Looks like the Tariffs are back on. The idea of waiting 30 days was just a frivolous notion just like everything else Trump says.
Donald Trump has signed executive orders to slap 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States, including Canadian products, starting March 4 — the same deadline given to Canada to convince the U.S. president to halt his plan for across-the-board duties.
www.ctvnews.ca
TRADE
Back in the day trade was easy. Our tribe had meat - your tribe had fruits with something magic in them that stopped scurvy. (Vitamin C). We NEEDED each other! Then in the modern world we invented nation states and economics. Trade became about economics. Australia has LOTS of iron ore we mine with the best Aussie mega-trucks. America has LOTS of amazing software and a huge entertainment industry. Let's trade! When we both specialise in the things we are best at and trade - we all get the cheapest possible deal. Win win!
WHY CHINA IS WINNING
They have Muslim slaves in 're-education' camps making solar panels. They have really low environmental standards and Work, Health and Safety rules. They don't have as tight laws on pollution standards, meaning certain rare earth's are produced cheaper for the global market - but coming at the expense of the health of their local workers. They have lower salaries and endless labour.
But most of all - they have planning and subsidies from the government. This planning is about hitting economies of scale unlike anything the human race has ever SEEN before! Forget Henry Ford's production line - China has production line CITIES! All stacked neatly in a row. A few MILLION people live on this part of the 'line' - and they make that widget and provide all the services and lifestyle for the employees there. When finished, a few trucks take it a short distance to the next city of a few million people - and on it goes! It only works because the central government has absolute power to plan these things. They're not like modern democracies where say NASA can't build cheap rockets because every Senator needs jobs in his area, so the whole space industrial supply line is boondoggled inefficiently all over the continent! No - China's about efficiency. Or attempting to. (Corruption has crippled some of the provincial governments with their favouring a simplistic real estate pyramid scheme that collapsed. But China are even working on massive anti-corruption policies to try and combat such things.)
"IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE.... LIVING IN HARMONY...."
I wish we could all just get along, to allow for better trade. Imagine if the world traded everything everywhere without protection, subsidies, or tariffs. Imagine we all used one currency and had pretty much rationalised Ordo-Liberal Economics. (“Civil rights, social justice and State funded healthcare, welfare and education in a market economy.”) There would be global standards on stuff (Sorry America - you've got to go metric!) and it would be cheap, and reliable, and repairable, and great.
REALPOLITIK
But hang on. The world isn't integrated politically. It is also quite dangerous to have truly GLOBAL choke points! Imagine an earthquake takes out Taiwan! The world's best computer chips are ALL made there. One war or one big 'Black Swan' natural disaster - and the world is in trouble!
FRIENDSHORING
I guess in the real world we do need some duplication and redundancy - and it's probably best to think of it in terms of a strategic defence issue. I guess that's what Biden's I.R.A. bill was all about. The biggest industrial policy with the most boring name - the "Inflation Reduction Act". It gave stimulus to certain American vital interests - such as energy and CHIPS - without punishing democratic allies. It swung some doors in America's favour, without slamming the doors in friend's faces. When facing this kind of geopolitical rivalry from China, we should enrol the entire Western world in the cheapest possible friend-shoring trade pacts possible! It's the only way we could even pretend to have a chance of supplying what we need without relying on China. Not that anything we make would compete economically - but economics isn't the point. Defence is. Only a united front of democratic nations supplying each other's needs as cheaply as possible might just be able to wean off China without totally bankrupting ourselves.
DEFENCE: Indeed - we need both defensive and economic pacts much larger than NATO. The EU should Federate into a country called Europe - and streamline their bespoke individual weapons platforms into more streamlined production runs to bring the prices down. The USA has only 30 weapons platforms - absolutely bulk produced - and the EU has over 120 weapons platforms with tiny individualistic production runs that sends costs per unit through the roof!
TRUMP HURTS ALL THIS
But Trump is SO "alt-right" he has to dog-whistle to the extremists in his support base all the time. Then he puts a small tariff on China - and a huge tariff on his allies? He's doing the opposite of what we need to do to wean off China! He pretends he is doing a favour for the American working class by bringing a few industries home again. But what if those few jobs mean the rest of the population have their cost of living expenses soar even higher? I just don't get it. The urgent issue here is Russia and China. Then Trump comes along and adopts policies that will WEAKEN THE WEST while also threatening to withdraw from NATO. He's not a President. He was a real estate developer - and
was not a very good one. Apparently as long as he gets to play king, it doesn't matter if he appeals to the worst instincts of the electorate - and ends up making the Western World go the way of the Trump Plaza Hotel.
