Let's declare WAR! Economic War on China

reply to post by ~Lucidity

So is competition and we're still well qualified to compete. We just need to bring it back.

I see you chose to ignore my earlier posts then. Let me recap: the USA cannot compete with Europe, Japan, or China on a level playing field. Y'all simply dont have the population density.
What's good for the USA is that the field isn't level. If it had been, the US economy would have crashed again right after WW2.
Reserve Currency = Magic Chequebook = Free Lunch
Get it now?
Not entrepreneurial spirit, nor hard work, just ripping off the rest of the world.
Ears open?
We've not just had enough, we now have the wealth to destroy you, despite your military superiority. As you say: go figure...

The blame game, eh? There is plenty to go around.

First issue I guess is the idea of Protectionism. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it is very meaningful here. Protectionism will extend the Recession. We know that from our history. Without customers on a world scale there can be no recovery.

Then who do we blame for the outsourcing. The businesses or the government? Businesses are easy to understand they do what is the most profitable or they fail. It is that simple. Either we compete or nobody has a job. So what drove them to do what they have done?

1-Over taxation.

2-Over regulation.

3-Extremists groups having the ear of the government through various forms of bribery, including delivering them votes. This allows them to tie up business through law suits and even more regulation.

4-Unions driving employment costs to the point factory workers in menial jobs are being paid as much as highly skilled people like those with Masters Degree's. You can't pay an assembly-line worker 6 figure incomes with full benefits on top and compete. It can't be done. Lets call this one greed and Union corruption.

5-The average government worker makes $60,000 per year more than the average private sector worker, all of which comes out of wealth created by the private sector. The government creates no wealth and is like a vampire sucking the economic blood out of us.

Faced with these issues, businesses are left with zero choice and have to move to compete. The businesses are not the problem. The above list is the problem. The government wants you to believe it is the businesses to hide from the blame. They know taxes are strangling businesses. They know the Unions are strangling the businesses. They also know the Unions deliver votes.

Then we have the State issues on top of this. The Liberal States are doing the worst right now for a reason. Taxes are too high. Too much regulation. Businesses are bailing on places like New York and California for good reason. They can not compete under the burdens of the States who's government buys votes by redistribution. How many times does this idea have to fail in history before we wake up?

This whole thing boils down to Government, Taxes and Unions are the biggest thorns in our side. They strangle business and competition. It has happened because the dumbing down of our society by the extremists agenda has started to work. We will not come out of this until people pick up a history book and wake up to how they are being used and lied to. Redistribution has never worked, not even once in history and yet we are repeating the same mistakes again.

What did work and what made our country great was the Capitalist system you all owe your standard of living too. Right now you are being brainwashed by the redistribution crowd who is not telling you the end game is a two class society. There will only be poor and the wealthy / powerful if they succeed. They are banking people are stupid enough to let it happen. Right now it appears a lot of people are because they want some free Obama money.

There is no free Obama money. Your kids, your grand-kids and you are going to pay dearly for this. Don't blame other countries. That is what they want you to do. It's all slight of hand here folks. If they tell you to look at their right hand, look at their left instead; because you are about to get blindsided.

We have an extremist, activist in the White House who lies constantly with impunity. He has control of the entire government, has taken control of businesses and banks with no constitutional authority to do so. He is spending like a drunk because he want's this system to fail so he can remake our country to his warped, twisted idea's.

Think twice before you assign blame in the direction you are misdirected towards. People have the ability to think critically after the age of about 25, so use it folks. You want our country and our economy back; vote out the incumbents. No amount of protectionism and passing the blame on to others will fix anything. The R's and D's are the real enemy.

you all don´t get it do you? there is no them and us, there is only all of us, in the same situation. you all keep on going about heroes serving your contry, not knowing that it all is one thing. they are attacking us, we are attacking them. i get so tired of people hanging on to this realm. wake the f... up. please understand that here we are, all of us, in the same reality, with the same bioligy, the same not knowing what is going on. please stop hanging on to theese unsignificant things, and please start realising that we are all here.

Welcome to 1984
IMO Democracy has been hijacked by government and the big boy players behind Gov't as a result of rising corruption in the land
Didn't one of the Founding Fathers say :
'I give you a Republic - if you can keep it' ?

