Current Events > Biden Admin Wants to Move Away from Free Trade aka Less Made in China

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/25/joe-bidens-economy-trade-china-00096781

"The Biden administration has been trying to bury the free-trade era for months. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai drove a nail into its coffin in January, telling the worlds one percent at Davos that the Biden administration would try to shape a new economic world order around protecting workers. And National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan sought to deliver last rites in April, promising the White House would forge a new Washington consensus to replace the one that had governed the globe for over a generation. I remain convinced that through all of this disruption were moving towards a new economic order, Tai told POLITICO in an interview. Id really like to fill that gap with a positive vision that we will be prepared for it.

The goal is to replace the old paradigms of globalization free trade and a reliance on markets with a worker-centered trade policy that raises wages not just for Americans, but around the world. But building a new world economy is proving more difficult than eulogizing the old one. While the pro-globalization consensus has shown cracks for years from the financial crisis to the election of former President Donald Trump Bidens team has struggled to outline how it will shape new rules and institutions to replace those that governed the world for the last half-century.

Bidens team is moving slowly to transform a paralyzed World Trade Organization, once the premier facilitator of globalization, into a new-look economic club that reflects its progressive values. As those efforts crawl along, Biden has sought to forge new economic partnerships in Asia and Latin America, but the nascent effortspale in comparison to Chinas trillion-dollar infrastructure program for developing nations and risk replicating the corporate-friendly trade policies of the old system. Meanwhile, Bidens quest to counter Chinas technological growth risks sparking a new Cold War and dividing the world into two or more global trading blocs a fate the White House insists it is trying to avoid.

More fundamentally, Bidens brain trust has yet to settle on a vision for how the next era of global economics will be constructed. Their initial ideas are abstract at best. Sullivan, in his April speech before the Brookings Institution, compared the Biden economic vision to a building by avant garde architect Frank Gehry, all flowing lines of chrome and steel resembling nothing less than a roller coaster. In the end, the way that we are going to build an international economic architecture is not going to be with kind of Parthenon-style, clear pillars as we did after the Second World War, Sullivan said, but something that feels a little bit more like a Frank Gehry a mix of structures and substances. Bidens critics from centrist free-trade holdouts to Trump-fueled populists who focus on competition with China are hardly more concrete in their own ideas. Across the political spectrum, American policymakers are grappling with how to shape a new global economic system to replace the one they built decades ago."

I dont know if the administration has clearly outlined what that new world looks like, Sen. Marco Rubio , the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO after a Capitol Hill hearing in February when he assailed the old, pro-globalization paradigm. But I dont know if anybody else has either. Despite the backlash against the globalization era, the shift to a new economic model is not assured. Supporters of free trade are keen to bend the arc of economic change back toward lower tariffs, taxes and regulations. But even they recognize they must change their approach to respond to the inequality and discontent that the globalization era has created."

Will something be done to wane the US off cheap made in china products? Will wages finally start to keep up with inflation with this method?

The bullet points listed:

FOUR TAKEAWAYS

Biden wants to turn away from so-called neoliberal economic ideas free trade abroad and austerity at home that have animated economic policy since the late 1970s.
In their place, Biden has proposed a worker-centered trade policy to raise wages and environmental standards here and abroad.
But the administrations ideas are still abstract at best, with one key adviser predicting a mix of structures will govern the future economy.
If Biden cant shape a new global economy soon and sell those reforms to voters Trumpian populism is waiting, focused largely on competition with China.

China!

So how are Republicans going to spin this?

oh, now we like protectionism and tariffs?

Questionmarktarius posted...

oh, now we like protectionism and tariffs?

Conservatives always have.

name_unknown posted...

But the administrations ideas are still abstract at best, with one key adviser predicting a mix of structures will govern the future economy.

Polite way of saying his idea is batshit insane.

Suddenly Hollywood Biden sportin on the nWo tank tee.

This enforces that Biden is not ending the Trump tariffs on China anytime soon. Must be one of the few things they agree on.

Cheap items in the market place is one of the reasons to allow employers to have such low wages. Lack of updates to min wage and weak unions are others.

So at this point are we can we all agree that neoliberalism has run it's course?

name_unknown posted...

This enforces that Biden is not ending the Trump tariffs on China anytime soon. Must be one of the few things they agree on.

Cheap items in the market place is one of the reasons to allow employers to have such low wages. Lack of updates to min wage and weak unions are others.

The only thing people in Washington can agree on is their dislike of China lol.

Down to the last citizen.

SHRlKE posted...

So at this point are we can we all agree that neoliberalism has run it's course?

But I was told Biden is an extreme communist

hockeybub89 posted...

But I was told Biden is an extreme communist

I'm not from the US so I don't really care about short term things like who president it.

More abstractly do we feel neoliberalism has run it's course in general?

SHRlKE posted...

I'm not from the US so I don't really care about short term things like who president it.

More abstractly do we feel neoliberalism has run it's course in general?

Well free trade has helped the average Chinese citizen to a degree but a course correction was long over due.

name_unknown posted...

Cheap items in the market place is one of the reasons to allow employers to have such low wages.

Also nobody has money because the factory that used to make those things here, is in China or Vietnam now.

Tldr?

TaylorHeinicke posted...

Tldr?

Biden has learned Economics 102 and now realizes that he's in trouble.

TaylorHeinicke posted...

Tldr?

Biden is keeping Trump's general "ChiiiiNA!" polices in place.

Feel like these takeaways were structured with the expectation to cause shock and concern, but the only people who would be concerned are conservatives.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Biden is keeping Trump's general "ChiiiiNA!" polices in place.

So does the left hate biden now?

First businesses would need a new location for cheap labor. Which I believe is becoming India and Vietnam more and more.

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

but the only people who would be concerned are conservatives.

It's a trap.
Do something Trump did, and watch who suddenly starts screeching that it's communist or something.

ellis123 posted...

Biden has learned Economics 102 and now realizes that he's in trouble.

Interesting. Why is that?

TaylorHeinicke posted...

Interesting. Why is that?

Capitalism is good for the consolidation of wealth into the powerful (and with wealth being power it is just a cycle). China has been taking this aspect seriously for decades while the US pretty much stopped caring once Raegan became a thing. Thus the means of production are entirely outside of the US and thus when it comes to actual power it is in China's court.

Eventually he's get to Econ 103 and realize most of this is BS as well.

It was the Clinton admin on the way out that opened up China to the WTO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Relations_Act_of_2000

"President Bill Clinton in 2000 pushed Congress to approve the U.S.-China trade agreement and China's accession to the WTO,[13] saying that more trade with China would advance America's economic interests: "Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its marketswith a fifth of the worlds population, potentially the biggest markets in the worldto both our products and services in unprecedented new ways," said Clinton."

"As a new member, China agreed to rapidly lower import tariffs and open its markets, although many trade officials doubted it would stand by those promises.[15] China did cut tariffs after it joined the WTO, but it nonetheless continued to steal U.S. intellectual property (IP) and forced American companies to transfer technology to access the Chinese market, which were violations of WTO rules"

"By 2018, U.S. manufacturing jobs had decreased by almost 5 million since 2000, with the decline accelerating."