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I disagree. Consumers may have benefited from lower prices on those products but have suffered from reduced incomes and purchasing power.
The *net* result is what we care about and our perpetual trade deficit along with other supporting policies, have killed our real incomes.
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If another market can make something cheaper because they are better or mor efficient, that's one thing. But when it's cheaper on the backs of slave wages, govt. subsidies, and lax regulations that's another and an unfair playing field. It seems wrong that we impose minimum wages, safety and environmental regs, and high taxes on domestic businesses but allow their foreign competitors to bypass all those things and undersell them.
Very true. The US is very efficient and cheap for a developed country. The idea that we need to get poorer and dirty in order to compete with the undeveloped world, is beyond absurd.
I thought conservatives were opposed to global government? Meanwhile, we impose safety and environmental regs in this country in order to keep our people safe. Other nations use people the way we use shrink-wrap. Sinking to their level is not the answer to anything. If you can't compete in the current version of what has always been a globalized economy, we have welfare programs that you can apply for.
Sinking to their level? Or forcing them to meet our standards? We can't physically make them pay their people and be safe, but we can not let them have a financial advantage in our markets because of it. If we can calculate carbon offsets then we can calculate regulatory and wage offsets. And technically, it wouldn't be a tariff or trade tax.
It seems wrong that we impose minimum wages, safety and environmental regs, and high taxes on domestic businesses but allow their foreign competitors to bypass all those things and undersell them.
India has a minimum wage equal to $0.28/hour, while Sierra Leone has a minimum wage of $0.03/hour.
That is exactly what those workers should be paid given the level of economic development in their respective States.
Sinking to their level? Or forcing them to meet our standards?
The latter would be preferable, but this all sounds so strange coming from those who don't believe in imposing "our standards" on our own domestic industries to begin with.
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Originally Posted by oceangaia
If we can calculate carbon offsets then we can calculate regulatory and wage offsets. And technically, it wouldn't be a tariff or trade tax.
You'll need a regime to do the work. Something like the IPCC, the WTO, the G-20, or even TPP. But some people just don't like any of those very much.
The latter would be preferable, but this all sounds so strange coming from those who don't believe in imposing "our standards" on our own domestic industries to begin with.
You'll need a regime to do the work. Something like the IPCC, the WTO, the G-20, or even TPP. But some people just don't like any of those very much.
What is so strange about not wanting to saddle our industries with a bazillion requirements that make them less competitive? What is strange are those who want to "sock it to them" with high taxes, strict environmental regulations, and mountains of paperwork then don't understand why those busiensses decide to move operations somewhere else.
We already collect and compile most of the data needed to calculate the offsets. The businesses that moved out certainly calculated it.
Businesses make location decisions based on forecasts of overall profitability. The US produces about 22% of everything produced anywhere in the world because on that basis, this is one of the most attractive places in the world in which to operate a business. We meanwhile moved out of the business of trading workers' lives for bits of marginal product about a hundred years ago. Others have already followed us down that path, and more will soon be doing the same.
You know, it's that very attitude towards businesses that Obama and Hillary espoused - the who cares if they leave or how our actions affect their profitability - that enabled someone like Trump to become President.
Not just a war with China, but apparently Trump is planning trade wars with Japan, Germany, All of Europe, and Mexico. He has probably also threatened others that I have not heard of.
Will US Companies succeed in a global trade war? Who will they sell goods to? And since our goods will cost a whole lot more to export, how can American companies beat the low prices from China and Mexico? Will it be quality? We don't manufacture any more so, will we have to relearn quality? How long will that take?
Will US corporations - the great patriots they have already proven themselves to be - just abandon America in order to sell to the rest of the world?
I'd like to hear what those who have studied (not just taken an Econ 101 college course) trade and trade wars think.
BlkTopTrvl, there’s no benefit to instigating a trade war but I’m a supporter of “most favored nation’’ agreements between nations. The concept does not prohibit participating nations from favoring their own nation’s enterprises but it prohibits them from discriminating, (i.e. granting favor or disfavor) among all participating nations other than themselves.
United States presidents have significant power to determine when a nation has breached such an agreement with us and is empowered, (regardless of congressional opinion), to retaliate against a nation that so disfavors us.
I’m among the proponents of the substantially market driven trade policy described in Wikipedia’s “Import Certificates” article.
Regardless of price increases to USA purchasers of imported goods, (i.e. regardless of how small of price increases), due to the policy, it would entirely or almost eliminate USA’s chronic annual trade deficits of goods while increasing our GDP and numbers of jobs more than otherwise. Additionally, it’s serves as an indirect but effective subsidy of USA’s exported goods. USA’s economy would better thrive if we adopted this policy.
Refer to Wikipedia’s “Import Certificates” article.
The incompetitiveness of Manufacturing in USA is in the cost of Labor, Technification is cheap, or at least China has turned it into being VERY VERY Cheap. ...
Alonso_Castillo, "technification" ain't all that cheap.
wage’s purchasing powers have effect upon almost each of producers’ cost items.
I doubt that that have significant effects upon borrowing costs. Labor’s a significant component of builder’s costs, of material and components produces’ costs, and their delivery costs. Producers of products’ materials and components also have direct and indirect labor costs. Thus, regardless if producers’ rent or own their production facilities, labor costs affect producers’ facility costs and similar affects most of their other direct and indirect costs.
USA producers of High-tech products requiring lesser proportion of labor costs are at a lesser disadvantage to lower wage rate nations, but faster, cheaper, and thus more feasible communication and delivery are advantageous to lower wage rate nations.
Robotics techs and such with high skills and degrees, are certainly desirable. We must continually seek upgrading of our technologyand education. But to the extent that other nations similarly improve, we gain no competitive advantage unless we exceed othe nations' acheivements, and to the extent their labor costs are less we remain at some economic disadvantage if we continue to seek “pure free trade”.
I’m among the proponents of the substantially market driven trade policy described in Wikipedia’s “Import Certificates” article.
Due to the substantially market driven Import Certificate policy, regardless of price increases to USA purchasers of imported goods, (i.e. regardless of how small of price increases), the policy would entirely or almost eliminate USA’s chronic annual trade deficits of goods while increasing our GDP and numbers of jobs more than otherwise. Additionally, it’s serves as an indirect but effective subsidy of USA’s exported goods].
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