Christ is the only one to totally beat that Dark Prince system and pass on the keys - ' If I make you free - you shall be free indeed'
I believe Lincoln [ bless his memory] leaned on that one

Y

reply to post by Bunken Drum

I didn't ignore your earlier posts. I read them. I had nothing to add, but I do disagree. We can and will compete to the level to which we need to. To do nothing is to die.

That sheer density can now work for us, and frankly I don't see it working against us. And Europe, by the way is in the same boat the U.S. is in, no?

And I'm sorry, but who has the wealth to destroy whom? Who's talking about destroying anyone? Certainly not me.


[edit on 24-11-2009 by ~Lucidity]

Originally posted by HotSauce
reply to post by ~Lucidity

 

Agreed on India. Heck I say declare economic war on the whole darn world.. might as well just cut to the chase.

Well my free market friends, what will come of Walmart and all those jobs???
Or the rest of the consumer economy???

I am all for it - but it would sort of be like staging a revolt against FREE MARKET capitalist idealism... Socialisms cousin, protectionisms - Kloplutcher would have you all hung by you S&C's -

reply to post by Janky Red


I'm not really sure. But there sure isn't a lot of balance here. Someone said the other day (maybe it was in the video someone posted here) that Wal-Mart is virtually a monopoly. I haven't had time to think about that yet. And even if it was, I'm not sure anyone cares about such things anymore...even the baby bells are going back to mama. (Lame joke.)

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
reply to post by Janky Red

 

I'm not really sure. But there sure isn't a lot of balance here. Someone said the other day (maybe it was in the video someone posted here) that Wal-Mart is virtually a monopoly. I haven't had time to think about that yet. And even if it was, I'm not sure anyone cares about such things anymore...even the baby bells are going back to mama. (Lame joke.)

Well Blame tends to think Walmart should be entitled to do whatever it wants with impunity. If their model was applied across the board we would be third world with in
ten years.

The race to the bottom, get another job and stop the socialisms


There needs to be balance

Everyone is way too late.

They declared war on us many years ago.

My company is trying to manufacture a new product for smartphones. We get outrageously great estimates from China and Taiwan, but what we found out was chilling. We will not manufacture there. It's a massive market, but by the time it hit the shelves knock-offs would already saturate the country and surrounding markets. If we ordered manufacturing, they would hold our delivery a few days, take our designs and have them on the street weeks before we even hear about it.

A good friend of mine was the technology expert for the legal department of a major US technology corporation, dealing with trade issues with China. Part of his article is quoted here. (With anonymous permission)

Rapid Product Dissemination, Rapid Copying and Manufacturers in the Far East Manufacturing Region

China, currently the manufacturing darling of the world, is commonly mistaken to be an open and fair market. It is not. China, and its nearby close relatives, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. are not open (to the Western mind) and are very intent on one thing, bringing cash flow into their countries while minimizing outflows. This attitude saturates every aspect of their mindset towards doing business with The West as well as each other.

It was long suspected, and now known to be true that China does not respect patents or copyrights and does very little to battle corporate espionage or protect intellectual rights. There is no regard to US intellectual property and very little to products invented within their own borders. They are as likely to copy each other as they are to copy outsider's ideas. This concept is rampant throughout the region and there is currently little to no commonly known defense to protect against it. Very large corporations are known to have resorted to bribery or to unusually high levels of local content in order to have a small semblance of government support (at the cost of very low margins from sales).

In an in-person meeting with China's Ambassador to the United States in San Francisco, I was amazed at his candidness at expressing that he was powerless to do anything about these attitudes and that the Chinese government would do nothing to protect my company's intellectual property rights if we chose to begin operations in their country, but they certainly would be happy to take our money, thank you very much (in exchange for no fairness).

Small companies essentially do not stand a significant chance at making any money at all in the Chinese market because products there are copied and disseminated so quickly that the original manufacturer is more likely to see a copy in the stores before seeing his own product there, and they copy will be significantly less expensive. The most likely scenario is that the original holder of the intellectual property finds themselves with a significant loss in the Chinese market and will not be unable to capture any net profit at all despite capturing any percentage of the market there. This is not worth the effort and it creates a risk in exposing a patented product to an economy that does not respect patents. A negative cash flow of a small percentage of a huge market is still a loss by any accounting method, its just not worth giving away intellectual property, spending all the money to set up the marketing to then have it stolen in a lawless society.

