Metal Reviews

Free market? You still believe it exists?

a trade tariff war against Asia (which is to say, China)?

if foreign goods can match our standards (and that do manage that in several cases) at a cheaper price, it's all the better for the consumer. on paper (i know...) the reasoning is that our own industries would move into higher value-added activities...

of course, i'm not familiar with the tariff structure, for all i know we're being permissive and Asian countries are being protectionist douchebags regarding imports from Europe. i know India is like that for several goods.

@Karma: No, this my point. International exchanges are biaised, unfair and destructive, therefore we need to be pragmatic and fight back with a good dose of protectionism.

@Az: The theory is well known and unfortunately proven wrong as years pass by. 1) People losing their jobs because of delocalization or total annihilation of our industrial structure are not going to find another jobs in higher added-value industries, because they have no qualification. 2) These people are out of the national/european economic system: they consume less, they pay a lot less taxes, and they are (from an economical point of view of course) a dead weight on our societies. This leads to a pauperization of our economies, hampering the emergence of higher added-value industries, and jeopardizing the others. 3) Local market opportunities. Higher added-value industries need intermediate consumption for their inputs (obviously). Some industries need those to be local, not produced in China or whatever.

And it's been 20 years now. I'm not angry against China - they're doing whatever they see fit to improve their economy, their nation and their power, this is no different from what other (super) powers have done in the past -, but we have to fight back. Everybody knows the Yuan is artificially devalued (approx. by 50%), we need to put tariffs to AT LEAST to compensate this. And/or, we need to control the European Central Bank to fight back. If we don't act, we're doomed.

I have nothing against China in particular, India and Brazil are a threat too. I have no problem with them protecting their home markets, as long as they let us do the same (again at a European level).

Ah whatever. Sorry with the campaign in France and everything, this is getting on my nerves more than it usually does.

the yuan issue has to be seriously taken on with the WTO, that is true.

as for the move into value-added areas, it still has a long way to go to achive the smoothness it has on paper, but you can see examples, with the emergence of clusters like all the aerospace companies in Toulouse and whatnot.

Something that's been fucking with international economy for a while now is the fact that the IMF and the World Bank function on what is essentially the Washingtonian consensus. It's impositional neoliberalism, a spread of Reaganism and Thatcherism that reduces developing countries to expanses of slums by forcing them to accept conditionalities for loans. These institutions either need to be scrapped, or heavily reformed.

Haha, you sound like this "Developing worlds economics" teacher I had a few years ago. On the Washingtonian consensus and its intricacies, at the time I was thinking "Okay, his diagnosis may be accurate, but he's going to far on antiliberalism propaganda."

I'm no leftist (at all...), but now I see how right he may have been on this very subject.

Umm rants don't equal falsity.

Trust a Frenchie to be all for tariffs.

It's like their love of Common Agriculturual Policy which does a lot to protect innefficient French farmers by getting countries like Germany to subsidise them.

In the meantime third world countries whose main export is agricultural products are pushed out of the European market because they're unable to compete with subsidised Euro farmers. The system is so innefficient thousands of tons of food are burned each year because farmers overproduce to get the subsidies.

And then there was the 1980 nationalisation of large chunks of French major industry and banking under Mitterand or nationalising major car producer Renault for 50 odd years (1946-1996).

So much for the French and free trade.

1) Free trade trade is not in our DNA, I won't argue with that. Every single study shows it (here are poll results from last year, they are about the same today) :

- 75% of the French population think open borders to Chinese and Indian goods will harm the French job market in the next 10 years (11% think it's the contrary, 7% think it won't have any effect, 7% do not answer)

- To the question "Nowadays, there is no tariff in France on imported products from China and India. Do you agree with this choice?
-> Strongly agree: ........4%
-> Agree: ...................16%
Total YES:...................20%
-> Strongly disagree....30%
-> Disagree.................40%
Total NO:.....................70%
(Do not know, do not answer: 10%)

- And finally, because we're not completely dumb: "If tariffs are to be implemented/increased, at what level should we do it?"
European level....80%
French level........20%

Bam. Frenchies are pro free trade inside EU borders, and pro protectionism outside EU borders. Frenchies are pragmatic, not dogmatic.

