Can somebody explain to me how China is screwing us?

[piezoe]

The headline is 'jobs' of course: you shouldn't be making things cheaper for us to buy, by using your cheap labor versus our more-expensive labor. We demand the unreality of $10 shoes AND a $20/hr domestic labor rate to make 'em. (And LOTS of $20/hr domestic workers, too!)

But the real deal (as you might surmise) is the intellectual property theft (in the $B, annually), one-way technological transfers ($B annually), AND THEN THE LACK of reciprocity re our ability to participate in the Chinese market. (Remember: they are hitting their LOWS of GDP *GROWTH* 6%+ annually!! over the last few years -- that is a Holy Shit!! economy, nearly 100% closed to foreign providers or foreign ownership. [What *has* opened up has been dribs and drabs, and nearly wholly without legal recourse should 'the rules' change at all. "Whattttttt???"])

From what we are told your remarks are correct. But we may not be fully informed. I recall when General Motors complained that the Japanese would not buy U.S. made cars even when they became available in Japan; consequently General Motors sought tariffs on Japan made cars imported into the U.S. Later we learned that GM had been attempting to sell U.S. made cars that had not been adapted to the Japanese market, i.e., big cars with big engines and steering wheels on the wrong side!

 

[tommcginnis]

From what we are told your remarks are correct. But we may not be fully informed. I recall when General Motors complained that the Japanese would not buy U.S. made cars even when they became available in Japan; consequently General Motors sought tariffs on Japan made cars imported into the U.S. Later we learned that GM had been attempting to sell U.S. made cars that had not been adapted to the Japanese market, i.e., big cars with big engines and steering wheels on the wrong side!

I grant your points 101%, but I have to point out an irony, too: I was teaching econ through most of the financial crisis→Great Recession, and had to point out that the old saw of "What's good for GM is good for America!" was WAY no-longer true: instead, since about Y2000, GM's major manufacturing site matched their major marketing effort: China. Think about the governmental efforts to float one of the largest *conglomerates* in America, under the guise of "saving American Jobs!" that was going on -- and all the while, Wall Street, CNBC, Bloomberg, anybody-that-was-anybody (Oh, and some twinkie economist teach 8,000 sections of Community College Econ 201...) ALL KNEW IT WAS BULLSHIT. That's irony, man.

 

[SunTrader]

"But most economists are long on theory and short on practical results.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith in 1978 famously predicted that General Motors so dominated the auto business that other companies would be foolish to try to compete. At that time, the unionized GM held 46 percent of the market. But other companies eroded its dominance over the next three decades. In 2008, GM was rescued with a government bailout. By 2014, the auto giant commanded just 17 percent of the market."

From Fed Up (2017) by Danielle DiMartino Booth