I.e. the kind of trade that they dictate and call "free", creating banana republics that cut them special deals, toppling governments when they don't like their decisions, using humanitarian and development funding (even from supposedly independent sources, like the IMF) as bribes and pressure to secure special treatment , insisting on the dollar being used in major trade as opposed to the euro or the yuan (and punishing those states that make the opposite "free" decision), getting their hands on oil producing countries, and so on.

And of course using protectionism whenever they like for themselves ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St... ).

Some free trade...

We have an independent judiciary, democratic institutions--what are structural Separations of Powers which is the most important structure of a civilization consistent with liberty.

China doesn't have that. Saying the US also cheats the rules, too, is important, but shouldn't be confused with the reality that China does it much more abhorrently.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ax5hwm/economic_war...

And how did that work? (i.e for the Iraq invasion/Afganistan).

"international law matters only when it is aligned with US national interests"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/15/mike-pompeo-...

The government continues war\policy 1. People continue criticizing.

The government starts war\implements policy 2. People criticize.

The government continues war\policy 1 and war\policy 2. People continue criticizing.

...

Of course, Iran is now threatening free trade through the straits of hormuz. Would you call intervention to protect free passage "toppling foreign governments" because they "make decisions we don't like"?

It really does not matter. US of A could never prove the existence of WMD in Iraq. In fact, all of their claims have been proven to be wrong. Millions dead. People who started the war are enjoying retirement sipping on the costliest wines.

I mean a Chinese person can say that they are glad to live in a country that does not invade other countries, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Around half of your population don't seem to want that at all as long as 'their guy' is in power.

China is the last sovereign country in the world. Authoritarian but willing - unlike U.N.-governed countries - to give its people the freedom to do what they want. The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. Only financial power.

That being said, what's your take on China's behavior specifically, do you believe they are acting in a "fair" manner? Do you believe the advantages they enjoy are all justified? (Note: for the sake of this argument only, karmic payback for US historic behavior is not considered a valid justification.)

EDIT: I'm curious why explicitly acknowledging valid points but then asking a clear and specific question (that excludes these points as they are not directly relevant to current trade with China) is being downvoted? Downvotes for disagreement are appropriate according to HN guidelines (or they used to be), but I'm not asserting anything, I am literally asking a serious question.

Regarding trade: I think China (and any country) should have absolute say in how they do business, and who they want to do business with, who to allow in their internal market, etc.

And of course other countries should be free to reciprocate. That would be actually free trade in my book: with any nation being free to do business as it pleases (trade this, impose tariffs on that, etc).

The current "free trade" is mere lip service in the sense: "we promote free trade to force others to open their markets to us, but we ourselves use tariffs, wars, and whenever we like to further our interests". So, I don't like it, and I also don't like the "totally free" trade (which I find a pipe dream, as big players wil always work their way around it).

>Do you believe the advantages they enjoy are all justified? (Note: for the sake of this argument only, karmic payback for US historic behavior is not considered a valid justification.)

I think "fair" can only be considered in context. Something is fair or not according to how the actual players play the game, not according to some abstract rules. If everybody cheats, China is fair to cheat too. In that case, I don't think the "karmic payback" is irrelevant to answer the question, nor I believe it's mere US "historic behavior" (if the latter implies something that happened only in the distant past and is not active behavior it's benefiting from at the moment).

Regarding human rights: China is authoritarian (and on the fore-front of authoritarian abuse of technology). That said, the situation is accepted well by the vast majority of its population, who doesn't have much tradition of free elections in the first place, and who probably worries of the impact of a breakdown of the regime.

Naive pundits might call for the immediate dissolution of the CCP for example, but in 1.6 billion people state a power vacuum could lead to chaos, schism, and civil war than makes India/Pakistan, or modern day Iraq/Libya etc look like Disney movies. In any case, it's up to them, not to outsiders to call their shots (or to take sides in their internal power struggles). All kinds of countries had their popular revolutions, reforms, etc, if China (as a nation) doesn't like its regime, they're welcome to change it.

I don't necessarily disagree, except:

- does this take into consideration explicit agreements they've signed with the WTO?

- if this behavior is perfectly fine, why the extreme reluctance (on both sides, at least until recently) to acknowledge specifics of how the game is actually being played?

> I think "fair" can only be considered in context. Something is fair or not according to how the actual players play the game, not according to some abstract rules. If everybody cheats, China is fair to cheat too.

That seems perfectly reasonable, but my question was: is the US "cheating" China? Are de-facto terms and actual actions (actual actions, so excluding "karma"-based justification) of trade between the US and China "fair", or are they not fair? As far as I can tell, that question remains unanswered.

