LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
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User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
19hr ago
Sure, it blocks intra-EU competition, but the EU is effectively acting as a cabal here - Franch gets champagne, Greece gets feta, Italy gets prosecco and so on. They agree to not interfere with each other in exchange dor working together to impose the restrictions on the rest of the world.
It's trivial (conceptually, if not practically) to structure your non-tariff trade barriers, such as the CBAM, to favour domestic producers over foreign imports - e.g. calculating emissions of imports in a unfavourable way. Indeed, the CBAM has been accused of doing just that. It also inherently favours domestic European goods due to the lower transport emissions and the fact the Europeans are trying to develop green industries. The Europeans of course argue this is simply a green policy, and this is merely leveling the playing field in the name of the environment. Maybe this true - but the fact it favours domestic industry must surely be a nice bonus.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1d ago
To a degree, yes, you're correct, it's just then which regulations or protections are generally considered legitimate, and don't hinder the 'spirit' of free trade. Although with health and safety regulation specifically is that they're competing on an even playing field in that specific market with domestic goods - this isn't the case with all (most) non-tariff trade barriers, which often put additional burdens on imported goods that domestic goods don't have to meet, or are structured in such a way to make it far easier for domestic goods to meet the requirements.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1d ago
Yes, that's my point. That there's a right way to do not-protectionism in the liberal trade rules based order. Trump's doing in protectionism with his tariffs the wrong way (to a extreme degree, I might add).
You are correct, it's protecting EU domestic markets from foreign 'similar' products from using the geographical indicators (although the EU has occasionally managed to extend that protection to other markets). So Australian sparkling white wine can't use the name 'champagne' in European markets. This was a major sticking point during fairly recent Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations (Australia is a major agricultural exporter), particularly around products like feta, parmesan, prosecco, and was instrumental in the collapse of negotiations along with other agriculture protectionist policies. Now, one might think it's fair for the Europeans to do this to protect their cultural culinary heritage - I wouldn't disagree. But it does still provide a non-tariff trade barrier (i.e. is a protectionist policy) against potentially more competitive imports.
It's technically true that Trump's 'retaliatory' tariffs aren't actually retaliatory, as most countries don't have tariffs on vast majority of US imports. However, there are other actual, tangible non-tariff trade barriers countries use, it's not just illusory 'Critical Trade Theory'.
Tariffs are considered archaic and stupid in our global WTO liberal free trade regime. But occasionally (or sometimes more than occasionally) states want to engage in protectionism. The way they get around this is by implementing non-tariffs trade barriers that have plausible deniability with other justifications. This is sometimes described as neo-mercantilism in academic literature. The European Union loves this, from geographical indicators to carbon border adjustment mechanism and other regulatory measures - all implemented for other goods, that just so happen to also protect their domestic industries as well (unintended side effect, of course). Though, the EU will sometimes resort to tariffs on short notice as well, such as to prevent Chinese state subsidised EVs flooding European markets - but that's justified as an anti-dumping measure - purely self defence.
And China bans imports of goods, out of deep concern for the safety of their citizens. They blocked imports of Australian rock lobster because of high levels of cadmium (no evidence ever confirmed) and periodic bans of imports of either Canadian or Australian canola over concerns of blackleg fungus contamination. Of course, China too used extortionate tariffs on Australian barley to protect themselves from Australian 'dumping' cheap barley in China. Damn, us pesky Australians! First we try to poison the Chinese with toxic lobster, then we try to destroy the domestic Chinese barley market! In a weird coincidence, concerns about cadmium disappeared the same time relations normalised with China post-COVID! What luck! And don't forget the China rare earths export ban and dispute in 2010-12, which was for the good of reducing pollution and conserving the resource. The fact it happened after a major maritime and diplomatic dispute with Japan is a coincidence, I'm sure.
For better or worse, Trump's approach is about as unsophisticated as you can get, just slapping tariffs on just about everyone and everything. See, in the enlightened WTO free trade order, you can't just put tariffs on things, that would break WTO rules and free trade principles! No, instead what you're meant to do is provide some really-justified-for-other-reasons non-tariff measure to block export or imports, and then spend the next 5 years rules-lawyering how it doesn't violate the 'international rule based order' after which time the outcome of the dispute doesn't even matter, if someone even bothers to challenge it, that is.
