The "world order" will look very different by the time Trump leaves office. He wants to cede more of the Middle East to Russia, reduce our participation and leadership in NATO, reduce our military presence in South Korea and Japan, and cancel or renegotiate trade deals, including the TPP.
The result will be a world that is more clearly apportioned among 3-4 major powers. Small Asian countries, if they can't get a feeling of solid support from the U.S., will eventually ally themselves with China. And the EU and Russia will battle (hopefully not openly) over the lands between and near them.
It's essentially the end of "pax Americana". I think it's incredibly short-sighted. Trump looks at international relations as a quarterly balance sheet but almost certainly does not properly account for the value of the stability the U.S. provides throughout the world now.
This is an argument that Trump has been making for decades. He believes US is getting the short end of these deals because he sees the US almost as mob guys providing protection but forgetting to collect protection money. He sees the US as spending money protecting Japan, S. Korea, and Europe without getting proper return. I believe we've been getting peace and favorable trade deals in return. He thinks that isn't enough and that it's time to collect.
The same thinking has him arguing that we should get the oil fields after the Iraq war.
I don't agree with this reasoning but we're about to see this play out.
Edit: here's a video that I linked to in my other comments. It's an Opera interview from 1988 where Trump says Japan is "beating the hell out of this country" and "they aren't paying" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI
This has been the most consistent part of Trump's platform. America is getting the short end of the deal.
Again, I'm not a Trump supporter but this policy is what Trump genuinely believes and will likely pursue.
It has also greatly benefited America during the whole post-war period. It is not a coincidence that the world's consumers are spending much of their money on products from American companies. Whether the American lower class gets a share of the profits is an other question of course.
This goes for tech too. American companies like Uber, Netflix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple have been able dominate most of the world market. In a protectionist world they will be locked out, just like they are in China today.
But he's not aware of the whole story. Japan is paying us money (billions, I think) to keep those bases there. I assume the same goes with other countries. This isn't free protection.
First off let me clarify that I'm no Trump supporter either. :) That said, I've been reading a book called "The Accidental Superpower" that I find very insightful, and the author makes arguments similar to the ones you mentioned. He argues that since WW2 the US has defended free trade around the world (through "the Bretton Woods system") essentially "for free" - even though we shoulder the defense burden for the rest of the world we haven't used this to negotiate treaties that are biased in our favor. The author sees this system ending in the next 20 years (i.e., the US will no longer defend the world's commerce for free) and he spends a large portion of the book discussing how different countries around the world will have to adapt.
A couple interesting notes: the author predicts that in a world with less free trade the US would do relatively well thanks to shale oil and our other natural resources (like rivers and rich farmlands).
He also talks a lot about demographic changes. He says in the US this will cause some pain from ~2020-2030 as the baby boomers retire, but we'll recover as millennials enter the most productive years of their careers (40s-early 60s).
However he also predicts much more dire consequences for Russia due to demographic changes, and suggests they might not recover from a decline starting around 2020.
I can't repeat the entire analysis from the book in this box but I've found the author's comments to be thought-provoking so far. :)
Of particular interest to the HN crowd, the author also argues that demographic issues mean that right now there is an unusually large amount of investable capital available, but this will soon change as baby boomers begin to retire and switch from accumulating and investing their money to trying to stretch what they've already earned to last the rest of their lives. He predicts we'll see much less money available for risky investments starting in the next few years, due simply to demographic changes around the world.
Unfortunately, it does seem likely that "Make America Athens losing the Peloponnesian War (again)" is the policy objective.
If one wanted to look on the bright side, there's a chance that "I am a master businessman who can cut better deals" is a merely way to have something say about foreign policy without having to go to the effort of thinking about it.
Providing a launch pad for forward deployment of Armed forces is a pretty good deal IMO. Doing this helped the US keep USSR in check. Now assume that NATO never happened. Life would go on. These countries would be in a lot of debt, but they'd have their own armies for sure with the US twiddling their thumbs from across the ocean. Maybe Russia would've occupied a couple more countries. Although it seems these countries should pay up for protection money, consider the difference a rent that US is paying them for maintaining a military base. A quick google search gave me "...he United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad.."
Rightly or wrongly I think a sizeable portion of the world is tired of the flavour of stability the U.S. provides.
It feels a bit like the U.S. thinks the rest of the world isn't capable of looking after itself. And perhaps it isn't, and some boarders will be redrawn, but I get the feeling a lot of people are ready to give it a shot.
Especially considering the U.S. as de facto self-appointed global police, is doing a terrible job of looking after it's own citizens with regard to education, healthcare, the war on drugs, shooting black men, mass shootings, etc etc etc.
Personally, the way I feel about the U.S. as the purported bastion of "The Free World™", the leading light of Democracy is this:
It has to stop. No one believes the charade any more. And with the presidential election being a choice between terrible and wacko, the U.S. would be the laughing stock of the world if the situation wasn't so frightening.
I'll give one strong example:
In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.[1]
Rightly or wrongly I think a sizeable portion of the world is tired of the flavour of stability the U.S. provides.
I agree. However, I also think that a lot of the world, especially Europe, has a strange and unrealistic vision of what a multi-polar world would look like. A multi-polar world looks like 18th and 19th century Europe writ large, with nation states jockeying for power, and war being considered as a logical extension of economic and political policy. It isn't nations coming together and negotiating peacefully at the EU or UN or wherever.
It feels a bit like the U.S. thinks the rest of the world isn't capable of looking after itself.
Arguably because the rest of the world isn't. If you look at the "free world", who actually spends even 1% of their GDP on defense? Heck, half of Germany's air force can't even fly because they've pared their maintenance budgets back too far to buy spare parts for their planes. When France and Italy bombed Libya, they had to rely on the US to provide necessary logistical support, like tankers and reconnaissance, and even the smartbombs themselves. Taiwan explicitly relies on US carriers to guarantee its territorial sovereignty against Chinese aggression. Japan likewise.
A world in which the US is in full retreat is not a more liberal, peaceful world. It's a world in which even more autocratic powers, like China and Russia advance.
EDIT: By the way, I totally agree that the US is overstretched. But unilateral retreat, leaving our allies in the lurch to face hostile powers on their own is not the correct way of addressing that problem.
If you look just at the shield of deterrence that the U.S. has held over western Europe, it has allowed the growth of both social democracy and of the common market there. European nations all spend a much lower percentage of their budgets on defense than the U.S. does. While their citizens take that as a sign of cultural superiority, their leaders know that it is made possible by NATO and the outsized role that the U.S. has played in it for decades. Every one of those nations is looking at Russia right now and wondering "what happens next."
Same thing on the other side of the planet: both Japan and South Korea have very little military might; they depend on the deterrence the U.S. provides. They are looking at China and wondering what happens next.
If the U.S. reduces or removes these relationships, it will dramatically change these nations. Japan and China hate each other. If the U.S. draws back, Japan will complete its transition away from pacifism and will have nuclear weapons of its own in less than a decade. Same with South Korea.
Even if you think that the U.S. is not a leading light of democracy, these are real relationships and altering them has real consequences: more weapons and more tension among more nations in the world.
