Tag: free trade

Pay Now or Pay More Later

The Chinese Global Times points out some of the obstacles that are facing the USA’s attempt to bring back the semiconductor industry:

The substantial losses incurred by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) factory in the US state of Arizona illustrate both the consequences of ignoring market logic and the deep-seated difficulties the US faces in its attempt to forcibly restructure global semiconductor supply chains through political intervention. TSMC’s Arizona facility incurred a staggering loss of nearly NT$14.3 billion ($441 million) in 2024, the largest loss since the establishment of the US factory, Taiwan-based media outlet Economic Daily News reported on Monday, citing TSMC’s latest Annual General Meeting Report to shareholders. By contrast, TSMC’s factory in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province earned nearly NT$26 billion last year.

This financial disparity goes beyond a simple comparison of operational efficiency; it underscores the challenges of replicating TSMC’s traditional profitability model in the US, a market plagued by high costs and a fragmented supply chain.

TSMC’s Arizona struggles were predictable. It is no secret that the decision to build chip manufacturing plants in the US was never driven by commercial viability but by geopolitical pressure under the CHIPS Act. There are multiple causes for TSMC’s losses in Arizona. While the site has been in volume production since late 2024, the trajectory of financial deficits indicates that its problems are not temporary. 

A key factor is the disruption of the supply, industry and market chains. The semiconductor industry is a highly complex and intricate system where upstream and downstream companies are closely interdependent.  While the US excels in chip design, it lags significantly behind Asia, especially East Asia, in terms of the complete supply chain needed for manufacturing. TSMC’s Arizona factory relies heavily on importing key components and raw materials, which not only drives up logistics costs but also extends the supply cycle. Any hiccup in the supply chain can lead to production standstills.

All of these issues, problems, and challenges are real. And yet, what is the alternative? There is no alternative, unless the USA is willing to become dependent upon either a self-reliant USSR or the global manufacturing giant China for all of its digital devices?

The point is not efficiency or minimum cost; it’s the misplaced focus on efficiency and lowered costs that created this dilemma for the USA in the first place. The point is national sovereignty, particularly when war is increasingly going to be decided by large-scale high-tech drone manufacturing. It’s important to take market logic into account, but it’s even more important to avoid confusing market logic with national best interest.

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Who are the Reactionaries Now?

As comically unprincipled as conservatives are, liberals are even worse. Specifically, 2.86 times worse.

Support for free trade among American liberals has more than doubled since Donald Trump won his second term as US president in November, a study has suggested. During the election campaign, Trump accused America’s trade partners of ripping off the country and vowed to impose harsh duties on them. On April 2, he made good on his threat, announcing new “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly 90 countries, saying that it would raise revenues and boost the number of jobs in the US.

After global markets reacted by dropping sharply, the president put most of the tariffs on hold for 90 days, reducing them to a baseline rate of 10%. However, the pause does not apply to China, whose exports to the US are now subject to tariffs of up to 145% amid an ongoing tit-for-tat trade war.

A poll by Polarization Research Lab, first published by the Financial Times and actively shared by social media users on Friday, has suggested that “American attitudes towards free trade have rapidly polarized” over the past several months.

In early 2024, there was some 20% support for unrestricted exports and imports among both liberals and conservatives, the study said. However, the divide on the issue between the groups, which appeared in the run up to the election, has increased dramatically since Trump’s victory, it said. According to the poll, more than 40% of leftists surveyed now say that they “strongly approve” of free trade.

Meanwhile, the number of conservatives who support free trade has decreased, albeit not as sharply, with some 13% of them still favoring it, the study suggested.

In other words, 20 percent of liberals now SUPPORT the nonsensical, societally-destructive concept of free trade solely because President Trump is against it. Conversely, only 7 percent of former free trade-supporting conservatives have changed their mind on the topic.

A pox on both their retarded houses.

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Importing Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry

There is a lot more going on in the trade war between the USA and China than just escalating tariff rates. The Chinese are obviously concerned that the US is going to essentially import all of Taiwan’s most valuable intellectual capital.

