dagblog - Comments for "The Left Has No Foreign Policy"

I live next to a bridge, and

Decader — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:11:58 +0000

In reply to I was committed to not coming

I live next to a bridge, and it used to be every once in a while you'd find a body underneath it - perils of depressed urban living. Okay, so they put up a fence so not so many suicides, but people do kill themselves - more in the north than in the south, for example (though Colorado lock-in may cause more than All Work No Play Jack homicide). Again, if it's a result of physical abuse, rather than the usual trauma of being a migrant laborer under stress, well, Foxconn has a big problem.

And then China is trying in different ways to change - e.g. domestic consumption. To go along with that energy & pollution & worker conditions, etc. That also means they'll be trying to cover 90% of their population with public health care by end of 2011 - as a way of stimulating domestic consumption. Rather clever, that. And ambitious.

And no, this blog hasn't touched much on SE Asia conditions and where China fits in, as well as influence on Africa. Of course most of China's effect these days is felt in economics & trade, fortunately not so much saber rattling, though that part's not to neglect - a sprightly army they have.

I find your response to be

SleepinJeezus — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:38:10 +0000

In reply to I was committed to not coming

I find your response to be real coherent, and right on target, too. Bravo!

Too often, I find myself asking "Just whose economy is it?" when I encounter the "experts" talking about growth and success. Reason being, I look around my neighborhood and amongst my peers, and I see everything going backwards in terms of quality of life. And I don't see much consideration for the quality of life for others in the developing countries, either. Human resources. Grist for the mill. All doing their part to give it up for the growth of the economy. But whose economy is it?

I was committed to not coming

we are stardust — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:25:57 +0000

In reply to I don't *refute* you - just

I was committed to not coming back here, and focusing on other sorts of writing, but here I am again. Your 'poor babies', of course, pummeled my poor brain and my sensibilities (as you suspected). Yet another twist on micro-creative-destruction, I guess. Some of us like myself have a pretty hard time with such a Big Picture view of long-term economic plans. Yeah; ya kinda have to ignore the suicide nets a bit below the dorm balconies, but it's a pretty tiny percentage of dead workers, and they might have done it anyway. Christ, Des.

And Welfare Reform may not have brought the US to its knees, but last I checked, some of the defenders of family and children didn't think it worked out so well, although it might have with smarter, longer, and therefore, more expensive provisions. Can't want to argue that one further today.

But I remember Clinton for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, too, not only deregulating derivatives, but preventing individual states from regulating them.

You'll like this from FP magazine; 'cooler heads will prevail in the trade war with China' is the theme:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/19/reluctant_warriors

Another one deals with the differences between Reagan's responses to Japan over trade, and has this funny paragraph:

Like 1980s Japan, China today is pursuing an export-led growth strategy, suppressing domestic consumption, pushing savings, and guiding investment into strategic industries. It has a multitude of trade barriers, weak labor unions, and an undervalued currency. The U.S. trade deficit with China is now about $250 billion -- four times that with Japan. Despite its early welcome to foreign investors, Beijing is focused intensely on developing its own technology. More importantly, U.S. high-tech industries -- solar energy, computer chips, and fiber optics -- are increasingly being offshored to China. And Chinese commitments to strongly protect intellectual property are often honored more in their breach than in their execution. As one Chinese friend explained to me last year, "Now we have all the foreign dogs in the kennel, and we're going to beat the stuffing out of them."

When you opened this blog, you spoke of 'foreign policy', then talked about 'trade policy' instead. That they are intertwined is clear. This bumble-fumble by Obama on his trip to China last year may speak volumes:

The United States also has less leverage with China today than it did with Japan then. Washington needs China to deal with transnational threats like Iran, North Korea, and global warming, not to mention financing the mounting U.S. government debt. So Obama has been less able and less willing to act -- except, that is, when he is making inexplicable concessions. During his trip to China last November, for example, Obama pledged that the United States would assist Beijing in developing its own commercial jet, though aerospace technology is one of the few U.S. strategic industries that still exports to China.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/lie_of_the_tiger?page=0,1

So the trade deals and currency revaluation deals are twisted with considerations over Taiwan, and Chinese 'interests' v. 'stay-the-hell-out-of-chinese-business re: Taiwan', and extending their naval forces beyond Taiwan to the south, and Hillary in Australia cutting deals for closer ties with our military and theirs, and bases of operations, and a more (ahem) vigorous US Naval Presence there in the Pacific and...yeah; it's complicated, because you have a couple big countries that want to be Top Dog...or something. (Sorry for the crap end of that thought; I typed myself into a corner, and i have ass-cramp now and want to get off...) ;o)

But I really will try to make this my last comment and try to get a real life today. And besides, kgb is much better informed and coherent than I am.

And the last paragraph about

Decader — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:24:03 +0000

In reply to No, it's "there is some doubt

And the last paragraph about whether the government plus the paper are working together for some political purpose - to drag more benefits out of Foxconn, perhaps, or else Foxconn didn't play the right political game with the high muckety mucks?

