I initially used to think China might have more leverage against any potential trade war agains the US, as:
1. The Chinese had option of imposing high tariffs on politically significant US agricultural products, like soyabean, which are not very large in $ value, but affect a lot of areas.
2. Since some swing states are highly influential in US elections, the Chinese always had the option of imposing tariffs which impact the swing states mostly.
Both of these thoughts arose from the fact that as a democratic country, the US would have to take into account both short and long term trade prospects.
Now reading this article, it seems being a predominantly export driven economy and having a huge trade surplus with the US, the Chinese don't really have that much leverage.
Based on the figures I could find, China imported $130 billion dollars worth of goods from America last year, of which $12.3 billion was soya beans. The most likely reason they imposed high tariffs on soya beans is precisely because they had so few actual options. (I know the media portrayed it as some kind of genius move at the time, but that's been looking increasingly dubious. It's not clear that they will be able to feed their livestock at reasonable prices.)
To a large extent the tariffs were imposed just before China traditionally started importing from Brazil, so for several months they had little effect on actual supply (a few ships did get turned away, but for the US it was slow season). Brazil has ended their shipments, and China is turning to other countries which are selling at inflated prices and then buying from the US.
Don't paint the above as good for the US - things are bad for farmers, they are selling below what the cost would have been. I'm pointing out that the picture is (as always) complex.
Also, soybeans are a fungible commodity. As China buys up non-American soybeans, American exports will (with effort) be redirected to the customers who were originally planning to buy non-American soybeans that the China bought. The tariffs will be more of a hiccup for American farmers.
On the other hand, most of China's exports aren't fungible commodities, so it will have more difficulty finding substitutes for the reduced demand caused by American tariffs.
Yeah their leverage ends up being limited but even if they had focused their tariffs on soy beans, it would have hurt them more than not given the Importance of the us in their imports.
> Now reading this article, it seems being a predominantly export driven economy and having a huge trade surplus with the US, the Chinese don't really have that much leverage.
You shouldn't be basing your opinion on opinion news articles. Just 2 years ago, the nytimes was telling us the world was headed to economic armageddon with no end in sight. Look at us now.
One day the news tells you Trump is going to start ww3 with china and the next you'd think china is weak and have to submit to Trump's demand.
> Both of these thoughts arose from the fact that as a democratic country, the US would have to take into account both short and long term trade prospects.
If that was the case, we wouldn't have the rust belt. We wouldn't have the collapse of detroit. We wouldn't have NAFTA or trade with China. Most americans were never for lopsided trade with china or mexico or even canada. I think foreigners have an idealized view of the US, democracy and how things work.
Trade with china for the last 40 years was basically "wage arbitrage" ( which some might call exploitation of cheap chinese labor ). US corporations moved production to china to use the abundant and cheap labor. The reason why we didn't have tariffs on "chinese" imports is because most "chinese" imports to the US are actually american goods. Or it's a sino-american partnership/company. This is why Trump is getting so much backlash from corporate america. The tariffs hurt american goods.
China seems to be at a fair disadvantage on exports dependence, but you're right, China is far less export dependent than one might think. The devil is in the details of course, but I'd venture a guess that US imports would tend to be more discretionary than China's, but who knows.
Point number two has been preoccupying my brain the last few months. Our system of electing presidents tend to hinge on several swing states, and in those states, a few key districts, and this means that our elections are vulnerable to foreign influence much more so than if, say, presidents were elected by popular vote.
Protecting elections may mean ending winner take all electoral college system.
Is there a more accurate interpretation describing how the founding fathers believed it served the purpose of "adult oversight"? What exactly does that mean by the way?
The electoral college and winner-take-all are mutually exclusive ideas.
Presently, the electoral college benefits rural voters (Wyoming and the like) by increasing vote value. Winner-take-all elections benefit urban voters by disenfranchising rural voters (every non-Democrat county in California).
This is a poorly drawn equivalence as the winner take all system doesn’t imbalance vote value like the electoral college does. IE you’re just saying winner takes all disenfranchises people who don’t vote for the winner which is a tautology.
> You’ve just provided a different way of saying there’s a winner and a loser.
No I haven’t. Let me explain a bit more below.
> Disenfranchisement !== losing, it’s being denied the ability to have your vote count the same as anyone else’s.
> for the same candidate.
Exactly!
It’s a vote for the same presidential candidate regardless of whether you live in California or Ohio. Yet a Republican vote in California is meaningless because California assigns it’s electoral votes as winner takes all based on state level results.
If 51% of voters in California vote Democrat then all 55 electoral votes go towards the Democrats. This clearly disenfranchises conservative voters.
California has the ability to assign it’s electoral votes proportionally and enfranchise millions of conservative voters.
Of course they won’t because it would hurt the Democrats chances of winning unless all the other states followed suit.
Yet if it’s a question of right and wrong then shouldn’t California do the right thing and give conservatives a voice regardless?
I’m sorry but I thought the issue we were talking about was whether global winner-take-all, IE most votes cast in the country determines the winner, is disenfranchising compared to our current electoral college system.
> is disenfranchising compared to our current electoral college system.
I guess my point is we can enfranchise significantly more people than today without moving away from the electoral college.
Yet no state is seriously considering assigning their electoral votes proportionally.
I think that shows the people calling for the removal of the electoral college are playing politics and are only interested in it if it helps their side.
To me your point of view reads as superficially civil but deeply cynical underneath. The current system is unfair, and you criticize people who want to fix it because they won't take a local action which is nominally aligned with the goal but in reality will just tilt the unfairness further.
