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“It's time for a Trade War” said President Dumb aka Cadet Bone Spurs

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« Reply #50 on: July 08, 2018, 03:38:05 pm »


from The Seattle Times....

Trump's trade policy

Trump's trade policy is a relic of 19th century economic thinking.

By DAVID HORSEY | 4:39PM PDT — Friday, July 07, 2018



PRESIDENT TRUMP's impulse to slap tariffs on every major trading partner is reminiscent of America's trade debates in the 1800's. When William McKinley, a long-time advocate of tariffs, became president in 1896, he quickly realized how counter-productive tariffs could be in an age when products from the United States were beginning to flood world markets. McKinley wisely reversed course. In today's global economy, imposing tariffs and engaging in trade wars is even more self defeating, but Trump forges ahead with his antiquated policies, in the process damaging relations with long-time allies, such as Canada and Europe. Soon, they will also prove damaging to American exporters and workers.

__________________________________________________________________________

• See more of David Horsey's cartoons at The Seattle Times HERE.

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/trumps-trade-policy
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« Reply #51 on: July 12, 2018, 04:15:40 pm »


from The New York Times…

How Rare Earths (What?) Could Be Crucial in a U.S.-China Trade War

Chinese companies dominate important parts of the global supply chain. The Australian C.E.O.
of one alternative source of key minerals says her firm can't fill the gap.


By ALEXANDRA STEVENSON | 6:43PM EDT — Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Testing chemical solutions at Lynas Corporation. The company provides materials known as rare earths, which are used to make personal electronics like smartphones and televisions, and electric and hybrid cars. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.
Testing chemical solutions at Lynas Corporation. The company provides materials known as rare earths, which are used to make personal electronics
like smartphones and televisions, and electric and hybrid cars. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.


KUANTAN, MALAYSIA — Amanda Lacaze grabbed her iPhone and rattled off the names of the special minerals needed to make it. The screen was polished with lanthanum and cerium. The inside has a magnet made with neodymium and praseodymium.

Those minerals almost certainly came from China. Ms. Lacaze's job is to give the world an alternative source, in case a global trade war spirals out of control and China cuts off supply.

Right now, she can't. Her company, Lynas Corporation, can provide only a fraction of the minerals — known as rare earths — that China produces. And even that source isn't a sure thing: The work is so volatile, complex and expensive that Lynas once came close to collapsing.

“There were times where we were sitting there and I'm saying, ‘Can we really afford to put coffee into the staff rooms?’” Ms. Lacaze said.

The Trump administration amped up its trade fight with China on Tuesday when it threatened to impose tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods, ranging from frozen catfish fillets to copper wires to piston engines. China has threatened to match them dollar for dollar.

But it has other ways to retaliate beyond tariffs. It could refuse to buy American products, like planes from Boeing. It could intensify regulation of American companies doing business on the mainland. It could threaten to offload a piece of its huge portfolio of Treasuries, which could rattle the bond market.

And in one of its more strategic weapons, Beijing could use its dominance to cut off key parts of the global supply chain. China is the major supplier of a number of mundane but crucial materials and components needed to keep the world's factories humming. They include obscure materials like arsenic metals, used to make semiconductors; cadmium, found in rechargeable batteries; and tungsten, found in light bulbs and heating elements.

They also include rare earths. A trade war risks putting those minerals in the middle of the conflict, potentially giving China a way to get back at the United States by cutting off supplies to American companies. Already rare earths have become embroiled in the conflict — they were among the long list released on Tuesday of Chinese-made goods that the Trump administration wants to tax.

China has used its control of rare earths to try to get its way before. In 2010, it stopped exports to Japan for two months over a territorial dispute. Speculators hoarded rare earth minerals, sending prices soaring.

“There is a hole in the western supply chain,” said Ryan Castilloux, the founder of Adamas Intelligence, a research firm.

It is hard to go a day without using rare earths. They are found in personal electronics like smartphones, televisions and hair dryers, and electric and hybrid cars.


Amanda Lacaze, Lynas's chief executive, left, Kirsten Smith, senior process manager, and Kam Leung, vice president of production, at the company's plant in Kuantan, Malaysia. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.
Amanda Lacaze, Lynas's chief executive, left, Kirsten Smith, senior process manager, and Kam Leung, vice president of production,
at the company's plant in Kuantan, Malaysia. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.


Rare earths after being baked at 1,000 degrees Celsius. They aren't truly rare — they are made up of 17 elements found together in the ground all over the world — but turning them into useful materials is costly and complicated. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.
Rare earths after being baked at 1,000 degrees Celsius. They aren't truly rare — they are made up of 17 elements found together in the ground
all over the world — but turning them into useful materials is costly and complicated. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.


They aren't actually rare — they are made up of 17 elements found together in the ground all over the world. But turning individual minerals into useful material is complicated, messy and costly, as Lynas well knows.

Rare earth refining is done on a large scale in only two places on earth: China, and Lynas's plant here in Kuantan, Malaysia, a sprawling industrial area on the coast of the South China Sea. The company mines rare earths out of a collapsed volcano in Australia and ships them to Kuantan to be refined.

Building that plant nearly sank Lynas. When Ms. Lacaze was named chief executive in June 2014, the company was struggling with $450 million in debt. Design flaws had delayed full production. It faced criticism from environmentalists.

With the business hemorrhaging cash, Ms. Lacaze slashed costs. She negotiated with impatient lenders, including hedge funds and a Japanese government agency that had backed Lynas because it was unsettled by China's hold over the industry. She reduced rent and overhead by closing the company's Australian headquarters and moved the company, her husband and herself to Lynas's facility in Kuantan.

On a recent visit, Lynas technicians mixed rare earth concentrate, which looks to the untrained eye like unremarkable dirt, into chemical tanks that extract elements like lanthanum and cerium. Through a series of steps that take place in more than a dozen buildings, the resulting pinkish powder was funneled through oversize sieves into boxes on a conveyor belt and baked at 1,000 degrees Celsius.

“It's just like a giant pizza oven,” Ms. Lacaze said.

Next door to the oven, more than 150 bags of neodymium and praseodymium and cerium sat on a warehouse floor to be shipped to customers around the world. These bags are precious goods — each one filled with neodymium and praseodymium is worth around $50,000.

“Just don't hit the bag!” Ms. Lacaze said she likes to tell the forklift operators. “It's like hitting a BMW.”

Ms. Lacaze, 58, was an experienced turnaround specialist who had worked in telecommunications and consumer products in Australia before coming to Lynas. In a drawl that hints at her Brisbane roots, she said she knew well the “glass cliff” phenomenon, in which organizations in crisis are more likely than successful businesses to offer leadership positions to women.

“Women more often get to do jobs like mine, where you clean up other people's mistakes,” said Ms. Lacaze, wearing her signature pink work boots. She is one of fewer than a dozen women running the 200 biggest companies in Australia, where Lynas is publicly listed.

She has looked to elevate women at Lynas, often out of necessity as well as virtue. Unable to expand payroll during the the slump, Ms. Lacaze turned to current employees — often women — who worked in support roles like human resources and finance and shifted them to the factory floor to be operators, technicians and shift supervisors.


Rare earths are refined on a large scale in only two places: at Lynas's plant in Malaysia and in China. China's grip on the market puts the supply chain at risk in a trade war. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.
Rare earths are refined on a large scale in only two places: at Lynas's plant in Malaysia and in China. China's grip on the market puts
the supply chain at risk in a trade war. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.


When Ms. Lacaze took over Lynas in 2014, it was saddled with $450 million in debt. It's now profitable. — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.
When Ms. Lacaze took over Lynas in 2014, it was saddled with $450 million in debt. It's now profitable.
 — Photograph: Rahman Roslan/for The New York Times.


China is her most immediate challenge. Lynas is now profitable, but Ms. Lacaze sees a potential trade war between China and the United States as more of a threat than an opportunity. Beijing could keep rare earths off the market, depriving many American and European manufacturers of the minerals they need.

Lynas couldn't compensate for it all. It accounted for only about 12 percent of world output of rare earths last year, according to Adamas, the research firm. Chinese companies accounted for more than four-fifths.

“If there is a full-blown trade war, I can't believe that the Chinese wouldn't use rare earths as part of that,” Ms. Lacaze says. If China wanted to restrict the supply of rare earths by sticking tariffs on rare earth products or stopping exports outright, “they could do it, literally overnight.”

Under that scenario, companies would look for alternatives to rare earths. Tesla Motors, for example, briefly turned to engines that don't use rare earths after the 2010 price surge. That could hurt Lynas's business.

The Association of China Rare Earth Industry, an industry group controlled by the Chinese government, did not respond to a request for comment.

Even if it doesn't disrupt the supply, China will likely keep its grip over the market for rare earths for a long time to come. It also dominates research and development of these minerals, giving it a leg up on the future, Ms. Lacaze said.

“I think there's about 100 Ph.D.s in rare earths working in applications inside China and working in technology development,” she said. “To my knowledge, do you know how many Ph.D.s there are outside of China?” With the fingers of her right hand, she made a zero.

