Originally a part of the argument was bringing them into the fray, intertwining and possibly entangling them in the world order...which would work if they played along but they increased exports and have been careful not to rely on anyone so that whole approach is out the window.

Bush / obama had other priorities. bush was at war and obama was too busy making preachy speaches, being hated by anyone that doesnt like to be preached, and accomplishing absolutely nothing. nice man though...but he needed to stick to speech circuit...not run a country

ToothSayer, where do you get these insights about China from? Any particular site you're reading about this?

It really started with Clinton, when Clinton made a push to let them into the WTO. The idea is that by having open trade, Chinese people would come to Western countries, do business in western countries and result in a vibrant middle class that would democratize the country and perhaps make them more liberal.

Obviously it didn't work and the naysayers were correct:
https://fpif.org/china_in_the_wto_the_debate/
https://newrepublic.com/article/90711/trade-barrier

Instead China ended up being a state powered fascist economy, taking as little from foreign nations as possible while dumping as much as possible to hold sway over the Western nations and all the while maintaining an iron grip against liberalizing the population. Our naivety over the Chinese government has resulted in basically handing them the stick to beat us with.

TS is correct, think of what sociopaths would do given such a situation, multiply it by ten, and you have China. Do not expect them to operate in good faith.

It took people like Trump and his all star team of Lighthizer, Kudlow, and Wilbur Ross to finally take a stand and do something about it.

"Death by China" may interest you. Bear in mind its Peter Navarro who is the biggest china hawk on the planet so its surely slanted but it makes you realize how they can manipulate things in thier favor...and now they are certainly using every tool.

great post... also noone had a team this strong. in the canada deal, Freeland had no chance. Shes a journalist and Trudeau is a school teacher. They are up against people that have studied trade for a long time. This trade team can make a lot of progress...just have to let them continue

Protectionism is a disease intertwined with nationalism. Posts above are good examples.

You have quite the track record of misreading things.

China is the anti-free-trade nationalist actor here. Trump is trying to force them into playing by the global free trade rules which they agreed to as a condition of access, and then cheated at on a grand scale for their own nationalist benefit and to the deliberate detriment of other economies. No other country does this.

Trump is a very strong pro free trader (far stronger than Obama) who wants to stop a cheater from rorting the free trade system with their national protectionism and deliberate targeted antagonism to the economies and industries of other countries.

Trump isn't trying to do anything of the sort. He just wants to flaunt the fact he's POTUS and he gets to do **** nobody else can.

It's fascinating how deranged people are on Trump. I think they're used to people with a very high verbal intelligence (most politicians), so they see Trump with a lower verbal intelligence and their dumb brains assume he's just an idiot, because they've been monkey-trained to measure intelligence and competence via verbal intelligence (the entire political-media-academia complex is set up to elevate people with rhetorical talent which is largely correlated with verbal intelligence). Obama was a poster-boy for very high verbal intelligence and utter incompetence at everything else.

Intelligence is far broader than verbal intelligence and it's possible to have a low verbal intelligence and be a genius in business, negotiation, game theory, reading mood, understanding what matters and what doesn't, etc. And vice versa. In fact, it's one of the ways that politics has gone horribly wrong - a high verbal intelligence has close to zero correlation to having the traits that matter for a good leader. People who can do stuff well just do it and hate spending heaps of time talking about it.

The trade thing is black and white. Trump is taking the right path to a) improve free trade and the economies of open market countries and b) punish those who cheat at free trade like China.

He's the greatest free trade promoting president in modern history, which is wonderful for the US as the US has the greatest capitalist system and the most talent and wins at true free trade. The dumbasses with journalism degrees and heads full of hard-left nonsense who understand little about realpolitik have it exactly backward and are cheerleading for anti-free-trade communist China by setting up a narrative of Trump as anti free trade instigating this, when in fact any sane person knows China is massively anti-free-trade on a scale never seen before, and has been allowed to profit from this to the detriment of the US. It's quite amazing to watch how the US media can become so corrupted and destructive as to have an insane take on this issue where they side with the perpetrating party against the US.

