[walexander]

There is no moral obligation for them to do so and yes they can choose not to enforce US IP law if they don't want to.

The US can also choose to place massive tariffs on any goods coming out of China, making them highly uncompetitive. Their choice, it looks like.

[DennisP]

In which case China does the same thing back to us, as we've been seeing lately. Most economists think this sort of thing does more harm than good.

[reaperducer]

Most economists think this sort of thing does more harm than good.

Only in a hypothetical scenario where it's a battle of equals.

But China has worked itself into a corner now for several reasons:

1. It imports so little from the U.S. that it's almost out of stuff to put tariffs on.

2. Most of the things it imports from the U.S. are used in manufacturing in China, and then sold back to the U.S. as a finished product. So China's own tariff makes Chinese goods more expensive and less attractive in the U.S.

3. China still needs to import a metric ass-ton of soybeans from the U.S. It tried getting them elsewhere, like Brazil, but every other soybean-growing country saw the opportunity and raised prices. So putting additional tariffs on American soybeans will make food cost more in China, and there's nothing China can do about it.

I've heard there's additional pressure on China in regards to the soybean situation because harvest is already over for soybeans in the southern hemisphere. And you know who's sitting on a ton of soybeans ready for export? The U.S.

I don't know enough about soybean growing cycles to say if that last paragraph is still true or accurate, though.

[reissbaker]

To be honest, I think this is hurting China more than the US, and we're seeing that reflect in the Chinese economy. The US is also the stronger global superpower of the two for now — see, for example, Canada's arrest of Huawei's CFO under the direction of the American government, whereas I doubt Canada would arrest any American citizens at the behest of China — so I think the US has more of an ability to enforce its rules than China has the ability to enforce its desired alternate set of rules. Picking a fight with the US also means picking a fight with most of the US trade allies, which are the richest countries in the world by far: nearly half of the entire world's GDP is generated by the US and the EU alone (37 trillion out of 80 trillion global GDP); and that's not counting heavy hitters like Japan, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea. I don't see a lot of win conditions for China on this one.

IP theft is illegal in pretty much the entire industrialized world. China's big, but it's not bigger than everyone else combined.

[DennisP]

"This does more harm than good" and "this is hurting China more than the US" can both be true.

[reissbaker]

I mean, at the end of the day the question for the US is: does a trafe war hurt more than continued IP theft?

[stale2002]

That's mostly an empty threat.

There are dozens of supposed reasons to start a trade war with China, but most of those "reasons" are just saber rattling.

If we aren't going to start a trade war (or a real war!) Over things like Tibet, or the humans rights violations, or the million people that China has put into camps, then I don't see how something morally silly such as IP laws would be the tipping point.