US To Delay China Tariffs on Some Products, Including Laptops, Cell Phones (reuters.com) 87
The Trump administration on Tuesday delayed imposing a 10% import tariff on laptops, cell phones, video game consoles and a wide range of other products made in China, in an abrupt pull-back from a hardline stance on Chinese trade. From a report: The U.S. Trade Representative's Office action was published just minutes after China's Ministry of Commerce said Vice Premier Liu He conducted a phone call with U.S. trade officials. The delay in the tariffs that had been scheduled to start next month provides some relief to retailers. Although most stores would have stocked their holiday merchandise before the earlier September deadline, some might have faced the tariffs for fill-in orders late in the holiday shopping season. "We're doing this for the Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers," President Donald Trump told reporters as he prepared to depart from New Jersey for an event in Pittsburgh.
Somebody chickened out (Score:5, Insightful)
But an orange chicken instead of the usual yellow.
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Tried a few different locations, and still the same soapy taste.
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Seems to lack the courage of their convictions, I think they call that YELLA!
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Nah, just massaging the financial markets, as everybody already posted.
Plus, *Holiday* season starts in a couple of weeks, don't want to upset that market.
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I think so far tho....it still is a bit down from past couple of weeks of drops.
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Winnie the Pooh 1 Garfield 0
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Trump: Tarrifs on china!
Left: OMG this maniac is going to ruin the economy!
Trump: NVM
Left: Hahaha, what a pussy he chickened out.
Re: Somebody chickened out (Score:3)
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How to make money on the stock market (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Buy stock in affected companies at a bargain.
3) Roll back previous announcement.
4) Sell rebounded stock (PROFIT!!)
You gotta believe someone in the Trump administration is making a killing in the stock market today.
The pattern is showing (Score:5, Interesting)
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When you consider how liquid his cabinet is (plenty of billionaires), there should be no surprise who the insiders are
Re:The pattern is showing (Score:5, Interesting)
Was there ever a question of his dishonesty and self-serving nature?
Re:The pattern is showing (Score:5, Interesting)
It informally was, but then 62 million people changed their minds about this issue and decided it should not be a condition of taking office. I think we should allow those people to explain their decision before we leap to any conclusions. Trump supporters, what would you say is the most compelling reason (the one that persuaded you) why presidents should not have to put their assets into a blind trust?
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Well, if the assets are doing business with foreign states and monarchies (or their agents), it has a good chance to run afoul of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 [wikipedia.org].
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No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.[
What is violated here? No title, present, or office allowed, and emoluments are salaries/payments for employment. What is the supposed violation here? Note that if you state "but emoluments, profit!", well, being in a blind trust does NOT eliminate that at all - the profits still are made, and there is no condition about "non-blind emoluments".
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It's long be established (and upheld by SCOTUS) that the intent of the clause is to protect American offices from foreign influence attempting to corrupt them through gifts and tit-for-tat arrangements. Since emoluments also covers payment for services, that includes having a foreign agent choosing to use an officer-owned business instead of a competitor.
Having a blind trust (or any other blinding mechanism) does not eliminate the profits, but it does reduce the corrupting foreign influence. A foreign agent
Re:The pattern is showing (Score:4, Informative)
Nowhere. It had been an informal requirement imposed upon candidates by the voters, whereby if you don't do that, then you get zero votes, because people have strong incentive to prevent government power from being abused. We know that lots of people in government have abused their power to rip us all off. It was through learning from our experiences, that in the 1970s it became the norm for candidates to show they had (and would continue to have, as long as they held office) no obvious conflict of interest. The ones who wouldn't do that, were rejected by voters.
Until recently.
Bu it had been a requirement. I am asking the kind of people who disagree with this informal requirement, why they see it as so unimportant. (And yes, just as you say, supplying tax records is pretty much the same issue.)
Ok, I must have failed to communicate my question. I am not saying that Trump voters need to learn from America's experiences with corruption. I am not proposing a law (though others are), where we give more power to the government to use on us. I am asking why Trump voters feel (or felt, at the time they placed their 2016 vote) what was learned from earlier corruption scandals isn't of value anymore. Trump voters once had the power to impose a certain level of transparency on candidates, but they gave it up. Why?
And of course the follow up to that: now that we've seen how a presidency goes without that requirement, does that change peoples' mind about enforcing it? i.e. would people vote for Trump again, even if he continues to maintain the appearance of corruption?
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Trump voters once had the power to impose a certain level of transparency on candidates, but they gave it up. Why?
