[HN Gopher] 30% of world GDP signed a trade agreement yesterday
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30% of world GDP signed a trade agreement yesterday
Author : contingencies
Score : 81 points
Date : 2020-11-15 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smh.com.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smh.com.au)
| stevofolife wrote:
| Poor Taiwan
| cute_boi wrote:
| the way India backed off from such trade agreement makes me
| worries.
| nitrobeast wrote:
| worried about india or the agreement?
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| 10% of the 30% is China's GDP, and another 10% relies on Chinese
| inputs for their GDP outputs. So, the title might just as
| accurately read: 10% of global GDP accepted Chinese hegemony.
| Don't believe me?
|
| Ask yourself how free "free" is a "free trade" agreement when one
| side:
|
| - Has a per capita fraction of the environmental
| regulations/costs.
|
| - Has a per capita fraction of the social program costs.
|
| - Has a per capita fraction of the labor/union costs.
|
| - Has a per capita fraction of the regulatory/I.P. costs.
|
| - Provides tax incentives for export.
|
| - Manipulates its currency to undercut global pricing.
|
| - Has no foreign bribe prohibitions.
|
| The world's one and only attempt to check Chinese economic
| domination died when Trump lost his reelection bid. It is now a
| race to curry favor with Beijing.
|
| This post will be downvoted into oblivion because it says thing
| people don't want said and that others don't want to believe.
| threeseed wrote:
| Trump had a lot of rhetoric over China but was weak on action.
|
| Pulling out of TPP was a massive geo-political and economic win
| for China. And nothing was done about widespread IP theft,
| trade imbalances, data sovereignty concerns or the use of trade
| to influence other country's policies.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Your mental model of China as a pure producer who undercuts
| everyone else just isn't accurate. Many of the countries in
| this deal actually have a trade _surplus_ with China, meaning
| that they 're exporting to China more than China is exporting
| to them.
| ben_w wrote:
| America has a bigger economy than China, and the EU was (pre-
| Brexit) roughly equal to China.
|
| To the extent that I expect China to dominate the global
| economy for the next century or so, it is because I expect
| others to choose to fight amongst themselves instead of
| choosing to build and grow, and not because of China itself.
| moralsupply wrote:
| I have a contrarian view on this. I believe that China is
| heading to an economic collapse during this decade.
|
| The Chinese economy is effectively a huge bubble fed by
| monetary stimulus, and it doesn't seem to be sustaining its
| historical growth since the 2010's -- although nobody really
| knows what's going on there, given that the PCC discloses
| information that favors whatever narrative they want. In any
| case, it may quite well happen that Covid has been
| accelerating the Chinese economy's demise.
|
| The PCC is very aware that the country is in trouble, and
| this is evidenced on how bellicose they're getting in the
| last few years, as a matter of desperation.
|
| On the top of that, the Chinese population is increasingly
| becoming aware of the corruption in its government. The
| number of conflicts between the population and the PCC has
| progressively been escalating.
| cambalache wrote:
| > I believe that China is heading to an economic collapse
| during this decade.
|
| This has been said during the last 30 years at the very
| least. It's not going to happen, white Americans must
| accept that they will not longer be rulers of this planet.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| Nah, China will dominate because we the western world have at
| least some scruples and decided that economic growth must not
| come with complete disregard for worker safety or
| environmental concerns. But for some reason, if we just pay
| China to slave drive their people and pollute on our behalf,
| then it's ok.
|
| Please tell me why you think I'm wrong.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| Sad to see that this point being ignored.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Getting down voted because rump only made things worse. Those
| soybean contracts he was touting as part of a phase 1 deal with
| china, Chain went to Brazil and I doubt they'll come back and
| buy from America in any where near their pretrade-war-that-is-
| easy-to-win state. https://en.mercopress.com/2020/10/28/china-
| takes-51-4-more-s....
|
| rump fucked the farmers in favor of the agribusinesses.
| Animats wrote:
| Not including Taiwan, of course.
| LittlePeter wrote:
| I genuinely wonder if Taiwan can claim to be part of this
| agreement? Claiming so would implicitly acknowledge they are
| China, which they would be unwilling to do I think.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I thought a large part of the contention was that Taiwan did
| consider themselves to be China. The real Chinese government
| anyways, in exile.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Having China, Japan and South Korea in single trade agreement
| really is pretty remarkable, imagine that a hundred years ago.
| Given the uncertainties right now it seems pretty positive that
| at least in Asia there's still a relatively broad commitment to
| free trade.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| If you think this agreement represents "free trade" then you
| don't understand how these things work.
