What's the Bottom Line?
Benefit to Consumers is what matters --
not Hate, China-Bashing, and Paranoia.
Certainly one can make a good case for good paying manufacturing jobs in China (and other places, including the US) as a stabilizing factor . . .
By making the consumers worse off? consumers who have to pay the cost for all those over-paid factory workers? How does making the consumers poorer stabilize anything? How does driving up the prices they pay (with no improved performance or better production) cause stability?
My arguments against China as a source of ‘cheap’ consumer goods and computer parts, circuit boards, etc. stands: China is well known to be predatory with regards to intellectual property, . . .
You can't name one example where this is corrected by imposing punitive tariffs which consumers must pay. The only impact is the lower living standard of consumers.
Many countries practice intellectual property theft. British producers in the 19th century complained of U.S. producers doing the same to them, before there were patent laws agreed to. And today the U.S. can easily steal Chinese intellectual property in retaliation, which is the norm up until copyright/patent laws are agreed to. Penalizing consumers with punitive tariffs does nothing to reduce the intellectual property theft. Banning the imports is done only out of hate toward the more competitive Chinese workers, not for the benefit of consumers or protection of intellectual property.
. . . and their environmental record and human rights record is absolutely abysmal, . . .
None of which is corrected by punishing consumers with punitive tariffs. On the contrary, the higher tariffs will force those bad conditions to get even worse, making the Chinese workers worse off and imposing higher costs onto China and thus making it more difficult for them to improve the environmental conditions. China has done more to improve these as a result of the trade with the West over the last 50-60 years and would have a worse record if the trade had been less. All of the bad conditions were much worse before expansion of China trade with the West.
. . . including specifically the workers who work in near slave conditions for low pay.
All of which was much worse before there was trade with China -- trade which has raised the living standard of China's population.
And of course there is the huge environmental cost of shipping goods and parts overseas.
That's a broad condemnation of all trade, with the EU, Australia, China, S. Korea, and Japan. Also a condemnation of trade between the U.S. West Coast and the East Coast, and all trade over long distances.
The extra cost of long distance shipping is automatically factored in when it's left to buyers/sellers to choose in a free market, rather than the xenophobia and China-bashing. The producers don't expand to the greater distances of shipping unless this is offset by other factors making it more efficient/cheaper (and thus more profitable) to ship it those longer distances.
I have nothing against the Chinese people and want to see everyone, whichever nation they reside in, to have access to decent jobs with good working conditions, and a clean environment, among other things such as a free society, excellent education and health care and good opportunities for a good standard of living.
Not even the U.S.A. or European nations have this Utopian Paradise. This demand for a Workers' Paradise before trade is allowed means there can be no trade with any nations.
It wasn't this demand for a Perfect World which made today's prosperity (in some nations) possible. Rather, it was over a long time of poor conditions and exploitation, even slavery, where centuries of suffering and sacrifice gradually led to some improved conditions. None of that improvement was accomplished by suppressing trade with some nations because they were too poor and had worse conditions. Rather, trade suppression is often what kept the poorer nations poor and oppressed.
That China and some other countries are able to make goods at such low prices is actually a lie: they do it by stealing intellectual property, . . .
All you have is hate, not facts, on which to base that. Nothing of this was any less true of S. Korea and Japan and Taiwan ---- in effect you are condemning ALL countries which struggled to compete, including the U.S. which also did the same evils 100 years earlier. Your moralistic condemnation of poorer countries like China is basically a condemnation of all trade, ever, in history, based on hate, paranoia, and possibly fear of lower-class workers going on a rampage unless we put them into factories to keep them out of mischief.
W. Europe and the U.S. are equally condemned and accused of getting rich by "stealing" it from the others, by cheating and plundering rather than by honestly producing and competing. This is delusional and paranoid. There are both good and bad practices, some almost criminal, practiced by ALL the trading nations, including China and all the others as well. All that's different about China is that it's so much larger than the rest, and currently is outproducing India as the only other nation so large. And it's true that there is a military threat which has to be addressed. But in trade China is no different than any other poor nation trying to industrialize and become a more competitive producer. ALL those nations have a low wage level out of necessity. The delusion that they can adopt the West's Minimum Wage is a massive hoax. And fraud perpetrated by Left-Wing Economics Quackery.
