While you weren't looking, the trade war with China went off the rails

[Recursion]

https://www.businessinsider.com/us/trump-trade-war-us-china-tariffs-lost-no-meaning-2019-11

The investigation determined what many in the business community had been talking about for years: that China abused its US partners, stole the IP of American companies, forced those companies to reveal their technology to Chinese counterparts, and muscled US firms out of the Chinese economy in favor of state-owned enterprises.

This, the Trump administration said, was a problem beyond the capacity of the World Trade Organization. It was a problem worth going to economic war over. And so we did.

But so far this trade war has accomplished nothing aside from breaking up US supply chains and souring relations between the US and China. And now instead of discussing meaningful ways the Chinese economy will open to US businesses, trade negotiators are reportedly haggling over how many soybeans China will buy.

In fact, the status of the negotiations today sounds a lot like the status of the negotiations back in December 2018, when the US and China temporarily laid down their arms. Back then, The New York Times called the treaty — which included a resumption of soybean purchases on China's part — "less a breakthrough than a breakdown averted." The "phase one" deal the administration is now working on would do much the same thing.

Basically the White House and USTR are frantically trying to restore the trade situation to what it was before Trump decided to kick up an anthill.

[tanyev]

1. Was it ever really back on the rails?

[Mike 03]

2. Your editorial comment is spot on.

We will be lucky if when this "baby step" deal is signed we are not worse off than before we started. Last night I was listening to Bloomberg radio (it was the open of markets in Asia) and one of their guests was pathetically pleading for there to be "some deal, any kind of deal" as a fig leaf to try to put this behind us or fool uneducated investors into believing there was some kind of resolution. He was probably a Trumper; Trumpers know the truth about this trade deal but are praying nobody else notices what a fiasco it is.

[UTUSN]

3. K&R - "restoration" (of everything) will take an FDR to accomplish

[crickets]

6. Sadly, I fear you are right. nt

[Wounded Bear]

4. Basically, we gave China a huge fucking gift...

and now we are negotiating whether or not we can get the wrapping paper back.

[Recursion]

5. Argentina and Kazakhstan have already upped their beef exports to China

There's no particular reason China would even want to go back to a single source for staples.

[chriscan64]

7. A part of it involves China not processing our recycling.

I work at a print shop that used to be paid for waste paper, now we had to scramble to find a company we have to pay to take it off our hands. On top of that, the cost of paper from China skyrocketed. Getting back to where we were will take creating a recycling system from scratch as well as other parts of the supply chain.

Unlike infrastructure, opioids and e-cig bans this problem does not even get the empty lip service.

[Recursion]

8. It's one reason I'm against plastic "recycling" programs

China was never recycling plastic; it was just shredding it and using it as fill. And now they aren't even doing that anymore, and three quarters of what people put in their "recycling" bins winds up in landfills anyways. We need to be using less plastic to begin with.