Manufacturing jobs stagnants in the 80s (despite population growth) and begins to decline in 90s onwards. The increase in output has largely been due to productivity gains - but the actual manufacturing output as a percentage of the US economy has continuously shrunk. All the graph you linked shows is that existing manufacturing has gotten more productive/more efficient, which is unsurprising. In fact, output has actually stagnanted over the last 20 years despite productivity growth.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2d ago
Yes it was - US trade balance only begins to dramatically decline in the 80s, and then dramatically accelerates in the 90s (i.e. the same time NAFTA comes into effect and China's exports explode in growth). While there was decline and deindustrialisation in some areas and sectors before then, US manufaturing and exports was still relatively healthy in the up to the 80s.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2d ago
Is your objection to my use of the term 'Rust Belt', or the argument that the 80s/90s weren't critical turning point? I don't care about the former, the latter is statistically true - deindustrialisation was much more significant after then, then had occured previously.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3d ago
I said I am not specifically defending Trump's implementation of tariffs - there's a lot to criticise even if you're someone who is generally in favour of protectionism.
Any large macroeconomic change is going to have short term economic shocks, basically regardless of what exactly they are.
The concern is not what the short term economic impacts will be on what remains of American industry, but (re)developing a long term industrial base. Whether the tariffs achieve that is up for debate and remains to be seen. The ship may have already sailed.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3d ago
The 80s aren't 30 years ago
Ah!
Regardless, while there were some indication of deindustrialisation earlier, the late 80s/early 90s were a critical inflection point - it's when economic relations with China began to normalise, allowing China grow explosive, and Chinese exports grew enormously during the 90s (and later other Asian nations such as Vietnam and India) In America specifically, NAFTA was signed in 1994.
Also, I find it funny all the grandstanding about free trade in the media - while free trade has been a principle since the end of WW2, in reality completely and absolute free trade has only really been a thing for the last 20-30 years. The 1950s-1990s had a moderate amount of tariffs and other trade restrictions. Short memories.
This is a response to both the above and @PyotrVerkhovensky's below comments on tariffs.
Some 30-odd years ago, economists had a proposition for the American people, and the West and the global economy at large, that went something like this:
Trade liberalisation is fantastic. It will bring massive economic growth, cheap consumer goods for all! Now, all these free trade agreements might have the negative impact of hollowing out America's (and the West's) industial base as all manufacturing and its associated blue collar jobs move overseas, but don't worry! Some of the massive economic gains from trade liberalisation can be captured and used to help blue collar communities 'adjust' to this economic change but helping them to reskill into other industries, such as ERROR:Undefined. Everybody wins! Plus, liberalising trade with China will help them liberalise politically as well. Pax Americana will live on!
Obviously, this didn't come to pass - at the very least, the claims that the negative repercussions of trade liberalisation will be offset by capturing some of the economic gain didn't happen, as Western deindustrialisation and the Rust Belt is testament to. What's more, economists rarely consider social impacts, especially second and third order effects. Deaths of despair and the social decline of middle America wasn't considered a possibility. A few economists may give lip service to social issues, but ultimately they can be resolved with economic solutions. Never mind that the wealth generated by trade liberalisation was highly concentrated by a minority of elites concentrated in financial centres and not widely distributed, cheap plasma TVs be damned.
I think the strongest argument in favour of tariffs (in the broad sense, not necessarily Trump's implementation) flips the free trade argument on its head - rather than middle American manufacturing being sacrificed for the good of abstract macroeconomic growth and GDP, abstract macroeconomic growth and GDP should be sacrificed for middle American manufacturing. Why were blue collar workers expected to sacrifice their livelihoods for the benefit of financial markets back in the 90s, but we shouldn't expect financial markets to sacrifice some of their growth for the well-being of blue collar workers now?
The question that is often forgotten in economic policy debates is who is the economy for? Too often do economists, policy makers and the media alike forget that the economy is a means, not an end, and that abstract GDP growth is not necessarily the goal that should be pursued, especially when that growth can come at the expense of the social well-being of the population, even if the insistence is that it will always benefit everyone.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
15d ago
This is not speculation on my part. Israel did, in fact, ask the US to invade Iran first and not Iraq.