For other countries, that means depending on China for a long time to come, she said.

“It doesn't scare me,” Ms. Lacaze said, “but it should scare policymakers.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Cao Li contributed research to this article.

• Alexandra Stevenson is a business correspondent for The New York Times based in Hong Kong covering Chinese corporate giants, the changing landscape for multinational companies and China's growing economic and financial influence in Asia. Before moving to Hong Kong, she covered the world of high finance and its darker corners, charting the influence of billionaire financiers in the markets and on the political stage for The N.Y. Times in New York. She was a reporter for the Financial Times in New Delhi and London prior to joining The New York Times in 2013. Originally from Canada, she has also lived in Thailand, Singapore, and China, where she got her start as a reporter.

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on July 12, 2018 of the New York print edition with the headline: “Rare Earths May Tilt a Trade War. Rare Whats?”.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • INTERACTIVE: How Trump's Trade War Went From 18 Products to 10,000

 • New Round of U.S.-China Trade War Rattles Global Markets

 • The Fear of a Toxic Rerun

 • Taking a Risk for Rare Earths

 • China Restarts Rare Earth Shipments to Japan


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/business/china-trade-war-rare-earths-lynas.html
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« Reply #52 on: July 13, 2018, 05:27:35 pm »

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« Reply #53 on: July 14, 2018, 09:09:37 am »


America is going to LOSE the trade war against China.

And....as America becomes increasingly tribal and at war with itself, their economic power will collapse and China will become the economic top-dog in the world.

America will then no longer be able to pay for their expensive military, so China will also become the military top-dog in the world.

Good to see America has a stupid retard for a president who is facilitating this change of power, eh?

Haw haw haw!!!
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« Reply #54 on: September 14, 2018, 04:13:53 pm »


from The Washington Post…

Why China could withstand the trade war far longer than Trump thinks

The president's expectation that financial hardship will prompt Beijing to cave is misplaced, analysts said.

By DAVID J. LYNCH | 8:40PM EDT — Thursday, September 13, 2018

A man monitors stock prices at a brokerage house in Beijing. The Shanghai Composite Index, China's main stocks gauge, is down 23 percent this year, making it the world's worst-performing major exchange. — Photograph: Andy Wong/Associated Press.
A man monitors stock prices at a brokerage house in Beijing. The Shanghai Composite Index, China's main stocks gauge, is down 23 percent this year,
making it the world's worst-performing major exchange. — Photograph: Andy Wong/Associated Press.


PRESIDENT TRUMP insisted on Thursday that he was “under no pressure to make a deal with China,” signaling a readiness to escalate his trade war with Beijing.

“They are under pressure to make a deal with us,” Trump tweeted in reference to China. “Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing.”

The president's statement sought to downplay any hope that the United States would extend a hand toward reconciling the trade conflict, amid word that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had invited Chinese officials to return to talks.

Trump's view that the Chinese are suffering while the U.S. thrives helps explain his confidence that Beijing ultimately will buckle. But the president's expectation that financial hardship will prompt Chinese President Xi Jinping to cave in a fresh round of diplomatic talks is misplaced, analysts said.

“There's a lot of overly wishful thinking on the American side,” said Jeff Moon, a former U.S. trade negotiator. “Every economy has problems. We have trillion-dollar deficits. That doesn't mean either economy is in fundamental danger. It's a massive miscalculation.”

The Shanghai Composite Index, China's main stocks gauge, is down 23 percent this year, making it the world's worst-performing major exchange.

But unlike in the United States, the ups and downs of the Chinese stock market affect relatively few people, meaning sell-offs are unlikely to translate into pressure on Chinese leaders.

Less than 10 percent of China's adult population owns shares, according to Fraser Howie, the Singapore-based author of three books on the Chinese financial system. In the United States, the comparable figure is more than half, according to Gallup.

In addition, Chinese share prices move with little regard for what is happening in the real economy. In 2008, for example, stocks fell by more than 65 percent even as the economy grew by nearly 10 percent.

“It's wrong to think the market fully equals winning the trade war,” Howie said.

Likewise, any wobble in the Chinese economy thus far has been modest. Though China has slowed from the double-digit growth rates it recorded earlier this decade, its economy grew by an annual rate of 6.7 percent in the second quarter.

“To the extent that Trump is looking at that and thinking he has China by the neck, he's wrong,” said economist Andrew Polk, a partner at Trivium, a Beijing-based advisory firm. “China's economy has its own issues. It's slowing down, but it's not about to blow up. Trump has less leverage than he thinks.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a news conference on Thursday that officials had received the White House's invitation for talks and the two sides are working out the details.

“China has always held that an escalation of the trade conflict is not in anyone's interests,” Geng said.

On Friday morning in Beijing, the front page of the state-backed China Daily read: “US offer for trade talks welcomed.”

The president has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, mostly industrial goods, and says he will soon slap levies on an additional $200 billion. American consumers will feel the sting of that move as prices rise for Chinese-made refrigerators, air conditioners, furniture and clothing.

Trump says the tariffs are aimed at compelling China to abandon a host of unfair trade practices, including forcing U.S. companies to surrender their trade secrets in return for access to the Chinese market.

The Chinese government has retaliated with equivalent tariffs, targeting American agricultural products in politically important states ahead of the November congressional elections as well as American multinationals with factories in China.

On Thursday, the largest U.S. business groups in China pleaded with Trump to cease fire. Nearly two-thirds of more than 430 U.S. companies in China say the duties Trump imposed this summer have damaged their businesses, according to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and Shanghai.

Nearly half of the respondents — in retail, food and manufacturing — reported that their production costs have climbed, while 42 percent said sales were down. Just 6 percent, meanwhile, said they would consider moving factories to U.S. soil, an administration goal.

“The U.S. administration runs the risk of a downward spiral of attack and counter-attack, benefiting no one,” said William Zarit, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.

Most of the tariffs that have been imposed have hit U.S. companies, not the Chinese, according to economist Mary Lovely of Syracuse University. She found, for example, that 87 percent of the computer and electronics parts subject to Trump's levies were produced by American companies.

Trade-war uncertainty has contributed to a cloud over Chinese investing. But this year's losses in the casino-like Chinese stock market also are nothing new — the market fell by almost half over a six-month period that ended in early 2016.

Apart from trade worries, there are a number of domestic considerations that have hurt Chinese stocks.

China's market is closely tied to the amount of money available for investing. This year, Chinese officials have tightened credit in a bid to wean the economy from its dependence upon debt-fueled growth. That's meant allowing more Chinese companies to default on their corporate debt, a change from previous years when state-owned banks would have kept them afloat.

The collapse of several peer-to-peer online lending networks also spooked Chinese investors.

The market has been hurt by concerns about Chinese companies' use of their stock as collateral for loans, which leaves share prices vulnerable if they get into financial trouble and are forced to sell. Chinese financial institutions had nearly $220 billion in such loans at the end of July, down about 8 percent from the recent peak in January, according to Bloomberg.

“China's markets have dropped by close to 25 percent,” Trump said at the White House last week. “Their markets have gone down. I don't like to see that. But I can tell you that the United States has picked up about $10 trillion in worth. And China would like to be in our position. They would like to be in our position.”

But the president's repeated crowing about China's financial woes is contributing to a nationalist backlash that may prolong the dispute, with the Chinese concluding that Trump is seeking more than just a level playing field for trade.

“The way we're going about it makes it harder for Chinese leaders to make concessions,” said David Loevinger, a former financial officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. “The U.S. has a one-pronged strategy — keep raising the pain threshold until the other side cries uncle.”

Some of the president's top advisers see the financial market slump as a reflection of broader economic problems in China. “What are these stock markets telling you?” Lawrence Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said on CNBC last week. “China is moving lower in their economy. The U.S. is moving higher. We're the hottest place in the world.”

It is true that the U.S. economy is hitting on all cylinders. The 3.9 percent unemployment rate is approaching half-century lows, while the expansion that began in June 2009 shows no sign of losing steam. Optimism among small-business owners recently hit a 45-year record.

“The Economy is soooo good, perhaps the best in our country's history (remember, it's the economy stupid!),” Trump boasted earlier this week on Twitter.

China's gradual slowing comes as the government is attempting to engineer a shift from growth based on heavy investment in infrastructure and exports to an economy powered by domestic consumption, according to William Overholt, a senior fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center.

Uncertainty arising from Trump trade policies will lead to a global slowdown in growth next year, according to BNP Paribas. The bank's latest forecast, released this week, calls for China's economy to grow at an annual rate of 6.1 percent next year versus 1.8 percent for the United States.

Many analysts point to drops in retail sales and investments as an indication that China's economy is downshifting. But Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he doubts the economy is genuinely slowing. The Chinese government is changing the way it collects and reports key economic data, including retail sales and investments, making it difficult to draw conclusions.

But China imported almost 19 percent more goods in August than it did in the same month last year.

“The underlying demand in the economy is fairly strong,” Lardy said.

The administration’s confidence that China is being hurt also overstates the country’s dependence upon trade, he said.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, China has reduced its dependence upon trade by one-third, according to Lardy.


