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I have the feeling that the whole trade war starts from a pile of nonsense.

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Marco:

--- Quote from: technix on May 24, 2019, 01:36:57 pm ---What might the alternative be? China is not going to start a war, take your land or rob your people on a whim.

--- End quote ---

Not on a whim, only for calculated strategic reasons. Land disputes are rare because we live in a new era, where the most important strategic resources are not peons or even arable land ... it's minerals, fossil fuel and potable water. Land filled with uneducated hostile peons is more trouble than it's worth, especially if overpopulated. The only way to make land truly valuable is to ethnically cleanse it first. Ocean floor though has no peons to displace, annexing it looks less hostile. Also important is the rise of exploitative "free trade". For strategically less important resources it's more convenient to just manipulate countries in letting you have economic ownership of their resources, rather than sovereign/military ownership.

The ways of war have changed.

As for China's abortion policy, I think it's neither something to celebrate ... nor to have much faith in it to keep in place. The support for abortion in communism has IMO always been as much for reasons of destroying tradition as for ideology and when push came to shove demographic wise ideology has also lost on occasion. A Ceaușescu like pivot could very well happen yet in China.

Marco:

--- Quote from: rstofer on May 24, 2019, 02:42:35 pm ---There is no way to know, at the border crossing, whether that child is part of the family or not.  To avoid complaints of further abuse, they separate the children.  Yes, some are legitimate children, but not all.

--- End quote ---

There's one other important issue nearly never mentioned, near the end of Obama's administration all the prison facilities which could house families together were closed by court order. So until that was worked around basically the administration only had two choices, detain the parents apart or not detain them at all.

SparkyFX:

--- Quote from: blueskull on May 24, 2019, 06:00:23 am ---Why is manufacturing so important? Why can't we let people do creative stuffs like making YT videos or making handcrafts?
--- End quote ---
That´s an interesting question, especially regarding the "reason" for this: the trade deficit (which equalled overall ~ -45 USD billion per month in 2017, being a whopping 0.2% 4% of the GDP of 19390 USD billion in the year 2017 - all that is, not China alone). It sounds much in absolute numbers, maybe the comparison is mathematically questionable, but if 100% of the GDP pays for a system, 0.2% 4% of that will probably not rebuild ´murica and pay for all the problems, walls or whatever. You could also re-frame the -45 USD billion trade deficit as: the imports are valuable, but the exports are not valuable enough, that could mean a few things internally need to be changed.

E.g. in 2019 global players move money in ways that might evade trade deficit calculations in the first place, by licensing costs, tax evasion, hollywood accounting and such.

Manufacturing or trading goods or the trade deficit between continents is obviously not the center of all commerce (0.2% 4%!), there are still plenty of businesses that are not affected at all, like infrastructure (can´t economically ship your infrastructure, you´ll gonna need it in the future :-), i know there are exceptions, *hello Huawei 5G Ban discussion*), education, power generation, medicine, everything that does not get across the language barrier or must be local. All of these are magically not present in the discussion with MAGA folks.


--- Quote ---There gotta be some human touch that machines can't do, and there are people willing to pay for it.
--- End quote ---
Machinists work like that as well, either small part counts or even high volume production thanks to CNC. Wages are usually the big factor, so people better do smart stuff very often or lower count for higher pay.


--- Quote ---Is it heavily inflated? Yes. But as long as we have money to spend, we don't care.
--- End quote ---
Well, in a mining centered economy, the flow of physical matter, the ability to mine, refine and increase the aggregate net value is what counts, it also presents a limit to the speed of trades and value that can be gained or lost. In a consumer based economy that shifts more to the impression of value, time spent, time saved, experience made, access to information. In a finance based economy... the house is on fire, leave quick, there is no SI unit for currency. I predict China to use it´s wealth and increase the social and life standards, kind of evening out wages internationally in the very long run.

But excuse my sickening hypocrisy, i write this as i unpack some stuff that arrived in the mail today, from China. Spare soldering iron: 8.17 Euro, assortment of generic 630V caps (one off-hobby projects): 11.20 Euro, postage included.

Edit: whoops, 4% instead of 0.2%, thanks Marco

Marco:
You used monthly trade deficit and yearly GDP. 2018 trade deficit was $878.68 billion, around 4% of GDP.

SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: SparkyFX on May 24, 2019, 03:47:07 pm ---
But excuse my sickening hypocrisy, i write this as i unpack some stuff that arrived in the mail today, from China. Spare soldering iron: 8.17 Euro, assortment of generic 630V caps (one off-hobby projects): 11.20 Euro, postage included.

--- End quote ---

You have to admit, though -  nobody imports anything into the EU without paying VAT and customs duties...   which probably add up to around the 25% that the US administration wants to impose?

Americans literally pay no duties or taxes when e.g. buying stuff from China on eBay,  in most cases.

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