There's various sources for this including from US officials such as Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell. It's also stated in Mearsheimer's Israel Lobby book from memory.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
16d ago
Israel was only 'against' the Iraq War insofar that they wanted the US to invade Iran first. The Bush admin said they'd do Iraq and Afghanistan quickly before Iran, who would similarly be a cake walk. Well, we know how that turned out. Israel still wanted the US to invade the whole Middle East (on their behalf) in the long run anyway, they just disagreed about the order.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
I suppose it's been memory-holed and vastly unpopular both here and in the mainstream media, but Ukraine did take many actions in the lead-up to the 2022 invasion and the 2014 invasion and the period inbetween that reflects poorly on them. They're not blameless for all this (although most blame goes to Russia and the US liberal foreign policy establishment for fucking with Ukraine). I'm not going to go into detail about each point but they include:
- Violating the terms of both the first and second Minsk agreements.
- Facilitating and arming pro-Ukrainian/anti-Russian militias who would continiously shell Russian communities in the Donbas even during periods of ceasefire (if you're willing to dig through UN Security Council records you can find Russia complaing about this in many, many meetings over many years - this is honestly a major factor than has been completely ignored/forgotten).
- Engaging in a cultural suppression of Russian communities in Ukraine, including the banning of the use of Russian in government, newspapers etc (also a perennial issue).
I have no lost love for Russia but it's been so dishonest how Ukraine over the past few years has been transformed in the media from a corrupt shithole to the bastion of European democracy (despite, you know, Zelenskyy destroying all his political opposition. If it wasn't for American and European interests meddling in Ukraine for the last two decades, this conflict would be indistinguishable from any other regional global conflict (India-Pakistan, Rwanda-Congo etc)
I wanted the woke to be defeated by classical liberals.
We could debate all the fundamental philosophical problems of liberalism (classical or otherwise), but what I think is the more pressing problem with this attitude of simply wanting to return to "90s liberalism" which seems to be espoused by many figures is that they make no effort to explain that even if somehow liberalism defeats woke and we all become good liberals again, how will liberalism not immediately give rise to woke again. Woke, if not liberal itself, arose in the conditions of liberalism. Why wouldn't it do it again? Even if you're a 'classical liberal' rather than a '90s liberal' (social liberal) it's just delaying the problem slightly longer.
Ironically, despite the contemporary right-wing movements often being accused of being reactionary, it's really the anti-woke liberals who are reactionary in the quite literal and plain meaning of the word. They think we can just turn back the clock on political and philosophical development of the last thirty, fourty, fifty years and (re)establish a liberal utopia and the last fifteen years of woke will disappear forever like a bad dream, like it never happened. Remember, this 'SJW' 'woke' thing is just a fad that college kids will grow out of once they enter the real world.
Contemporary right-wing thought doesn't do this. It's decidedly post-liberal, not liberal or pre-liberal. It has, with maybe a few exceptions, fully embraced that liberalism has had its political moment, it has failed and the question is how to address those failures. The dialectic has progessed, one might say. Even the ironically named 'neo-reactionaries' aren't really reactionary in any meaningful sense, other than just borrowing basic, well-worn concepts from eons past. Their politics are still clearly post-liberal. I would even argue 'MAGA' (insofar it is a coherent political movement) is post-liberal, again despite the ironic name.
So my question to all those who just want to 'retvrn' to the liberalism of decades past - how to you plan to address or reform liberalism so it will won't cause woke again? What do you acknowledge are its problems? How would your changes keep the essence of liberalism so despite the changes it could still meaningfully be called liberalism? How would it not just be simply nostalgia for a past that can never be returned to, if it existed at all?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
I think all of the reasona outlined contributed to at least some degree, but for me the one that has the most salience and is the dominant reason is definitely "the Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution".
Every card-carrying male feminist I'm known has been a sex pest. To clarify, by 'card carrying male feminist' I don't mean a general liberal man who says he's a feminist when I asked, I mean the man who will unprompted talk about 'women's issues' and will make sure everyone (especially the women' knows he is a feminist and one of the good ones. And by sex pest, I don't necessarily mean someone who has committed sexual assault (though they also count) but someone who constantly pesters (as the name suggests) women for dates, relationships, sex. Everytime he talks to any new women he's thinking about how he can manipulate get this woman to date him. He will literally ask out every women he meets.
