Maggie's Farm

Not sure how devaluation plays into this. The issue isn't the relative value of yuan versus dollar. It's productivity. US workers are still capable of being the most productive in the world. As the article points out, China's firms have created 'productivity cities' as manufacturing plants. It's actually pretty impressive.

In order to compete, we'd have to not keep our money on a 'fair footing' (such a thing is nonsense), but make our firms more competitive.
Furthermore, devaluation of currency creates what? Inflation domestically (for China). Guess why China's having issues now? Their currency policy isn't exactly helping them, in fact it's making things worse. In fact, the Yuan has appreciated against the dollar over the last 20 some-odd years, and last year's devaluation was probably in line with market needs (though I prefer floating rates, China still thinks they can centrally plan shit). Only 10 years ago, the yuan was 8.5 per dollar versus 6.5 today, though 6.5 does factors in last year's devaluations.
Those devaluations weren't particularly big, either. They were 'big' in the sense of the single day moves, but over the 10 year span, it's a drop in the bucket.

China has bigger problems looming, though. Their mismanagement of their economy is starting to cause issues with their debt structure. If they can't service debt, they may have to devalue further just to keep servicing it....which carries other issues they will have to deal with.

Lowering corporate taxes won't cause manufacturing to return. It will allow corporations to start paying their taxes rather than seeking to avoid them, but it doesn't create a different productivity schedule for manufacturing.

Most importantly, it doesn't matter if things are made here or in China. You want iPhones made here? Great. Prepare to pay $500 or more for them. And you won't see quality gains. One of the benefits of the massive output of these Chinese plants is that while there are quality issues, most of them are cleared up quickly.
In the US, we spend more time clearing up quality issues before we even begin manufacture, which gives long run savings in long life-cycle manufacture, but when pipelines change every 6 months to a year due to upgrades and improvements, making those quality adjustments on the front end is more costly, because they have to be repeated every time there is a new product to pump out.

The article kind've addresses that when it talks about how the iPhone screen changed and how quickly the plant adjusted. This wasn't a quality issue, per se, but you can see how they are capable of fixing things.

People tend to think of trade as a 'war' in which one nation wins and the other loses. That's mercantilism and is outdated.

Modern economies rely on comparative and competitive advantage. While we may be sending $270 to China for an iPhone - which people think is 'bad' because we gave them our money and they have the manufacturing job - we now have the iPhone and all the productivity gains it offers. If those gains were not worth $270, then we wouldn't have made the purchase.

But China having our cash means they now have to spend dollars. Or they can hoard them. Or they can invest them.

So what have they done? They've invested in the US. Our balance of trade deficit is what people pay attention to. Nobody looks at our foreign investment surplus...

Then you should be able to explain to me what 'the issue' is? Rather than you also skirting it, perhaps you can enlighten me?

And, for what it's worth, while I can see how you'd make the error - I'm not 'conservative' at all. Not even remotely.

You said I missed the point entirely, then you say I'm doing fine.
Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If I missed the point - which perhaps I did, though I doubt it - then perhaps you can enlighten me so I can address the point?

I'll address those issues, and always have.

While I appreciate you gain pleasure from reading what you assume is a fallacy, I don't typically engage fallacy. You may have an opinion which allows you to think something is fallacy (which is fine, that's up to you). But your response is really just trolling. So I don't do that.

Oh, you're basing this on some kind of moral grounds?

I see no reason why that should even come into play.

I don't do hints. They are trolling. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

Also, yes, we did have that exchange.
I still fail to see where your issues lie on that point. Near as I can tell you seem to think there is a 'problem' of some kind with profit regardless of how it is achieved.

A trade imbalance is only an imbalance in trade. The balance then takes place elsewhere in the economy. The term "inbalance" is actually quite misleading to any economist worth his salt. The means of exchange is fine. How would you 'fix' it?

The rest of what you wrote isn't meaningful to me because I don't even know what you're implying.

Saying "I know" does not advance the discussion, but I can tell already that's not in your interest. So if that's how you prefer to troll, then so be it.

As for any of this being a moral issue, whether it's yours or not is immaterial.

You say there are some who are "electing" to not see the issue. Perhaps it's just that there is no issue. Or you've created an issue others don't see. Or the issue is there, but lying under the surface so that many others who are well-informed simply can't see it.

You take great pains to hide your thoughts.

As for the "regardless" statement - I made a similar point in our previous conversation. You chose to ignore it and moved past that point. I assumed I was correct. If I'm not, then tell me what kinds of profit are acceptable to you?

As I said, it seems you have a moral issue more than anything else.

Let's do a thought experiment.

You and I both have a garden. We both sell from our garden, and we both take seeds from our crops to plant next year.

The cost of man-hours for me to take the seeds out is better than yours. Let's say it's $10 and for you it's $15 in man-hour value.

You decide that you'll make money from me by 'subsidizing' your seed preparation, and you make more seeds and sell me my entire seed requirements for next year, but you ask for $7.

I recognize the value of this, so I stop collecting my own seeds, and purchase yours.

How did I lose?

Sounds pretty awful. To us.

To them, it's probably a huge step up in life.

But there are people who will say "capitalist exploitation" of these people. Ahem. They live in socialist/fascist China. Blame THEIR politicians, not our corporations.

More importantly, stop forcing our values on other nations. There's no doubt we've moved past this kind of lifestyle, in terms of work. We didn't even need legislation to do it - look at all the jobs you used to do as a kid that kids WON'T do anymore.

Find a kid to mow your lawn? I was lucky to have young men capable of doing it for 10 years or so, but now I'm back to the grind. Shovel the driveway? Even if there is a kid who's willing to do it, legislation in many states and towns makes their work illegal. But finding a kid willing to do it is incredibly hard.
Eventually even China will reach this point, and these factories will move someplace else. In the meantime, their government can allow (or force) this kind of labor.

But no, it's never coming back here until relative development is robotic enough to make it worthwhile. I suppose, at some point, 3D printing and just in time manufacture will make it possible to bring manufacturing back home, and most assembly will be robotic.

But after reading that article, all I can think about is some Democrat screaming "We are EXPLOITING THEM!!"