In response to media query on concerns on the Taiwan island over the US hollowing out its semiconductor industry are growing, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said that the concerns of Taiwan’s industry are not groundless. TSMC has long become a political pledge of the DPP authorities’ attempts to seek “Taiwan independence” by leaning on the US. It is only a matter of time before Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is handed over by Lai Ching-te, who is a “professional traitor of Taiwan.”

According to Reuters reports, TSMC and Intel recently discussed a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture to operate the US chipmaker’s factories. TSMC will take a 20 percent stake in the new company. Taiwan’s major chipmaker United Microelectronics and US-based GlobalFoundries are looking into the possibility of a merger.

As hard as it is to build, it falls as quickly as a spark sets hair on fire. If the DPP authorities are allowed to continue down the dangerous path of selling out Taiwan and ruining Taiwan, Taiwan’s industrial sector and the public will not only lose their current jobs, but also the opportunities for future development, said Zhu.

This is where trade war can lead to actual war. Remember, what President Trump is attempting to do is set up the USA in the best possible position for when the current international trade regime collapses entirely. Getting Taiwanese semiconductor companies to move to the USA would be a major coup, and it’s obviously one that the Chinese authorities will seek to prevent.

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Trade Deficit = Whip Hand

Donald Trump makes the textbook economics explicit:

The countries that deem US tariffs on their goods to be too high can just stop doing business with America altogether, President Donald Trump has suggested. He further insisted that his latest trade policies have made the US “strong,” bringing “billions of dollars a day” into its coffers.

On Wednesday, the US president slapped stiffer “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly 90 nations, only to announce a 90-day pause and a “substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%,” in a post on his Truth Social platform several hours later. The pause however does not apply to China, with which the US has engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of ever-higher tariffs, with most of Beijing’s imports now subject to a 145% duty.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump proclaimed that “ultimately, we pretty much can do what we want to do. We can set the tariff, and they can choose not to deal with us, or they can choose to pay it,” he explained, asserting that “if they think it’s too high, they don’t have to do business with us.”

It’s a simple and obvious power equation. When you have nothing to lose, and you’re the one who owns the market in which everyone is interested, then you’re in control. No country with a trade surplus with the USA has any leverage at all, because the US is obviously better off not trading with it than continuing to trade with it on the basis of the system that has impoverished and hollowed-out the US economy.

This is why the threats of returning the favor are so empty and stupid. The USA would BENEFIT from pure autarky, so trade restrictions are not a viable threat. The President’s move is brilliant, because it not only protects the US markets, it prevents US companies from leaving the USA as well.

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Mailvox: Vox Dai Responds

Edward Feser wrote a critique of President Trump’s new tariffs and his trade policy. A reader asked ChatGPT to respond to his critique as if it was me. And apparently AI now does non-fiction nearly as well as it does fiction.

1. Feser’s Overemphasis on Prudential Moderation over Existential Necessity

Vox Day might begin by pointing out that Feser’s argument is essentially one of technocratic prudence—tariffs might be useful in moderation, if well-targeted, in the right economic climate, with good timing, and clear justification. Vox would call this academic dithering in the face of civilizational crisis. From his view, America is not merely suffering a mild imbalance of trade—it is being gutted by decades of globalist betrayal that have systematically offshored its manufacturing capacity, hollowed out its industrial base, and turned its working class into wage-serfs of the service economy.

“Feser speaks as if we are tweaking dials on a functioning machine. The machine is broken. Or more accurately, it’s been sabotaged.”

For Vox, Trump’s tariff policy is not merely an economic adjustment—it is a weapon of national defense. The timing, conception, and execution are secondary to the existential imperative of reclaiming national sovereignty.

2. Feser’s Appeal to Order Is Misplaced When the Existing Order Is Corrupt

Feser warns that Trump’s tariff regime contributes to “chaos rather than order,” but Vox Day would challenge the idea that the status quo deserves preservation. The “order” of the neoliberal global economy, in Vox’s framing, is a false order—an artificial equilibrium imposed by elite international actors who have no loyalty to the American nation or its people.

“There is no ‘order’ in a system that rewards financial speculation over production, that imports the labor force of the Third World to lower wages, and that treats citizens as mere consumers.”

