Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Apr 30, 2019 4:28 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:35 am
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It is hardly surprising that the tariffs drove up the price of foreign washers. Perhaps more unexpectedly, they also prompted American manufacturers to raise their prices.

Companies that largely sell imported washers, like Samsung and LG, raised prices to compensate for the tariff costs they had to pay. But domestic manufacturers, like Whirlpool, increased prices, too, largely because they could.

Unexpectedly? That's Econ 101. You are reducing competition by essentially setting a minimum price above the current price for some of the competitors in the market.

Trump administration accuses Chinese officials of ‘reneging’ on earlier commitments in trade talks, reaffirms plan to raise tariffs

The latest skirmish between the economic powerhouses began last week when Chinese officials made new demands in ongoing trade talks, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said. Those requests infuriated the president, who announced the new tariffs on Sunday.

Amid harsh rhetoric aimed at their counterparts, administration officials reaffirmed their plan to raise tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods on Friday at 12:01 a.m.

President Trump has shown little interest in removing the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed more than a year ago despite growing evidence Americans are paying a hefty price for these tariffs and increasing pressure from Republicans in Congress to remove them.

U.S. consumers and businesses are paying more than $900,000 a year for every job saved or created by Trump steel tariffs, according to calculations by experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The cost is more than 13 times the typical salary of a steelworker, according to Labor Department data, and it is similar to other economists’ estimates that Trump’s tariffs on washing machines are costing consumers $815,000 per job created.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2019 7:20 pm Canada is...I can't remember. I think unwilling to ratify the new NAFTA until the tariffs on steel and aluminum are removed.

Drumpf's fixation on those tariffs in particular has me thinking they are enriching him personally somehow.

Grifman wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2019 10:05 pm
No, it's just based upon his own personal bias and economic ignorance. Remember, he doesn't realize that consumers pay the tariffs, he thinks the foreign companies do, and has said so publicly multiple times.

China said on Monday it will adjust tariffs on a revised target list of $60 billion worth of U.S. imports, with additional rates of 20% to 25% in retaliation for a U.S. tariff hike on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

A total of 5,140 U.S. products will be subject to various tariff rates starting June 1, the finance ministry said in a statement.

An additional tariff of 25% will be levied against 2,493 goods including liquefied natural gas, the ministry said, and an additional tariff of 20% will be imposed on 1,078 products.

Beijing previously set additional rates of 5% and 10% on 5,207 U.S. products worth $60 billion in September, and warned at the time that it would counter any higher tariffs imposed by Washington on Chinese products.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 10:16 am Hey, he's playing 4d chess. Just be patient.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 10:29 am The economy would have crashed? Evidence?

LordMortis wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 10:29 am If he has a circle who know what he's going to tweet and when he's going to 180 or spin in circles, they are making an absolute killing in these last two plus years.

Alefroth wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 3:51 pm I'm not even sure what victory in this trade war looks like. What are we trying to get out of China?

S. President Donald Trump's administration has slapped tariffs on $250 billion worth of imports of Chinese goods to press demands for an end to policies - including industrial subsidies - that Washington says hurt U.S. companies competing with Chinese firms. China responded with its own tit-for-tat tariffs on U.S. goods.

The issue of industrial subsidies is thorny because they are intertwined with the Chinese government's industrial policy. Beijing grants subsidies and tax breaks to state-owned firms and to sectors seen as strategic for long-term development. Chinese President Xi Jinping has strengthened the state's role in parts of the economy.

In the push to secure a deal in the next month or so, U.S. negotiators have become resigned to securing less than they would like on curbing those subsidies and are focused instead on other areas where they consider demands are more achievable, the sources said.

Those include ending forced technology transfers, improving intellectual property protection and widening access to China's markets, the sources said. China has already given ground on those issues.

"It's not that there won't be some language on it, but it is not going to be very detailed or specific," one source familiar with the talks said in reference to the subsidies issue.

The role of the state firms may benefit the United States in another part of the trade deal. The Trump administration wants China to make big-ticket purchases of over a trillion dollars of U.S. goods in the next six years to reduce its trade surplus. The companies likely to make the purchases are the state-run firms, both sources said.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 2:01 am I'm getting a little worried about how the tarriffs are going to impact the kickstarters waiting to be delivered.

Board games and dice are included under the subheading: 9504.90.60. “Chess, checkers, backgammon, darts and o/table and parlor games played on boards of a special design and parts thereof; poker chips and dice.”

...

