[tim333]

A few individuals buying less stuff isn't going to have much effect. We need something more like the west putting 50% tariffs on Chinese products so all the manufacturing starts moving to other countries. That would probably get their attention.

[lordnacho]

The real issue is that we don't care to hurt ourselves enough in punishing the Chinese.

If they were some minor country that supplied all the world's bananas someone could potentially put together something like that, and we'd all live without bananas for a while.

But China makes just about everything, and not just cheap and simple stuff anymore.

In game theory (and experiments with real people) sometimes it makes sense to punish a misbehaving player even though it harms you yourself. It really does not seem like any country in the West is anywhere close to being willing to do that.

[chadcmulligan]

Australia is - its stood up to china - in a fairly minor way - demanding an investigation into the origins of covid 19. It's now involved in a tit for tat thats probably going to cost a lot.

[token78]

Australia and Japan and a number of Asia-Pacific nations have joined the CPTPP - the reality is that the main driving force has been a mission to build a trading coalition in which the participating states can extricate themselves (and the supply chains of their businesses) from what has become a dependency on cheap Chinese goods/manufacture. Hot take - embracing the trans-pacific partnership is the best thing we can do to contain the rising influence and ambitions of Xi Jinping's China.

[chadcmulligan]

Indeed you can't trade with a partner who uses trade as a weapon - it does occur to me that china thinks the same of the US. We're just the smaller monkey getting hit down the line.

[mmm_grayons]

You're absolutely right. The thing America most needs to do is open her borders to truly free trade with the world, with the exception of Red China and a few other nations we want to topple. More than that, we need to build free trade areas (of which we are a part) in those areas, strengthening them further against her influence. We need everyone else on our side and that's a great way to make progress towards that goal.

[ng12]

Even on HN all anyone could talk about was how Trump's Trade War was hurting the economy. I thought the trade war was poorly executed but at the same time at least he was doing _something_.

[ZeroGravitas]

He pulled out of the TPP which was fairly explicitly about containing China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

Which was failry explicirly aboit containing China.

[jessaustin]

Opposing Trump Trade War (TTW?) wasn't going to resurrect TPP wasn't going to resurrect TPP. I doubt Biden has the stomach for that either. Most people hate boondoggles, and we've noticed ISDS.

[stickfigure]

I'm sort of coming around to this perspective, but I think it's a bit rash.

I'd like to see something along the lines of "tariffs go up 5% each year, and will be dropped to zero when China drops the GFC". I don't want huge economic disruption for China or the US, but a slow disentanglement. And a clear carrot that lets them know it's not personal, the CCP just has to let its citizens talk with the peoples it wants to trade with. "Your move" to the CCP, while remaining positive about the Chinese people.

[h0l0cube]

The only motivation for policy makers to do this, is if it would appease swing voters. Voters need to be at least as interested in the human rights angle as the domestic employment angle, if we are to see tarrifs being used specifically as leverage to improve those global human rights.

Otherwise, in spite of gains in redundant manufacturing capacity (great for local employment, and for national security), it's likely there would be a degradation in workers' rights domestically in order to keep costs low. In order to avoid these outcomes, workers' rights and human rights need to be something that most voters believe are important.

[snicker7]

There isn't a functional difference between a 5% tariff and a 50% tariff for most goods.

[d0gbread]

Why is that?

[loceng]

The number may be higher than 5% but it's because exponentially more and more non-Chinese competitors can outcompete more and more based on price the higher the tariffs on Chinese goods are.

[snicker7]

Competition. In a competitive and rational market, the cheapest good (of comparable quality/availability) will get 100% of the sales.

[nickff]

Your comment made me think of the anti-apartheid boycotts against South Africa; I am not sure exactly how those worked, but it would seem that we should at least consider how that worked.

[simonsarris]

South Africa probably produced commodities, like natural resources and agriculture, and not things like iPhones, drones, etc.

Any pressure would need to come from governments forcing the hand of larger businesses to slowly move complex manufacturing elsewhere.

[mixmastamyk]

"I ain't gonna play Sun City…"

Interesting, although it's not clear that they worked because of or alongside efforts. China is not a small country that can be economically isolated.

[stjohnswarts]

I agree, the western democracies tried opening up trade and hoped that would open up the Chinese government to a new way of looking at the world with more tolerance. That has gotten us no where. They will have to hit them in the wallet or it's all just huff and puff complaints and strongly worded letters from the UN. Of course this will hurt Western economies as well so it may just never happen.

[hcurtiss]

There’s a lot to not like about Trump, but he’s literally the only one in 50 years who’s been willing to play for keeps on Chinese tariffs. And he’s been raked over the coals for it.

[ansible]

And accomplished jack-all.

The real problem is not China producing cheap steel, but human rights abuses, and censorship. 45 hasn't done anything about that.

[abc-xyz]

Here’s an incomplete list of things Trump has done to stand up to China. I challenge everyone to name a single person (or country, or continent) who’s done more than him.

- He refers to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus (CCP is trying very hard from distancing themselves from responsibility; they won’t even let us into Wuhan to investigate).

- He started a trade war with China, which has forced companies to move their manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Mexico, Taiwan, etc. (Biden admittedly said he would end Trump’s China tariffs, but the many companies that already left are unlikely to return), and even high end tech such as the iPhone is starting to get assembled outside China as well.

