GM News: Rumorpile: GM China Venture Is Under An Anti-Trust Investigation

[William Maley]

General Motors is under investigation by China's National Development and Reform Commission over possible antitrust violations. 

News of this first broke in an interview with Zhang Handong, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's price supervision bureau done by Chinese Newspaper China Daily. Handong said an American automaker would be penalized for monopolistic behavior. He did not mention said automaker. Bloomberg was able to learn from sources that the automaker in question is General Motors. 

The accusation is that GM told distributors in China to fix prices in an effort to improve sales.

It should be noted that many of the penalties handed down by the bureau have been to mostly foreign companies. This has led many to accuse the bureau of being protectionist of companies in China, something the bureau has denied time and time again. Also, this comes days after President-elect Donald Trump made comments questioning the U.S. policy of not recognizing Taiwan.

Source: China Daily, Bloomberg, Reuters

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[G. David Felt]

This is the start of trade wars due to Idiot God's Messenger opens mouth and inserts foot.

[hyperv6]

Here is what is going on. 

Trump as like most business people negotiate deals and the first volley is always for more than you will settle for. We will make demands China will make threats but in time China will negotiate a deal as they need us as much or more than we need them. China's economy is not all that strong and they need a place to sell their goods. They also know while it is not painless we could return to be self sufficient if needed. We have the people, the natural resources and the technology to do what ever we need to do. 

We have been for too long caving to everyone else and losing our place of leverage in the global market. We have apologized and conceded for the last how many years. 

What many people do not understand but the world has been at war in WW III for a good while as it has been a fiscal war. 
 

What else must be understood we neutralized nuclear weapons with Mutual Assured Destruction the same is being done with Mutual Financial Assured Destruction. We go down China goes as well as the rest of the world. The key to this now is to negotiate your deals and get the best one you can. This is what will go on as we have failed in making deals globally for the last 8 years and you can see the damage for our negligence. 

Trump is much smarter than some realize or want to realize. He is setting up many things and has sent strong signals but many people miss them.  Want an example? 

Just as I just explained here. Trump at all his rally's would play the Rolling Stones you can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you get what you need. This is how he thinks and works. Some may not like him and I am sure he will fail in some ways as if you do not fail you are not trying. But the big picture here is to put America in a better place in the glob to hold more leverage over things we should be in control of.

Our future will call for the same things we saw in WW II as we need to stand up, work together and there will be some pain and sacrifice. We need to teach out people how to work again. They need to learn to pass a drug test, they need to learn to show up everyday. If our people worked with the same ethics over seas they would starve to death.  You are not going to get rich working at Mc Donalds. You should not get rich working at Mc Donalds. 

We are going to see a new working class started here call No Collar Workers. The tech fields need more workers and they are now looking to the non collage workers. These will be places where people who work hard will be able to move ahead in their lives. It is an opportunity that some will take and many will fail at. 

China has gotten away with murder literally. They are doing and taking what they want and what do we do? Nothing. they build island bases at will. They tell us who we can and can not talk to. They let the nut job in N Korea do as he pleases when they could shut him down in a day if they wanted to. They sell arms to Iran and are now working again with Russia. What have we done to leverage anything on them? 

It took an obnoxious business man from NYC to let them know we are no longer going to take it up the &^%$% vs the do nothing politicians. This is why they have always said those who can do start business and those who can run for office. 

This is not going to be about winning this is about have some say in what goes on. 

The truth is if we cut off China it would be painful for both but we here would survive and they would not. But it will not come to this as both sides now neither can afford to go that far. Deals will be made and we will get a little better deal than we have had. 

It it time to stop labeling Americans just because you disagree and start to look out for our country before we fail. What we have been doing was failing and at this point we need to do something different. 

[riviera74]

How will China NOT survive a trade war (or zero access) to the US market?  This is NOT 1979.  China is in better shape than anytime in the last two or three centuries.  They may have a problem or three but I am sure they can survive without trading with the USA just fine.  They did just that for centuries.

The problem with trade wars is that they tend to beget real wars, as in mobilized armies preparing to invade other countries.  Our war against Japan (in the 1940s) started with an embargo against selling oil to Japan back in the 1930s, admittedly to protest their militarism in the western Pacific and much of East Asia. 

Trump seems to think that this is a game.  He may be grossly underestimating their resolve---and overestimating our ability to withstand such massive unnecessary economic pain to make a point against one of our largest trading partners.  Running trade policy as if we are trying to restore Detroit to 1950s greatness is a fool's errand.  Such blatant protectionism is wrongheaded on its face and very misdirected.  Instead, we should be wedging China's borders open to MORE American goods and services, not cut ourselves off completely.

[hyperv6]

China would survive but they will feel the pain and this is what opens dialog to reach better terms for us.

This not a game it is diplomecy that we have sorely lacked. There will be some pain both ways but it will open talks and give us some leverage. 

We have rolled over for too long.

like it or not we need each other and we will find term both agree on. 

This is how you wedge boarders open.

The goal here is not to retun every job. Yes we would like some back but we also would like to open their market to more of our product to increase new jobs.

Same with Russia we need to open talks with them after the foolish reset. 

Our state department has done a lot of damage and now is a time to try to recover from their deals and make better ones. The trouble is some of what they did are difficult to fix at this point like Syria and Iran.

if there is a war it will be Iran and they will be after Israel. We gave them all they needs to finish the weapons they have wanted.

Then most our allies are in major trouble in the Euro union and they are out of money with their programs and immigration.