__________________________________________________________________________

Danielle Paquette in Beijing contributed to this report.

David J. Lynch joined The Washington Post in November 2017 from the Financial Times, where he covered white-collar crime. He was previously the cybersecurity editor at Politico and a senior writer with Bloomberg News, focusing on the intersection of politics and economics. Earlier, he followed the global economy for USA Today, where he was the founding bureau chief in both London and Beijing. He covered the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the latter as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Marines, and was the paper's first recipient of a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. He has reported from more than 60 countries.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • U.S. companies in China are suffering in trade war, survey says

 • Trump confirms new talks in U.S.-China trade war, but makes new threat against Beijing

 • Trump threatens tariffs on $267 billion in Chinese goods, expanding the trade war to all Chinese imports entering the U.S.

 • Canada braves Trump’s threats and insults in hopes of closing NAFTA deal

 • Trump's path to a new NAFTA deal runs through Canada, lawmakers say

 • Businesses beg for tariff relief as trade war with China rolls on

 • Did Trump just announce plans for a trade war?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-china-could-withstand-the-trade-war-far-longer-than-trump-thinks/2018/09/13/a0d9fca2-b77b-11e8-a7b5-adaaa5b2a57f_story.html
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« Reply #55 on: September 15, 2018, 02:02:27 pm »

not really a trade war is it asking for a fair trade deal

anyway china makes fake goods that are rubbish

my wife has a bone spur it is a real thing

look how much people in china get paid in an apple factory 20 cents an hour

they are fucken slaves

they had to put suicide nets around apple factory because its so much fun being a slave there

they murder people and sell their organs what a place

china is worse than the nazi's and killed million of their own people

shove china right up your arse

The reality of human organ harvesting in China
PEOPLE are secretly executed or sedated on a surgeon’s table as their organs are removed one by one.


https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/the-reality-of-human-organ-harvesting-in-china/news-story/14d3aa5751c39d6639a1cc5b39f223b7

fuck china




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« Reply #56 on: September 19, 2018, 01:45:20 pm »


from The Washington Post…

Trump's nasty fight with China's middle class could extend the trade war

Growing anger at what is seen as Trump’s bullying could make compromise over trade harder.

By DANIELLE PAWUETTE | 6:18AM EDT — Monday, September 17, 2018

A man looks at his smartphone as he stands near video display screens showing an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping along a street in Beijing. — Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press.
A man looks at his smartphone as he stands near video display screens showing an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping along a street in Beijing.
 — Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press.


BEIJING — A dock worker from the eastern port city of Ningbo said he wants China to stand unflinchingly against President Trump's demands.

A salesman in Beijing hopes his country will keep punching back in the commercial ring — even if it hurts his wallet.

And a coffee shop owner in the Chinese capital said Trump's tariffs have inspired her to retaliate at the store: She's swapping U.S. products for Chinese brands.

As the trade war between the world's two largest economies unfolds on the international stage, analysts say Trump's brash approach to try to win concessions from Beijing has provoked a public fury that could ultimately thwart his efforts.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's iron grip on power depends on healthy support from the nation's exploding middle class, and now that middle class, angered with Trump's escalating threats, expects China's leader to respond with strength. This could make finding a compromise to end the escalation even more difficult.

The American president tossed more fuel on this fire on Monday when he said that he intends to trigger levies on additional Chinese imports, seemingly voiding an invitation sent days earlier from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to rekindle negotiations.

Hours earlier Monday, Trump tweeted: “If countries will not make fair deals with us, they will be ‘Tariffed!’” he said on Twitter.

The tough tone effectively ties Xi's hands, said James Zimmerman, former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

“Getting the Chinese to the bargaining table should be all about face-saving — not a chest-thumping exercise,” Zimmerman said. “Xi has no choice but to stand firm and stand tall.”

Until the past few days, when Trump stepped up his tweeting about the negotiations with Beijing, public opinion in China appeared in recent months to be leaning in Trump's favor.

Members of the middle class, a force of as many as 400 million people in both blue-collar jobs and professional roles, per government estimates,had been posting criticism of Xi's leadership online, particularly when it came to his dealings with the United States, said Cheng Li, a contemporary China scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The unease came as the country's stock markets plunged nearly 24 percent from January peaks, and the Chinese currency dropped almost 10 percent against the dollar this year amid the trade tensions. Rising rent, debt and grocery store prices also played into citizens' concerns.

Officials have responded to the growing anxiety by blaming Trump and framing Beijing as the adult trying to cool a geopolitical tantrum. China's retaliatory tariffs on $50 billion in U.S. goods this summer, they said, were measured responses forced by Trump's swings.

The message appears to have stuck, Li said.

“The middle class has been critical of the Chinese government, but now that anger is shifting to the United States,” he said. “Chinese media has portrayed Trump as greedy and crazy.”

Trump has threatened to slap duties on practically everything the United States buys from China, a $505 billion order. He wants China to buy more U.S. goods, correcting what he considers an unfair relationship, and to stop stealing intellectual property from American companies.

But to some Chinese, the U.S. president just looks like a bully.

Chen Weiyong, 64, a retired dock worker from coastal Zhejiang province, said he thinks Trump is taunting China by moving the goal posts.

“He says one thing one day and does another the next,” he said.

Chen, who spent decades unloading cargo ships at one of the country's major ports, said he has seen the nation's commercial power up close. That muscle, he said, could survive without the United States. “The chain will not break,” he said, giving Xi's defiance a thumbs up.

Li Yunfei, a 35-year-old salesman in Beijing, said he expects the cost of food to soar as the trade war heats up. He is especially worried about soybean oil, which he uses to cook just about everything.

Still, he would take the financial hit.for his country “The government must fight back,” he said.

Rill Liu, 40, who runs a cafe in Dongsi, a Beijing neighborhood known for a network of traditional alleyways called hutongs, said Xi's actions do not concern her, “an ordinary person.”

China, however, is full of ordinary people who hear the United States' insults.

After Trump started publicly slamming her country, she said she protested with her shopping cart. “Before we used Apple, but now we've changed to Huawei,” she said of the Chinese phone maker. “It makes you emotional like that.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Yang Liu contributed to this report.

Danielle Paquette is a reporter focusing on national labor issues. Before joining The Washington Post in 2014, she covered crime for the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan and on CNN.com. She has also reported stories from Kigali, Rwanda, and Davos, Switzerland.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: How to win a trade war

 • Trump to impose tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods in trade escalation

 • U.S. companies in China are suffering in trade war, survey says

 • Trump threatens tariffs on $267 billion in Chinese goods

 • Businesses beg for tariff relief as trade war with China rolls on


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/trump-started-a-nasty-fight-with-chinas-middle-class-that-could-extend-the-trade-war/2018/09/17/887bb05e-ba43-11e8-b1c5-7a2126bc722c_story.html
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« Reply #57 on: September 19, 2018, 03:21:46 pm »


from The Washington Post…

Trump administration slaps tariffs on roughly $200 billion more
in Chinese goods — a move almost certain to trigger retaliation


The move puts new import taxes on about half of all the goods
Americans buy from China, including common household items.


By DAVID J. LYNCH and DAMIAN PALETTA | 2:45PM EDT — Monday, September 17, 2018

A U.S. flag is seen during a welcoming ceremony in Beijing, China, on November 9, 2017. — Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters.
A U.S. flag is seen during a welcoming ceremony in Beijing, China, on November 9, 2017. — Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters.

PRESIDENT TRUMP threw his biggest punch yet at China, imposing tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese imports and gambling that American consumers are willing to pay more for popular products to wring trade concessions from Beijing.

With Monday's announcement, roughly half of the $505 billion in goods that Americans buy annually from Chinese firms will face new import levies.

Unlike the $50 billion in Chinese products that Trump hit in the first tariff wave, in July — which fell mainly on industrial goods — Monday's action will affect consumer products such as air conditioners, spark plugs, furniture and lamps.

Starting from September 24, American importers will pay an extra 10 percent tariff for the affected items, rising to 25 percent at the end of the year, according to senior administration officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

China has vowed to retaliate against the latest U.S. tariffs with new import taxes on $60 billion in American products. If that happens, the president said he would immediately begin the process of approving tariffs on a further $267 billion in Chinese imports — effectively taxing everything Americans buy from China.

Trump acted — accusing China of posing “a grave threat to the long-term health and prosperity of the United States economy” — even as Chinese officials weighed an invitation to visit Washington for talks aimed at ending the months-old dispute.

“The Trump administration is yet again sending a perplexing mixed message by inviting Chinese officials for negotiations and then imposing additional tariffs in the run-up to the talks,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the International Monetary Fund's China division. “It is difficult to see what the administration's vision of an end game might be other than total capitulation by China to all U.S. demands.”

Trump said the tariffs are designed to force China to change a range of unfair trade practices, including compelling American companies to surrender their technology in return for access to the Chinese market.

“For months, we have urged China to change these unfair practices, and give fair and reciprocal treatment to American companies,” the president said. “We have been very clear about the type of changes that need to be made, and we have given China every opportunity to treat us more fairly. But, so far, China has been unwilling to change its practices.”

