Yeah, if you need help finding them, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Cities that could've been or could have been even greater
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Yeah, if you need help finding them, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I'm looking at the causes. The effects are, naturally, delayed. Especially when we focus on when they become very obvious.
If we look at the Japanese economic miracle -- that started in the '50s, and their shift to massive exports came in the '60s. But the USA actually experienced the great flood of Japanese imports in the '70s & '80s, and the public perception of it peaked in the '90s (see: loads of movies with a "Japan becomes the world's foremost superpower" released back then)... when the Japanese economic machine was actually already grinding to a halt.
The results are delayed relative to the causes, and the perception of the public is delayed relative to the results. But if you really want to change things... go back to the causes. (Which is also why I wrote that the earlier any 'America First' policies are implemented, the less drastic they have to be.)
History Learner
Well-known member
I just don't see any evidence to blame Japan for the rise of the Rust Belt; U.S. industrial employment was still rising until 1978 and thereafter was stable for decades. I can understand arguing delayed effects, but 30 years rather boggles the imagination if we are assuming profit motive, which tends to be implicit in any Globalization argument. The real kicker was China, and the decline of U.S. companies making investments in capital goods like industrial robots:
Of particular importance is China’s emergence as a major exporter, which US leaders encouraged. A pair of papers by economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, found that the parts of the US hit hard by Chinese import competition saw manufacturing job loss, falling wages, and the shrinking of their workforces. They also found that offsetting employment gains in other industries never materialized.
Another important paper by this team of economists, along with MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price, estimated that competition from Chinese imports cost the US as many as 2.4 million jobs between 1999 and 2011.
Why did China have such a big impact? In their 2016 study, economists Justin Pierce and Peter Schott argue that China’s accession to the WTO in 2001—set in motion by president Bill Clinton—sparked a sharp drop in US manufacturing employment. That’s because when China joined the WTO, it extinguished the risk that the US might retaliate against the Chinese government’s mercantilist currency and protectionist industrial policies by raising tariffs. International companies that set up shop in China therefore enjoyed the benefits of cheap labor, as well as a huge competitive edge from the Chinese government’s artificial cheapening of the yuan.
The resulting appreciation of the dollar hurt US exporters—in particular, manufacturers. A 2017 study on the dollar’s appreciation in the early 2000s by economist Douglas Campbell found that the dollar strengthened sharply, in real terms, compared to low-wage trading partners including China. The subsequent increase in foreign imports and diminished demand for American exports resulted in a loss of around 1.5 million manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2008.
There are also observable signs that automation wasn’t to blame. Consider the shuttering of some 78,000 manufacturing plants between 2000 and 2014, a 22% drop. This is odd given that robots, like humans, have to work somewhere. Then there’s the fact that there simply aren’t that many robots in US factories, compared with other advanced economies.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
That's not the claim I'm making. I'm pointing out the reality of delayed effect. It's not just Japan, that's only an example to illustrate what I mean. It's the whole American position regarding imports from the global market. You can trace back what happens when, and when it subsequently begins to affect the American economy.
The point being: you're right in stating that American industry actually peaked well after World War II, and that the downturn began decades after that. I'm not disputing that. I'm stating that the underlying causes of these events lie further back, and that if you want to change things using relatively modest alterations, you therefore need to put the POD further back as well.
In other words: by '92, if you want to protect American industry, you need a borderline ASB scenario where Perot wins and gets a Congressional majority in both Houses. Because nothing short of that is going to do the trick, at that stage. Whereas you can also go back four decades from that point, change American policy in far more dramatic ways, and get it all done very quietly.
What about having Pat Buchanan win in 1992 instead?
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I consider that even less likely than a Perot landslide.
Maybe if Bush just outright drops dead.
And even then, same thing as with Perot applies: he would actually need a Congressional majority to back his policies in this regard, and I just don't see that happening.
