Valuetainment - April 10, 2025


"Trump Has A Point" - Richard Werner BREAKS DOWN How US-China Tariff Tactics Will Shape Global Trade


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

170.50691

Word count

2,220

Sentence count

27

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the current trade situation between the United States and China and the benefits and disadvantages of tariffs. We discuss the benefits of tariffs and how they can be used to increase the level of value added in the domestic economy.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 if china agrees and say you know what reciprocal tariff zero
00:00:04.720 we're not going to put any on you you put nothing on us
00:00:08.880 if that was to be agreed upon who loses more and who wins more
00:00:14.660 actually that is the best scenario and and that's where actually the standard international trade
00:00:24.640 theory has a bit of a point unusually you know i'm usually quite critical of mainstream economics
00:00:29.520 but that's the one point where they're perhaps slightly stronger um everyone would win because
00:00:36.220 you see tariffs the reason is the following trade is really the source of wealth creation
00:00:43.620 for everyone trade whether it's internal trade or external trade but actually when you then
00:00:48.180 have the country divisions and you look at how countries are doing compared to each other
00:00:51.840 you will see that international trade is the main source of wealth creation between countries
00:00:58.220 so trade is extremely valuable now most economists very simplistically follow from that that you
00:01:04.940 should never have tariffs not even unilateral tariffs not even if the other guys have lots of
00:01:09.880 tariffs against you you should not respond by putting tariffs on is always better not to have tariffs
00:01:14.500 that's the official mainstream economics response and they're very clear cut about this that's not
00:01:20.520 entirely true and therefore to some extent you know president trump has a bit of a point um namely
00:01:26.480 tariffs have proven in history to be extremely successful and in fact necessary when you are a developing
00:01:36.100 economy that wants to move up to the next level and you want to um raise the level of value added of
00:01:44.860 your entire domestic economy the principle to be successful as an economy is through international
00:01:52.580 trade and you have to follow the rule of mainly importing raw materials that means low value added
00:01:58.320 goods then you do the adding of value and you export high value added goods and the u.s is very good
00:02:05.360 with certain high value added goods and services are included of course particularly the services u.s is very
00:02:11.160 good and there's you know high value added whether it's software you know technology related um and
00:02:17.140 telecommunications and and it and and so on um that's the principle that applies throughout history to all
00:02:24.640 countries at all time periods um and that's where tariffs can be very useful if you want to move up to the
00:02:32.520 next level and you put on tariffs such that you enhance that pattern of
00:02:40.920 you know basically you want to get raw materials very cheaply so you'd never put tariffs on raw
00:02:46.700 materials that you're importing uh import tariffs you'd never have that and on raw materials but of
00:02:53.440 course if the other country is mainly exporting finished goods that you are also trying to you know
00:02:59.940 manufacture yourself or services you know they're offering services that you are trying to offer that's
00:03:05.040 where the tariffs make sense if behind this tariff wall if you want or tariff protection i mean it's
00:03:12.060 only a partial protection because you're not banning those you know it's just getting slightly more
00:03:15.440 expensive depending on the percentage if you behind this protection you make sure that industry and
00:03:23.040 your domestic um players are actually stepping up to the plate and are getting ready because in the future
00:03:29.540 you want to take this off and then let them roam freely and let the foreign uh things come come in 1.00
00:03:35.640 freely um and that pressure has to be there and then it can be extremely successful that's how japan
00:03:43.700 was in the 20th century the country that had the the most dramatic economic development only overtaken
00:03:50.520 towards the end of the 20th century and then beginning of 21st by china uh although if you take the
00:03:55.440 whole country because you know it's huge and and you know rural areas some are still not so developed
00:04:00.080 you know it's a bit of a mixed uh batch but big chunks of china did um you know beat japan on on 0.99
00:04:06.120 in that respect but they all followed the same pattern and it's also true if you go further back in
00:04:10.780 history german economic development in the 19th century the u.s development in the 19th century
00:04:16.180 overtaking number one economic power britain happened with the same um with the same pattern namely
00:04:22.600 very selective tariffs so that this trade pattern was encouraged where you get your raw material imports
00:04:31.000 cheaply and you have development of your domestic high value added goods and service industry
00:04:37.560 and you then encourage the exports and so you usually it's a combination of tariffs and subsidies
00:04:44.580 to to to work on that pattern but it's only justified because it is you know it is a government
00:04:50.260 intervention you know that's quite clear this is a government intervention tariffs and normally
00:04:55.200 a free market is preferred but if you do it cleverly you combine this intervention with
00:05:01.520 incentives for the private sector to step up to the plate and deliver you know shift to the higher
00:05:08.260 level manufacturing or service sector value added activities then it's extremely successful and has
00:05:14.460 been in history consistently that's how the u.s overtook britain yeah but the question for me okay
00:05:20.240 so who's the biggest loser so i went while you're speaking i'm trying to see what chad gbt is going
00:05:26.020 to tell me the biggest winners and losers are if they agree to zero percent tariffs rob if you're going
00:05:31.000 to pull this up and ask the question who are the biggest winners and losers if the trade if the
