In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. – Apple CEO Tim Cook
Now imagine fighting a prolonged war with a country whose manufacturing expertise exceeds yours by orders of magnitude.
Allies
Now you are talking about something different. Nothing changes the fact that the US still imports a ton of stuff from China no matter how you want to account for it. As I said, is China a problem or not?
And you are wrong about consumers not paying one dime more. Remember this thing called inflation? Is it a problem or not?
I don’t have a problem with US as a country importing a tone of stuff from China or Taiwan or any country per se, because that is one of the advantages of being a global money issuer and running a trade deficit is just a built-in feature.
What I DO support is US Government levying tariff on China like a fine-tuning dial to shape, influence, control Chinese behaviour. I like the idea of Executive Power slapping on punitive levy to block Chinese SOE to deter and punish Chinese malicious take over or dominate certain segments of US markets. I DO NOT support a blanket free-trade with a regime that is Marxist in nature but pretend to operate as “companies” in disguise. I don’t want to see US government forfeiting that crucial executive power known as tariff.
On the second point you raised, from what I can tell, the current inflation is caused by 1 monetary policy (ie., the rate of money printing)
2 labour shortage (ppl less motivated to work, due to government handouts, or psychological problems such as the opioid epidemic, the covid pandemic, and the hollowing out of industry)
3 cost of energy (less oil and gas produced within within North America)
By the way you might notice the above points I made are essentially Trump administration’s policy, which means I didn’t just make them up myself.
The tariffs aren’t working. And it’s partly because the US Government has printed … 4 additional trillion dollars just in 2020/2021 alone. You said so, they can print money, and they will do so every chance they’ll get. Can’t have it both ways. If the tariffs are working, please provide some proof. And the Chinese can always circumvent the tariffs by using a third country. Some Chinese companies have set up shop in Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. “As long as they are not from China!!!” Yeah but who gets the moolah eh.
We can argue all day as to what caused the current inflation, but consumers are paying. See links below and this: US Retail Sales
From the last article: " Some of the nation’s largest retailers have been using soaring inflation rates as an excuse to raise prices and rake in billions of dollars in additional profit, a corporate watchdog group charged on Friday." In other words, they raised prices beyond the rate of inflation and people are paying.
Shame! I love Almond snickers, China helping my diet 
Their words. They have said it several times. They are not lying. They have explicitly stayed their plans. Keep the island…
The KMT did it when they came in. Decapitated the society. The Japanese did it against the Seediq. The extent of killing has to be bigger this time as it is killing the Taiwan chicken to scare the China dog.
Tariffs are useless because as stated, US in particular and the West in general built China up as the factory of the world. The truth is now they are the weak ones, the dependent ones.
It is not cheap knickknacks or electronics. Medicine, rate metals, food. It will be worse than WW2.
China has a lot of allies that willingly or not will give to the cause. US would need to get everyone on the same page. Ain’t happening. Developing countries need China or starve.
Not to mention this.
Fancy that. Russia says what China wants them to say. It’s almost as if China was sponsoring pipelines from Russian oilfields or something.
Rent is still too god**** high.
China can be replaced, Taiwan can’t. The difference between China and Taiwan is that Taiwan has high tech industries with no substitute. That importance is multiplied by Taiwan’s insistence on horizontal companies. Foxconn can easily build the factories in Brazil or India but it’s much harder to replace Foxconn itself. If you ban Oppo people can buy Samsung or Apple but if you lose TSMC the world will stop. The list goes on.
The west is getting ready.
China has had a stranglehold on global rare earths production for decades, as the U.S. and other countries outsourced the dirty processes of mining and refinement. But this started to change in 2010, when Beijing cut off all rare earths exports to Japan over a fishing trawler dispute. Since then, the explosion of the EV industry has made rare earths even more critical, leading the U.S. and other countries to get back in the game. China’s share of global productiondecreased from 86% in 2014 to 58.3% in 2020, when it held 37% of global rare earths reserves.
You’re far more optimistic than me, good sir. The world is still hooked up on fossil fuels and feudal/racial divide. Hard to let go of cheap drugs that keep the powerful in power and the world turning as usual.
Yes, he did, in 2000. Then George W, who became president in 2001, took the ball and ran with it. The US trade deficit in 2000 under Clinton was -83 billion; at the end of Bush’s presidency in 2008 it was -269 billion.
Well, as a Canadian, it hasn’t given us a huge boost over the US. The giant sucking sound of jobs that was supposed to be going to Mexico pretty well was sucked up by China.
Did you see that huge shift of jobs to Mexico? Some American companies, like Caterpillar, have shifted production.
I mean, Mexico has done okay, but it hasn’t been Japan 1980s or China 2000s.
It’s not just losing jobs.
And speaking about the deficit, why stop at Bush. It’s not as if the deficit was better under Obama and Trump. Clinton was the one who opened the barn door though. Heck as I said, he opened not one, but TWO barn doors. He might as well be China’s best friend.
The economic and tech discussion is interesting and intelligent enough, but I just think this ‘China invades’ talk is pointless media hype now that COVID and Ukraine are finished.
I don’t buy any of this ‘imminent invasion’ pantomime.
Belle and Sebastian can help even the hardest soul shift timelines.
Enjoy the summer…
Motherfuckers!
Can you provide word for word translation?
Guy