1) A big strong guy, stronger than anyone else, fucks with anyone who tries to change anything
2) lots of strong people stop anyone who gets too destructive
I don't think 1 is remotely sustainable. 2 might be doable.
> In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.[1]
> How can you take yourselves seriously?
Totally agreed.
If the US had low crime rates, great quality of life, and was seen as universally fair and just - well then 1 might work. But when it's so unjust, unfair, and unbalanced at home, while we spend billions abroad... it stops making sense.
> It feels a bit like the U.S. thinks the rest of the world isn't capable of looking after itself. And perhaps it isn't, and some boarders will be redrawn, but I get the feeling a lot of people are ready to give it a shot.
Well, this was the sentiment of most Americans after World War 1. It took the attack on Perl Harbor for Roosevelt to have enough support from congress to join WWII.
I think that after WWII the US government made part of its foreign policy to use economic integration and military might to prevent any country from ever dragging them into WWIII.
I am personally not worried about China, Russia, the middle east or even North Korea. But I would be seriously worried to see Japan rebuild their military because we pulled our bases out of there.
> Especially considering the U.S. as de facto self-appointed global police, is doing a terrible job of looking after it's own citizens with regard to education, healthcare, the war on drugs, shooting black men, mass shootings, etc etc etc.
Those things aren't really related, except as far as american attitudes go.
For example, a massive amount of money is spent on health care.
A large daily dose of craven "speaks comfortable untruths for power" mainstream media, who have been owned by the military-industrial complex for decades. The morons at CIA didn't see it coming, that Americans would question the lies of network news, or else they would have attempted to strangle this internet thing in its cradle. They've adapted somewhat, e.g. the "good work" done at Facebook this cycle or the constant fear-mongering about Russia, China, North Korea, ISIS, etc. They just couldn't get their bloodthirsty old gal over the line, though.
The conspiracy theorist in me would like to be a fly on the wall in Pence's personal security briefings. If they hear what they like from him, he'll be our President in short order. Wasn't he a big incarceration fan?
I suspect we actually know very little about Trump's intentions. I believe that, like Clinton, he was willing to say just about anything to get into office, regardless of what he truly intends.
If anything, I think what killed her is that she is a very unexciting stay-the-course President. No major changes, just incremental improvements. Very likely what is actually happen in any Presidency. What's sad is that the American people punished her for actually being realistic about what a President can actually do.
There's not going to be a new border wall and there's not going to be any more jobs for the middle class. Clinton knows that, Trump doesn't.
I honestly don't believe he has many intentions and is not motivated by a vision for the country or the world. He's a super-aggressive competitor and I think that's his sole motivation.
President Obama ridiculed him to his face at the Correspondent's Dinner a few years back. The campaign is a Fuck You to Obama and the rest of the establishment that laughed at him as a lightweight.
He worked very hard and won and now he'll be improvising. He'll have to pay back some people that supported his campaign, many of whom have specific political goals. He'll allow them to work towards those. But apart from a big tax cut for the very rich (strangely) I'm almost certain see that he doesn't care much at all about the rest of his platform. Certainly not the Christian-right stuff.
Maybe he has a real conviction about trade deals. It'll be interesting to see if he moves the needle on any meaningful trade metrics.
That's just my personal impression from listening to him talk.
Did Clinton really incite racial divide? Throwing Muslims and Latinos under the bus?
While I give credit that Trump may indeed be well intentioned but the main difference between him and Clinton is that Trump does not understand his words have consequences. Clinton knew to attack Trump the persona and not attack an ethnic group.
I'm not convinced he really wants to do the things you list.
We will all find out in time, but as I watched him sit with Obama yesterday and also with Paul Ryan, both of whom looked like seasoned politicians who knew what was expected of them, I saw in Trump a man who looked lost and uncertain.
I suspect that he liked the idea of being president more than he will enjoy doing the job.
Trump has been as consistent as Bernie over the decades with regards to foreign policy. Here he is in 1988 on Oprah saying similar things to what he's said on the campaign trail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI
I don't agree with Trump but to think he really doesn't want to do the things he's been saying over the decades seems wrong.
His trillion dollar infrastructure plan, which is vitally needed in this country where bridges and trains are falling apart, is going to be stopped dead in its track by Mitch McConnell. He flat out said it wasn't a priority.
It's going to be an awful four years where any of the good things Trump said (the stuff that resonated with Bernie supporters, renegotiating trade deals, infrastructure improvements, term limits and curtailing lobbyist influence ) are going to be flat out denied by this awful congress headed by one of the slimiest most cynical men in our history. Mitch McConnell's congress is a massive roadblock to progress.
The value of stability to who? Other nations? America has ample military resources for defending its own shores, and I fail to see how we'll be negatively impacted by exiting the Middle East (aside from wailing from the pro-Israel lobbies).
Trump knows exactly what he's doing, and it is completely in line with his "America First" slogan. It's about focusing on improving our own citizens' lives before pouring trillions into wars, offshore military bases, NATO defense payments and UN programs in the name of globalization.
The point to the post you're replying to is that "defending its own shores" is not the only value derived from American dominance. A free and unimpeded military environment in the middle east is one where, say, Russia feels justified in blackmailing Saudi over OPEC disputes.
A withdrawal of forces from ROK and Japan means that they now have to turn to China for protection from the lunatics in the North.
A world without NATO means that Russia gets to annex Russian-speaking regions of Estonia whenever they want, just like they ALREADY DID to the Ukraine.
It's tempting to believe that there are no militarist nuts with guns in the modern industrial world, but it's not true. What is true is that they've been largely suppressed in the post-cold-war era by American military dominance.
Until now. I'll actually put this prediction down in writing: before the end of Trump's term, there will be at least one shooting war involving one of the players mentioned above.
> It's about focusing on improving our own citizens' lives before pouring trillions into wars, offshore military bases, NATO defense payments and UN programs in the name of globalization
And what those people ended up accomplishing was making sure that when the U.S. finally did enter World War 2, it did so more or less unarmed and with its Pacific Fleet sitting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Which meant that it took longer to defeat the Axis than it should have, and a lot more Americans (and people, both military and civilian, in all the other nations that struggled against fascism) had to die to make that happen.
In the age of rapid transit and telecommunications, the world is even smaller than it was then. Which makes hiding behind the oceans that sit between us and the rest of the world even less viable of a strategy today than it was.
In so much as America is a "global cop", it's because we actually directly benefit the most from "continued peaceful existence of the world". We do the most trade, we are the largest economy. We have the most to lose.
US military dominance is what makes USD the world's reserve currency which in turn drives 30-40% of our GDP if we start to withdraw it will start to affect USD standing as a world's
reserve currency.
> It's essentially the end of "pax Americana".
> I think it's incredibly short-sighted.
Whatever you think of Trump's policies, the US portion of world GDP has been going down since the 1950s. How long do you think it's tenable for the US to maintain its current commitments? When it's down to 20% of world GDP? 10%, 5%?
The US is still coasting on foreign policy that was essentially made in 1945 after WWII. There's just no way that policy can be maintained indefinitely.
Trump has made comments to the effect that he'd like to lay the foundations of a new type of foreign policy that'll last for decades to come. Whatever you think of his plans I think it's clear that the US can't maintain these foreign entanglements indefinitely, and will need to distribute some of the load to their current allies.
