China’s plan to get around Western tariffs: Fill the world with factories
In response to the trade war, the Asian giant is investing billions of dollars abroad in plants, especially in industries linked to the energy transition
So they're now outsourcing production to the West? We've really come full circle.
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.
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).
Also a lot of infrastructure in Africa is being funded in China, their position there is only going to grow stronger.
This is what happens with production revolutions. We did the same thing, as did England.
It'd be really funny if China building factories in Mexico causes NAFTA to collapse.
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 😏
And then we have mass worker revolts to seize the means of production in these countries right? Right?
Woulda been funny. Not just for the obvious benefit of having an uprising and potential revolution in Europe, but also to see how genuine those "red millionaires" are about socialism with Chinese characteristics
A bit nitpicky, but the idea behind SWCC isn't that the Capialists in the PRC are "the people's Capitalists" or anything, but that the State as a DotP allows market competition in a controlled manner similar to a birdcage. As these markets form monopolist syndicates, they centralize, and socialize, by which point the CPC increases public owership. Communism is achieved by degree, not by decree. Trying to achieve Communism through fiat has historically resulted in struggles and difficulties.
I recommend reading Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism for an overview of what that entails.
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.
And this behavior is somehow sold to the public as a way to boost the economic wellness of the people living under the isolationist programs, but instead it enables profiteering corporations to exert more control over the artificially narrowed market space.
Locking the door with the fox(es) in the henhouse.
economics is far from a simple competition… things like game theory lead to monopolies being bad for everyone, and that’s what china wants in a lot of cases. the chinese government subsidises some of its industries dramatically so they can take over a global market and then slowly backs off the subsidies when they’ve killed their competition
it’s similar to microsoft’s embrace, extend, extinguish strategy
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.
Why do we “need” to change laws to artificially inflate the price of cars? Don’t we give enough money and government control to Ford and GM?
The EU Wants Chinese car factories to operate locally.
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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
capitalists have no nation
Not entirely true. There's a large difference between Nationalist Bourgeoisie and Imperialist Bourgeoisie. The Nationalists in Imperialized countries are progressive compared to the Imperialists that oppress both the Nationalist Bourgeosie and Proletarist in Imperialized countries.
