Obama and Trump administration demands are pretty much similar, but when China said NO, their responses are totally different. Trump is taking China to the mat which Obama did not (what ever the reason may be).
Obama's response to contain China was the TPP. It could have been more (or less--no way to know) effective than Trump's, Obama just didn't tweet about it.
TPP was bad idea, it was so anti-worker I am surprised that a Democrat is supporting it. I do not have to say about the settlement system of TPP. It was stupid, literally having parallel legal system outside of all the current legal system.
TPP died for good reasons because it for technocrats by technocrats.
Those aren’t necessarily bad for American workers. American manufacturing is high skill and involves precision equipment and manufacturing. What would have moved to Vietnam would have been more basic textiles and cnc/molding. Not sure why everyone glorifies basic manufacturing work like it’s the pinnacle of American labor.
>What would have moved to Vietnam would have been more basic textiles and cnc/molding.
And these are the types of jobs that provided a decent living wage for the middle/lower-middle class, of which a lot of people in the midwest and rustbelt use to do, and the loss of such jobs has decimated these communities. Service sector, warehouse fulfillment, and gig economy jobs don't provide nearly the value, nor do they provide the types of benefits that former jobs did.
Edit - Not sure why my comment is being downvoted. A lot of the jobs in the midwest were things like basic factory work of plastic products, textiles, CNC machining, molding (of which my dad was previously employed doing), and other things of that nature which have been outsourced over the decades. These jobs not only provided a stable livable wage, but most of them also provided benefits such as health/dental insurance for not only the workers but their entire families. These jobs have left over the years, and nothing which provided the same standards of living has come into replace them. States such as michigan, illinois, ohio, wisconsin, and others in that area have been hit hard over the past few decades because of these changes in the global economy.
you are being disingenuous when you say "everyone glorifies basic manufacturing work" as i never indicated anything of the sort, so i'm wary of engaging you further.
but, for whatever it's worth, the average US growth rate for advanced technology product exports was higher before Jan 1 1994 (NAFTA) than it was afterwards up until most recent data, 2018. i didn't look at imports, but suspect that the rate of import is higher/increasing. there are various interpretations of that, one of which could be that global demand for high tech stuff is simply slowing outside the US, but that seems unlikely given how much tech is blowing up generally.
another one of which that seems solid is that manufacturing "body of knowledge" / infrastructure probably allows tooling up the workforce and chipping away at high tech sort of stuff that the US may have had a dominant position in.
And under Trump, the steel tariffs have basically forced Ford and GM to stop making sedans in the USA and instead make them in Mexico. Ford Focus: moved to China (Ironically). Ford Fusion: Cancelled. GM Volt: Cancelled. Harvey Davidson: moving to Europe.
Things aren't exactly simple, and I am not convinced that the tariffs + tax cuts have helped the American worker at all. US Manufacturing is down for two months in a row now, and I don't see it getting any better any time soon.
We're at a point where the Trump-defenders need to start explaining exactly what these tariffs are supposed to do and why they think the tariffs are helping. The tariffs have been in effect for well over a year, do you have any evidence that they're helping yet?
---------
Frankly, I don't care how much we hurt, or help, China. It was supposed to be "American First". So lets talk about America and whether or not these policies help Americans.
Youre thinking in the short-term. Of course there are going to be short term economic losses for the US when Trump announced the bans and the tariffs. But its only short term until the west figures out how to defeat the communists. In the long term, theres gain, not just in the economy of western countries, but most importantly gain in human rights, human dignity, and most of all, liberty! China's oligarchs would get mad at the CCP when the economy starts going to shambles and when they cant take their money out of the country.
> But its only short term until the west figures out how to defeat the communists.
The Berlin wall fell nearly 30 years ago and the USSR has collapsed shortly thereafter.
China's method of governance isn't anything like the communists. They're actually building advanced economies, as the builder of iPhones and lots of other equipment.
China is authoritarian, and probably best described as "legalist" (medieval Chinese philosophy). China engages in a system closer to capitalism, see Alibaba, Huawei and Baidu.
