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AAFTA and China Tariffs

5K views 105 replies 36 participants last post by  Adam Saarinen 
#1 ·
#38 ·
This is their sandbox. The AFFTA is the American Fly Fishing Trade Association. They're made up of FF tackle manufacturers, fly shops, and outfitters, and they act to promote the industry and the businesses of their members. If they believe it's detrimental to the industry and to their businesses to have to pay 30% more for goods imported from China, they certainly have a right to criticize the person responsible for it.
 
#11 ·
U.S. still believes climate change is made up by the democratic extremists. So who's really the bad guy now? Trump's trade ban is going to hurt both economies.

https://www.belfercenter.org/public...a-and-us-policies-meet-climate-change-targets[/QUOTE]
Could not agree more. 17000 years ago North America was covered with 30000 feet of Ice. Long befor man walked the earth. But now a certain party is declaring total devastation in 12 years.
 
#14 ·
I wonder why half the people in this country would want to see the innovative capabilites in the US be degraded in favor of assembly and manufacturing power. Do you guys want to be the best at creating new technology, state of the art medical science, or smelting steel?
 
#16 ·
I don't like buying stuff from China, but my fiancée just bought me 100 3mm holographic eyes direct from China for under 1 euro. And the bigger the size & the more you buy the cheaper they get. I remember on another site years ago, one of the guys from Fly Fish Food saying you can buy 14,000 holographic eyes direct for only $80
 
#17 ·
Dear acronym associations from the linked article,

I don’t recall seeing your associations as it concerns the Pebble Mine, global economic, global social, or global environmental issues either. You’re not on Yelp either.

Your ability to absorb $69B in 10 months makes you rich. You should pay more of a fair share in taxes.

Outraged,

Now give me free stuff
 
#28 ·
Much ado about nothing-we have plenty of bad apples to deal with right here in red, white and blue land. Remember Pharma Bro from a few years back raising the price of Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750? Now there's a tariff to get exited about-especially if you need Daraprim. And just last week the CEO of Gilead was before congress to answer why the HIV drug Truvada was being sold in the US for $2,000 a prescription when the same drug was being sold in Australia for $8. No real answer other than "because we can". When our own people can give us such a royal screwing it is just a blueprint for others to take advantage of our gullibility. We have been shafting other countries for decades on raw materials and I guess we are getting a little uncomfortable with the fact that those guys are trying to beat us at our own game.
 
#31 ·
Much of the grief with our manufacturing sector can be traced to the growth of the CEO culture in this country. These high rollers have learned how to cultivate the maximum profit from their position and are more interested in gaining another spot in the Fortune 400 than developing cutting edge manufacturing processes. The average CEO pay is said to be from 261 to 360 X what the average wage is for an American worker. These are the same guys that will fight wage increases, health care and benefit packages for their workers while raking in multi million dollar salaries and bonus's. By letting another country supply the labor, do the design and make the capitol investment in infrastructure these CEO's have little to do but rake in the profits. They no longer have to think or manage to any degree and as we have seen so often they fail frequently as a result of their own incompetence and egos. It matters little though as most receive a golden parachute for their performance no matter how bad. Failure is anticipated in their contracts and they will get paid no matter what.

We are rewarding the wrong guys and handicapping the strength of our work force while stifling innovation. The USA used to be a feared technological megalith with our products desired around the world. Today we have become just "me too" as other countries surge ahead investing in new technology while we continue to invest in CEO's. A poor investment by any measure.
 
#34 · (Edited)
Sadly, this is very true.

Case in point. My FIL was a nationally leading salesman for a major automotive part manufacturer and watched helplessly as the corporation was driven into the ground by "entitled" senior management (on a side note, he says there's actually a lot of truth about the business in the movie Tommy Boy). Anyway, one particularly greedy, and incompetent, CEO walked away with a ridiculous severance package (millions per year) as a "punishment".

This gets back to what I see as the key word to fixing pretty much everything in this country. That word is "incentive". Incentive for productivity, innovation, team work, and just plain hard work, have largely been destroyed by entitlements at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum.

