
China warns Trump against abandoning climate change deal - alexc05
https://www.ft.com/content/35803636-a82a-11e6-8898-79a99e2a4de6
======
alexc05
As I read this I stared thinking about the "wildest" scenarios I could around
China attempting to enforce climate action on the USA.

With the understanding that it is a somewhat "beyond science fiction" level
scenario. What would happen if China imposed trade sanctions against the US
such that they just stopped shipping goods entirely?

I mean manufacturing would obviously restrung to the US but not right away.
What would it be like if ALL Chinese manufactured goods just stopped? For sake
of argument maybe include other nations that agree with the necessity of
climate action. (India, Europe, etc...).

What would America be like if global manufacturing & trade to the us halted
and full trade sanctions (like Iran/Cuba) were imposed?

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
First, a reality check: 2015 imports from China were $582 Billion [0]. The
Chinese GDP in 2015 was about $10 Trillion [1]. That makes the US responsible
for consuming nearly 6% of the Chinese economic output. I'm not an economist,
but I think that means that stopping all exports to the US would put about 6%
of China's workforce out of work. Given their reliance on employment as a
deterrent to civil unrest, I'd say it's something they wouldn't even
contemplate.

As to the hypothetical effect on the US, I'd say that 100 years hence,
historians would comment on how remarkably the US had snapped into action and
replaced all the imported products and sources with domestic and non-Chinese
sources. That would be coupled with a rationalization of what products
American consumers didn't need and only bought or upgraded because they were
cheap. There would be a lot of 'oh, I didn't need that anyway'.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are many other established and up-
and-coming non-Chinese manufacturing hubs that could ramp up to absorb some of
the displaced Chinese sources: Malaysia, Vietnam, India, and others.

It's be a much less jarring event to the US than it would be to China, but
actually enduring the process would be extremely unsettling and a lot of
Americans would have to endure hardship during the transition.

[0] [http://www.census.gov/foreign-
trade/balance/c5700.html](http://www.census.gov/foreign-
trade/balance/c5700.html)

[1]
[http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/201601/t2016011...](http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/201601/t20160119_1306072.html)

~~~
avmich
And just as another probability we can also consider this. 6% of economic
output isn't something dramatic - just think, many companies can have quarter-
to-quarter results fluctuating more than that - so it's entirely possible that
China won't notice that much, especially if the reduction is evenly spread.

More, in autocratic economies people sometimes have higher tolerances to
sudden economic turmoils, so it could be just another example of that. Those
6% could even be redistributed, possibly lowering prices elsewhere but in
general decreasing, dampening and postponing the direct effect - so possibly
not creating anything of a huge problem for China.

Regarding USA springing back into self-reliance mode, one can - just as an
example, possibly not particularly relevant - see how other countries behave,
and how quickly they adjust. As recently demonstrated by Russia, some
"remarkable snapping into action" suspiciously didn't happen, and so far
economy slides downward two years in a row. That's after lots of
rationalizations of Russians which products they don't really need - and
reminding that, again, the tolerance to economic hardships there could be
bigger than in US.

Of course it's also unreasonable to imagine that not only China, but a whole
set of countries could decide against US simultaneously. Never had examples of
that in the past, right?

Once again, this is just another perspective to the reality check proposed.

------
hedora
Non paywalled stories

[http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN12W349](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN12W349)

[http://www.salon.com/2016/11/01/when-china-calls-out-
donald-...](http://www.salon.com/2016/11/01/when-china-calls-out-donald-trump-
on-climate-change-you-know-its-bad/)

~~~
alexc05
Thanks! Weird that I found it on Reddit and was linked straight through to the
full article.

I wonder it their out-link now works to disable paywalls like the google
search web links do for some?

[https://out.reddit.com/t3_5ck2cc?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.co...](https://out.reddit.com/t3_5ck2cc?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F35803636-a82a-11e6-8898-79a99e2a4de6&token=AQAAkzgnWKnM_qd1XfcqH92702DyaPR22-ga9EgJLe1TH5zJN4L6&app_name=reddit.com)

Or

[https://www.google.com/search?q=China%20warns%20Trump%20agai...](https://www.google.com/search?q=China%20warns%20Trump%20against%20abandoning%20climate%20change%20deal)

------
huffpopo
Given that Trump believes that global warming is a scam made up by the Chinese
to suppress the US, I highly doubt he'll listen

------
marcoperaza
China is not suddenly truly interested in emissions cuts. They are interested
in preserving the existing framework in which they get to keep growing their
emissions while Western countries have to cut theirs. They are being very
disingenuous, and good for them, because if they succeed they're going to eat
our lunch. I hope we're not that stupid.

~~~
pikma
What references / data points support this theory ? I'm curious to learn more
about this point of view.