. . . by enslaving workers and by trashing the environment.
That's just hate, leaving no room for improvement, but only absolute Condemnation of those others who are automatic Enemies because of the differences, and because they outcompete us on cost.
E.g.
"trashing the environment" totally ignores the fact that China is more responsible than the U.S. or Canada in doing something to curb carbon emissions, by imposing a much higher gasoline tax. A strong carbon tax is part of a legitimate policy to curtail carbon emissions, where the U.S. and Canada are irresponsible, being capable of doing what's right but instead choosing to "trash the environment" with the
instant gratification of cheap gas being their God-given right, and whining whenever the Saudis increase their price or curtail production.
And "enslaving workers" is less today in China than it was in the U.S. 200 years ago, when no nation sanctioned the U.S. or imposed trade barriers on it for these practices. Such trade punishment of another nation never produced net benefits for those nations, their workers, or their consumers.
I don’t give a shit if they make cheap phones air circuitry.
Right, your hate for them is the only bottom line. China is the West's largest competitor, and largest supplier of cheap labor (for the benefit of all consumers), and it's for this reason alone that you hate them. That consumers benefit from the increased production and lower cost is irrelevant, because it's only your ideology of hate that must be appeased, not any concern for the general welfare or higher living standard.
What workers do we really need?
auto workers? steel workers?
What evidence is there that we need more steel workers or auto workers? or more steel-worker or auto-worker jobs? What good are these "jobs! jobs! jobs!" when the only result of them is to drive up prices to all consumers and thus reduce the overall living standard?
There is no shortage of these workers we're pandering to, or of steel production or auto production or factories.
We have an OVERSUPPLY of auto and steel workers. Their value is decreasing. Why are you rallying around the Biden-Trump crusade to promote more auto- and steel-worker jobs? Where we have an OVERSUPPLY of workers, not a shortage?
Where are the real shortages? the real need for more workers?
Right now there is a huge shortage of FIREFIGHTERS. This will become more and more obvious with the summer increase in wildfires.
Your heroes Trump and Biden are giving us more auto-worker and steel-worker jobs (or the illusion of more steel-worker jobs), incentivizing more jobseekers away from where they're really needed. Artificially propping up wages of the less valuable steel and auto workers, protecting them against the competitive Chinese workers you hate, causes more enticement of jobseekers into this pool of whining crybabies whose best contribution is to prolong their privileged mythic status as being "the workingman" backbone of the economy.
While there is a long list of worker shortages: What we really need are more truckdrivers, more elder care workers, more child care workers, more restaurant workers, more electricians, more plumbers, more construction workers, bus drivers, healthcare workers, first responders, welders, airline traffic controllers, pilots, flight attendants, shipbuilding workers --- and many more.
Can't you figure out that we are discouraging job-seekers from meeting these real needs when we entice them into auto and steel production, where they are not needed but are in oversupply? What is it about Trump and Biden's charisma that blinds you to the damage you're doing to the economy by promoting still more steel- and auto-worker jobs? where so much potential is going to waste, where there's no economic need for them to meet because all that work easily gets done anyway at so much less cost?
If there's anything wrong with our economy today, it's this misallocation of labor and resources into this unneeded production -- or much less needed -- when there is so much other greater need which is disregarded because of our obsession with auto and steel manufacturing. When so much needed work doesn't get done, it leads to higher prices, because of the labor shortage in those neglected sectors.
Why are you so obsessed with auto workers and steel workers, as some kind of national religious heroes who have to be pandered to? When will you figure out that it's supply-and-demand which determines where the real need for labor is, rather than your hate for China's low-cost competitive workers? Who hammered this hate into your head? Why do you prefer the Biden/Trump China-bashing and Hate Economics to the Economics of competition and production to serve consumers?
No one yet has explained how China's production of solar panels and electric vehicles poses a threat to consumers. I.e., how it does damage to the economy. Why do you imagine that auto-worker and steel-worker jobs are all that matter and to which all else must be sacrificed? Where did you acquire this brainwashing?