Trump has described the tariffs as leverage in negotiating Chinese policy changes with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But several preliminary rounds of talks have yielded no agreement and Trump has said he was in no hurry to settle the dispute.

“We stand ready to negotiate with China any time if they are willing to move towards serious talks to remedy trade problems,” White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in New York on Monday.

He said China had to agree to some of the White House's demands for any progress to be made.

“He has not been satisfied with the talks with China on this,” Kudlow said of Trump.

In deciding to proceed with additional tariffs, the president ignored pleas from hundreds of U.S. companies that appeared at public hearings last month to oppose the new levies. Executives complained that the tariffs would make their products more expensive, costing them sales.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office received roughly 6,000 written comments when Trump first proposed the new tariffs, most opposing them.

Initial reaction from the business community on Monday was unfavorable.

“Let's face it, nobody on either side has any idea how long this tariff war will last or where it will end up,” said Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council. “Setting aside whether this would be a successful negotiating tactic by the president, which only time will tell, the rapid escalation of tariffs and increasing uncertainty will cause significant short-term harm to both businesses and consumers.”

Jim O'Sullivan, chief economist for High-Frequency Economics, said financial markets will probably adopt a “could have been worse” reaction to the latest tariffs.

At the White House, Trump wrongly said that “China is now paying us billions of dollars in tariffs” and he celebrated the Treasury Department collecting “tremendous amounts of money, which is great for our country.”

In fact, tariffs are taxes that are paid by Americans who import goods from abroad. Through the end of August, the administration had collected nearly $22 billion in revenue because of its new tariffs, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation.

Officials agreed to exclude roughly 300 product categories from the final product list, including bluetooth electronics, car seats for children, and some chemicals. Apple won waivers for several of its popular consumer products including the Apple Watch.

The president has long been fiercely critical of China, accusing it during the 2016 campaign of “the rape” of the American economy and vowing to create a more balanced trade pattern. Yet despite months of tariff talk, the gap between what the United States buys from China and what it sells there continues to widen.

Through July, the United States ran a $233.5 billion trade deficit in goods trade with China, an 8 percent increase compared with the same period in 2017.

The tariff duel is causing companies that rely on Chinese factories to rethink their business relationships, said Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council. “These supply chains are incredibly complex and the disruption will be inflationary,” he said. “There's no way around it.”

So far, however, the U.S. economy has shrugged off the president's trade war. Although individual companies have complained about their operations being disrupted by material shortages or cost increases, growth remains strong and unemployment is approaching a half-century low.

Excluding fuel, import prices rose just 1.3 percent over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But uncertainty over trade policy remains unusually high. The United States is trying to negotiate a new North American trade deal even as it threatens to impose national security tariffs on imported automobiles, especially those from Europe.

The president on Monday said he will soon reach new deals with U.S. trading partners that will reverse the offshoring trend of the past generation. “What's going to happen is businesses will start moving back into the United States, which to me is — that's the dream,” Trump said. “The businesses are going to pour back into the United States. That's jobs, that's a lot of other things; that's a lot of taxes coming to us. And product will start being made here again.”

Trump's showdown with China also could intensify. The president has threatened to expand his tariffs to cover all Chinese imports, an escalation that many economists say would be costly.

“Attempts to help those hurt by globalization via higher tariffs or other forms of protectionism, even if well meaning, will raise prices and hurt all consumers, especially poor and middle-class families,” said economist Satyam Panday of S & P Global Ratings. “Not to mention damage the competitiveness of companies that import raw materials and components from other countries and folks who work in export industries.”

China no longer can match U.S. tariffs on a dollar-for-dollar basis, since it imports only $135 billion of American products. But Chinese officials have other ways of making the United States hurt, including by harassing American multinationals with tax audits and customs inspections or mobilizing consumer boycotts against them.

Business groups are pinning their hopes for defusing the standoff on talk that Trump and Xi could meet this fall on the sidelines of an international gathering such as the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires in November.

A decision to back away from confrontation with China could only be made by one man. “China trade is now a presidential level, political issue. It was not under Obama. And it was not under Bush,” said Derek Scissors, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “Now everything is subject to the president deciding.”


__________________________________________________________________________

David J. Lynch joined The Washington Post in November 2017 from the Financial Times, where he covered white-collar crime. He was previously the cybersecurity editor at Politico and a senior writer with Bloomberg News, focusing on the intersection of politics and economics. Earlier, he followed the global economy for USA Today, where he was the founding bureau chief in both London and Beijing. He covered the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the latter as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Marines, and was the paper's first recipient of a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. He has reported from more than 60 countries.

Damian Paletta is White House economic policy reporter for The Washington Post. Before joining The Post, he covered the White House for The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-administration-slaps-tariffs-on-roughly-200-billion-more-in-chinese-goods--a-move-almost-certain-to-trigger-retaliation/2018/09/17/15ded2f0-b215-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html
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« Reply #58 on: September 19, 2018, 03:42:14 pm »


from The Washington Post…

China says it will immediately retaliate when Trump tariffs take effect

Beijing has warned it will impose tariffs on $60 billion in American goods.

By DANIELLE PAQUETTE | 10:17AM EDT — Tuesday, September 18, 2018

A container truck moves past containers at the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai, China, on April 24, 2018. — Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters.
A container truck moves past containers at the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai, China, on April 24, 2018. — Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters.

BEIJING — Beijing struck back on Tuesday against President Trump's new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports, vowing it would immediately retaliate when they take effect and threatening a protracted dispute that could raise the prices of household goods in both countries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has refused to budge amid mounting threats from Trump, who vowed to place higher border taxes on practically everything the United States buys from China if Beijing unveils new duties, effective from Monday at noon.

“In order to safeguard our legitimate rights and interests and the global free trade order, China will have to take countermeasures,” the country's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. “We deeply regret this.”

The Chinese government will impose tariffs of up to 10 percent on an additional $60 billion in American goods following Trump's escalation, slapping higher border taxes on nearly all U.S. exports to China.

Officials also signaled that they would add a complaint about the latest U.S. action to more than a dozen China has already lodged with the World Trade Organization.

Trump accused China in a pair of tweets on Tuesday of targeting American workers in the heartland, wrongly saying the country had “openly stated” it was aiming to sway U.S. elections. (Beijing's earlier round of tariffs, launched in July, hit U.S. soybeans and pork, among other goods.)

“China has openly stated that they are actively trying to impact and change our election by attacking our farmers, ranchers and industrial workers because of their loyalty to me,” Trump wrote.

“There will be great and fast economic retaliation against China if our farmers, ranchers and/or industrial workers are targeted!” he added.

Analysts said Xi's defiance reflects his desire to present China to the world as a superpower.

“China needs to show that it will stand up to Trump and the United States in order to demonstrate to the rest of the world that it is now America's rival,” said Shaun Rein, managing director at the China Market Research Group in Shanghai.

Trump's latest measures inject uncertainty into the status of the trade talks, Chinese officials said, suggesting the commercial battle between the world's two largest economies could drag on indefinitely.

Beijing said it hopes the American president will “correct” his actions before the Monday deadline, urging the White House to consider the far-reaching consequences. Economists say the cost of consumer products such as air conditioners, furniture, lamps and handbags will rise, since many American manufacturers assemble goods on Chinese soil.

But Trump has pledged to punch back if Beijing retaliates, this time on $267 billion in Chinese products.

China purchased roughly $130 billion in American goods last year — less than a third of what the United States ordered from Chinese enterprises. Now Beijing is poised to impose higher border taxes on a total of $110 billion in U.S. products.

China's Foreign Ministry said it will respond to Trump's latest round of tariffs with duties on more than 5,200 types of American imports, including industrial parts, chemicals and medical instruments.

Chen Dingding, founder of the think tank Intellisia in Guangzhou, said China will continue to welcome negotiations.

“We will fight and talk at the same time,” he said.

China's vice premier, Liu He, was expected to visit Washington next week to restart negotiations with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, but analysts say the $200 billion development likely knocked that meeting off the table.

Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of China's securities regulator, said at a forum in Tianjin on Tuesday that Trump's tactics have “poisoned” the deal-making atmosphere.

Trump's announcement landed in China on September 18, a day considered the start of Japanese aggression 87 years ago and an anniversary some Chinese see as an informal day of national humiliation.

Beijing has said it would also unleash “qualitative” measures against the United States, which some American firms have interpreted as heightened regulations and stalled visas.

The threat of more tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. products — and Trump's pledge to target an additional $267 billion in Chinese goods if that retaliation materializes — have worried the American business community in China.

“Contrary to views in Washington, China can — and will — dig its heels in, and we are not optimistic about the prospect for a resolution in the short term,” William Zarit, chairman of the American U.S. Chamber of Commerce in China, said in a statement on Tuesday.

China has maintained that it is well positioned to withstand blows in a geopolitical tussle, even as the nation's growth is projected to slow this year.

The country's central bank, meanwhile, has allowed its currency to slide about 5 percent since January, giving Chinese exports an edge in overseas markets while making imports costlier. (On Tuesday, it cost 6.88 renminbi to buy a dollar.)

