Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 June 10

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June 10

US Trade tariffs

Why are the countries which Donald Trump's administration has just posted tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium so angry. Aren't the tariffs that they impose on the United States exports considerably higher. It seems hypocritical of the European Union, Canada, Japan, et al. to criticise the Trump administration for threatening their export markets when the tariffs that they impose threaten the United States export market, and lead to huge trade deficits. Surely, when they criticise Trump's 'America First' policy as 'protectionism', isn't that exactly what they do when they have tariffs of up to 300%? How do countries that impose such large tariffs on the United States justify this. On a Eurosceptic note, doesn't this policy of imposing very high tariffs on non-EU products reinforce the criticism that the EU is essentially a protection racket?

Just as an aside, I don't have strong feelings either in support or in opposition to Donald Trump, I just accept that in terms of levelling the playing field on international trade, he may, unless there are factors I'm unaware of, have a point. --Andrew 00:14, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The 300% would be in reference to the controlled Canadian milk supply system. The system is closed to stabilize prices for dairy farmers so that they are not in a poor situation like they are in Wisconsin where the farmers overproduce and then sell their milk below production cost and go out of business. Many dairy farmers in the US wished they had such a system. .

References

Plus of course the US gives large subsidies to milk producers which keep them overproducing. Sending it to Canada could be counted as dumping. Dmcq (talk) 10:23, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Besides that, most of the world has been cutting tariffs slowly but surely for the last 50 years, Trump is the first to increase tariffs at the expense of both the US and their trade partners, and other nations don't want to raise tariffs in response (trade war), as it will hurt them as well as the US. Of 19 (talk) 00:52, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

See Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act for a relevant historical episode. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:44, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Well that's not exactly reassuring. At least you could see the reason then when the Great Depression was starting, but the economy was already growing when Trump came into office, the main problem was that inequality was growing. And as far as I can see inequality is growing even more under Trump. His zero sum game attitude is an inequality driver. Dmcq (talk) 10:42, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The Anglo-Irish Trade War is a good illustration that countries will not back down under extreme economic pressure. Did sanctions and poverty in Cuba topple that government or get them to change their policies? It may not be in the economic interest of countries to have a trade war but they will most certainly do it if pushed. Dmcq (talk) 11:00, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

To get back to the original question: There is a difference in average tariffs between the US and the EU, but it is not extreme (IIRC, its 3.5% vs. 4.5%). You ned to look at the overall system, not just individual tariffs. Import duties for car are higher in the EU than in the US, but duties on pick-ups and light trucks are a lot higher in the US than in the EU. These tariffs have been negotiated in multilateral treaties under the rules of the WTO. It is, of course, possible, to negotiate new tariffs and even new rules, But that should be a bi- or multilateral process, and not a unilateral action. Quick changes in markets are bad for the economy - it needs time to organise production chains, and disruptions come at a significant cost. As for the trade deficit: It shrinks significantly, if not only goods but also services are considered (I assume that's Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook and the like). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:57, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

OP, The short answer is, it doesn’t work that way. Companies trade; countries rarely do, if ever. When a producer in one country sells to a wholesaler in another country, the producer may well own the wholesaler (or vice versa) and the transaction may well be merely an inter-company transfer. Pricing may be mainly dependent on where it is favorable from a tax perspective to record the profits.

When populist protectionist career politicians raise the price their own companies and consumers must pay, the companies involved in the trade may earn less profit as the market demands less product at the higher prices.

Economists don’t look at bilateral trade balances except when populist protectionist career politicians force the matter for their own purely partisan purposes. The reason is that bilateral trade balances provide no meaningful information, as can easily be understood by a first year economics student. What matters in the entire balance of goods, services, royalties, dividends, transfer payments, capital investment, portfolio investment, change in international reserves (unless one enjoys seigniorage privileges), etc. In other words, the Balance of Payments.

But, that’s too complicated for populist protectionist career politicians to convey to ignorant voters in a sound bite, so they just jack up prices and thereby lower standards of living. The foregoing may not be entirely objective, but it is accurate. DOR (HK) (talk) 09:33, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Copyright Permission for Photograph (1932)

Arthur Garfield Hays’s book Let Freedom Ring (New York, NY: Boni and Liveright, 1932) includes a photograph of H.L. Mencken and Arthur Garfield Hays facing page 158. The book does not provide any credit information for the photograph in question.

Our assumption is that attorney A.G. Hays held the copyright during his lifetime. He died in 1954. His daughter, Jane Butler, renewed the copyright to the book in 1970. She died on May 3, 2016.

The question is whether the copyright to the photograph has been lost with her death, and whether it is now freely available for use by bona fide users?

Alternatively, the copyright renewal of 1970 may well mean that the copyright is still in force, and it is mandatory to trace Jane Butler’s children?

We decided to make use of the Reference Desk service of the Wikipedia because we assume that, given the large numbers of photographs in the Wiki, you have some real experts in copyright at your service.

