Trump's Trade War

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Trump's Trade War

Postby grzegorz on Sat May 18, 2019 4:23 pm

Watch "Trump's Trade War (full film) | FRONTLINE" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/4_xQ5JisFuo
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby grzegorz on Sat May 18, 2019 6:01 pm

Trump shot himself in the foot. He should have used TPP as a threat if China didn't agree with his terms. Instead a fit of tantrum he wrecked TPP and wrecked his chances of getting anything out of Xi but unlike Trump Xi has time in his side and 10 years from now Trump will be in the dust bin of history and probably a dust bin from his diet and Xi will be still be in control. The Hail Mary play didn't work. Sorry US farmers time to sell what is left of your livelihood to Mansanto. You should have listened but you didn't.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby grzegorz on Sun May 19, 2019 2:42 pm

Watch "Nothing In Trump Hotel Made In America, Investigation Reveals" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/7KI9zla1JEg
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby Peacedog on Sun May 19, 2019 8:03 pm

China strikes me as being the loser in the end on this one. What Trump is doing, if he holds to it, will accelerate what I describe next. I can't think of anything the PRC can do to stop it however.

Its demographic death spiral is going to accelerate over the next decade or so. The one child policy has been a complete disaster. The PRC got old before it got rich and now it will never catch up.

Western nations are getting caught up on all of the technology theft being perpetrated by the PRC and will severely dampen down on this.

Fifth generation tech is largely beyond the ability of a socialist society to operate and the necessary top down control systems in place in China cannot operate this kind of technology at all. The Politburo is betting the farm on AI making it possible, but they are going to lose that bet.

Manufacturing is already moving out of China and into places that better protect technology and property rights. The coming almost complete automation of manufacturing will be the end of the Chinese labor advantage and essentially eliminate their access to hard capital. And the manufacturing won't be coming back.

And none of this deals with the internal debt timebomb at the province level. Short hand the second the outside currency starts to dry up, they're screwed.

My guess is that at some point the wealthier coastal areas will make a break for it and the boys from Beijing won't be able to pay for enough of a goon squad to keep it together. It will be more of a mush than a civil war as no one will have, or be interested in spending, the money necessary to win. Sichuan, or Shanghai, will be the first to make a break for it if I had to pick. The Politburo will probably get slaughtered by their own populations at the end of the day. The mobile family planning teams and the internal security police will be the first to get the knife. I'm not sure who will end up running the Beijing sector, but my thought is that it won't be the current crowd or any of their lineage.

The developed world will chose sides to support, but it will be a soft support as nothing in China is really worth that much from a Western perspective at that point. It will make getting herbs for TCM practitioners a real bitch though. :o


With labor being irrelevant for heavy industry due to increasing automation, an inability to protect intellectual property and the developed world entering a post scarcity environment most of the developing world will slip into complete irrelevancy. Those that can eventually bridge the gap will be in good shape. Those that cannot will dwell in a kind of developmental twillight based upon what technologies they can master and those that they cannot.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby everything on Mon May 20, 2019 7:19 am

USA has the same issues but worse.
Greying population and fewer workers to contribute to Soc Security.
Millenials "behind" on every measure incl having fewer kids.
Anti immigration so not importing workers to make up for shortfall.
Anti immigration so not benefiting from brain drain to USA.
Suffering from reverse brain drain now.
China is actually ahead on AI, in part due to reverse brain drain.
Also, no USA students want to study STEM or compsci.
Robots taking manufacturing jobs would be ok but those jobs have already been outsourced by US CEOs to China a long time ago.
That was done as "joint ventures" with "technology transfer" so Chinese factories could learn how to do things, then people falsely naively complain about IP when they fully knew what they were doing.

The core issue is manufacturing which has led to the trade deficit and debt: USA is exporting basically produce vs. China is exporting higher-in-the-value-chain manufactured goods.

the area where the administration is probably right is to not trust manufacturers like Huawei.
The reason is because every advanced country can use these kinds of tech for spyware.
When China got busted over it last year, they basically said "we aren't the only ones who do this" and no one said anything about that.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby Bao on Mon May 20, 2019 7:34 am

Chinese people are loyal. The more the US does the more US companies and products will lose market and become banned. China will win this as long the US is not successful bullying other countries to follow its lead. Everything here is about trying to press down China, stopping it to grow and have a bigger voice in the world. I sincerely hope that more and more countries stand on China’s side and start to say no to the old US bully terrorizing. The whole world will benefit if the US starts to act civilized and cooperates instead of starting conflicts everywhere all over the world just to get reasons to continue to play Big Brother World Police.

everything wrote:the area where the administration is probably right is to not trust manufacturers like Huawei.
The reason is because every advanced country can use these kinds of tech for spyware.
When China got busted over it last year, they basically said "we aren't the only ones who do this" and no one said anything about that.


Huawei has offered full transparency and is prepared to sign documents about “cleanliness” in this matter and on how to proceed so the European countries will be satisfied. The US will have no discussion. The only thing they want is to stop Huawei to protect the Americans own interests. China must not grow bigger and Chinese companies are not allowed to get a better position. The US has already shown similar tactics on other international companies from other countries. It’s all about a dirty ugly game to protect their own market and their world domination. It’s the US that should not be trusted. But I believe that the EU is starting to become less naive.
Last edited by Bao on Mon May 20, 2019 7:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby edededed on Mon May 20, 2019 7:36 am

Interesting view, Peacedog. You may be right, but why cannot a socialist country operate the newest technology? Is it because they will find it difficult to transition to teal, etc. models for organizations (i.e. not top-down)? (I feel the same problems in large US corporations, anyway.)