Analysts say the People's Bank of China probably will not greenlight much more tumbling, since a fading renminbi (RMB) could spook more assets out of the country.

“The weakening of the RMB could help offset the new tariffs,” said Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Commodities and Global Markets, a consultancy in Hong Kong. “However, it will also hurt China itself.”

Other signs of weakness in China's economy as the trade war escalates include cooling consumer spending, slowing infrastructure investment and a relatively low but growing rate of corporate bond defaults.

The Shanghai Composite Index, meanwhile, has plummeted more than 20 percent since the year's start, with losses snowballing after Trump launched the trade war.

Some analysts have predicted that the business uncertainty will prompt layoffs in China, which has a tight labor market, with unemployment at 3.8 percent.

But demand for Chinese products on American soil has jumped amid rising tensions: The latest census data, released on Wednesday, showed the U.S. goods deficit with China this year has grown about 8 percent to $234 billion from the same time last year.

Deutsche Bank economists Zhiwei Zhang and Yi Xiong estimated in a September analysis that an escalated trade war would shave only a half percentage point off the country's growth. Goods to the United States, they noted, accounted last year for just 12 percent of China's total exports.

“The Chinese authorities likely feel no urgency to give in and agree with all the terms the U.S. side requested,” Zhiwei and Yi wrote.

Tim Stratford, former assistant U.S. trade representative and managing partner of the global law firm Covington's Beijing office, predicted at a World Economic Forum panel in Tianjin on Tuesday the fight would see no winner soon.

“They're concerned the U.S. motivation is wanting to keep China down,” Stratford said. “I expect therefore we're going to have a deadlock for quite some time.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Luna Lin and Yang Liu contributed to this report.

Danielle Paquette is a reporter focusing on national labor issues. Before joining The Washington Post in 2014, she covered crime for the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan and on CNN.com. She has also reported stories from Kigali, Rwanda, and Davos, Switzerland.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Trump praises his tarrifs' ‘tremendous impact on China’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-could-soon-target-practically-all-us-imports-as-it-retaliates-in-trade-war/2018/09/18/7a12708a-bac9-11e8-adb8-01125416c102_story.html
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« Reply #59 on: September 19, 2018, 06:01:27 pm »


from The Washington Post…

New U.S.-China tariffs raise fears of an economic Cold War

The trade dispute could be leading to a commercial divorce and the uncoupling of a 40-year relationship.

By DAVID J. LYNCH and DANIELLE PAQUETTE | 7:32PM EDT — Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Delivery workers pull carts loaded with boxes of goods for their customers outside an office building in Beijing. By next week, the United States and China appear likely to be on the brink of slapping tariffs on their entire goods trade, which exceeds $635 billion annually. — Photograph: Andy Wong/Associated Press.
Delivery workers pull carts loaded with boxes of goods for their customers outside an office building in Beijing. By next week, the United States and China appear
likely to be on the brink of slapping tariffs on their entire goods trade, which exceeds $635 billion annually. — Photograph: Andy Wong/Associated Press.


CHINA said on Tuesday it would retaliate for President Trump's latest tariff salvo, risking further U.S. trade actions that could result in what some analysts are calling an economic Cold War.

By next week, the United States and China appear likely to be on the brink of slapping tariffs on their entire goods trade, which exceeds $635 billion annually.

Chinese officials in Beijing said they would meet the 10 percent tariffs that Trump announced on Monday on nearly $200 billion in imports with similar measures on $60 billion in U.S. products. If that occurs, Trump has said he will “immediately” begin the process of applying tariffs to all Chinese items entering the United States.

The showdown comes as Chinese officials were preparing to travel to Washington for new talks aimed at resolving the months-old trade dispute. Negotiations earlier this year failed to make much progress and it remains unclear whether Chinese officials will resume bargaining in the wake of the president's latest escalation.

As hopes dim for an early end to the conflict, the likelihood grows that the two countries are moving toward some sort of commercial divorce. Some analysts anticipate an economic partition reminiscent of the globe-splitting divide between the United States and the Soviet Union following World War II.

“We're probably talking about a world with two centers: a China-centered economic domain … and another centered on the United States,” said Aaron Friedberg, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, who handled China policy as an aide to Vice President Richard B. Cheney in the George W. Bush administration. “It's heading toward a bifurcated global economy.”

Such a fundamental reshaping of the U.S.-China commercial relationship after nearly four decades of growing interdependence would ripple through the global economy, shaking financial markets, reordering business supply chains and perhaps even raising the danger of military conflict, analysts said.

The two countries' annual goods trade, which has almost doubled since 2006, is roughly equal to the output of Argentina, which is widely considered to have the world's 21st-largest economy.

For now, a genuine breakdown in the U.S.-China relationship, affecting roughly 40 percent of the global economy, remains a long-term prospect. The immediate prospect is for the trade dispute to percolate for the remainder of this year, gradually ratcheting up the economic pain in both countries.

Trump says the tariffs are needed to compel China to abandon a host of unfair trade practices, including making American companies surrender their trade secrets in return for access to the Chinese market and subsidizing state firms in advanced-technology industries.

“The purpose of the tariffs is to modify China's behavior,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on CNBC. “The real purpose is not to end up with tariffs. The real purpose is to end up with a level playing field so that American firms can compete properly.”

The newest tariffs will hit consumer goods such as appliances and auto parts, but Ross insisted the impact would be so slight that “nobody's going to actually notice it at the end of the day.”

That's unlikely to be true in every case. The 25 percent tariffs that Trump imposed on imported washing machines in January quickly translated into sticker shock for shoppers. Over the past year, retail prices rose 13.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the short run, the president's newest tariffs will be weaker than his earlier trade actions, as a strong dollar allows Americans to overlook any modest price increase on Chinese goods.

The president announced on Monday that he will hit up to $200 billion in Chinese goods — itemized on a 194-page list — with a 10 percent tariff starting from September 24. That's a smaller tax than the 25 percent levy he applied to $50 billion of imports from China in July, as well as the foreign steel and aluminum shipments that he began taxing in March.

Changes in the value of the U.S. dollar and China's currency over the course of this year are certain to sap some of the new tariffs' power. Since early February, the dollar has gained more than 6 percent against the Chinese yuan, a move that could erode more than half of the new tariffs' impact.

“This shows you how complex it is to narrow the trade deficit,” said Torsten Slok, chief international economist for Deutsche Bank Securities. “Tariffs are a small part of the picture. There are many other moving parts and the rising dollar is offsetting some of the effects.”

The drop in China's currency likewise will exaggerate the effect of China's retaliatory tariffs, making goods imported from the United States even more expensive for Chinese customers.

“American exporters now face a double whammy in terms of their competitiveness in the Chinese markets due to China's retaliatory tariffs and the strengthening of the dollar,” said economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University, who formerly was the head of the International Monetary Fund's China division.

Under Trump's plan, the tariff pain on the $200 billion batch of Chinese goods will grow on January 1, 2019, rising to 25 percent from the original 10 percent. If there remains little sign of diplomatic progress by that point, more companies may switch their orders from Chinese suppliers to factories in countries such as Vietnam or India, executives said.

“We have not yet seen any significant shift in the customer supply chains. However, if the situation continues for any amount of time, we do expect customers to diversify their supply chains and perhaps some of the trade patterns might change,” Rajesh Subramaniam, executive vice president of FedEx, told investors last week.

As the president pursues his uncompromising approach to China, business leaders are growing increasingly frustrated. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation were among those blasting the administration's use of tariffs as costly and counterproductive.

“We are disappointed that the administration seems to continue to misunderstand the complexities and reality of global trade,” said Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. “There are many legitimate trade concerns U.S. companies have in the global marketplace, but tariffs are unwieldy and often counterproductive to address those problems.”

China's Foreign Ministry said it will respond to Trump's latest round of tariffs with duties on more than 5,200 types of American imports, including industrial parts, chemicals and medical instruments.

Trump has promised to respond to Chinese retaliation with further tariffs on the remainder of Chinese imports — which he has variously characterized as $267 billion or $257 billion worth of products. Goldman Sachs published a research note on Tuesday saying that announcement could come within “the next couple of weeks” with imposition sometime early next year.

“If he does that, we're just headed inevitably for an economic Cold War with China,” said economist Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Down this path, we will see a limitation of all economic contact.”

The administration also has taken steps to discourage Chinese investment in the United States. Congress this year passed legislation, with the backing of the White House, to scrutinize more closely a wider array of potential Chinese acquisitions of American technology companies.

“People are very focused on tariffs. But that's just one element,” said Michael Hirson, director for Asia at the Eurasia Group. “The non-tariff measures are equally important and may be a longer lasting legacy.”

Some administration hard-liners would be content to see the trade and investment restrictions lead to a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies, Hirson said.

That could be costly, according to Caroline Freund, director of macro trade and investment at the World Bank.

If 25 percent tariffs were applied to all U.S.-China trade, and investors withdrew, the U.S. economy would be 1.6 percent — or $320 billion — smaller than under normal trading circumstances while China would lose 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product, according to a presentation Freund gave on Monday at the Peterson Institute.

