
Ford Is Fined in China - headalgorithm
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/china-ford-antitrust-trade-war.html
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seanmcdirmid
This is Changan Ford, meaning a JV where Ford controls exactly 49% and Changan
51%. The fine is for anti competitive behavior in setting a floor on resale
values, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to fine.

I don't think this is very related to the trade war, as it is hurting a
Chinese company just as badly as an American one.

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nikofeyn
can someone explain to me this "trade war" between the u.s. and china? as far
as i can tell, it is an entirely constructed thing (in terms of how it
started) and is simply the new "war" just like we had the cold war, war
against drugs, war against terror, etc. so now the trade war is just the
u.s.'s new war fetish.

so other than the current administration's idiotic approach to anything, what
was the impetus of all of this?

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mc32
When Clinton granted China MFN status and then was allowed into WTO there were
some (perhaps naive) assumptions of working in good faith and that while it
was expected China would be granted some breaks as it caught up, eventually it
would play nice abide by the rules everyone else respects. Well, it’s been 30
years and China is still not playing fair in trade (ownership requirements, IP
transfer, IP theft, market access, etc.)

The admin is doing something the Busch admin should have done, or at least the
first Obama, but neither did because it would be too upsetting to
multinationals and would also “upset” China.

Now we have someone who says times up, do what you signed up for or deal with
the consequences of ignoring the rule set out.

And, to a great degree, I agree with this. Blue collar labor was thrown under
the bus. That little Texan was right. A giant sucking sound did take the jobs,
but not Mexico but rather China chiefly, among other labor outsourcing, to our
detriment (their own too) and environmental degradation.

Now, I’m glad and it’s great China took this opportunity to lift its people
from abject poverty but we took too much of a hit. It should have been more
measured and more fair.

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nikofeyn
but my guess is that the period of china stealing ip (which is an obvious fact
that has happened over decades) is only temporary in the grand scheme of
things in that it won't last forever. this is because china has stolen ideas,
concepts, and direct designs to catch up but is now in many areas surpassing
product design in the u.s. so this idea that u.s. design and development >
chinese design and development won't last and is already breaking down. thus,
the u.s. is in real danger since china has all the manufacturing ability. so
yea, china has stolen and ignored ip laws, but that soon won't even matter.
that's at least my prediction.

i have a friend in a u.s. technology company, and they simply cannot beat the
chinese version of their product in both price and features despite being the
creator of the product category decades ahead of others. the chinese companies
copied the design but have now exceeded it, so the u.s. product does very
poorly in china.

so what it sounds like to me is that the u.s. sees the writing on the wall,
which is all due to their own actions and corporate greed over the past few
decades, and so now is making a hail mary in a trade war. it doesn't seem like
a good idea when it likely won't be long until china has the upper hand.

so it seems it basically comes down to trump taking his poor understanding of
dynamics and abusing the u.s. government's and people's need for a "war".

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mc32
(Almost) Any country can be a leader in some area even if they are not a
superpower. Germany, Japan, UK, France, Taiwan: they all have leadership in
some technologies even though they are small compared to the US and China.

Should they throw their hand up and say, guys and gals of the world, we can’t
keep up with you in all areas, please, come take our IP!

I think the answer is obvious.

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nikofeyn
i am not for sure i understand.

i was saying that it seems to me that the u.s. can't always rely on the
argument and stance that "oh, it's just china making cheap copies". it seems
that china has directly stolen and continues to do so, which is a major
problem of course, but they will eventually have no need to. so the problem is
worse than just needing to stop china from stealing. the problem is that it's
possible the u.s. will be left behind because of our unconcentrated effort
versus the chinese's highly concentrated economic approach.

my simple understanding is that u.s. corporation's greed and other u.s.
economic factors caused a move of nearly all manufacturing to china and now
everyone's saying "hey, wait a minute".

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filesystem
I may misunderstand what you mean. Are you saying that you believe China will
stop producing inferior (made as cheap as possible) copies of desirable goods
and marking the price up? Why would they stop? They have already proven that
they have no interest in acting in good faith, and in the absence of morals,
this practice is obviously much more profitable than innovation.

China now has all the capital & knowledge required to become the worldwide
leader in innovation. However, their entire industrial culture was built to
the specifications of "making cheap copies". It will be interesting to see
what the side effects of those origins will be for China in the long run.

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marnett
China has manufacturing facilities and capacity that far exceed any other
nation. This includes making high end products based on foreign designed
specifications (I.e. iPhone). GP is saying that it is not if, but when, China
will have attained the baseline IP to spend remaining efforts on exceeding
foreign innovation and using their domestic manufacturing capabilities to
deliver on them.

Currently the “trade war” just attacks Chinese companies that have done
exactly what I described above (Huawei being a primary example) - claiming
cybercrimes, arresting executives, slamming lawsuits, barring imports, etc.

Manufacturing is not a switch that can be turned back. America had severe
oversight when allowing our manufacturing capacity to head south to Mexico and
east to China. We are pretending the trade war is the US “sticking it” to
China. But in reality China has all the cards in this war - the US is bluffing
to its citizens; the economy of the coming decades will be on China’s terms.

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nikofeyn
you're exactly right. although i think the oversight was coupled with greed.
corporations in the u.s. began a race to the bottom in terms of manufacturing
cost, and now we're paying for both incompetent oversight and greed. consumers
are to blame as well, but that blame is hard to place when consumers in the
middle and lower class are getting squeezed in every direction.

it's very disappointing that the u.s. took this turn.

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vernie
I think this is great news but I'm still bitter about the PowerShift debacle.

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stochastic_monk
I’m still upset about the terrible transmission on the Ford I purchased. I
will never support them again.

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vernie
I particularly loved their insistence that "that's just how it is, there's
nothing wrong with it". Perfection.

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stochastic_monk
It took me four visits before they admitted that there was a problem.

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bluetwo
So how is this going to end?

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MoveMyMobile
War probably. The issue with disconnecting our economy from China is there
will no longer be anything stopping a full fledged war in the South China Sea

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devy
A direct war (even conventional warfare, which can quickly escalate) between
nuclear-armed states could be the demise of mankind. Please remember that.

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MoveMyMobile
It wouldn't be a direct war in the sense everyone is thinking. The US has
several strategies published regarding war with China with the most likely
strategy being one of containment, not outright invasion. I'm saying that the
open markets and globalization that has happened over the last several decades
(And is now being reversed) is the reason we have had relative peace (No war
between larger powers) since WWII

