[HN Gopher] Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland ___________________________________________________________________ Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland Author : DanBC Score : 379 points Date : 2021-03-18 08:57 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (face2faceafrica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (face2faceafrica.com) | lmm wrote: | Feels like a pretty confused article, diving back and forth | between cocoa and coronavirus vaccines even while saying they're | unrelated. | | Building up local industry sounds like a good approach for the | long term (though, contra the article, inevitably at a short term | cost); the simplistic free trade arguments discount the value of | developing industry within the country. A ban is a very blunt | instrument though; a tariff (perhaps gradually increasing over | time) seems like a better approach that would help the country | gradually transition while avoiding shocks. | Laforet wrote: | Until someone shows me actual evidence of a ban being applied | or at least some concrete plan with penalities for violations, | what I have just read are nothing more than rhetoric and | posturing. | | Banning the export of a commodity is very hard. It works when | the supply could be drastically reduced in the short term (1973 | Arab oil embargo), or when the product has already failed in | the market and they need government intervention to save face | (recent Russian ban on raw timber export). In any other case, | the goods will always find a way through the controls to meet | the demand. | jeromegv wrote: | That was indeed a very confusing article to read, I couldn't | finish it. | Shivetya wrote: | Explain LID [0] which is effectively a tax applied to every ton | of cocoa sold of which most is paid to the farmers. | | However I think Ghana is in the wrong here because extorting | other nations to give them anything free of charge by withholding | trade goods will simply means that the trade goods will | eventually be sourced elsewhere. | | Regardless what you think about rich vs poor, medicine vs goods, | and such, IP is property and using a world wide organization to | deprive another of their rights is never a good idea. (no | whataboutism please). Yes it is medicine, yes it is important, | but that does not mean it has to be free. It should be something | that can be negotiated but going nuclear in trade never benefits | anyone and usually affects the poorest of world the most. | | My suggestion, just up the LID | | [0]https://www.uncommoncacao.com/blog/2020/10/20/the-lid-in- | gha... | bildung wrote: | _> to deprive another of their rights is never a good idea. (no | whataboutism please)._ | | What about access to cocoa not being a right? | djohnston wrote: | I think OP is talking about access to the COVID vaccines. As | much a human right as access to cocoa really. | meepmorp wrote: | they said no whataboutism, fam | stan_rogers wrote: | I can't tell whether or not your response was meant to be | in jest, but "whataboutism" is a variety of _tu quoque_ | involving a third party. | meepmorp wrote: | What about my post makes you think I don't know that? | tziki wrote: | I wish them success, but my prediction is that in a few years | they'll have no successful products and the world's chocolate | makers have found new suppliers. You can't just make a decision | to create successful products. | KuzMenachem wrote: | You can incentivize the creation of certain types of businesses | that aid in the economic development of the country though. | Many countries, especially in Asia, have "decided" to become | successful producers of industrial goods. For example, the | automotive and electronics industry in South Korea were heavily | supported by national policy, after the government decided that | these areas were critical for the development of the country | [0]. This actually worked incredibly well - many companies are | still around today (e.g. Hyundai, Samsung, LG). | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five- | Year_Plans_of_South_Korea | vagrantJin wrote: | Inter African free trade is increasing sharply, so their | primary market would likely be other African countries. Maybe | that was their trumo card if worst comes to worst. | jelling wrote: | Same. I am concerned they are overlooking how much marketing | mind-share Switzerland has globally for chocolate. Ghana could | get there but it will not happen overnight, more like a | generation. Distribution will also take time. | | Give that cocoa is their number 3 export - and I suspect most | of that is in raw form - I really hope this doesn't backfire. | They need foreign currency. | | A wiser path might be to build up global chocolate brands in | parallel to raw exporting, sort of like we're seeing China move | up the value chain from value-added manufacturing to consumer | brands. | sct202 wrote: | They can process the beans and no one will notice. There are | a lot of cocoa processors who produce bulk chocolate for | other brands who melt that down to form their own products. | Companies like Barry Callebaut or Valrhona primarily supply | other companies with chocolate. | ars wrote: | I will notice - it's not easy obtaining Kosher | certification in Ghana. | bogomipz wrote: | Sure but processing cocoa into chocolate at the scale | quality of Callebaut and Valrhona is a massive undertaking | of both production and skill. Callebaut and Valrhona | produce chocolate for high end consumers such as pastry | chefs in high end restaurants or artisanal bakeries. I'm | not saying Ghana can't get there but it's going to a long | time. Certainly long enough that it would be very much | noticed. | KaiserPro wrote: | You're missing a step here. Yes brand recognition is powerful | for consumers. | | But I don't think ghana is going to be doing B2C stuff just | yet. I'd assume that they are going to export cocoa products, | as it would allow them to charge a much higher price, keeping | more money in the country | acdha wrote: | We recently enjoyed some chocolates made in Ghana from a company | founded by a Ghanaian-born American immigrant: | | https://us.midunuchocolates.com/ | [deleted] | htatche wrote: | Is this rather a ban on Ghana suppliers themselves in order to | trigger a shift in the country's manufacturing so they're forced | to step up their processing and break away from just sending the | crops at whatever price the market sets? | kleiba wrote: | I guess they will have to sell the beans to some other state | then, from whom Switzerland will then buy it? | ramraj07 wrote: | If you read the article you would have gotten the answer - they | want to make the chocolate themselves. Godspeed Ghana! | kleiba wrote: | I read the article. Want to bet? | standardUser wrote: | It's called industrial policy and it's pretty much the only way | nations can make the leap from developing to developed. The thing | is, industrial policy and mostly-free trade can and do work | really well together, but for about a generation the "Washington | Consensus" of free trade absolutists didn't allow it. Those | countries that did so anyway, like China, were able to thrive, | while smaller nations got stuck as resource exporters. | marcodiego wrote: | Cocoa as most raw food are just like commodities with little | value added. Developing countries should make efforts to sell | products with grater value added if they plan to become less | dependent on richer nations. | m12k wrote: | I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the | argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up | an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a | skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin | with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete | with those of already industrialized countries - these are | already so effective that they can undercut newcomers before they | have time to become competitive. So the book argues that when | developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements | (for example by making aid dependent on this), these countries | are also forced into a position where they get stuck at the low | end of the production value chain, selling raw materials, while | buying processed goods from others (often the same role they were | forcibly assigned when they were colonies). So much like we allow | children time to learn in school before we expect them to compete | in the job market, we should allow developing countries to employ | protectionistic policies like tariffs, in order to protect and | build up their fledgling industries nationally, before fully | entering the world market in a couple decades when they are | ready. | conjectures wrote: | If you've not read it, 'Kicking Away the Ladder' by Ha-Joon | Chang is a great book on this topic. | | It has a good deal of historical detail on what developed | countries did themselves to become developed with respect to IP | and protection. | emodendroket wrote: | This was Alexander Hamilton's idea and was in fact largely the | US strategy in large part. | enriquto wrote: | > So much like we allow children time to learn in school before | we expect them to compete in the job market, we should allow | developing countries to employ protectionistic policies | | This sounds a bit paternalistic and condescending. I guess that | first and foremost the "first world" should stop financing | horrible dictatorships and wars in the ex-colonies. That would | be a good, honest start. | flavius29663 wrote: | > should stop financing horrible dictatorships | | When you do that and even take down the dictator (Gadafi), | you end up with a worse government, or no government at all. | We can all agree Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator | supported by the US, look at Iraq now, is it better off | without Saddam? | | There is no clear cut, and it seems like whatever the west is | doing or abstaining from doing it's going to attract hate. We | all hate that the Saudis are free to be horrible, but what is | the alternative? A new Iraq? | | What if you just let them be, you might say? Then you end up | with 8 year long wars like Iran-Iraq. Or with genocide like | in Yugoslavia in the 90s. | | I think we can all agree China is a horrible dictatorship, | how exactly can we stop financing it, since we rely so much | on their factories? | dane-pgp wrote: | > We all hate that the Saudis are free to be horrible, but | what is the alternative? A new Iraq? | | That's a false dichotomy. I think that many people who | oppose the war in Yemen would settle for an end to military | support and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and possibly other | economic sanctions. | | Whether that would lead to a positive outcome for Yemen, | though, is another question, and highlights your point | about the problems of abstaining. | enriquto wrote: | I suppose you are being sarcastic. In that case I agree | with you. | zfs wrote: | Is the difference between developing and developed countries | really the lack of tariffs or is it due to poor governance? I | feel like the reason why countries are always so pro-tariff is | because the benefits of tariffs go towards a small group of | people, whereas the cost of tariffs are diffused. But small | costs add-up and if you start applying the tariffs to other | industries then you start seeing the impacts in the cost of | goods. | | What are the examples where protecting a country from exports | for a few decades then opening it up to competition actually | produced a world-class industry? Singapore is an example of a | country that has been pro free-trade and has benefited as a | result. | devdas wrote: | South Korea. China. The US. The UK. Singapore has pretty much | no manufacturing. | devdas wrote: | In fact, if you want actual free trade, then trade in labour | must also be freely allowed. | | Freedom of movement to everyone, as inside the EU, would make | even more sense. Every country is rather protective of that | though. | tim333 wrote: | When I was younger tariffs were popular in developing countries | but they seldom seemed to produce much prosperity - quite the | contrary really. | | Maybe if you apply the tariffs very intelligently but most | developing countries are not blessed with great non corrupt | governments. | | The | | >pressured into free trade agreements (for example by making | aid dependent on this) | | is kind of telling. A lot of the long time free trading | countries like HK and Singapore don't need aid. It's often the | tarrifs that make places poor enough to need that. | marcosdumay wrote: | Things are even more problematic than tariffs keeping the | people poor. | | Developing countries do not have hugely diverse domestic | industries with top of the line offerings. How can one create | a successful business if every niche or high quality product | you have around costs a lot more for you than for your | compettitiors in developed countries? | Mauricebranagh wrote: | And even today you can see NH users in south America facing | eyewatering taxes on computer hardware. | tim333 wrote: | Which is the kind of thing that hobbles the economy - it's | not like those counties are building their own Intels and | Apples as a result of the tariffs. | [deleted] | throwaway9870 wrote: | Perhaps, but Asia does pretty well. Korea, China, Taiwan, | Vietnam, etc. all did amazing development in the last 30-60 | years. The reality is that some cultures are better at it than | others. Compare China to India for example. | throwaway776543 wrote: | What's also interesting is South Korea and Taiwan developed | during their authoritarian phase. You can probably throw | Singapore into that group too. | triceratops wrote: | > The reality is that some cultures are better at it than | others | | That's extremely lazy reductionism. You're talking about | countries of wildly different sizes (Taiwan is tiny, Japan is | medium-sized, China is gargantuan), starting from wildly | different levels of development (Japan was developed pre-WW2, | India and China were in abject poverty), with wildly | different levels of homogeneity and diversity (Japan is | highly homogenous, China less so, India not at all), | diplomatic alignments (Japan with the US, China with the | Soviets, India in the third world), resources (Japan with | zero, India with quite a fair bit), availability of capital | (Japan, Taiwan and South Korea with quite a fair bit, India | with very little, don't know about China), political systems | (government-managed free market in Japan, autocracy | transitioning to a democracy in Taiwan and S Korea, socialism | in India, full communism until 1980s-1990s in China). | jeffreyrogers wrote: | They followed the policies the OP is talking about though. | That's their point: you need to protect your exporting | industries early on so they can develop and become efficient. | Then you can protect them less as they become higher | quality/more productive. All of the countries you listed did | this. India has a bunch of economic problems, many of which | are self inflicted. | sam1r wrote: | This is well written. Nice metaphors and thank you. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | >"we should allow developing countries" | | Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the 'first | world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow' internal | policies to an sovereign nation? | | It sounds like a Freudianslip or something, the reality is that | its easy to bully or bribe officials in developing nations. | throwaway210222 wrote: | "I often hear this [phrasing] in the 'first world' and surely | you don't 'allow' or 'disallow' internal policies to an | sovereign nation?" | | Forget about the third-world, right now the USA is not- | allowing Germany the right to build a pipeline with Russia! | | First-world - check, sovereign - check, allies - check. | dahfizz wrote: | > the USA is not-allowing Germany the right to build a | pipeline with Russia! | | The USA is threatening trade sanctions if Germany builds | the pipeline. I would not call that "not-allowing". | | That seems to be OP's whole point. The US is responding as | a sovereign nation to actions of other sovereign nations. | Phraseology like "allow" and "disallow" are not accurate. | If Germany does the cost-benefit analysis and decides to | cancel the pipeline because they don't want trade | sanctions, that was their decision as an independent | nation. It is not as if we are threatening war. | throwaway210222 wrote: | Nonsense. The USA would not have gone to all the trouble | to pass legislation to sanction Nordstream2 if they | didn't think it would be effective. | | The USA didn't just do it to voice their displeasure: | they could have done that with an email. | | They truly think its enough of a hammer to stop the | pipeline. | | Hence "won't allow" | ClumsyPilot wrote: | The law is threatening fines if you exceed the speed | limit. By that logic. | | Are allowed to break the law? Are you not? | dahfizz wrote: | My landlord raised my rent this year. Are they not | allowing me to live in my apartment? | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Are you with a straight face equating consequences of | breaking the law (fines and jailtime) with paying rent? | dahfizz wrote: | No, I'm making it obvious that collecting fees does not | constitute forcing someone to do something. | nytgop77 wrote: | stop dating this girl or i will raise the rent x10. my | english is not that good, but 'forcing' does not seem | far.. maybe 'coercing' fits better, but the idea is very | similar, make somebody do stuff against their will. | dane-pgp wrote: | You're not allowed to break the speed limit even if you | pay the fine. You are allowed to live in your apartment | if you pay the demanded rent. | dahfizz wrote: | > You are allowed to live in your apartment if you pay | the demanded rent. | | ding ding ding. Germany is allowed to build whatever | pipelines they want, they just also might have to pay US | trade sanctions. Without a threat of force, we are not | forcing them to do anything. | rsj_hn wrote: | There is no right to trade with the US, or with anyone | else. | | If the US wants to impose a tariff to nations that do X, | that does not mean that the US is forcing these nations | to do anything. They can pay the tarrif, change their | behavior, or sell their goods elsewhere. Or they can | charge a counter-tarrif -- oops, not if they are an | export-dependent economy they can't. That's the crux of | the issue. | | Germany needs to pay their own workers enough so the | German economy is not dependent on exporting a 1/3 of | their GDP each year just to maintain domestic employment. | | Obviously when you create an economy that crashes the | moment others stop letting you run massive trade | surpluses, then you are effectively handing your | sovereignty over to your trading partners. | | Whining about that and blaming your trading partners for | using the power Germany has given them seems a bit naive. | | Germany will never be sovereign as long as it is an | export-dependent economy. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | The US is exploiting its centrality in the international | financial system, though. No other country uses secondary | sanctions so extensively to dictate to other countries | who they may and may not trade with. | | When the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, for | example, it essentially ordered European companies not to | trade with Iran. Even European companies that have no | business in the US are afraid to do business with Iran, | because American secondary sanctions will still hit them. | No European bank will lend to a European company that | does business with Iran, out of fear of American | sanctions. | | These sorts of actions will eventually provoke a | reaction: either the establishment of alternate financial | systems or retaliatory sanctions. | madengr wrote: | The USA is not allowing the USA to build a pipeline. | grecy wrote: | > _Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the | 'first world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow' | internal policies to an sovereign nation? _ | | Oh, it's much simpler than that. If an undeveloped (or | developing) country doesn't place nice with the "Developed" | rules, the IMF will just bankrupt their currency and send | them back to the dark ages. | | Why do you think Switzerland is the world's 3rd biggest | exporter of Coffee [1], while not growing a single bean ? .. | and Germany is number 5. | | The IMF doesn't let coffee growing countries like Ethiopia or | the Ivory Coast export processed beans, because they want the | immense profits going to developed countries. Also the WTO | plays a role and just doesn't tax unprocessed raw coffee | beans coming out of those poor countries, but taxes processed | coffee (and chocolate) goods at astronomical rates. | | [1] http://www.worldstopexports.com/coffee-exports-country/ | jariel wrote: | WTO has rules, as do nations with agreements in place. | | 'Allow' implies some degree of forgiveness or allowance of | entity on the other side of the table. | | In this case, Ghana may probably face trade sanction/scrutiny | for their protectionism. It will have to play out in terms of | other agreements. | luxuryballs wrote: | collusion for thee but not for me | andrepd wrote: | The point is that yes, economically strong countries can and | do dictate internal policies of a sovereign nation. | bluepizza wrote: | > Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the | 'first world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow' | internal policies to an sovereign nation? | | Not exactly. Between forcing their hand on disadvantageous | trade deals, lodging complaints and enforcing restrictions | with the WTO, and outright installing dictators and funding | militias - allowing or disallowing is all what the first | world ever does. | tsimionescu wrote: | I get where you're coming from, but in this case they are | completely right to use this phrasing, with exactly the | connotation you are talking about: the status quo is that the | first world is NOT allowing these countries to run their | affairs as they want internally. | | That is, any developing country is presented with 2 options | by the developed world: either accept 'free trade' (allow | foreign investors to buy up the local industry, commit to IP | laws, don't apply tariffs) or no one will be allowed to trade | with you or send you aid. | | In the meantime, powerful countries are taking numerous | protectionist measures in their key industries, since that is | the only way to actually be prosperous. | btown wrote: | > either accept 'free trade' (allow foreign investors to | buy up the local industry, commit to IP laws, don't apply | tariffs) or no one will be allowed to trade with you or | send you aid. | | Do multi-national trade agreements (which I believe are the | core mechanism for this) actually penalize signatories for | trading with non-signatories? Or is it more that trade | between signatories is so advantaged that no company within | a signatory state would be competitive were it to trade | with a counterpart in a non-signatory state? | edflsafoiewq wrote: | Free trade is usually done on a tit-for-tat basis. I think | the GP is saying they should allow protectionist policies | without "tatting". | pydry wrote: | This is effectively how the US built up the industries of | Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. | | The reason these countries were allowed to do it where | others are not was because the US wanted strategically | placed powerful allies in the region. | | There probably wouldn't be a Japanese electronics/car | industry, for instance, if the Soviets hadn't spooked the | the US in the 40s. | jbay808 wrote: | The US built those industries only in the same sense that | they built Germany's. | | Japan's industrial base was built before the 40s, with an | extensive domestic supply of machine tools and industrial | equipment, rail infrastructure, and finished manufactured | goods. Or else who do you think was building the planes, | ships, and submarines that the allies were fighting on | the Pacific front? Their industries were temporarily | damaged by the war but it's no surprise that they'd be | back to building cars within a couple decades. | | They, rather than the US, were the ones who built up much | of the initial industrial base of Taiwan and Korea, as | part of their own colonization efforts. Not out of so | much benevolence, of course. | pydry wrote: | They weren't building walkmans or cars for export. | | Their skill base was intact but their industry was razed | by WW2. | | Either way they needed raw materials and markets to | develop their industrial base and that required favorable | American trade policy, $$$ and military support. | [deleted] | Mat342 wrote: | That's absolute BS, asians are smart and hardworking, US | didn't build them | dominicl wrote: | I'm curious about this argument. Haven't heard the "tiger | states" growth attributed solely to US policies. Any | links/pointers to those advantages that were granted | these states but not other developing countries at the | time? | sct202 wrote: | I don't know about solely developed, but South Korea, | Taiwan, and Japan did receive substantial amounts of | foreign aid in the post-war period. In addition, some of | this aid financed land reforms that forced large land | owners to break up large holdings and sell to the tenant | farmers who previously rented the land. The notoriously | small farms in Japan are not a natural free market | development. | pietrovismara wrote: | That's what the west does all the time. | | Blackmail poor countries into selling all of their assets to | foreign capital, just to gain access to foreign credit. | | See what's happening in Cuba. See what Vietnam had to do | after the war with the US, see Greece with Europe recently, | see countless more. | | The WTO, IMF and the World Bank are the colonizing arm of | capitalism. | | It's a relatively new form of supernational economic warfare | that turned out to be very effective, especially when | combined with embargoes and economic sanctions. It's the | famous "offer one can't refuse". | Blackstone4 wrote: | The way you phrase it, makes it sound like theft...surely, | they have to buy the assets and that goes to the | owner...the owner then can chose to re-invest locally if | they choose to...the capital doesnt just disappear... | pietrovismara wrote: | > the owner then can chose to re-invest locally if they | choose to | | Only at the conditions imposed by the IMF. Usually that | means the state has to steer away from anything that | could be profitable and focus only on what is not | palatable to foreign capital. | | It also means states can't apply import taxes, thus | making their industries instantly obsolete. It's pretty | much a huge transfer of wealth from inside to outside. | Blackstone4 wrote: | so are you mainly refering to state-owned assets rather | than privately owned assets? State-owned companies are | notorious for being badly run...no wonder they are | overrun by foreign competition. Would it not be possible | for a state to IPO these assets or give shares directly | to the population rather than sell? | viro wrote: | > Only at the conditions imposed by the IMF. Usually that | means the state has to steer away from anything that | could be profitable and focus only on what is not | palatable to foreign capital. | | Im going to need a direct example please | pietrovismara wrote: | Just check the IMF page on "Conditionality"[0]. Check the | "Prior actions" sections and see "Elimination of price | controls" there. | | Also see this video[1] about Vietnam, around halfway | through it explains pretty well how it works. | | Edit: I realize now you asked about the "forced | privatization of industries" sentence. That's thoroughly | stressed accross all IMF literature, and you can see it | happen in pretty much every country that takes IMF "aid". | | -[0]: https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016 | /08/02/21... | | -[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMubOw5H-yo | viro wrote: | I just want to note nationalized industries have an | incredibly unfair advantage over private industry. Since | nationalized industries have no real need to make money | at all. Widget A cost $65 to make? Nah, let's sell it at | $5. Most of the fund comes from capitalist states. It | wouldn't make much of sense for them to fund an economic | system that is often antagonistic to capitalism. | msg3 wrote: | The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang makes similar arguments in | his book Bad samaritans. He argues that this model was | successfully followed by Korea (Samsung, Hyundai, etc), Japan, | and even Henry VII in 15th century England - well worth a read. | rsj_hn wrote: | This is called the "infant industry" argument, and it has been | made since at least the 16th Century, most famously by Antonio | Serra, a proto-mercantilist. | | This idea of raising tarrifs on imports and then using the | money to protect domestic industries has been tried in Latin | America in the 60s and 70s, in Africa, and in many places. | | The results are mixed. | | The problem with infant industry is that you get a group of | local monopolies protected by the government who sell expensive | low quality goods to the public, people get sick of it, they | want the lower priced better foreign goods as it will increase | their quality of life, and at some point there is sufficient | political pressure to force a regime change. | | Another way of saying this is that the infant industries often | fail to grow up, they remain protected infants forever. | | On the other hand, if you don't protect your infant industries, | then you have no chance against mature foreign competitors, as | you point out. | | Then there is a third aspect to this, which is that foreign | governments, especially East Asian governments (not only China, | but China is the biggest offender) massively subsidize domestic | industries and so you have to subsidize and protect your | industries in return, or they will be destroyed by competitors | who never need to turn a profit, or repay a loan, or meet any | environmental regulations, or deal with unions, etc. | | So it's a tough call. All these theories have valid points, but | they all have fatal flaws. For the last few years, I've come | around to the following mantra, which is my own development | philosophy: | | * every country should have a long run balance of payments. | That means all trade should be balanced. | | * countries should make investments in local productive | capacity, but not subsidize industries per se | | * countries should not allow foreign companies to set up | factories or purchase capital or land. Each nation's assets | should be owned by their own citizens only. | | * With the above caveats, there should be free trade and no | industry protection. | | What this means, in practice, is banning foreign capital | inflows. Have your own currency, borrow only in your own | currency from your own people, and don't allow foreigners to | purchase you bonds, stocks, land, or factories. | | But trade all you want with them. As long as you do that, your | currency will depreciate sufficiently to prevent any flood of | cheap imports, and your domestic industries will have a chance. | ReadFList wrote: | >To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country | cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries | >these countries are also forced into a position where they get | stuck at the low end of the production value chain, selling raw | materials, while buying processed goods from others (often the | same role they were forcibly assigned when they were colonies | | Basically what Friedrich List [1] wrote in 1841 [2], and being | proven correct time and time again while we completely | disregard it. | | Now you can even go further and ask yourselves if what is | happening in the West by moving all the factories and | manufacturing to China and neighbouring countries isn't exactly | like the Colonization of the Americas by the British. | | It wasn't _luck_ that made the USA Great. It was the best stock | from Europe who come up with the American School [3], and we | can now see the tragic consequences of abandoning it for | "free" trade. | | If a country imports manufactured goods and exports raw | materials, it is a colony. