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© 2018 AFPChina to hit U.S. soybeans, cars, planes with retaliatory tariffs
By YASUYOSHI CHIBA BEIJING©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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© 2018 AFP
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smithinjapan
BOOM! China chose these tariffs carefully -- all items that are mass produced in areas that voted heavily for Trump, or in Mitch McConnell's home district (the whiskey). This is going to be political suicide for Republicans, and likely why Trump is going to have to back off and not enforce anything.
wtfjapan
LMFAO and Trump though that China had no nads, that $Trillion Boeing orders for all those planes look very shaky at the moment, I bet Airbus would be giddy with excitement.
SuperLib
I agree we have a problem with intellectual theft and China, but I don’t see how we are now closer to solving the problem. We are just tanking our own stock market and hurting American workers....but I’m sure the rich will short some stocks and make some cash out of it.
IloveCoffee
When trade stops, war starts. How can the largest debtor nation in the history of the world, that doesn't produce anything think they can win a trade war against the largest creditor nation in the history of the world that produces everything? China is an industrial giant. If i were Trump, i would be praying for China not to let their currency rise in value, and become consumer driven nation. If that ever happens, it's game over for the US, because it would mean the Chinese consumers will be able to afford to buy the stuff they produce, and therefore they would not need to export them anymore.
The people with these ''economic nationalists'' like Trump is that they view nations and economies as a collective entity, but they are not a collective entity. Nations do not trade with each other, PEOPLE trade with each other. People benefit from importing cheap stuff, every American benefits from this, regardless of what the trade figures say. Trade deficit does not hurt the consumers, if the imports were more expensive, that could inflate the GDP and other trade numbers, but the average consumer will NOT be better off, therefore how can you say that trade deficit is a problem if eliminating it makes the consumers suffer.
There are many reasons why America does not produce stuff anymore like it used to, and China is NOT one of them. It's a little bit more complicated than that, it has to do with high labor costs, which in term has to do with red tape and regulations, minimum wages, anti-discrimination laws and stuff like that. Every employer will tell you that in America the riskiest thing you can do is to hire someone.
OssanAmerica
China is not the largest creditor nations in the world.
1) JAPAN: As per latest Ministry of Finance report, at the end of second quarter 2016, Japan's net IIP stood at yen 354,341 billion (at exchange of 103.64:1 equivalent to US$ 3.41896 trillion).
http://www.mof.go.jp/international_policy/reference/iip/201609a.pdf
2) GERMANY: As per latest Bundesbank report, at the end of second quarter 2016, Germany's net IIP stood at euro 1,548.1 billion (at exchange of 1:1.11, equivalent to US$ 1.718391 trillion).
http://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/...rmoegen_quartal.en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
3) CHINA: As per SAFE, at the end if second quarter of 2016, China's net IIP stood at SDR 1,189.29 billion (equivalent to US$ 1.6636 trillion)
http://www.safe.gov.cn/wps/portal/english/Data/Investment
CrazyJoe
Spoiler Alert: This is going to end badly.
The Chinese have strategically planned what tariffs to hit to exert maximum pressure wherever they want. They've thought 5 moves ahead on the chess board. They have a president with a lifetime appointment and are operating from a position of trade strength.
Trump is shooting from the hips with an fringe element trade adviser. (Honestly, it's hard to know if it's better or worse if he listens to him.) He's shown an inability to understand the most obvious unintended consequences to his actions, let alone try to anticipate the impacts of the Chinese will do in response. He's also making these moves as an unpopular president willing to risk the humming economy he inherited.
The idea that this is 'easy to win' and he was suddenly going to bring back jobs to America by showing the base how tough he was was naive. The Chinese stuck it to his base in their opening gambit....and that was just to give him a small taste of how ugly they could make this.
I totally agree the Chinese have implemented unfair trade practices, but a trade war is entirely the wrong way to address them. The damage you on US businesses and consumers offset any gains you think you're going to get.
HonestDictator
It's only China. But think of it this way, the CCP has rooted itself deeply in the country's "privately owned" business in order to profit itself more than the people of China. They've engaged in every dirty trick they can think of to become economically manipulative on the world stage. Certain other countries that do business with China are being maneuvered economically into CCP controlled perspectives. The idiot US corporations that outsourced their manufacturing to China had their tech stolen (not that I wasn't surprised about this over a decade ago), and China's government continuously supports corporate espionage on a global scale in any country with high technological innovation.
This is what happens when some folks mis-interpret how things will play out when they decided that China's government would change if "free capitalist democracy" were introduced to the CCP's method's and ideology of authoritarian control. Ooops.