00:05:38.200 tariff on china and u.s goes to zero reciprocal tariffs goes to zero who are the biggest winners and
00:05:43.600 losers here's what it says winners big u.s retailers walmart tars get amazon would benefit from
00:05:49.860 lower import costs consumers would see cheaper goods electronics clothing furniture toys lower
00:05:56.100 prices equals lower inflation more purchasing power if they go to zero percent tariffs u.s tech
00:06:02.240 companies apple tesla hp which manufacture heavily in china would save on costs and avoid supply chain
00:06:07.820 friction yeah text imports like qualcomm nvidia would expand access to chinese markets okay i just saw a
00:06:14.100 story about how much an iphone will be right now based on what it's going to cost rob if you want to pull
00:06:17.860 that story up this is from five days ago i saw that it would be quite a bit yeah three thousand
00:06:22.740 dollars is what i saw three thousand dollars is what i saw i saw three thousand so this one's saying
00:06:26.580 23 well i think it's three thousand for the one with bigger if you go a little bit lower rob it'll tell
00:06:31.620 you let's go a little bit lower in the story it says all the way up to three thousand i think uh
00:06:36.340 twenty three hundred dollars forty three percent increase with what's going on with tariffs okay so that's
00:06:41.200 that let me continue chinese manufacturers and exporters with u.s tariffs gone chinese firms 0.66
00:06:48.080 in electronics machinery textiles regain full access to u.s markets because it's cheaper to get
00:06:52.880 exports increases china's export momentum okay next u.s chinese logistics and shipping firms global
00:06:59.920 financial markets wall street would rally on improve u.s china relations reduce geopolitical risk
00:07:06.080 investor optimism six south asian and global suppliers these are all great winners now let's
00:07:11.600 look at losers u.s domestic manufacturers steel aluminum textile furniture yeah so that means jobs
00:07:17.840 still going to go over there because it's going to be cheaper labor there china substitutes vietnam 1.00
00:07:22.640 mexico india these countries benefited from u.s china decoupling the trade war so a lot of us started
00:07:27.840 sending business to vietnam mexico india they would take it so they may not want reciprocal tariffs with
00:07:32.960 u.s and china u.s labor unions which i don't understand these guys these are the protectionist
00:07:37.600 policymakers unions will likely see a betrayal of bring jobs home okay to bring the jobs here okay
00:07:43.440 fine u.s defense hawks and china skeptics companies that relocated from china during trade war domestic
00:07:50.560 industries these are saying who the losers are for you i see more positive on doing reciprocal than not
00:07:56.880 doing it why isn't china agreeing to do it i think we do we do have a political element here and that
00:08:04.720 is and you know on both sides we saw it in the the message from president trump it was the second or
00:08:12.480 third word of his message disrespectful and the chinese have the same attitude they feel what president
00:08:20.400 trump's been doing has been very disrespectful so we do have i mean it's like between between
00:08:24.720 humans you know we're sort of is the oh this has not been the nice way of doing it we're slightly
00:08:30.720 miffed now and we're gonna you know we don't want to be pushed around so there is that element
00:08:36.480 but in principle if you have no tariffs on either side
00:08:41.760 basically each country still has to think is this um a healthy relationship and
00:08:50.160 i mean there's this long history and we're just you know president trump is being
00:08:55.680 quite um you know quite focused on this and willing to have a dramatic policy change because until now all
00:09:03.120 the presidents didn't touch this and they let the the state department and all the trade negotiators
00:09:09.840 work in line with standard trade um orthodox economics um and so there wasn't really hasn't
00:09:18.160 been much of an um dramatic um policy change but the end result has been essentially you know
00:09:27.040 previous administrations overseeing the transfer of labor of u.s jobs to china and that's really
00:09:34.640 essentially also been u.s policy and so the u.s policy has helped in making china very strong
00:09:40.640 because all the u.s companies were more or less encouraged yeah that's fine you do that
00:09:44.560 you know the environment was like that and so president trump is unusual because he's he doesn't
00:09:49.200 care about about all this economic orthodoxy he just sees the jobs going and he wants to reverse it
00:09:55.120 he sees and has seen since the 80s as we saw from that whole interview that there isn't
00:10:00.080 really quite a level playing field when it comes to tariffs and he's just saying hey let's let's uh
00:10:06.320 change that um but in my view there's a slight missing element and and that is
00:10:13.120 one one needs to combine that with a policy that sets the right incentives not not to dictate to
00:10:20.960 anyone at all no but to create the incentive structure for the private sector in the u.s
00:10:26.160 such that you will have still boosted high value added activities expanded in the u.s you want to
00:10:36.320 keep that you want to offshore essentially low value added activities that doesn't you know that's not
00:10:42.640 the big problem and i think where where to draw a line is the question and i think it's been drawn
00:10:49.440 at too high a level so that the u.s has has been quite uh you know successful in the it sector and
00:10:57.520 in software and and things like that but too much of the manufacturing has been offshore and that's
00:11:02.960 where president trump has a point but is this going to change is going to be reversed just through tariff
00:11:10.560 policy and perhaps even this agreement you know if you do this agreement zero zero then it's not going
00:11:15.040 to change actually you you think you don't think zero zero is going to make any difference for this
00:11:20.560 point on this point that really you'd like to have more jobs in the higher value added
00:11:26.720 manufacturing sector in the u.s doesn't create the more jobs here so it doesn't solve for that
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