The end game of all this, as we saw in a microcosm with Canada and Mexico, is better trade deals for the US, more free trade, and a powerful coalition opposed to China where the US president has enormous leverage against the Chinese to force reforms.

I think you give President Trump way too much credit. He definitely gets credit regarding China, but I have an extremely hard time believing that he fully understands what he's doing. He has made statements that demonstrate he doesn't even understand what a tariff is. I know that's sort of an ad hominem attack, but it's not the only time he's said things that 1) make no sense and 2) clearly do not present as evidence he's a great leader. His verbal intelligence, as you put it, has nothing to do with it. A great leader doesn't state things publicly that his own team has no idea what is going on or gets blindsided by. That's extreme disorganization. The only positive takeaway from that behavior is that it's nice to not have a pussy in the White House and he's aggressive with regard to China...

But he's curiously not aggressive with Russia. You can't just conveniently ignore that. It's problem.

One other problem is, in a general sense, America is not a business and the President of the United States is not a CEO. It's nice to run a country that way if you own real estate, business, have mad money in a portfolio, or don't have or care not to have a moral compass. Even if you like Trump as President on the basis of being a businessman, again, for the millionth time, he's not a great businessman. He's more like a boom or bust WR in fantasy football. You can't run a country like that with lives at stake imo

(Allegedly) Chinese spy chips found in hardware used by Amazon, Apple: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...-top-companies

Great leaders provide a general direction and surround with themselves with people who execute the particulars of the vision. Trump might not know everything, but Ross, Lighthizer, Mnuchin, Kudlow and Navarro most certainly know everything there is to possibly know about trade. You cannot come up with a better all star cast to represent the U.S.

Then you haven't been paying attention and don't understand how Trump operates. Trump has been an absolute nightmare for Russia. Sanctions upon sanctions, the annihilation of a Russian battalion with over 200 soldiers killed, installing military bases in Poland, US becoming a net exporter of shale oil; any one of these things would be a problem for Russia. All of them together are a catastrophe.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...obama-in-eight

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/o...ons-putin.html

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/63065...ever-on-russia

One of the most fascinating things about President Trump is that with respect to foreign leaders, he makes good personal relationships with his enemies/competitors and allows them to save face while shivving them hard under the surface. He is not going to taunt them over the victories.

On the contrary, his experience in business gives him a Machiavellian play-to-win mentality far beyond any normal politician. He will use anything and everything to win, and he's doing it on behalf of the U.S. It is a grand sight to behold, although his ruthlessness is rather frightening at times.

He's been rocked on every negotiation from EU, NAFTA, China, to North Korea. The concessions he's extracted vary from absolutely nothing to stuff they were planning to do anyway.

This is no surprise. He's not interested in getting a good deal for America. He's only interested in looking like he's doing something.

The Chinese really are sociopaths. Or as I read, just have different values. Quotes of comments on recent news:

It’s worse than even that article describes.

In the last 2 or 3 years, since I married my wife from China, I have been brushing up on my Chinese. A lot of the Chinese literature I have been reading is explicitly racist with the protagonist pushing basically might makes right, especially if it’s for motherland. There is a **** ton of “they do it too” justification for human rights atrocities.

Recent **** I read/heard that’s beyond pale include, just for some sampling:
Young women defending rapist (google JD Minnesota billionaire Chinese) literally saying the victim should be honored
Of course Uigyrs are second class. They aren’t Han. Don’t you hate Muslims too? (This is dude complaining about Chinese affirmative action for minorities and I couldn’t help but point out China treats minorities like ****)
Who told them to be so stupid? They deserved to be scammed. (After reading a case on German IP being stolen by employee)
A classmate literally bragged about getting a cousin to beat the **** out of her nephew’s teacher for getting the kid injured in class. (Kids knees were hurt during warm up doing air squats.. I was like that kids made of glass)

This is all within the last 4 or 5 months.

Even the people who are aware of how sociopathic some of beliefs are justify it by saying something along the times it will just take time to get better.

He definitely made progress on NAFTA. New NAFTA is better than old NAFTA for the US and is likely a better deal than most other Presidents could have secured.