At the White House on Tuesday, Trump said that while he might make a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping “at some point,” his focus for now remains on tariffs.

“We are always open to talking. But we have to do something,” the president said. “We have a tremendous trade imbalance with China, tremendous trade deficit. And the way I look at it: Last year, we lost over $500 billion to China. We can't do that. I don't want to do that. And that's been going on for many years. Other presidents should have taken care of this situation, and they didn't. But I'm going to.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Danielle Paquette reported from Beijing. Luna Lin and Yang Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.

David J. Lynch joined The Washington Post in November 2017 from the Financial Times, where he covered white-collar crime. He was previously the cybersecurity editor at Politico and a senior writer with Bloomberg News, focusing on the intersection of politics and economics. Earlier, he followed the global economy for USA Today, where he was the founding bureau chief in both London and Beijing. He covered the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the latter as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Marines, and was the paper's first recipient of a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. He has reported from more than 60 countries.

Danielle Paquette is a reporter focusing on national labor issues. Before joining The Washington Post in 2014, she covered crime for the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan and on CNN.com. She has also reported stories from Kigali, Rwanda, and Davos, Switzerland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-round-of-us-china-tariffs-raise-fears-of-an-economic-cold-war/2018/09/18/749ec99a-bb74-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html
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« Reply #60 on: September 22, 2018, 06:59:03 pm »


EXCELLENT NEWS: China tells Trump to “go fuck yourself!!”



from The Washington Post…

China cancels trade talks with U.S. as new Trump tariffs loom

Chinese officials, who reportedly were preparing to send a high-ranking official and a delegation
to Washington D.C., canceled the planned negotiations after President Trump announced he
would impose new levies on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, effective from Monday.


By DANIELLE PAQUETTE | 2:05AM EDT — Saturday, September 22, 2018

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and President Donald J. Trump attend a welcome ceremony in Beijing on November 9, 2017. — Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and President Donald J. Trump attend a welcome ceremony in Beijing on November 9, 2017.
 — Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.


CHINA has scrapped trade talks with the United States days before President Trump is set to escalate the commercial battle with a new round of tariffs, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Chinese officials canceled the planned negotiations after Trump announced he would impose new levies of up to 10 percent on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, effective from Monday. Beijing vowed to strike back, slapping duties of up to 10 percent on an additional $60 billion in American products.

China's Ministry of Commerce did not immediately respond on Saturday.

Beijing had prepared to send Vice Premier Liu He, the country's top-ranking economic official, to Washington next week, along with a mid-level delegation to prepare for his visit, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had been expected to oversee the talks, which were called in hopes of easing tensions between the world's two largest economies, U.S. officials have said.

The effort crumbled a week after Trump tweeted the White House felt “no pressure” to resolve the dispute with China. He has accused the country of stealing intellectual property from American businesses, among other trade infractions.

“We are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us,” he wrote, adding: “If we meet, we meet?”

Analysts said the news reflects the breakdown in the international relationship.

“This is brinkmanship that benefits no one and a reflection that four decades of constructive U.S.-China relations are spiraling out of control,” said James Zimmerman, partner in the Beijing office of the international firm Perkins Coie LLP and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

U.S. industry groups in China urged Trump on Saturday to restart negotiations, asserting that fraying ties between the countries is bad for global business.

“We encourage both sides to resume a results-oriented dialogue in earnest,” said Jake Parker, vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council, which represents about 200 firms, including PepsiCo, Apple and General Motors.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has refused to bend to the White House's demands amid escalating threats from Trump, who pledged to place tariffs on virtually everything the United States buys from China if Beijing responds with the new duties.

Xi faces public pressure to stand undaunted by Trump's financial swings at his country, analysts say, as he seeks to prove that China, too, is a superpower on the international stage.

Beijing's next round of tariffs, slated to take effect on Monday at noon, target more than 5,200 kinds of American imports, including industrial parts, chemicals and medical instruments.

“In order to safeguard our legitimate rights and interests and the global free trade order, China will have to take countermeasures,” the country's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Tuesday. “We deeply regret this.”

Trump's latest levies bring more uncertainty into the status of negotiations, Chinese officials said at the time, suggesting the economic conflict could drag on indefinitely.

By next week, the United States and China could be poised to impose tariffs on their entire exchange of goods, which surpasses $635 billion annually. An all-out trade war would trigger job losses in both countries, economists say, as well as a spike in the cost of household goods, including bedding, furniture, toys, razors and toaster ovens.

Trump's next opportunity to meet with Xi is in November at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina. Both leaders are expected to attend the multilateral conference.


__________________________________________________________________________

Danielle Paquette is a reporter focusing on national labor issues. Before joining The Washington Post in 2014, she covered crime for the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan and on CNN.com. She has also reported stories from Kigali, Rwanda, and Davos, Switzerland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-cancels-trade-talks-with-us-as-new-trump-tariffs-loom/2018/09/21/c36138ac-be16-11e8-97f6-0cbdd4d9270e_story.html
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« Reply #61 on: September 28, 2018, 12:53:03 am »



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« Reply #62 on: September 28, 2018, 08:25:17 pm »

thanks for the picture of you and your mother
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« Reply #63 on: October 07, 2018, 06:16:02 pm »


from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times…

The trade war and its costs

The longer the U.S.-China feud, the more unpredictable its outcome.

By ROBYN DIXON | Saturday, October 06, 2018

Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald J. Trump at their summit in Beijing last November. The U.S.-China relationship since then has deteriorated quickly and significantly. — Photograph: Kyodo.
Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald J. Trump at their summit in Beijing last November. The U.S.-China relationship since then has deteriorated quickly
and significantly. — Photograph: Kyodo.


BEIJING — President Trump and his supporters say he is winning his trade war with Beijing. Just look at the Chinese economy. The nation is dealing with a mountain of debt, and its growth and investment are slowing. But are Trump's trade policies responsible? And if Trump keeps on pushing, can he win? And if so, at what cost?

What is Trump's real objective?

No one is quite sure how far Trump plans to go in pressuring China with hefty trade tariffs. One analysis late last month by the Australia-based ANZ Bank predicted the warfare will last until 2020 because the two sides are so far apart. Washington accuses China of stealing American intellectual property and demands it open its economy up more to foreign competition. China contends that it is playing by World Trade Organization rules.

Some analysts think the real U.S. objective is a gradual “decoupling” of the world's two biggest economies, hitherto deeply entwined and interdependent. The U.S. government has blocked investments by several prominent Chinese companies — particularly in the telecommunications and high-tech fields — as threats to American security, and Chinese investment in the U.S. economy has plummeted. Meanwhile, some U.S. companies are planning to move operations out of China if the trade war drags on.

“There is no doubt that U.S.-China relations have flipped, from some kind of hedged, competitive engagement, to all-out competition on numerous fronts,” said analyst Richard McGregor of the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, who is currently in Washington. “It's not just about trade. It's geopolitical, military, diplomatic and economic, which is why there's no real endpoint in sight.

“Both sides want to untangle parts of their economic relationship on national security grounds, to ensure that they don't rely on each other in any pivotal areas. Business and trade used to provide some ballast to the geopolitical competition. Now, business is just another battleground.”

One interpretation popular in China is that the economic conflict is all about “containing” its rise as a high-tech global leader. The longer the warfare continues, the more uncertain its outcome, as both sides ratchet up pressure in ways designed to antagonize.


Is Trump's trade war putting the Chinese economy under so much pressure that it is slowing down?

China's economy is slowing and may slow down further, analysts warn. But it has nothing to do, they say, with Trump or the trade war. Instead, it is related to Chinese government policies since 2016 to bring the country's mountain of debt under control.

For years, Chinese growth was fueled by credit, some of it issued by murky institutions known as “shadow banks” because they operated outside the formal banking sector, making it difficult for the government to control. Between 2008 and 2017, China's credit grew faster than that of any other economy in history: by $29 trillion, compared with gross domestic product growth of $7 trillion.

It seemed the normal rules of boom and bust did not apply. But others say those days are ending.

Chinese GDP growth eased from 6.8% in the first quarter to 6.7% in the second, and it is expected to slow further in coming months. Spending on infrastructure was 6% in the first half, compared with 8.6% the previous year.

“China is no longer insulated from a slowdown in its economic growth by virtue of its extraordinary savings rate. Similarly it is not U.S. trade pressure that is bringing about this reckoning in its economic outlook. That's very important because it means that China must change its course regardless of whether what we do here in Washington is naughty or nice,” said China economic analyst Daniel Rosen, launching a report he co-wrote, “Credit and Credibility: Risks to China's Economic Resilience”, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Wednesday.

China has been moving to reduce bad loans by banks and off-budget loans by local governments, leading to an economic slowdown as credit tightens. Those moves are complicated by the trade war, which further threatens growth and puts the Chinese economy under additional pressure.


Do China's economic problems mean that Trump can win the trade war? And what are the dangers of pressing on?

Trump seems so confident of victory that there is little likelihood he will ease up the pressure. He told reporters on Monday that China badly wanted new trade talks, but that “it's too early to talk … because they're not ready.”