Internal debt - my economics understanding is really not there, but I don't really understand country debt, since they create their own money from thin air anyway (fiat currency), and it is not the same kind of accountability as to a person in debt (e.g. go to jail, have assets taken away). Of course too much money creation causes trouble, but as long as that doesn't happen...

It still does seem that new technologies continue to be born in the West (America, etc.), though. Big "shakers" like tablets, data science, etc.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby windwalker on Mon May 20, 2019 7:51 am

.Huawei has offered full transparency and is prepared to sign documents about “cleanliness” in this matter and on how to proceed so the European countries will be satisfied. The US will have no discussion. The only thing they want is to stop Huawei to protect the Americans own interests.


All countries act in their own interest. Some might forget what happened to the Iranian centrifuges. The controllers were intercepted in route and some of the chips changed just enough so that they would not spin at the correct speed.

There is no way to know for sure what is going on in the embedded chips. The US intelligence agencies do not want to take the chance. There are key technologies that are considered national interest. unfortunately in the semiconductor area the US has lost a lot of its manufacturing capability.

There are even certain tools sets that the US cannot make any more even though the technology was developed within it. Steppers "photolithography" being one them.


Many years ago working in a slider Fab in Thailand one of the Korean engineers I knew took some of the product they made.
I had asked him about it, he said he would bring it back to Korea and they would examine it. We both know it was highly illegal something you could get put in jail for.

He told me that he was Korean, Korea is a small country and that in this industry if he's asked to do something he hasn't much choice. A very different attitude for many Americans, who tend to feel like the US it's just a place to work .
Last edited by windwalker on Mon May 20, 2019 8:04 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby everything on Mon May 20, 2019 9:47 am

That's right, making it hard to separate rhetoric b.s. from actual concerns.

for national interest, "cyberwarfare" like Stuxnet is something that is done.

It seems like chip manufacturing gives you one helpful capability. any high tech manufacturing is useful.

There isn't such a thing as full transparency. The rhetoric is just propaganda from both sides, almost by definition since rhetoric is the art of persuasion.

"Innocent" things like Google, phones, Windows, printers, USB sticks, etc., may or may not be innocent.

Stuxnet supposedly failed in N. Korea because of its extreme secrecy and isolation - too difficult to get state malware into its systems.

As far as Trump's handling of anything, though, he's a total idiot.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby grzegorz on Mon May 20, 2019 10:14 am

FWIW all that Trump has done is raise prices for Americans.

Yes, China's one child policy was a mistake. But the Chinese and Xi know that Trump is just a fart in the wind and a few years he and his tariffs will pass while Xi is still running the show.

Trump blew it. He has nothing but tariffs which do nothing but his own crap and products made China more expensive in the US only.

Image

Btw, China is ahead of the US in green energy which despite what FOX news may say is the future and the present.

As far as climate change destroying the coastal cities of China that has already started in the South and they still deny climate change. Who's the fool now?
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby grzegorz on Mon May 20, 2019 10:29 am

everything wrote:USA has the same issues but worse.


Exactly! The tax bill just added a trillion to our deficit when we still haven't paid off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile we are talking about fighting another war for the Saudis and take on Iran.

We will pay for the failures of the Republicans.

North Korea fail!

Valenzuela fail!

Iran fail!

And now

China fail!
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby grzegorz on Mon May 20, 2019 10:39 am

We haven't even discussed the fact that college education can cost as much as a house here.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby Peacedog on Mon May 20, 2019 11:34 am

The current kind of advanced technology that is being referred to as fifth generation, and above, requires large numbers of highly skilled people acting independently towards a unified goal to make it work. As we've talked about before, that is one of the reasons why the US is one of the few countries that can engage in fracking.

Socialist countries by definition are top down decision making societies. They simply cannot allow this to happen. People might get ideas.

China is handicapped by being both socialist governmentally speaking and Confucian culturally.

It is also why China cannot innovate or come up with original research, versus a variation on a theme, and is why intellectual property theft is such a big issue for their government. Huawei is just the beginning. Expect, over the long term, for technology transfer to basically come to an end. Likewise with Western universities being open to anyone who wants to attend.

Also, remember that no one trusts Huawei as Chinese companies have been caught violating written agreements multiple times. The Chinese government does not respect intellectual property rights from foreign sources. So, expect most foreign sources to simply stop sharing this over time. If you are just going to get ripped off in the end, there is no point in even engaging.

AI is not really all that useful in this regard as it cannot engage in general intelligence reasoning. It's great for specific applications, it just can't recognize a pattern and skip to the end. It has to calculate all possible outcomes and identify the best one. For this reason it cannot also identify the best courses of action from multiple different systems of reasoning and come up with a coherent answer. People by default do this multiple times per day.
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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby Peacedog on Mon May 20, 2019 11:55 am

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Re: Trump's Trade War

Postby Bill on Mon May 20, 2019 12:10 pm

It hurts when I Pi
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