- In December, Trump gave China 90 days to conclude a deal Otherwise. Trump said he would boost tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25% from the current 10%.Those 90 days ended March 1.
- On December 31, I noted Trump Hails “Big Progress” on Trade Deal With China. I commented “Supposedly there is ‘big progress’ on a comprehensive trade deal with China. Color me skeptical.”
- On January 19, I noted China Pledges US Buying Spree to Reduce Trade Surplus With US to Zero By 2024. I commented “In discussions that are not yet public, and will likely be empty promises, sources say China Offers a Path to Eliminate U.S. Trade Imbalance.”
- On February 22, the Washington Post reported Trump says he expects to meet with China’s Xi and finalize new trade deal but Trump would not rule out extending the deadline beyond March 1.
- On February 24, Trump Tweeted there was “substantial progress on intellectual property” and suspended tariffs.
- On February 25, I noted Hooray! “Substantial” Progress With China (Just Don’t Ask Where) in response to Trump’s Tweets.
- At the end of February, Trump expected a small delay in signing.
- On March 2, I noted Trump Assails WTO “Straitjacket”, Attempts Pocket Veto of Entire Organization.
- On March 12, the Washington Post stated U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer told the Senate Finance Committee “Our hope is that we are in the final weeks” of negotiations. However, Schumer said on the Senate floor, “It is abundantly clear that China is playing us.”
- On March 13, Trump stated that he is in No Rush to Complete China Trade Deal. “I think things are going along very well – we’ll just see what the date is,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Drum Roll Please. ……
Today, Bloomberg reports China and U.S. to Push Back Trump-Xi Meeting to at Least April
The key words here are “at least” April. Lighthizer warned ‘major issues’ remained outstanding in talks.
90 Days Till Who Knows When
We have gone from the certainty of “90 days or else” to canceled tariffs and who knows when.
As I said at the outset, there will be a deal, just don’t expect much substance to it or for China to honor it if there is.
Meanwhile, I am sure a pause in Tariffs and a delay in the deal suits China just fine.
For the record, I think the pause in tariffs is a good thing because tariffs are a bad idea in the first place. US farmers were getting killed by China’s retaliations.
Any deal that eliminates tariffs and retaliations will be a good thing, even if it otherwise accomplishes nothing.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The concept of intellectual property rights is problematic and loads of people don’t accept it all that much. That applies particularly to the third world where they view intellectual achievements as the heritage of all mankind, and property rights as another imperialist scheme to keep the money flowing to the wealthy and powerful. And, in truth, only a fraction of whatever is collected in the name of property rights actually goes to the creative individuals it purports to sustain.
There’s simply a big difference between making a copy of something and taking something away from someone: It’s worse to have your TV or car stolen than to have them copied.
Amen!
Intellectual Property “Theft”, is only “Theft” in a Newspeakian sense. It’s not as if virtually all of mankind are thieves, who stole the wheel from the first guy who carved one out of stone….
The Chinese can wait this out. I bet they’re looking 20 years into the future. After the US is swamped by Spanish speakers and Europe is mostly Muslim. And thinking the west will be drowning in welfare while they have a more intelligent harder working population that can and will crush us.
Much of his “deals” are headlines…so long as he can continue to keep the negotiations going he looks like a master negotiator…sooner or later the bottom will fall out and the Chinese will continue their sneaky ways…just like Charlie Brown continues to want to believe Lucy will not pull the football away…
Intellectual property rights lawyers can’t save us from Chinese competition; we need to get our R&D and STEM education acts together. They’re all over the floor.
In the 1980s, it was Japan Inc. and those sneaky French constantly in our headlines as the chief industrial espionage villains of the time. And It was common knowledge that you couldn’t leave your hotel room at a certain Paris hotel and not expect your briefcase contents to have been photo copied while you were away.
I personally know the former IBM SE who was present in a certain major mainframe site when the final proof of IBM’s operating system theft was produced by a card deck sent from IBM support that printed on the nearest IBM N1 printer the contents of a certain main memory location. Yes, it was the IBM logo and the mainframe operating system IP battle was over, licensing agreements were signed, etc. What a delightful lawyer goat rodeo!, but the war raged on…and Japan lost due to R&D, or lack thereof.
As to back doors, I assume we’re still among the best at it. We were listening through one when Muammar Gaddafi’s thugs arranged the American murders in the German Bar, prompting Reagan’s attempt to kill him.
Let’s compete, not lawyer up. We’re good at it.
“Let’s compete, not lawyer up. We’re good at it.”