Maybe if he's able to reshape the GOP in his image like Trump did, only 25 years earlier?
Skallagrim
Well-known member
There's a reason it took that long to happen. In '92, Perot and Buchanan were exponents of the same trend (anti-globalist resentment from the broader "right"), but that was still a minority movement. Bush beat Buchanan three-to-one in the Republican primaries. That's a pretty good indication of the proportional relation, at that time. And remember, Perot scores as well as he did because Buchanan lost. If Buchanan had been the candidate, Perot would have missed out on quite a few votes. The two were fishing in the same pond, albeit from different shores, as it were. (Conversely, Buchanan wouldn't have been able to pick up every Perot voter, either, because Perot was socially pretty liberal, and a sizable number of his voters wouldn't like Buchanan's paleoconservatism.)
We can see the limits of an America First candidate at this juncture, then. It's not going to win the election.
By 2016, the chickens had come home to roost. The things Perot (and Buchanan, for that matter) had warned about had actually come to pass. American jobs had vanished, with a "giant sucking sound", just as predicted. American industry had gone into an embarrasing decline. The trade deficit had become a tragedy. The public debt had ballooned far beyond even Perot's predictions (which were called "alarmist" at the time). Debt ceilings had been shattered time and again. Deficit spending had become the norm. And endless foreign quagmires had resulted only in long rows of coffins holding dead American boys. All while the globalist megacorps kept getting bigger, even as their economic policies led to a great recession.
And that's why Trump won, while Perot and Buchanan didn't. Reality caught up. Same thing happened when Reagan won, whereas Goldwater had lost. In '92, a Buchanan campaign would've ended the way Goldwater's campign ended in '64. The people weren't ready yet. Because... delayed reaction!
Incidentaly, all those reasons I've mentioned above, why Trump won? They haven't gone away. And the people are still pissed. Which tells us something about the American future.
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History Learner
Well-known member
That's exactly what I'm arguing against; there's no evidence it's ASB or even that the causes lay further back outside of specific industries. There's numerous studies cited that show it all traces back to the 1990s for the most part, with the decline in capitol goods investments and the Chinese introduction in WTO. If it's earlier causes, where's the proof?
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Do you imagine that policy in the '90s existed in a vacuüm? That it just happened out of nowhere? Things don't trace back to the '90s, because the things that you mention didn't just happen out of nowhere. You mention the WTO. Which was founded in '95. Cool. Why? What led to the political climate where the creation of the WTO found the support that it did?
Like I said: if you want things in the '90s to change with a '90s POD, you need a big, drastic POD. Globalism didn't form from thin air. It had been decades in the making, and if you want a world where the '90s are sufficiently different to change the very things that you believe to be the fundamentals here... then you first need to go back quite a bit, and alter the things that made the '90s the way they were in the first place.
History Learner
Well-known member
Yes, I consider the policy of the 1990s unique; the Cold War had just ended and the Baby Boomers came into clear political power with Clinton. The decisions that resulted in the decline of American industry could thus be averted with a PoD then, although specifically in the context of the original point-the rise of the Rust Belt cities-it is far too late. Really, you'd need to just avoid China entering the WTO to prevent most of the job losses, which is certainly doable with the Embassy Siege of 1999.
What embassy siege?
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Baby boomers didn't hatch from eggs, fully formed, the day after the USSR collapsed.
What I mean is: yes, they came into their own at that time, but their ideas didn't just come from nowhere. You speak as if, just because the policies were implemented then, a simple POD at that same time can change things easily. Not so. The boomers, and their political beliefs, were shaped by the preceding decades.
As far as the embassy thing goes... I assume you're conflating the siege in Myanmar (not relevant here) with the accidental bombing in Belgrade? (Which involved no siege, after all, but I can't imagine you mean anything else.) In any event: we shouldn't over-estimate its importance. The only way this hinders Chinese WTO entry is if China decides to step back because of it... which is highly unlikely to happen, since that runs directly counter to China's all-too-evident interests. If the cooling between China and the USA is worse than in OTL, it'll still be a temporary thing. At most, you delay things a bit. In the grand scheme, that means little.