First off, for several obvious reasons, Trump voters obviously trusted Trump more than Hillary Clinton, even more so during and after the Mueller investigation as it became clear that Trump really was the subject of a witch hunt and liberal media smear campaign with very sketchy beginnings which included spying during Trump's election campaign and defrauding of the FISA court. Before the election, Hillary was deleting emails under subpoena, and caught up in a number of conspiracies, while her husband (on
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Trump voters obviously trusted Trump
Nah, they just gave up on truth altogether and voted for the one who told them the best lies.
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The goal of our founders was to have a citizen government, and that was a good idea compared to having a "ruling class". The idea was that normal people would come in and serve for a few years, and then go back to their normal lives, having to live under the rules they created. Having someone put the things they worked hard for in a blind trust would:
A) be ineffectual - would it be that hard to let the trustee know what was going on
B) make the office even less desirable to successful people
As it is, we st
Re:The pattern is showing (Score:4, Insightful)
The goal of our founders was to have a citizen government, and that was a good idea compared to having a "ruling class". The idea was that normal people would come in and serve for a few years, and then go back to their normal lives, having to live under the rules they created. Having someone put the things they worked hard for in a blind trust would:
A) be ineffectual - would it be that hard to let the trustee know what was going on
Then it isn't a blind trust is it.
B) make the office even less desirable to successful people
So the only reason that a successful person would want to serve their country is if they can profit from it?
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62 million? But the US population is 350 million or so. Why should those 62 get to decide?
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What Trump has really done with the tariffs is given himself a knob with which to control the economy. If the economy starts to overheat, he can enact some tariffs and cool it down, or if it begins to cool down, he can relax some and let the trade go again.
For example, I think he turned up some screws on the tariffs to force the Fed to lower rates when they wouldn't do it simply for the asking. And, a week after they cut the rate, "oh I'm going to delay these tariffs" and the market pops back up 500 points.
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Trump reliable (Score:2)
The almighty dollar has spoken and Trump obeys.
People say he's erratic, but he turns to face the dollar signs like an obedient weathercock.
Hong Kong (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what policy changes governments around the world might make (if any) in the event that the protests in Hong Kong are violently crushed by the PLA. With smartphones everywhere, there would be much more footage available than was the case during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Incidentally are there any slashdot substitutes which still allow anonymous posting?
Was it really worth the cost of losing the positive contributions of people who needed to remain anonymous just to get rid of the APK spam? I mean, as long as people are reading at +1 it should be a non-issue.
Then again, the fact that there wasn't a story posted on the main page about the change isn't very encouraging... another site lost to a "safety and trust committee".
Re:Hong Kong (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally are there any slashdot substitutes which still allow anonymous posting?.
...wait - when did this happen?
Just tested - "Post Anonymously" is indeed broken as an option. WTF, Slashdot? a decade of GNAA crap, decades (plural now) of weak goatse-traps and stupid skinhead garbage, all of which was easily ignored and filtered out... but some weak-ass like APK was what tricked-off the AC option? Really?
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Yeah, yesterday was the first time I logged in since 2015 lol
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For me it seems to work. There was probably a mistake made and corrected by a webguru or what do you call them.
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Same.
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I heard that you have to be logged in to post anonymously now.
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Huh, I rather like that.
Posting Anon, but then if you shit up every comment section, it's easy for admins to tell who needs to fuck off.
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It's definitely better than letting everyone in anonymously. Now there is an account behind every Anonymous Coward.
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Yeah, I think the corporate owner of /. didn't want to see an 8-chan scenario, so they are directly tracking us all now
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They might not even have had a choice. Hosts and CDNs are probably updating the TOS to preclude anonymous commenting as we speak.
Re:Hong Kong (Score:4, Interesting)
It’s been notable that the discourse has improved considerably since the AC posting was stopped. From a mod point of view, I used to use almost all my points modding AC trolls down. The last time I got points recently, it was a pleasant surprise that most of the mods I did were modding up.
Not to mention a vast decrease in scrollling past the crap floods.
Works for me.
Re:Hong Kong (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the part that's killing me about it.
Philosophically, I think it's a bad thing for them to have disabled Anonymous Posting. There are a lot of situations I can think of where someone posting in good faith would want to not log in.
On the other hand, /.'s been so pleasant in the last week, that I'm hard pressed to miss the ACs, and not just the APK, Nazi spammer, Kendall-hater BS. AC posts definitely showed less civility than who posted while logged in. The conversations are better now, and I'm more willing to partake.
On the whole, it's probably a net-negative, but I'll take advantage of it while it lasts.
