Here's the list of Chinese kit facing extra US import tariffs: Hard disk drives, optic fiber, PCB making equipment, etc The US government on Tuesday revealed the list of Chinese imports it plans to slap extra tariffs on, under orders from President Trump, amid rising trade tensions between America and China. The much-awaited list [PDF] includes metal alloys, electronic parts, and industrial machinery. These extra fees could make a decent dent …
>Don't worry, Trumpy's stupidity and flagrant incompetence with international commerce will soon trigger a collapse that will make the “ DOT-COM” crash of the 90s look like a picnic,
I'm counting on it. I want to buy a bigger house and I can't afford it. Prices for bigger houses have already started to fall after the Brexit vote has started to drive money away from the country and next March should make a bigger dent. A big crash should do the trick - it's what allowed me to get the place I'm in now on my crappy IT salary. Assuming I still have a job then of course.
"I'm counting on it. I want to buy a bigger house and I can't afford it."
Just wait for the many ignoramuses in the US to realise that anthropogenic global warming is actually a thing and coastal property prices are going to nosedive.
"Prices for bigger houses have already started to fall"
Only for the last 2 months.
after the Brexit vote has started to drive money away from the country "
Brexit will attract that sort of money - fewer regulations, free market, more free trade options, etc.
Don't worry, Trumpy's stupidity and flagrant incompetence with international commerce will soon trigger a collapse that will make the “ DOT-COM” crash of the 90s look like a picnic, which he will of course shift the blame to the Democrats, Clinton, or Obama, because EVERYONE knows he's perfect and never makes mistakes or lies.
Trade deficit 375 BILLION dollars.
Trade surpluses are a problem, usually of the country with them. What does China do with all that cash? Buy American assets, particularly US treasury bills. If you want to know where this leads look at the Japanese boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s. Germany isn't doing that well with its own trade surplus either: it means savings being invested abroad in dodgy assets.
International monetary policy has for years trade more or less successfully, usually the latter, tried to deal with the problem of surpluses. Trade wars, howeve, have never worked because all the incentives are against them.
However, news just in: American manufacturing jobs were lost to automation and rationalisation. Difficult to see how giving US robots preferential treatment will bring well paid jobs back to the rustbelt.
Except that both the corrupt political parties in the US are for these "free" trade deals. You act as if the Republicans are against this. Not by a long shot. Just wait and watch. If Trump keeps this up, he will be treading on thin ice. The 1% puppet masters aren't going to like it. Then get ready for the deep state to step in even more than they are now.
Yeah, this is great, Trump. So the already impoverished majority in America will now have even higher prices to pay.
That's OK, though, 'cause just think of all those minimum wage jobs it'll create, so there'll be even more people with not enough money to pay your artificially inflated prices.
Genius.
Nationalists should be banned from politics. No, actually nationalists should just be banned. Period.
This has nothing to do with nationalism and has everything to do with fair trade.
Obviously there is a negotiation tactic going on here, just like buying something at a Chinese night market. The vendor gives you a high price, you counter with a much lower one, pretend to walk away and at the last second they will call you back to make a deal.
At the moment America is basically taking the opening price, adding 10% because they don't want to upset the vendor and pretending not to notice when they steal stuff from their backpack.
Liberals should be banned from politics. Not only they outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs, they caused large deficits, destroyed middle class, sunk the US in debts and as a reward for creating an invisible ruling elite two or three dozen billionaires, they even cheat out of paying taxes.
It is the liberals who made Americans poor by taking their jobs, so the happy few can have multiple 100 million dollars yachts and lear jets.
OK, I'll bite...
Surely it is unregulated, profit seeking corporations that outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs?
Surely it is the loss of any advantage in education compared to nations like India that has eroded the middle class and allowed their jobs to be globalised?
As far as I can see, these things are the responsibility of Republican policies...
Or maybe 'liberals' means different things depending on whether someone is talking about gay rights or import tariffs... I've lost track of the fractured lunacy of US politics, TBH...
Or maybe 'liberals' means different things depending on whether someone is talking about gay rights or import tariffs...
To a certain manipulated section of the American public 'liberals' are always the enemy, I think it's only cause 'commie' has gone out of fashion and harder to pin on anyone, and I don't think the word socialist even exists in the american lexicon (which is a thin volume, to say the least).
Problem is, it seems to be catching on in the UK (like it's from a 'Friends' episode or something).
