chapotraphouse

Four stories from the COVID supply crunch stood out to me:

1. Factories building and garages maintaining 18-wheelers had to shut down because they couldn't source some small metal part that came from China domestically. It was just like a particular kind of ball-bearing.

2. A factory that made doors had to shut down because it couldn't source its inputs domestically

3. Municipal utility companies warned that they had no supplies to respond to infrastructure damage because they couldn't source them domestically

4. Nurses were wearing trash bags while people paid $100 for homemade ineffective hand sanitiser on ebay because the basic supplies required to respond to the pandemic at any level couldn't be sourced domestically.

Big fuck around energy.

50% on solar panels? Holy shit that's actually fucking insane, China makes 80% of all panels. They're nuking any hope of a green transition

lol, lmao even

I'm sure that voters will be ecstatic to hear that Biden is tackling the bread and butter issues like "everything isn't expensive enough".

Does he really think that the people he's trying to win over care more about sticking it to China politically at the expense of renewable energy than being able to afford basic goods? All those people have already been screaming at progressives that everything's their fault for 8 months.

So much for that infantesimal amount of inflation reduction they were trying to campaign on.

From 2022: Trump metal tariffs ruled in breach of global rules by WTO

Trade wars are good and easy to win

"well the best part about the free market is that if you don't like a company, then a better company will come along and give you a better service. you can buy what you want and vote with your wallet"

The adults the room(tm) used to say the free market would solve climate change because eventually green energy would become cheaper and then it would be widely adopted. Now the price has fallen and they're slapping tariffs

Surely this is going to be followed by the largest attempt at reindustrialization in US history right?

I literally thought about this earlier today while on the bus, "What happens to the USA if they tariff all of Chinese goods, or China does it to them? Where will they get their treats from?" Well, looks like China needn't apply their own taxes and tariffs, cause dear old Joe is doing a capable job himself.

Certified :sit-back-and-enjoy: moment

If you actually cared to compete with China you would join the technology arms race by investing heavily into it instead of banning superior competitors. If state intervention does positively affect technological progress instead of just pure competition, then neoliberal ideology is wrong and should be abandoned.

there are some wonderfully salty threads on /r/neoliberal about this

Full Tweet if you're too lazy to click the title lol (it's fine):

I just imposed a series of tariffs on goods made in China:

25% on steel and aluminum,

50% on semiconductors,

100% on EVs,

And 50% on solar panels.

China is determined to dominate these industries.

I'm determined to ensure America leads the world in them.

Guess we're not coming anywhere close to carbon reduction goals

I'm sure that'll help reduce inflation 🙄

Born to lose

Election is a fuck

252,534,748,452 dead Palestinians

make the price of stuff go up

make green energy more expensive and less accessible

for the grand benefit of uhhh... sticking it to the reds?

this is why I can't take people seriously when they scream about how badly we need to get Biden elected to stop Trump. Because Biden seems to be doing everything in his power to lose 2024

Such an L even from a neoliberal point of view. The US is an advanced manufacturer, those are our inputs. Nations that are dominated by resource extraction get into a rut because they fundamentally can't match the productivity of economies that are creating the final end goods, because that's where most of the profit comes from. The sellers of inputs can only ever match the profit rate of the final good it's used for. The US is obviously not going to have a resurgence of production of steel, aluminum, solar panels, and semiconductors, so this is just going to end up tanking every sector that uses them. It's just the worst of the nudge-based economic brainworms taken to it's logical extreme.