US defence spending as share of GDP is in broad terms stable, and lower than the 50s and 60s, so the basis of saying the policy can't be maintained indefinately is unclear.
Of course, US spending could have been even lower still if we avoided using false pretences to engage in a pointless war of choice in Iraq, which, of course, had nothing to do with commitments to Europe or Japan.
Just saw on the news that after Trump met up with Obama, he's announced he wants to retain some core parts of Obamacare.
The broken promises already started. And they're going to keep going. "Draining the swamp" already isn't happening. A lot of Washington insiders are on his team. I don't know if he's actually going to be able to do any of the things he's promised now that he's in the know.
Some provisions of Obamacare are very popular, even among Republicans. Requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions was supported by 74% of Americans, including 62% of Republicans, in a Harris Poll survey this past May.
Of course, how do you keep insurance companies from going out of business under the weight of that provision? That's where the individual mandate came from--which is the least popular part of the law.
So: good luck with making the numbers work, Trump.
>>I don't know if he's actually going to be able to do any of the things he's promised now that he's in the know.
Keep in mind Obama also made many (leftist) promises in his 2008 campaign, such as closing Gitmo. Once he understood certain realities though, he had to abandon those promises and become more of a center-left president.
In this election, the Democratic base wanted a real leftist. That's why there was tremendous excitement about Bernie. The Democrats decided to field a center-right candidate instead. The result is clear: they got crushed.
Just wanted to throw a word on the trade deals. The major aspect in the current trade deals that got negotiated in secret (like TPP and TTIP) were not tariffs or trade barriers. Tariffs are currently the lowest they ever been between nations and its more or less just a formality to finally have them completely removed.
What would have a major effect on the world is the new copyright and patent laws and the investor-state arbitration. The world will less be changed from not having those, and by many views for the better. I don't expect China or Russia to try impose harsher copyright and patent laws, destroying ship loads with generic drugs or implement a world-wide investor-state arbitration.
My bet is that Trump will do what presidents before him did, much the same way. Presidents do what their consultants tell them, and what political and business interests and deals dictate. If he asks an Asia expert, that expert will say to Trump the same as what he said to Obama. Campaign speech and slogans is one thing. What substantial changes have resulted from Obama's "hope" campaign slogan?
I agree with you that it certainly makes larger conflicts more likely.
This backing off on world power actually began with Obama, and has been a theme throughout. I'm on mobile right now and can't dig them up, but there a lots of state and military papers on it.
Here's the Secretary of Defense speaking in 2011:
"But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should “have his head examined,” as General MacArthur so delicately put it."
> He wants to cede more of the Middle East to Russia, reduce our participation
Maybe it was a different week, but I thought his complaint was that we were weak against Russia and letting them do whatever they want. That's where his whole he's know Putin respects power but we have not been projecting it came from.
Again, maybe that was said at a different time. It is why I keep saying we'll have to wait and see what he really does and not just says.
> We have to understand “stability” to mean maintenance of specific forms of domination and control, and easy access to resources and profits. And the phrase “fundamentalist religious zealotry,” as noted, is a code word for a particular form of “radical nationalism” that threatens “stability.”
If he plays his hand wisely he actually has a chance to negotiate better terms for US as the opposite party will be pretty sure he is capable of pulling the plug.
I think that's true, but for most of his supporters this probably doesn't matter. Even though America has been doing well on the world stage in influence and soft power, the benefits are perceived to have been bestowed on the wealthy and not shared evenly with those in rural areas torn by economic changes from globalization.
I actually think the exact opposite. Obama's actions have clearly ended, or diminished at the least, Pax Americana. He's basically withdrawn completely from the Middle East enabling Russia to fill the vacuum. Obama's abandoned our friends in Easter Europe enabling Russia to fill the void. That's just factual.
Distinct possibility those countries will dislike us less though. Currently we're like their overprotective (attack) helicopter parents. I am a little bit less worried about the major powers as I am the less predictable ones like North Korea.
And of course once the shit hits the fan everybody will refuse to accept responsibility and somehow it will be the Democrats fault. And again the cycle will begin where the Democrats have to again clean up the Republican's mess. Nobody remembers 2008.
Everyone who thinks of themselves as a "rival" to the US is right now throwing parties with swimming pools filled with fine, expensive champagne.
It's like your main competitor, who was always 10 steps ahead of you, just got as a CEO that guy who's yelling loudly all the time but knows nothing about the industry.
I think America will really have to become "Great Again" because by electing Trump they have shown that he is right. The country who openly voted for a racist and a xenophobe is surely not great. The faster democrats and other get out this stupid rust belt explanation phase the better.
Fine with me (although I disagree all that will occur under him, but it will be inevitable, all empires decline). It's not my responsibility to pay taxes to police the world (while European and other friends gloat to me about their welfare system). We've got a geographic advantage, we should use it. What's shocking is how has the rest of the world not realized that the US' track record in policing the world has been abysmal and destructive? I would prefer these decisions be distributed across the world rather than resting on the hands of the US population (don't get me started on them).
What if the US is actually already making a net gain on the security they provide? The Pax Americana had its upsides for the hegemon. (The Brits certainly liked their time at the top.)
With a background in Economics - I've always been inclined to support free trade deals. Granted it's one thing to theoretically say they're great, and another to say it to the face of someone who's lost their job because of it.
Cheaper goods help the American people in aggregate - but they disproportionately hurt certain swathes of the population, primarily those who work in manufacturing and related fields. One has a large intangible benefit spread out - another has a very tangible human face to it.
The problem with this argument is that numerous studies have shown that trade is responsible for a small proportion of manufacturing jobs lost in America in the past few decades.
Increases in productivity and automation have been shown to be responsible for most of the job losses, and those would have happened with or without free trade agreements. In fact, the US manufactures more things than it ever has before -- it simply does so with fewer workers.
This means that restrictions on trade won't bring many jobs back. If US companies have to manufacture things in the US, they will automate their factories as much as possible to save money.
These articles cite the studies I mentioned, and are pretty good in general:
That's a reasonable argument, and I'll have to read up more on it. What I posted above was via by economics classes from some time ago, so it may be time to actually take a look at the data.
By no means am I for trade restrictions - I was just commenting on the fact that the answer (like most of any complex issues) is "it depends".
Maybe the point is that an economic strategy that chases marginal cost savings only creates short term benefits for investors while selling out an industrious workforce that were otherwise poised to create the next big innovation.
>trade is responsible for a small proportion of manufacturing jobs lost in America
I've seen conflicting claims on this. Other reports say trade has caused massive job losses.
Anyone who lives in a formerly manufacturing heavy area is going to be find that argument hard to believe. We see companies closing down shops and moving them overseas time and time again.
Nobody on the ground believes that, it looks smells and sounds like horseshit.
This plays out in every collective bargaining deal. The company says "here's the offer, if you don't like it, we'll close the place and go to [Alabama|Mexico|China]".
The automation thing is a statistics trick. You look at total value of the finished output which skews the numbers to things like car assembly where many tasks are automated, but ingnore the downstream parts manufacturing, much of which is offshore or in Mexico.
Have you ever seen a textile factory? There isn't a ton of automation for many phases of the work. Just a race to the bottom to places like Bangladesh where it's easy to abuse the workforce.