| person_of_color wrote:
| go on...
| phkahler wrote:
| Let's use NAFTA as an example. Free trade between the US,
| Canada, and Mexico should be something you can explain
| (ELI5) in one or two pages. A lawyer might extend that to
| 10 to 20 pages to make it formal using legalese. The actual
| agreement ran over 700 pages and included carve outs for
| all sorts of things for many different companies and
| industries. It was a trade agreement. Maybe there were some
| "free" parts in it too but it did not establish "free
| trade" in general.
| andrepd wrote:
| The world is a complicated messy place. A newspaper
| webpage has how many hundreds of pages of js code? 700
| pages of legalese "source code" for a free trade
| agreement between ~500 million people doesn't seem that
| bad.
| vmception wrote:
| *1.5 billion?
| cambalache wrote:
| Nafta
| wenc wrote:
| I believe parent is talking about NAFTA (or USMCA)
| countries. The population covered under the agreement is
| 493 mil.
| vmception wrote:
| Sounds like something worth reading before the general
| public understands it :)
|
| I haven't been this excited since I read the entire CARES
| Act
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| A definition of "free trade" that excludes the kinds of
| things free trade treaties typically do just doesn't seem
| very helpful for describing the world.
| H8crilA wrote:
| What does this mean in practice? They will not have tariffs on
| everything/some things? Does this cap tariffs? Does this uncap
| capital flows, especially crossing the mainland China border?
| Does this cap FX exchange rates? Does this make establishing
| cross-border corporate structures easier? Is there protection for
| cross-border trade routes for physical goods? Is there
| deregulation in terms of online services (things like "we'll let
| you store our data")? Is there agreement on "quality of goods"
| for things like food or pharmaceuticals? etc.
|
| The article explains nothing, other than saying "yeah they agreed
| on something".
| nabla9 wrote:
| It's significantly less substantial than CPTPP is.
|
| There is little of harmonization except clarifying some rules
| of origin issues
| https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/roi_e/roi_info_e.htm
|
| It contains some tariff removals. Tariffs have lost importance
| relative to other issues because they are already relatively
| low. The world has gone trough nine rounds of GATT and is on
| 10th.
|
| I think this signals that ASEAN countries are willing to play
| China and the US against each other in trade.
| CountSessine wrote:
| It's interesting that even within the context of this agreement,
| there's a question as to whether or not China will honour their
| obligations under the agreement with respect to their bilateral
| relationship with Australia.
|
| I don't think that this agreement means very much.
| threeseed wrote:
| This is the key part here.
|
| China has been retaliating recently against Australia since
| they chose to stand up to them over COVID-19, HK, South China
| Sea etc.
|
| And they've done this through sneaky but legal means e.g.
| suspending wine imports by accusing them of dumping, magically
| finding pests in a range of imports and labelling Australia as
| a dangerous place to live in order to discourage Chinese
| students.
|
| So having a FTA in place doesn't necessarily mean much.
| nmlnn wrote:
| In fact China and Australia already had a bilateral FTA
| between them that came into force in 2015. Pieces of paper
| are meaningless to the CCP.
| snowwindwaves wrote:
| Canadian exports to China were also suspended due to
| allegations of "pests"
| danaos wrote:
| The balance of power is shifting.
| nemo44x wrote:
| With Biden elected I'll be interested in seeing if the USA
| rejoins the TPP agreement. It was negotiated under Obama and
| Biden was a supporter at the time.
|
| Of course Congress is the tricky part. Trump pulled the USA out
| as he was essentially a Democrat in terms of trade
| protectionism - a very odd position for a Republican. Congress
| is split but I could see the Republican Senate passing it. The
| question is will enough a Democrats in the House agree to it?
| Likely a very divisive issue between the Liberal (maybe yes)
| and Progressive (no) sides.
| moralsupply wrote:
| I'm not taking sides here, and this comment is not supposed
| to start a flame war, but let's remember that Biden is not
| confirmed as the president yet.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Now they just have to consume as much as America, and we'll
| see.
| rmah wrote:
| They do. China now has a consumer market (measured through
| retail sales volume) that is just a bit larger than the USA.
| In 2019, China had apx $6.4T in retail sales vs the US at
| $6.0T. Retail sales for 2020 are expected to be flat in China
| and down sharply in the USA. That's right, the largest
| consumer nation in the world is now China.
|
| The Chinese certainly don't consume as much per person as
| Americans... but they probably wish they could.
| cambalache wrote:
| Dont need to. A China consuming half as much as America (per
| capita) would possibly mean a 2X economy.