> Naive pundits...

I absolutely agree on a philosophical basis, but unless I'm mistaken, this seems orthogonal to my specific question. For the sake of clarity and conversational efficiency, I'd rather we not add new topics of discussion to this particular sub-thread.

China has neither. Free is free as in no restriction, not free to do whatever you want.

Free to do whatever will make global trade more difficult for everyone as all countries will have tariffs, as it was historically.

Well, the term (and its proponents) should not hijack the concept of freedom them. One could call it "open" (or sometimes "forcefully open" market, e.g. like when the British waged war on China so that they are free to sell opium there).

Free as in freedom should include the freedom not to trade.

>China has neither

Well, despite that is one of the biggest importers and exporters of the world, and they've been rising from an agrarian economy to the worlds top manufacturer, and being in the top-2 global players. So looks to be working for them.

>Free to do whatever will make global trade more difficult for everyone as all countries will have tariffs, as it was historically.

That's a good thing in my book. We need less global trade, if not for anything else, for environmental reasons (the "reduce" part of the reduce, reuse, recycle).

If the people in some country feel as if they benefit from trading something, they can always choose to trade it. But if they have negative consequences from trading, i.e. importing or exporting X, then why should they continue to do so and suffer them?

I also agree that open trade is a better name

This answer seems to pretend the prisoner's dilemma doesn't exist.

The world grows more when it works together. If China doesn't want to play by the rules of the global trading system, it should stop reaping the benefits while undermining it for everyone else.

Free markets have always come thick with caveats to suit whatever goals the authors/negotiators had at the time. The US, for example, generally prioritized investment access and largely got it. They also prioritized economic infrastructure, like the dollar standard and globalising the US patent system.

Meanwhile, agricultural markets were kept outside of the mix, which is a huge deal to many politically/economically weak countries. The line between a bad faith exploitation of the system (as you characterized china) and an acceptable exception was determined by political interests and power dynamics, not by principles.

What I'm saying is not that china "plays fair" or that the US does. What I'm saying is that it's a game where rules get made on the fly and power matters. There's a tendency to see your own priorities (patents stand out to me, in the US-China context) as obvious non-issues and rivals' priorities as huge compromises. I think it's wise to limit the moral reasoning which leads to finger pointing and conflict.

Meanwhile, there's always a lot of dirty dealing on all sides. Putting up trade barriers on national security pretexts or whatnot.

I think the Singaporean minister has the broad point right. The US had an incredibly central role in creating the current global trade setup. This reflected their power (and prestige, especially in Europe) at the time. The system wasn't a bad one and China has been a great beneficiary of it. A lot of the non-economic reasoning did come to fruition too. China is a far more open-to-the-world society today.

But... The size of China's current economy changes the political balance. They will demand a US-like role and unless that's accepted by the US, politically & emotionally, we're headed for a recessive period.

Afterwards he adopted a still more forceful method of driving home his point: whenever his opinion was called for on any subject, he invariably concluded with the words, ‘And furthermore it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed!’ (Lives, ‘Cato the Elder’ 27)

The Carthage during 20 years after Second Punic War became export powerhouse and it was even able to repay war idemnities 10 years ahead of schedule.

Carthage became that (short lived, because Cato won that argument) export powerhouse in part thanks to the Mediterranean "pax romano" that would soon destroy them.

Even the EU has many import tariffs to protect its own industries from unfair competition from China and others.

Why should someone who makes bikes in the EU compete with someone who does it for $0,50 an hour in Vietnam or who knows where?

Protecting your own markets is the sensible thing to do. Any country with a decent industrial policy does it.

Because this will lead to increased competition on the low cost countries labor market, increasing their wages. Long term that should equalizes wages and thus standard of living globally and everyone is happy. At least that's the overly simplified and wishful thinking. Reality is obviously a bit more complicated, but I still wouldn't want to entirely discard that concept.

Fast forward to 2018, China and USA already agreed to WTO rules with China considered as a developing countries and thus granted special rights such as protection of its industries. Then USA unilaterally breaks WTO rules with tariffs with an arbitrary interpretation of "national security" and wants a signature of a one way deal where USA gets all the rights and controls but doesn't give anything. I'm sorry but history teaches you that kind of deals will get your citizens subjugated by foreign powers or foreign corporations.

China is no longer a developing country. The can say they are developing but that is no longer true.

China surely has some very shiny metropoli, but there is a few decades worth of modernization to be done still as you go inland.

