China blinks, sending trade envoy to Washington for talks
A Chinese trade envoy is on the way to Washington in a renewed effort to end a worsening tariff dispute that has raised worries it will chill global economic growth.
The delegation, led by a deputy commerce minister, will visit in late August to discuss “issues of mutual concern,” the Commerce Ministry announced Thursday. No details of a possible agenda were provided.
The two governments are poised to impose a new round of tariff hikes on $16 billion of each other’s goods next week in their worsening conflict over Beijing’s technology policy.
The Commerce Ministry said Beijing “reiterates its opposition to unilateralism and trade protectionism and does not accept any unilateral trade restrictions.”
This month’s meeting would be the first between senior U.S. and Chinese officials since June 3 talks in Beijing between Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Vice Premier Liu He ended with no settlement.
Following that, Washington imposed its first round of 25 tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods on July 6 in response to complains Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. China responded with similar penalties on American imports.
The Trump administration is due to impose similar increases on an additional $16 billion of Chinese imports on Tuesday. China’s government has issued a list of American goods for retaliation.
The world has never seen a POTUS like Trump, the master of the deal. Too wealthy to be bribed, does not suffer fools, and is unafraid of the media. Or anything else, for that matter.
This was inevitable. They get far more from the relationship than we do. As much as I like my cheap electronics, they are not even close to fair trading partners.
Trump knows that, and despite the wails and gnashing of teeth from the chattering class, he slapped the tariffs on. China has no choice but to come to the table, at least if they want to keep their social-capitalist Communist Republic, or whatever it is. Same with the Euro-Socialists.
I wondered how long it would take before they got nervous.
“The world has never seen a POTUS like Trump, the master of the deal. Too wealthy to be bribed, does not suffer fools, and is unafraid of the media. Or anything else, for that matter.“
God I hope we see a second term.
AMEN! and the whining snowflakes wake up to the fact we FINALLY have a President…!!
Ditto that and I am SO looking forward to seeing President Trump getting re-elected in 2020, hopefully by a landslide like Ronald Reagan had in 1984!
China is more pragmatic than many realize. It’s a country of billionaires and millionaires at the top. They send their kids to US, Australian, New Zealand, UK, and Canadian schools. What Trump is doing is hitting the Chinese power players in their personal pockets. He’s ignored their nationalistic defense loyalties, and gone straight for their personal wealth and families. It’s a brilliant strategy, not used until now.
I’ve worked in China for years, and keep an eye on the place from where I work now. Chinese are ready, willing and able to weather a trade war, much better than Americans are. Especially farmers. The $12 billion handout they just got isn’t going to go very far. As I write, other countries’ farmers are filling orders for all of the staples: corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat. American farmers will not get that market back, or if they do, prices will be much much lower. A market that took years to open is now closed. Period. It belongs to Brazil, Australia, Canada, and Argentina. My neighbors in WA state did not ship any stone fruits this summer (normally how they break even every year), and everybody growing apples wonders what the fuck they are going to do with them without the Chinese market. As far as the trade deficit itself: Every last item that gets on a boat in China and lands and discharges in the US was ordered and paid for by Americans. The Chinese aren’t running some racket where they force us to take the shit and then run through our pockets. I once ordered a new iPad through the Apple website. I was able to track it all the way from the factory in Chengdu to my front door. In 5 days. As for most of the plastic crap we buy from China, most of the value and profit is realized in the states by Americans. Last time I checked, if Walmart was a country by itself, it’d probably be among the top 10 trading partners from China. Nearly 80% of what it sells is Chinese, and 1000’s of Chinese manufacturers do nothing but fill WalMart orders. Here’s the way to address a trade deficit: Invent and make shit here that other countries want to pay good money for. Like enough money to balance trade, if that’s what you really want to achieve. The Chinese are not showing up hat in hand, it’s more a matter of it being their turn to travel during this round of… Read more »
“you can’t print money and issue debt if nobody’s buying”
“Hold my beer”- The Fed
(That’s a joke.)
I agree with your assessments.
The joke is on us.
Government is hermaphroditic; it issues debt then buys it from itself. It doesn’t need the people anymore.
Hard to innovate and open new markets when China just copies the intellectual property and government subsidizes cheaper products.