Public hearings on the proposal will start June 17. During this time companies and individuals can provide input on tariff levels to be imposed. Requests to exclude specific subheading will also be taken. The tariffs could be implemented any time after June 24.

stessier wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 9:16 am I know of companies that still do manufacturing in the States because of how fast the trade secrets would be stolen if they moved the processes to Asia. If they start enforcing IP law, I could see that changing. Unintended consequences and all that jazz.

President Obama pressed the issue of cyberthefts in his first meeting with President Xi in 2013, only to be met with more denials.
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A few days later, on September 25, 2015, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping met privately. As Obama recapped the meeting to the press, he said he had “raised once again our very serious concerns about growing cyberthreats to American companies and American citizens. I indicated that it has to stop. The United States government does not engage in cyber-economic espionage for commercial gain.” Then the president made an announcement in the Rose Garden that many US leaders had never thought they’d hear: “Today, I can announce that our two countries have reached a common understanding on the way forward. We’ve agreed that neither the US or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage. In addition, we’ll work together, and with other nations, to promote international rules of the road for appropriate conduct in cyberspace.” The breakthrough was later endorsed by the G-20, the rough equivalent of the first arms-control agreement ever reached in cyberspace.

“We did see the behavior of the Chinese change. I had been cynical about the agreement, but I was wrong,” Carlin recalls. “China, at least in a narrowly defined box, had agreed to a new cyber norm. Consistent with their agreement, they largely ceased state-sponsored hacking that targeted a private US company for the direct economic benefit of a Chinese competitor.”
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Donald Trump’s trade war against China has largely been couched as a way to punish China for its years of rampant intellectual property theft. And the official documents that make a case for that war have made scant mention of the progress that the Obama administration made. “After years of unsuccessful US-China dialogs, the United States is taking action to confront China,” wrote the US Trade Representative’s office, disregarding the quite successful dialog that took place at the Omni Shoreham hotel in 2015. If the US isn’t going to acknowledge that things ever got better, what incentive does China have to keep on good behavior?

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 9:52 am

stessier wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 9:16 am I know of companies that still do manufacturing in the States because of how fast the trade secrets would be stolen if they moved the processes to Asia. If they start enforcing IP law, I could see that changing. Unintended consequences and all that jazz.

Trade secrets aren't protected by traditional IP law though, right? That's why they are trade secrets rather than patents or whatever else.

Contrary to patents, trade secrets are protected without registration, that is, trade secrets are protected without any procedural formalities. Consequently, a trade secret can be protected for an unlimited period of time. For these reasons, the protection of trade secrets may appear to be particularly attractive for SMEs. There are, however, some conditions for the information to be considered a trade secret. Compliance with such conditions may turn out to be more difficult and costly than it would appear at first glance. While these conditions vary from country to country, some general standards exist which are referred to in Art. 39 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement):

• The information must be secret (i.e. it is not generally known among, or readily accessible to, circles that normally deal with the kind of information in question).
• It must have commercial value because it is a secret.
• It must have been subject to reasonable steps by the rightful holder of the information to keep it secret (e.g., through confidentiality agreements).

In most circumstances, there is nothing wrong with reverse engineering. The recently-enacted Defend Trade Secrets Act declares that it cannot be an “improper means” of acquiring information. (In fact, if you properly reverse engineer a product, the information you discover can be held by you as your own trade secret.) The reason behind the rule is apparent when you consider the limits of trade secret protection: selling a product that reveals the design and method of its manufacture means the secret is imperiled. If it is very easy to discern, then the secret is lost immediately. If it might take some time to figure out, then that’s called reverse engineering, and anyone is allowed to do it.

White House officials are scrambling to come up with a new bailout plan to placate furious farmers after President Trump’s initial idea of donating unused crops to poor countries came under scrutiny, people briefed on the planning said.

Amid intense political pressure from Senate Republicans, White House officials are eyeing different ways to advance funds to agriculture companies that have complained they are being caught in the middle of the escalating trade battle with China.
...
Trump already directed that the department pay out $12 billion to farmers last year who said they were rapidly losing funds because of new import penalties from China. But China signaled Monday that it plans to dramatically increase its restrictions in retaliation for tariffs that Trump has imposed on Beijing.
...
Hoeven said there was a chance that White House officials could attempt to purchase U.S. farm products and then give them to poor countries. A similar program was established under the Food for Peace Act.

But government officials have found that these programs are very difficult to administer, in part because it can be hard to move crops on a large scale to poor countries efficiently. There are also concerns that dumping large amounts of crops can disrupt the local farming infrastructure, and some poor countries do not need certain crops that could be in abundance in the United States, such as soybeans.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 10:30 am But you can legally reverse engineer trade secrets. And as soon as it is no longer secret, it is no longer protected (unless whoever reverse engineered it claims their process as a trade secret too).

