US immigration authorities said on Friday that they had detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided Hyundai’s sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia, where the Korean automaker makes electric vehicles.
The Pew Research Center, citing preliminary Census Bureau data, said the US labour force lost more than 1.2 million immigrants from January through July.
I would be a little bit surprised if the people in charge of high-level trade are that simple-minded.
China was already a great reliable trade partner. They have other issues as does any nation, but attractiveness for trade wasn’t really one of them, they were already pretty bangin’ in that regard, and the US losing its status as a good investment doesn’t suddenly mean that Chinese markets will become always a safe investment by default. I feel like these narratives like “trade relations = loyalty and friendship, there can be only one favorite nation-crush” are sort of for public consumption.
Their changing in business patterns shows it’s the very opposite of them being simple-minded:
I business terms, the biggest negative that the Trump Administration added to Trading in and with the US and US-based Suppliers and Customers is uncertainty - you never know when they’re going to do something that fucks up your business: in other words, Trump made the Risk around doing business in America or with US-based companies and customers far higher.
Risk is one of the biggest considerations in evaluating business plans and the more competent and professional a company’s management is the more likely they’ll do thorough evaluations of any business prospects, something which always includes risk considerations. In fact an entire Industry exists dedicated to manage such risks: the Finance Industry.
Only shitty shit little companies rely of the “gut feelings” of the business owner to evaluate business opportunities.
So yeah, in business plan models all over the World, anything which directly or indirectly can be influenced by the actions of the American Administration just got a big chunk of Risk added, whilst no such thing was added to such plans involving other countries, hence doing business with America is now less appealing that doing business with other countries, in a very direct way.
My expectation is that for most countries even the Tariffs themselves (which for most aren’t all that scary) haven’t as much impact in making America less attractive for business than the sheer unpredictability of the US Administration.
See that all makes sense. What the other guy said was what I was pushing back on.
Well, I read “Trumpian Fascism” as including the whole random, incompetent and unthinking abusive usage of American Trade tools that’s making the risk profile of American explode.
Even plain old Fascists are profoundly incompetent, with policies which even when they seem positive upfront invariably have side effects that completly undo any good of those policies and more, plus their authoritarianism means those things are invariably forced on the say so of at best a handful of party faithfull - Fascists definitelly don’t put the views of specialists above those from non-expert party loyalists, and they’re almost never patient enough to wait for the right time and doing it at the right rate when enacting their policies.
Trump seems to even more incompetent, reckless and even dumber than most “plain old Fascists”, hence why I read “Trumpian Fascism” as meaning a particularly bad version of all that shit.
Under that reading of mine, what the other poster wrote is a summary version (roughly just the conclusions, without the rationale) of what I wrote.
So you stopped reading at “Trumpian Fascism,” 4 words into the message, and decided to miss “will make China look good” and all the other stuff that I was disagreeing with? Glad we got that sorted out lol.
I agree with what you’re saying now, still just not sure what it has to do with public opinion polls in Korea or “make China look good.”
Well, I mentally added “relative to America” to that “will make China look good”: Trump’s actions have made China look good relative to America.
China isn’t really any better “looking” than before, it’s just that Trump has tilted the balance against America, and hence favored other nations, China being IMHO one of the best placed to win from it in International Trade terms because they’re already a massive manufacturing and exporting nation - the need for products and services is still there and if America made itself a less reliable partner, then somebody else will be taking the place of America in the trade partnerships that will now exclude America and China seems likely to be a big winner from that.
This doesn’t just apply in Trade terms. In Geostrategical terms Trump’s Risk (and the risk of any future Trump-like president) also applies - just notice what’s happening to Ukraine - and the change in the perception of America as a reliable geostrategical partner will also benefit other countries which vie for primacy in the geostrategical arena, again most notably China which seems to be the most likely nation to in this century replace America as the top power in the World.
In multiple arenas, if you can’t trust potential partners you chose different partners or treat them and their promises with extra skepticism.
This is were the public opinion polls in Korea come in: if people in Korea see America as less reliable (i.e. more risky) they will tend to do business with America less, and that’s not just in individuals and businesses trading less with America and American businesses but also at the level of governments trusting the promises of American governments less and hence taking preventive measures for the possibility that America won’t uphold its promises.
In practice that means less trade with America - which as I explained above likely benefits China the most - and also in military and diplomatic terms having a less adversarial relationship with China so as to reduce the military and diplomatic risks from China, because Korea can’t rely as much on America to help dissuade China from any funny business in Korea so has to thread more lightly - this too benefits China as a Korea which wants to appease China is more likely to offer them diplomatic concessions than otherwise.
Again, none of this means China’s appeal has increased, it just means that relatively to that of the major military, trade and diplomatic power which is the US, China’s appeal went up.
It’s more America losing than China winning.
Sounds great! For the nth time, it sounds like we agree on pretty much everything you just said. I think your extensive lectures need to be directed at the person I replied to, not at me.