The economic outputs may be bigger, the cream is only rising to the top.
On one podcast I was listening too they held a survey asking people whether trade deals were "good", "bad", "I don't know", "I think it's complicated". When following up, neither the "good" nor "bad" responders could answer questions about how trade deals worked (whereas the other categories had a better grasp).
Trade deals are hard, I believe one of the reasons we have been so successful at finding private tax evaders was in the same trade deal that killed Detroit.
Trade deals are hard, I believe one of the reasons we have been so successful at finding private tax evaders was in the same trade deal that killed Detroit.
Can you elaborate on that? What killed Detroit wasn't a trade deal, except to the extent that we allowed Japan to sell autos here at all.
What killed Detroit was a self-administered one-two punch: incompetent executives and engineers who designed awful cars that nobody wanted to buy, and unions who ganged up on their employers to demand outrageous compensation for building those cars.
Then someone with a background in Economics should understand the benefits do not accrue evenly. When developed nations trade with developing nations, the middle class of the developed nation loses.
This is partly why the neoliberal playbook the democrats having been running backfired. Sure, open up trade, but ensure that the wealthy people and large corporations don't accrue all of the benefit.
This can be done in a number of ways but none of them were even attempted, it was just good for business == good for america, period.
The victims are literally left behind by the forward march of progress.
Previously, the rate of change was much less, so it was easy to speak about retraining, going back to school, etc.
But nowadays things are moving fast, and accelerating. It's going to get more and more difficult to provide a soft landing for those who are falling off the back of the ascending, accelerating rocket. It's only going to get worse. And the irony is, it's happening because of something that's considered good overall - progress.
We need some radical changes in how we think of... uh... everything I guess. Jobs. Social security. A man's worth. You name it, it's in there.
The central bank can print arbitrary amounts of money. So demand is never a problem.
(And the government can tax land all they want without disturbing the economy, so basic income is not much of a problem either. At least economically---politically land lavue taxes are hard to push through.)
>Not sure why the American people care so much about it. It's gone and not coming back.
Because millions of older, former Obama voters in the rust belt can recall when their small towns weren't chained-shut shitholes drowning in drug abuse, hopelessness and commercial devastation.
It was when the plant was open.
Those people, out of desperation, have given us Cheeto Jesus.
in the post-war decades, manufacturing provided a huge number of well paying jobs for people without college degrees. relegating those people to part time retail and uber precariat is bad for everyone.
I've been revisiting this as I've been helping my wife with a class on it. I'd say free trade in general is a net positive for the world but agree that it's hard to explain that to someone in the US that just lost their job. Those cheaper goods help most Americans too. I don't know enough about TPP to comment on specifics.
Alas the TPP was only marginally about trade. Lots of exporting of American IP protection, too.
Really, it would be best for everyone to just unilaterally drop all their barriers and tariffs---no mutual deal necessary. (Like Britain did for some time in the 19th century.)
Various powerful interest groups lobby and shove economic capture for themselves into these deals, transferring power over these matters from American voters to some international group looking over their interest.
The TPP is chock full of economic capture goodies which have nothing to do with free trade.
One problem is that economic theories are all based on dozens of underlying assumptions, many of which are baseless and false. Further, these flawed economic theories used incredibly flawed metrics (like GDP) to measure growth. They ignore real costs, like the massive environmental destruction caused by transporting items around the world. An accurate formula would attribute a tangible, financial value to the finite resources of the earth (the environment) upon which we all depend on to survive, and calculate those costs when determining whether or not "free trade" in the aggregate was actually beneficial. This doesn't even address the massive costs incurred by wars and policing needed to maintain safe and stable transit routes around the world, or the secondary and tertiary costs associated with these activities.
Can someone explain to me why the sentiment on here has changed? If I remember correctly, when we first learned of this TPP, everyone here was up in arms that it was a secret cabal designed to infringe on innovation. I think there was an EFF blog post describing those sentiments.
I'll get down voted but it doesn't really matter. The sentiment changed because of identity politics. As soon as Trump mentioned he was against the tpp places like hn and reddit suddenly became very quiet in their opposition to it.
Once all the candidates came out against it, it became clear it was not going anywhere anytime soon. So why bother posting about something that is not going to happen.
I don't think identity politics had anything to do with it. Bernie Sanders was against the TPP as much as Trump was, for many of the same reasons.
The issue with the TPP is that it put the interests of international conglomerates above the ability of sovereign nations to decide what happens within their borders (ie an energy company could sue a small country for increasing the gas tax). While free trade is almost universally desirable, it must be balanced against the concentration of power that inevitably accumulates from unfettered capitalism.
That's not correct. A company would have been able to sue only if the country was enacting a policy that would allow them to unfairly take advantage of an investor. e.g. if the country made a deal that allowed a factory to be built in their country and then enacted a policy (tax or otherwise) that would force the investor to halt operations in their country for sole the purpose of taking control of the factory.
Without that part of the trade deal there would be no stoping a small country from what is essentially stealing from a international company. Before trade deals those types of disputes were usually settled with armed conflict.
Because what are the motivations to post a comment ? When you agree with the situation you are less inclined to comment, but when you find the situation unjust you let your voice be heard. You cannot infer the stance of the community based on the proportions of agree/disagree comments.
That's not completely fair. I have always been for the TPP and still am. I have not changed my position.
The EFF stance wasn't rational, standardizing IP laws with trade partners was actually a good thing for innovation IMO. I understand their aversion to it, but disagree.
I'm pretty sad that this trade deal has died. It is scary that we're giving up free trade for protectionism, which will actually hurt those people that were hurt by the existing trade deals a great deal more.
Standardising can be done by taking more reasonable IP laws over to usa instead of pushing usa's boneheaded IP bullying onto the rest of the world incrementally.
People follow the leaders and adjust themselves to political realities. They are not homo economicus or rational without a certain tough mindedness. Not a very complex business.
I think as a somewhat meta-analysis of the outspoken HN crowd on this deal (based on current comments) - it's valuable to look at previous discussions on HN:
Top comment excerpt from this thread from a year ago [1]:
It is an awful document, with horrible policy, yes....What these leaders are pushing is not democratic, it is oligarchic.
Top comment excerpt from this thread from a year ago [2]:
Reading these things makes me angry. There are people in the world who uphold economic wealth and ownership over life itself.
Didn't Google openly support TPP? Seems to me that Google's was one of the biggest losers on Nov 8. Eric Schmidt openly supported Hillary, there were accusations of SERP manipulation, YT censorship and so on. I wonder if FTC [0] will finally be able to go after them for anti-trust since Google's lobbyists won't be able to stop them [1].
I strongly suspect you'll see a shift in how the US handles Google. At least a dozen or so Googlers work at the White House, and they'll need to find new jobs by January 20th. (Someone with more time on their hands than me will hopefully track whether or not they all go back to working at Google HQ instead of Google White House.)
Given their liberal slant and their strong support for Hillary, even a pro-business-leaning Trump probably isn't going to do Google any favors. And as the four antitrust cases in the EU are likely to go through within the next year, the FTC will probably at least feel some pressure to do their job.