Here's my favourite items from the list. Apparently, Chinese torpedo makers are selling their wares in the US market at unfairly low prices. American howitzer makers and makers of aircraft carrier catapults and arrestor gear are facing similar problems. If only the Pentagon didn't insist on buying the lowest price armaments sold at Walmart instead of buying from American suppliers.
More seriously, I have scanned over the list and a lot of items look like they are there to pad out the length of the list. I suspect that a great many of the more mundane items are not made in the US at all and there is no US industry to protect.
Where the US may run into problems is with a lot of obscure components that go into products that are made in the US, and which will raise the cost of producing those items enough that the company simply closest up shop in the US and moves the production to Mexico to get around the tariffs.
Then he'll slap the same tariffs on Mexico.
Trump's rules are very simple: importing is for losers, winners (or "cheats", if they're foreign) export.
If the country as a whole is idiot enough to give him his head (which currently I wouldn't bet a groat against), I'm sure he can, in time, foster a thriving US domestic industry in manufacturing everything on the list, no matter how obscure or mundane. Of course they'll be more expensive and lower quality than the imports, but they'll be AMERICAN, dammit!, and that's what matters.
The depressing part is, this will actually create jobs. Incredibly wastefully, but still - jobs. The economy as a whole will be trashed (in much the same way, and for much the same reasons, as the Soviet Union's economy was during the Cold War), but everyone will be working, and it will take a long time for the reality to percolate that the whole country has been basically frozen in time while the rest of the world moved on.
I've known this whole century that we were seeing the end of American power. I'm just amazed at how quickly it's happening now.
The depressing part is, this will actually create jobs.
I think this is unlikely. If the US retreats from international trade, it will attract less investment and it is investment that's needed to create the jobs. Instead US isolationism could weaken the dollar hegemony, potentially driving up US funding costs significantly, unsettling financial markets and driving investment and jobs elsewhere. As has happened with every protectionist regime of the last 50 years. Sure, American won't be another Zimbabwe or Venezuela but it will be diminished.
Reads in parts as though crafted with the assistance of favoured Republican financial donors - Cash Machines/ATM devices and parts, farming equipment and parts, heavy industry machines and parts, aviation, munitions, wind turbines, electric cars, electric motors...
Reads in part as a list of low value items (semiconductor and electronics parts esp) that will still be cheap enough that the tariff will be paid and the US Govt gets extra cash.
Reads in parts as filler: cassette players (without record function), crt based projectors
"low value items (semiconductor and electronics parts esp) that will still be cheap enough that the tariff will be paid and the US Govt gets extra cash."
Not necessarily unless the tariff also applies to the same parts in finished products. It makes home produced goods (even) less competitive with imports. Adding tariffs on production equipment pushes that cost up still further.
There were people buying broken DIMMS. The DIMMS moved to a different company name and were shipped out of Europe for a "replacement under guaranty" certificate. A crate of new DIMMS (different manufacturers and different sizes) could then be shipped in without paying import duty.
Hold on to your broken hard disks - their scrap value is about to increase.
I don't think Trump knows what he's doing, but, this is something that should have happened decades ago. Complete industries shouldn't be outsourced and moved in order to use slave labor. But, that is the epic fail of a capitalist system that we live in. A completely unsustainable system that is destroying the planet.
Decades ago it would have been productive - there were factories making it elsewhere
Now - not so much. The two decades of currency manipulation, direct and indirect subsidies have killed near all of the non-Chinese electronics manufacturing. All of the manufacturing is in China. Taxing it will not help as everybody sees this as a short term thing and would rather grin and bear it instead of investing the billions you need for a proper high volume lithography rig and supporting infra to print chips.
Just for comparison purposes - Chinese stopped the sponsorship of textile manufacturing as too low tech/low margin more than 5 years ago and it is now evenly spread throughout the third (and not so third like Eastern Europe) world. They have no intention of doing this to electronics though - they know that it is their biggest long term leverage on the rest of the world and they are not letting go off it.
The two decades of currency manipulation, direct and indirect subsidies have killed near all of the non-Chinese electronics manufacturing. All of the manufacturing is in China.
Fact check: China produces less than 5% of globally produced semiconductors[1], and buys less than half of all semiconductors produced[2], so there must be a fair bit of electronics manufacture not going on in China.
