Posted on 03/02/2018 9:02:11 AM PST by Mariner
BEIJING (AP) — China had no immediate reaction Friday to U.S. President Donald Trump's vow to impose high tariffs on steel and aluminum, which he followed up by insisting that trade wars "are good, and easy to win."
Chinese leaders have threatened in the past to retaliate if Trump raises trade barriers, but now need to weigh whether to back up those threats with action and risk jeopardizing U.S. market access for smartphones and other exports that matter more to their economy than metals.
"China will definitely respond. It doesn't want to be seen as weak. But it will be relatively restrained," said economist Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics. "They don't want to be seen as a party that is wrecking the international trading system."
Global stock markets fell sharply Friday over worries of a possible trade war following Trump's announcement that he will levy tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
Early Friday, Trump thumbed his nose at the concerns over rising trade tensions and higher prices for U.S. consumers, tweeting that "trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don't trade anymore-we win big. It's easy!"
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
“and that the tariffs therefore were a violation of America’s WTO tariff-rate commitments”
Who will compel Trump to follow a WTO edict?
He and the vast majority of his constituency has no fear of a trade war. None.
We hold all the cards with a $375 bil deficit with China and a $150 bil deficit with the EU.
We cannot allow the continued looting of America. Whatever impact a trade war has in the short term will be more than recovered in the long term. Yes, some industries will be impacted more than others, but to use the classic Free Traitors meme: Overall the US will be better off.
GW failed when he didn’t have the balls to call their bluff. And they WERE bluffing. They stood to lose FAR, FAR more than the US.
Politics makes strange bedfellows but the common theme here with Trump is AMERICA AMERICA AMERICA
I know of one Chinese panel manufacturer that is now moving all operations here
MUCH safer place to do business
we have laws. Courts. Real protections
I love how Trump is finally taking them on. It’s about time
...
Go. Trump. Go.
“The chinese can hurt us more with an embargo than we can hurt them in any way.”
Absurd short-term view.
Too bad for Trudeau
China retaliate? Good luck with that. This is a shot across their bow meant to wake them up, they’re cheaters.
RE: GW failed when he didn’t have the balls to call their bluff.
It’s more complicated than that. INDUSTRIES THAT USE STEEL WERE BEING HURT AT HOME.
Bush levied those steel tariffs in an effort to protect jobs in the ailing U.S. steel industry.
Those tariffs caused the domestic price for some steel products, such as hot-rolled steel, to rise by as much as 40 percent. The clear beneficiaries of the steel tariffs were steel industry executives, stockholders and the 1,700 or so steelworkers whose jobs were saved.
But there is no such thing as a free lunch or a something-for-nothing machine. Whenever there is a benefit of doing something, there is a guaranteed cost.
According to a study commissioned by the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition, steel-using industries — such as the U.S. auto industry, its suppliers, heavy construction equipment manufacturers and others — were harmed by higher steel prices.
It was estimated then that the steel tariffs caused at least 4,500 job losses in no fewer than 16 states, with more than 19,000 jobs lost in California, 16,000 in Texas and about 10,000 each in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. In other words, industries that USE steel were forced to pay higher prices, causing them to have to raise prices on what they produced. As a result, they became less competitive.
It may sound absurd, until you have worked in heavy manufacturing like I have.
Electronics, machine parts, hardware, small parts, structural steel, aluminium extrusions, plastic parts, die cast components, chemicals, foodstuffs, lumber, fruits, vegetables, metals, tooling, and an infinitely longer list are either majority sourced, or sole sourced from china.
Basically 80% of everything you come in contact with every day, assuming you’re a US citizen, comes from china, just like that phone/tablet/laptop/desktop that you’re on right now; along with all of the server/network/ethernet/fiber/communications equipment that allow both of us to have this conversation.
Think about that.
Exactly why they would not do an embargo against us. It would be suicide for them.
All of that is true, but to assume the flows of capital will not reverse and come back to the US...is not.
There would likely be shortages of critical manufactured goods and materials for a few years. Worst case.
How long would it take Briggs and Stratton to move motor manufacturing back to the US? Maybe a year. The same could be said of most other finished goods and electronics.
And in the end, China would cease to exist as a nation-state.
China needs us waaay more than we need them.
It strikes me what Trump is looking at are those thousands of small manufacturers who’ve gone out of business because of the expansion of cheap Chinese imports (of which many were design knock offs) into this country. Remember the Obama quote on manufacturing.
But that was a slow gradual process when it began. Then accelerated by policy. So it should be when as we’re trying to bring small industry back.
Certain key manufacturing and re-manufacturing processes essential to defense should be targeted first and done on a very very limited basis. Because a wholesale approach would wreck our economy.
Ehh, why not? It's not like there's any chance we'll buy any less of their sh*t anytime soon.
That is, until King Donald re-retaliates by slapping a nice, big tariff on all of it.
So, now when I hear somebody like Mark Levin trying to mansplain the traditional free trade theory and how we lose from protectionism, all I can think is, how has that worked out for us in the last 30 years? Free trade was down the toilet with China getting MFN under Bush I and then Nafta.
“Free trade was down the toilet with China getting MFN under Bush I and then Nafta.”
Free trade has never existed in the history of man.
And it never will.
It’s all about winners and losers among the nation-states. Mercantilism.
And Mercantilism built the USA.
I’m inclined to side with you with one or two possible exceptions:
China has the market on rare Earth metals, which are vital for everything in modern living and also for our modern military equipment. The bright side on this is the USA DOES have the rare earths in the lower 48, but the environmental shortsighted nutjobs have so far (to my knowledge) prevented us from taking advantage of what we have.
However, I have to assume the President is taking measures to rectify that situation in case they cut us off.
Next the gargantuan debt. Yes, China would hurt themselves by dumping our Treasuries, or deciding not to come to any more auctions, but the Chinese do not think like Americans. Beijing does not care about the short term effect on their people+ - they play the long game.
Still, it’s hard to believe this administration is not aware of all this and is taking action accordingly.
The semiconductors are made in Taiwan, but yeah the boards and devices are assembled in China.
That’s a strong possibility, and Mr. Trump may do the same thing... this could be a bluff. He never tells exactly what he’s thinking.
“China needs us waaay more than we need them.”
True, but we get very little steel from China, so the 25% tariff shoudn’t bother China very much.
I think China is also only 4th on the list for aluminum.
“shouldn’t” and we get about 2% of our steel imports from China.
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