This trade war was never about actual complaints about trade policy but rather people wanting to stick it to the Chinese
Nothing to do with politics, power, money, positioning for the new global paradigm, and communism. Nope... just because they are Chinese. Bravo.... you have a 5th grader's understanding of geopolitics
Lol if Fredo likes big words, let's fumble around why Trump went peepee over TPP. Farmers now know it wasn't about Jina.
Trump is a self-described self-enriching nationalist and his followers are mostly poorly educated white people afraid of losing their white culture who know nothing about politics, power, money, positioning for the new global paradigm, and communism. Case in point, you. The new global paradigm is this: Use the ignorance and anger of your base to make money for you and your family.
And the Canadians, Mexicans, Europeans, Japanese, etc.... The PRC is a big target and they have certainly done a lot of things that deserve to be addressed but I don't think the anti-trade stance of Trump is just about sticking it to the Chinese. I think it has to do with a narrow nationalistic and xenophobic view. It is a direct way of lashing out at the rest of the World to oppose the forces of globalization and modernity. It is what fuels much of the populism, on both Right and Left, that is happening in the World. It's what's behind Brexit, Erdogan, Modi and Bolsonaro.
No the Chinese aren't being singled out. But there are the number one scapegoat for the death of manufacturing jobs in the US. It's much easier to blame the Chinese than to look at the erosion of labor laws, the rise of automation, and they way our tax system has shifted away from incentivizing investing in people.
I work at a service provider in 07-10. Gas and power. The parent was based in Chicago. We were selling gas to ethanol producers and had to stop. Its a boondoggle as stated earlier To Obama's credit, President from Illinois, he talked ethanol campaigning but quickly realized its a boondoggle
I seriously doubt Trump has a giant package that dipped in booze would please farmers or anyone for that matter. Just ask Melania. She doesn't look pleased at all. Ever.
It's convenient to pin "pan" Trumpism as a "narrow nationalistic and xenophobic view", but let's deconstruct a little further on how Trump and elsewhere tapped that resentment. Anti-globalism was an issue for the far left before neo-liberalism embedded itself deeply into the ruling class of the left as a business friendly prescription to the "people's ills". Like the “tax break” dogma, it enriches the wealthy far more than it does the workers from both consumer and producer nations. For producer nations, it's been a historic a race to the bottom when it comes to labor wages and tax breaks in order spur foreign investors and multinationals. Consumer nations benefit from cheaper overseas products, but it also depresses wages and demand for labor from constant threats of outsourcing and offshoring. The good: Nations who specialized a competitive good and had decent or excellent infrastructure for supply chain integration created a modern marvel...On the ground TVs and electronics became a lot cheaper. The freer trade and open markets also sparked credit and finance booms from more access, for better and worse... The bad: That has tangible societal effects that ripple across the non-coastal regions such as US and China, which economists now belatedly acknowledge. Simple company towns that produced or assembled parts now resembled ghost towns that dug up gold in the Old West. Larger cities benefitts from more capital/ideas/manpower. It is also more efficient in delivering government funding to the most people. This fact means that in the age of competition...uhh "modernity", small towns are almost always left behind if they are not self sustaining and are reliant upon a resource or outside benefactor. If people want a more "efficient" government, then they should support policiies to funnel everyone into cities. Too bad Red Folk love tighter knit communities that are easier to form in smaller towns... If you're China, the people there aren't exactly presented with a choice. They're more than subtly funneled into those meat grinders in the guise of opportunity and making good on the promise from being a little emperor. Besides, they're most likely peasant class living on dirt floors. One of China's trick over the decades had been to unofficially peg their dollar to make the goods produced in their factories more competitive elsewhere. They also didn't spend their trade surpluses and hoarded it like a mountain pile of gold. What this meant was that Chinese in other regions rarely felt the true purchasing power of their Yuans during the past decades. The endgame has been to build industry into world class status before the economy collapsed under its own competitive weight, but can you imagine this strategy in any democracy, let alone the US? Winners and losers! The Admin is favoring the Coastal Elite! They're treating the hard working Blue Collar class like trash and leaving the town folk to die! The Antebellum days are here again!! Wait, isn't that the kind of resentment building across the developed world? The xenophobia is a tangible symbol of lost simple blue collar jerbs and opportunities. It's also a powerful symbol with emmasculating connotations when you think about it. There are regional Rust Belts all over developed and developing world with governments unable to throw money at those areas with low ROI. Worker mobility is also a non-factor as rent and housing in favorable areas continue to skyrocket. If you're British blue collar worker, who cares if London had surpassed NYC as the financial capital of the world. Is that your money? Does that pride put food on your family's plates? Maybe you lost out on a contract to Omer who will work twice as hard for half as much. But hey, you served your caste so well with that stiff upper lip! I don’t think the simmering resentment against globalism is by default narrow. It might very well be a privilege to assume so.
