Escalation in China US trade war.

[ZenOps]

One more day.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48196495

Charts, because everyone loves charts. Personally I think you have to be crazy to order anything from the USA without checking China first. If the USA is only 3x more expensive, then start laughing - if its 10x more expensive - run for the door. Because everyone knows that if the USA landed a man the moon, everyone else can only land hamsters.

https://www.thetravelmagazine.net/ho...ump-hotel.html

[ZenOps]

By my estimation: Using a Big Mac as a economic indicator is a poor choice. You really want to do ballpoint pen.

A Bic Cristal or Papermate Inkjoy should cost about 7.5 US cents to design, mass manufacture produce, and ship. The retail price should be right around 9 cents, or more succinctly not quite two US nickels (a few grams of copper and maybe two grams of nickel) or one pre-1981 Canadian nickel. When you go to a Trump hotel and they hand you a Bic Cristal, you should know that its 9 cents.

This assumes that you can produce a million pens with only two supervisory humans and a fully automated pen factory.

A real Vanilla milkshake with shaved chocolate served by a human, should cost: About $5 (but not in nickels) Electric car? Should eventually hit $8,000 (in nickels) which also means that combustion engine cars may be worth less than that. A loaf of bread? Jebus knows Galen Weston made slaves of everyone in Canada, there is no way that a loaf of bread costs 20 Canadian nickels.

[JRSC00LUDE]

You have a great knack for taking potentially interesting conversations or topics and driving them into pointless oblivion in a single post.

[The_Penguin]

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The retail price should be right around 9 cents, or more succinctly not quite two US nickels (a few grams of copper and maybe two grams of nickel) or one pre-1981 Canadian nickel.

How many donuts is that?
U.S. donuts.

[ZenOps]

Not enough data for a nickel to doughnut comparison. You can do a nickel to coffee comparison though. And to add: The vanilla milkshake does of course come with cherry.

Personally I blame the USA current woes on too many "one offs" I mean, if you only produce one space vehicle that works once - what do you do when ten people want it? It becomes impossible to fill the order at any price. The proper course of action is not to have "retrievable" rocket boosters, but to produce 10,000 rocket boosters and use them each, once.

Its also worth noting that china is winning on touchscreen pens with replaceable tips. Not that they would sell 100 billion of them (like the Bic), but 1 billion is not out of line considering the pervasiveness of cellphones compared to paper notepads. USA millennials? No concept of what would be necessary to produce 10 Billion pens in a lifetime (very achievable and realistic goal) USA millennials opening a single can of tuna? I give it 50/50.

BTW: A nickel and tungsten carbide ball point are two of the hardest thing to manufacture (not tech related) from an energy cost standpoint and quality standpoint.

[roopi]

Trade war is imminent

[ZenOps]

Oh sheit, here it comes. Aliexpress and Ebay has a whole bunch of Chinese sellers who refuse to ship to Canada.

[JRSC00LUDE]

Good, it'll help climate change.

[ExtraSlow]

Just think how much this'll help small local businesses too! We should just ban international trade and we'd all be prosperous!

[Xtrema]

So Rush Hour 4 won't happen now?

[ZenOps]

USA is losing the solar panel war, badly.

Assuming that it takes as much coal energy in as out to produce a solar panel. Sounds stupid to an oilman, but assume "Bic Cristal" level production. If you can convert 5% into 5% solar year on year, you eventually won't have to do coal at all. And then you can start having solar manufacturing plants that heat silicon to 2000 degrees, using only solar energy - which is self replicating, and compoundable in interest. If you need only two people to produce 100 billion pens, then its reasonable to assume you might only need to shovel sand into one end of an automated factory, supervised by two people, and get solar panels out the other side.

People say that carbon is still abundant on earth, but consider that there are trillions of tons of silicon on earth. Each is a viable energy source, silicon just uses up more space and takes longer to hit equivalency.

Ultimately what I'm saying here is that since people don't use paper notepads as much anymore, convert one of those Bic Cristal factories into a solar panel factory. There - I just saved the planet, someone give a Nobel Prize.

That, and if you really wanted to, you could put the solar factory in Hawaii and melt the silicon with volcano power. Volcano!

[ercchry]

Steel and aluminum tariffs lifted, US wants Canada on their side after all?

[ZenOps]

Nah, its just favoritism jockeying. US flexing its dollar printing impunity. Bitcoin might go on an absolute tear.

[Xtrema]

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Steel and aluminum tariffs lifted, US wants Canada on their side after all?

The war is on.

China is now looking for Asian allys but most wants to play both sides to maximize profit.

[ZenOps]

In many ways its retarded to "Buy American" or "Buy Chinese". Realistically a lot of manufactured goods have no human hands upon them. If a human hand actually went into producing a Bic Cristal, it would cost a lot closer to $1 apiece. So in essence, it really doesn't matter who you buy from if you care about "supporting human labor" because the money will simply go to a robot - a robot that is owned by an international conglomerate. There is no human putting ink inside of ballpoint pens, or popping in the ball at the tip - its all precisely done a million times a day - by machine. Capitalism or communism means nothing to the machine, and it means nothing to me.

Modern cellphones are starting to become so automated in production, that its actually detrimental to have humans with their big fat greasy fingers - messing up a micron level manufacturing factory. The AI is quicker and more dexterous in fixing problems then relying on humans to try and figure it out.

I tend to buy from places that are honest, inexpensive and high quality. Sadly the USA has been lacking in all three areas. China tends to lack in honesty (but at least they don't claim to have landed on the moon with a human) I buy from the machine, a machine owned by 100 countries and manned by no humans - join me.

I can imagine they might stuff A13/Kirin 985 cellphones inside of cereal boxes, like solar calculators. That is the dream I dream of, a dream of machines so efficient in production and high quality - they have to give them away.

[speedog]

So is there a back door way for Canadians to make some money what with Trump increasing the China tariffs - bringing the shit into Canada and then sell it across the border to US consumers? Surely companies like Amazon have already looked at this angle, seems too easy.

[roopi]

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So is there a back door way for Canadians to make some money what with Trump increasing the China tariffs - bringing the shit into Canada and then sell it across the border to US consumers? Surely companies like Amazon have already looked at this angle, seems too easy.

Tarriffs/duties are based on where the product is made. If you import a Chinese product into Canada you pay Canadian duties and then if you export that product to the USA it gets hit again with duties by the USA. Only angle would be to do something illegal as in import it to Canada and then relabel it and export to the USA as a made in Canada product.

[ExtraSlow]

Smuggling is always possible, but you'll need a fast ship to make that Kessel run.

[pheoxs]

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Tarriffs/duties are based on where the product is made. If you import a Chinese product into Canada you pay Canadian duties and then if you export that product to the USA it gets hit again with duties by the USA. Only angle would be to do something illegal as in import it to Canada and then relabel it and export to the USA as a made in Canada product.

It could help manufacturing in Canada. Import cheap components from China and assemble here. Slap a Made in Canada sticker and ship to the US

[Xtrema]

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It could help manufacturing in Canada. Import cheap components from China and assemble here. Slap a Made in Canada sticker and ship to the US

You mean shits we have been doing for a decade or more and it's part of the reason of the NAFTA renegotiation.

Trump is stupid by moving the date back to Dec, basically signaling China that they got US by the ball on Christmas.