Which goes back to my whole point: nothing arises from nothing. All events have precursors. Why did the WTO get founded? Why was China so interested in joining? Why did the USA view this as a positive development?
Those questions have answers that involve factors going back decades. And those are the factors you really need to change.
History Learner
Well-known member
Chinese crowds besieged the American Embassy and other diplomatic locations in China after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Serbia:
Chinese protesters infuriated by the deadly NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia continued violent demonstrations into their third day today, attacking American diplomatic missions across the country and trapping the American ambassador inside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
“No question that we’re hostages here,” James R. Sasser told CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” by telephone on Sunday. “I think this demonstration is now exceeding government expectations, and there’s always the danger that it’s going to go out of control.”
Thirteen people besides Sasser were stuck inside the compound.
“It is not safe,” an embassy staff member said today by phone. “We’re not going near any windows.”
Had their been a direct storming of the Embassy or one of the consulates, it would've triggered a backlash in the United States that very easily could've derailed the WTO membership process for China. Besides Perot having an excellent run in 1992 and a decent showing in 1996, you also had Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996 for the GOP, along with remnant Left types in the Democrats that such an event would give leverage to.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
That would require a lot of escalation. Quotes (which only go to subjective experience) notwithstanding, the actual events here involved protesters outside the embassy, some rowdy types throwing some plastic water bottles and shit like that -- not a "siege". Alarmism at the time was way overblown, and things cooled down very quickly.
The last sentence of the article you link to holds a major clue, and reveals more than the entire rest of the article: "Others passed around cases of Pepsi--to quench throats parched from yelling anti-American epithets."
The yells mean little. The thirst for Pepsi -- and countless other product of international trade -- tells us the real story. If the Chinese people had really meant business there, they'd have been drinking from the water bottles, while throwing the Pepsi bottles. They didn't.
Which means that here, too, your scenario of things escalating would require an earlier POD. As it stood in OTL, escalation was deeply undesirable to all involved.
I've gone into their successes and limitations in post 68. In some scenario where some earlier POD leads to an escalation between the USA and China in 1999 (something that certainly wouldn't just happen without us first laying some ATL groundwork to justify this shift), you might see Buchanan winning the Reform Party nomination without all the OTL drama. The fact remains that Buchanan had already been cast into the wilderness by the Republicans at the time, and the Reform Party was dying. In OTL, they got under half a million votes nation-wide. (As for disgruntled activists more to the left: Ralph Nader didn't do that much, either. Didn't break three million votes.)
Which all adds up to tell us that by 2000, the early-to-mid '90s peak of America First sentiment had well and truly been flattened back down. A best, if such sentiments get a boost due to souring relations with China, you get on par with the OTL results that the Reform Party booked in '96. That's 8 million votes. And that's assuming Nader doesn't run, so as not to split the anti-globalist vote. (Which is a huge "if", given Nader's personality.)
Long story short: even if things go as bad as they possibly can regarding relations with China over the incident you cite (which, again, would require some POD further back), it's not going to be nearly enough to shift US politics over into 'America First'. At most, cooling relations will delay Chinese WTO entry for a year or two -- as I postulated earlier.
History Learner
Well-known member
I don't really understand why we need to dismiss the Ambassador's statements in favor of statements concerning Pepsi, but I don't think you realize how tense and violent the situation was:
In Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, protesters swarmed over the walls of the U.S. diplomatic compound, broke through the front door of the main consulate building, and set fire to the home of the top consular official in the city. There were no U.S. injuries reported, and Chinese police reportedly used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Xinhua, the government-controlled Chinese news agency, reported anti-NATO demonstrations in eight other cities, including Shanghai and the southern city of Guangzhou.