But the problem with trade wars that drag on is that they have a way of souring entire relationships. This week's near collision between the U.S. destroyer Decatur and a Chinese warship in the South China Sea showed the potential for a serious military clash. The vessels came within 50 yards of each other. The United States accused the Chinese ship of “unsafe and unprofessional” conduct, and China warned the U.S. to cease “provocative” action.

There are other frictions: American sanctions on a Chinese military agency and U.S. sales of military equipment to Taiwan have angered China. Trump has also accused China of interfering in the U.S. mid-term election. And after the recent arrest of a Chinese student suspected of spying, the Trump administration announced moves to limit visas to Chinese students in high-tech fields.

Vice President Mike Pence delivered a broad-ranging attack on China on Thursday, just days before Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo is due for talks in China. The relationship has deteriorated so much, so fast in recent weeks that it is beginning to feel as if something has broken.

“Both China and the U.S. — and their leaders — currently seem committed to economic and security policies that will increase the tension between them, heighten the cost and scale of their de facto arms race, and at least marginally increase the risk of incidents, clashes, or more serious conflict,” military analyst Anthony Cordesman, former director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, wrote in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He compared the U.S.-China competition to the arms race pursued by Britain and Germany before World War I, setting the stage for last century's two most devastating wars.

“Each is pursuing policies that are broadening the range of technologies and forces it can use against the other. Each is adjusting its strategic posture to put more emphasis on containment and conflict. Each is effectively attempting to ‘win’ the future at the other's expense,” he wrote.

As relations worsen, he continued, “it is becoming steadily harder to distinguish between efforts designed to limit or contain the other state and those that might lead to actual conflict.”


__________________________________________________________________________

• Robyn Dixon is a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. She has reported from China, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. Dixon spent 10 years in Moscow, traveling extensively to Ukraine, Georgia and Tajikistan and across Russia. She started as a cub reporter in her home city of Melbourne, Australia. After doing every conceivable job, including writing a daily TV column and covering national politics in Canberra, she went to Moscow for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, sister papers of the Fairfax group in Australia. In 1999, Dixon moved to the L.A. Times'  Moscow bureau. She became the Johannesburg bureau chief in 2003.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=9d9f670d-b667-4bce-9b30-5f15f98369db
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« Reply #64 on: December 23, 2018, 11:05:53 am »



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« Reply #65 on: December 23, 2018, 11:46:44 am »

you have a bone spur in your peabrain
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« Reply #66 on: December 23, 2018, 02:53:14 pm »


You've been listening to that lunatic Alex Jones for too long.

He has “FUCKED” your brain.

No wonder you think that god delusion inside your mind is a real god.

If I lived in Woodville, I would stand outside your house every day pointing in your direction and rolling around the ground pissing myself laughing.
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« Reply #67 on: February 19, 2019, 04:28:11 pm »


from The Seattle Times…

A new meaning to ‘crushing it’ with trade war

Trade war with China is creating casualties in our state and across the U.S.

By DAVID HORSEY | 11:47AM PST — Friday, February 15, 2019



THE TARIFFS that the Trump administration has imposed on China and Beijing's retaliatory sanctions against American goods have done serious damage to American farmers, exporters and consumers, and nowhere has the negative impact been felt more than in Washington's heavily trade-dependent economy.

__________________________________________________________________________

• See more of David Horsey's cartoons at The Seattle Times HERE.

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/a-new-meaning-to-crushing-it-with-trade-war
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« Reply #68 on: February 20, 2019, 04:42:26 pm »

and I thought Trump was working to make better deals
instead of getting ripped off by China who steals America's stuff

China is an evil empire of slaves
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« Reply #69 on: May 07, 2019, 08:42:25 pm »



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« Reply #70 on: May 17, 2019, 06:38:48 pm »



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« Reply #71 on: May 17, 2019, 10:09:47 pm »



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« Reply #72 on: May 18, 2019, 03:11:57 pm »



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« Reply #73 on: May 20, 2019, 05:27:54 pm »


from The Washington Post…

As Trump escalates China trade dispute, economic ties
lose stabilizing force in matters of national security


Tensions could extend beyond the trade sphere and impact
other areas of contention between Washington and Beijing.


By PAUL SONNE | 2:59PM EDT — Sunday, May 19, 2019

From left, U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He line up for a photo before the opening session of trade negotiations in Beijing in February 2019. — Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/European Pressphoto Agency/Agencia-EFE/Shutterstock.
From left, U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He line up for a photo before the
opening session of trade negotiations in Beijing in February 2019. — Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/European Pressphoto Agency/Agencia-EFE/Shutterstock.


THE United States for years relied on economic interdependence with China as a stabilizing force in relations with Beijing, with business between the two nations forming what former treasury secretary Hank Paulson used to call the “ballast” in U.S.-China affairs.

But as President Trump escalates his trade dispute with Chinese President Xi Jinping, there is a realization that those days are gone. The result is a reduced incentive for stability and restraint in Washington when it comes to China, raising the possibility that tensions could extend beyond the trade sphere and impact other areas of contention, including Taiwan or the South China Sea.

“The way a lot of people have been talking about this is that you have lost, or you're losing, the ballast,” said Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former official in the George W. Bush administration. “The challenge now is that there is not much of a constituency that wants to protect the relationship amidst trade tensions, security concerns and human rights concerns.”

The U.S. military is expressing growing alarm about China's defense buildup. Human rights advocates are crying foul over China's use of surveillance technology and internal re-education camps for Muslims. And some American business executives, who once prized China and advocated for a more conciliatory stance toward Beijing, say they feel stung by what they see as unfair practices, ranging from intellectual-property theft to rules that require partnerships with local Chinese entities.

Underpinning the growing strain is a sense among many Americans, harnessed by Trump during the 2016 presidential election, that China is not playing fair, and the time has come for Washington to shift the balance. While Trump has focused on trade, raising the stakes in recent days by applying 25 percent tariffs to billions of dollars in Chinese goods, his administration's tougher line has extended to national security, too. The Pentagon's defense strategy calls for “great power competition” that aims to prevent China from achieving any substantive military advantage.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration added the Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei to the U.S. Commerce Department's “entity list”, making it difficult for the Chinese firm to do business with any American company. The Commerce Department said Huawei “is engaged in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interest.” The dispute over Huawei demonstrated the confluence of Washington's economic and national security concerns.

“Putting these in two completely separate boxes — and saying we have to maintain close economic ties even as we compete in the national security realm — I don't think that's possible anymore,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I don't think that we have the strong support from the business community that used to exist for this relationship. To me, the playing field has changed so fundamentally.”

Still, the United States and China have developed a complex and robust economic relationship that dates to the normalization of diplomatic ties four decades ago. Today, the United States imports more than half a trillion dollars in Chinese goods per year, underscoring the extent to which both nations have hitched their economic futures to each other and melded their supply chains in the decades since the diplomatic breakthrough of 1979.

That reality raises a broader question about the Trump administration's approach to the world's second-biggest economy: How can the United States execute full-fledged “great power competition” with China, the likes of which Washington has not seen since the Cold War, when the nations remain so economically intertwined?

The conundrum highlights one of the key differences between the Cold War and the burgeoning competition between the United States and China. The United States and the Soviet Union had few economic and trade links in the decades after World War II. The U.S. policy of containment, as the late diplomat George F. Kennan put it, ultimately sought to cause the “breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.” Any such containment policy with China would carry great economic risks for the United States.

“While I understand the appeal of thrusting China into a role of Soviet Union 2.0, thrusting or forcing China into that role would lead us toward a very misguided goal of containment,” said Ali Wyne, a policy analyst at Rand Corporation. “China is far more powerful economically than the Soviet Union ever was.”

The Trump administration has sent mixed messages about what it is seeking to achieve long term with its trade and national security policies on China. Some officials, including Trump at times, suggest economic ties with China will continue apace and possibly even deepen, so long as Beijing agrees to new, fairer rules. Others emphasize American resolve to restrain China's unfair expansionism and end the economic linkages that have been fueling its rise.

“For some sides of the administration, the purpose of the tariffs was to build leverage so as to pressure China to open its markets to American businesses, thereby deepening the U.S.-China relationship,” said Ely Ratner, director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, who was previously an adviser to former vice president Joe Biden. “Others see economic interdependence as a huge vulnerability and a problem that needs to be solved. Is the goal a more reciprocal economic relationship or is it one that's less interdependent?”

Ratner said he didn't expect the worsening trade relations necessarily to result in more Chinese aggression in Taiwan or the South China Sea. He said the question is more on the U.S. side — whether the failure to reach a trade deal will prompt the Trump administration to unleash harsher measures against China that until now it has been holding back in the interest of striking a deal. He said those measures could extend to the national security space — for instance, with more a more muscular U.S. military presence in the South China Sea.

Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs executive and treasury secretary under George W. Bush, is no longer describing business as the “ballast” in U.S.-China relations. These days, he is warning of an “economic iron curtain” that could descend between the United States and China, noting the risks that entails for the American economy. One reason, he said in a speech in February, is that “national security concerns are now bleeding into virtually every aspect of our economic relationship.”