The reason Obama wanted TPP so badly was that he saw it as necessary to contain China's growing influence in South East Asia. Trump, who also claims to want to contain China, seems uninterested or uninformed in this type of geopolitical struggle.
The part of the TPP that turned off most techies was the extending and exporting of our draconian Intellectual Property laws. Those laws were designed and pushed by Hollywood as a form of protectionism for the their industry, exactly the kind of protectionism for American companies that Trump claims to support. Hollywood politically is normally aligned with Democrats, but Trump's celebrity is a product of that same Hollywood, so I imagine Trump understands very well the desire for those IP protections.
This is a shame. Globalism is good for people overall, and the US has almost instantly lost a lot of credibility and influence in the region (especially in contrast to China).
EDIT: I'm amazed to see all other comments so far are anti-trade.
Globalism may indeed be good for 3rd world countries, as their wages and the wages of 1st world countries will tend to converge. This is obviously not good for 1st world workers, who still have 1st world house payments, taxes, etc.
An argument could be made that the 3rd world countries also suffer, as they end up being dictated to by the much stronger 1st world countries, and give up much of their sovereignty. 1st world countries also give up some sovereignty, which doesn't sit well with the general populous, as the beneficiaries of that loss of sovereignty are the multinational corporations, not the man on the street.
As someone from a third world country that was entertaining a similar trade deal with the US, I certainly wanted to take no part on the humongous shit show that is the US patent system, which was part of the deal.
protectionist policies might work if there is only one 1st world country and one 3rd world country, but America's share of world gdp is shrinking rapidly and an attempt to preserve their lead via protectionism is likely to backfire as they isolate themselves from the world economy.
Globalism doesn't lower 1st world wages. (And people certainly benefit from cheaper fridges---but those consumer benefits are diffused amongst the population, and have no clear champion.)
If you are assuming Clinton and Trump are proxies for and against globalization respectively, more people (aka popular vote) actually voted for continuing globalization.
Because globalism is not going anywhere. Trump can't isolate the US without dramatic, negative consequences. Trade war with the China ? Economists predict a worldwide recession. Tariffs on Mexico to pay for the wall ? Good luck to US agriculture.
Globalism is good overall, yes, but it is very bad for certain subgroups. Everyone else has been benefiting at the expense of blue collar workers in developed countries.
Someone loose their job because there's a change in global economic structures. Another group of people lose their business of selling ice for house hold refrigeration.
The problem is not globalisation or change, its the idea and related political deception that somehow if there are protectionist barriers the emergence of new suppliers, products, new skills, new ideas will go away.
This is but one of several of similar distorted perceptions of reality that underpins the faulted democratic systems. If Society and government should facilitate something it's increased adaptability and acceptance for change, rather than selling the fraud that they can take it away.
If corporate america and the government had been less greedy and not insisted in rolling in corporate sovereignty and absurdly broken copyright and patent laws into free trade deals and considered providing some sort of relief to people negatively affected in the short term we wouldn't be having this backlash.
I think most of the TPP discussion was FUD, but the backers of TPP are partially responsible for that because it was negotiated in secret (even our own Congress was forbidden from taking notes while viewing it!). They did a horrible job of marketing it to the American people. There are issues with TPP, but it seems they can be fixed and we shouldn't toss the entire thing. But I think a lot of the fear is based on ignorance of trade agreements.
Obama is smartly trying to move the country closer to Asia because he sees that is where the growth is. Growth in Europe is anemic and doesn't seem to be getting better anytime soon, so why not align your country with the region that is growing and seems to be looking to the future? Plus we already do a lot of business with Asia, so why not improve relations through better trade deals?
I don't get it either. Free Trade has improved the lives of billions of people. It helps prevent wars and binds people and countries together. I just don't get the Hacker News Hate on Free Trade.
I support free trade, but I am strongly opposed to TPP. In the past 10 years we've seen many attempts at faux-free-trade agreements... corrupting deals negotiated in secrecy, intentionally hidden from pubic checks / balances, supporting big corporate interests and oligopolies.
That is not free trade.
When it comes to TPP in particular, I am radically opposed to their proposed IP laws. EFF has a short write up on how TPP undermines with digital IP: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
As an Australian, I loathe the TPP, negotiated in secret, where US IP laws can invade our own; pharma companies can jack up the prices on medication; and foreign companies that don't even have a presence here can sue our government and hold them to ransom.
Most importantly, it's not a "free trade deal". It's just a "trade deal". Australia's trade deals in the past with the US have done things like removed tariffs for all US goods coming here, but not removed tariffs the other way around. We're definitely the little brother in this relationship.
I can't speak for HN posters in general, but a lot of people I know are pretty positive on globalization and open trade as a concept, but against these specific treaties because of the staggering amount of power they put into the hands of giant corporations.
Honestly me too. I'd rather us dictate trade in the Pacific than let China set the terms. That's really what this is about. Globalisation is happening regardless of whether people want it or not. It is all about who sets the terms though.
Globalization is not inevitable nor irreversible. Pre-WWI the world was globalizing rapidly, but with WWI, the Great Depression/inter-war era, etc. it suffered massive setbacks. They were not pleasant setbacks for pretty much anyone involved.
I'm ambivalent about free trade in general, and I tend to agree with the issues people have with TPP in particular, but I did want to address this sentiment:
> Globalisation is happening regardless of whether people want it or not.
Why? Globalization is a product of human behavior and human choices. Neither sunspots, cosmic rays, hurricanes, or earthquakes make globalization happen. It seems absurd, to me, to pretend that globalization is this Force beyond our control, that we just have to adapt or die.
That isn't so. Globalization has gone on in the world because we, including and especially the United States of America, made it happen. The governing and business elite has chosen time and again to pursue globalization policies because it seemed like the right thing to do economically and often because it benefited them.
We can choose to enact different policies and go in a different direction any time we want, and even pro-free trade economists like Krugman concede that the consequences will not be particularly dire (see his Brexit commentary.)
It's good for "some" people.
There also has to be a level playing field, some of the "players" have been caught cheating (currency manipulation for example - excellent analysis here http://www.epi.org/publication/trans-pacific-partnership-cur...), some (like Japanese automotive "politics") are openly hostile without any repercussions.
This isn't just free trade, and many people were against the TPP a few months ago. It was such an unpopular position to support it that Clinton changed her position on it. If you've been following this issue it shouldn't really come as a surprise that most people are against it, at least on HN.
While globalism just took a big slap in the face, i dont think it's even reversible [it's too big to fail]. Trump may soften some edges, shake it up a bit, but I don't expect fundamental changes. Remember that populist leaders generally don't hold on to positions.
Without globalism, you wouldn't have the internet as it is today, cheap computers, and smartphones wouldn't exist. High-tech depends on cheap asian manufacturing for its parts. Social media would be relatively negligible due to lack of network effects, and the 'peasants' love social media.
It is amazing to witness. Especially since free and open trade is unquestionably responsible for so much economic growth. It is especially important for countries like the US who were always going to need to move higher up the value stack as they had to complete with cheaper overseas labour.
The US is very much going the way of the UK. Slowly but surely moving towards irrelevancy.
Trade is a tool. It should be used to further the national interests of the USA. Last election hinted that there is more to the USA than Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
I am sad to say that it seems many countries have gone in the same direction as the United States; the European Union recently rejected a free-ish trade agreement with Canada.
