06-11-2019, 02:25 AM
(06-10-2019, 09:57 PM)Dill Wrote: There were bipartisan concerns, certainly. E.g., the US wanted stronger digital copyrights than our partners, who felt this would stifle innovation (e.g. control 70 years after an author's death). I agree with our partners on most of that. The other major concern was that the U.S. would lose some thousands of manufacturing jobs in the first few years. I can't disagree with that, but it would be balanced by improving the US trade deficit. Now that the US is shut out the final form of the TPP, The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, that means that Australia, Canada and Mexico are selling beef and wheat to Japan's massive market, not to mention South Korea and Taiwan. The US would have lost jobs, now it will likely lose businesses in the agricultural sector. Trump has expressed a willingness to rejoin the CPTPP "if the deal is right," but it will clearly be on terms set by those who current own the deal.
That's a lot of words to essentially agree with my assessment. As for your perception of the perceived benefits, much like the detriments, they are exactly that, perceived. Saying either position is/was definitive is speculative at best.
Quote:I brought up the TPP because 1) China was not in it, and 2) in its current incarnation, even without the US, it controls 13% of the global gdp--an economy roughly the size of China's, whose constitutive members could work effectively to curb Chinese economic malpractice/dominance. I.e., it would be another effective counterweight to China. Were the US able to get the EU, NAFTA and the CPTPP all coordinated and setting conditions on Chinese trade, that would have tremendous effect. China would not want that, but they don't have to worry about since Trump took the US out of the TPP and is throwing steel. tariffs at the EU, many of whose members the president has called "deadbeats" and are looking for ways to become less reliant economically and military on the US. Chinese sell steel too, as the EU countries well know.
None of which omits the fact that China has its claws deep in Europe and Australia. You also suppose the other TPP nations would go along with any action against China, a monstrous, and unfounded IMO, assumption.
Quote:US papers may be full of bluster between Trump and Xi, but I don't see a high probability that any good will come from a unilaterally instigated tariff war which puts "losing face" front and center, and so could tank both the US and Chinese economies. I also think the Chinese consumers would weather a trade-war/recession/depression much better than whiny 4th generation American consumers. And Xi won't have to stand for re-election as Trump will soon.
Correct Xi won't stand for election again, ever, because he's a despot of an autocratic nation that stands against every principle of free Western society.
Quote:Potential trade partners won't see the US as "the only guy who can stand up to China." Rather they will worry about how a recession/depression would drag their economies down and look for individual or collective buttress against that. For the first time since 1945, international leadership will have to come from another country, or perhaps a coalition thereof, if China is to be effectively discouraged from bad behavior and continue its integration into the world economy. More in my next post . . .
You just did a perfect job of explaining why every previous administration has kicked the can down the road on this issue. Moral cowardice is not a virtue, even when it avoids near term unpleasantness at the expense of the future.
(06-10-2019, 10:52 PM)Dill Wrote: I would dispute some of your characterization of China. Chinese, thinking of how they were violently colonized in the 19th century, could rightfully ask "when has 'the West' ever played fair with China?" And they could point out how other nations have grown at their expense for 200 years, including the many corporations who still find beneficial the cheapness of Chinese labor.
Quite honestly, historical grievances mean absolutely nothing to me. China's action in the present are unacceptable and I could give two shits what historical wrongs they choose to justify their current actions.
Quote:The US seems to be needlessly strengthening Europe's ties to the Chinese economy, while needlessly stressing out its ties to ours. The US was, in 2016, the only nation that could have orchestrated the world economy to consistently reward China for good behavior and punish it for bad, but Trump appears to have trashed that opportunity by trashing alliance networks in favor of unilateral foreign policy with individual nations. His negotiating style is not recommended by his business record--the many bankruptcies and eventual refusal of US banks to loan him money--and I think that a global version of that is where the US is headed at present.
This is both intellectually dishonest and insanely overly simplistic. To characterize any previous US action as holding China accountable for its consistent bad behavior, e.g IP theft, currency manipulation, straight up piracy and slave labor is inane.
Quote:While I find warnings about the China threat laughable when formulated "Committee-on-the-present-danger" style, I agree it is a the potential superpower competitor/adversay with a political system incompatable with ours, as well as with current international norms. At the same time, though, many have come to regard them as a good world citizen, insofar as they have taken seriously UN obligations (rather than just taking advantage of the UN) and extended a great deal of aid to developing countries, greatly enhancing their soft power at the moment the US is pulling back from its once-held advantage in that area. They may be playing a better long game.
You're the frog that gets stung by the scorpion and then wonders why it died. Myopic shortsightedness is also not a virtue.
Quote:The assumption that integration into the world market would liberalize their government seems to have fallen short of expectation, but that doesn't mean that concerted diplomacy of many nations could not exact better behavior from them.
Fallen short being an understatement of epic proportions. I have to wonder why you strive so hard to defend such odious regimes/belief systems as communist China.
Quote:Here is some reading you might like. David Shambaugh is one of the US' foremost experts on China, and he makes the case that China is in an economic decline which the party cannot likely manage. He build's a case around China's "middle income trap" (which erodes China's comparative advantage in cheap labor) and assesses four possible future directions for the government/economy. He might agree with you that the US could weather a trade war better than China. (I don't agree, though). http://www.iberchina.org/files/2016/TWQ_Fall2016_Shambaugh.pdf
On this we agree, China's economy is a house of cards. I have argued this since well before you started posting in PnR. It is only a matter of time before that house of dry rot and corruption collapses in on itself. I'm even in favor of anything, within reason, that will hasten this. However, I see no reason to continue allowing them to rape the US economy in the interim.