By this morning, hundreds of police had formed a protective cordon around the U.S. Embassy here and most of the protesters had left the immediate area. Police, however, told U.S. Embassy staff that demonstrations were planned across the city today. By 9: 30 this morning, about 2,000 people were already marching along Beijing's main boulevard -- a block from the embassy.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman said today that U.S. officials in Beijing were not getting adequate protection. Tom Cooney, the spokesman, said: "We feel that we are under a state of siege here. We don't have adequate security." He said the embassy had made a strong protest to Chinese authorities to provide better protection.
Sure, in OTL 2000, but here we would have a very different situation. You could also flip and have Buchanan do much better in 1996, if you absolutely feel an earlier PoD is necessary.
By which point it's 2003 and 9/11, the Iraq War, etc are all underway and we are dealing with a very different American political landscape.
Re: America First: One can say that Bush ran on a quasi-America First platform in 2000, no? No nation-building and all of that?
(He, of course, subsequently changed his mind on this, as he himself openly admitted in his memoirs.)
Skallagrim
Well-known member
The Pepsi shows the trend: Chinese consumers wanting Western luxury, same way US business wanted access to cheap Chinese labour and exports. The weight behind those underlying trends is enormous, and some relatively minor rioting means absolutely nothing compared to that. (For comparison, the WTO riots in the North-West were way more of a deal, and those did absolutely nothing, either.)
But how and why does Buchanan do so much better? What makes far more of the voting public believe that he's right?
Non-interventionism was his initial policy, yes. But economically, he was just continuing with the "neo-liberal" line that had already been set out.
History Learner
Well-known member
A reporter makes the statement that he saw some Chinese drinking Pepsi at a protest and we're supposed to infer the mass of the Chinese body politics is wanting Western luxury goods and thus is Pro Western? Meanwhile, multiple U.S. diplomatic personnel and the Ambassador himself saying they are under siege is supposed to be taken as subjective and dismissed. You're literally taking an isolated incident and saying it has societal level trends of enormous character, while dismissing protests across the breadth of China with tens of thousands of participants as nothing.
You see the disconnect here, yes? Same goes for the comparison for the Anti-WTO protests too; they didn't involve tens of thousands across the entire United States and certainly no documented incidents of them breaching consulate/embassy perimeters to set fire to and attack diplomatic buildings.
Remove Alan Keyes, and Buchanan wins Iowa and OTL he came exceedingly close to winning Arizona.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I'm pointing out a particular example that happens to illustrate a well-documented trend. The underlying evidence is provided by the actual actions of the Chinese and the Americans surrounding the whole bormbing affair, and in the subsequent period. That is: they worked very hard to brush it all aside as fast and as thoroughly as they could, so that what they wanted to happen couldn't be hindered by it. And it wasn't.
That's a very subjective interpretation. I'd argue that Keyes only galvanised Buchanan's supporters. Keyes was widely seen as a stalking horse, and as such was detested by Buchanan voters. The votes he picked up came primarily from people who didn't want to vote for Buchanan anyway. Considering Buchanan's controversial career, it cannot come as a surprise that quite a few such people exist, even among those who agree with quite a few of his political positions. By '96, Buchanan had already made enemies -- among the voting ublic as well -- and Keyes sought to exploit that.
If we remove Keyes, I say it changes very little. Iowa may be a closer call, but Buchanan doesn't win.
But even if we assume that Buchanan does, in fact, receive every single Keyes vote in all the primary elections: that's still not nearly enough to get the nomination. And there we get to the broader problem: you'd then have to bank on a scenario where Buchanan's increased success (which, mind you, I think you over-estimate) leads a substantial number of moderate voters to flock to him. And that's not going to happen.
Because in 1996, Buchanan represents a distinct minority within the Republican Party; one that has pretty well-defined limits. A lot of Republicans simply will not vote for Buchanan, because they disagree with him. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it took another twenty years for a majority of Americans to embrace the policies Buchanan proposed. In '96, the voters just weren't there for it.