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List [2] | https://archive.org/details/nationalsystemp00nichgoog [3] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics) | devdas wrote: | It was a lot of luck. Today, you would need access to oil for | energy (which needs USD), and far more complex technology, | which needs money to acquire. | | The US could also support massively extractive industries | internally. Most countries can't do that. | Mat342 wrote: | Honestly I don't think americans can outcompete Japan, Korea | Taiwan or China. Maybe they keep accepting fake printed USD | for real stuff in the future | ReadFList wrote: | Lot's of people said the same about the USA becoming | economically independent of the all powerful British | Empire. And yet the USA did it. | | Alexander Hamilton's influence goes way beyond inspiring a | ridiculous musical for an attempt to capture that | historical personality and distort his positions so nobody | would read his writings. | | There is a vast difference between not being possible, and | the interlopers we call "the elites" not wanting to do it | because they have other interests that don't overlap with | the Nation's interests. | zhdc1 wrote: | The Commanding Heights by Yergin and Stanislaw is another good | book that makes a similar argument. | jariel wrote: | So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck' | selling natural resources? | | I think it's probably a much better plant to extract a good | deal of wealth from the natural resource and invest it in other | areas of higher value creation, even in the same vertical. | | There's a good chance that Ghana's policies are needlessly | constrained. | | More obviously there are 100 things Ghana could do to improve | living conditions in more obvious areas i.e. corruption etc.. | | Consider the immediate situation: | | Ghana's exporters have just been banned from exporting. They | are going to go out of business very soon. | | Ghana doesn't have all of the layers of industry necessary to | support development and export of products i.e. there are no | market buyers at any reasonable price. | | Result: collapse of the industry - unless somehow the | Government of Ghana can artificially inflate prices and keep | them alive for a very long time while domestic partners somehow | magically are able to get off their feet. | | This plan feels not very well conceived. | | I'll bet something is lurking under the surface. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | It's called the Dutch disease for a reason. When Holland | discovered large natural gas deposits the entire rest of | their economy became less competitive. High wages from | natural resources (and oil is the worst for this because it | is so valuable) raise wages in the rest of the economy. This | makes your exports less competitive. It also shifts | employment into the natural resources sector (due to high | wages), when many of those people would maybe be better | allocated elsewhere. | | They only country that has been able to do what you're | talking about successfully is Norway and maybe the US and | Canada, which have much better institutions than anywhere in | Africa and the Middle East. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Other points are already addressed in different comments, but | to address this one: | | > _Ghana doesn 't have all of the layers of industry | necessary to support development and export of products i.e. | there are no market buyers at any reasonable price._ | | Per the article, they literally control half of the world's | cocoa. This means they get to define what "a reasonable | price" is, as long as the rest of the world wants to keep its | chocolate plentiful. | | I'm not a politician or economist - but to me, it seems | obvious the plan here is to bootstrap domestic cocoa | processing industries, get the current exporters to sell | cocoa to domestic producers, and export processed products | (like chocolate). They're not going to just stop cultivating | cocoa - being in control of half of the supply of raw | materials for a highly prized product is their one big | leverage on the international market. | | As to not having the necessary industry base to pull it off - | the question is, how fast can they build one? I'd guess a | couple of years, if no foreign powers try to make it hard for | them. | Chris2048 wrote: | The first question is: where are the main markets for | chocolate? If Ghana loses access to a large percentage of | the global chocolate market, controlling half the supply is | as much a liability. | | The second question is: Is there any reason cocoa can't be | grown elsewhere, or the _second_ biggest producer can 't | increase production? | rob74 wrote: | Yeah, I already see other tropical-zone countries cutting | down even more rain forest to make space for cocoa | plantations (in addition to the rain forest they are | already cutting down or burning for e.g. palm oil | plantations). That's not really the desirable outcome | here I think... | devdas wrote: | That's not really any different from what the developed | world did when they were in the same state of | development. | brodock wrote: | There is a location/clima reason. Cocoa grows (well) only | in a certain part of the world around the equator line as | it requires tropical weather with regular rains and small | dry seasons. | | It may be possible to use artificial techniques to grow | it elsewhere, but I'm assuming it's not economically | viable or you get a product with worst quality in the end | true_religion wrote: | The last time Ghana blocked cocoa sales, the European | powers responded by creating plantations in other countries | to break Ghanas monopoly of the supply. Then they went a | step further in researching and marketing low cocoa | chocolate so their domestic population would be less | reliant on cocoa. | | Agricultural luxury goods are one area where it's hard to | continually push a monopoly advantage. | | That said, I think that if Ghana can take the short term | repercussions, then the country will come out ahead. It can | become to chocolate, what France is to wine. But that would | require heavy marketing in order to change people's | perception about what kind of chocolate is most delicious. | msg3 wrote: | By itself, it's probably not a good idea. | | If the government supports the development of a chocolate | production industry, including support for cocoa exporters, | then it has every chance of success. | jfim wrote: | It might, and it might not. Even though Japan also makes | some fine watch movements, Swiss ones command a premium | over the Japanese ones. I'd assume that this would be | similar for chocolate. | rout39574 wrote: | If Ghana were to position itself as the 'Casio' or | 'Seiko' of chocolate, I expect they'd tolerate the fact | that there was a still an Omega out there. | | And with the Casio profits, they could make a reasonable | run at unseating Swiss chocolate in another century or | so. | zorked wrote: | Do you have any specific knowledge about Ghanaian industry or | is this just your opinion? Can you provide some sources for | your claims? | barry-cotter wrote: | Why would the Ghanaian government be any better at economic | planning than the Argentinian or Indian ones? Sometimes | industrial policy "works", as in South Korea or Japan. But | we have no strong reason to believe either would have | failed to develop without government help. Hong Kong didn't | need it. People talk about the successes of industrial | planning a lot but Argentina and India aren't the only | countries to piss away enormous resources propping up | domestic industries that vanished in a puff of smoke as | soon as they stopped being protected by tariffs or non tax | trade barriers. | hindsightbias wrote: | SK's recovery from the war was very sluggish for a decade | until a military coup, protectionist economic polices, | nationalization and multi-$B US economic donations. | andrepd wrote: | Maybe you would want to research what Japan and South | Korea have in common and what Argentina has different. | Hint: it involves something that starts with U and ends | with SA | rory wrote: | Maybe the government is trying to pressure Swiss companies up | the value chain to move processing operations to Ghana? That | seems like a reasonable way to increase income to Ghanaians | and build local human capital, without having to start | industry from scratch. | | I don't know the fine details of how chocolate is made, but a | chocolate bar seems like a fairly straightforward industrial | product. Why should it be made in somewhere as high-cost as | Switzerland, if not just because of operational and brand- | value momentum? | bingbong70 wrote: | The story of this century, "cut off useless middlemen", | Europe has a lot of comfortable useless middlemen left over | from the colonization period. | luckylion wrote: | > So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck' | selling natural resources? | | Canada maybe not so much, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Yeah, | and I think they understand that as well. If we have a fusion | breakthrough next year, what will Saudi Arabia export besides | Wahhabism? | m12k wrote: | The Saudi royal family is busy buying as much of Silicon | Valley as they can, to ensure they can still live atop a | mountain of cash once the oil runs out. As for the rest of | the country - yeah, they are royally fucked (pun intended) | since no other industry than oil was ever developed. | arethuza wrote: | They seem to be trying to develop their tourist industry | - I keep getting adverts for holidays there! | andrepd wrote: | It's possibly one of countries in the world I'm least | interested in visiting. | nasmorn wrote: | Where else to go to a good oldfashioned lashing? | arethuza wrote: | Saudi Arabia apparently has stopped using flogging: | | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/saudi- | arabia-t... | | However, plenty places still use corporal punishment, | including Singapore: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_corporal_punishmen | t | TeMPOraL wrote: | Or more likely, what happens when the oil wells eventually | run dry? Or even, what happens in the years before, when | those wells start producing less and less oil? | fakedang wrote: | > Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck' | selling natural resources? | | Actually yes. The trend happening there is reminiscent of the | spice trade. The UAE will stay afloat because of its massive | externally invested wealth fund and Canada's liberal policy | will keep the talent coming (although imo destroying the | local population's affordability). But Saudi Arabia has a | huge problem right now, since they squandered a lot of their | oil wealth and are in no position to rely on immigrant growth | - especially when native Saudis are not employable at all. I | know for a fact that the UAE actually monitors intelligence | in Saudi Arabia to make sure that a revolt or an insurgency | doesn't happen there. OPEC annual meetings are literally a | mercantilist exercise. | sandworm101 wrote: | >> a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete | with those of already industrialized countries | | Except that often they do. With lower safety/environmental | standards, lower wages, and lower expectations many | "developing" countries can undercut the labor markets of | developed countries, operating advanced manufacturing at far | reduced costs. Many would ague that is exactly how China has | risen to power. | | A reliance on export of raw resources is also no telltale of a | country still "developing" its economy. Canada is heavily | dependent on resource extraction and export. Canada is also a | former colony. But would anyone here dare say Canada is a | "developing" economy? | pietrovismara wrote: | > With lower safety/environmental standards, lower wages | | Well, no, thanks. I'd rather not be forced to enslave my | people in order to compete with western capitalism. | ISL wrote: | The people of some countries are already enslaved by | poverty and corruption. The pragmatic question is: will | attracting outside capital improve the situation of the | populace or not? | Mauricebranagh wrote: | Its not like those countries would have had higher labour | standards in the first place. | oblio wrote: | > So the book argues that when developing countries are | pressured into free trade agreements | | This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the | Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). | | All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where | they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not | (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). | | I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in 2007, so we had to | liberalize everything. It has generally been good for us | (higher wages, economic growth, overall development), but I | know all the German, French, Belgian supermarket chains. | | Do you know why I know them? Because there are 0 (zero!) local | supermarket chains left. They've all been bought by foreign | companies. | | Similar story for banks, car companies, whatever. | | During the 2008 economic crisis Erste, Austrian banking group, | repatriated all the local profits (from BCR, former major | Romanian bank) to Austria so that the local banks would not be | impacted. Similar story for OMV, Austrian oil and gas group | (from Petrom, former major Romanian oil and gas company). | | It's a mixed bag, really. You need some foreign investment to | kickstart things, but if you don't start blocking stuff off, | you'll never go over the middle income barrier, at best. At | worst you practically become someone else's colony, or in the | olden days, you actually were their colony (and what happened | in Bengal in 1941 and Ireland in the 1800s comes to mind). | kar1181 wrote: | Similar things are happening in Croatia. | pjmlp wrote: | To the point that when I traveled around a couple of years | ago along the coast, most people I met along the way seemed | to be more confortable speaking German than English. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Kosovar familiarity with German | is something that dates from the era of Yugoslavia, it | has little to do with corporate sway in the modern EU. | | Yugoslavia 1) allowed its people to freely work in the | West, and many people chose to go to West Germany, and 2) | Yugoslavia built up extensive tourist infrastructure in | Croatia and Montenegro that drew predominantly German- | speaking holidaymakers (and not so many English-speaking | ones -- UK holidaymakers went for e.g. Spain or Greece | during this era). All this made German seem like the | language for communicating with foreigners, though among | younger generations it is already giving way to English. | pjmlp wrote: | Yeah this was about 10 years ago. Thanks for the | overview. | | Althought I did see enough Lidl and Aldi around. | mrkramer wrote: | As far as I know the history of my country Croatia | familiarity with Germanic nations dates from Habsburg | Monarchy[1] meaning 300+ years. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Monarchy | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | In Hapsburg times, only a fairly small elite outside of | Austria knew German. Most people in the Empire knew only | their own language (or sometimes e.g. their own language | and some degree of Hungarian). It wasn't until after the | fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the average | person - due to modern state-schooling curricula, | business contacts with German speakers, or going to work | in Germany - began to know German. | | There is quite a body of scholarship on the | sociolinguistics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, if you | are curious. | mrkramer wrote: | Public/state workers had to know German, military | personnel had to know German and as the education system | was building in Habsburg Monarchy and Austro-Hungarian | Empire children and university students were learning | German. There are more than 2000 German words in Croatian | language today dating back from Habsburg Monarchy and | Austro-Hungarian Empire. | | You don't build a bond with some nation and culture over | the course of one century it takes more than that. For | example like you probably know Ottoman Empire was ruling | and controlling south-east Europe for 500 years and | impact of that is very much visible and present today. | foobarian wrote: | Speaking of the Ottoman empire, when I watched a Turkish | show recently I was surprised to hear a number of words I | had no idea were Turkish origin. (Well, could be the | other way around too I guess. But they sounded Turkish.) | Sanduk, cizma, budala, paramparcad, kapija, sandzak, | inat, kutija, ajde just off the top of my head. | | The German connection is definitely there. There was even | a transliterated word used for people working abroad: | "gastarbajter," from German Gastarbeiter. And it was used | for anyone working abroad, no matter where :-) | | Edit: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Categor | y:Serbo-C... . I can't believe "boja" is borrowed. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Public/state workers and university students _were_ a | small elite until the 20th century, as were | schoolchildren until a fairly late date. Also, the | demographics you speak of were males, meaning that you | are leaving out a half of the population. | | Certainly German words in Croatian testify to contacts at | some level of the population. Romanian, too, abounds in | German words in some domains, for example, but this | doesn't mean the average Romanian would have been able to | speak any German. But in Croatia knowledge of German | varied greatly from the country's northwest to its south. | Again, the sociolinguistics of the Austro-Hungarian | Empire are well-described. | paganel wrote: | Fellow Romanian here, a person very close to me died of | heart-failure in the middle of the street in downtown | Bucharest 10+ years ago, not a block away from her employer's | HQs at the time. She was in her early 40s, her employer was | BCR (the bank that had just been acquired by Erste), and said | close person had had a few fights with the new Austrian | rulers to be, she was part of the bank's trade-union body, | she didn't want her colleagues' jobs to go away after the | purchase. The jobs did go away after the purchase, in droves. | | A person even closer to me used to work for OMV immediately | after they had purchased Petrom (our former State-run oil | company). The stories I could hear back then could fill many | pages, I still remember seeing the papers with hundreds of | people's names on them, people who were supposed to be laid | off the following days. And that was just from one company | division. To say nothing of the fact that the Austrians had | no oil drilling operations, no oil drilling specialists, | nothing of the sorts, while Petrom had been in the oil | drilling business for decades. Or how OMV had (I think it | still has) as its major shareholder the Austrian State, so in | fact we managed to sell our oil state company to basically | another state. | leto_ii wrote: | Also a Romanian here. My take is similar to yours, but I | would go even further in saying that the 90s were even more | catastrophic in terms of privatization and liberalization. | Remember the 'shock therapy' years? Prices doubling every few | months? Entire industries collapsing, prized factories being | sold for scrap metal? Millions losing their jobs etc. - a lot | of that stuff didn't have to happen that way. A lot of it was | forced via Washington Consensus type reforms. | | To my mind the EU was our salvation not so much because of | its economic nature, but because of its political one. The | free market was the price we had to pay in order to be able | to travel, work, study abroad, earn real wages that we could | use to invest back into our own country etc. The EU also | insured a decent degree of geo-political, strategic | stability. Without the EU we may have ended up like our | neighbors to the North/East. | starfallg wrote: | >I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in 2007, so we had | to liberalize everything. It has generally been good for us | (higher wages, economic growth, overall development), but I | know all the German, French, Belgian supermarket chains. | | That's already known factor though. The reason of the free | movement of labour to make up for capital movements like | these. | lostinquebec wrote: | Do you have a counter factual? | | It seems to me too early to predict a lot about Eastern | Europe. < 20 years is not a long time. 2007 means that the | first children born after Romania joined the EU are 8 years | away from leaving university. | | You could very well be correct, but I'd want to see some | countries that tried this a lot longer ago. | oblio wrote: | It's hard to say, but... | | Almost all the cases of countries going from | underdeveloped/developing to developed did it through | various forms of protectionism: Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, | South Korea, China, Hong Kong. | | I'm trying super hard to think of a country that did it by | liberalizing fully. Eastern European countries might be the | examples you're looking for, but it's too early to say. | | If you think about any sport, or any activity in general, | it makes sense. You never expose the hard parts, you only | expose what you can easily defend or what can defend | itself. Or if you're China, you fake exposing the soft | parts and then you catch everyone in your tar pit :-)) | jopsen wrote: | Are those supermarkets really all that French or Belgian | anymore? | | In practice, many large companies are owned by investors from | all over the world looking for diversification. | skocznymroczny wrote: | The specific ownership and the details are irrelevant, what | matters is that a large chunk of their profits is extracted | out of the country and doesn't get reinvested. | viro wrote: | Thats not how the economy works. Walmart profits don't | get "invested" in the States. They get invested into | Walmart. The wages and taxes those wages fuel always gets | applied locally. Nothing is being "extracted". Thats just | nationalist bullshit used to fuel protectionism. | oblio wrote: | If the very well paid jobs stay in the home country, how | do you call that? | | If the interesting work all stays in the home country, | how do you call that? | | We like to kid ourselves that multinational companies are | truly multinational, companies of the world. What's the | percentage of non-American top managers, for example, | working for American based multinationals? It's probably | in the low 1-digit percentages. | | There is a definite advantage to bejng an early investor. | For these companies the risk is comparatively small and | the rewards they reap are huge and on very long time | horizons. | | It's not super clear cut that it's all nationalist BS. | labawi wrote: | AFAIU, neither wages nor investments count as profits - | those are paid to owners / shareholders. | | As far as returning the earnings to workers and local | economy via taxes - yes there are expenses, you can't | take 100% of income as profits, but there is a lot of | leeway to direct the funds pretty much wherever the | company chooses. Corporate headquarters in tax friendly | countries are popular for a reason. | TheButlerian wrote: | Fucking dumb Eastern European gypsy. | Blackstone4 wrote: | Is that really true? The international supermarkets may | chose to invest by open new stores....secondly, they had | to buy the local supermarkets in the first place...that | went somewhere...maybe that was reinvested locally. It is | not clear cut. | labawi wrote: | > they had to buy the local supermarkets in the first | place | | When foreign owners extract profits to recover their | investment or pay whomever, wealth is in fact leaving the | country - because they still own the capital (stores) yet | get money back. | | It's not clear cut based on this. They could have | invested beyond price, brought knowledge, improved | efficiency ... It's also possible they are in effect | extracting wealth colonialist style, which is something | to beware of - at scale it can have severe consequences | for local economies. | oblio wrote: | The top management for sure is French/German/Belgian. At | least big chunks of it. And the owners | (individuals/companies) are French/German/Belgian. | | If push comes to shove, they will for sure prioritize | French/German/Belgian interests. | | Can't really blame them but strategically it's not a | position you want to be in, looking at it from the other | side. | killtimeatwork wrote: | Yep. The story about large corporations being totally | nationeless is a pure fantasy. For example, just a couple | years ago Fiat-Chrystler decided to move production from | one of its best factories in Poland to one of its worst | (in terms of quality and costs per unit), located in | Italy. It made zero sense for the business and was only | made as a favor to Italian politicians. | | In more general sense, all global companies have some | originating country and most of them keep the HQ and most | of the high-paying jobs there. They expand to other | countries mostly as a cost-saving measure and they have | zero loyalty to them, while they have a lot of loyalty to | the mothership. | toyg wrote: | _> It made zero sense for the business_ | | No, it makes perfect sense when you factor in that | FIAT/FCA/Stellantis was and is the receiver of massive | subsidies, in various guises, from the Italian state. | Losing those would be more harmful to the business than | losing any foreign factory (with the exception of US | ones, which were also beneficiaries of massive state | support). FCA stopped being a "national champion" ages | ago, they are just a hardened global business now; they | just know which side their bread is buttered. | | _> They expand to other countries mostly as a cost- | saving measure and they have zero loyalty to them_ | | Believe me, they have zero loyalty to "the motherland" | too. Many of them have long relocated their HQ too, for | fiscal reasons. FCA/Stellantis, for example, is now based | in Amsterdam. The chance that they'll ever expand again | their manufacturing bases in Italy or France is minimal. | | Honestly, the issue is that national champions don't | exist anymore. Greed-is-good is all that matters. | cycomanic wrote: | Aldi the 3rd (or 4th) biggest supermarket chain is still | owned essentially by the Aldi families (there are in fact 2 | Aldi chains, because the brothers could stand each other. | foobarian wrote: | I've been in Massachusetts for a while, which is a small | American state. And guess what? 20 years ago there used to be | many more local supermarket chains, that over time were | increasingly absorbed or destroyed by massive national | chains. I feel like this same story plays out all over the | world, except that when you have countries like in Europe it | feels like a more personal type of event e.g. "those foreign | superchains are out to get our local wholesome stuff." But in | reality maybe it's mostly just business. | killtimeatwork wrote: | That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any | treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection, | but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via | IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant | companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined | the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus | before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western | capital with no clear path of escaping the trap of | mediocrity. | | So far, the standard of living in post-Soviet EU countries is | still higher than in China, but that's because of the much | better starting point and also because it's just hard to | provide wealth for over a billion people in a modern, heavily | automated economy. However, even