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textiles trade war america / europe will lose to china

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Don Rizzle:
america has taken the heavier stance in the trade war by imposing import quotas and threatening a 27.5% tarriff on all chineese imports, while europe is only trying to ease the transition after the multi fibre agreement expired at the begining of the year and have be working closely with china to do this. America is also trying to get china to revalue their currency (something they have been trying to do for a while) but as china pointed out any revaluation should not be linked to the current textiles row.

but what is so wrong with all this? america and europe have been forcing developing countries not to place import tarriffs and quotas on their goods for years, in a system which keeps them poor and us rich. now the tables have turned slightly maybe we can do some rethinking in the way we conduct international trade? this is the main reason african's live in poverty (as well as bad governence). At the end of the day china has every right to export as much as it likes and would win any case referred to the WTO hopefully we can flush out these double standards the devloped world has, something i can give Gorden Brown credit for trying to bring about change with the way we trade with africa.

We live in a time where most of the world's countries are independent and are self governed, there is no superior human species and we should all be working from the same rule book....

Don Seer:

its not about double standards. its about looking after #1.

were the tables turned these countries _would_ do the same to us..

Don Rizzle:
the developed world is hoplesly innefficient at low skilled / labour intensive manufacturing so why pay way over the odds if it can be produced at a fraction of the price else where? we've had our industrial revelution and now that in decline in our countries, we need to be innovative and use our superior knowledge base (from far higher investment in education and human capital) to be the drivers of change and the providers of service based products. the sooner we realise this we can properly prepare for the future and the long term prosperity of all nations, if not it will be our downfall because they've already started taking over.

Don Seer:
yeah its because these countries dont have the same laws the developed ones have to protect their workers, the environment, have a minimum wage etc.. now while these are "good things" (tm) the playing field isnt level.

thing is.. people over here wont even work manual jobs anymore..

by thte time i left school in 92 the tories virtually abolished things like YTS / trade apprenticeships by making them inaccessible or very costly to employers. they created this skills shortage.

thats why we had a big decline in trade skills like carpentry, plumbing etc.. labour are trying to resurrect apprenticeships.. a few years ago i never heard people saying that wanted to be chippies and that like.. but now younger lads i talk to are actually interested in going into this kind of work.

back then all the people i know of who didnt stay in education ended up working in retail.. and most still do as they have no skills to get anything else.

Don Rizzle:
bad examples seer, both of those cannot be done abroad, we will always need people to work in our shops and to build / fix our properties, the reason lots of people want to be a plumber, chippy, bricky etc. is because the money is good due to the lack of this 'skilled' labour, it also appeals to those who don't the idea of further education and would rather take a more vocational approach. its simple supply and demand theory at work.

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