The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

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Precision
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by Precision »

slowpoke wrote: It required us to take active steps to allow them to better compete in service industries here. Bye Bye CPA jobs, programmer jobs, tech support, etc.
And thats just the bits known, a lot in that treaty was protected information to a very high level. Fuck them for that.
agreed, there is VERY little in a trade agreement that needs to be kept secret. A POX on all of them
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Netpackrat
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by Netpackrat »

Kommander wrote:
Netpackrat wrote: So, because corporate welfare for the US gun industry, I should be subject to being felonized if I build myself an AK containing the wrong number of foreign made parts. Got it.
None of us are saying that and you know it. There is absolutely no reason why we can't eleminate ridiculous import restrictions while ensuring that American gun manufactures are getting a fair shake in the market.
That's the effect of the law that is being discussed.
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John_in_Longview
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by John_in_Longview »

This ban is also keeping M1 Garands and M1 Carbines from being repatriated, therefore it must go. :x
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Vonz90
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by Vonz90 »

slowpoke wrote:
Vonz90 wrote:
First Shirt wrote: Nah, that makes too much sense, they'd never go for something like that. ( I can remember reading a report once that showed that a Toyota Corolla cost only 2K more in the US than it did in Japan. A Chevy Cavalier, that cost the same amount in the US as the Corolla, cost almost 40K in Japan.) I'm all for fair trade, as long as it FAIR!
The TPP was supposed to fix that, but that is dead (Thanks Trump!). All of the countries that were parties to that have higher trade barriers than we do, so the deal pretty much consisted of them lowering barriers to where ours already are.

I am open to the idea that Obama admin made a bad deal, but I have yet to see anything that demonstrates it to any degree. Certainly the broad outlines were fine.
It required us to take active steps to allow them to better compete in service industries here. Bye Bye CPA jobs, programmer jobs, tech support, etc.
And thats just the bits known, a lot in that treaty was protected information to a very high level. Fuck them for that.
If it required them to be at the same level (and I am not an expert on the thing, so assuming this) - why would we not be able to compete? If you are having trouble competing with another economy, fix that which is making you uncompetitive.

Labor costs will always track productivity. There may be a temporary arbitrage situation, but the market will adjust for that relatively quickly. After that, the cost difference comes down to taxes and regulation (and particularly in our case the very negative way we tax capital equipment depreciation, which makes it prohibitively expensive to make things here with a short product cycle.)

Protectionism is just a way for special interest groups (mostly unions and the left generally) to lock in regulation and high taxes.
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slowpoke
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by slowpoke »

Vonz90 wrote:
slowpoke wrote:
Vonz90 wrote: The TPP was supposed to fix that, but that is dead (Thanks Trump!). All of the countries that were parties to that have higher trade barriers than we do, so the deal pretty much consisted of them lowering barriers to where ours already are.

I am open to the idea that Obama admin made a bad deal, but I have yet to see anything that demonstrates it to any degree. Certainly the broad outlines were fine.
It required us to take active steps to allow them to better compete in service industries here. Bye Bye CPA jobs, programmer jobs, tech support, etc.
And thats just the bits known, a lot in that treaty was protected information to a very high level. Fuck them for that.
If it required them to be at the same level (and I am not an expert on the thing, so assuming this) - why would we not be able to compete? If you are having trouble competing with another economy, fix that which is making you uncompetitive.

Labor costs will always track productivity. There may be a temporary arbitrage situation, but the market will adjust for that relatively quickly. After that, the cost difference comes down to taxes and regulation (and particularly in our case the very negative way we tax capital equipment depreciation, which makes it prohibitively expensive to make things here with a short product cycle.)

Protectionism is just a way for special interest groups (mostly unions and the left generally) to lock in regulation and high taxes.

How do you propose to fix foreign government subsidy and cuurency manipulation? How do you fix foreign military spending money to monopolize circuit board production and transfer it to thier country? China has been selling at a loss to move manufacturing, and electronics industry there. Now that its there it creates barriers to doing the engineering work here. We are in the process of throwing away any technical advantages we have as a country.
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Vonz90
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by Vonz90 »

slowpoke wrote:
Vonz90 wrote:
slowpoke wrote: It required us to take active steps to allow them to better compete in service industries here. Bye Bye CPA jobs, programmer jobs, tech support, etc.
And thats just the bits known, a lot in that treaty was protected information to a very high level. Fuck them for that.
If it required them to be at the same level (and I am not an expert on the thing, so assuming this) - why would we not be able to compete? If you are having trouble competing with another economy, fix that which is making you uncompetitive.

Labor costs will always track productivity. There may be a temporary arbitrage situation, but the market will adjust for that relatively quickly. After that, the cost difference comes down to taxes and regulation (and particularly in our case the very negative way we tax capital equipment depreciation, which makes it prohibitively expensive to make things here with a short product cycle.)

Protectionism is just a way for special interest groups (mostly unions and the left generally) to lock in regulation and high taxes.