Some of us are. And the ones who are, were the ones who used to be in charge of things. Print enough money and hand it, largely unconditional, to confirmed zero productivity idiots; and keep at it for long enough, and tah-dah; now the zero productivity idiots are in charge. And they, being zero productivity idiots and all, are not good at it at all. Not even compared to such easy pickings as a bunch of communists. So instead, they cry for governments and lawyers to ban something and blame someone. Like all zero productivity idiots with enough unearned money do, when intellectually overwhelmed by someone marginally less idiotic.
There are still plenty of Americans who could easily compete with anyone anywhere in the world. But what they can not do, is compete while having their hands tied behind their backs. By being forced to hand over enough to support ambulance chasers, “investors,” idle yahoos expecting to “make money of their house,” public union leeches, warfighting against everyone all the time, and one dimwitted politician’s moronic attempt at creating a “legacy” for himself after another. All in magnificent splendor, despite virtually none of the above producing anything of value in return.
Americans used to have a field day, because it was potential competitors in communist countries who had to support an entire Party apparatus of deadweight leeches. They still do. But by now, even in a communist dump like China, The Party, despite its best efforts, cannot manage to rob its competitive people and enterprises quite as thoroughly as the above mentioned leeches combined managed to, here in the US. Fix that, here at home, and some communist backwater won’t even be visible in Americans’ rear view mirrors, a few years from now.
“What about China spying and hacking to steal technology from everywhere, with no effective means of control or repercussions?”
Spying is a different matter.
I doubt that China is spying anymore than we are. We spied on Germany, tapping Merkel. Germany did not put up enough of a stink. One wrong does not excuse another.
Outright theft is still another thing. I do not know if I believe all the charges, but some are surely true. Some Libertarians don’t believe in patents at all. But I am not in that group.
My understanding from a friend is that many of these concerns are overstated. He has specific knowledge of Boeing. Even if China stole stuff no sensitive manufacturing takes place there, they could not get parts or training, and no one would trust their products straight up anyway. I do not remember the conversation precisely, but it was convincing. He has been a reliable contact for many years.
I have stuff on the crashes that I cannot use, but it is nothing the FAA does not know.
These are complicated setups. Sometimes I just have to say, I don’t know.
Here is a specific example: Chinese do not respect patent law, and although I too am mostly Libertarian I think it is necessary to reward those efforts, and patents don’t last forever. The only way to get China to respect things like that is with an agreement with them that they will, with enforcement mechanism. Also, everyone knows China steals technology by spying and by hacking. I do not blame them for trying to steal state secrets, all governments do that. But stealing proprietary secrets from companies with no repercussions? Bad. China would probably say “that’s American law, it does not apply here”. Well Donald is trying to fix that. I wish him luck, I can hardly imagine anything more difficult.
“Respecting patent law,” does not imply one has to uncritically bow down to whichever arbitrary “law” is enacted, in response to lobbying by some US patent troll.
Tariffs don’t work. by now that should be obvious. I already gave my solution. If companies are so concerned over theft, they don’t have to move their operations to China. If they are willing to take the risks, do we need govt enforcement?
I agree American companies should not share their technology with China just to be allowed to do business there, and that is part of Trump’s negotiations. But that is only part of the problem: what about China spying and hacking to steal technology from everywhere, with no effective means of control or repercussions?
The fewer effective means of control or repercussions governments have, the better. Applies universally. There’s nothing special about the Washington Junta that makes them any more worthy of support, in any endeavor, that their counterpart in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran nor anywhere else.
Stuki, I misunderstood you. I did not know you consider capitalism, socialism, communism, and jihadism as equals.
I “consider” always having been at war with Eurasia and Eastasia as equals as well. Inevitable side effect of emphasizing insight over mindless, arbitrary hype.
Trump has said his main priority is to get China to agree to quit stealing American technology, and that would include an enforcement mechanism. That is why the “trade” talks are so difficult: because that is the last thing China wants. I give Trump a lot of credit for taking on this very difficult and necessary task which all previous presidents have ignored. Mish, you know as well as I do that the technology theft issue needs to be addressed, but you don’t like the way Donald is doing it. SO, what is your strategy to accomplish that? Criticism is easy; solutions – not so much.
Correct it is idiotic to let them continue to screw us, steal tech and have one sided unfair trade practices. It wouldn’t even be so bad if China wasn’t hell bent on becoming the worlds leading military power and suppressing the US. These people have killed 50 million of their own citizens and we are giving them the rope to hang us with. It is again IDIOTIC to let them get away with this. The normal text book economic theory on free trade doesn’t include helping your evil enemy empire subugate you while greedy capitalis companies just focus on short term profits. What do you think will happen to prices when a full scale conflict with the communists occurs? Better to pay up now than die later.
