US immigration authorities said on Friday that they had detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided Hyundai’s sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia, where the Korean automaker makes electric vehicles.
The Pew Research Center, citing preliminary Census Bureau data, said the US labour force lost more than 1.2 million immigrants from January through July.
I would be a little bit surprised if the people in charge of high-level trade are that simple-minded.
China was already a great reliable trade partner. They have other issues as does any nation, but attractiveness for trade wasn’t really one of them, they were already pretty bangin’ in that regard, and the US losing its status as a good investment doesn’t suddenly mean that Chinese markets will become always a safe investment by default. I feel like these narratives like “trade relations = loyalty and friendship, there can be only one favorite nation-crush” are sort of for public consumption.
Their changing in business patterns shows it’s the very opposite of them being simple-minded:
I business terms, the biggest negative that the Trump Administration added to Trading in and with the US and US-based Suppliers and Customers is uncertainty - you never know when they’re going to do something that fucks up your business: in other words, Trump made the Risk around doing business in America or with US-based companies and customers far higher.
Risk is one of the biggest considerations in evaluating business plans and the more competent and professional a company’s management is the more likely they’ll do thorough evaluations of any business prospects, something which always includes risk considerations. In fact an entire Industry exists dedicated to manage such risks: the Finance Industry.
Only shitty shit little companies rely of the “gut feelings” of the business owner to evaluate business opportunities.
So yeah, in business plan models all over the World, anything which directly or indirectly can be influenced by the actions of the American Administration just got a big chunk of Risk added, whilst no such thing was added to such plans involving other countries, hence doing business with America is now less appealing that doing business with other countries, in a very direct way.
My expectation is that for most countries even the Tariffs themselves (which for most aren’t all that scary) haven’t as much impact in making America less attractive for business than the sheer unpredictability of the US Administration.