Discussing Biden's Potential China Policy

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FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

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gelgoog said:
I think the tariffs had the effect of more quickly moving production of labor intensive products out of China and into other countries in Southeast Asia and Mexico. But that was already happening. Had been for like a decade. One example is shoes and clothing which had been moving towards Bangladesh and Vietnam for about that long and away from China. As China itself moved up the value chain and salaries increased in China the production was moving there already. What the US tariffs led to was things like moving production of solar panels to Vietnam and Malaysia. Of course moving production facilities entails costs even if salaries are cheaper. But I think the major reason for the US inflation was not Trump's tariffs but the Fed printing money. I also think the trade balance got worse because of the way the government decided to support the population with cash handouts. I would not have done any cash handouts. I would have just passed a moratorium on loan payments, mortgages, and rents for the duration of the lockdowns. i.e. freezing the velocity of money and the economy not increasing it.

The tariffs would have never brought manufacturing into the US given the way they were structured. And with NAFTA being in place there is no way manufacturing would go to the US. Even if the US put tariffs on all international trade of said goods, production would just move to Mexico. Since the tariffs just applied to China, production moved to other countries in Southeast Asia which were close to the rest of the supply chain and where the main market is.
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Not just that, for solar only the final module assembly moved to Vietnam and Malaysia. The original components - wafers, electronics and encapsulation materials - are all imported from China. The wafer processing equipment used to be AMAT or Lam... Now Chinese.

So far from reducing dependence on China, reliance on China increased. Now Vietnam and Malaysia hooked on China too.
 
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gelgoog

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Even if the US applied sanctions to all non-NAFTA countries I think they would be hard pressed to move production outside Asia. For solar panels at least, the US would have to make a boycott on solar panels together with Japan and the EU for it to stick. And I think even then the chance the production would go to NAFTA would be slim to none. The EU has a much larger market for solar than the US. Like double the size. The US solar market is roughly the same size as Japan. The Chinese solar market is as large as Europe and Japan put together.
If you go by geographical constraints alone the bulk of the market is in China and Japan and with India quickly moving up the scale it doesn't make financial sense to put the production outside Asia.
 
Bellum_Romanum

Bellum_Romanum

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The sister of the newly elected Philippine Pres. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had an interesting idea with respect to their dispute with China over the South China Sea specifically the West Philippine Sea per Philippine claim. She directly reminded to the interviewer that China must be seen and understand in the proper historical context with respect to it's relationship with the Philippines. For one thing, China has never invaded, occupied, desired to invade for imperial or hegemonic aspirations then or now. Most importantly, China is the Philippines biggest trading partner. Secondly as for the idea of having the U.S. inviting the Philippines on a joint patrol in the South China Sea ought to be revised with actual claimants or countries that are involved in disputes to the actual joint patrol like Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and China. To involve a country that's not a claimant in the dispute, not part of UNCLOS and not located in the part of the pacific should not be involved at all. She said (paraphrase) that Asian issues should be solved by Asians themselves. I had to rewind the video to re-watch to and listen if I heard her answers correctly. If this is the direction the new administration is going to be making then I say it's a good positive welcome change for the direction of the relationship for ASEAN countries and with China.

 
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ansy1968

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Bellum_Romanum said:
The sister of the newly elected Philippine Pres. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had an interesting idea with respect to their dispute with China over the South China Sea specifically the West Philippine Sea per Philippine claim. She directly reminded to the interviewer that China must be seen and understand in the proper historical context with respect to it's relationship with the Philippines. For one thing, China has never invaded, occupied, desired to invade for imperial or hegemonic aspirations then or now. Most importantly, China is the Philippines biggest trading partner. Secondly as for the idea of having the U.S. inviting the Philippines on a joint patrol in the South China Sea ought to be revised with actual claimants or countries that are involved in disputes to the actual joint patrol like Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and China. To involve a country that's not a claimant in the dispute, not part of UNCLOS and not located in the part of the pacific should not be involved at all. She said (paraphrase) that Asian issues should be solved by Asians themselves. I had to rewind the video to re-watch to and listen if I heard her answers correctly. If this is the direction the new administration is going to be making then I say it's a good positive welcome change for the direction of the relationship for ASEAN countries and with China.