How do you propose to fix foreign government subsidy and cuurency manipulation? How do you fix foreign military spending money to monopolize circuit board production and transfer it to thier country? China has been selling at a loss to move manufacturing, and electronics industry there. Now that its there it creates barriers to doing the engineering work here. We are in the process of throwing away any technical advantages we have as a country.
The short answer is don't be stupid. Specific answers are:

1. Currency manipulation actually screws the county who is doing it in the long run. Let them.
2. Use free trade agreements so we can specifically attack problem areas (i.e - not opening up part of our trade unless they do the same). I am actually not against some tariff so we have a better carrot to negotiate with for that reason.
3. We already have anti-dumping laws. Use them (which we already do).
4. "Barriers to doing engineering here" - not sure what you mean there. I have engineers in the US, Mexico and China working for me. No problems.
5. Understand that all of the things you mention screw over the country doing them in the long run. China is F'ed. Stuff is already moving out (for instance the company I work for moved almost all of the electronics stuff out a few years ago, not putting any new big stuff in and slowing moving the big stuff out unless it is for the China market.) There is no cost advantage to manufacturing in China right now other than cost of capital - that is just a choice we are making.

20 years ago everyone was all "Japan, Japan, Japan!" - their managed economy and closed trade was the future. Well, do you want to trade economies with Japan these days?

Well for the last ten years it has been "China, China, China!" - you will shortly see that their managed economy and closed trade has F'ed them worse than Japan's did their economy (as they also have a big dose of corruption and mismanagement to go with it.)
Precision
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by Precision »

Vonz90 wrote: The short answer is don't be stupid. Specific answers are:

1. Currency manipulation actually screws the county who is doing it in the long run. Let them.
2. Use free trade agreements so we can specifically attack problem areas (i.e - not opening up part of our trade unless they do the same). I am actually not against some tariff so we have a better carrot to negotiate with for that reason.
3. We already have anti-dumping laws. Use them (which we already do).
4. "Barriers to doing engineering here" - not sure what you mean there. I have engineers in the US, Mexico and China working for me. No problems.
5. Understand that all of the things you mention screw over the country doing them in the long run. China is F'ed. Stuff is already moving out (for instance the company I work for moved almost all of the electronics stuff out a few years ago, not putting any new big stuff in and slowing moving the big stuff out unless it is for the China market.) There is no cost advantage to manufacturing in China right now other than cost of capital - that is just a choice we are making.

20 years ago everyone was all "Japan, Japan, Japan!" - their managed economy and closed trade was the future. Well, do you want to trade economies with Japan these days?

Well for the last ten years it has been "China, China, China!" - you will shortly see that their managed economy and closed trade has F'ed them worse than Japan's did their economy (as they also have a big dose of corruption and mismanagement to go with it.)

What he said. Protectionism is very much like currency manipulation. It really hurts the doer more than the receiver...in the long run. There are caveats due to size dissimilarity, captive markets etc. Also protectionism at its end result hurts the consumer very directly and in the near term with higher costs. Not to mention keeping the home producer artificially free of competition makes for sloth and noncompetitive products. Think Big Three Autos in the 70's.

My opinion, China is set to implode. The real question is will it be a slow motion thing like Cuba or a very obvious cross the event horizon thing like Venezuela?
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HTRN
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by HTRN »

Not exactly, A) the us is the largest economy in the world, and one of the most self sufficient, 80+ percent of all dollars spent remain in the US. B) China is the second largest economy in the world, relying heavily on exportto keep itsslf growing.

If the US put a trade embargo tomorrow on China, it would hurt the US, temporarily, but it would destroy the economy of China - look what happened when oil prices shot up it sent them into arecession, as the cost of shipping went up dramatically

And yes, they will flood the market with cheap AKs, M-14s, and A Rs, worse, is because of the ARs erector set construction, you'll have every part made in everything ranging from full on modern factories, to places the Kyber gunsmiths would be embarresed of, and of course, virtually any brand tha commands a price premium will be counterfeited. Do you really want to allow someplace that does shoddy work and disappears to make something that has a working pressure north of 50k psi?

There are a few books and lots of online articles about doing business in china, but after watching a bunch of serpentza, advchina, and c-milks youtube vids, on the kind of screwing they do to each other, i wouldnt want chinese guns allowed in the US. Perhaps limiting it to a nation by nation basis? Perhaps start with the former combloc nations who are keeping they're factories open...
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slowpoke
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by slowpoke »

already do).
4. "Barriers to doing engineering here" - not sure what you mean there. I have engineers in the US, Mexico and China working for me. No problems.
The problem is that without the manufacturing expertise close to the engineers, there is a very slow and imperfect feedback loop to the engineer on design for manufacturability, and design in general. This isnt a big deal with experi nced engineers who tend to get it rightnthe first time, but is a major impediment to training engineers. When issues come up its faster and easier to get the junior engineer at the plant to make the fix than the junior engineer here to do it. Currently there arent any toy engineers in the US anymore. The old ones retired, junior ones are now in china and shanghai. Thats one industry. Board design is moving that way as well. twenty years from now, we wont have any experienced engineers in fields that we have exported manufacturing in. This is a huge problem. Its missing the point to say it wont bring manufacturing jobs back. The point is it will staunch the bleeding of engineering and other knowledge working jobs to overseas.
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dfwmtx
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Re: The BATFE deputy director just said what?!?!?

Post by dfwmtx »

BATFE being criminals (again), this time with the T part:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/u ... 0141709868
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