It's a bit like tritely declaring that people should just opt in to pay more taxes individually if they think tax rates on the wealthy are too low.
> because they won't take a local action which is nominally aligned
Of course - Your collective actions don’t mirror your rhetoric.
> in reality will just tilt the unfairness further.
I thought your argument was disenfranchising voters was immoral and unfair.
Yet I’ve shown you a politically viable way to enfranchise millions more people and you are claiming that enfranchising these people makes the system less fair?
> It's a bit like tritely declaring that people should just opt in to pay more taxes
> I thought your argument was disenfranchising voters was immoral and unfair.
I don't think I said anything to that effect -- aside from that the current system is unfair -- but you seem to be arguing against a bit of a straw man here already, so I won't stop you from continuing.
> How so?
How not so? You could easily say (and I imagine you in particular would say): you think taxes should be higher? You should pay more voluntarily right now regardless of what the official rates are.
Your viewpoint neglects to consider that certain changes must occur uniformly, at a structural level in order to be effective.
Under your proposal, if CA adopted it and WY did not, 50 voters in Wyoming for Candidate A would get even more voting power relative to 50 voters in California for the same candidate at the federal level. That you think that is more fair makes it difficult for me to believe you're approaching this discussion in good faith. I also sense you're replaying arguments you've had before and aren't looking to change your mind. So we can probably leave it off here.
I did assume your basis was the belief that it’s immoral/unfair for one persons vote to be worth less than another’s simply based on which state they live in.
> You should pay more voluntarily right now regardless of what the official rates are.
Why would I say that? I don’t think a single person paying more in taxes would make a difference.
> at a structural level in order to be effective
Yes. And if done at the California state level it would enfranchise millions of people.
I’ll leave it up to you to judge whether that’s good or bad.
> 50 voters in Wyoming for Candidate A would get even more voting power relative to 50 voters in California
The distribution would change to give the minority accurate representation based on their vote count.
So a Californian minority voter would not be unfairly disadvantaged just because they live in California.
I mean it’s the same as when we enfranchised women - men’s votes were obviously diluted.
> and aren't looking to change your mind
I’m simply trying to understand your argument. If you can put forward a convincing case and prove it’s not just a political power play then I will happily change my mind.
Though I must warn you that I’m on the other end of the states vs federal debate:
I’m happy for the individual states to decide where they want their electoral votes to go - even if they don’t want to hold a vote and instead use a panel of experts to decide or even if they just want to flip a coin.
How is an equal voice disenfranchisement or at least how is it any more or less so than the disenfranchisement of Californians under electoral college rules.
That may or may not be, but in the end it is a different question than the one I raised. One might have an electoral college system without a state by state winner take all, which can lead to particular districts in particular states having outsized influence on the national election, and as such presents itself as a manageable target for foreign influence campaigns. This seems, to me, a national security risk that should be mitigated...and is much easier to mitigate than, for example, depending on efficient removal of foreign state-powered advertising campaigns.
Meantime, other soybean manufacturers will dial up production, so when the tariffs are dropped by China, the US soybean manufacturers will be selling to an oversupplied market, dropping the price. And given the US subsidies will almost certainly go when the Chinese tariffs do, the risk to the US soybean industry has only been postponed, rather than countered.
> Meantime, other soybean manufacturers will dial up production, so when the tariffs are dropped by China, the US soybean manufacturers will be selling to an oversupplied market, dropping the price.
I don't think so. Doing some Googling, it looks like China's soybean imports (100 million tons) could be more than satisfied by the production of Brazil and Argentina (139 million tons). US production is 108 million tons.
Soybeans are fungible, so instead of other producers ramping up soybean production, I think we'll see production stay constant while trading relationships reconfigure around the tariffs. For instance: China can replace American soybeans with Brazilian ones, and American soybeans will then go to wherever the Brazilian soybeans were going to previously.
China, according to those links, purchases 60% of all global soybean exports.
Looking up the figures, about another 30% is the EU, with 10% for everybody else.
Now, the EU is increasing their US soybean imports, but they cannot make up the shortfall even if they wanted to, and are only really increasing their imports from the US because US soybeans are currently cheaper than South American ones.
Also, the EU are not really that interested in helping the US on this one without first getting concessions in the ongoing EU vs US trade war.
Out of this, the EU have so far managed to get Trump to promise to drop much of the EU trade war in return for the EU buying more US soybeans, which is something the EU were going to do anyway and as I said before, will only cover a fraction of the reduction in US exports to China.
Also, the EU continuing not to target US soybeans exports is all rather dependent on Trump keeping to his word on not continuing the EU part of his trade war, if he restarts it, those reassurances are going to leave the table.
Tariffs in China really will just mean that buyers and sellers will shift around.
Chinese will now buy Soy from Brazil, thus avoiding tariffs, and rather than buying more expensive Soy beans from Brazil (because of more demand), those other buyers will shift to buy from the US.
Chinese tariffs on commodity goods won't have an effect if there a good number of buyers and suppliers.
For now, I belive the subsidies are only going to last a while. Granted considering the current administration's lack of care for deficit spending.... they probabbly would just dial up more subsidies after a while.
1. The Chinese had option of imposing high tariffs on politically significant US agricultural products, like soyabean, which are not very large in $ value, but affect a lot of areas.
2. Since some swing states are highly influential in US elections, the Chinese always had the option of imposing tariffs which impact the swing states mostly.
Both of these thoughts arose from the fact that as a democratic country, the US would have to take into account both short and long term trade prospects. Now reading this article, it seems being a predominantly export driven economy and having a huge trade surplus with the US, the Chinese don't really have that much leverage.