The other incentive killer being opportunity, or lack thereof. I feel for many young people starting out in today's economy. Between the cost of housing and healthcare, I can understand why some just say "screw-it" and turn to drugs or other self-destructive life choices. Not that I condone those choices, just that I can understand giving up when "success" in the usual sense seems completely out of reach.

And just for the record. I'm not in the left or the right camps. Both have valid points to make, but both are also failing to listen to valid criticisms from the opposing sides. Politics has devolved into something more like sports. To the point it seems values are being based on doing the polar opposite of what the rival "team" is espousing.

So, it boils down to this: We can't have effective social programs without a strong economy to support them, but we also can't have a strong economy (or at least one worth having) in the absence of a functioning, healthy society.

The key to restoring balance between those two, besides compromise (gasp), isn't the redistribution of wealth, it's the redistribution of incentive.
 
#35 ·
I completely agree with the notion we need to re-establish manufacturing in this country. As has been said, not everyone can be a doctor, a lawyer, or a software engineer, and that doesn't make them any less useful (I'd argue necessary) in a functioning society. Well-paying manufacturing jobs were the backbone of the middle class. As has also been said, it was corporations (enabled by the Citizens United ruling that established them as individuals for lobbying purposes, so... Congress) that "globalized" economies, shifted labor and manufacturing overseas to maximize corporate profit. Now, the same people who profited from that transition are essentially trying to beat the monster they have created in China into submission to our trade whims. As most of us who've lived longer than about 10 years understand, "You can't have it both ways."

Incidentally, from a local point of view, I REALLY like the idea of exporting milled lumber overseas, as opposed to whole trees. At the edge of almost every depressed community in Western WA lies a dormant timber mill. Bringing those back to life might do a lot to help those communities. Sadly, I fear the top brass at the timber companies (more CEOs) might be profiting more from selling whole trees, so they might be the hardest to convince it's a good idea....
 
#37 · (Edited)
I completely agree with the notion we need to re-establish manufacturing in this country. As has been said, not everyone can be a doctor, a lawyer, or a software engineer, and that doesn't make them any less useful (I'd argue necessary) in a functioning society. Well-paying manufacturing jobs were the backbone of the middle class.
Yes, with one exception that the traditional concept of manufacturing jobs being "low brow" occupations is itself obsolete. Which was the point I was trying to make in my first post. As products become more sophisticated, it's only natural that the technology required to create them must advance in complexity as well.

Often, this relationship is non-linear. In the case of shrinking transistor sizes we're pretty much at the wall with regard to optical printing technology. The link on EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) Lithography illustrates just how far this technology is being pushed. In a nutshell, to image smaller features (transistors) we need to use shorter wavelengths of light. Get this, to generate the 13.5 nm EUV light source, a CO2 laser fires 20 kilowatt pulses at droplets of molten tin, ionizing them into a plasma that fluoresces at the EUV wavelength. And that's just to turn on the "light bulb" inside the 180 ton, $120M "projector", that has a support crew of 50 engineers and technicians. This "manufacturing" stuff is up there with, and arguably beyond anything NASA is doing:

https://www.euvlitho.com/2017/S1.pdf

But I digress. Manufacturing jobs ain't what they used to be. Even in my case, working in a 20 year old "Fab" (semiconductor plant). In another time and industry, my equivalent title would be a "mill wright". Essentially a glorified mechanic with limited engineering functions. And while there are similarities in that I perform preventative maintenance (i.e. cleaning, lubing), trouble-shooting, replacing failed components, etc... I also have to perform metrology setups, understand SPC (Statistical Process Control), of which there are literally thousands of charts that can flag, and interpret what a parameter in alarm means in terms of what's really happening inside a machine. Many times that leads to process engineering coming to us (equipment engineering) for help.

So even though I'm just a lowly technician by title, I routinely have discussions with a process engineer who has a Master's in chemical engineering and a PhD in physics. Topics can range from issues associated with viscosity in photoresist, to optical changes in exposure systems due to changes in barometric pressure. I've also managed to pull off 3 utility patents. Not exactly the kind of blue collar stuff typically associated with a "factory" job.

The point being, from my perspective the idea that manufacturing is somehow devoid of opportunities for critical thinking, cutting-edge innovation, and need for higher education, is utterly and completely absurd. Sure, packing a bazillion transistors into a cell phone (so small they would look like jelly beans next to a bacterium scaled to the size of a cantaloupe) is pretty much the same as shoveling coke into a blast furnace.