At least one silver lining to the GOP/Trump change in the wind. I hope that we are able to find more as time goes on. As outrageous as Trump is and as much as I find him personally reprehensible I hope for at least a few welcome policy changes.
Readit News
The result will be a world that is more clearly apportioned among 3-4 major powers. Small Asian countries, if they can't get a feeling of solid support from the U.S., will eventually ally themselves with China. And the EU and Russia will battle (hopefully not openly) over the lands between and near them.
It's essentially the end of "pax Americana". I think it's incredibly short-sighted. Trump looks at international relations as a quarterly balance sheet but almost certainly does not properly account for the value of the stability the U.S. provides throughout the world now.
The same thinking has him arguing that we should get the oil fields after the Iraq war.
I don't agree with this reasoning but we're about to see this play out.
Edit: here's a video that I linked to in my other comments. It's an Opera interview from 1988 where Trump says Japan is "beating the hell out of this country" and "they aren't paying" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI
This has been the most consistent part of Trump's platform. America is getting the short end of the deal.
Again, I'm not a Trump supporter but this policy is what Trump genuinely believes and will likely pursue.
This goes for tech too. American companies like Uber, Netflix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple have been able dominate most of the world market. In a protectionist world they will be locked out, just like they are in China today.
A couple interesting notes: the author predicts that in a world with less free trade the US would do relatively well thanks to shale oil and our other natural resources (like rivers and rich farmlands).
He also talks a lot about demographic changes. He says in the US this will cause some pain from ~2020-2030 as the baby boomers retire, but we'll recover as millennials enter the most productive years of their careers (40s-early 60s).
However he also predicts much more dire consequences for Russia due to demographic changes, and suggests they might not recover from a decline starting around 2020.
Compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Russia_Sex_by_Age_2015010...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_by_Sex_and_Age_2015-0...
I can't repeat the entire analysis from the book in this box but I've found the author's comments to be thought-provoking so far. :)
Of particular interest to the HN crowd, the author also argues that demographic issues mean that right now there is an unusually large amount of investable capital available, but this will soon change as baby boomers begin to retire and switch from accumulating and investing their money to trying to stretch what they've already earned to last the rest of their lives. He predicts we'll see much less money available for risky investments starting in the next few years, due simply to demographic changes around the world.
If one wanted to look on the bright side, there's a chance that "I am a master businessman who can cut better deals" is a merely way to have something say about foreign policy without having to go to the effort of thinking about it.
Amazon sells their extra servers as a product. The US can start selling their extra nuclear weapons as a product. Business 101!
It feels a bit like the U.S. thinks the rest of the world isn't capable of looking after itself. And perhaps it isn't, and some boarders will be redrawn, but I get the feeling a lot of people are ready to give it a shot.
Especially considering the U.S. as de facto self-appointed global police, is doing a terrible job of looking after it's own citizens with regard to education, healthcare, the war on drugs, shooting black men, mass shootings, etc etc etc.
Personally, the way I feel about the U.S. as the purported bastion of "The Free World™", the leading light of Democracy is this:
It has to stop. No one believes the charade any more. And with the presidential election being a choice between terrible and wacko, the U.S. would be the laughing stock of the world if the situation wasn't so frightening.
I'll give one strong example:
In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.[1]
How can you take yourselves seriously?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
Edit: fixed randomly incorrect reference
I agree. However, I also think that a lot of the world, especially Europe, has a strange and unrealistic vision of what a multi-polar world would look like. A multi-polar world looks like 18th and 19th century Europe writ large, with nation states jockeying for power, and war being considered as a logical extension of economic and political policy. It isn't nations coming together and negotiating peacefully at the EU or UN or wherever.
It feels a bit like the U.S. thinks the rest of the world isn't capable of looking after itself.
Arguably because the rest of the world isn't. If you look at the "free world", who actually spends even 1% of their GDP on defense? Heck, half of Germany's air force can't even fly because they've pared their maintenance budgets back too far to buy spare parts for their planes. When France and Italy bombed Libya, they had to rely on the US to provide necessary logistical support, like tankers and reconnaissance, and even the smartbombs themselves. Taiwan explicitly relies on US carriers to guarantee its territorial sovereignty against Chinese aggression. Japan likewise.
A world in which the US is in full retreat is not a more liberal, peaceful world. It's a world in which even more autocratic powers, like China and Russia advance.
EDIT: By the way, I totally agree that the US is overstretched. But unilateral retreat, leaving our allies in the lurch to face hostile powers on their own is not the correct way of addressing that problem.
Same thing on the other side of the planet: both Japan and South Korea have very little military might; they depend on the deterrence the U.S. provides. They are looking at China and wondering what happens next.
If the U.S. reduces or removes these relationships, it will dramatically change these nations. Japan and China hate each other. If the U.S. draws back, Japan will complete its transition away from pacifism and will have nuclear weapons of its own in less than a decade. Same with South Korea.
Even if you think that the U.S. is not a leading light of democracy, these are real relationships and altering them has real consequences: more weapons and more tension among more nations in the world.
1) A big strong guy, stronger than anyone else, fucks with anyone who tries to change anything
2) lots of strong people stop anyone who gets too destructive
I don't think 1 is remotely sustainable. 2 might be doable.
> In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.[1]
> How can you take yourselves seriously?
Totally agreed.
If the US had low crime rates, great quality of life, and was seen as universally fair and just - well then 1 might work. But when it's so unjust, unfair, and unbalanced at home, while we spend billions abroad... it stops making sense.
Well, this was the sentiment of most Americans after World War 1. It took the attack on Perl Harbor for Roosevelt to have enough support from congress to join WWII.
I think that after WWII the US government made part of its foreign policy to use economic integration and military might to prevent any country from ever dragging them into WWIII.
I am personally not worried about China, Russia, the middle east or even North Korea. But I would be seriously worried to see Japan rebuild their military because we pulled our bases out of there.
Those things aren't really related, except as far as american attitudes go.
For example, a massive amount of money is spent on health care.
A large daily dose of craven "speaks comfortable untruths for power" mainstream media, who have been owned by the military-industrial complex for decades. The morons at CIA didn't see it coming, that Americans would question the lies of network news, or else they would have attempted to strangle this internet thing in its cradle. They've adapted somewhat, e.g. the "good work" done at Facebook this cycle or the constant fear-mongering about Russia, China, North Korea, ISIS, etc. They just couldn't get their bloodthirsty old gal over the line, though.
The conspiracy theorist in me would like to be a fly on the wall in Pence's personal security briefings. If they hear what they like from him, he'll be our President in short order. Wasn't he a big incarceration fan?
If anything, I think what killed her is that she is a very unexciting stay-the-course President. No major changes, just incremental improvements. Very likely what is actually happen in any Presidency. What's sad is that the American people punished her for actually being realistic about what a President can actually do.
There's not going to be a new border wall and there's not going to be any more jobs for the middle class. Clinton knows that, Trump doesn't.
President Obama ridiculed him to his face at the Correspondent's Dinner a few years back. The campaign is a Fuck You to Obama and the rest of the establishment that laughed at him as a lightweight.