Who did Brazil, Australia, Canada, etc. sell their agricultural products to? Won’s they be looking for a replacement?
“Here’s the way to address a trade deficit: Invent and make shit here that other countries want to pay good money for.”
We do. The problem is the Chinese steal those inventions and make them in China, undercutting the US manufacturers.
The “global economy” is coming around to realizing they have had it too good for too long.
They can suck it up and continue to do business or they can just plain suck it.
Then Americans need to be willing to pay the consequences of dis-engaging from a global economy that they themselves promoted for the past 50 years. It won’t be pretty, especially for American workers & farmers. Wall Street will be okay with it, because they will make money whether the market goes up or down. The rest of us, not so good.
We are already paying those same consequences for the current system. Just not as well publicized.
And nobody (except those in favor of the current system) is saying those who want fair trade want to “disengage from a global economy”.
Manufacturing moves from one place to another with the way the wind blows.
American furniture used to be made in the Carolinas. Then it moved to Michigan. Then it moved to Japan. Now it’s in China.
Back in history? During the so-called Industrial Revolution, furniture in England came from France, Italy, Japan and China.
If I really, really want to go a whole lot further back, spices and silk came from China, rice came from Africa, and cotton came from Egypt/Middle East.
Nothing new here, nothing new to see.
Don’t fall for it. President Trump sees the long game and so does China. An America that can manufacture is terrible for China and that is what we are beginning to do again. Doesn’t matter what China offers we shouldn’t take it. It would be a short term nothing gain while furthering the decline of America. There are more important things than cheap Chinese crap and increasing stock margins.
This isn’t so much a trade war as it is national security issue and stoping decades of economic suicide to appease the stock market masters.
It should be a national security issue, but Trump is not acting that way. Up until the 1980’s we had strategic industries we kept going, and large stocks of strategic materials. Maintaining this system was regarded as a public good.
Nobody is willing to pay workers a living wage, -let alone the median wage for their state. I myself would sit at a plastic injection molding machine 12 hours a day if I could get $25 an hour. (That’s a few dollars below the average hourly wage in WA state).
Between purging immigrants (legal or not) and Americans being unwilling to do nasty hard work for peanuts, I don’t see manufacturing coming back in a big way any time soon.
I’ve been all over China. I’ve seen huge factories that cover as much as 50 acres, employing tens of thousands. It takes a lot to feed WalMart.
“Nobody is willing to pay workers a living wage,”
WTF does that even mean? Somehow, more than a couple of hundred million people in this country seem to be surviving pretty well in this country. At least judging by the number of recreational boats I have seen in the back yards of working class neighborhoods.
Before this moron jumps down my throat, I believe businesses ‘distribute’ wealth more effectively and efficiently than governments. So, a mandatory ‘living wage’ is commie code speak for ‘I don’t know how non-socialist markets work’
“Between purging immigrants (legal or not) and Americans being unwilling to do nasty hard work for peanuts, I don’t see manufacturing coming back in a big way any time soon.”
None of that makes a f**k of sense.
Not a fact, followed by bullsh*t, with supposition based on a hunch.
Man, you really must hate the pursuit of free market principles.
Should we then destroy machines that are making shit instead of people? There’s a word for that: “Luddite” -look it up. At least 1/3 of jobs have been lost to automation.
Friends who are farmers on the east side of the Cascades are now only calculating how much they’ll be leaving on the trees or in the fields. Nobody there to pick process and move. And they have been told Chinese importers are now ordering this fall’s stuff from the EU, thanks to the tariffs.
Are you by any chance under the impression that when we impose tafiffs on other countries’ products that somehow those countries pay us some money? Because it does not work that way. You the consumer end up paying, as the importers pass the 25% along to you.
As for tariffs China and EU impose on our products, once the 25% is slapped on, the Chinese or European importers (and customers) cancel orders from the US and place them with other producing and exporting countries. To do otherwise would add 25% to the cost.
For example: Both Boeing and Airbus (and now Embraer/RJ/Bompardier) make medium-sized passenger jets. China can cancel B737-XXX orders and place them with Airbus for the A320-XXX series. French workers win, American workers lose. Chinese airlines still have an acceptable and safe way to fly people from point A to point B. At 25% less for hardware than if they’d bought Boeing.
