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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to trade what matters is whether or not you meet your treaty obligations. It's a rules based process, where you agree the rules and have some arbitration process, e.g. through the WTO.

On that basis, what matters is whether China is following the rules it, and everyone else, agreed to. If you think some one is cheating you arbitrate. We made a deal.

Trump is intent on blatantly breaking the rules the US has agreed to, and breaking the deals it committed to. That is important because companies invest billions of dollars based on the rules countries agree on trade. Arbitrarily change the rules with no warning and those billions of dollars of investment can become worthless and the jobs associated with them lost in Canada, the EU and countries all over the world aside from China.

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> what matters is whether China is following the rules it, and everyone else, agreed to

That's incorrect. China is failing, to an extraordinary degree, to comply with what it said that it would do in being allowed into the WTO. Namely, opening up their economy in terms of full and equal foreign access. At every step, they've refused to go forward with that. As it turns out, most likely, they were lying and buying time. Their goal is clearly to get large enough to not have to ever comply. They've been very obviously following Deng Xiaoping stated policy - 24 character strategy - of hiding their strength and biding their time.

North Korea used the same strategy to acquire its nuclear weapons. Lie, pretend you're going to do a thing, with no intention of doing the thing, buy time, get the nukes, then you no longer have to comply and or you've massively increased your bargaining position.

It's amazing how clear this is, yet so few people can see it, it makes me wonder if there would be less confusion if we didn't have two different cultures involved.

Of course, Western corporations and their executives who are profiting handsomely from it have good reason to "not notice" what's happening and continue to talk their book, but the wilful ignorance of genuinely well-meaning liberals is more complex.

I always wonder if Chinese leadership sometimes leans back and marvels at how easy it is to win when the uninformed citizens of your adversaries are in an ideological war with each other.

There is willful ignorance mostly by those profiting. But it's not as simple as "well-meaning liberals". That seems like a re-writing of history when there are plenty of examples from the left protesting these deals.

And it's a bit hard to peg who on the right/left we're talking about as high level politicians tend to blur the line when talk about trade deals. "True scotsman" and all.

Sanders was all over unfair trade deals that hurt American workers. Perhaps he would've done it in a responsible manner? If there is such a way.

Perhaps I'm remembering wrong. It seemed as if the right was all for trade deals until Trump made it popular.

> But it's not as simple as "well-meaning liberals". That seems like a re-writing of history when there are plenty of examples from the left protesting these deals.

I suppose I should have said modern "liberals", the word almost has no meaning anymore.

Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky are both historically very philosophically aligned with Trump on many of these topics, but many on the modern left, if you take them at their literal word, would have you believe they are some sort of alt-right hyper-capitalists.

I am of the opinion that some very powerful people have discovered a number of psychological tricks that the human mind, particularly under current Western moral beliefs, is almost completely defenseless against.

This is just how the state operates. It will never be transparent about just how threatening the Chinese are and vise versa. Ignorance is bliss within the world of global power dynamics. If you ever meet someone who works/has worked for intelligence agencies, ask them about China. Whether they will share anything verbal or not, their true feelings have already flushed across their face.

If that's true then how would you explain their obsession with the "Russian Hackers" boogeyman, while remaining completely mum on the absolutely massive economic and political threat China has become, which anyone could have seen coming well over a decade ago?

I strongly disagree. I believe what matters is, or should be, whether the current arrangement that has been "agreed to", is objectively fair or not.

What is in the best interests of wealthy influential people and corporations may not be in the best interests of overall society. Maximizing GDP is not necessarily in the best interests of overall society.

I think this article makes some good points on whether "what we've agreed to" is actually "fair", and there are numerous other articles like it, but if an alien from another planet was to come here and listen to public discourse on the topic, they'd be left with the impression that there is no debate to be had.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/business/trade-chin...

It may be difficult to determine what is "objectively fair" in a complex globalized world, but it seems to me like there is a coordinated effort to avoid a conversation on the topic getting any kind of traction.

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