| aeternum wrote:
| It will soon be much more than 30% of GDP. The US seems to have
| forgotten that the economy is not a zero-sum game.
| [deleted]
| CountSessine wrote:
| Every one of these economies has a rapidly aging population
| that desperately needs a positive balance of trade and export
| to maintain GDP growth. Every one of them would give up this
| agreement in a second for untariffed access to the US consumer
| market, which none of them have anymore.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Given the US' attack on immigration, it too will have a
| rapidly aging population.
| CountSessine wrote:
| I know - the irony! Perhaps the only reason that the US has
| so many millennials is that so many people come to the US
| undocumented, skirting the dumpster-fire immigration and
| visa system. Without those millennials, the US would be in
| the same pickle.
| danbolt wrote:
| Certainly immigration and not to do with being the
| children of baby boomers!
| viraptor wrote:
| US has estimated 11M of unauthorised people. Let's say
| 25-34yo are millennials - that's 3M of them. Same age
| bracket has 45M US residents. I'm not sure the 3M are
| making that much of a difference. (Although it's higher
| than I expected)
| catmanjan wrote:
| As an Australian, immigration does not fix aging
| population, it just delays it...
| xienze wrote:
| > it too will have a rapidly aging population.
|
| I mean the US government could do things like provide lots
| of incentives for its citizens to reproduce but, nah, too
| difficult. Just import the entire third world, things will
| work out fine.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The number 1 thing for ALL these countries is access to
| resources that they don't have. The most important among them
| is oil. The only way to buy oil is dollars. That's the reason
| their economy is set up to export to America.
|
| The minute oil producers start accepting other currencies
| (which is what trade blocs such as this could accomplish) or
| they reduce their dependence on oil (which is what Chinese
| companies are offering for cheap), these countries will not
| even try to export to North America because population-wise,
| America can never have as many consumers as Asia and Africa.
|
| Our wealth in America is only because we are the reserve
| currency. We are not producing goods and services of the
| future any longer.
| threeseed wrote:
| > We are not producing goods and services of the future any
| longer.
|
| Not sure what you are talking about here.
|
| Majority of globally successful companies still come from
| the US and that isn't changing anytime soon.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| They were "global" before the last 4 years. That won't
| last without constant nurturing.
|
| You should look at China's stock market and what they are
| able to achieve without printing trillions like the US
| just did. And we are still not out of covid.
| CountSessine wrote:
| Nobody has any faith in the Chinese stock market and the
| ability of the market to find efficient prices.
|
| The entire Chinese banking system is essentially
| bankrupt.
|
| Chinese companies are forced to accept suboptimal
| business decisions to further CCP goals.
|
| In spite of the incredible inventiveness of the Chinese
| people, companies in China outside of PCB-level board
| assembly are weak and uncompetitive, having been the
| beneficiaries of government protectionism (how many
| countries use Baidu for example).
|
| Except for a video-sharing website for teenage girls.
|
| And a network switch manufacturer that is subsidized and
| owned by the government.
|
| And the population is getting old before it gets rich,
| with no social safety net.
|
| What does fiat currency even mean in a closed society? Is
| China solvent or not? What can we say about government
| debt when private banks are forced to make bad loans at
| the government's request? And what can lenders expect
| back when the government doesn't respect private
| property?
| romanoderoma wrote:
| According to what source?
|
| "In 2019, Fortune's Global 500 list of the world's
| largest corporations included 119 Chinese companies, with
| combined revenues of US$8.2 trillion (that's 40% of US
| GDP). That same year, Forbes reported that five of the
| world's ten largest public companies were Chinese"
| harryh wrote:
| _Our wealth in America is only because we are the reserve
| currency_
|
| This is tinfoil hat territory. The US makes, perhaps, a few
| 10s of billions from seigniorage of dollars held abroad,
| but that's a very small number in comparison to the US GDP
| of approx. 20 trillion.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| You really think the wealth of fiat currency is from
| seigniorage?
|
| For a better measure of understanding how economies are
| operating, look at GDP (PPP).
| mobattah wrote:
| Under the Donald Trump administration, the US receded from
| its position of total global hegemony. This backtrack has
| massively hurt the United States.
| tengbretson wrote:
| When you hate Trump so much that you start defending
| American imperialism.
| shostack wrote:
| Which raises the question of how much that may have been
| the point.
| mimikatz wrote:
| We had this set up for America under TPP, which Trump rejected
| and Hillary claimed she would as well after being pushed that way
| from the left.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Do we really seem to be lacking in imported shit from Asia?
| qaq wrote:
| Eastasia, Oceania, Eurasia ...
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