He worked very hard and won and now he'll be improvising. He'll have to pay back some people that supported his campaign, many of whom have specific political goals. He'll allow them to work towards those. But apart from a big tax cut for the very rich (strangely) I'm almost certain see that he doesn't care much at all about the rest of his platform. Certainly not the Christian-right stuff.
Maybe he has a real conviction about trade deals. It'll be interesting to see if he moves the needle on any meaningful trade metrics.
That's just my personal impression from listening to him talk.
While I give credit that Trump may indeed be well intentioned but the main difference between him and Clinton is that Trump does not understand his words have consequences. Clinton knew to attack Trump the persona and not attack an ethnic group.
We will all find out in time, but as I watched him sit with Obama yesterday and also with Paul Ryan, both of whom looked like seasoned politicians who knew what was expected of them, I saw in Trump a man who looked lost and uncertain.
I suspect that he liked the idea of being president more than he will enjoy doing the job.
I don't agree with Trump but to think he really doesn't want to do the things he's been saying over the decades seems wrong.
It's going to be an awful four years where any of the good things Trump said (the stuff that resonated with Bernie supporters, renegotiating trade deals, infrastructure improvements, term limits and curtailing lobbyist influence ) are going to be flat out denied by this awful congress headed by one of the slimiest most cynical men in our history. Mitch McConnell's congress is a massive roadblock to progress.
Trump knows exactly what he's doing, and it is completely in line with his "America First" slogan. It's about focusing on improving our own citizens' lives before pouring trillions into wars, offshore military bases, NATO defense payments and UN programs in the name of globalization.
A withdrawal of forces from ROK and Japan means that they now have to turn to China for protection from the lunatics in the North.
A world without NATO means that Russia gets to annex Russian-speaking regions of Estonia whenever they want, just like they ALREADY DID to the Ukraine.
It's tempting to believe that there are no militarist nuts with guns in the modern industrial world, but it's not true. What is true is that they've been largely suppressed in the post-cold-war era by American military dominance.
Until now. I'll actually put this prediction down in writing: before the end of Trump's term, there will be at least one shooting war involving one of the players mentioned above.
This is literally the exact same argument the first group of people to use the "America First" slogan made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee
And what those people ended up accomplishing was making sure that when the U.S. finally did enter World War 2, it did so more or less unarmed and with its Pacific Fleet sitting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Which meant that it took longer to defeat the Axis than it should have, and a lot more Americans (and people, both military and civilian, in all the other nations that struggled against fascism) had to die to make that happen.
In the age of rapid transit and telecommunications, the world is even smaller than it was then. Which makes hiding behind the oceans that sit between us and the rest of the world even less viable of a strategy today than it was.
Countries destroyed by brutal dictators propped up and supported by US might have something to say about the "stability" part there.
> I think it's incredibly short-sighted.
Or we could try a few more regime changes in Libya, maybe create another ISIS because that was lots of fun.
I think "pax Americana" sounds not like you think it sounds to many countries in the world.
The US is still coasting on foreign policy that was essentially made in 1945 after WWII. There's just no way that policy can be maintained indefinitely.
Trump has made comments to the effect that he'd like to lay the foundations of a new type of foreign policy that'll last for decades to come. Whatever you think of his plans I think it's clear that the US can't maintain these foreign entanglements indefinitely, and will need to distribute some of the load to their current allies.
Of course, US spending could have been even lower still if we avoided using false pretences to engage in a pointless war of choice in Iraq, which, of course, had nothing to do with commitments to Europe or Japan.
The broken promises already started. And they're going to keep going. "Draining the swamp" already isn't happening. A lot of Washington insiders are on his team. I don't know if he's actually going to be able to do any of the things he's promised now that he's in the know.
Of course, how do you keep insurance companies from going out of business under the weight of that provision? That's where the individual mandate came from--which is the least popular part of the law.
So: good luck with making the numbers work, Trump.
Keep in mind Obama also made many (leftist) promises in his 2008 campaign, such as closing Gitmo. Once he understood certain realities though, he had to abandon those promises and become more of a center-left president.
In this election, the Democratic base wanted a real leftist. That's why there was tremendous excitement about Bernie. The Democrats decided to field a center-right candidate instead. The result is clear: they got crushed.
What would have a major effect on the world is the new copyright and patent laws and the investor-state arbitration. The world will less be changed from not having those, and by many views for the better. I don't expect China or Russia to try impose harsher copyright and patent laws, destroying ship loads with generic drugs or implement a world-wide investor-state arbitration.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/trump-or-n...
This backing off on world power actually began with Obama, and has been a theme throughout. I'm on mobile right now and can't dig them up, but there a lots of state and military papers on it.
Here's the Secretary of Defense speaking in 2011:
"But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should “have his head examined,” as General MacArthur so delicately put it."
Maybe it was a different week, but I thought his complaint was that we were weak against Russia and letting them do whatever they want. That's where his whole he's know Putin respects power but we have not been projecting it came from.
Again, maybe that was said at a different time. It is why I keep saying we'll have to wait and see what he really does and not just says.
https://chomsky.info/fateful02/
> We have to understand “stability” to mean maintenance of specific forms of domination and control, and easy access to resources and profits. And the phrase “fundamentalist religious zealotry,” as noted, is a code word for a particular form of “radical nationalism” that threatens “stability.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-china-media-i...
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It's like your main competitor, who was always 10 steps ahead of you, just got as a CEO that guy who's yelling loudly all the time but knows nothing about the industry.
Cheaper goods help the American people in aggregate - but they disproportionately hurt certain swathes of the population, primarily those who work in manufacturing and related fields. One has a large intangible benefit spread out - another has a very tangible human face to it.
Increases in productivity and automation have been shown to be responsible for most of the job losses, and those would have happened with or without free trade agreements. In fact, the US manufactures more things than it ever has before -- it simply does so with fewer workers.
This means that restrictions on trade won't bring many jobs back. If US companies have to manufacture things in the US, they will automate their factories as much as possible to save money.
These articles cite the studies I mentioned, and are pretty good in general:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/business/economy/more-weal...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/the-rage-ag...
By no means am I for trade restrictions - I was just commenting on the fact that the answer (like most of any complex issues) is "it depends".
I've seen conflicting claims on this. Other reports say trade has caused massive job losses.
Anyone who lives in a formerly manufacturing heavy area is going to be find that argument hard to believe. We see companies closing down shops and moving them overseas time and time again.
This plays out in every collective bargaining deal. The company says "here's the offer, if you don't like it, we'll close the place and go to [Alabama|Mexico|China]".
The automation thing is a statistics trick. You look at total value of the finished output which skews the numbers to things like car assembly where many tasks are automated, but ingnore the downstream parts manufacturing, much of which is offshore or in Mexico.
Have you ever seen a textile factory? There isn't a ton of automation for many phases of the work. Just a race to the bottom to places like Bangladesh where it's easy to abuse the workforce.
The economic outputs may be bigger, the cream is only rising to the top.
Trade deals are hard, I believe one of the reasons we have been so successful at finding private tax evaders was in the same trade deal that killed Detroit.
Can you elaborate on that? What killed Detroit wasn't a trade deal, except to the extent that we allowed Japan to sell autos here at all.