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It's interesting how much the ACs dragged even the logged in comments down. I'm really surprised it has such a noticeable effect, because most of the uncivil stuff I was seeing was from logged in users.
On the other hand I do miss some ACs, like the "drink!" guy. Yeah, I'm that vain, but it's a big ego boost to have your own personalized trolls. Speaking of which I haven't seen much of Mashiki lately.
Ideally there would be some way of having the AC option while not having it drag down the quality of discours
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I wonder what policy changes governments around the world might make (if any) in the event that the protests in Hong Kong are violently crushed by the PLA. With smartphones everywhere, there would be much more footage available than was the case during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
You are overestimate the importance of Hong Kong. Without mainland China's support and business, it is a dead city. The Chinese government would just need to seat back and let these frustrated (*) violent youngsters continue to ruin the city until the middle class with their million dollar condos getting enough of it and fighting back. Then they will learn a lesson of what democracy / populism will eventually turn into.
(*) Their frustrations are expected and understandable when they can make probably HK$10k
Re:Hong Kong (Score:5, Interesting)
Something like 60% of the cash flowing in and out of China goes through Hong Kong. If the HKEX crashes, there are likely hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, at stake. Beijing can't afford to let Hong Kong sink. It's the single most important piece of turf, finance-wise, in China.
Why do you think protesters are targeting the airport? They know the police won't open fire there, because to do so would pretty much lead to investors running for the exits. There'd be runs on Hong Kong banks. Heck, in the leadup to China's takeover, billions flowed out of Hong Kong out of fear that the takeover could lead to significant political changes. Beijing only placated those investors by a good deal of reassurance that Hong Kong, by and large, would continue much as it had under the British.
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Something like 60% of the cash flowing in and out of China goes through Hong Kong. If the HKEX crashes, there are likely hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, at stake. Beijing can't afford to let Hong Kong sink. It's the single most important piece of turf, finance-wise, in China.
Chinese companies can list their shares else where like London, New York, Shenzhen, or Shanghai. In fact, the most successful ones like Alibaba have done that.
Why do you think protesters are targeting the airport? They know the police won't open fire there, because to do so would pretty much lead to investors running for the exits.
Why would there be any difference opening fire at the airport (against violent protesters) vs else where in the city? The police won't open (real) fire only because they don't want to hurt people, like the French police did.
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>The police won't open (real) fire only because they don't want to hurt people
Tienanmen Square won't happen this time because they don't want to hurt people? Meanwhile, China is mobilizing a very large force in Shenzhen.
People are already getting hurt. With the military coming more people will get hurt.
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In a contest between China's economy and Jinping's ego, Jinping will go for his ego every time. A free HK, in the sense that he cannot reach in an remove enemies, is something that goes against his very nature. Given the corrupt apparatus of the CCP, there's no entity in China to stop him. They'll simply lock up anyone who fails to agree he's Emperor and ordained by the Heavens to screw anyone to his heart's content.
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Without mainland China's support and business, it is a dead city.
Before they got slagged off back to China they were doing great! Not only great, they were doing phenomenally well. Hong Kong would probably prosper more if they were able to gain their independence. (which is never going to happen, China is trying to expand their territory, they're not going to give any up).
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Before they got slagged off back to China they were doing great! Not only great, they were doing phenomenally well.
Hong Kong grew by becoming a middle man between China and the West. In the early days of PRC, China was under heavy western sanctions, like what Venezuela and Iran get today, so it got all its modern supplies through Hong Kong; the western world kept silence about these "illegal" trades and finances because the Brits made money from that. In fact, PLA could have just crossed the border in 1949 when it took over all of rest of China, but the leadership decided not to in order to leave this western window ope
Re:Hong Kong, about to get real (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/ascottpede... [twitter.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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China thrives because of HK, not in spite of it.
That used to be true, no longer.
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Was it really worth the cost of losing the positive contributions of people who needed to remain anonymous just to get rid of the APK spam? I mean, as long as people are reading at +1 it should be a non-issue.
Some of us read at -1 because either we're moderating, or because we enjoy some of the sideband discussions.
But I do not miss faggot guy. Or nazi guy Or swastika guy, or you-know-who, or any of that rot.
Put another way, I wish slash would allow anon posting to logged-in users, and do away with all the other miscreants. For every one decent AC it seems we had dozens bad ones.
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Put another way, I wish slash would allow anon posting to logged-in users, and do away with all the other miscreants. For every one decent AC it seems we had dozens bad ones.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of those people were really one and the same person. I'm glad that we don't have to deal with all that nonsense anymore, but, I agree AC had his value. I like your solution. Allow AC for logged-in users and if they abuse it, ban them.