This was always going to be the case with Trump. The US has a huge advantage in these negotiations because of their market size and geography. If the US is willing to press its advantage here - its absolutely going to win concessions. [Note, this is also why the idea that some single clause in a trade agreement pulls Canada into the US sphere of influence is silly - it was already there.]

The question of course is, is it worth the cost. There are other issues and areas where the US needs or wants help/co-operation. Behaving very aggressively in negotiations like this has other costs that are very hard to measure. And there's also some amount of win-win in trade and sometimes maximizing short term wins can be non-optimal long-term.

US got jack****. We got auto quotas that don't matter and aren't expected to matter any time soon, if at all. The country of origin.

We also got relaxation on dairy quotas, which we already won in WTO and Canada has already handed out to EU.

Tell me, just what did Trump get that actually matters?

Like you said, behaving aggressively like Trump has intangible costs (like goodwill and trust). Trump doesn't give a ****. All he wanted was to sign his name on another piece of expensive resume paper that he could wave in front of a camera and says he negotiated a new deal.

He even got rid of the name NAFTA although the new deal is substantially the same as the old deal.

The agriculture changes are more substantial than what the US would have gotten as part of TPP and more substantial than they were getting in the status quo (what we're comparing against after all). The IP extensions help US companies. The "sunset clause" is probably an improvement for the US - although not a big one. Its more opportunity to throw its weight around and get changes that it wants (Mexico and Canada are automatically dogs in any negotiations). There are various other things that are small wins for the States.

Minimum wage requirements in Mexico raised to $16 an hour is a gigantic one. No more labor arbitrage between US and Mexico.

75% Part origination requirement for auto/trucks manufacturing. No more parts dumping from China into CAN/MEX.

Removal of all agricultural subsidies between US/MEX, and pretty much all tariffs between the two countries except for the steel/aluminum.

US Steel/Aluminum tariffs remain in place, applied after a threshold quota is met. Doesn't really matter because Canada/Mex don't really produce steel for US export; it was just being reexported from China.

CAN/MEX entering into agreements with other countries (such as TPP) must be met with US approval to maintain the current trade agreement.

Try reading it instead of just spewing stuff you read on the news. I'm still studying it, and it looks like a significant win for the U.S., and a pretty good win for Mexico. Only Canada got shafted.

It's subtly (but very importantly) different. If the US (or technically any country) chooses, it can terminate the agreement with 6 month notice. It doesn't have to approve the other country's trade agreement.

If it required approval, that would be a much bigger deal since getting approval of anything or basic action from the US Government is a giant political **** show. But this means the US Government has to act to withdraw from the USMCA.

Minimum wage is red herring. Only 40-45% of parts need to meet that requirement. That essentially describes the status quo. (actually significantly more than that is made by unionized labor even under status quo so I'd be surprised if this changes anything except in marginal cases.)

75% origination is only making differences at the margins at most. We aren't sourcing parts from China.

US/Mex agricultural subsidies removal is a problem against US farmers, not the other way around.

Canada produces steel almost exclusively for export to the US and imports negligible amount.

NAFTA had provisions, and common sense dictates the same, that required the 3 countries to negotiate with each other before they entered into more trade pacts.

I do study it. In fact, definitely more than you do.

If that is your response, then I find it hard to believe that you study it. Perhaps you are studying it for academic purposes or something, but you certainly don't live it or operate in any of the affected industries.

I particularly like:
"We aren't sourcing parts from China" (http://www.worldstopexports.com/auto...ts-by-country/ not to mention all of the WTO suits against China over parts dumping or hiding origin through re-exports),

"That essentially describes the status quo," (currently it is roughly $3 an hour for everything due to heavy handed contracts by global auto manufacturers) and

"US/Mex agricultural subsidies removal is a problem against US farmers, not the other way around" (Mexican subsidies are fueling the cartels and marijuana exports into the U.S. and causing exploitation of rural Mexican farmers - https://www.internationalbudget.org/...mpo-in-mexico/, and we can finally start to end that godawful U.S. corn subsidy - this is win/win).

No serious student of trade, logistics or LEAN industries would make the statements that you made with a straight face. Don't become another Spurious.

Ouch.

No one who’s aware of the history of NAFTA, recent trade disputes, and statistics on the ground would disagree with anything I posted.