Subject: Re: Trade deal with China reached
It's worked out pretty well, actually.

Sure. If you're China. They're now the #2 economy in the world, have built the world's biggest Navy and are openly throwing their muscle around the globe in such a way as to destabilize it.

As I pointed out, China's economy has become deeply dependent on its trade with the rest of the world.

For some things. Your original stance was that China could ride out a Trade War with the US, btw.

Which in no small part has contributed to China almost entirely refraining from military belligerence over the last 30-35 years.

Because they've spent all that time modernizing their military. Ask Lambo/Lapsody how much they like China's aggression in the Spratly Islands and in the South China sea. Ask Taiwan and Australia how much they like being surrounded by aggressive PLAN and Chinese Air Force elements harassing their militaries and intimidating their governments.

Tariffs aren't going to drive the free market bring back the type of manufacturing sufficient to make us self-sufficient in "critical goods" like you are advocating. To do that, you need to get closer to the state-run centrally-planned economy of China. "Capitalism with Sanders characteristics" - a dominating industrial policy that can force the reallocation of capital in this U.S. into industries and fields that there is no market reason to invest in.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Upthread you touted the CHIPs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act but here you're saying that massive government intervention is a bad thing. BTW the reallocation of capital in this U.S. into industries and fields that there is no market reason to invest in is exactly what every single green initiative the west has engaged in has been doing.

But that's the point - the GOP heavily criticized both the CHIPs Act and the IRA, because it that type of industrial policy is anathema to the (sizable) free market wing of the party. And you'd have to 10x or 100x those measures in order to get close to the scale of government intervention in the economy necessary to get private parties to start reallocating their capital into building the type of manufacturing clusters you see in China.

You're making some leaps here. Nobody is saying 'go replace Russia/China's titanium industry' via tariffs. What's being said is "find a way to buy and make stuff we need to buy and make from nicer guys that this".