms with the government and pay politicians through the nose to have the government use their power to forcibly destroy their competition.
#59
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@Greyparrot
And the public pays attention to 1 or 2 stories at a time. If every company is doing shitty things all the time, there isn't enough public outrage on the planet to stop them. The public does not have the expertise, the attention span, or the ability to hold all companies accountable all the time. Not to mention that the public is only able to get angry after the company has done something terrible. They have no method of preventing companies from doing something terrible. 

That is why we have government agencies to monitor and regulate their specific industries. It shouldn't be up to the people to scream and yell at corporations to not poison us. They should never be allowed to poison us. That is why we need strong government regulation to prevent companies from doing these shitty things. And if they do them anyway, we need a government body to punish them. 
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#60
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@HistoryBuff
I take a little different stance than greyparrot. I believe in small amounts of regulation mixed with groups like Greenpeace that advertise the crap out of irresponsibility from companies like that. (Not a big fan of a lot of what they do, but some things are reasonable). When consumers know that you are dumping toxic chemicals in some city's drinking water or are killing thousands of animals, there will be backlash. Perhaps regulation should essentially force companies to be transparent about where they dump any toxic chemicals?