Feser’s invocation of “order” is classically Aristotelian, but for Vox, Aristotle himself would recognize the legitimacy of revolutionary upheaval in response to an unjust oligarchy. In that light, disruption is not vice but virtue.

3. Misdiagnosing Trump’s Popular Support as Fanaticism

Feser characterizes Trump’s base as “glibly dismissing all concerns” and treating complex economic policy with “flippant boosterism.” Vox would see this as an elitist dismissal of populist wisdom. Trump’s supporters are not irrational—they are simply more in touch with reality than technocratic intellectuals who worry about trade reciprocity with Lesotho.

“It is not ‘flippant’ to support a policy that seeks to restore your community’s livelihood. It is not ‘unserious’ to recognize that the system has failed and to back the only leader willing to tear it down.”

Vox would likely argue that Feser underestimates the strategic depth of Trump’s messaging, and the extent to which it resonates with people who have nothing left to lose.

4. Feser’s Focus on Legality Ignores the Regime Question

Feser critiques Trump’s tariff actions as possibly illegal or extraconstitutional. Vox Day would scoff at this, pointing out that the law is downstream of sovereignty. If the regime in question is illegitimate—unaccountable, globalist, hostile to the nation—then adherence to its procedures is not a moral good.

“The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The post-WWII economic order is not sacred. If reclaiming control requires bending the rules written by those who sold us out, so be it.”

Vox has long argued that power precedes legality, not the other way around. Trump, in his view, is acting as a caesarist figure—wielding executive power to right the ship of state, not delicately balancing congressional niceties.

5. Feser’s Economic Assumptions Are Still Liberal, Even If Postliberal

Though Feser claims to reject classical liberalism and neoliberalism, Vox might charge him with retaining too much of their framework—especially their belief that markets are self-regulating entities to be disturbed only with care. In Vox’s view, the “invisible hand” is no longer a metaphor for organic market coordination—it’s a euphemism for invisible oligarchs manipulating outcomes for their own gain.

“Tariffs aren’t ‘inefficient’ if the market itself is rigged. Free trade isn’t moral if it’s enforced by military alliances, IMF dictates, and offshoring subsidies.”

Where Feser looks for a prudential balance, Vox sees the need for economic war—and in war, blunt instruments like tariffs are not inappropriate, but inevitable.

6. Missing the Meta-Political Stakes

Ultimately, Vox would say that Feser misses the forest for the trees. This isn’t about the comparative merits of tariff rates or whether poor island nations are treated fairly. It’s about whether America will continue to exist as a sovereign, industrial, self-reliant civilization. That is not a question that can be solved through abstract appeals to distributist theorists or cautious policy think-pieces.

“You don’t use a scalpel to excise a gangrene-stricken limb. You use an axe.”

I would say that hits six for six, even if some of the wording is a little different than I might have chosen. I do love that reinterpretation of Smith’s Invisible Hand, though. I’ll see if it missed anything and add it in a subsequent post; I suspect Mr. Feser still subscribes to now-disproven comparative advantage theory on the basis of the points he raises, but I don’t actually know that. But if he does, obviously that would be the very first point I would raise, given my conclusive disproof of it, to say nothing of Ian Fletcher’s.

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104 and Counting

Tariffs on Chinese goods are going to 104 percent.

China now faces another 50% in tariffs after Beijing missed a noon deadline to withdraw the retaliatory import taxes it imposed on the United States.

The new tariffs will go into effect at 12:01 am, the White House said. That brings the total tariffs on all goods from China coming into the United States to 104%.

Trump placed a 34% increase on China when he announced his tariff plan on Liberation Day. That was on top of 20% import taxes rolled out earlier this year on Beijing.

The president, on Monday, pledged another 50% tariffs after Beijing responded to his tariff threat with a 34% increase on U.S. goods coming into China.

Well, the Chinese can’t say they weren’t warned. I warned them, on their state TV, nearly nine years ago, that President Trump would wage, and would win, a trade war against them. None of the Chinese or Hong Kong economists agreed, of course, but what was obvious then is even more obvious now.

