China has moved so fast into a cashless society, where everyone pays for everything with a mobile phone, that Chinese newspapers report beggars in major cities have started to place a printout of a QR code in their begging bowls so any passer-by can scan it and use mobile payment apps like Alibaba’s Alipay
.. Chinese men and women friends tell me they don’t carry purses or wallets anymore, only a mobile phone, which they use for everything — including for buying vegetables from street vendors.
.. the fact that China has 700 million people doing so many transactions daily on the mobile internet means it’s piling up massive amounts of information that can be harvested to identify trends and spur new artificial intelligence applications.
.. Trump’s broad complaint that China is not playing fair on trade and has grown in some areas at the expense of U.S. and European workers has merit and needs to be addressed — now
.. when the U.S. allowed China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 and gain much less restricted access to our markets, we gave China the right to keep protecting parts of its market — because it was a “developing economy.” The assumption was that as China reformed and become more of our equal, its trade barriers and government aid to Chinese companies would melt away.
.. China grew in strength, became America’s equal in many fields and continued to protect its own companies from foreign competition, either by limiting access or demanding that foreign companies take on a Chinese partner and transfer their intellectual property to China as the price of access, or by funneling Chinese firms low-interest loans to grow and buy foreign competitors.
.. 81 percent of its members felt “less welcome” in China than in the past and had little confidence any longer that China would carry through on promises to open its markets.
.. China tells the world that its policy is “reform and opening,” but on the ground its policy “more resembles reform and closing.”
.. Alibaba can set up its own cloud server in America, but Amazon or Microsoft can’t do the same in China. China just agreed to allow U.S. credit card giants, like Visa and MasterCard, access to its huge market — something it was required to do under W.T.O. rules but just dragged its feet on for years
.. The world leader in industrial robots, the German company Kuka Robotics, was just bought by the Chinese company Midea; Beijing would never allow the U.S. to buy one of China’s industrial gems like that.
Of Tweets And Trade
when Trump talked trade, he had no idea what he was talking about — no more than he did on health care, or taxes, or coal, or …. Specifically, Trump seemed to have two false ideas in mind:
1. Existing trade agreements are obviously and bigly unfair to the United States, putting us at a disadvantage.
2. Restricting trade would be good for America and bad for foreigners, so the threat of protectionism gives us lots of leverage.
.. In fact, since Mexican tariffs were higher to start with, in effect Mexico made more concessions than we did (although we were giving access to a bigger market.)
.. Oh, and China currency manipulation was an issue 5 years ago — but isn’t now.
.. stuff you export is often produced with a lot of imported components, stuff you import often indirectly includes a lot of your own exports.
.. When we buy autos from Mexico, only about half the value added is Mexican, with most of the rest coming from the US — so if you restrict those imports, a lot of U.S. production workers will be hurt.
If we restrict imports of components from Mexico, we’re going to raise the costs of U.S. producers who export to other markets;
.. protectionist policies would produce many losers in the U.S. industrial sector.
any attempt on Trump’s part to get real about trade will run into fierce opposition, not from the kind of people his supporters love to hate, but from major business interests.
.. So far, at least, the Trump trade agenda, such as it is, has involved tweeting at companies
.. the classic answer of collapsing juntas is the Malvinas solution: rally the nation by creating a foreign confrontation of some kind. Usually this involves a shooting war; but maybe a trade war would serve the same purpose.
.. If Trump does do something drastic on trade, it won’t be driven by his economic theories, it will be driven by his plunging approval rating.
Treasury’s Mnuchin Fends Off Push to Reject Protectionism
BADEN-BADEN, Germany—U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rebuffed a concerted push by world finance chiefs on Saturday to disavow protectionism, fanning fears that the Trump administration’s pursuit of an “America First” policy could ignite global trade conflicts.
.. At a news conference, Mr. Mnuchin said earlier language on protectionism “was not necessarily relevant from my standpoint.”
He also warned that some global trade agreements weren’t being enforced, and that the new administration would be aggressive in doing so.
.. Mr. Schäuble said at a news conference that Mr. Mnuchin appeared to have no mandate to negotiate any new or creative commitments on trade.
.. Brazil Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told the G-20 about his country’s own experience with protectionism as the country has just experienced its worst recession on record.
“We had adopted during the last years some protectionist measures for some sectors of the economy and the net result was not positive,”
.. Evidence that it may just be too soon for the U.S. to offer the G-20 anything substantive on trade, financial regulation, tax overhauls and other policies, Mr. Mnuchin relied on senior civil servants to conduct much of the detailed negotiations at the meeting.
.. If trade czar Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, a top Trump adviser and self-described economic nationalist, have their way, many officials fear the White House could trigger a trade war. The administration has advocated applying unilateral actions that eschew a rules-based multilateral order, including submission to the World Trade Organization’s authority.
.. The U.S. delegation found a rare ally in Japan, which came to the defense of Mr. Mnuchin, saying talks over American protectionism were overblown.
Trump’s Defense of Ivanka Reflects Approach That Could Hurt the Economy
Such actions, if meant to disrupt Nordstrom’s business, could be a signal to other retailers that it’ll be costly to cut off existing business relationships with the Trump family. This kind of bullying could have unintended consequences.
.. Even if you think her products are excellent, Mr. Trump’s outburst provides an incentive not to stock them. After all, if it doesn’t work out, who wants to be in the cross-hairs of an easily angered president with 24.3 million Twitter followers and the power of the regulatory state? It might be far safer to do business with someone else.
.. Mr. Trump’s strategy to protect his daughter’s business seems to mirror his strategy to protect American jobs. Just as he has made it more expensive for potential partners to sever business relationships with his daughter, the C.E.O.s of Carrier, General Motors and Toyota can attest that he has made it more expensive for them to sever their relationships with American workers.
.. The prospect of a costly Trump tantrum could give factory bosses reason to think twice before setting up shop in the United States. In the short run, perhaps Mr. Trump’s threats can slow a painful decline. But in the longer run, defending the status quo may do more harm than good.