Larger companies have found it to be very difficult for them to enjoy the freedom they do in the US. There is no actual freedom to sell freely and there is no protection for their intellectual property. The only companies that have done well are those that can afford billion dollar marketing budgets, are in it for the very long haul, and sell prepared food products under a hard to copy brand such as McDonald's and Taco Bell/Kentucky Fried Chicken (I.e. YUM brands). Those brands have the ability to defend themselves with a billion dollar shield but its not been proven that they will always be able to defend themselves in the future, they are taking a big gamble but have the cash on hand to do so. Although they do seem to be one of the few US victories in China, keep in mind that very little profit flows back to the shareholders in the US because most of it is eaten up in Chinese labor and Chinese raw material, neither of which helps the US significantly.

The classic example of a company doing long term business could be seen in examining Microsoft's lack of success in the Far East region. Microsoft for many years now, has battled with the Chinese government to stop the wholesale unauthorized duplication of its various software products, including its flagship Windows Operating System, but to to avail.

Less than 1% of gross revenue comes from China back to Microsoft, yet 95% of the computers run their operating system. This past August, 400,000 personal computers were reported to have been sold in China, less than 1% were sales by US companies, despite US companies creating the personal computer market and manufacturing 99% of all computers made today.

Previous year's sales of PCs in China were approximately 1.5 million units, yet despite the massive sales of computers Microsoft can barely take in 1% of revenue which in all likelihood results in a loss for Microsoft to operate in China. Why? Because Microsoft has a huge anti-fraud operation in China (and in the US for bootlegged Chinese sourced software) which costs them millions of dollars a year to operate. It is currently believed that all major US companies have anti fraud divisions in China that cost them millions of dollars of dollars to operate. They typically hire local security companies (ex Police and ex Government agents) to investigate and on rare occasions they will even cooperate with the government in a raid on illegal warehouses but that has effectively done nothing to stop the illegal activities.

Microsoft even went to the extreme of hiring the preeminent anti-fraud scientist/engineer in China to create an unbeatable hologram to assert Microsoft's ownership of their intellectual property. Upon declaring success, Microsoft spent millions to retool for the new hologram. The impact on the knock-off market? None whatsoever. It turns out that regional consumers in that area do not look at the hologram and just buy the cheap knockoffs anyway.

The Chinese government says that they are helpless in this situation and has made very few public arrests so the problem marches on essentially unabated.

Outsourcing to Far East manufacturing centers is no different than manufacturing in China itself, even for products that are only intended for sale in the US. The entrepreneur could eventually find that his product went up for illegal sale in China as they were ramping up sales in the US. They may even find competitive products in the US in more distribution chains than they authorized, only to find them to be Chinese knockoffs.

In summary, the market that is safest and most important to aim for is the US open market. Know that even then, someone will take the product back to China and copy it. China is insuring that it doesn't fall into economic decline by enforcing that 99% of all products sold in China are made in China, and that it exports to other markets to bring in even more money. We in the US have made terrible mistakes by outsourcing products and services to other countries. India's economy is growing because of our service centers now placed within its major cities, while we are suffering a decline in jobs for call center employees. We import everything from cars to food and wonder why jobs and our economy have been suffering for years. We need to support job and services, our agriculture, and our planet by making and consuming as much as possible within our own borders.

Luckily the writer is my longtime friend and adviser and we did not send the real design for estimating. If we had, we would have been just another body thrown on the side of the road as China's economic manufacturing armies tread on any sacred ground to take a product from us and give nothing back.

The result will be, no US companies can compete, no work for American workers, and cheap knock-offs made in China with cheaper and toxic materials filling our selves and displacing the quality and workmanship we once enjoyed.

ZG

[edit on 11/24/2009 by ZeroGhost]

I think current mess is a consequence of declaring economic war on China years ago. I remember couple of years ago there was a rumour circulating in Asian disscusion boards. If you use translation function you could easily communicate with other asians using different language.
Rumour was that US is attempting to pull out hot money at once from china by pressuring Chinese government to open up financial market. When hot moneys are pulled out, asset bubble would have been crashed and China would have been devided into several countries due to social unstability. Anyway, soon after this rumours circulated, there was interest rate increase in US for strong dollar policy. It wasn't officially reported anywhere but I remember that I saw statistics report of China selling US treasury bond. So what I thought was that because of Chinese government selling treasuries, US FED had to increase interest rate to lure more foreign investment. And then as you know things got wild. Probably this kind things will be revealed long time in the future. But there was economic wars going on for sure. During Asian financial crisis, US disagreed financial aid to the troubled countries before IMF step in and let them go bankrupt in purpose. This is a fact reported about 10 years later.
I believe US defeated Japan with the same way before, but China wasn't that simple to influence like Japan. If the rumours were true, none of the plan succeeded.

