[breakyerself]

China has the upper hand and the US is being run by morons. With the US cutting itself off from the largest supplier of electronics while simultaneously destroying the basic research infrastructure that keeps America on the bleeding edge you can expect a brain drain towards Europe and Asia. The damage from this administration will last generations.

[x0x0]

We are being run by abject morons who will never be able to understand simple truths, one of which is China is in a far stronger position: their factories are missing dollars. We are missing goods. One of those is easy for a central bank / government to replace.

Watching these people discover where the world's rare earths come from is equally amazing and terrifying.

[nickff]

Rare earth metals aren’t very rare, they’re just messy to extract and refine.

There are reasons that the Chinese (government) want so many dollars, and the external funds are not easy to replace (or they would have done it already). This is not to support the current trade ‘war’, but just to point out that it’s a bit more complicated than you can describe in a pithy comment.

[libertine]

But now Greenland being annexed through military means is on the table - we can't make this up.

[pstuart]

I just learned why the interest -- apparently the TechBros™ have eyes on using Greenland to host their new corporate city states.

[seanp2k2]

Don't worry, we'll just mine everything we need ourselves in the active warzones in Ukraine! I bet Yosemite has tons of the rare earth we need, we just have to dynamite everything in there to find it! /s

[photonthug]

The sooner we kill all the animals, the quicker we can find where they are hiding all their gold.

[monocasa]

I swear to god, if we set off the Yosemite supervolcano from heavy mining there...

[BobaFloutist]

The supervolcano is in the other iconic, international-destination national park starting with Y, Yellowstone.

[PKop]

What do you think the point of rebalancing trade is? To get out of dependence on foreign suppliers. "China's economy, copmposed of massive domestic production, industrial capacity, and manufacturing inputs is in a stronger position"

Yes, sounds like something that should be changed to increase the strength of the US. China has protectionist economic policy and trade barriers. If that equals strength why shouldn't we do it too?

[no_wizard]

>If that equals strength why shouldn't we do it too?

Tall order to prove this. Does it actually equal strength? What is strength and does China actually have said strength? None of this is defined.

Additionally, China has economic policies that if the US followed would be very, like the games they play with their currency valuation for example. They also have stringent capital controls, many of their largest businesses are the government has a large slice of the ownership, they subsidize export corporations to a much broader degree etc.

Are you also arguing for those things as well? Because its not simply tariffs that mark the only difference in economic policy between the US and China

The other asinine thing is we implemented tariffs against all countries, without a plan, and without a definitive proven reason as to why. As many economists have pointed out, the trade deficit is very deceiving and does not equate to there being a problem for the US inherently.

[x0x0]

> without a definitive proven reason as to why.

profound, comprehensive stupidity

[mindslight]

The current nonsense is the opposite of strength - it is empty bluster, based on ideas two decades out of date, by a "man" who talks like he's had a frontal lobotomy and who can't even sit on a chair properly.

Actually righting the severe damage done to our industrial base would take constructive direction by the government to build it back - once again the complete opposite of what they're actually doing by attacking our still-existing educational/research institutions.

At best high tariff taxes are just closing the barn door long after the horse ran away. But really it's just the same old pattern of the same type of hollow politicians using pent up frustration about the last scam to drive support for their next scam.

[sharken]

I agree with the barn door analogy and that the US badly needs a plan for building manufacturing.

It also needs a plan for mining rare earth minerals as well as a plan for processing them.

On the flip side the deal with Ukraine for rare earth minerals might just end the war, if not Russia see this as an opportunity to get all of the territory it currently occupies.

[Workaccount2]

But think of the coal mining jobs...

In all seriousness though, China is also not some young slick economic powerhouse. It's largely propped up facade with serious structural issues that the US doesn't have.

Also keep in mind that while countries are annoyed with the US, that doesn't mean they are going to welcome Chinese ships into their waters.

[woooooo]

They are far and away the leaders in manufacturing. Also the only country with a tech sector on near parity with the US.

Yes, their housing market is messed up and that causes problems in the financial sector, but it's a real stretch to call everything else in the country "propped up".

