That sounds a bit optimistic on the no IP theft or opioids front.

This is pretty silly. Us companies will still want to hit the Chinese market. Tariffs won't stop that.

Guess I better put in a few Ali Express orders now.

what freaks me out is it's almost as if someone planned this.

> what freaks me out is that it's almost as if someone planned this.

Why would prior planning freak you out? This is a bit confusing to me.

I tend to not give political leadership much credit in that area...(successful planning and execution)

Ah, that's interesting. I tend to view political leadership as intelligent, calculating, and manipulative but in service of "greed," that is for their own gain or that of their major donors, as opposed to their voter-constituency.

As such, planning doesn't surprise me but genuinely beneficial legislation does.

The fact that the national (and international) media's narrative about Trump and company might be wrong?

No one questioned that the US could hurt China. Did we forget that that isn't the point? So far the US has not gained anything from this.

Its going to happen. Right now China is on the brink of some massive starvation due to their hog epidemic. [1] Pork is their largest meat consumed. When they've slaughtered 90% of their herd, the price of pork will go through the roof across the globe. This will increase the cost of all agricultural goods.

When food becomes expensive for China what will their newly affluent middle-class do? What will the poorer people do?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19823238

Just found the source of this epidemic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ9bP6wo8rA&list=WL&index=49...

My narrative about Trump is from listening to him speak and reading what he writes.

From this I get the impression of someone whose ignorance is far deeper than their stupidity, whilst being pretty damn stupid.

The one thing he does seem to know is some NLP techniques, of the kind employed at shady car dealerships, though he seems to be doing that more by rote rather than displaying any deep understanding.

edit - however I do like his assertion in a tweet recently that his first two years of governance have been a kind of German cake.

We're living in a world where neither the entire political machine of the oval office nor the very spell check on the device he is currently using to type can keep the commander in chief from admitting even to himself that he made a simple spelling mistake. Wow.

Hucksters never let you see how smart they are.

He is a sports-star of bullshit. He's not the best by a long shot, I have better in my own family, he's not got the vocabulary to play a wide field for one thing, but he is in the leagues.

edit - just reading the news this morning. He is perhaps further up the leagues than I thought.

German cake? Care to link?

I'd think that would be giving him too much credit. I think it's more of "a broken clock is still right twice a day".

Trump can declare tarriffs and fit the whole decleration in a tweet, it's instant gratification for his feedback loop and keeps all things Russia related further down the news feed.

Too bad that Mueller thing didn't have much Russia related.

more like a negotiation ploy.

To what end? Xi Jinping can just wait until the next president to negotiate away the tariffs. The public certainly hates them. Right or left, I don't see how anyone can see these surviving through another administration.

> The public certainly hates them. Right of left, I don't see how anyone can see these surviving through another administration.

Citation needed. Free traders certainly hate the tariffs, but only a tiny fraction of the public are committed free traders. Also Democrats are dispositionally far more favorable to tariffs and protectionism than Republicans, so unless Trump doesn't run or the Libertarians win the presidency (ha!), I don't see the next administration being much of a swerve in the direction of free trade.

This affects some of my family directly and has a very noticeable impact on local businesses who had become accustomed to and were investing pretty significantly in attracting Chinese interest in their products (California wine industry). While the industry existed for a long time before the Chinese market became a factor, starting in the recession their was definitely a push to attract Chinese individuals to california wine, to the point where many major tasting rooms were recruiting people who speak mandarin, and some folks I know regularly had relatively wealthy recent Chinese college graduates working harvest jobs. I have not been aware of a Chinese intern in our circle for years, and also haven't seen a listing looking for Mandarin in months if not longer.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-wine...

I imagine the situation is similar for many other non-essential exports to China.

First of all, once factories leave China, they don’t go back. China’s wage is already at a level similar to Mexico, and is more expensive than Southeast Asia.

Second, both Democrats and Republicans leaderships are anti-China. Chuck Schumer, senate minority leader and a democrat, told trump to “hang tough” on the Chinese tariffs. Bernie Sanders slammed joe Biden when Biden made a remark about how China isn’t a threat.

Yes, exactly. Vietnam stands to reap the benefits. Factories are opening in Vietnam en masse. Once they're up and running, the lifting of tariffs against China won't matter. Chinese workers are higher paid than they used to be. Now China will have to make their way as an advanced, developed economy (with lower growth), just like everyone else.

The Chinese are also shifting a lot of their polluting heavy industry to Cambodia.

You know where those factories aren't opening?

The United States.

Which seemed to be the whole point of this exercise.

I don't agree with that. Some, though definitely not all, manufacturing is moving back to the US. But even getting manufacturing to shift out of China to other countries is smart policy, because it reduces the US's concentrated economic dependence on its main strategic rival.

I haven't heard of US factories being one of the main arguing points. Wiki has these listed [0]:

1.1 Structure of China's political economy system

1.2 Accusation of theft of intellectual property, technology and trade secrets

1.3 Forced technology transfer from US companies to Chinese entities

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

> 1.1 Structure of China's political economy system

So you're cheerleading, of all places, Vietnam?

> 1.2 Accusation of theft of intellectual property, technology and trade secrets

Will still take place.

> 1.3 Forced technology transfer from US companies to Chinese entities

This only happens if you want to invest in China. It's a trade-off that's up to each individual firm doing it to make.

Also, I have a hard time believing that Trump's base give two shits about any of these things, beyond a bit of nationalistic ra-ra-ra. None of this has any impact on the life of someone pissed off that their best life prospects consist of collecting dole in the rust belt.

I'd rather Vietnam gain access to military-adjacent tech than China, or grow their economy with factories from US companies, etc - because while Vietnam's main threat is China, China's is the US.

A bunch of mid-strength countries is better for the US than a superpower competitor.

Nit: His name is Xi Jinping, where Xi is his family name and is pronounced sorta like ”she.”

Thanks, fixed. Learned a new thing today.

The way things are going it's not all certain that Xi won't be waiting until January of 2025.

I'd be willing to wager that this will be the case.

So Trump did a good job, but let's hope someone undoes his trade policy because "fuck Trump"? Not sure what your point is.

Depends on who the next president is. If Trump is reelected or the Democrats nominate a more populist candidates (i.e. Bernie Sanders), it might not matter who's in the Oval Office. After 8-12 years of tariffs, it might be too difficult to come back from for China and the US.

> Perfect timing, what with US growing healthy at 3% and wage growth, and China suffering from debt overload and demographics decline

A stopped clock is right twice a day. Trump is a clown who has very near zero policy success (by his own agenda, not my opinion of his success). But his self-immolation strategy here might actually pay off. He's desperate for positive headlines (both to stroke his ego and distract from investigations into lawlessness), so hopefully he won't bluff his way into a stalemate.

The biggest factor working against Trump is the fact that he's just not credible. No one in their right mind can rely on him to honor any agreement he's ever made, so if I were China I'd be pretty concerned about the stability of any deal. BTW this factor also sank his domestic agenda: he can't get his own party on board with legislation because they don't trust him. His only options are to press buttons that Congress granted the President long before they ever suspected someone like him might take office.

>This is the disengagement of US economy with the Chinese economy as we speak. No more IP theft, no more US factories for China, no more knowledge transfer, no more opioids from China.

Great, it is going to screw both parties and then they will blame each other and we will be very lucky if we avoid war. Yippidee-fucking-doo-daa.