Tell me more.
Ex PH 2 is right.
Everything we get from China could just as easily be made in Vietnam.
Or Laos. Or the Philippines. Or any other cheap labor country.
I doubt the manufacturing will come back to the U.S. as labor cost is much higher here.
I checked my Hanes stuff. “Made in Thailand”. Thai people gotta eat, too, you know.
And there are still sweat shops in the rag district in New York City.
Lumber prices are way up.
I just bought some really nice plywood stamped “Product of Chile”
In Northern Maine.
And why cannot a piece of plywood be bought in Maine that was made in either Maine, they still have trees don’t they?, or Canada, cheaper or even for the close same price V a piece shipped half way around the world?
“they still have trees don’t they?”
Yes, more than you could imagine.
Plywood is made from veneering large logs which are mostly down south (yellow pine) or in the northwest.
Maine trees (poplar) go mostly to OSB and LDL while pulp wood gets hauled by truck to a seaport, shipped to China, made into paper products and shipped back here.
The real lumber disputes are US/Canada
Canada cuts US wood then ships it to Canadian mills then sells the lumber back to us.
There’s yer global economy.
Preach it Dude. Should’ve had my sarc light on. I’m in GA, we’ve had massive shut down of mills, logging outfits, GA/Pac selling off timber lands ect. As many pines we still have in GA, Home Depots Distribution Center in ATL ships out Southern Pine 2Xs stamped china. Sucks
Paper mills in Maine are gone.
The timber lands sold off to Irving of Canada. Thats how they cut US wood for their mills.
Textile mills…gone
Shoe shops….gone
You either work for Irving or dig potatos.
Gonna get interesting, plus down & dirty before it’s over. Prior to the War Between The States, 80% of the Federal Treasury came from tariffs on imports/export thru Southern Ports. The income taxes instituted during WTBS and again in the WWI era gave the Feds a new and more controllable revenue stream. Demoncans and Republicrats alike have sucked up at the trough, with Wall Street, for the most part, being the biggest winner. Oct of 29 changed a lot of that. Back on topic, I DO NOT buy anything at a wally world. Saw first hand how that company destroyed small town America, put thousands of Mom and Pop shops out of business, even helped to take out smaller manufacturers. They also have not had a good track record on how they treat the employees. One reason why they can’t get and keep decent help. NAFTA started the biggest most modern decline of manufacturing in the US, what didn’t go to Mexico was beating feet to Korea. Big push for Chinese built crap started in that time frame also. One of our factory Reps, when asked how that particular product could sell for such a low price simply stated, “Well we are not paying any labor to speak of, and mush is cheap.” I have made a very spirited attempt, for a long time now, to not buy any made in china product. It has gotten very difficult, as we all know. I’m afraid that Burma Bob is very correct in the farm market situation. The US Farmer can still feed the world, but the $ being allocated is going to, either the very large corporate concerns, or the major processors like ADM ect. The smaller farmers, to my personal knowledge, in Nebraska. Iowa, South Dakota are not seeing. or will not see, any of that $. I also agree with the posters who emphasize that this is not a trade tariff problem as much as it is a National Security problem. We need to have our own means of building whatever it is that we may want to consume… Read more »
Then you better give up shopping at chain convenience stores, chain restaurants, just about every gas station in the country, hardware stores, banks, Sam’s club, BJs, Toys ‘R Us, etc….
Good luck finding a pair of shoes. Then there is the food industry. You are going to need an awfully big garden to replace the meats, vegetable, and fruits grown by those big corporations that put small farmers out of business.
You are right TA. Have already done most of that. No choice on the gas, have to buy that. Do my best to trade with independents, again they are hard to find. Grows a little garden and put up as much as I can, just me & my lady friend that checks up on me. Have taken real good care of my tools, hand, and hope I don’t have to replace them. Shoes, yeah that is tough. Been buying my work boots from Hall Safety Supply, and so far all of their stuff is still made here. When this ‘puter and the TV Set dies, will be forced into china built crap, cause that’s about all that’s available. Wasn’t saying I could make it without china, but I make a very spirited attempt; checking all made in labels, and using the www to find American or other country sources. Hell, we gotta start some where. Right now, it sucks to be the Patriotic American Consumer, unless price is your only consideration. Hoping my two vehicles I own, Ford & Saturn, last as long as I do, cause the next one, even it assembled here, is eat up with chinese parts.