China's "communist party" is only communist in name. Although they're against human rights, they are welcoming of capitalists. Its why Tesla is building a factory there, even with the threat of Tariffs, because the rising Chinese middle class is actually working for that country. China is unfortunately, discovering an "authoritarian capitalism", some kind of crony capitalism which benefits the party and ultimately builds markets (Chinese Stock Market and Chinese Mega-corps are on the rise. Foxconn, Alibaba, Huawei, etc. etc.)
I feel like the "authoritarian capitalism" trope is inaccurate.
China introduced some elements of capitalism and liberty into its economy, but clearly retains government control over what would otherwise be independent companies.
Whether it chooses to exercise that control is immaterial -- the CCP obviously believes very strongly that if needed it has that control.
And legally, it does.
In that respect, China looks much more like the late-stage Soviet Union, where a diversity of political power groups (some allied, some opposed) give the illusion of a free market to a command economy.
Building advanced economies sure, I agree with that. Building a better society? I doubt that. Theyre an Orwellian state because they know that without the propaganda and massive human rights intrusions, their communist party would crumble instantly. If the people actually believed in their own leaders, the CCP wouldnt have to use all that propaganda and censoring to further their cause.
Theyre an advanced economy yeah I agree with that. However, their markets are not open to foreign companies at all. Not a single western company can compete in China because of the tech theft and spying, and most of all because all the big companies are not private at all, theyre just communist institutions that are disguised as "private companies". If any western person uses an app like WeChat they would be so weirded out by the UI. That is because companies like Facebook and Google evolved that big organically, while companies like WeChat or Weibo or whatever evolved unorganically, their users are forced to use those apps.
And on top of that all, theres just no doubt whether theres tech theft. Most of the big companies in China are that big due to the fact that they blatantly just stole the tech and theyre not even trying to hide it. Theres countless of instances of this occurring, and its very surprising to me that the West just woke up.
Look at Hong Kong. Because of the West, HK has had a taste of what freedom looks like, and they would fight a lot to get back their liberty!
Fraternité, Égalité, Liberté!!!!!!!!! You can only compete with bullies if you are a bully yourself. With fire with fire!
It's too early to tell. Wars of any kind, including trade wars, are a short term cost hoping for a long term gain. If the Chinese economy is hurt more than the American economy that is one level of success. Then, if manufacturing moves back to the US and other Western hemisphere nations that's another level of success.
The trade war, as far as I understand, started largely because companies were complaining about Intellectual Property being stolen. Although I figure the larger reason is China is a threat to American global influence, and we're trying to make sure we're the dominant country.
Regardless, I don't know how you quantify "if the US economy was hurt" in a consistent and accurate way. I'm sure some would want to use the S&P 500 or our GDP as a single measure. Neither of these things would immediately account for whether the obvious goal (not having IP stolen) or less obvious and quantifiable goal (dominance and global influence) are maintained, or suppose there's some other goal I don't know about, but it's more complex than saying we produced more value this year than last year.
I picture someone saying, "Look the S&P 500 went down, therefore the 'trade war' failed, see!" I'm not saying you would say that, I just think your definition, "if the US economy was hurt, then its a failure" leaves room for vague interpretation, where virtually any metric could be selected as proof of failure.
Basically any long term goal has short term costs. Building a new road costs money up front.
We don't want jobs just to come to the US. We want to help build the economies of the people scrambling across our border too. So jobs in Mexico is great, as long as there's also new jobs in the US.
Kind of - Japan ratified the TPP, and Obama just said he'd talk about it.
Regardless, you're still right. In lieu of the TPP falling apart, China created it's own version to control APAC trade and fill the power gap, called RCEP. The trade war and the "America First" attitude has only incentivized China to speed up the negotiations, which if successful, will control something like half the world's global GDP.
The next RCEP meeting is next month and it will be interesting to see what comes from it.
I think it’s early. Many of those countries see China suspiciously but also want trade. We’ll see if those countries are able to push back on one sided aspects.
Very doubtful that it will go anywhere soon. Not only do half the ASEAN countries and China have territorial disputes, India and China have rather cautious and cold relationships. Both SK and Japan are also very cautious towards China and have cold relationships with each other.
I would think that at least the South China Sea territorial dispute would have to be settled, China would have to (at least symbolically) drop its support for Pakistan, and Japan and SK would need some form of reconciliation.