[datavirtue]

Any mfg that can is leaving China right now. This happened on a smaller level with Trump's last Tariffs.

[crote]

Are they really, though?

Other countries simply don't have the same supply lines and trained workforce. There are no other countries with anything even remotely comparable to something like Shenzhen's electronics market, for example. Who wants to go to a different country when your product will take longer to ship, will have a worse quality, and will be more expensive to manufacture?

Besides, the US doesn't have a stable foreign policy. Moving your manufacturing to a different country takes years, why would anyone start that process when there is zero guarantee that the same tariffs will be in place a month from now, let alone a year or two from now?

And where would you move to? Any country which attracts a significant amount of manufacturing is pretty much guaranteed to be hit with the same kind of tariffs. The only safe option is the US itself - but it's often cheaper to just accept the tariffs!

I bet a lot of companies are just going to accept the revenue loss and wait for the US to stop acting crazy. The tariffs are only just starting to hit and people are already getting mad. This won't last forever.

[spwa4]

> Other countries simply don't have the same supply lines and trained workforce

This is tempered, isn't it?

1) the whole advantage of China that we exploited WAS a large untrained uneducated workforce. That wasn't worth it anymore and things like textiles have already largely moved.

Of course, this doesn't apply to a number of sectors like electronics. But:

2) anyone educated and/or with money is scrambling to leave China, and this is nothing new.

[bilbo0s]

At this point that ship has sailed.

I think the answer fairly conclusively in the global south is that, yes, yes they will let Chinese ships in their waters.

It will be bizarro-land if we have people in Kenya, Colombia, South Africa, and Peru driving around in 10000 dollar Chinese EVs and using 5000 dollar Chinese robots to clean their homes. While we pay 5 to 10 times that for the same conveniences.

I seriously think there's a really good chance the world 25 years from now may have a fundamentally different structure than it has had for the past 100 years.

[pclmulqdq]

It's time to open your eyes to the way the rest of the world lives because "bizzaro land" is basically here. Cheap Chinese roomba replacements clean people's homes, $15000 Chinese EVs are insanely popular, and the price of all these goods certified for the US market is 200-300% higher, so many Chinese companies don't bother.

[Izkata]

Some quick searches on car costs and converting between South African rand and USD, it looks like US consumers already pay around 2-3x as much for a car (just in general using averages, didn't look for specific models or EVs).

[alabastervlog]

Car prices in the US are way up over the last few years—prices, which were already trending up, spiked with "Covid shortages" and then just kept going up after those should have been alleviated. Was the ratio as bad in, say, 2015? (I really don't know)

[zelda420]

Are Chinese ships not already delivering products and welcomed?

I was Peru last year and saw nothing but Chinese made electronics, especially phones, and a lot of cars. I see more and more Chinese electric cars in Mexico too. Talking to the locals they seem to like Chinese tourists just wish they spent as much as Americans.

[datavirtue]

Nope. All other Asian countries are putting transshipment controls in place to prevent Chinese trade getting funnelled through. They went around Trump in his first term and now he is out for revenge. Mfgs must leave China now if they want access to the US market. He just skull fucked Chinas economy.

[bigbadfeline]

> They went around Trump in his first term and now he is out for revenge.

Sounds like high IQ statesman's behavior.

> He just skull fucked Chinas economy.

There, we get high IQ commentary as well... seems like, we're lucky today.

[Workaccount2]

Warships.

[littlecorner]

The brain drain started decades ago. We've been importing people for STEM jobs and exporting manufacturing for a while, leaving behind large numbers of people with no hope for a better future. Now the rest of the country faces that prospect as well

[deepsquirrelnet]

Yep, was there 20 years ago. The secret is having first class universities and a stable, thriving economy that attracts bright students. American exceptionalism is that momentum.

The brightest people in the world want to come here and contribute to our economy and spend the money they earn here at your businesses. That’s a privilege, and it’s too bad we don’t value it more.

[worik]

> The brightest people in the world want to come here

Not any more. Not the women, the queer, poc...

[20after4]

I think it's worse than generations. It will likely never recover. What's happening resembles when private equity takes over a company and runs it into the ground intentionally.