For years now we have all been feverishly buying cheaper goods from China so that we could fill our triple car garages to overflowing. I have long maintained that this was not so much a good thing as a self-defeating thing. Doing a deal with the devil so to speak. Now developed countries are starting to become increasingly unhappy with the unfair habits of our chinese “partners”: we buy all their stuff and they steal all our good ideas and intellectual property, our music and even our books. Not only that, but they are evidently giving us back acid rain and other damaging environmental by-products in the bargain. We westerners have been dumb, self-indulgent and lazy. We have brought this on ourselves. And the Chinese have been busily sucking away our economic strength, leaving us with plastic junk in exchange for our life savings and the planet's resources.
Today at last it seems the rumblings are building, and necessary but painful trade disputes are coming to the fore. The Associated Press today reports that in addition to the April 10 copyright case that the US filed against China, the EU and Mexico are also adding their complaints to the intellectual property infringments that have been rampant and largely ignored so far. See EU, Mexico Seek to Join China WTO Talks: http://www.cnbc.com/id/18414672/for/cnbc/print/1/displaymode/1098/
Bottom line: This piper has to be paid. More of this will have to come. Soon we will have to acknowledge the true cost of all the useless stuff we have purchased on credit.
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I agree…I think many won't be suprised at the news and the renewal of protectionist policies given the length of time the abuses have gone on.
Do you feel this will be the catalyst for the next contraction or could protectionist concerns be overshadowed by the $3.00 per gallon bugaboo? C.
I see these issues as a compilation of things that will eventually break the camels back. Either way I see less consumption, and it seems a painful correction period my follow. I would love to see another way out.