Just because a country is a democracy does not mean it will be a reliable trading partner. Democracies can easily swing from free market to protectionist trade policies -- and back. Outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to any single country is an incredibly risky idea.
A non democratic country has fewer checks and balances on these things than the ones that do. But you are right, that's not a guarantee at all. Just a matter of degree.
In the US both tariffs and sanctions can be (and are) unilaterally imposed by the president.
Sanctions are crystal clear thanks to the IEEPA [1]. The president needs only declare an emergency, which is typically done in the exact same executive order imposing the sanctions. We're currently under at least 42 different national "emergencies", of which 34 are to impose sanctions. [2] The legal basis for tariffs is less clear, but in effect no different. Trump's tariffs [3] were all passed unilaterally, appealing to all sorts of acts that grant the president conditional tariff powers, but where the condition is framed in a broad enough way to include nearly any rationale.
But also consider that an act of Congress could modify IEEPA or repeal a specific tariff or sanction that the US president enacts. Perhaps that's a rare event, but those checks and balances are in place.
In China, Xi can decide to impose tariffs or sanctions, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
I think this issue is what really cuts to the matter. China, on paper, has a similar system in place. Their system is based on tiered elections. You elect a local representative (who has significant power), who then elects (alongside other elected representatives) their representative. And this continues on up to the top where you have the ~3000 members of the National People's Congress who ultimately elect the president. The... NPC.
The NPC has immense power. They can override anything Xi Jinping does, and even have the power to completely recall him, or amend the constitution. But of course this won't happen. They have a one-party system with relatively minimal internal conflict. So even though the NPC is genuinely powerful and has every check and balance imaginable, they will not be using them.
Democracies aren’t beholden to the ego of an authoritarian. Free trade for free countries, and a tyrant tax for authoritarian regimes should be the norm if we want human centered capitalism. https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2023
Free Trade for Free Countries is a decent slogan! I’ve long been disappointed that this isn’t the mainstream position. Anything else feels very hypocritical (for the US).
Eh, economic engagement with unfree countries got us south korea, Taiwan, probably more in eastern Europe: Albania comes to mind. Afaict disengagement only worked with south Africa.
1. Democratic countries that mostly abide by international law and the rules-based order.
2. Non-democratic countries that also mostly abide by international law and the rules-based order, because they benefit from it more than not doing so.
3. Non-democratic countries that reject international law and the rules-based order.
The US trades with #1 and #2, and was hoping to make China into #2. But unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, China is in the grey area between #2 and #3 and probably trending toward #3.
2 works for small countries, if countries are large enough they can afford themselves to be a 3, which otherwise is reserved for failed states and outright dictatorships.
What good is free trade is China's navy gets to countrol shipping routes? That's one card they are playing. The other one is controlling Russia in exchange for Taiwan.
They understood that building cheap and in great numbers is the key to success. They did this with the J-7 and now the J-10.
The USA also got rid of Trump peacefully.
The Belarussians tried to get rid of Lukashenko and failed. And now their territory is being used to commit war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.
In democracies voters can fix their mistakes without risking their life and freedom.
Obviously you haven't lived in a dictatorship. Spend a few years in Russia or China or Turkey or Iran and then come back with your hypothesis about the raw truth.
Have you? Honestly, pompous "democracies" aren't fundamentally different to the rest of the world, when you start actually experiencing the day to day living.
There are lots of "dictatorships" where living is better then in lots of other "democracies", but this is not something you'll figure out from your internet feed, you really have to actually travel.
Exactly. The answer is not so clear cut black and white. Centralized governments tend to be more efficient but lack the checks and balances of a democracy. Singapore, for example, is a good showcase for centralized government.
There are other, more recent and more fitting examples you could choose if you want to use a specific politician.
You could also have used research that shows that people in general support or reject policies based on what party they think came up with them and not based on the (sometimes quite obvious ahead of time) consequences of those policies.
Except this isn't true. Trump was voted into power by the lower middle class simply for having rhetoric that was different from the status quo. He was "real" and his style largely resonated with an america who was tired of politicians acting fake and tired of digging through all the complexity of the economy and politics to figure out what was wrong with the country that caused them to work two jobs just to support themselves.
Trump instead lowered taxes for the rich. He was one of the rich, and he served himself. It was his rhetoric and dramatic conversational style that essentially caused people to unknowingly vote against their self interest.
I apologize for using the word "stupid" here. People and voters aren't stupid. Trump, however, was indeed an example of people not using the best strategy in the name of their self interest.
Just because a country is a democracy does not mean it will be a reliable trading partner. Democracies can easily swing from free market to protectionist trade policies -- and back. Outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to any single country is an incredibly risky idea.