“The problem with applying a blunt hammer is that it can end up breaking everything,” Paulson said. “If you aim to hurt others but end up hurting yourself, you cannot always recover for a second chance.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Paul Sonne is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, where he covers the U.S. military and writes about defense policy at the Pentagon. He joined The Washington Post's National desk in 2018 after nearly nine years as a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Moscow, London and Washington, most recently covering national security from the D.C. bureau. As Moscow correspondent for The W.S. Journal, he covered Vladimir Putin, the 2014 Winter Olympics and the conflict in Ukraine. Before that, Sonne wrote political, general news and corporate stories out of The W.S. Journal's bureau in London. He started his career as an intern for The New York Times and the Associated Press. Sonne graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Russian literature and received his master's from the University of Oxford, where he studied Russian history and politics as a Marshall Scholar.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • After tariff threats, many Chinese see Trump as a Marvel villain out to destroy them


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-trump-escalates-china-trade-dispute-economic-ties-lose-stabilizing-force-in-matters-of-national-security/2019/05/19/61d50abc-78da-11e9-ac17-284a66782c41_story.html
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« Reply #74 on: May 27, 2019, 11:46:40 pm »


from The Washington Post…

Trump's tariffs could fizzle fireworks, an American
tradition that's 95 percent made in China


If fireworks aren't removed from the list of tariffs, executives said,
their businesses will not be able to absorb the costs.


By TAYLOR TELFORD | 4:39PM EDT — Friday, May 24, 2019

Of the 250 million pounds of fireworks that are imported by the United States each year, nearly 95 percent come from China, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association. — Photograph: Calla Kessler/The Washington Post.
Of the 250 million pounds of fireworks that are imported by the United States each year, nearly 95 percent come from China,
according to the American Pyrotechnics Association. — Photograph: Calla Kessler/The Washington Post.


THE escalating trade clash between the United States and China has sent thousands of U.S. companies scrambling to determine whether they could source goods from other countries to escape higher tariffs. But when President Trump threatened to tag large penalties on $300 billion in Chinese imports earlier this month, a sense of panic settled over the fireworks industry. It had nowhere else to go.

“It's virtually impossible for our product to be made anywhere else but in China,” said Bruce Zoldan, the chief executive of Phantom Fireworks in Youngstown, Ohio. “If these tariffs happen, it'll be the greatest threat to our industry.”

Zoldan met with White House officials on Wednesday to press his case, and he is working on a formal request to be delivered next month that he hopes would exempt the fireworks industry from the penalties. A final decision by the White House could come in late June, in the midst of the fireworks industry's busiest period.

After several months of negotiations between the White House and Beijing that left many believing a truce was within reach, a messy unraveling has left many business executives wondering how to avoid collateral damage.

Trump's showdown with Beijing has nothing to do with fireworks, but they have nonetheless been brought into the fray of the trade war and its headline issues: trade imbalances, government subsidies, intellectual property and global economic health. And while Trump has repeatedly suggested that companies can sidestep the tariffs by moving manufacturing to the United States, that is not an option for domestic fireworks sellers.

It would take years to replicate the manufacturing base in another country, and fireworks executives are extremely wary about major changes that could upend safety protocols.

And though shipments for this year's Fourth of July celebrations theoretically shouldn’t be affected by tariffs, vendors might raise prices anyway, to start making up for what they'll lose once the taxes kick in. And come next summer, after years of record-breaking sales, fireworks might suddenly be scarce.

Fireworks have typically been the province of small businesses in the United States, starting with Italian immigrants who brought the trade with them. But regulatory shifts in the 1970s and '80s all but smothered domestic manufacturing just as demand began to spike, and the businesses that had for generations passed down the craft of making pyrotechnics were forced to primarily become importers.

Today, of the 250 million pounds of fireworks that are imported to the United States each year, nearly 95 percent come from China, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association. Trump has not yet imposed tariffs on fireworks, but they were recently added to a list of products that would face a 25 percent penalty if China doesn't reach a broader deal with the White House soon. And if fireworks aren't removed from that list, executives said, their businesses will not be able to absorb the costs.

And if the industry can’t win an exemption before tariffs take effect this summer, the levy will cut deeply into the revenue streams of legions of small businesses, local economies, and the school groups and non-profits that rely on fireworks for fundraisers.

“The fireworks stands and tents you see in grocery store parking lots and on the roadsides serve as fundraising opportunities for organizations like school boosters, churches and veterans' organizations,” the National Fireworks Association said in a news release after the tariffs were announced. “With an unfair tax that serves to raise the cost of firework devices so significantly, we're hurting the very organizations that make up the fabric of America.”

In recent years, as states have loosened the regulatory tethers and Chinese manufacturers have raised safety and production benchmarks, fireworks sales have swelled. Americans spent nearly $900 million on sparklers, roman candles and other glowing bursts in 2018 — a more than 300 percent increase since 1998.

But ever since Trump slapped tariffs on $50 billion in select Chinese goods in July, the fireworks industry has waited warily for the second act. Luck held until early May, when the president jolted the trade talks by imposing 25 percent tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, and Trump hit back by proposing tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports.

Steven Houser, secretary of the National Fireworks Association, said he's heard from many of the group's 1,200 members, who are frantically trying to understand what's happening.

“They listen to the news and hear them say tariffs and they think the sky is falling,” said Houser, who also owns and operates a wholesale fireworks company called Red Rhino Fireworks in Missouri.

The industry — including groups such as the National Fireworks Association and the American Pyrotechnics Association — is now mobilizing and hoping to finesse an exemption for fireworks before the list of impacted imports is finalized and the tariffs take effect July 1.

Zoldan said that he tried to emphasize the economic impact of new tariffs when he met with top White House officials this week. Though “sympathetic” to his argument, he said, they didn't provide any answers. White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.

“I just explained the future potential crisis in our industry,” said Zoldan, 70, who has been in the business since he was a teen, selling firecrackers to friends out of the back of his mother's Impala. “We help Americans celebrate America's birthday, and the majority of these people aren't those with a high income. If this fourth tranche passes, those people will be hit hard.”

Zoldan, who has met with past White House occupants, said his customers include both devout supporters of the president and those with the opposite sentiment. He said fireworks cuts through politics and appeal to everyone, but that higher costs due to tariffs could change the industry and put many companies out of business.

The American Pyrotechnics Association on Thursday filed a request to testify during the U.S. trade representative's public hearing for the latest round of proposed tariffs on June 17.

“The proposed 25 percent tariff would cause severe economic harm to the industry and municipalities nationwide would no longer be able to afford an Independence Day fireworks display,” the APA wrote in the request.

Trump began imposing tariffs on Chinese imports last year, and the economic impact has been mixed. Some companies have worked to absorb the cost, limiting the effect on consumers. But others have passed it along to their customers, and Zoldan said fireworks margins are slim enough that he predicted a similar result.

Because of the way these import penalties work, a typical small business bringing in 10 shipping containers of consumer-grade fireworks would see its tax jump from the $10,000 to $12,000 range to as much as $70,000, said Stephen Pelkey, chief executive of Atlas PyroVision Entertainment in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

Shipping across the ocean adds to the complexity because established companies often place orders several years in advance, meaning they could find themselves owing more than they anticipated or could afford. Even passing most of the tariff on to customers probably wouldn’t be enough to neutralize the damage, said Pelkey, who says he supplies holiday fireworks to more than 300 New England communities.

“The average small business is going to see anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 in additional costs just to deal with current inventories,” Pelkey said. “We're not even sure how we’re going to deal with it. Everyone is going to feel this pain.”

“This will cripple those tiny companies,” said Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association.

It's not just small businesses that stand to lose. Come summertime, many non-profits, schools and churches briefly transform into fireworks retailers to raise money for other ventures they might otherwise struggle to afford: dances, uniforms, events, trips. For most of these groups, the tariffs would eat into an essential revenue stream.

Fireworks shows can also generate interest and maximize receipts at events that might otherwise struggle to attract crowds — minor league baseball games, county fairs, small-town celebrations. Each spring, the Thunder Over Louisville fireworks show at the Kentucky Derby Festival brings about half a million people to the city, according to Aimee Boyd, vice president of communications for the festival. The show costs more than $1 million to stage and pours more than $56 million into the local economy.

“Thunder is the largest event held in Louisville each year, not only because of its attendance, but also through its impact on the local economy. For every $1 spent, more than $22 is generated.” said Mike Berry, president and chief executive of the Kentucky Derby Festival. “Fans travel from all over to see Thunder. They're staying here for the weekend, eating at the local restaurants and buying souvenirs. It all helps support the Louisville economy.”


__________________________________________________________________________

Taylor Telford is a reporter covering national and breaking news at The Washington Post, where she has worked since June 2018. Previously, Telford was a features intern with The Post. She also worked in metro at the Tampa Bay Times and the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • How one Chinese businessman became the largest supplier of pyrotechnics in the United States


https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/24/trumps-tariffs-could-fizzle-fireworks-an-american-tradition-thats-percent-made-china
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