I'm not sure how the hell I found this research paper (prob to support the ideas I wrote here), but after reading it piece by piece, it goes into the recent causes of populism while going into how it threatens liberal democracy. As a research paper, I found it educational in understanding civics... Not sure if I fully understand the author's three suggestions to make the problem easier to manage. tl;dr Populism is generally held as the power of the many. Liberal democracies are generally pluralistic, they grant power to a coalition of interests. Whereas the herd mentality tramples individuals not moving in the same direction, liberal democracies should try to protect as many groups and individuals as possible. The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy Relevant excerpt: Against this backdrop, the Great Recession that began in late 2007 represented a colossal failure of economic stewardship, and political leaders’ inability to restore vigorous growth compounded the felony. As economies struggled and unemployment persisted, the groups and regions that failed to rebound lost confidence in mainstream parties and established institutions, fueling the populist upsurge that has upended U.S. politics, threatens the European Union, and endangers liberal governance itself in several of the newer democracies. In recent years, however, I have come to believe that this is only a portion of the truth. A structural explanation that places economics at the base and treats other issues as derivative distorts a more complex reality. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union all failed to deal with waves of immigration in ways that commanded public support. Not only did immigrants compete with longtime inhabitants for jobs and social services, they were also seen as threatening established [End Page 7] cultural norms and public safety. Postelection analyses show that concerns about immigration largely drove the Brexit referendum, the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the gains of far-right parties across Europe. In government, the media, and major metropolitan areas, technological change has spurred the growth and consolidation of an education-based meritocracy, giving rise to new class divisions. For citizens with less formal education, particularly those in rural areas and smaller towns, the dominance of this new elite has led to feelings of marginalization. Too often, individuals who have prospered in this meritocracy are seen as harboring a sense of superiority to their fellow citizens. Denying the equal dignity and worth of others is self-defeating: Insult does even more than injury to fuel resentment, one of the most dangerous of all political passions. With these developments, divisions among citizens based on geography, formal-education levels, and value systems are growing sharper. Supporters of dynamism and diversity increasingly clash with proponents of stability and homogeneity, beneficiaries of technological change with those harmed by the resulting economic shifts. As the British analyst David Goodhart vividly puts it, democratic citizenries are being divided into “Anywheres” (individuals whose identities are professional and who can use their skills in many places, at home and abroad) and “Somewheres” (individuals whose identities are tightly bound to particular places).1 A college degree, it turns out, not only expands economic opportunities but also reshapes an individual’s entire outlook. As I wrote in these pages in April 2017, “elites’ preference for open societies is running up against growing public demands for . . . economic, cultural, and political closure.”2 All too often, liberal democracy is conflated with the spread of a cultural liberalism at odds with custom and religion. The combination of economic dislocation, demographic change, and challenges to traditional values has left many less educated citizens feeling that their lives are outside their control. The national and international governing institutions they thought would step in to help seemed frozen or indifferent. In the United States, partisan polarization gridlocked the system, preventing progress on critical issues. In Europe, the opposite phenomenon—a duopoly of the center-left and center-right that kept important issues off the public agenda—had much the same effect. ... Historically, right-leaning populists have emphasized shared ethnicity and common descent, while left-leaning populists have often defined the people in class terms, excluding those with wealth and power. Recently, a third definition has entered public debate—the people as opposed to cultural elites. In its U.S. version, this definition sets “real people” who eat hamburgers, listen to country and western music, and watch Duck Dynasty against “globalist” snobs who do whatever PBS, NPR, and the New York Times deem refined. When populists distinguish between the “people” and the “elite,” they depict each of these groups as homogeneous. The people have one set of interests and values, the elite has another, and these two sets are not only different but fundamentally opposed. The divisions are moral as well as empirical. Populism understands the elite as hopelessly corrupt, the people as uniformly virtuous—meaning that there is no reason why the people should not govern themselves and their society without institutional restraints. And populist leaders claim that they alone represent the people, the only legitimate force in society. This approach raises some obvious difficulties. First....
Please do! It’ll take your vote away from trump, the guy you spend 90% of your time here defending. Your hero.