While this may hurt, it's time to stop the CCP's manipulation of economic progress for their own political propaganda.
proxy
Commodities like beans are fluid. Brazil will fill China's demands and the US will sell to Brazilian customers.
tinawatanabe
It is commendable that China challenged but how can China feed its 1.4 billion people without soybeans?
fxgai
Wishful thinking. I’d say the 1.3 trillion omnibus splurge the other day was more suicidal for Republicans.
Willing to risk some of the 20%+ gains in the humming stock market since he was elected, in order to keep promises to get tough with China etc, all in an effort to try to become more popular. Time will tell.
Personally I don’t think this trade spat will be an issue six months from now.
The tariffs may not even be imposed, wait and see. A lot of gamesmanship going on here.
fxgai
The US doesn’t have a monopoly on soybean production although it is good at producing them.
Prices are effected greatly by weather too, anyway.
This obviously doesn’t suit either Chinese nor American peasants though, so wait and see what actually happens.
Serrano
" This is going to be political suicide for Republicans, and likely why Trump is going to have to back off and not enforce anything."
Ah, but smith, you forget - Trump is playing 4-D chess. Unlike past presidents, he is taking action to do something about this massive trade imbalance with China.
Strangerland
I bet you actually believe that, don't you.
Alexandre T. Ishii
Trump with his strategy of "America First" will get much challenges to other countries not to trade /deal with USA, may be much to China this time. Who's the fu+k doing this trade war?
mukashiyokatta
The US soybeans are GMO anyway, so you don't want to ingest them. Franken-food!
ThePBot
Uhm, rice?
wtfjapan
It is commendable that China challenged but how can China feed its 1.4 billion people without soybeans?
majority of US soybeans are used to feed Chinas 200 million pigs.
Brazil grows almost as much soybean as U.S. They could be the winner on this one.
Brazil and Argentina both exported more Soybeans than the US last year, China is the world biggest importer by far, China can just purchase them from these two countries without the 25% tarriffs. no loss to them, lets see if the US can offload there Soy exports as easily.
Netgrump
@ tinawatanabe
China imports for third of it's demand for foreign soybeans from Brazil, another third from Argentina and the rest from the US. And you've the soybeans grown in China. As you may know originates the soybean from China.
Great times for the commodity business coming up :)
Netgrump
@ mukashiyokatta
The Brazilian and Argentinian soybeans are GMO too, and the Chinese don't care about that. Only the Canadians and a single US farmer grows non-GMO today.
I am Sam
Too much doom & gloom reading these comments. Firms and businesses like candlestick & wheelbarrow makers of centuries past go bust - producers innovative & invest in new opportunities and life goes on.
DAaron
I know that it's hard to believe but the U.S will survive just fine.
Seth M
Trump is right in the long run, America's manufacturing sector is dead thanks to the decades of unchecked capitalism and globalism, it will probably take a decade or longer to revive it, with drastic measures.
China wants everything, from everyone. With America shutting down the door, they will probably target Japan and Europe now.
Netgrump
At least a decade or two ...
A divided nation delivers a divided labour force with lacking skills next to a huge problem with narcotics and drugs, so automation and robotics may be the answer.
Matt Hartwell
Lets see if Trump has a strategy. The move by China to target soybean production was extremely predictable. Every article on the potential for trade war before this all started suggested they would be targeted so there should be zero surprise in Washington. If Trump has no plan to mitigate the damage to U.S farmers on this issue, then it tells you he has no strategy and he should stop now. I always said in the posts I've made that without a strategy it is really stupid to proceed.
Lots of doom in gloom in the media yesterday, completely over the top, but lets look at the facts shall we:
The $50 billion in tariffs, on both sides, are not in effect.
They represented a tiny, tiny sliver of U.S GDP and Chinese GDP even if they do go ahead.
Many other Western countries will actually benefit in a trade war, which is an interesting factor to note. If you look at the West as an alliance of countries, you can see some obvious advantages in that.
People bang on about the stock market. As of writing its already regained almost half of the extremely minimal overnight losses and that's before we even talk about the charge its been on for the last couple of years.
I fully expect that regardless of how this episode turns out, the U.S will seek to block IP theft and Chinese investment in important, advanced industries using whatever methods are available because there is very broad bipartisan support for measures against China when it comes to this particular issue. Even the Democrats fully recognize its a significant problem and the Europeans also recognize its a massive problem for them as well. In a year from now, action will have been taken.In the mean time, might be wise to get into gold if you are an investor.
fxgai
So the stock market ended up overnight, after new Trump economic advisor Kudlow said, basically the same sorts of things I said above (and 5 clowns gave me bad karma for that, haha - don’t let your political allegiances bias your views, my Americano friends!)
Netgrump
@ fxgai
You're amazing really, maybe there's a new job waiting for you in DC :)
Serrano
"I bet you actually believe that, don't you."
I bet you actually don't believe that. See how that works, Stranger?
Guess we'll find out in the coming months.