- He was the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan's President since 1979.

- He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades.

- The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Hong Kong Autonomy Act were signed under his administration.

- The TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration.

- The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was singed under his administration.

- Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration (which dragged Canada into it because China decided to arbitrarily arrest Canadian citizens).

- China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks.

- Huawei was blocked from using Android and chips with US tech (which will effectively kill their mobiles once their stock runs out).

- Huawei was blocked from building 5G networks (USA paid other nations to block them as well).

- Hong Kong’s special status was revoked.

- Universal Postal Union agreed to let countries raise postal rates after Trump threatened to leave - this means you’ll no longer be able to buy cheap junk from Aliexpress (and resellers like Wish) at no shipping cost (the receiving country was previously forced to deliver the products for free, even if you brought some toy for 10 cents).

- Trump is pushing for WTO to drop China’s developing country status.

- TikTok and WeChat (likely with more to come) would’ve been blocked by now if it wasn’t for judges temporarily blocking the bans.

There's a reason China's GDP growth in 2019 was the lowest it's been since 1990, and there's a reason China's worldwide reputation is at an all-time low. That reason is Trump. It's also no surprise that all the nations that suffer the most from CCP's actions, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. tend to be pro-Trump.

[tracer4201]

Serious question - which of these advance American national interests or prevent human rights abuses?

The first item in your list is President Trump calling the virus the Chinese virus. Aside from maybe bringing his supporters as a rallying cry, what does that actually achieve? It feels more like hollow political rhetoric and not something that delivers any kind of results.

What do the arms sales achieve? Is it merely profit for the American industrial complex, or are you saying Hong Kong now has some chance against China in the event of a military conflict?

[ryandrake]

> Serious question - which of these advance American national interests or prevent human rights abuses?

You're moving the goal posts. OP simply said the president "accomplished jack-all". I can't stand the guy either but these are at least accomplishments, even if the effects of some of them are symbolic. What do you want him to do? A land invasion?

[tracer4201]

No, I don’t think I’m moving any goal posts. Op provided a list of items, and my question is very simple - what is the net impact? What has Trump actually achieved? What is the result?

From your last comment, are you implying no action can be taken that isn’t simply symbolic except for a land invasion?

Interesting that you turn this into a personal attack. If you agree with the OP, that’s okay. The goal has always been delivering results, not empty, feel good rhetoric that makes you “feel” good. If it’s about your feelings, then okay, I’m sure his strong man rhetoric is good enough over any actual policy shift.

[wolco2]

The 5G Ban gives other local companies the leg up.

[eitland]

> Serious question - which of these [...] prevent human rights abuses?

Replace prevent with reduce and I'd say almost all of them.

Say what you want about Trump but he has started to made it clear that there will be consequences.

[tracer4201]

What are the consequences, and what specifically has it reduced?

[netsharc]

> I challenge everyone to name a single person (or country, or continent) who’s done more than him.

Kublai Khan. For your education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China . To respond to your hyperbole, he actually conquered China rather than issue some decrees which you're counting as "winning".

Obviously (from my point of view; I could be wrong...) you're a deluded Trump supporter and there's no point in trying to convince you what a terrible president he is and to show you how he hadn't even considered how his policies (domestic as well as foreign) could (and did) backfire and disadvantage American businesses and consumers, but maybe I can convince you to consider this, written about Primary Candidate Trump in December 2015: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-...

> Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. [...]. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren’t.

> Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”

> And very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Trump despite establishment denunciations — which means something like a third of Republicans — will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish. At this point such people will insist that any negative reports about Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media; Trump’s very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient looking forward.

But who knows, maybe I (and the Not-Trump voting folk) are the chumps, eh? To quote Orwell (full essay: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...):

> [W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

[timmytokyo]

>President Donald Trump says he did not sanction Chinese officials further over the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang as he was in the "middle of a trade deal".

>Mr Trump told the Axios news site that achieving a "great" deal meant he could not impose "additional sanctions".

>The issue arose after allegations in a book by ex-Trump aide John Bolton.

>Mr Bolton had alleged that at a summit last year Mr Trump gave Chinese President Xi Jinping the green light on building the camps in its western region, with the US leader saying it was "exactly the right thing to do". Mr Trump denies the allegation.

>Axios says that when Mr Trump was asked why he had held off imposing further sanctions on Communist Party officials over the issue of the camps, he said: "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.

>"And when you're in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on - we've done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53138833

[marsrover]

One of the reasons I voted for him this time, even though I didn't in 2016.

[ReactiveJelly]

Maybe next year Trump will break up my gay marriage and make it illegal for me to get the medicine I'm on. Nothing like a little down-home American human rights abuses. He can't even condemn a terrorist group when asked directly to.

[_-david-_]

>Trump will break up my gay marriage

Trump is first president to come into office already supporting gay marriage.

>make it illegal for me to get the medicine I'm on

You are going to need to explain this since as far as I can tell Trump has not attempted to make any medicine illegal.

>Nothing like a little down-home American human rights abuses

Will you explain this one as well?

> He can't even condemn a terrorist group when asked directly to.

Trump has denounced white supremcy like 20 times.

https://thepostmillennial.com/over-20-times-trump-publicly-d...

[spinny]

You gay marriage is safe, your medicine will probably become cheaper. He has condemned the antifa scum plenty of times