What killed Detroit was a self-administered one-two punch: incompetent executives and engineers who designed awful cars that nobody wanted to buy, and unions who ganged up on their employers to demand outrageous compensation for building those cars.
This is partly why the neoliberal playbook the democrats having been running backfired. Sure, open up trade, but ensure that the wealthy people and large corporations don't accrue all of the benefit.
This can be done in a number of ways but none of them were even attempted, it was just good for business == good for america, period.
The middle class is doing just fine, thank you.
If anything, you could try to make some argument about the poorer part of the population (though even they are not really impacted).
Previously, the rate of change was much less, so it was easy to speak about retraining, going back to school, etc.
But nowadays things are moving fast, and accelerating. It's going to get more and more difficult to provide a soft landing for those who are falling off the back of the ascending, accelerating rocket. It's only going to get worse. And the irony is, it's happening because of something that's considered good overall - progress.
We need some radical changes in how we think of... uh... everything I guess. Jobs. Social security. A man's worth. You name it, it's in there.
(And the government can tax land all they want without disturbing the economy, so basic income is not much of a problem either. At least economically---politically land lavue taxes are hard to push through.)
Because millions of older, former Obama voters in the rust belt can recall when their small towns weren't chained-shut shitholes drowning in drug abuse, hopelessness and commercial devastation.
It was when the plant was open.
Those people, out of desperation, have given us Cheeto Jesus.
Really, it would be best for everyone to just unilaterally drop all their barriers and tariffs---no mutual deal necessary. (Like Britain did for some time in the 19th century.)
Who said TPP had anything to do with free trade?
Various powerful interest groups lobby and shove economic capture for themselves into these deals, transferring power over these matters from American voters to some international group looking over their interest.
The TPP is chock full of economic capture goodies which have nothing to do with free trade.
Dead Comment
I don't think identity politics had anything to do with it. Bernie Sanders was against the TPP as much as Trump was, for many of the same reasons.
Without that part of the trade deal there would be no stoping a small country from what is essentially stealing from a international company. Before trade deals those types of disputes were usually settled with armed conflict.
(Hey Adam!)
This is a huge win, we can negotiate better agreements.
I won, and I'm not sure what I'm expected to say beyond that.
The EFF stance wasn't rational, standardizing IP laws with trade partners was actually a good thing for innovation IMO. I understand their aversion to it, but disagree.
I'm pretty sad that this trade deal has died. It is scary that we're giving up free trade for protectionism, which will actually hurt those people that were hurt by the existing trade deals a great deal more.
Top comment excerpt from this thread from a year ago [1]:
It is an awful document, with horrible policy, yes....What these leaders are pushing is not democratic, it is oligarchic.
Top comment excerpt from this thread from a year ago [2]:
Reading these things makes me angry. There are people in the world who uphold economic wealth and ownership over life itself.
And there are many others from this search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TPP&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p...
Note that the EFF's stance hasn't changed:
https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
What seems to have changed is the messenger only. That's worth closer introspection.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10363500 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232
[0] http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close...
Given their liberal slant and their strong support for Hillary, even a pro-business-leaning Trump probably isn't going to do Google any favors. And as the four antitrust cases in the EU are likely to go through within the next year, the FTC will probably at least feel some pressure to do their job.
Here's Google's open endorsement of the TPP: https://blog.google/topics/public-policy/the-trans-pacific-p...
The part of the TPP that turned off most techies was the extending and exporting of our draconian Intellectual Property laws. Those laws were designed and pushed by Hollywood as a form of protectionism for the their industry, exactly the kind of protectionism for American companies that Trump claims to support. Hollywood politically is normally aligned with Democrats, but Trump's celebrity is a product of that same Hollywood, so I imagine Trump understands very well the desire for those IP protections.
EDIT: I'm amazed to see all other comments so far are anti-trade.
A lot of the people who frequent this site are against the TPP because of its copyright and intellectual property provisions.
Globalism may indeed be good for 3rd world countries, as their wages and the wages of 1st world countries will tend to converge. This is obviously not good for 1st world workers, who still have 1st world house payments, taxes, etc.
An argument could be made that the 3rd world countries also suffer, as they end up being dictated to by the much stronger 1st world countries, and give up much of their sovereignty. 1st world countries also give up some sovereignty, which doesn't sit well with the general populous, as the beneficiaries of that loss of sovereignty are the multinational corporations, not the man on the street.
Because globalism is not going anywhere. Trump can't isolate the US without dramatic, negative consequences. Trade war with the China ? Economists predict a worldwide recession. Tariffs on Mexico to pay for the wall ? Good luck to US agriculture.
Edit: Only ~50% of eligible voters voted. Half of those voted for the winner. That's only 25% that actively voted in support of the winner.
The problem is not globalisation or change, its the idea and related political deception that somehow if there are protectionist barriers the emergence of new suppliers, products, new skills, new ideas will go away.
This is but one of several of similar distorted perceptions of reality that underpins the faulted democratic systems. If Society and government should facilitate something it's increased adaptability and acceptance for change, rather than selling the fraud that they can take it away.
There's no total fixed sum of `goodness' to go around in the economy.
Obama is smartly trying to move the country closer to Asia because he sees that is where the growth is. Growth in Europe is anemic and doesn't seem to be getting better anytime soon, so why not align your country with the region that is growing and seems to be looking to the future? Plus we already do a lot of business with Asia, so why not improve relations through better trade deals?
That is not free trade.
When it comes to TPP in particular, I am radically opposed to their proposed IP laws. EFF has a short write up on how TPP undermines with digital IP: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
Most importantly, it's not a "free trade deal". It's just a "trade deal". Australia's trade deals in the past with the US have done things like removed tariffs for all US goods coming here, but not removed tariffs the other way around. We're definitely the little brother in this relationship.
> Globalisation is happening regardless of whether people want it or not.
Why? Globalization is a product of human behavior and human choices. Neither sunspots, cosmic rays, hurricanes, or earthquakes make globalization happen. It seems absurd, to me, to pretend that globalization is this Force beyond our control, that we just have to adapt or die.
That isn't so. Globalization has gone on in the world because we, including and especially the United States of America, made it happen. The governing and business elite has chosen time and again to pursue globalization policies because it seemed like the right thing to do economically and often because it benefited them.
We can choose to enact different policies and go in a different direction any time we want, and even pro-free trade economists like Krugman concede that the consequences will not be particularly dire (see his Brexit commentary.)
Jamacia is a good example[1].
[1]http://www.lifeanddebt.org/
It's good for "some" people. There also has to be a level playing field, some of the "players" have been caught cheating (currency manipulation for example - excellent analysis here http://www.epi.org/publication/trans-pacific-partnership-cur...), some (like Japanese automotive "politics") are openly hostile without any repercussions.
The US is very much going the way of the UK. Slowly but surely moving towards irrelevancy.
Who is it good for and how?
* Cheaper products for everyone
* Competition drives innovation
* Lower risk of large-scale wars
* Ship high-pollution industries overseas
* Improved price stability
In practice, it falls apart because...
- US has a poor social safety net. Low-income workers often end up jobless or in even lower skilled jobs
- Globalism builds bigger corporations, which actively suppress competition
- Big direct wars are replaced with constantly simmering proxy wars
- We can't control environmental degradation in other countries