2) However, I personally am against the CAP you're mentioning, not only for the reasons you've also mentioned, but also because agriculture is less than 2% of our economic structure, which makes the CAP almost irrelevant. Almost I say, because at last this way we have strict quality control on our products (we know what we're eating).
Or so we like to think...

3) The Mitterrand experiment you're referring to lasted two years (1981-1983). From 1983 to 2012, not only nothing has been nationalized, but we pretty much privatized everything (Banks, energy, highways, transportation, telecommunications, postal services...) Right and left political parties alike.

Clichés, much?

Did you actually just try to respond to dead1 on serious issues?

Here is some advice: don't bother.

Haha.

Interesting points.

From what I've read though, bilateral free trade is nowhere near as efficient as multilateral free trade.

And the Eurozone does operate more as a bilateral free trade zone as it excludes the rest of the world.

Protectionism on the whole is not good though - it often benefits very few parties at the expense of the whole economy. And it creates innefficiences which in turn can result in economic stagnation and decline as witnessed in Latin America prior to the opening up of economies in the 1990s.

Tasmania's a great example of stagnation caused by too much government support. The forestry and heavy manufacturing industries have had massive indirect government support (e.g. subsidised electricity). However they have never learned how to be efficient and despite government support are now collapsing or closing down.

In one instance a vehicle ball bearing manufacturer went bust despite massive contracts with Ford etc and several government bail outs.

The management mindset created by government supplied crutches made the company incapable of change and innovation and led to it's eventual demise.


I don't advocate complete lack of government intervention - industries still require regulation to meet social, environmental and in some cases national interest goals. Indeed the GFC showed the need for government regulation.

But where possible free trade should be allowed to prosper.

Mind you I could be talking out of my arse. After all I only finished high school and highest level job I've held has been a supermarket clerk.

As I said in a previous post, I'm very much inclined to say free trade is the optimum when possible. We're currently being gang raped however (sorry for my French), by huge countries which do not play fair. We have to fight back. Soon.

And you have valid points, so you shouldn't worry much about your educational background. It's not like I'm a Nobel prize winner myself...

As far as "gang-raping" is concerned, well, it's not like we're third world countries being forced into a neoliberal state of equality by countries who used protectionism to get rich in the first place and deny us the opportunity to do likewise. Probably the most important thing European countries should be attempting to do is fight the Washingtonian status quo by making it impossible for big business and big bankers to dodge taxes as easily as they can currently. If all across Europe, CEOs and the super rich had to pay the same minimum tax rate, it would provide much more money for European infrastructure and future education, and would set a precedent for applying a global minimum tax rate.

I hope I don't sound like this.

Pick up Planet of Slums by Mike Davis one day. Very enlightening.

You did? Umm I've been on the Mike Davis train for the last five years, bro.

So who did you vote for, Bruce? Looks like a pretty depressing election, full of socialists, fascists and protectionists...

For the only guy who made sense to me, François Bayrou. A centrist, who wants to cut spendings without upping taxes too much. A humanist as well. A good man. His party is probably what is the closest to your Lib Dems, I think.

I am going to vote for Hollande in two weeks. I'm not a big fan of some chunks of his programme (the most "socialist" ones ), but those are mostly horsecrap he is not seriously considering anyway... or so I'm hoping. Besides, Sarkozy is a human turd. So, it's not like I have any choice.

Results of Round 1 for those interested (round 2 in two weeks):

Hollande (Center left)... 28%
Sarkozy (Center right).. 27%
Le Pen (Far right)......... 18%
Mélenchon (Far Left).... 11%
Bayrou (Center).............. 9%
Irrelevant entities......... <3%

Le Pen probably won't ask her voters to vote for Sarkozy (she aims to gobble up Sarko's party and wants it utterly destroyed to ease the task), so Hollande should win this quite easily.

Fucking politics. Really depressed about it right now.