And even if you want to hand-wave that, and just assume -- against all credibility -- that Buchanan gets the nod in '96.... then he proceeds to lose in the general, and we're right back to square one. Because now his policies have failed at the ballot box, so your assumption of this leading to greater success for those same policies in 2000 becomes pretty damn invalid. On the contrary: Buchanan's defeat would lead to a free trade neo-con getting the nod in 2000. And, ceteris paribus, winning.
As such, again, once more: things don't "just" happen. It has to make sense. We have to grapple with the reasons why it didn't happen in OTL, and then we need to figure out how to change those factors, so that it can plausibly happen. I've pointed this out to you in regards to all your "well, if [x] just happens in the '90s..." scenarios, because none of them stand up to scrutiny. There are underlying realities, and you just ignore them again and again.
What you also do -- and at this point, I feel compelled to bring it up -- is structurally present opinions and scenarios for others to reply to, while you don't really reply to the questions asked of you. I've asked quite a few questions, and you haven't actually answered a single one of them. You've side-stepped several, and outright ignored others. Whereas I have, in good faith, engaged with every point you have raised. So I'd really like it if you were to actually engage with the points I've raised previously, instead of side-stepping them and focusing only on your points. Otherwise, I feel, the conversation threatens to become utterly one-sided.
So here goes. A few questions, re-iterating and clarifying those I asked earlier:
-- I have asked you why, in your opinion, the WTO was founded in the first place. That is: what were the political reasons that led to a clear majority in support of this? Do you believe that support to have arisen out of nowhere in the '90s? If so, do you believe the USA favoured protectionism prior to the '90s? When, in the 20th century, would you say the majority in US politics turned against protectionism? Can you explain why and how you think the political climate could and would suddenly flip towards protectionism, when the going trend was the exact opposite?
-- Why was China even interested in joining the WTO? You present it as something that could easily have been averted, so it seems you think that Chinese support was fairly thin. Is that true? Do you believe that the Chinese had only limited interest in free trade with the West? Or if you don't, and if you do believe that it was important to them... why do you assume they'd be very ready to about-face on that?
-- Same goes for the USA. Why did a political majority view Chinese entry into the WTO as a positive development? Was this a minor matter to the USA, and would opinions in Congress have easily flipped? If so, why was there such limited support for protectionism at all during this period? And if it was important to the USA, then why do you assume that it would be easy to turn American politics against it?
-- In 1996, at a time when a clear majority of Republican votes disagreed with Pat Buchanan on many key points, how do you suppose that he'd be able to get first place in the primaries? Why does only "Keyes not entering" seem to affect the race in your scenario? Don't you think that other candidates (who kept running in OTL despite a poor showing), now seeing Buchanan make ATL gains, would drop out and support Dole? Don't you think that would boost Dole considerably more than Keyes being absent would boost Buchanan?
-- Supposing for a moment that an ASB just hands Buchanan the nomination... how do you expect him to do in the general election? We must consider this, when we see that most Republican voters at the time were politically closer to Clinton than to Buchanan, and that the logical expectation for the election, therefore, is a repeat of 1964: Clinton wins in a land-slide, and Buchanan gets a Goldwater-esque defeat from which he never recovers. Can you see a plausible path to victory?
-- Assuming that, as I expect, no such path to victory exists... how do you think a humiliating defeat for Buchanan and his politics would affect the 2000 election? You raised Buchanan doing better in '96 as a way to make protectionist sentiment stronger in 1999/2000. However, a Buchanan victory in '96 seems impossible to me. Do you think a defeat would strengthen his cause? Historically, the opposite has typically been true. Is there any reason why 2000 in particular would be crucially different?
If you could please answer these questions, perhaps we'll be able to get to the actual heart of the matter. That is: why things were the way they were, and why we seem to disagree on how easy or difficult it would have been to change them.