No, it's "there is some doubt

Decader — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:22:41 +0000

In reply to You should recognize that

No, it's "there is some doubt as to whether this has happened". A preliminary leak on a report to be released with unnamed witnesses with no verification of the accusations - well, it's not a slam dunk, is it?

And if you go from "oh, the dorm rooms are so bad" to "hey, and they do corporal abuse" - well, come on, that's two very different things. If they're actually held and beaten, talk about that. That's serious. Quit acting like a small barren dorm room is the worst thing that ever happened to people - crap, they could be living in trash in a typical Bombay rundown neighborhood playing Million Dollar Slumdog instead of that dry room with a job.

Oh the poor babies, they're

Decader — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:41:46 +0000

In reply to Did you actually look at

Oh the poor babies, they're living in a college-size dorm rooms. My crocodile tears fall over the place.

Cripes, it's not beautiful, but no, I don't kill myself. Get real.

Any idea what most Shenzhen or inland high-rises look like?

Why do you think these diseases spread so quickly through them? Open plumbing - the feces above flows below. This dorm room looks more sanitary than the typical apartment building.

You're talking about people starting off at the very bottom moving from the country to the city to get ahead - a blistering 12 out of 300,000 kill themselves - how many freshmen off themselves?

"Certain parity in labor and environmental requirements" - crap on that - tell me what they are. A double apartment building for every worker? Minimum $5/hour? What is it? This is a straw man. You've no clue what the answer is - "they should do better" is about how you'd probably sum it up. A never-achievable goal.

Yes, people want to shut China down.

Did you actually look at

kgb999 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:02:05 +0000

In reply to I don't *refute* you - just

Did you actually look at ArtAppraiser's "deeper look"? This is how they live ... in the dorm selected for a western media organization to see.

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/11/500x_img_1069_01.jpg

When you sign up to live like that ... get back to me. Interesting thing, did you notice how all the areas were pretty damn sparse with people considering it's a complex containing 400,000 people in a 1.6 mile area - especially the areas that were all shiny-polished looking? Maybe explore the Chinese concept of "Face" a bit.

Nobody is saying cut China off. People are saying that we need to demand our trading partners have a certain parity in labor and environmental requirements instead of rewarding our corporations for doing an end-run around American standards by doing business in places that don't maintain them and then repatriating the products without penalty or tariff while off-shoring the profits so they don't have to pay any goddamn taxes on them.

Frankly, teabaggers are starting to make a whole hell of a lot more sense than Clinton-conservative Democrats, at least their priority for American trade policy doesn't include making sure we can't have jobs if Chinese fucking workers might be negatively impacted (though, I'm not at all convinced that would be the result). Carrying the torch for Chinese government produced propaganda doesn't really makes you any more sophisticated than Beck.

Also too. It was Clinton signing Gramm-Leach-Bliley that ultimately brought America crashing to it's knees. Welfare reform screwed a bunch of poor people; a betrayal of core Democratic principles but hardly enough to bring down the economy. NAFTA et. al. primarily continued the job Regan stared in helping decimate the labor movement by slow attrition and with it the middle class. On the bright side, I think Clinton did get himself plenty of extra sex on the job, so there is that to look up to ... and let's face it, a cigar will never be viewed in quite the same way again. And of course now Clinton is a multi-millionaire many times over as a reward for his lifetime holding relatively low-paying elected positions. Funny how that works. Also.

Ironically, there has beem

kgb999 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 06:38:27 +0000

In reply to Another point in China's

Ironically, there has beem more than a little speculation that this was just the sort of situation we wanted to take control of Iraq to prevent.

Lame. Thanks for the

kgb999 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 06:34:46 +0000

In reply to Sorry, I probably didn't

Lame. Thanks for the explanation.

I don't refute you - just

Decader — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 06:25:37 +0000

In reply to Guess we could keep trading

I don't *refute* you - just add to & deepen the look at what you write, which is all negative from an anti-NAFTA view. Yes, it's negative, yes it was going to happen anyway - indians will lose their little place in the sun, it's happened all over the world - and Mexican policies of 1921 are going to eventually change. But yours describes the upheaval, and whether NAFTA could have accounted for that should be considered.

Kinda like Art Appraisers deeper look at FoxConn - in ways doesn't look too bad, in ways looks rather 1984'ish. We have to get past the 1-sided talking points that are designed to spin every situation one direction only. Global change is complicated.

For the most part NAFTA is irrelevant to anybody - it didn't much fulfill the great boom in production, didn't much kill our factories because there was a Chinese tsunami much greater than the great sucking sound. But every time I see Clinton's name brought up (post-election post mortems in several quarters) it's about that NAFTA deal and welfare reform - you couldn't imagine that the guy did anything else in his time in office, or that both NAFTA and welfare had brought the US crashing to its knees.

Meanwhile, we've gone a decade without any serious attention to China from the left or right, except for people clamoring "cut them off, cut them off" or "we can't, we can't". This is childish, and China's one of our biggets issues, as just 2 secs of reading Quinn posts gives you an idea of.

Back to real issues. Real complexity. All this tea bagger stuff has us way off our game - they've got us debating like Beck.