[edit on 25-11-2009 by mirine]

I love the graphs and stuff. You see china, and then you see good ole japan... which the US has her hand up there # so deep its coming out their mouths. Thats how the US competes with china on its own turf... with an outside influence.. Now if anyone doesn't understand why or how its being done. You can PM me. You gotta give credit where credit is due... the US sure does know how to plan for stuff... 50 years prior it was setting its nest egg up in japan just to counter china's growth within the US market. Sometimes makes me think if there is timemachines ;P

Originally posted by HotSauce

So you are saying you would rather go down without a fight. I see your point about the governmet and they need to be dealt with and put in their place... but we must also fight to get our jobs back, not by tariffs, but by outcompeting our adversaries.

This quote shows an alarming and widespread lack of understanding of the causes of the US predicament.

For the vast majority of purchases, price rather than quality will be the only deciding factor for the buyer. For most products, cost of labour are a substantial part of the cost, and unless chinese workers increase their minimum wage 500 times or the american workers decrease theirs by the same amount, US products cannot now or in the immediate future compete in any way.

This means that tariffs are in fact the ONLY way of retaining or creating jobs in the US.

reply to post by HotSauce


HotSauce you should be ashamed of yourself for posting such non-sense. You have it all --- ARSE BACKWARDS...

Who are you going to fight... Toys R Us? -- Walmart? -- Home Depot? All of whom have intentionally chosen to have their products made in China.

Sadly, your reaction is common amongst unknowing Americans who cannot face the fact their dear country would sell their jobs to China for a bag of profit.

So now you are pissed because everything you lay eyes on is from China and America has succombed to "half the man he used to be"

An economic war against China is an impossiblity... why?... because China is our economy. It is the patriotic American companies that have sold you out... Now you want to shoot and kill the Chinese economic machine. ------ GOOD LUCK!

Go into your local Walmart and ask managment if they will be willing to "go to war" with you. They will hand you a Chinese made American flag and call security to have you thrown out! China makes 99% of their products. In fact the takeover is so bad your goverment has even outsourced the manufacturing rights of Army issued (dog tags) to be made in China...

[edit on 25-11-2009 by Level X]

reply to post by HotSauce


Why declare economic war with China? Out of spite?

The US dug it's own hole. No one put a gun to it's head to globalise to the extent it has!

Anyway, you needn't worry. The country that has given me so much is heading inexorably to it's own bubble implosion. So really, as much as I hate to say it, your wish to see China collapse economically, is something, I fear, you'll in all likelihood be granted.

Originally posted by ladyinwaiting
I'm wondering if we did suddenly decide to stop buying so many Chinese products, and ticked them off; then they decided to retaliate by demanding we instantly repay our loans/debts to them, what would happen to us in that event?

I really think we are walking on eggshells as far as our relationship with China goes. It's a fragile interdependency.

That's one of the smartest things I read on this thread so far

It is definitely a fragile interdependency - and a very complicated one at that!

Most of the comments here are a little reductionistic, and they fail to recognise that the collapse of China economically, is not going to be the magic panacea for the US economy, that many seem to think.

Once again, well said ladyinwaiting! I like the way you think



[edit on 25-11-2009 by mckyle]

I ALREADY HAVE!

I refuse to buy Commie goods.

- My shirts come from the last shirt factory still operating in the UK, Coles of County Londonderry in Norther Ireland (bsides, after what they went through with the fighting for 30 years, they deserve it)

- My shoes come from Churchs shoes of Northampton in England They and Trickers are one of the last shoe companies in England. They would seem to to be astronomically expensive, BUT you can get excellent seconds (say with some tiny mark or scratch on the leather for half price by calling the factory shop.

- For toilet brushes etc, we buy from Vitalia of France and Rubbermaid which is still 100% Canadian made.

- For toys for kids, we always buy fabulous toy train stuff from Dapol, one of the very last toy manufacturers rto refuse to outsource to China. It is 100% made in Wales.

- For bed linen, we buy Estonian stuff from Ikea.

...IN short F**k You, Mao, you're not having our dough.