I have known several men during that fit the above description (unfortunately so, as I have a visceral dislike of them).
The reason I think they fit the "seeking absolution" reason is because:
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They seems to intuit that their behaviour is not appropriate on some level
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Feminism as a religion gives them absolution by blaming their bad behaviour on an external force ("the patriarchy") rather than taking personal responsibility, where as most other religious or moral systems would demand more of them in taking personal responsibility. It also allows them to project their bad behaviour on other men to minimise their culpability ("it's not just me, ALL men are like this.")
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Consent being the be-all-end-all for sexual ethics in feminism allows them to rationalise away the worst of their behaviour. They're not being inappropriate, creepy or overstepping boundaries, they're merely "seeking consent". I am reminded of that thread a while back here discussing a reddit thread about a literal virgin teenager asking a girl he studies with to be fuck buddies and being confused about her negative response.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Scalia's dissent in Morrison v. Olson pretty much warns against this, but that's just a blatantly obvious example. The (over)expansion of bureaucracy generally is, by it's nature, mundane and hard to observe.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
That was it, thank you!!!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Trump specifically mentions that Palestinians will be part of the 'international zone', though.
"I envision the world's people living there. You'll make it into an international, unbelievable place. The entire world will be there - Palestinians also - many people will live there. they tried the other for decades and decades, it's not gonna work.
International zones is history have typically been led by a major power, not literally the entire international community. Shanghai by the British and Americans, Tangiers by the French (with support from Britain and Spain) etc.
Sounds like Trump wants to turn Gaza into a kind of international zone of centuries past (maybe post war occupation Japan is a better analogy)? Honestly, not a terrible idea when compared with every other option available. Of course, it can easily go horribly horribly wrong but literally every other idea seems equally likely to be horrible.
shortly after calling for the permanent displacement of the Strip's residents.
I hate hate hate modern journalism. At no point (at least based on the words actually said as reported in article) does Trump actually call for displacement of Palestinians. He is calling for the construction of an international zone in Gaza, which will include the local Palestinians. He is also calling for the creation of something like special economic zones for Gazan migrants in nearby (?) countries, this is honestly super unclear.
Trump is calling for a loss of sovereignity for Gazan and its inhabitants, which is arguably a bad thing (depending on your perspective), but at no point is he straight up calling for displacement. And honestly, Gaza has limited sovereignty anyway, and what sovereignty they do have is largely exerted by a terrorist group.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
But Trump is not in the same position as the average American. He’s overweight or slightly obese, giving him a higher share of the risk for heart disease and stroke.
Sounds like the average American to me. Not actually joking - life expectancy already factors in the fact that most Americans are overweight/obese.
Here's the National Catholic Reporter arguing that Vance is wrong, but only rebutting a strawman.
The National Catholic Reporter is a liberal/progressive "Catholic" publication. They have and do promote political positions completely at odds with Catholic teaching, including defence of abortion and IVF, among many other things. To the point where bishops have called on them to remove Catholic from their name. I wouldn't take them as representative of the faithul Catholic position. It's in their interest to misrepresent Vance. This is the polite way of describing the NCR.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
A fantastic comment I remember reading (I think it was back on Reddit?) was "all marriages are gay marriages now". It was about the increasingly meaningless of legal definition of marriage, or along those lines. If anyone has a link that would be appreciated.
The question is what do those names actually mean to consumers. At least here in Australia, names like 'feta' are fully genericised - they don't have to come from a particular region in Greece. This is true for a lot of names, though the EU has taken great pains to reverse this.
When a consumer goes to buy feta, what exactly are they looking for? If two products are virtually identicial, taste the same, same texture, but one happens to be made in Australia and one in Greece, do most consumers actually care? Do they just want a lower price (I'm sure some foodies will claim there are subtle but irreducible differences).
At what point does a name become genericised to the point of referring to a type of product, rather that than referring to the geographical origin of a product? Danish pastries certainly aren't just made in Denmark.
It is a legitimate criticism to say that a consumer might be looking for feta and not care if it's from either Australia or Greece, but EU geographical indicators hide Australia 'feta' from consumers as a potential option, and this constitutes protectionism.
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