Submitted 2 months ago by Amoxtli@thelemmy.club to technology@lemmy.world
“Free trade” means letting everyone do what they’re best at so that everything is done as well and as cheaply as possible. However this makes no guarantee about any one country’s ability, at the end of the day, to stand alone without dependencies on others for vital goods. In fact if anything it works against that.
I don’t know why Trump talks about globalism as some Democrat thing. It’s his own party that has been driving for free trade since forever.
Are you saying that 10% of an economy is vital goods and the other 90% is not? Not that I have any numbers on this but 10% seems low to me.
I don’t know about the numbers you present, but absolutely agree that some industries are just worth supporting, from a government perspective. Cannot be reliant on a geopolitical enemy for goods that allow your country to continue to function.
I think Trump losing us allies is a travesty, but there’s no guarantee during a global conflict you can get items from said allies.
“Free trade” means big countries dominating smaller ones. In what way can a small Caribbean nation compete with the US for example? Say they have a self sustaining economy. They have farms to feed their people, and textile mills to clothe them. Free trade opens their markets up, and they are quickly overwhelmed by the mega corps and their economies of scale. Now local industry is driven out of business or subsumed by foreign competitors. Maybe tourism? Multinationals buy up all the hotels, beaches and restaurants. Locals get minimum wage jobs serving and cleaning. Any attempt at “protectionism” incurs penalties under the free trade agreements.
Well, Taiwan and Singapore are able to be competitive in the world market, despite being very small and lacking major resource advantages or big militaries. They do this by developing very sophisticated expertise and pressing the few very particular advantages they have.
“Free trade” means letting everyone do what they’re best at and then exchange the goods they produce
If that were the case there would not be Plaza accords, dismemberment of Angstrom and the absolute annihilation of industry in the post-soviet states. “Free trade” is and always has been a fanciful banner for wealth extraction
All abstract ideas are good, and those with less assumptions are more abstract, but the problem is - nobody wants purely abstract ideas.
Pretty Victorian conditions in factories producing all those nice things we have, for example, would not be acceptable in USA.
Which means that this abstract idea is somehow mixed and divided with a border with another abstract idea.
Differently in one place and in another.
OK, I’m using a boring and long way to say that some things have to be balanced. Bad labor conditions allow cheaper production, skewing competitive balance. Tariffs or something like that can in theory balance it out back again.
Trump is a former democrat. Many in his administration are former democrats. Trump isn’t a liberal. Both Republicans and Democrats are liberal.
Global foundries has a fab nearby, and all they produce are those chips for the old obsolete cars put out by Ford
Not everything has to be latest gen CPUs, there will always be a market for 555 timers and ESP32s
Plus, these have to be automotive grade, which requires a higher tier of durability. Not a lot of profit margin to be made on those sorts of devices.
Except these are the empty headed sensors that trigger the check engine light despite the engine running just fine
“A country with experience in fab construction can build one faster and cheaper than a country with no experience”
Yeah, not really surprising
If you thought GPUs were pricey now. At least the rest of the world can still buy from Taiwan.
Yep that 24/7 round-the-clock construction surely would contribute significantly to the difference.
For now.
infinitevalence@discuss.online 2 months ago
Also because we dont have the construction experience of building FAB’s, and we have different building regulation and standards.
25% tariffs on steel also wont make it any cheaper.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Also because Taiwan has basically slave labor like China. Also things cost more here cuz our workers have benefits and things like rights.
K1nsey6@lemmy.world 2 months ago
1950 wants its tired anti china tropes back
Eheran@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What benefits and rights are that supposed to be?
FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What rights are these of which you speak?
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 month ago
There’s a big cultural difference. Taiwanese workers, like Chinese, Korean, and Japanese workers as well, have a much higher tolerance for long work hours and less pay.
All of these East Asian cultures have long-standing social norms against complaining and refusing to work hard. It’s a collectivist culture of work that puts the success of the company ahead of the individual’s interests. In return, companies tend to be loyal to workers so it’s very common to stay at one company for your whole career.
We westerners used to have similar values back in the 1950s and earlier. That all changed during the counterculture.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You are correct, but people always want to believe their enemy’s enemy is their friend, and if their enemy is ideological, then that enemy’s enemy must be their ideological friend, and same with morality. That’s never so.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
You’re getting downvoted, but I work in the industry (GF, Intel, TI) and have heard horror stories from people who have worked on TSMC and even Samsung sites.
PanArab@lemm.ee 1 month ago
“Right to work”
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yes, and with all that combined twice as expensive and twice longer is kinda fine. Provided it will function.