Sarcasm aside, in reality, if that job function still existed in the US (?), it would be automated and tightly controlled through instrumentation and SPC. So yes, fewer jobs than a traditional steel mill but better paying jobs that are more technical in nature.
 
#36 · (Edited)
Shad great post, and I would like to build on one of your points. The groups that drove globalization were politicians on both sides who for some odd reason felt that selling raw materials abroad and letting them add value to the product made sense, which flies in the face of Econ 101. It was populists like Ross Perot who, with charts flying, warned against a "giant sucking sound" as middle class jobs moved to Mexico, and boy was he right. The mainstream politicians thought NAFTA was just a swell idea and thought Perot was crazy (as he was a bit ;)). So yeah, we did make lop sided trade agreements favoring other countries over our own, and we did almost single-handedly fund NATO long past the reconstruction phase in Europe following WW II.
Now that jobs, wages, manufacturing, and all economic indicators are soaring it will be harder for the CEO/political elites to argue that capitalism no longer works. The globalists are poised in the wings, though, as they don't like a bunch of peasants and serfs controlling things. Time will tell.
 
#44 · (Edited)
I can see both sides of this issue. I f'ing cannot stand President Trump, but also agree that China has taken advantage of the situation.

I lived and worked in China for 4 years, have a Chinese wife, and love the Chinese people; their government, not at all.

I agree something needs to be done about the situation, and that previous administrations, D and R, have done little or nothing about the worsening problem. My issue with the current back and forth is that, as a person holding a degree in International Relations, I feel that these things should have been discussed quietly. I don't even mind threats of across-the-board tariffs, but doing so in a public way paints both sides into a corner. The Asian concept of "face" is not well understood in The West, but I can tell you that if you make these threats publicly, the Chinese simply cannot back down; it's a cultural thing. I saw it on a commercial level many times. The issues could have all - ALL - been handled by discreet negotiations. We could have gotten far more than we will now. Bank on it.

There is a story about former Ambassador to the UN Patrick Moynihan. He wanted a contentious vote in the UN General Assembly to go our way, but it looked like it would not. He met with dozens of other countries' representatives privately, quietly, and would have a conversation that went like this: "So, what about this upcoming vote? Pretty interesting issue, eh? How do you think your country will vote? By the way, I just spoke with the President about the foreign aid we've been giving your country. He asked me if I felt it should be continued. What do you think?" He won his vote. Nobody knew about this, and the countries were not publicly - or explicitly - threatened. THAT is diplomacy.
 
#61 ·
I can see both sides of this issue. I f'ing cannot stand President Trump, but also agree that China has taken advantage of the situation.
The issues could have all - ALL - been handled by discreet negotiations. We could have gotten far more than we will now. Bank on it.
.
This is not a criticism of your post, as you have personal experience, but in all these years there hasn't been a single person capable of these "discreet negotiations"? Madeline Albright, John Kerry, Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger?
 
#51 ·
I'm aware that the US is near the top of the CEO pay scale. We have the strongest economic system in the world the past decade or so and the US leads the world in tech, medical innovations and tens of thousands of students from all over the world come to US yearly and pay top dollar to study at our universities ,which in my view are way over priced ,
but that's another discussion. Foreign Investors seem to prefer investing their monies in the US over other stagnant countries due to the stability of system. I could go on and on...

For all the doom and gloom we've been bombarded with the past two years and the idiots who had tantrums and said they would leave to evil US and live in Canada or Europe ( none followed through on their promises) well the US must do something right.

[

QUOTE="mtskibum16, post: 1495667, member: 10094"]The US is on another level though as far as the pay gap between CEOs and the workers when compared to much of the world. Chart pulled from statista.

View attachment 202840 [/QUOTE]
 
#60 ·
For all the doom and gloom we've been bombarded with the past two years and the idiots who had tantrums and said they would leave to evil US and live in Canada or Europe ( none followed through on their promises) well the US must do something right.
And you know none of them have followed through how? And does this have anything to do with losing manufacturing jobs in the USA or trade wars?
 
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