Any justification? China's GDP per capita is lower than Mexico's.

Absorbing global manufacturing has made Americans the richest people with the highest purchasing power on the planet, has subjected American companies to competition that no other country has experienced, and has made them more productive as a result. Why would any American want their government to give in to the same mercantilism that China practises, at the expense of their own people? To maintain jobs that pollute the local environment and are largely going to be automated away anyway?

The central issue which makes this call for retaliation so intuitive (but mistaken) is that the plight of people who lose their jobs to trade is tangible. The steel worker is a person we can picture. But the collective welfare we all gain by the cheap imports from a country like China is invisible. Industries have lobbies, consumers don't.

Milton Friedman says that because he's a policy advisor of countries that benefit from others dropping their protectionist policies.

At a certain state of development (and when you are not yet top dog to dictate what "free" trade means to other countries), you need some well balanced protectionist policies. The US itself rose thanks to its protectionist policies. Britain too -- as did all others major powers when it served them well.

"Britain was the first country to successfully use a large-scale infant industry promotion strategy. However, its most ardent user was the U.S.; the economic historian Paul Bairoch once called it "the homeland and bastion of modern protectionism"

Same with copying from others. Germany was famous for cheap, bad knock-offs of British products in the 19th century. That's the origin of "Made in Germany". And it seems China follows the exact same path. First the knock-offs were bad and people laughed. Then they got comparable in quality for a cheaper price, people started using them and companies grumbled. And then China started to lead in some areas and now the "established" players are in full panic mode and try to block Chinese companies (e.g. Huawei).

Before "Made in Japan" became a sign of pride, Japanese products (including cars) were ridiculed as cheap imitations and rip-offs of western inventions. This changed in the 70s.

When the US administration gets into a tradewar that makes Chinese commodities more expensive and stops American farmers from selling soybeans, how exactly is this to the benefit of anyone?

The answer is clearly that the narrative is purely political and not economical. Playing up China as an economic enemy rather than a partner resonates with a relatively small, but vocal minority of the voterbase, who for ideological reasons seeks conflict with China.

The US "is the most advanced country on the planet" because it constantly uses "industry protection". Besides tariffs and subsidies, the whole power of the US state and military is constantly used to further US trade and resource interests, enforce favorable trade rules, ignore this or that treaty that doesn't benefit the US industry (e.g. environment or child labor laws), and so on.

>When the US administration gets into a tradewar that makes Chinese commodities more expensive and stops American farmers from selling soybeans, how exactly is this to the benefit of anyone?

For one, it's of benefit of those making (and/or) selling commodities of their own.

Heck, even American workers, who might have to pay more for Chinese-made commodities, but they also get jobs again to make similar commodities in the US. A paycheck + more expensive goods trumps being unemployed + the availability of cheapo Chinese goods.

--> The US is the most advanced country on the planet, therefore it logically follows that they do not need industry protection.

This doesn't seem quite right to me. Are you seeing a perspective that I'm overlooking? Have I perhaps mischaracterized you?

> The answer is clearly that the narrative is purely political and not economical.

Even if we assume for the sake of argument that "Playing up China as an economic enemy..." is completely true, do you consider that a complete proof of the above assertion?

This has only been true since about the mid 20th century and is by no means guaranteed to continue. Other countries are also populated by clever humans who would love to overtake us.

As an American I'm inclined to be supportive of measures taken by my government to keep the US in the top spot.

Friedman has been called many things but inconsistent or unprincipled were not among them. He advocated for free trade for the same reasons free trade is the overwhelming consensus of economists; it works and they can explain why whether you want the verbal or mathematical explanation.

Well balanced protectionist polices may be worth it theoretically but all a nation is really doing that way is increasing the variance of their economic growth. It’s a gamble. It could be a costly failure that retards growth for decades before being dismantled as in Ireland, India and Argentina or it could work, as in South Korea or Japan. Note that protectionist policies are not necessary for export lead growth. Hong Kong did just fine with unilateral free trade.

Actually in good-old Europe, "unprincipled" is upon Friedman's more common monickers.

Not that America is that behind:

"It must be said that there were some serious questions about his [Friedman's] intellectual honesty when he was speaking to the mass public." (Paul Krugman)

Or how about:

http://professorfekete.com/articles/AEFWhereFriedmanWentWron...

Paul Krugman's Hypocrisy: Now The Deficit Matters

https://www.dailywire.com/news/12299/paul-krugman-how-ive-co...

