Manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the U.S. They were leaving/disappearing long before NAFTA and are going to disappear. 6 out of 7 manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation, the other 1 in 7 to free trade - which has also increased our exports and created jobs here. TPP would have made us less dependent on China and thus given them less power to screw with us. It would not create jobs in the U.S., nor with it cost jobs. U.S. manufacturing is at a historical all-time high - that's the shocker people don't realize. The problem is that no one needs people who can operate a machine anymore because they operate themselves.
How are we dependent on China once everything is automated? Why continue to keep the operations offshore? How can we justify it? Seriously, the China threat is way overblown. We live in a bizarro world where Democrats are for offshoring and Republicans are against free trade. And yet people call Drumpf the black swan. I think people just haven't looked at themselves in the mirror lately.
Dems are not for offshoring. We are dependent because China is what is keeping inflation down in the U.S. - if China we to raise prices in any way (i.e. trade war) we'd find our economy tanking. They have massive capital in dollars and so have incredible influence on our economy is they so choose to exercise it. The opposite is also true.
You haven't been paying attention to what's happening in China. The narratives you're going by are 5 years out of date.
Printing money like crazy, for one. - Inflation, sequestered for the most part in the most massive housing bubble in the history of men (but we all know how that story ends) - Exports decreasing, rapidly - Dwindling foreign reserves; out flow of capital like rats jumping off the Titanic - Increased reliance on imports for critical things like food and medicine (thanks to WTO... funny that the Chinese thought they out-smarted us) - Unsustainable levels of municipal and corporate debt (but they can always print more money, right?) - Massively under-reported unemployment (did you know China's unemployment figure does not take into account any of its rural population?) - Rapidly aging population History will prove that WTO was poison in a candy shell for China. The government and the elite ate the candy shell, and left the poison to the masses. And these are just the objective indicators, before giving effect to the self-inflicted damage by the hard left (right?) turn in ideology. If you want a quick shorthand for all of this, just look at the exchange rate. The Donald will have you believe that it's because China is "manipulating its currency". If you believe that, you have about as much insight into our adversary as The Donald. To get to the root of it all is much, much harder. After all, no "China expert" has any incentive to tell the world that China is going to hell in a handbasket. We all make our living from selling the China story. Here's another shorthand. You remind me of the people who were worried about Japan in 1990.
I think your view is a bit over simplistic. China began printing money in large amounts to avoid defaults not to manipulate currency. Their economy is very well protected from outside influences by the way. Much more than you give credit for. Japan was never seen as the same threat by the way - it wasn't that Japan was stealing jobs by making cheaper cars and moving factories to Japan. It was simply that Japan made better cars that people prefered. Ford and GM didn't move factories to Japan, they just got outcompeted. And ultimately the US figured out how to compete. You are showing you don't understand the history if you think Japan is a good example. Japan was about competition, China is about labor cost. The issue with China is the control they have. You see China has been buying up gold and other safe reserves - their money supply is tightly controled - far more than the U.S. in fact. They know what they are doing.
You must have been too young or not yet born to remember Vincent Chin, but feel free to Google it. Let's bookmark this thread and come back in 2 years, shall we?
Yes again the Japanese weren't stealing jobs, they were outcompeting U.S. automakers. Japanese cars were winning with higher quality, not because they were cheaper.
Better get those big flat screen TVs on Black Friday now for cheap if you want to shred up TPP and wipe your ass with it. That's where der jerbs come from.
Vincent Chin is like a dagger in the heart story for the Asians that post here? I give you credit my friend for the debate you and Sweet Lou been having but that was a cheap shot. To the Asian Americans that are established but went through hell in this country they deserve an apology. I don't know much about Chinese culture but I can definitely discern between these rich Chinese foreign exchange/visa people that come from somewhere up North with their weird robotic Mandarin tongues and hardworking generational Chinese Americans that have almost nothing to show for....
This tirade reminds me of the Academy Awards fiasco. Hey! Let's make it about race, but let's make fun of another group! Please, spare me your political expediency masquerading as political correctness. TIA.
You like a taste of your own medicine. There will be no economic collapse for China dude... The reason why China maintain the manufacturing quo is because there's multiple setups there along with a shipping route that is the new "Silk Road". I'm not saying there haven't been operations moved elsewhere but they basically the same "Silk Road" like shipping routes from Asia in the East to America in the West. It's a matter of the cost of all this change that you're looking at and most companies will have somebody else manufacture their product while slapping their name on it rather than deal with the headache and costs of starting a brand new operation with new machinery from the scratch (not just dye templates of their product). Sorry bud. Don't think you are such an expert at all.
I have no idea what I just read. I want to say it's a copy and paste job out of some CCP propaganda piece, but it's not even as lucid as the ones I've seen. Nice work.
This debate is interesting. How do you two have the perspective to comment the way you do? Is there real insight here or just talking points from different sides of the aisle? I've been in China two months three years ago and visited HK/Taiwan/China each of the past few years, but even then I have only the ground view and no way of perceiving such broader market forces. To me they may as well be the movement of celestial bodies. I can say that, amongst the people, there is a dominant jingoistic sentiment in Northern China, as if they were a rising power and the US was a declining one. In the South and in HK, there is more a globalist sense that we are all in this together and will rise and fall in unison. In Taiwan, they just elected their own upstart leader bent on exacerbating the divide with mainland China. What they didn't realize, however, is that they could never go back to the past and their sense of immunity under the umbrella of America's protection. Now that isolationist Trump has risen to power, they find themselves caught with their pants down. Things aren't looking good economically.
China certainly has some serious domestic issues to get over, such as cleaning up their environment and the rampant corruption. I think their most troubling issue is the bubble they have developed in their economy as it's not just housing. Their powerful state owned companies are a big part of the bubble problem as they are still not concerned about profitability like their counter parts which creates a lot of toxic debt. However, China is certainly gobbling up resources and creating networks, especially in Africa and along the "Silk Road" as someone mentioned. It will be interesting what type of role china plays in the global community. They certainly have time to turn around their troubling demographics. Russia on the other hand is quickly running out of time.
On the main subject. I agree with Calurker that there are many problems facing the PRC. Many including myself have been predicting a recession in the PRC. Part the big mystery of what is going on there is why it hasn't happened already. That though doesn't mean that the US is going to be fine and can retreat behind a protectionist wall. Our economies are very interconnected and even as the PRC has been unloading US debt it still is the largest holder of US debt. Chinese decline has already affected the economies of Australia, Brazil, and Canada. A trade war between the US and the PRC will not end up well for any of us.
