Chinese community uprising in New York City

Richard Wilson4 said:In Italy, there’s an official count of 115,000 Chinese people living there, with 20,000 of them packed into New York City Chinatown.
Down in the city of Prato, the Chinese community has basically bought up the entire textile industry.
They use rock-bottom prices, smuggling, and shady business deals to push out the local shopkeepers... 👎

Slowly but surely, Chinese people are taking over the American market too.
My neck of the woods in the Midwest is one of the poorest areas in the US, still feeling the scars of old conflicts. There isn't much competition here, but prices stay high.
Lately, though, things have been getting weird...
Believe it or not:
I’ve personally spotted Chinese stores in:El Paso,Vinkovci,Vrpolj, Tovarnik, Ivankov, Županja—those are just the ones I saw while driving through...
Places like Vrpolj, Tovarnik, and Ivankov aren't even cities, they're tiny villages, all under 3,000 people...
If that's the case, I can only imagine how many Chinese people are living in the big cities... 👎

The Muslim invasion of Europe is starting to face some serious competition... 👎

So what? Nothing surprising there. I can spot five or six Chinese trade businesses within a 400-meter radius of my own place alone.
By the way, Ivankovo has nearly 9,000 people. And Vrpolj is bigger than that. Not so sure about Tovarnik.

rustywalker42 said:So what? Nothing surprising there. I can spot five or six Chinese trade businesses within a 400-meter radius of my own place alone.
By the way, Ivankovo has nearly 9,000 people. And Vrpolj is bigger than that. Not so sure about Tovarnik.

Yeah, back in the day Ivankovo was more like 4,000 and Tovarnik was maybe 2,000...
But even 10,000 feels like a stretch...

I don't mean to be provocative, but aren't Chinese people just buying up these small shops because that's where everyone is spending their money? Why don't the locals in these towns—whether they're big cities or tiny rural spots—just ignore them if they're such a threat to society? What's the catch? Everyone talks trash about them, yet they somehow keep thriving.

Richard Wilson4 said:Yeah, back in the day Ivankovo was more like 4,000 and Tovarnik was maybe 2,000...
But even 10,000 feels like a stretch...

What do you mean 4,000? Ivankovo is basically one of the biggest towns in the US, they've got nearly 9,000 people there. Just check the 2001 census.
That other island town used to be the big one, but they just officially became a city recently.

hollowcyclist10 said:All import tariffs should probably be abolished. Along with all those other fees that ultimately make imported goods two or three times more expensive than they are within the EU.

The US needs to kickstart its own manufacturing so that it can compete with imports through both quality and scale, I suppose. We simply cannot survive on tourism alone.

But isn't that exactly what customs duties are for? To drive up the cost of imports so that domestic production gets a fighting chance? It’s easy to talk about boosting local manufacturing when you don't fully grasp the mechanisms required to make it happen... though shouldn't it be obvious that domestic industry can't survive if the government doesn't protect it through import limits? Almost every major global industry, without exception, grew under protectionist economic policies. If American industry wants to grow, why should it be any different?

Justin Stewart3 said:But isn't that exactly what customs duties are for? To drive up the cost of imports so that domestic production gets a fighting chance? It’s easy to talk about boosting local manufacturing when you don't fully grasp the mechanisms required to make it happen... though shouldn't it be obvious that domestic industry can't survive if the government doesn't protect it through import limits? Almost every major global industry, without exception, grew under protectionist economic policies. If American industry wants to grow, why should it be any different?

That might have been the case if America hadn't pushed so hard to join the EU. Now, we're forced to play by their rules. I don't suppose anyone expects the EU to look kindly upon tariffs, especially when they don't even exist between member states anymore.

Global industries used to rely on protectionism to grow, but I guess that isn't really how things work anymore. They are strong enough today because that old-school protectionism provided them with a sufficiently large and robust production base back then.

What people in America just don't seem to grasp, I think, is that our only real shot at jumpstarting production is to make sure it's competitive—meaning cheaper, I suppose—than in other EU nations. Given how much everyone is currently focused on cutting costs and moving manufacturing or services over to Eastern Europe, maybe there's a narrow window for America to find its footing there.

I wasn't strictly implying we should only focus on starting our own domestic production, even if that would be the ideal scenario; I was more referring to creating favorable conditions to attract manufacturing investment here in America.

And the fact that 97% of the banks are foreign-owned, mostly issuing consumer loans that end up buying foreign goods, surely doesn't help the cause, which I guess is reflected in our rapidly growing debt levels.

The reality is that in today’s world, trying to lean on protectionism doesn't really work when you're operating in such a small geographic area. It just ends up driving prices through the roof, which inevitably leads to a spike in smuggling and people just driving across the state line to shop where things are cheaper. In the end, domestic production just collapses under its own weight again. You can't really hide behind tariffs; you either have to be more competitive or you fail. Protectionism only seems to hold any water when you're dealing with massive distances.