with their gargantuan | population size, I see China potentially overtaking Poland or | Czech Republic in terms of quality of living in the next | 50-100 years. | thereddaikon wrote: | Funny you say that because exactly the opposite thing | happened to China. They were completely taken advantage of | in the 19th century and didn't fully recover from that | until a 100 years later when Nixon and Kissinger in one of | their "4D chess" moves restarted diplomatic relations as a | way to limit the Soviets. | | From that point on they had a pretty clever long view | policy but it would have been surprising if they hadn't. | They spent the previous century getting fucked by foreign | invaders, if they hadn't learned how to resist it by the | 1970's then Chinese culture as we know it would have been | doomed to collapse by the 90's. | | And truth be told they almost did in 1989. If the CCP was a | little less organized, if the military was a little less | loyal and if the protesters had their shit together a bit | more it could have turned into a full popular revolution. | khuey wrote: | They did sign those treaties (e.g. with WTO membership), | they just ignored them. | yorwba wrote: | They didn't exactly ignore them. | | A WTO member can either comply with their treaty | obligations (e.g. reducing barriers to trade) or have | other members apply their own remedies (e.g. punitive | tariffs.) | | If the effect of compliance is worse than the punishment | (e.g. underdeveloped industry eliminated by foreign | competitors vs. continuing to operate despite high | tariffs) they'll not comply. | | If the punishment is worse (e.g. industry is basically | competitive, but tariffs would make products hard to sell | in foreign countries) they'll choose compliance. | | At the bilateral level, there's not much difference to | the pre-WTO situation, which might make you wonder | whether it's all pointless. The advantage of the WTO is | that it provides a shared target for compliance: if a | country follows WTO rules, pretty much every other member | will be happy with that. Which is a bigger incentive than | having to please every trading partner individually. | oyashirochama wrote: | And no one cared, it something that needs to be reckoned | with. | audunw wrote: | I really think China is making a huge mistake actually. See | how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs EUV | machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due to | their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if | they're just going to copy them? | | China also messed up big time by enforcing their 1 child | policy, and taking so long to open up and industrialize. | They're far behind economically compared to where other | countries were with their demographic. Now they're on the | verge of the biggest wave of senior citizens reaching | retirement the world has ever seen, with crumbling | infrastructure and housing, relatively low GDP/capita and | no clear path to manufacturing/export of truly high value | goods and services. They're screwed. | | China really wants to get out of low-value manufacturing, | and in some ways they're encouraging pushing that out to | south-east asia and africa. But at the same time they don't | have the positive image and reputation needed to be a big | exporter of high-value goods. Who is going to trust Chinese | companies with things like 5G infrastructure and CPS, when | they're all basically an extension of the CCP when it comes | to security? Who wants to live and work in China now, when | you have no real justice for foreign citizens and the CCP | can arrest you at a whim? If anything even close to | Shenzhen is replicated elsewhere in the world, I think | companies and individuals will gladly develop their | products elsewhere. Will a giant Chinese company ever gain | the reputation of Samsung or Sony? DJI I guess? But that's | a bit niche. | | Poland is growing healthily last I checked. The proof is in | immigration numbers in other European countries. It seems | to be reversing. In Norway there's a clear downward trend | in immigration from Poland. | mrkramer wrote: | IP theft allowed China to acquire much needed technical | know-how and to build up their manufacturing industry. | mytailorisrich wrote: | > _See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy | ASMLs EUV machines, while China is blocked._ | | That's because of geopolitics: These countries are small | enough that they cannot be a threat to the US. In fact | they are dependent on the US. | | China, on the other hand, is a strategic adversary | irrespective of their IP laws (and enforcement of those | laws) or even of their political regime. | yorwba wrote: | > See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs | EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due | to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if | they're just going to copy them? | | ASML's machines aren't something you can just copy by | buying one of them. (You'd do better by hiring ex-ASML | engineers to teach you how to do it.) And ASML would've | sold their EUV equipment (just as they continue to sell | previous-generation machines) if their export license had | been extended by the Dutch government, but the US applied | pressure to make sure that didn't happen. | | You say China took too long to open up and industrialize. | Well, they are open to buy from ASML and industrialize | with their help, but others are closing that door... | tablespoon wrote: | >> See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy | ASMLs EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that | is due to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to | China if they're just going to copy them? | | > You say China took too long to open up and | industrialize. Well, they are open to buy from ASML and | industrialize with their help, but others are closing | that door... | | There's also the elephant in the room: China is | controlled by the Communist party, which holds values | that are antithetical to those of many of its trading | partners | (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas- | new-lea...). Neither Taiwan nor South Korea have that | kind of incompatibility. It was kind of naive and | arrogant for Western trade policy to focus on stuff like | IP theft and market access while ignoring that elephant. | brutus1213 wrote: | I think people who think China can be contained are being | naive. As an academic, I am extremely impressed with the | improvement in scientific publications in CS out of China | of late. In 10 years, they are now killing it on a | consistent basis (personal anecdote: a paper from | Tsinghua or Shanghai Jiao Tong on average is as good as | one from Berkeley, Stanford or MIT). I have a feeling it | has to do with the reality that Chinese nationals (or | people with some ethnic/language connection) are an | integral part of cutting edge science globally. It is | extremely do-able to entice these individuals back. | Western countries have severely under invested in | research .. even back when I got my PhD (like a decade | ago), my job packages were far superior in Asia (not just | China) than in the West. | | I think in 5G, some top level planners in the West have | realized the error of their ways, and are investing | heavily in basic research. I think it is too late. | 908B64B197 wrote: | > (personal anecdote: a paper from Tsinghua or Shanghai | Jiao Tong on average is as good as one from Berkeley, | Stanford or MIT) | | Wait until Berkeley Stanford and MIT get better network | security! [0][1][2] | | [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/us/chinese- | scientist-canc... | | [1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-11/c | hinese-... | | [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese- | researcher-e... | klmadfejno wrote: | > I really think China is making a huge mistake actually. | See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs | EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due | to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if | they're just going to copy them? | | Because China can waggle a huge target market to tempt | people into repeating well documented mistakes | newswasboring wrote: | > See how TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung are free to buy ASMLs | EUV machines, while China is blocked. Part of that is due | to their rampant IP theft. Why sell machines to China if | they're just going to copy them? | | You seem a bit misinformed. ASML CEO has repeatedly | showed extreme desire to sell in china (it already | comprises the fastest growing DUV market)[1]. It's the | american pressure, indirectly or directly exerted which | is causing issues. If it were upto ASML SMIC would | already be establishing it's EUV fabs. | | [1] https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-10-16/dutch-tech- | giant-asm... | nytgop77 wrote: | fact remains, that there are dificlties. | babesh wrote: | The 1 child policy is probably a big issue but IP theft | is partly how the US industrialized. The textile mills of | the North that kicked off industrialization in the US was | based off of IP stolen from Britain. In fact, many of the | practices that the Chinese are using were also used by | the Americans: smuggling plans, hiring key employees, | tariffs, etc. | | https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/07/30/ip_t | hef...! | | http://web.mit.edu/heikki/www/antebellum_tariff_draft1.pd | f | thereare5lights wrote: | It's really interesting what some of the similarities | there are in China's rise vs the US's rise. | | * Genocide | | * Colonialism | | * IP Theft | | * Promotion of an ethnostate | | * Manifest Destiny | | * Monroe Doctrine | | I'm sure there's more. | jkepler wrote: | Isn't the underlying problem here the idea of | Intellectual Property doesn't really correspond to real | property? If I have an ax I use to provide lumber to our | town and you steal it physically from me, that's theft. | But if you see my ax, understand how it works, and make | your own to also cut lumber, is that really theft? Or is | it net beneficial to the town, as now people have more | cut lumber to choose from and perhaps lower prices? | However, if I lobby to get an IP law, how does that serve | the community? It only protects me from competition. | mpoteat wrote: | The theory is that nobody will invest in e.g. researching | how to build a complicated lumber cutting machine if they | don't have protections against their competitor copying | the results. | | Let's say this research costs 1 million dollars, and the | company bankrolls this via a loan. They build it and are | successful, and begin paying it off. | | Their competitor copies their idea, and exploits the fact | that they have more capital and less debt to buy up more | of the market, and end up the winner. | | So, under a zero protection scheme it is optimal to wait | until your competitor invests in research, and then just | steal it. Which is what happens on a geopolitical level | where there is no feasible enforcement possible. | fragmede wrote: | Even domestically, the reason Hollywood is the center of | the film industry is because California was too far from | the East coast for patents on moving picture cameras to | be effectively enforced. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | I thought it has more to do with weather, particularly | ~300 sunny days per year. | the_af wrote: | It was a bit of both. I think I first read about this in | Lessig's _Free Culture_ [1], but even Wikipedia mentions | some of this: somewhat ironically because of the MPAA 's | current heavy-handed tactics, Hollywood was founded on | piracy and patents infringement. Some moviemakers moved | West to explore new territories and climates (Wikipedia | mentions D.W. Griffith) but others soon followed suit in | order to avoid Edison's patents. It can be argued that | _Hollywood was made possible_ by people who broke the law | [2] | | So Hollywood and the MPAA, who so aggressively pursue | what they deem "IP infringement", have more than one | skeleton in their closets. | | Bear this in mind whenever someone tells you -- as often | witnessed here on HN -- "but without copyright there will | be no writers" or "art isn't possible without IP laws". | | ---- | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book) | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_St | ates#Ri... | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | > "without copyright there will be no writers" | | Just recently had a bit of a good laugh about this. I | decided to read Caesar's notes on Gallic wars, and | downloaded some random .fb2 | | It turned out to be a preview fragment, which ended with | a stern warning that it is illegal to break copyright | laws and that this book can be legally purchased via | provided link. I'm sure Gaius Julius is very happy with | how these guys protect his interests. | throwaway776543 wrote: | > Part of that is due to their rampant IP theft | | Weren't South Korea, Taiwan, and even Japan once known | for their rampant IP theft? | Mauricebranagh wrote: | The US was to and not that long ago. | nix23 wrote: | >Japan once known for their rampant IP theft? | | Yes they stole even IBM Mainframe OS's repeatedly....and | sold it. | medium_burrito wrote: | Nowhere near as bad. The sheer scale and reach of Chinese | counterfeits/crap quality is epic. If there's an olympics | for this, China wins all the medals in every event. | | - Fake apple cables | | - Fidget spinners | | - Remember fake Apple stores? | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-fake- | idUSTRE7... | | - Remember the milk scandal? | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal | | - And don't forget the Three Gorges Dam, where the | grifters building it used so much concrete building it | (causing a global concrete shortage), but didn't worry | about the problems non-homogeneous concrete causes in | large load-bearing structures, and skimping on quality | and every which way. The CCP has basically admitted the | dam is useless for flood control. And it has some cracks, | and the weather changes are going to cause more issues. | nytgop77 wrote: | probably legaly i am wrong. but apple cables and figdet | spinners.. not much _intelectual_ property there. there | should be separate term for brand infrigment. | throwbacktictac wrote: | I think it's healthy to have a diverse set of mid and | upper market companies. Chinese companies will ultimately | buy their way into up market businesses. One antidote | that I can readily think of is the acquisition of the | street wear company Bape buy a the Chinese/Hong Kong | manufacturer I.T Group. Forbes magazine is another | company that was acquired by a Chinese company. | | Furthermore, Hong Kong has some international appeal and | most people think of it as a nation separate from China. | In reality, companies from China incorporate in HK to | escape the aurora of being a Chinese compnay | babesh wrote: | Hong Kong companies have better brand reputations than | Chinese companies but gradually there are more Chinese | brands gaining better reputations. | | I would expect this to continue. In fact, there are | probably a few brands that are Chinese that you don't | realize are Chinese. | [deleted] | Nimitz14 wrote: | Uuh have you not heard of xiaomi or oneplus? They're | already creating high value goods. | klipklop wrote: | Indeed. My 4 year old Oneplus phone taught me that China | can make a phone just as good as anyone else. It's a | quality product and was at a great price. | | With that said, my next phone will be an iPhone. I am | trying to de-china whenever I can when it comes to buying | stuff. | OrbitRock wrote: | DJI drones is another example | jfengel wrote: | _Who is going to trust Chinese companies with things like | 5G infrastructure and CPS, when they 're all basically an | extension of the CCP when it comes to security?