Hypocrite Krugman: ‘Awful’ 2017 McCain Now ‘Genuine Hero’, Again Claims GOP ‘Authoritarian'

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2018/11/13/...

Yes they were, for example Friedman said that free market policies enable 'freedom' and socialist ones do lend themselves to authoritarianism, while conveniently ignoring the fact that in almost all places where his vision was put as fully into motion as possible, (70/80s Latin America), it had to be accompanied by severe state oppression. His policies could not be enacted via truly democratic means and in that sense they were no different than the 'socialist' ones he was so critical of.

He even admitted this later, essentially saying that you need a huge crisis of some sort, so that an economic 'shock therapy' could be enacted in order to bring about his vision of free markets.

Consider another great economist, Joan Robinson. She supported Mao and the Cultural Revolution to her dying day[1]. That’s principle. When you look on morality and abandon it because your politics are more important you’re showing your principles. That’s consistency.

Regarding the “shock doctrine”, a phrase that appears nowhere in Friedman’s voluminous writings others have covered this ground at length.

> The Klein Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Polemics

> Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine purports to be an exposé of the ruthless nature of free-market capitalism and its chief recent exponent, Milton Friedman. Klein argues that capitalism goes hand in hand with dictatorship and brutality and that dictators and other unscrupulous political fig- ures take advantage of “shocks”—catastrophes real or manufactured—to consolidate their power and implement unpopular market reforms. Klein cites Chile under General Augusto Pinochet, Britain under Margaret Thatcher, China during the Tiananmen Square crisis, and the ongoing war in Iraq as examples of this process. Klein’s analysis is hopelessly flawed at virtually every level. Friedman’s own words reveal him to be an advocate of peace, democracy, and individual rights. He argued that gradual economic reforms were often preferable to swift ones and that the public should be fully informed about them, the better to prepare themselves in advance. Further, Friedman condemned the Pinochet regime and opposed the war in Iraq. Klein’s historical examples also fall apart under scrutiny. For example, Klein alleges that the Tiananmen Square crackdown was intended to crush opposition to pro-market reforms, when in fact it caused liberalization to stall for years. She also argues that Thatcher used the Falklands War as cover for her unpopular economic policies, when actually those economic policies and their results enjoyed strong public support. Klein’s broader empirical claims fare no better. Surveys of political and economic freedom reveal that the less politically free regimes tend to resist market liberalization, while those states with greater political freedom tend to pursue economic freedom as well.

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp102....

[1]https://chinachannel.org/2017/12/13/fellow-travellers-tale/

Actually, I was only commenting on the claim that he didn't receive criticism for his 'principles', when he clearly did. I did not pass any other judgment.

> Noam Chomsky is deeply principled. If someone opposes the US he’ll support them, whether they’re the Khmer Rouge or the Serbs in the Yugoslav Civil War.

Think of Chomsky what you want, but this is a tragically misguided interpretation of his stance. He doesn't want the U.S. meddling in other countries, as the U.S. does not really do it for humanitarian reasons, but for geopolitical and resource exploitative reasons, (I mean just the existence of the term 'colliteral damage', or 'double tap' and the fact that drone strikes kill over 90% civilians should tell you enough). The notion that the U.S. cares about human rights, while being allied with Egypt, KSA etc. shows this clearly.

The U.S. has melted down over stupid Russian Facebook memes, calling it 'meddling', while actively supporting an illegal coup in Venezuela in the same breath.

His point is also that he criticizes the U.S because he's a CITIZEN, while he's not a citizen of all of the other places. So he puts an emphasis on where he lives, because there he has the biggest chance of innacting some change, as opposed to somewhere where he has no say whatsoever. I mean that'll be easy to do, because you don't really threaten anyone in power, but it also means you're doing little more than posturing.

As for my personal belief, I am actually not against markets or whatever. They serve a useful purpose for games, books, smartphones etc. But I do believe that they also serve a catastrophically unethical purpose when applied to healthcare for example, so that put's me squarely in a social democratic camp, but that doesn't really change the fact that MF has seen one extreme, so he went the exact opposite extreme.

And extremes, including free market ones, cannot be innacted peacefully, as has been demonstrated every time his vision was innacted, most notably by the Chicago Boys.

> Actually, I was only commenting on the claim that he didn't receive criticism for his 'principles', when he clearly did. I did not pass any other judgment.

If your interpretation of someone’s writing makes no sense try rereading it to see if there’s a sensible interpretation. No one who supports Milton Friedman is going to be unaware he’s widely hated. I said he was principled and consistent and acknowledged to be so. That was wrong. He was principled and consistent and plenty of people disagreed with that truth.