They will tax Elon's BBQ torches: 93012000 ... flame-throwers...
Congratulations to Mr. Trump for turning the US into a protectionist $hithole.
Me ? Instead of selling parts (some from evil China), I will send preassembled systems (main board from Taiwan) instead. Now that will save 'murican jobs.
There is a difference, though, in that Taiwan is extremely open about trade, more so even than Europe. I have imported millions of dollars worth of industrial machinery, parts etc. into Taiwan from the US with mostly zero duties. Taiwan has a fairly balanced ratio of imports:exports and it's very easy for foreign entities to do business here.
There is a difference, though, in that Taiwan is extremely open about trade, more so even than Europe.
Wouldn't have anything to do America's promise to defend Taiwan from China and the massive arms deals as a result would it? Taiwan, like South Korea, is almost a US client state.
China does play fast and loose with trade rules, but largely because multinational corporations are desperate to get at the huge market and boost their own profit margins by making there. However, the end of the low wage employment boom is in sight with peak employment probably already past. At the moment it's not clear whether it will be automation or the declining labour force that drives the biggest change in China since Deng Xiaoping. Sort of like Japan since the 1990s but so much more so.
No it wouldn't, all WTO countries are given exactly the same treatment here.
Taiwan is a highly liberal, democratic and peaceful country with a nutjob neighbour. From a moral standpoint this is exactly the sort of country and system the US should defend, but Taiwanese are not idiots and realize we are basically on our own in case of military action by China.
Automation will not change China, by the time wages are high enough to make it worthwhile all the cheap manufacturing will have moved on somewhere else.
As someone who lived in Asia for most of their life and has tried exporting to China as a small business I am fully aware of how one-sided the realities of foreign trade are right now.
It's basically impossible to export even small quantities of many products into China due to ridiculous laws and red tape at customs. China whines loudly at increased tariffs for industries that are subsidized by government cronyism. cheap labour and lax regulations. But even with increased tariffs billions of dollars will continue to feed into the Chinese juggernaut while the Chinese market remains firmly closed for business except by cooperation with local government-connected entities.
China has been playing this game a lot smarter than western peers in the last 30 or so years and uses democratic openness against itself.
I would love to see genuine global free trade but that only works when all parties are playing fair. I'm amazed that so many people do not understand how China is gaming the west over trade and western countries are losing badly just to get slightly cheaper smartphones and dishwashers.
Even in the comments on this site it is clear, Americans, yes, even techies, typically do not understand the barriers to importing goods into China. They've forbidden western companies into the financial sector for decades....until they have the domestic market so sewn up that even a Goldman Sachs will not be able to make headway if they enter the market.
The list of import duties, products forbidden to import, requirements to enter a joint venture with a Chinese (often government owed) partner, requirements to expose technology to that partner and to the government, and onward. Understanding the complex regulatory and political (cronyism) barriers requires much time and experience. If we implemented half of the unfair trade practices against them, they'd crumble in a year.
>I would love to see genuine global free trade but that only works when all parties are playing fair. I'm amazed that so many people do not understand how China is gaming the west over trade and western countries are losing badly just to get slightly cheaper smartphones and dishwashers.
You're absolutely right, but Trump's trade war isn't going to help this. What China have done is make it difficult for all products. What Trump has done is put tariffs on a small number, which will drive up prices for those products in general. The retaliatory tariffs will have an effect elsewhere and it will ultimately be the US consumer that pays.
Generally with these things, there's a carrot approach and a stick approach. The carrot approach would be to make it more appealing for US companies to make their products in the US. It's far cheaper to make them in China, and the company bigwigs and shareholders don't give a shit that it makes Americans poorer, because America's system is aimed at enriching the individual.
Trump is going for the stick approach. He's using it against the wrong people though, because the people he should be targeting are himself and his cronies. Never going to happen. Far better for the US consumer to lose out.
You're absolutely right, but Trump's trade war isn't going to help this.
He just wants Republicans who support him to do well in the mid-terms. If there is a real trade war, it would lead to significant job losses in the US. But Trump only needs a phoney one so the chumps in Trumpistan think that next week, next month, next year things will improve for them. So expect lots of announcements about hard tariffs while the details leak out. Trade will largely displace and America will become a less attractive place to do business, but it might mean keeping majorities in a far more pliant Congress.
"He just wants Republicans who support him to do well in the mid-terms."