_ | | They're going to try to compete on price and quality. If | customers think that the Xiaomi phone is good and cheap, | the governments will have a hard time banning it. | Customers don't really care about turning over huge | amounts of information to Tiktok as well as to Facebook. | That puts the western governments in a bind, to either | ban wholesale or piecemeal, and it looks bad for them | either way. | | That's not a guaranteed win for China. It's hard to | compete on both price and quality, and they're going to | have to work hard to win a reputation for the latter. | It's possible: both Japan and South Korea have done it. | But they did so with a friendly US, not a hostile one. | | They have the advantage of an enormous internal market, | but it's not a wealthy one. They're going to look to | Africa, which is also not wealthy, but there is money | there, with less focus on privacy and more on price. | Perhaps India and Latin America as well. | jorblumesea wrote: | I think it's also fair to note that "Africa" is a huge | place with huge income distributions. I can see South | Africa and North Africa aligning more with the West, and | East Africa going more to China. | [deleted] | haspok wrote: | How can you compare China (population ~1.4bn) to any EU | country (population average ~10mn - several orders of | magnitude less, even in the case of the largest country)? | Size is an advantage, not a disadvantage! | | Pretty much none of the tactics would have worked for a | small country that China played successfully. If you are | small you can choose to be independent and protectionist - | and remain very poor, or join the party, but be pushed into | the corner, hoping that with time the playing field will | level out somewhat. | zz865 wrote: | I'm from a country where there are several locally owned | supermarkets. They're all very nice but eye wateringly | expensive. I'd love if Aldi/Carrefour/Costco moved in. | treis wrote: | This is the counter argument. By protecting an inefficient | sector you make it harder for every other sector to | operate. If Ghana moves to protect their Chocolate | manufacturing that will likely come at the expense of their | Cocoa growers. | | The best way seems to start with low level work and move up | the chain. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Romania still has at least one local supermarket chain I can | think of: Oncos. I'm not sure how many locations they have | outside of Transylvania, though. | | Sadly, Romania's competitiveness in building its own | businesses in Europe is weakened by being left out of | Schengen. Considering that Mark Rutte's party just won | reelection in the Dutch elections, sadly nothing is likely to | change on that front for years - he is the biggest force | vetoing Romanian accession to Schengen. | oblio wrote: | That's on our government. | | We should just start vetoing some of those important | treaties or other big agreements. We need to start | pressuring the other EU members into pressuring the | Netherlands for us. | Florin_Andrei wrote: | Well, it's a matter of leverage, isn't it? | AdrianB1 wrote: | In 2002-2005 I worked with all the supermarket and | hypermarket chains in Romania, I still have a couple of | friends in CxO positions in the top 5 companies; you are | missing the full picture on what happened there, but the | story is too long for a comment here; the 2007 change had | zero impact of what already happened in the early 2000s. | oblio wrote: | I wanted to keep it simple for non-Romanians. The process | started as Romania was implementing the EU acquis, after | 1999. | | I'd be interested in the story, if you have time, but my | only comment for everyone else reading this, these are | technicalities, regarding the gist of my comment. They only | change the timeline, but the main idea is the same. | AdrianB1 wrote: | That is the point, the main idea is wrong. The 2 major | factors were lack of experience of the Romanian owners (I | had very close friends that worked at the failed | Univers'all chain, it was total chaos) and capital to | build the right format at the right quality. | DSingularity wrote: | WW3 was fought with soft power and economics. Now some | countries own other countries and nobody is complaining. | smolder wrote: | I hear quite a lot of complaints from all sorts of people | about their economic victimhood. I've got complaints myself | about what global economics are doing for our prospects as | a species. | baryphonic wrote: | Considering that at the end of WWII, large swathes of | global population were subject to colonial rule, | particularly in Africa and Asia, I wonder how the current | situation you describe compares. | permo-w wrote: | Soft power and economics have been used as weapons for | centuries Do you really think that their current or recent | use is enough to warrant the moniker "WW3"? | | I don't | WalterBright wrote: | As a counterexample, the US has 50 states, and no internal | protectionism. Yet there are no "colony" states. | nytgop77 wrote: | puerto rico? | oblio wrote: | The starting point for the US states is/was much closer | than that of random countries around the world, to each | other. | | US states, despite what Americans tell themselves, are | culturally/socially/economically a lot more homogeneous | than random countries around the world are to each other. | | And US states are all protected by the same federal | government. None of them can really be abused by outside | forces with little/no repercussion. | | They really can't be compared (US states vs countries | around the world). | jldugger wrote: | > Do you know why I know them? Because there are 0 (zero!) | local supermarket chains left. They've all been bought by | foreign companies. | | It depends on your perspective really. When I lived in | Oregon, there were Fred Meyers all over the place, but | they're all owned by Kroger (HQ in Ohio) now. Are they | 'foreign' because they're from another state inside the USA? | | AFAIK, Kroger keeps the local brands, so IDK why none of the | local Romanian brands were kept. If it's anything like China | or USSR, probably not a lot of faith in the local brands I | guess? | DubiousPusher wrote: | Sort of yes. While a lot of the benefits of the development | that comes with the growth of the grocery industry in | Oregon will stay local, the surplus will not. It ends up in | Ohio or inside pensions or investor pockets. | | But this isn't a great analogy because the U.S. federal | government keeps interstate trade much more homogeneous | than the EU. | mrkramer wrote: | Developing countries lack proper legal system where laws are | based on property rights and market economy. That's why | mentality of African people for example can not change and can | not embrace capitalism. | | I would suggest you to read Hernando De Soto - The Mystery Of | Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs In The West And Fails | Everywhere Else | | The book argues "it actually has everything to do with the | legal structure of property and property rights. Every | developed nation in the world at one time went through the | transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal | ownership to a formal, unified legal property system. In the | West we've forgotten that creating this system is also what | allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth." | [1] | | Book is in the public domain: [1] | https://archive.org/details/Hernando_De_Soto_The_Mystery_Of_... | | Once the China for instance embraced capitalism and changed | their legal system to allow private property ownership and | allow market economy they thrived. Plus allowing American | companies to come and exploit cheap work force they acquired | "know-how" by now widely known and familiar stealing of | intellectual property and copying literally everything they put | their hands on. | valuearb wrote: | This is of course silly. Slowing your rate of growth now does | nothing to make you grow faster later. | totalZero wrote: | > when developing countries are pressured into free trade | agreements (for example by making aid dependent on this) | | "forced" is probably not the right word. "baited" is better. | | The developed world uses aid/loans to manipulate policy in the | developed world, by targeting desperation. Make loans that the | recipient cannot repay, then offer to restructure if they will | comply with certain conditions. | | This is why the IMF exists. | bingbong70 wrote: | "The developed world uses | aid/loans"/coups/assassinations/currency-debasement-attacks | Siira wrote: | Theory is not trustworthy. Here in Iran, we have had extreme | protectionist policies for decades in, e.g., cars, and all it | has done is made the car factory owners rich while car quality | stagnates and regresses, and prices keep rising. | tashoecraft wrote: | The book "How Asian Works" touched on this as well. A | combination of promoting/subsidizing local industries whilst | pushing them to be competitive on the global stage can do great | things | nickik wrote: | I don't think this is actually true. IF you go threw all the | history of development economics, sure its easy to point out 'X | government did X and look at that, now they are successful at | X'. | | However that is selection bias, government and international | development agencies tried literally everything, many things 10 | times, often over years and years. Often wasting resources that | then didn't go into their successful part of the economy. | | Quite often governments also do lead following, they do | something, something else is successful, then more money flows | into that and then a few years later all the bureaucrats | congratulate themselves on their success. | | We actually have pretty good and very clear numbers on what | actually works. Basically it boils down to 'don't be a shit | government' and if you manage that you will have some amount | pretty good amount of growth. Avoid a few idioitic policies, | implement the basic of law and business (property rights), | don't punish successful people, don't be ultra protectionist. | | Any country that manages that usually manages to get a fair | amount of growth. It might not be growth in Steel industry but | better more efficient framing, mining, tourism, labor intensive | industry and stuff like that are still very helpful base to | build up the basic infrastructure and business environment. | | The old Post-WW2 version of 'lets not import steel, invest many | billions in building our own steel industry' kind of plans | actually have a terrible history of success. | | But this debate has been raging for 3000 years now, in modern | history mercantilism vs free market debate, then the socialism | vs capitalism debate (calculation debate), then Post-WW2 | development of 'Development economics' that had all these | debates again. Look at India, and its strange 'Indian | Socialism' based on many British ideas. | | > So much like we allow children time to learn in school before | we expect them to compete in the job market | | Mostly what we are actually doing for most jobs is kids | basically showing that they can be good little workers and have | basic social skills. | | For a country this would basically be, show that you respect | basic property rights, don't have polices that make creating a | business impossible, be reasonable accessible to global market. | If you can do that, welcome to being adult, you will likely be | reasonably successful. | | > we should allow developing countries to employ | protectionistic policies like tariffs | | Allow them sure, who are we to deny them. But that doesn't mean | its a good idea most of the time. | osacial wrote: | That's a complete nonsense on how things work in reality. The | biggest problem for Africa is that MARKET of anything that they | are selling is in Europe and US. They can demand anything they | want(which is simple racket and anyone despises these things in | business), and it all will simply end with some startup in Cali | who will start to grow cocoa beans in vertical farms or some | other African country will become cocoa exporter Nr1 in the | world. | | ANY developing European country in history started with | offering raw materials and very quickly invested into | manufacturing and producing good quality products. There are no | obstacles for Ghana to do the same. At the moment you can see | some poor European countries with industry and skilled | workforce and they all have poor results because of corruption. | Something tells me, that it will be the same for Ghana. | nerdponx wrote: | Demanding a greater % of the final value of a good is a | racket? | | And you really think that Ghana's cocoa superiority will be | upended by some American startup? That's laughable, and | certainly not enough of a credible threat to keep Ghana under | the boot of economic imperialism. | vlan0 wrote: | Life and Debt is another good example. | | http://lifeanddebt.org/ | lr4444lr wrote: | Okay, but if local goods can't be produced at a price that is | commensurately low, then the fledgingly country's wage earners | have their purchasing power reduced, with less discretionary | income to further their own educational and business pursuits. | I think this thesis you are referring to takes for granted that | the tariffs are going to be responsibly used by the governing | class setting them to invest in the long term prospects of | their people and not siphoned off into corrupt ends. That's a | pretty tall assumption. | m12k wrote: | Correct, the lower priced international goods help give the | population of developing countries more purchasing power with | their low wages, but at the cost of those wages never going | up significantly. They get stuck in a local optimum - and | unfortunately, yes, in order to escape from one of those, the | first steps will always be toward something less optimal. | pydry wrote: | >if local goods can't be produced at a price that is | commensurately low, then the fledgingly country's wage | earners have their purchasing power reduced | | If the industry they work in can't compete their _entire_ | income is reduced to zero. | | That can knock out related industries as well and ultimately | leave the country exposed to currency collapse and | hyperinflation as the exporting countries decide that this | country has nothing it really wants