In most circumstances, there is nothing wrong with reverse engineering. The recently-enacted Defend Trade Secrets Act declares that it cannot be an “improper means” of acquiring information. (In fact, if you properly reverse engineer a product, the information you discover can be held by you as your own trade secret.) The reason behind the rule is apparent when you consider the limits of trade secret protection: selling a product that reveals the design and method of its manufacture means the secret is imperiled. If it is very easy to discern, then the secret is lost immediately. If it might take some time to figure out, then that’s called reverse engineering, and anyone is allowed to do it.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 11:08 am WaPo

White House officials are scrambling to come up with a new bailout plan to placate furious farmers after President Trump’s initial idea of donating unused crops to poor countries came under scrutiny, people briefed on the planning said.

Amid intense political pressure from Senate Republicans, White House officials are eyeing different ways to advance funds to agriculture companies that have complained they are being caught in the middle of the escalating trade battle with China.
...
Trump already directed that the department pay out $12 billion to farmers last year who said they were rapidly losing funds because of new import penalties from China. But China signaled Monday that it plans to dramatically increase its restrictions in retaliation for tariffs that Trump has imposed on Beijing.
...
Hoeven said there was a chance that White House officials could attempt to purchase U.S. farm products and then give them to poor countries. A similar program was established under the Food for Peace Act.

But government officials have found that these programs are very difficult to administer, in part because it can be hard to move crops on a large scale to poor countries efficiently. There are also concerns that dumping large amounts of crops can disrupt the local farming infrastructure, and some poor countries do not need certain crops that could be in abundance in the United States, such as soybeans.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 10:30 am But you can legally reverse engineer trade secrets. And as soon as it is no longer secret, it is no longer protected (unless whoever reverse engineered it claims their process as a trade secret too).

In most circumstances, there is nothing wrong with reverse engineering. The recently-enacted Defend Trade Secrets Act declares that it cannot be an “improper means” of acquiring information. (In fact, if you properly reverse engineer a product, the information you discover can be held by you as your own trade secret.) The reason behind the rule is apparent when you consider the limits of trade secret protection: selling a product that reveals the design and method of its manufacture means the secret is imperiled. If it is very easy to discern, then the secret is lost immediately. If it might take some time to figure out, then that’s called reverse engineering, and anyone is allowed to do it.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 9:54 am If only someone had done something about it:

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 11:08 am WaPo

White House officials are scrambling to come up with a new bailout plan to placate furious farmers after President Trump’s initial idea of donating unused crops to poor countries came under scrutiny, people briefed on the planning said.

Amid intense political pressure from Senate Republicans, White House officials are eyeing different ways to advance funds to agriculture companies that have complained they are being caught in the middle of the escalating trade battle with China.
...
Trump already directed that the department pay out $12 billion to farmers last year who said they were rapidly losing funds because of new import penalties from China. But China signaled Monday that it plans to dramatically increase its restrictions in retaliation for tariffs that Trump has imposed on Beijing.
...
Hoeven said there was a chance that White House officials could attempt to purchase U.S. farm products and then give them to poor countries. A similar program was established under the Food for Peace Act.

But government officials have found that these programs are very difficult to administer, in part because it can be hard to move crops on a large scale to poor countries efficiently. There are also concerns that dumping large amounts of crops can disrupt the local farming infrastructure, and some poor countries do not need certain crops that could be in abundance in the United States, such as soybeans.

Yet nearly a year after Trump slapped tariffs on imported steel, the U.S. steel industry is not thriving. It is reeling. Steel prices have fallen back to pre-tariff levels. Employment is stagnant. The clearest sign that tariffs are not working, however, is the stock market.

So why has the market soured on American steel? One reason is that Trump’s tariffs, overall, hurt the industry far more than they help. Here is how we know.

For the first half of 2018, steel-producer stocks followed broad market performance, even after steel tariffs took effect. Then, while the S&P index kept rising, steel stocks took two dives—in mid-June and early August, as the graphic highlights—before re-tracking the market.

What happened in June and August? Just before each drop, Trump released lists of imports covered by tranches of his first $50 billion in China tariffs. Since 95 percent of these imports were intermediate goods, purchased by American firms, markets anticipated that the tariffs would push up their prices, reduce their output, and hurt their sales. Tariffs would, in turn, drive down their purchases of domestic inputs, like steel.

That tariffs are hurting American steel, the very industry they were imposed to help, shows just how misguided they are.