OMG this is your real answer??? Go ahead and drink the cool aide and trust the dear communist leaders. You are a good little sheep, Misguided US foreign policy is a far cry from murdering 50 million of your own citizens and willing to do the same with anyone who disagrees with their ideology. You should be ashamed for comparing the US to China.
US foreign policy is far more than “misguided”. Besides, why not compare the US and China? We wreak far more havoc around the world than they do and nowadays we practically beg our own people to stick needles into their arms and/or kill themselves. We also deliberately turn Americans against each other to foster eventual conflict.
China’s no utopia and I wouldn’t want to be subject to their Orwellian Sesame Credit system, but part of the reason the world is so screwed up today is that elites everywhere view life as very cheap. Regular people aren’t needed, so they’re treated with contempt on both sides of the Pacific.
I buy most of what you said but where do you mean by we beg people to stick needles into themselves. ? Are people being forced by the govt to become drug addicts? People are free to do this to themselves. I do believe all drugs should be legalized as the war on drugs is a big fail.
Was referring to the many pill mills that encouraged opioids for a long time. I think we still hand out over 400M prescriptions per year, plus the streets are awash in heroin like never before. I hear about this all the time when I go back to Ohio, which still amazes me. Never thought I’d see junkies in the corn fields.
Agree that the war on drugs is a massive failure, at least in terms of its stated objectives. However, I have difficulty believing a problem this big happened accidentally, sort of like how we accidentally ramped up poppy production in Afghanistan.
I think the drug epidemic is due to incompetence, you are giving them to much credit to believe they engineered this themselves. I don’t see what the benefit would be if they did, a docile flock of sheep?
Docile, weak, and they self-eliminate. Some of the superfluous population take themselves out of the game voluntarily.
I see a theme globally where elites think there are too many people, they’re not needed for labor or even cannon fodder anymore.
“I see a theme globally where elites think there are too many people,..”
The “elites” are, to a person, too dumb to think. Mindless, arbitrary spasms and masturbation, does not constitute “thinking.” The “elites” destroyed the West not because they are “evil,” such that everything would be just hunky-dory if only someone “less evil” took their place. But simply because systems, customs and institutions that has evolved in the West, while the dupes have slept for multiple generations and let the retards run away with all their freedoms and all the guns they could otherwise have protected them with; did allow, and still allow, them to do so unopposed.
Have to disagree that global elites are fools. That could be argued in the past when rule was hereditary, but today’s semi-meritocracy makes that less likely. Some clever people were able to climb to the top of ladder in the past century. Also think there is an effort to make political policy look incompetent rather than insidious.
A better counterargument could be made that they’re just trying to make extra money from things like opioids and poppy crops, quick off the books profits, with the death toll being a happy coincidence.
Do agree that the general population has been in deep slumber for a long time, allowing so much to happen.
You need to get out more; and work, interact and otherwise deal with more of the “global elite.” Trump’s quite the brainiac in that crowd.
Just as climbing to the top of the world’s heavyweight boxing ranks, nor to the top of reality TV rankings, doesn’t mean you’re smart; neither does climbing to the top of the kind of junior high popularity clique that constitutes the “system” the West is currently governed by. Anyone of even just above average intelligence, will simply leave the junior highers alone. Hence they win by attrition.
Intelligent people tend to be drawn to activities that stimulates and rewards intelligence and understanding. Not to Washington DC nor Wall Street nor Brussels nor to some organized ambulance chase event where morons preen around “assigning blame” to people. Only dunces too dumb to understand how dumb they are, manages to put up with the above for more than about half an hour, before checking out to do something less demeaning.
“….have difficulty believing a problem this big happened accidentally,..”
Hand confirmed imbeciles all the money, resources and power in the world, and all you’ll get is problems. And they’ll all be big. Anyone competent enough to be behind conspiracies of this size, is simultaneously too competent to even bother feigning support, for something as obviously idiotic as all and any policy undertaken by the US government since the start of the progressive era 150 years ago.
Ignorance must truly be bliss. LMAO, accusing others of drinking the Kool Aid. You’ve not clue one.
Did you read my reply. If so you have serious comprehension issues.
No deal and the tariffs removed mean China won. Well, at least we got the wall! Oh wait, Mexico won too. And I understand Trump wants to cut Medicare. So even the swamp won. 4th degree chess indeed.