any more while they still | desperately need imports. | | This happened to Venezuela (after local industrialists | declared war on Chavez in 2002 he effectively set out to | destroy them) and Zimbabwe (when Muagabe dispossessed farmers | from their land, rendering it unproductive). | | The US is also exposed to this risk. It's steadily but very | slowly losing hi tech manufacturing capabilities - something | that takes decades to get back once lost (due to the network | effect and loss of skills). | tshaddox wrote: | > If the industry they work in can't compete their entire | income is reduced to zero. | | But I thought we're talking about a time period before that | industry even exists. | mxcrossb wrote: | The nerve of that website to beg for donations while being | plastered with advertisements | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | I know HN prefers not to discuss site misbehavior, but since | there is already is a thread... | | This site had it all. I think I had something like 4 or 5 | overlaying popups/infocards, plus ads. When I tried to scroll | it redirected me to the next page, and then it hijacked the | back button on top of that. | | Revisited to count the garbage: Donation beg, cookies, sticky | ad on the bottom, "Add to home screen", "install our app", | notification bell button. White space in the content area, with | an ad underneath. No content visible at all. | dgellow wrote: | I'm not sure I follow the argument. Surely Ghana could sell some | cocoa to Switzerland, while at the same time building their own | chocolate brands. Maybe reduce your export, but keep a strong | influx of money and at the same time invest in your own line of | products. | eloisant wrote: | Easier for them to compete internationally as Nestle, Lindt, | etc. will have to either reduce their production or find other | (possibly more expensive) cocoa sources. | | Also it prevents from having internal competition between | exportation and internal refining, as exportation is easy | "right now" money while refining will take time and | investments. | dalbasal wrote: | Wait... Swiss diplomats still wear jack sparrow hats?! | dgellow wrote: | No. The people you can see in the first picture aren't the | diplomats themselves, it's just part of the tradition when | welcoming country leaders. Watch the video, you will see that | our current president has completely normal clothes. | andimm wrote: | They are called Bundesweibel, took me a while to find them: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huissier | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibel_(Amtsdiener) | dgellow wrote: | Et pour les romands: | https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huissier_(Suisse) | | :) | prepend wrote: | I think it's good to see raw producers start working up market to | make their own chocolate. I think a Ghanaian chocolate brand | actually owned by Ghanaians and made for export would market very | well. | | It's interesting to me how much tasty and interesting stuff in | Africa has not been marketed internationally and there's lots of | room for them to grow and develop. | | For example, fonio [0], is a grain native to west Africa that | I've never seen in the US but was eaten every day when I was | there, as common as rice. It's gluten-free and could be the next | quinoa and a great opportunity to develop a new brand and export | finished products rather than just commodities. | | One of the big opportunities of all this digitization, I think, | is that it's now easier for remote locations to get more value | out of their commodities than just exporting raw and having | someone else add most of the value. | | I'm surprised the Swiss aren't trying to do more joint ventures | to develop chocolate making capabilities in Ghana. | valuearb wrote: | Or they just opened the door for other countries to get in the | cocoa business, while their chocolate business fails because | they don't have the expertise, brands or market access to | succeed. | [deleted] | hanche wrote: | I satisfy my chocolate cravings with chocolate from fairafric | now. Chocolate produced all the way from the tree to packaged | chocolate bars in Ghana. They ran a couple kickstarter projects | to get going. It's excellent chocolate too! At least the dark | variants, which are the only ones I care about. | | https://fairafric.com/en/home/ | kzrdude wrote: | Very cool. Just note (since it's on topic here) that their | team is mostly German, not from Ghana | https://fairafric.com/team/ | hanche wrote: | True. However, they seem to be working hard - and with some | success, I believe - at transferring ownership and | responsibility to their partners in Ghana. | auiya wrote: | There's a smoked chili pepper which I believe is native to the | area that is labeled as "ghana pepper" for export, and is hard | to find elsewhere. It is _incredible_. | zymhan wrote: | AFAIK peppers are native to the Americas, I'm not sure there | is a "native" African pepper. Though they certainly could | have been cultivating them for 400-500 years. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper#Origins | nix23 wrote: | >AFAIK peppers are native to the Americas | | You are right, the oldest proven use and origin of pepper | is from Mexico, exported from the portugese all over the | world...but the chinese and india peppers are still a bit | of a mystery. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper | exhilaration wrote: | Thanks, another item to add to my list: corn, tomatoes, | potatoes, and peppers. All are now staples worldwide but | were unknown outside of the Americas until ~500 years ago. | oh_sigh wrote: | Cacao seems like a highly relevant addition while you're | at it... | xeromal wrote: | Really?!?! | devdas wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange has a | whole list. | nix23 wrote: | You can add Tobacco too ;) | simonh wrote: | I found this article about the developing domestic Ghanaian | Chocolate industry much more informative than the OP. | | https://foodtank.com/news/2018/08/ghanaian-chocolate-revolut... | solidsnack9000 wrote: | In the long run, it wouldn't make sense for so much finished | chocolate to be from places like France and Switzerland, where | cocoa doesn't grow. | | There is a parallel with tea. At one time, people thought in | terms of "English tea" or "French tea". In recent decades, | western people are much more acquainted with Japanese and Chinese | tea directly. It is no coincidence that this stuff is fresher, | more varied, more affordable... | bsanr2 wrote: | This is similar to the situation with Global South coffee | exports, wherein actual growers only receive a fraction of the | revenue from consumer sales (despite the relatively cheap and | easy value-add of roasting or conversion into instant coffee) | because of logistical concerns, and because Europeans and | American just plain do not buy African roast coffee when it | appears on their shelves. If these countries were to decide to | restrict exports, a billion-dollar market would collapse. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | I think people buying fairtrade are under impression they are | solving the issue, whereas in reality it doesnt do much | jariel wrote: | Coffee is a commodity. Marketers will re-brand their roasts | pretty quickly and convince us all that 'it's better'. | | Coco is special in that production is limited. | brodock wrote: | Good coffee is not abundant. Not the crap you will find in | local supermarket, that will almost always taste the same. | It's like cheap wine. | [deleted] | unwind wrote: | This is a pretty minor point, but any proper coffee geek will | tell you that the shelf life of roasted coffee is pretty bad. | | Thus it makes sense to roast closer to the time when the coffee | is made available for sale; shipping from African countries up | to Europe, would increase the "latency" a great deal. | | I'm sure modern packaging gives a decent shelf life, and TBH I | don't worry much about the use-before label on coffee around | here, but that's generally because it doesn't last long on the | shelf anyway. :) | fogihujy wrote: | Not to mention that many prefer one specific blend. If you | want me to buy another brand/blend then you first have to | convince me that the new one is at least as delicious as the | previous one. | ggm wrote: | If the raw cocoa had attracted a price closer to the final | products value, this wouldn't have happened. Sure, the value add | is significant and so this is not just "chocolate is the value | inherent in the beans" but really? This is happening because | chocolate consumable production underpays the farmers. | | This response is a good thing. I hope they succeed, its as steep | hill to climb making good chocolate from cocoa. | tyingq wrote: | _" With Ghana's move towards processing its own cocoa, the world, | and not just Switzerland, will experience a massive shortage | since Ghana is responsible for about 45% of the world's cocoa."_ | | That seems like bigger news than the headline. | redisman wrote: | They can outbid the local companies if they want to. The whole | point is that Ghana wants to move up the rung from a producer | of raw goods to more value add to their exports | Shadonototro wrote: | they'll move production elsewhere, problem solved | | why people do not think nowadays? | tyingq wrote: | I'm no expert, but there are articles from many different | sources saying that the transition will result in a crisis, | and will take a long time to resolve. | Shadonototro wrote: | i doubt it, they anticipated that many years ago, they only | import 1/3 from ghana, easy to replace | | source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products- | eurostat-news/-/E... | ISL wrote: | It may encourage the major chocolate processors to build | processing plants in Ghana. | | This must be done with caution. Crashing the internal chocolate | price will hurt Ghanaian farmers in the short term even as the | country attempts to negotiate the country to a better place. | | "Governing a country is like frying a small fish" -- Tao te | Ching 60 | JoeAltmaier wrote: | My local shop got its chocolate from Honduras and Nicaragua. | They visited the farms and arranged to have the beans processed | there. Meant they could import a liquid and not an agricultural | product. So it didn't have to be fumigated. A big win. | amelius wrote: | They could also ask Switzerland to pay 30% of their revenue, | similar to what Apple does. | arcticfox wrote: | It's also a massive assumption... first of all that Ghana won't | be able to process & export chocolate in significant | quantities, and second of all that other nations that are | paying the LID won't be able to pick up the Swiss slack. | | Surely the cocoa won't just be burned, someone will find a way | to process it. | laraph wrote: | That 45% figure in the article is wrong; Ghana produces about | 18% of the world's production. They hold a lot of the world | market because they have low prices. If they raise their price, | their market share will drop, and other countries could move in | and take their position. There's simple market economics at | play. | SamBam wrote: | If Ghana is able to process its own cocoa at the same rate as | the Swiss, or at least accelerate to such productions soon, | then the world won't see a massive shortage of chocolate, just | of raw cocoa. | | It seems reasonable to me. My understanding is that the ones | adding the value, by turning the raw material into chocolate, | are the ones making the majority of the profits. | aritmo wrote: | Here says[0] that Ghana and China are about to sign a $2b deal to | build schools, roads, hospitals and other infrastructure. In | exchange of cocoa products. | | Did this work out for Ghana? There are no newer posts since 2018 | on this. | | [0]: https://archive.is/CPFhC | fmajid wrote: | Divine Chocolate is owned by Ghanaian cacao farmer: | | https://www.divinechocolate.com/products | | A much better model than the Fairtrade scam by which white-savior | consultants jet off to poor countries to lecture locals whose | backs their fat salaries are extracted off. | vmilner wrote: | It's about twice the price of Cadbury's in the UK, but | significantly better quality. I often buy it when I see it, and | it has fairly good shop distribution now. | mpol wrote: | How i fairtrade a scam? | | Please be aware that the market of cocoa is not an easy one and | not very transparent. The Dutch TV maker Teun van der Keuken | was devastated by what he saw in Ivory Coast with a lot of | child slavery going on. He started his own slavefree brand Tony | Chocolonely, but even they have to admit they can not guarantee | it is slavefree made, they can only strive for that. By the | way, the people from Nestle just shrugged over the issue of | child slavery. | | I am very happy to see good policy being applied in Africa, | they need to do this more often and strongly. Europe and the | US, governments and companies, have been pulling their strings | far too long. I hope China can give them a sense of how they | can fend better for themself. | devdas wrote: | https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fairtrade-scam-when-comes- | pri... | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/05/25/surprise. | .. | DetroitThrow wrote: | I didn't realize Tony Chocolonely was intended to be a slave | free brand, I had bought it in Europe thinking it had a | hilarious name and large size - the background of traditional | brands sold in the US sounds horrific if he decided to make | his own company based on what he saw, which haven't even | penetrated our domestic market. | pudhbithyftdti wrote: | You can purchase Chocolonely at Natural Grocers and Sprouts | in the US, if they're in your area. It's the best quality | chocolate I've ever purchased that didn't come from a | chocolate shop, highly recommend it. | | Coco is sold on world markets as a commodity good. | Suppliers can't know what country the beans originated. To | get guaranteed slave-free chocolate you effectively have to | create your own logistics for that specific purpose. Any | chocolate producers that haven't done that will have some | amount of slave-produced coco mixed into their supply | chain. | JulianMorrison wrote: | I wonder what Ghanaian chocolate will be like? I will be happy to | buy it and try. | refraincomment wrote: | Hopefully they also stop exporting unsolicited people. | jkaljundi wrote: | Netflix series Rotten has a good episode on cocoa lifecycle and | the problems involved: https://www.netflix.com/ee/title/80146284 | m000 wrote: | I really hope Ivory Coast will join Ghana on this, as they did | for the LID bonus case. Together they account for over 2/3 of | cocoa production. So, they can pretty much reshape the | cocoa/chocolate market and break out of colonialistic trade | agreements for the benefit of their people. | m_mueller wrote: | As a Swiss, I hope the same. I find this IP waiver blockage | horrid - it should be in the interest of everyone to try to | extinguish this disease worldwide, as quickly as possible, to | reduce the mutation risk as much as possible. Hats off to | Ghana! | barry-cotter wrote: | If the Swiss can buy from 1/3 of global producers that's still | plenty to satisfy the demand. And it's not like the world is | short of areas where cocoa would grow. It's not so long since | Vietnam went from not growing coffee to being one of the | world's largest producers in under 20 years. I bet they could | do it with cocoa too. | throwaway1916 wrote: | Yep. It would probably take another 20 years to develop | another Cocoa producer as prolific as Ghana and Ivory Coast. | Also, Cocoa only grows within 20 degrees north and south of | the equator. | jeromegv wrote: | There's actually a worldwide shortage of cocoa, it's | apparently not that simple. | jjcon wrote: | Due to COVID yes, but there are shortages of everything | right now - cocoa isn't unique in any way in that regard | BoorishBears wrote: | ... except it's actually relevant to the thread's point | about exercising greater control over _cocoa_ | jjcon wrote: | The above was in a response saying they could take 20 | years to invest in cocoa elsewhere - the shortage is very | temporary in comparison | BoorishBears wrote: | ... no it didn't. Didn't even imply it. Literally there | was an aside that used "20 years" and that's it. | | Why would you lie about a comment I can literally just | scroll up to read? | | The pandemic and its effects doesn't need to last 20 | years for Ghana and the Ivory Coast to take greater | control of their cocoa crop. | | We're literally watching it happen right now. | jjcon wrote: | > It's not so long since Vietnam went from not growing | coffee to being one of the world's largest producers in | under 20 years. I bet they could do it with cocoa too. | | It's right here... maybe do a read through before | breaking HN rules and assuming poor intent | BoorishBears wrote: | The sweet irony, read the comment you just replied to | | > Literally there was an aside that used "20 years" and | that's it. | | Which aside do you think I was referring to? An aside | about a different crop in a different period of time, | which might I add didn't involve a global pandemic? | | Saying someone said something they didn't is... a lie. Or | would you rather I just interpret it as you breaking HN | rules and assuming poor intent on their part? | saiya-jin wrote: | Issues with coca shortage were way before any covid hit | the distribution channels. Its not trivial plant to get | good crop, not ruined by pests, fungus etc. Quality | matters a lot. | jjcon wrote: | There were rumors that minor disruptions could cause | shortages but supply was still having no trouble meeting | demand (that is until COVID) | aaron695 wrote: | > Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland | | This is not true. | | He only said they are going to _try_ and process _some_ cocoa in | Ghana. | | "we intend to process more and more of our cocoa in our country" | https://youtu.be/gs_dD7qKfX8?t=317 | | It'll take decades and they will grow more to supply both | markets, if their market is successful. | | What's with the hysterical headlines - "Awkward moment when | President of Ghana says they intend to process cacao", "Ghana | will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland", "Ghana President shuts | down Swiss President", "Ghana President Publicly Denied Cocoa | Export to Switzerland." | | I thought maybe short sellers, but I can't see a link. | | Is it just some addictive meme, I guess the random covid bits are | like an attack vector or something? | sschueller wrote: | Yes, this is garbage news. I dont see anything in the top Swiss | papers. | 1MachineElf wrote: | Having worked in Whole Foods and been surrounded by family who | prefer organic, free/fair type foods, I must say I do understand | there is a market for the chocolates we usually see marketed as | non-European. There's an emphasis on dark chocolate, "artisanal | blends" with spices, etc. The kind of chocolate people pay extra | for because they think it's special, then don't touch because | they paid extra for and want to preserve it, only for it to | expire in the pantry. | | Let me be honest. I prefer European-style chocolate. Milk | chocolate. White chocolate. They're much richer, and I hope there | will continue to be a great supply of this type of chocolate. | Maybe that Swiss brand recognition has more to do with the fact | that it actually tastes really good versus what's being | attributed to hand-wavy concepts about colonialism and power | structures. | saiya-jin wrote: | As for Lindt, milk and white chocolates are rather small | portion of their portfolio [1], and at least here in | Switzerland it looks accordingly in the shops - these | 'artisanal' types take 80-90% of the shelves and overall are | bought more than basic milk/white ones. Personally, these days | if I buy then only dark one with sea salt. | | Fun fact - there is stark difference between Lindt made in | Switzerland and the ones made in EU (had ones from France and | Germany, you have to look for fine print in the back since | overall design is same). Swiss-made I found unsurprisingly only | in Swiss supermarkets, with the price being 50-100% higher than | the same in EU supermarkets, but the taste is much, much | better. I guess higher quality coca beans are used but not sure | here. | | They are so good that I don't seek out local/foreign artisanal | chocolate anymore, since every single one of them simply | doesn't compare (apart from price which can be even | significantly higher). Over the years, I've tried many. But | this is obviously highly subjective and true only for variants | of dark chocolate, I don't buy other types. | | [1] https://www.chocolate.lindt.com/our-chocolate/our- | brands/exc... | samatman wrote: | I might have a bad attitude about people's food preferences as | well, if I had worked at Whole Foods. | | I assure you, a bar of dark chocolate with "fancy" spices has | never expired in my pantry. The Swiss stuff is ok, if your | palate reached maturity at seven years old+. | | + this is not my actual opinion. I'm ribbing you. | rory wrote: | Hey I actually like that dark, spiced chocolate! I'm also | skeptical it's any more expensive than the Swiss chocolate sold | in gaudy mall stores like Lindt and Teuscher. | | There's obviously a market for these sort of "non-European- | style" chocolates, which, as you said, are marketed | specifically as being associated with countries like Ghana. In | NE Asia there's actually a chocolate bar just called Ghana | (made in Japan..)! So why shouldn't Ghana try to capture more | of the value of that market? I'm sure Swiss chocolate makers | can source their cocoa elsewhere, and milk chocolate needs far | less actual cocoa anyway. | reducesuffering wrote: | > "I prefer European-style chocolate. Milk chocolate. White | chocolate. They're much richer" | | And also much unhealthier. They contain copious amounts of | added, refined sugar. Cocoa can be healthy given it's nutrient | profile, but only outweighs the damage added sugar causes if | the chocolate is >90% cacao. | someonehere wrote: | I read their reasoning why they're stopping, but my gut tells me | China is behind this. They're actively tapping Africa for natural | resources and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some dealings | behind closed doors to hand over cacao to China. | rhplus wrote: | Playbook: 1) Ghana needs capital to build | cacao processing plants 2) Foreign investors loans | capital and plant is built with skilled foreign labor | 3) Once running, plants are staffed by unskilled local labor | 4) Ghana has an unrelated financial crisis and defaults on | loans 5) Foreign investors take ownership of cacao | processing plants through liens 6) Foreign investors | threaten to close plants unless they get a free-trade zone | 7) Cacao is now processed in Ghana with cheap labor and no | export duties | sgt wrote: | This is terrible. How did it get that far, so quickly? | igammarays wrote: | I wonder if we would go to war over chocolate, like we would over | other brown sticky stuff. | | Wouldn't be surprised if there's a coup in Ghana soon, not least | because a lot of rich exporters will be angry. | runawaybottle wrote: | Just flexing that geopolitical hot take: | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-22/ghana-see... | | China's influence over Africa to secure it's own cocoa | production? | | Article from 2017: | https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKL8N1K35R1 | | So looks like China paid up this year and got exclusives, and not | Switzerland. | | What's the game, I must know. Ghana is Lord Baelish? | jeffreyrogers wrote: | Seems like a good decision. Would be good for other African | countries to do similarly, but they are largely hindered by | corrupt governments whose officials benefit from exporting the | raw materials. | williesleg wrote: | No more swiss piss? Thanks china! | amelius wrote: | In other news, Switzerland begins militarization process | | https://infobrics.org/post/31420 | sadmann1 wrote: | How will Switzerland counter this change of events | fogihujy wrote: | The first response will probably be for the chocolate producers | to try to source the raw materials from other sources. This may | or may not result in production ramping up elsewhere, or even | new producers appearing as increased prices could make | production financially viable in places it previously wasn't. | | Depending on how the markets react, prices may go up, and many | of the really cheap brands could disappear from the shelves, or | just have their fat/sugar contents increased. There's also a | non-zero chance that new African brands will grab a part of the | low-end of the market, with protectionist measures implemented | to respond to them. | eloisant wrote: | Considering Switzerland is less than 9 millions people, their | total consumption is a drop in the ocean of the global market | so I'm don't think protectionist measures would change much. | | And I don't see why the big markets (EU, US) would want to | protect Swiss companies. | fogihujy wrote: | The big markets won't care about Swiss chocolate. It's far | more likely that Swiss chocolate producers will simply | focus on the high-end market and leave it at that. | | Now, if other African countries tried doing this to the EU | and re. other raw materials on the other hand... | ArkanExplorer wrote: | CO2 tariffs: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/how-an-eu- | carbon-borde... | | Ghana's electricity supply is 51% fossil fuel, whereas | Switzerland is 2.5%. | | But its a lot easier to build solar plants in Accra than in | Bern... | | I think that Europe is at a fundamental disadvantage over the | medium/long-term, due to the burden of its welfare states. | | Its surprising to see that taxes over basically all | categories are lower in Ghana than in Europe (except | corporate taxes). | | The minimum monthly aged pension is EUR6.60 in Ghana, vs | EUR1,080 in Switzerland. Life expectancy is 20 years longer | in Switzerland than Ghana, but the retirement age is only 4 | years later. | | The end effect of these extremely early and generous pensions | is that economies become stratified, to ensure that these | pension payments are maintained, and taxes are heaped on | individuals to pay for it. | | Europe needs a widespread increase of the aged pension age to | 70, cease all migration from regions with high usage of | welfare state service, and begin a large, multi-generational | modular nuclear power plant building plan. | kwere wrote: | maybe we need a individual capitalization pension plan | csomar wrote: | I think Switzerland is doing, overall, fine. France is the | biggest abuser. They have a large bloated-welfare system | that encourages people _not_ to work; and they have a | combination of impossibly high taxes and bureaucracy. | | If you look at this list, you'll know something is horribly | wrong with these economies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L | ist_of_countries_by_tax_reven... | | The ones at the top are all European except for Cuba... | ISL wrote: | My experience with corruption in Ghana suggests that the | Swiss have some other key advantages. It is impossible to | imagine a swiss policeman stopping every third car on the | country's main highway and asking, "Where's my Christmas?" | | That said, the potential for Ghanaians to thrive is | astounding. Incremental improvements will yield incremental | gains. It is a tropical paradise emerging from the weight | of poverty. | | Also, the mangoes are hands-down the finest I have ever | tasted. | WestOaklandfan wrote: | How will Ghana counter the loss of a high quality cocoa buyer ? | staticelf wrote: | Good for them I guess or is it? I don't understand how you cannot | have prosparity from selling raw materials? | | If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price | along with creating your own products. It seems weird to me to | not let foreign countries buy your raw materials just because you | want to produce more stuff yourself. | | It's not like I will start buying chocolate made in ghana because | they don't want to sell their cocoa anymore. I will still buy | from the brands I like and are used to most of the times, which | is a local brand. | sokoloff wrote: | I feel like for every measure of progress this might give | Ghana, it will give other exporters of cocoa beans 10x as much | advantage, at least in the short-term. | austincheney wrote: | > If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price | along with creating your own products. | | Who makes that decision? Cocoa slavery is a thing because the | economics of raw material pricing is complicated by many | factors but the demand is very simple and very high. | sokoloff wrote: | The (effective) demand for beans produced in Ghana just went | way down with this policy enactment though, right? | austincheney wrote: | I doubt it. If anything it will restrict market | availability which will only increase demand, but the best | way to know is watch the price for beans. | sokoloff wrote: | I agree that watching the market is the best way to judge | the balance. | | I'd expect the price for beans as-delivered to | Switzerland is likely to go up. The price for beans as- | offered in Ghana is likely to go down. The latter matters | more to Ghana cocoa farmers. | Mat342 wrote: | It's 2021, africans can abolish slavery if they want to | macspoofing wrote: | >I don't understand how you cannot have prosparity from selling | raw materials? | | Depending on how big the export is in relation to your economy, | it can certainly have a negative effect: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease | vmilner wrote: | >If you think you're not being paid enough, increase the price | along with creating your own products. | | That seems to be what happened with Mars and Hershey (i.e. a | price increase) though put in the terms of not paying farmers | enough and trade war. It's unclear to me whether Mars and | Hershey are now getting less cocoa than they did because cocoa | is being diverted to domestic production, or the same amount | and paying more. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-19 23:01 UTC)