The US of A blinked...!! (Score:2)
... "We're doing this for the Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers," ...,
As if he didn't know this was the to be the case at the very outset...
Guess what: The US of A blinked, and they blinked first!! Who would have thought things would turn out this way, listening to POTUS in the past few months?
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The US is a joke on the world stage. Putin got his money's worth out of trump....
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I just think that folks around the world are taking a huge yawn when USA "barks."
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I wonder how much Russia spent on the 2016 US election. Or on Brexit for that matter.
I bet it was the bargain of the century considering what they got out of it.
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Me. With this moron at the helm anything can happen.
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Are you sure about that?
FTS: The U.S. Trade Representative's Office action was published just minutes after China's Ministry of Commerce said Vice Premier Liu He conducted a phone call with U.S. trade officials.
Trump said some things. So what. Wait a week and see what comes of it.
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The US of A didn't blink, Asshole blinked. As an example of how he views the world, his cronies widely believe that he's objecting to being called a racist, not because of anything it implies, but rather it taints the Trump "brand".
just in case? (Score:2)
just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers
Tariffs always impact US customers. Even if the Chinese absorb it, that is just a price reduction they can no longer do.
In addition, the idea of returning tariffs to US citizens in tax cuts is just a transfer of money from the lower income to upper income. This next round of tariffs would disproportionately hit people with lower incomes as it will hit cheaper goods. They depend on cheap Chinese products to stretch their dollars, but their tariff payments will just be returned to people who pay taxes.
In fact
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In addition, the idea of returning tariffs to US citizens in tax cuts is just a transfer of money from the lower income to upper income.
Well, that's essentially what the federal government is for.
People make such a big fuss of Trump (Score:2)
But in the end, it really feels as if, just like many other politicans, he doesn't really do anything. The leftists cry, the rightists worship him, but in the end, Trump, Obama, whatever, aren't they all just puppets of the CEOs? Is there even a point to democracy?
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"The purpose of the Office of the President is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it".
- Douglas Adams
I'll get modded down as troll, but what the hell (Score:2)
But in the end, it really feels as if, just like many other politicans, he doesn't really do anything. The leftists cry, the rightists worship him, but in the end, Trump, Obama, whatever, aren't they all just puppets of the CEOs? Is there even a point to democracy?
He seems to not be doing much because people within and outside his administration keep telling him that his ideas are illegal, unconstitutional, or unenforceable. He's managed to get a few things done, one or two I actually agree with (bumpstock ban), but most of his policies and proclamations either get walked back (usually for not being hardline enough like his initial reactions re gun control before he meets with the NRA, or his aides telling him something really isn't a good idea) or blocked by the co
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"I don't think he would have completely eradicated bipartisanship" Your faith in Bernie is certainly larger than mine. I think he's just as much a dolt as Trump.
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> completely eradicated bipartisanship and temperate political discourse as the Trump presidency has.
Bipartisanship was dying way before Trump joined the scene. Trump was a response. He was not a random happen stance out of the blue.
Odd Date (Score:2)
"We're doing this for the Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers," President Donald Trump told reporters
Why delay tariffs until Sunday, Dec. 15? Seems like an odd date when Christmas in on Wednesday, Dec. 25. Why not just delay them until Jan. 1?
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He probably doesn't know when Christmas and New Year are.
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Because pretty much anything that is going to be purchased from China for the holiday season has been purchased by December 15th.
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BUT, Dec 15th will not make him 'grinch'.
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Apple stock spikes ... (Score:2)
Apple stock spiked [cnbc.com] after the tariffs were delayed.
Market manipulation?
Favoritism?
Game of Chicken?
Plain stupidity and not knowing what to do?
You decide ...
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Tim Apple called Trump and explained to him how tariffs would hurt iPhone 11 sales leading into the holidays, and would give Samsung a price advantage since Samsung smartphones aren't made in China and thus not subject to any of Trump's tariffs.
gutless. hopefully, he will change (Score:2)
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"It isn't the Chinese Trade War" (Score:1)
Is this an admission that tariffs are paid by... (Score:2)
US consumers?
If the Chinese were paying the tariffs, why would it be necessary to roll back tariffs on products that people give each other for Christmas?
Yeah, don't buy that crap about "other people" paying tariffs. It's you and me that pay them, it's just a tax by another name.
https://www.marketplace.org/20... [marketplace.org]