I never said or implied he didn’t receive criticism, anywhere.

This is what you said. People have thoroughly proven you wrong.

Have you noticed who is in government over there right now?

I am a free trade believer but you must be stupid not to see that US doesn't want free trade. It wants free trade where it works for them, their "free trade", in US dollars of course. If you compete with the US you become a foe, an enemy.

"We must protect our country and our workers. Our steel industry is in bad shape. IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!"

"I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn't think of the European Union but they're a foe"

"There's a lot of anger at the fact that Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars."

Unfortunately, to the current US administration, confronting China is not a means to change China's behavior for better, but an end itself.

Are the sanctions against countries like Cuba, Iran or North Korea also a part of "fair" and "free" trade?

Of course, US is free to choose with whom they want or don't want to deal; just don't call it "free" trade please.

TPP-agreement would have tied pacific countries and US tighter together while leaving China out until it improves. CPTPP and it's TPP without the US.

Monopolies?

Capitalists?

If we had the same rules everywhere and effectively one global government then we could have free trade. But we have sovereign nations with their own national interests.

Therefore trade always has to be a deal. Either the deal is a good one or it is not. We have had problems before with Japan, for instance they like to grow their own rice rather than just ship in 'Uncle Ben's' rice from Uncle Sam. Rice grown in Japan by real Japanese people on real rice terraces is much more expensive than rice churned out by U.S. agri-business. But do the U.S. agri-businesses have a right to demand free trade, pushing the Japanese small farmers out of business?

What sense does it actually make to do that? The product - rice - can be locally sourced with a lot of human effort gone into the production of it. This keeps people in Japan gainfully employed in agriculture. Japanese consumers also prefer the local product, it is more to their tastes.

Should this protectionism go on forever? Well, yes, it is not as if the local rice farmers in Japan are going to be competing for global exports.

So we have something similar with China and every other nation. I think that China are doing very well in tech thanks to the Great Firewall of China, they have versions of Wikipedia, Facebook, Google and Amazon - the world is richer for this diversity.

What is wrong with the U.S. approach to protectionism? They could be honest about Huawei and state that they wish to have domestic companies do 5G just because they have national interest to do so. They could be honest about their own 'Great Firewall' which is what the NSA is and be up front that the government feels it needs to spy on the citizens lest any of them get revolutionary thoughts.

The rest of the world is fine about U.S. protection of the pickup truck market. We get it - the U.S. needs Detroit and Detroit needs pickup trucks as they can't make competitive cars.

If the U.S. was claiming that Toyota and VW trucks were unsafe that would be wrong, that is what is going on with the Huawei situation, there are these allegations that are not substantiated by facts.

It is ridiculous that the U.S. is struggling with trade given how rich the country is from a land/resources point of view, how the U.S. owns the world's reserve currency and how almost all oil/energy has to be traded in USD. No other countries have these perks.

China has no territorial ambitions beyond Taiwan. This is benign, a bit like Ireland wanting Ulster back rather than Britain wanting to enslave India. They may peg their currency and have this Great Firewall, however, who is to say that they are wrong in not wanting their great nation to be ravaged by global capitalism? We just need to strike actual trade deals with China in the West, affording the Chinese people and their leaders some respect.

Then the Japanese rice producers have nothing to fear from free trade. If Japanese consumers don't want it, there will be little shipments of American rice anyways. This of course ignores any subsidies that may artificially effect the market prices of rice in either Japan or America, but free trade is as much about consumer choice as it is about big business selling it's products.

I live in Canada. We have a supply managed dairy system that's managed by quotas that farmers own. Part of the management of that system is brutally high tarrifs on foreign milk products, including cheese. The farmers have high income support, but Canada also has among the highest milk prices in the world. This effects poor people as well as limits choice. I'm a cheese snob, and while Canada (in particular around Quebec) can make some very delicious cheeses, I'm left paying exorbitant prices for some of the unique cheeses from Wisconsin, France, Switzerland, etc. The result of this protectionism is that, under WTO rules, Canada exports absolutely zero dairy products. Our cheeses don't compete on a fair market leading to stagnant products that compete on tariffs as high as 800%.

Now you may say "great! farmers deserve a good living!" but they're benefiting from protectionism while the rest of the economy is relatively free. If the entire Canadian economy was run on this model, Canadians would have to pay a lot more everything, which would make our standard of living much lower.

Farmers just happen to be politically well connected, which at the end of the day are the people who tend to benefit from "trade deals" that restrict certain elements of trade.

"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."