This. It makes planning more than two years in advance an impossibility since they are always looking to the next electoral milestone. Probably more like a max of one year since they need to be thinking about the next ballot box a year or more in advance.
Generally with these things, there's a carrot approach and a stick approach. The carrot approach would be to make it more appealing for US companies to make their products in the US. It's far cheaper to make them in China, and the company bigwigs and shareholders don't give a shit that it makes Americans poorer, because America's system is aimed at enriching the individual.
It's cheaper to make them in China for mostly all the wrong reasons. Low wages, minimal labour laws, poor safety, almost zero environmental controls and in some cases state subsidies.
Large corporations don't care about this stuff and can't help themselves. They will buy from the cheapest seller even if they know puppies and kittens are being fed into a grinder for fuel.
Some kind of control is still needed at the government level so basic ethical standards can actually be maintained and we don't all just race to the bottom.
It's basically impossible to export even small quantities of many products into China due to ridiculous laws and red tape at customs.
Doesn't seem to have stopped the Germans selling into China. Making in China is more of a problem but the US market is pretty damn well protected as well.
84138200 ........... Liquid elevators
Could someone explain how these work? I just don't get how liquid can move you between floors without it getting messy.
84172000 ........... Bakery ovens, including biscuit ovens
Surely as it's America should that not be cookie ovens?
84211200 ........... Centrifugal clothes dryers
84211900 ........... Centrifuges, other than cream separators or clothes dryers
Is cream separation a problem in America?
84842000 ........... Mechanical seals
They have robotic semi-aquatic marine mammals?
84594100 ........... Boring machines, numerically controlled, nesoi
Lenovo laptops?
"84172000 ........... Bakery ovens, including biscuit ovens
Surely as it's America should that not be cookie ovens?"
Since the origin is biscuit is "twice cooked", it does make it difficult to understand why a scone in the US became a biscuit while all biscuits of any type became cookies.
The tariffs will apply to goods originating in China, otherwise there would be plenty of places in the world where they could be transshipped through and relabelled.
Plenty of US imports already arrive through Canadian ports, as many US ports are generally more expensive. Of course American port operators are crying this is unfair and want tariffs applied on port services.
Trump has opened a new eastern front in his trade wars before finishing the one he started with Canada and Mexico. Washington is now desperately trying to make trade peace with those two now that it turns out that China isn't going to surrender. Boeing's sales in China may turn out to be the Stalingrad in all this.
these raise a chuckle
93012000 ........... Rocket launchers; flame-throwers; grenade launchers; torpedo tubes and similar
projectors
93019030 ........... Rifles, military
93019060 ........... Shotguns, military
93019090 ........... Military weapons, nesoi
93040040 ........... Pistols & other guns (o/than rifles) that eject missiles by release of comp. air or gas, a
spring mechanism or rubber held under tension
93051020 ........... Parts and accessories nesoi, for revolvers or pistols of heading 9302
93051040 ........... Parts and accessories nesoi, for revolvers or pistols designed to fire only blank
cartridges or blank ammunition
93051060 ........... Parts and accessories nesoi, for muzzle-loading revolvers and pistols
93051080 ........... Parts and accessories nesoi, for revolvers or pistols nesoi
93059940 ........... Parts and accessories for articles of heading 9303 other than shotguns or rifles
93059960 ........... Parts and accessories for articles of headings 9301 to 9304, nesoi
93063041 ........... Cartridges nesoi and empty cartridge shells
93063080 ........... Parts of cartridges nesoi
93069000 ........... Bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and pts
thereof; other ammunition projectiles & pts. thereof
The world has gone all wierd and upside down in a very short time.
US slaps tariffs on china's gizmo's and stuff. Then China reacts by slapping tariffs on US dead animal products.
I can only guess all the soon to be idle pig farmers in the US will be called to the microchip fabrication plant any day now with the incentive of greased pig wrestling friday's.
"Is this meant to encourage manufacturing away from China, to other more trade friendly (but still cheap) bits of the world (thinking Vietnam or Thailand)?"
China is investing relatively heavily in infrastructure projects in a number of African nations. I very much doubt they are only looking at the short term construction profits.
This could hurt Newegg. Presumably their volume buying would supply both US and Canadian operations. But now smaller Canadian competitors could have an advantage, even if their smaller volumes would not get the same quantity discounts.
Same principle might apply to other products and industries.
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