Obvious economic and ethical reasons aside, reducing our dependency on Chinese goods will be a huge benefit for mitigating climate change. The carbon cost of poorly regulated manufacture, as well as shipping such large volumes of commercial products around the planet is tremendous.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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I wonder if this will have a bonus result of reducing Chinese counterfeit items on eBay and Amazon.
Maybe. That’s one of the economic motives I mentioned. China follows the principle of territoriality in IP protection, leading to outright infringement in every industry. When an outsourced product line has completed manufacture, the factory will make some modifications to cheapen material quality and begin producing counterfeits around copyright to flood the market, eventually diluting and undercutting the original manufacturer’s product line out of business.
Easy way to help with that is to not use Amazon.
That's not always possible, but I do avoid it when it's possible.
I know. No judgement, I just encourage people to ditch that thing whenever they can. I canceled my prime almost 2 years ago once I noticed their anti-union activities, and don't miss it. But every once in a while it's literally the only place I can find something.
Well, maybe not the tariffs on EVs and solar panels.
That would be true if domestic sales were waning due to constraint.
Good.
Edit: okay, I actually hate those shitty one word comments. Shouldn't have done it.
Good, because their poor standards of worker conditions and undercutting living wages elsewhere needs to be stopped. Good because, as much as I hate the idea of infinite patents or design trademarks, shitty counterfeits are a bigger problem. Good, because it was their undercutting of costs that led to horrible environmental impact even compared to other industrial nations.
And, it ended up with all of that destabilizing world affairs. Now, whether or not that's good is a matter of opinion, but it isn't something that will end well if left unchecked. There definitely needs to be a counterbalance to western hegemony, but China is not the answer to that problem imo. They just aren't willing to be good neighbors to their actual neighbors (unlike Canada, who are giving awesome neighbors) unless they capitulate. It would just be replacing the bad parts of western domination with different bad parts, less good parts, and more extreme versions of some of the bad parts.
China, much like many countries, is ready for the next revolution.
Temu has gone bankrupt overnight.
Good