While you guys are whining about stuff being made in China, overseas, etc., and why it isn’t all made here, there are a few things that go with some of that manufacturing that you’ve forgotten. 1 – China doesn’t give a flying fart in space how much land is polluted with heavy metals from its manufacturing industry. It was not so very long ago that the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was in flames from that same kind of pollution. If you want to return to that, let someone know, okay? 2 – Chinese manufacturers pay crap wages and give no benefits. Period. No pension, no SSRI, no nothing. You work or you starve. 3 – If you want to blame anyone for any of this, blame companies like Apple. The iPad and iPhone cost about $10 or so to snap together in China, and buyers, who don’t give a crap about that, pay $600++ for those things. The mimics, like what you’re dragging around in your pocket or car, don’t cost you as much, but they are all made over there and cost ZIP to produce. And as I said, the Chinese don’t care how much pollution they create in the manufacturing process. 3 – I think it’s legit to blame unions for driving wages sky high. This also generates inflation in purchasing prices. But do you really want to give up your cozy paycheck and go back to working at a gas station for $.25/hr? I’d rather do my own canning and preserving, if possible, so I’ll support a farmers market if it’s within reach. But when I see in the e-mail that the “farmer” has brought in tomatoes from Michigan instead of growing them on his own property, I’m inclined to take a jaundiced view of that. On the other hand, land taxes are becoming more and more prohibitive, so that having a plot of ground with enough room to grow a garden that will provide you/your family with food for the fall through winter and into spring is more costly than practical if you live in a… Read more »
Preach it to the choir Ex!
I don’t see any ‘bubble’ growth right now, but there are things that resemble Ponzi schemes, like Bitcoin and its mining modules. But if those things deflate, it will be because everyone has pulled out their cash value, as happened with the Beanie Babies.
The guesstimate COLA for 2019 in SSRI and VADC is 3.0 to 3.5%, but that’s not going to be confirmed until October.
Since Toys ‘R’ Us closed all its stores about six weeks ago, I’m wondering what is going to move in to take its place. It may be that the era of the Big Box stores is coming to an end. People do like smaller shops, with friendlier staff, and I see small independent grocers starting up where the bigger chain groceries are starting to fail.
I don’t think China can afford a real war, because all OUR manufacturing would most likely be withdrawn, leaving them high and dry.
Yeah, big box stores and the retail space held by big banks.
If you thought the debt crisis caused by residential consumers was bad…
Just you wait until the banks start trying to unwind their bad paper on commercial holdings.
I’m in a well heeled suburb in CT, even with the ‘recovery/boom’ occupancy is somewhere in the 80%.
The economy changed drastically 15 years ago but the banks have been propped up with low interest ratesin the interim, shaking like fiends, addicted to cheap money, telling us ‘this time they’ll change’.
Horse. Sh*t.
There’s an indoor shopping malle near me that is slowly losing its chain stores. It is also losing business to the parking lot shopping center across the street. And even some of the Big Box stores are moving more toward online shopping/shipping to save rent space.
I wonder if these changes mean that we’ll go back to the Sears catalog shopping like things used to be. You can still get print copies of catalogs if you ask for them.
That Bowie song ‘Changes’ keeps running through my head now.
About the Sears catalogue, it’s already happening (see: the Internet).
The major issue here is the bulk of subjective value of financial institutions (read: their fitness to borrow, stock price) is based on ratings. The same crap the cabal of ratings agencies (Moody’s, S&P, Fitch) did running up to ‘08 is the same thing that is happening now, looking the other way while the Foundation crumbles.
“On the other hand, land taxes are becoming more and more prohibitive…”
Here in CT I pay almost 10% in property taxes. Let that sink in. Property taxes, and taxes in general, have become regressive to the point anyone that has the means would be better suited to leave. If you apply this model to the county at large what RATIONAL mind would BLAME the corporations?
Add to this, the growing, never corrected government subsidies of housing. This system is usury plain and simple, both sides have benefited from its corruption.
No. F**king. More.