This is Western liberal cope. China makes 5-year plans and publishes them. Building factories around the world is a massive planning effort. They are not reacting to tarrifs that were levied in the last 18 months. The tarrifs are a reaction.
China has been building international infrastructure, including factories, for years now. By the time a factory comes online to “avoid tarrifs” the tarrifs would have already had their maximal effect. Further, tarrif regimes can be changed in hours while factories take years to plan and execute. There is simply no way China is thinking they’re going to outmaneuver recent tarrifs with factories.
It’s nonsense
You forgot one thing though: China bad
check mate 😏
I’m not sure why we care. It’s just simple competition, if your opponent is able to sell a cheaper product, either lower your price or deal with it. It’s basic capitalism.
While I’m for tariffs on import to at least make cost equal to minimum wage for workers (to equate for the pay wage differential) if the factories are being built in house, it means they are following country standards including wages, I don’t see the issue.
Free market propaganda has never been applied under equal circumstances. It is rhetoric used by capital to reduce or destroy regulations, labor, national sovereignty, etc. Western industrialized capitalist coubtries built their industry and infrastructure using tariffs to protect it, then turned around and demanded the opposite from other countries so that they would have to buy their products and sell whatever those colonizer countries wanted (at the time, usualky raw materials).
Now that other countries are ascendant, US-based “free market” capital is gladly re-embracing protectionist logic. It has only ever been about maximizing their profits. The “theory” of free markets tails capital, it isn’t a science or even a valid line of thought.
So they’re now outsourcing production to the West? We’ve really come full circle.
Why do you assume the West? China often expands to other Asian countries. Or pretend to. E.g. after tariffs are applied to China you’ll often see a huge increase in intra Asia trade. Followed by different Asian countries heavily increasing their exports. Usually by hiding the true origin (tariffs are applied to the origin, not some transhipment place).
This is what happens with production revolutions. We did the same thing, as did England.
The difference is that they’re not doing it at the expense of hollowing out their domestic industry. They’re supplementing their own industry by building additional industry around the world.
“it’s just supplemental” would have initially worked to describe us industry shifting out
investment is finite, so if you have the choice between a and b, investing more money in a is by definition investing in a at the expense of b
“it’s just supplemental” would have initially worked to describe us industry shifting out
The difference being that China is not neoliberal. This does not coincide with deindustriakization, crushing unions, maximizing “free markets”, etc. It also does not correspond to anything like the regimes the US used to make offshoring in its own interests, namely to force imbalanced export economies on other countries premised on unequal exchange and a dollar-heavy (im)balance of payments. Worst case scenario of success is that other countries, particularly in Africa, develop industry, infrastructure, and good jobs while China gains trading partners and stays heavily industrialized, as they care for their real economy.
investment is finite, so if you have the choice between a and b, investing more money in a is by definition investing in a at the expense of b
At the level of entire countries this logic can break down. For example, third world countries have to figure out what to do with all these dollars they receive from their imbalanced export economies. You can’t just spend it on anything, yiur country needs to function and you can’t buy everything from everyone at fair prices this way.
The difference being that China is not neoliberal
i’d respond to this paragraph but you really haven’t made a coherent argument past “us bad china good”
At the level of entire countries this logic can break down.
no, because resources are always finite. the resource doesn’t have to be “money”.
This problem only occurs in capitalist economies where finance capital directs development. Meanwhile, all the critical economy in China is state owned. In fact, the share of private industry in China has been shrinking. https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-private-sector-has-lost-ground-state-sector-has-gained-share-among
it occurs when it’s economically more efficient to move industry out of your country than to keep it in
unless you’re suggesting china will willingly run the bulk of its industry with decreasing efficiency over time for the sake of keeping lower paying jobs domestically
These developments look increasingly structural. The authorities’ stance since 2020, including regulatory tightening and zero-COVID lockdowns, appear to have inflicted long-lasting damage to China’s private economy, the dynamism of which was a defining feature of its economic miracle in the past four decades. Nearly 20 months into China’s COVID reopening, the private sector has yet to bounce back, despite many pro-private business utterances and gestures from China’s leadership.
i’m not sure private businesses failing over covid is a good thing for an economy
Again, you’re thinking from a perspective of a market economy which China is not.
i’m not sure private businesses failing over covid is a good thing for an economy
I’m sure that saving countless millions of lives and preventing people from becoming sick and turning into a strain on the healthcare system is actually very good for the economy.
it occurs when it’s economically more efficient to move industry out of your country than to keep it in
It is not, generally speaking, more economically efficient to deindustrialize your own country. The logic you are using is neoliberal with “efficiency” meaning, “maximize profit for the financial sector”. This is an arrangement planned due to US-based economic crises and should not be projected onto China like some iron law. The US, as the global seat of capital, is uniquely harmful.
i’m not sure private businesses failing over covid is a good thing for an economy
The thing they wanted you to see were the statistics, not the guesswork and editorialization from that article.
It is not, generally speaking, more economically efficient to deindustrialize your own country
china is literally taking money that they could invest in domestic industry and investing it in industry overseas
i guess now you get to explain why they’re doing that if some form of economic efficiency isn’t the answer
The thing they wanted you to see were the statistics, not the guesswork and editorialization from that article.
“don’t look at that bit of the source i just chose to show you” would be an astounding bit of mental gymnastics
I disagree with your last point. A lot of companies should have sunk in covid and been consumed by more prepared ones. The governments didn’t want it to happen and they proved we actually live in a social net capitalist economy. This way if rich people accidentally lose we can remember socialism exists for them alone.
A lot of companies should have sunk in covid and been consumed by more prepared ones.
either way, mass company failure due to covid doesn’t imply anything about the split of china’s economy going forward
It’d be really funny if China building factories in Mexico causes NAFTA to collapse.
Seems like a short lived plan. Just need to change laws so that Chinese owned vehicles have a tariff, no matter where they’re made. Of course, then they just create shell companies in the states/EU and the game of cat and mouse continues.
The EU Wants Chinese car factories to operate locally.
Chinese EV maker BYD welcome to open factory in France, French finance minister says
European nations compete for Chinese EV factories, jobs even as EU weighs tariffs
China’s Dongfeng in pole position to build an auto plant in Italy - Italian sources