When you’re running a trade surplus, you can’t win a tariff battle. Reciprocal tariffs are not a viable weapon for the country doing most of the exporting, because the importing country benefits from protecting its manufacturers.

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The Ultra-Rich Condemn Robin Hood

A host of American financiers and billionaire investors have criticized President Donald Trump over the sweeping tariffs he announced last week, calling the measures “poorly advised” and warning of serious consequences for the US economy.

In other news, the American Society for Surprise Sex condemned the President’s new executive action establishing stronger penalties for rapists, with automatic life-in-prison for anyone convicted of sexual assault on a minor. ASSS spokesman George “Rape Rape” Martin decried the measure, calling it: “poorly conceived” and warning that it would have a depressive effect on novelists who are struggling to complete their books.

This meme fairly well characterizes the state of popular and media discourse about the tariffs.

Free trade is an absolute evil and an obvious lie. Both Ian Fletcher and I have conclusively, and separately, proven that it cannot deliver the promised benefits while the costs will eventually be unsupportable for any nation. If, for some reason, you are still a believer in the concept of free trade, I suggest reading my three-part critique of Henry Hazlitt’s orthodox case for free trade, in which I point out the multiple errors in the argument that was presented as the best possible case for free trade.

If you want more detailed demolitions of the concept, read WHY FREE TRADE DOESN’T WORK by Ian Fletcher and ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE by me and Dr. James D. Miller, PhD.

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China Hits Back

Even though the trade war is not the war that China can win right now.

China will soon impose an additional 34 per cent tariffs on all American imports in retaliation for Donald Trump’s 34 per cent levy. Beijing announced the measure today, the most serious escalation in a trade war with Trump that has fed fears of a recession and triggered a global stock market rout.

The new tariff, which comes into effect on April 10, matches the rate of the ‘reciprocal’ tariff imposed by Trump this week. The levies are in addition to the existing tariffs already imposed on US goods.

US exports to China totalled $143.5 billion last year, according to Office of the US Trade Representative data. Oilseeds and grains, including soybeans, machinery and aerospace products were America’s top exports to the country. The US imported $438.9 billion worth of goods from China last year, with top imports including electrical and electronic equipment, machinery, toys, and plastics.

I don’t know why China is doing this, since the balance of trade surplus means that the more US-China trade declines, the more it will hurt China rather than the USA. All I can think is that China isn’t actually concerned about the inevitable trade war, but is more interested in gradually turning up the heat in a conflict that it knows to be unavoidable.

Time would appear to be on China’s side in this regard. It has been 25 years since Bill Clinton announced the United States-China Relation Act of 2000 that opened the floodgates of US-China trade.

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It’s Just the Opening Bid

The “tariff rates” to which the God-Emperor 2.0 utilized to generate his newly-announced tariffs aren’t actually anything of the sort.

Flexport’s team was able to reverse engineer the formula the Administration used to generate the “reciprocal tariffs.” It’s quite simple, they took the trade deficit the US has with each country and divided it by our imports from that country.

This makes a lot more sense, because Switzerland doesn’t have a 61 percent tariff on anything. Which means that we’re in the realm of rhetoric here, not dialectic, and I suspect what the God-Emperor intends is for everyone to simply accept a 10-12 percent tariff rate without any reciprocating tariffs on their own imports.

I’ll admit, I’ve seldom been more wrong than seeing the initial tariffs being graduated UK-EU-CH instead of the other way around, as I was expecting. But Trump’s usual tactic is to slap his interlocutor into accepting his framework, then offering a much more palatable deal that would have looked unattainable before the metaphorical slap in the face.

Regardless, he’s doing the right thing if he wants to rebuild America’s industrial capabilities again.

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The Trump Tariffs

They’re hitting Switzerland harder than we expected, and the UK considerably less than we expected, but this will not interrupt our plans nor is it likely to change our book prices. If we have to, we can obviously increase our manufacturing in the USA, but some of the improvements in the coming payment systems should cover most of the increased costs for us. And, as with all things Trump, wait two weeks before attempting to analyze anything.

Regardless, we’re on top of it, we’re prepared for it, and we’ll deal with it in whatever way least disrupts our subscribers.

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