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@Bellum_Romanum bro the outcome of an illegal detention done to the Marcos Family, Bro she knew her father illegally claim the Spratly in the 70's, and nobody in the region recognized our claim in fact it start the ball rolling of illegal occupation by Malaysia and South Vietnam as we permanently occupied Kalayaan Island the 2nd largest. It was peaceful until Noynoy Aquino start using the newly arrived Corvette donated by the US to harass the Chinese fisherman. It's a coordinated move and our gov't follow the scripted to the tee as we believed in all mighty Obama. That's how incompetent Benigno Aquino Jr is, I'm sorry for being vindictive BUT he should be put to trial as a traitor before he died.

And I believe the long awaited COC will be signed during his brother term, giving BBM a major victory. China will help his brother administration at all cost as the Chinese knew there is a major destabilization effort being funded and plan by the US.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

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They say the Biden Administration is split on whether or not tariffs on China should be eliminated. Some want something in return from China. Where's their spin that US tariffs on China is hurting China and not the US? That was their point of tariffs in the first place hence why inflation. They still can't get away from thinking China only thinks about money despite how they even claim China's economy is wrecked over a self-imposed zero-tolerance COVID policy. If Beijing is willing to sacrifice the economy to prevent COVID infections, what does lifting tariffs that hurt the US more going to do for China? Inflation is not having the same effect in China as it is in the West. Is it because of their decades long policy to prevent real Chinese companies from doing business in their countries is actually insulating China from their economic problems right now?
 
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SanWenYu

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AssassinsMace said:
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They say the Biden Administration is split on whether or not tariffs on China should be eliminated. Some want something in return from China. Where's their spin that US tariffs on China is hurting China and not the US? That was their point of tariffs in the first place hence why inflation. They still can't get away from thinking China only thinks about money despite how they even claim China's economy is wrecked over a self-imposed zero-tolerance COVID policy. If Beijing is willing to sacrifice the economy to prevent COVID infections, what does lifting tariffs that hurt the US more going to do for China? Inflation is not having the same effect in China as it is in the West. Is it because of their decades long policy to prevent real Chinese companies from doing business in their countries is actually insulating China from their economic problems right now?
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Translation of what Tai said: "Yellen, get off my turf."

Seriously though, she is right. The tariffs are only a small portion of the inflation. The much bigger problem is the trillions dollars of the extra money printed by the central banks. These "wealth on paper" do not have the actual goods to support its face value.

I don't think Biden and his team are overlooking this. But it's a myth that nobody is speaking out.
 
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pakje

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SanWenYu said:
Translation of what Tai said: "Yellen, get off my turf."

Seriously though, she is right. The tariffs are only a small portion of the inflation. The much bigger problem is the trillions dollars of the extra money printed by the central banks. These "wealth on paper" do not have the actual goods to support its face value.

I don't think Biden and his team are overlooking this. But it's a myth that nobody is speaking out.
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You are right but those issues are either hard or very painful to solve.

The tariffs are the lowest of low hanging fruit, Biden could literally wake up in the morning and abolish them in his pyjamas
 
Hendrik_2000

Hendrik_2000

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Well didn't China say I told you so ? Now Biden can't figure out what t do?
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For China, the desired outcome is clear: get rid of the tariffs.​

Some Chinese economists are now observing America’s sky-high inflation and the debate over tariffs with a shade of schadenfreude.

“Little do they know that the tariff increase is no longer a strategic asset of the US, but a strategic burden,” Yao Zhizhong, a researcher at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
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(link in Chinese). “…If the US cannot get rid of the strategic burden of tariffs as soon as possible… a soft landing will be difficult to achieve.”

Of course, that assessment comes with the benefit of hindsight. But even in the trade war’s early days, Chinese economists were predicting that the tariffs imposed under former US president Donald Trump would drive up US inflation.
 
coolgod

coolgod

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Has anyone considered that China is playing a trick on Biden, like the Agent Tai meme. China knows the tariffs are disproportionately hurting US more, so China doesn't actually want US to remove the tariffs. By constantly telling the US to remove tariffs, China is increasing Biden's domestic pressure, since if he removes them he will look weak for the domestic audience.

If China really wanted Biden to remove the tariffs China would have just kept quiet.
 
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gelgoog

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The tariffs the US made were baloney for several reasons. For one, they weren't global, but only applied to Chinese products. So they were never ever going to get jobs back to the US like Trump claimed. For another, in several cases, the US market simply isn't large enough to affect companies decisions all that much. The US overestimates their own importance. It might have sped up transition for companies which were already moving outside China for wage reasons or whatever. But I doubt more companies moved out because of it than would have otherwise medium term.

I think the biggest issue was sanctioning sales of machine tools to China even for foreign companies. For this reason companies like Samsung are moving their next generation semiconductor factories outside China. But not to the US either.
 
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