We would like to make use of the photograph in a scholarly essay to be published in Menckeniana, a journal published by the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Md. for the members of the Mencken Society. Menckenire (talk) 18:39, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The real experts are at Wikipedia:Copyright assistance. However, determining whether a particular image is still under copyright is a form of legal advice, which we are forbidden to provide - there is a note to that effect at the top of the page: "We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice." Matt Deres (talk) 00:47, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

The picture was published in 1932. U S Copyright Office circular 15 [1] states:

NOTE: If a copyright originally secured before January 1, 1964, was not renewed at the proper time, copyright protection expired at the end of the 28th calendar year of the copyright and could not be restored.

You don't provide details of the 1970 copyright renewal so we can't help you further here, other than to point out that if there was no renewal in 1960 (ask the Copyright Office about that) the picture is now in the public domain. 2A00:23C1:3180:6501:4924:26B9:284A:6CE7 (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

insularity index

Consider, for a given territory, the probability that two randomly chosen residents cannot visit each other without getting on a boat. Has someone made a list of this (or something similar)?

I was amused today to notice that Greece, which would be high on this list, had a royal dynasty from Denmark, also high. —Tamfang (talk) 20:14, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The Pacific island nations would dominate the list. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:03, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Is there anywhere in the world that allows domestic partners to have as many partners as possible?

Most sources suggest that a "domestic partnership" involves two people. When people write about domestic partnerships, they compare this concept to marriage, hinting that it's supposed to be like marriage, but it is not legal marriage. So... if it's not legal marriage, then does that mean a person can have unlimited number of domestic partners while in a marriage, a person is limited to one partner? If there are 5 working adults in the same house, related or unrelated, then are they all domestic partners to each other? If the said five people are siblings, and the oldest of the five marries and brings in a new family member, who also brings in an income to the household, then is the oldest sibling a domestic partner to all working adults in the household or just a spouse to one person? SSS (talk) 23:39, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article on this - Domestic partnership. Very US-centric, but worth a read. The word partner itself has multiple meanings. There is the one that implies sexual activity, usually between two people. Then there is the one used in business, (where sex is not involved or is kept secret) where numbers greater than two are normal. When it comes to the domestic kind, most countries have no laws preventing any number of people getting together and having sex. It's just when it comes to marriage that the law tells you how many partners you can have. HiLo48 (talk) 23:49, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

In a domestic partnership, are the members obligated to engage in sexual intercourse? IIRC, consummation of marriage occurs after the wedding. The marriage must be consummated. If it ain't consummated, then it ain't a marriage, and the marriage can be annulled. If a person just gets a roommate, and the roommate is just there to help pay the bills and do household chores, then is that a domestic partnership? For the relationship to be a domestic partnership, do the members have to engage in intercourse with each other? SSS (talk) 01:07, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

You're right. Sex isn't essential. I guess "partner" is pretty ambiguous. HiLo48 (talk) 02:22, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

No-one can be obligated to have sex with anyone, even in marriage. Iapetus (talk) 09:01, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

In most jurisdictions, sex is not obligatory in marriage. However as much as we may find it disgusting, we shouldn't forget there still some jurisdictions where Marital rape is not a crime, and the ability to get divorced simply because the partner demands sex may be limited. Also we should take care in getting too high and might about this given that it was only in the 1970s that it marital rape started to be criminalised in much of the West. (Divorces are more complicated.) I mean heck, Germany only criminalised it in 1997. As a largely separate issue, there are still some countries where non consummation may be grounds for annulment. And likewise consummation may be required for a Common-law marriage. So the OP's point on sex being required for a valid marriage can be somewhat true in some places but it's definitely far from universal. (Although this is generally only an issue between the partners. I'm not sure if many jurisdictions allow someone else e.g. an heir to claim the marriage was invalid because it was never consummated.) And notably, I think many jurisdictions which have some form of domestic partnership have abandoned any consummation requirement. Nil Einne (talk) 08:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

BTW for the avoidance of doubt I should emphasise that I am not disagreeing that sex being obligatory in marriage, the lack of criminalisation of marital rape or excessive difficulties getting a civil divorce are seriously wrong. My only point with the "high and mighty" comment is that some people, not necessarily those on the RD, have a tendency to correctly recognise the superiority of certain systems in a number of areas without recognising that a lot of that vast superiority is often fairly recent. Nil Einne (talk) 00:36, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

• Group marriage despite having the word marriage in it? 173.228.123.166 (talk) 07:07, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

In modern legal usage, "domestic partnership" seems to be mainly modeled on monogamous marriage. In some traditional societies, a man was allowed to have a wife (or multiple wives), and also concubines, where concubinage was considered less than marriage... AnonMoos (talk) 10:24, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

There is the legal status known as the civil union. Civil partnership in the United Kingdom offers rights and responsibilities similar but not identical to civil marriage, and is sometimes confusingly referred to as gay marriage. Across the Channel, however, 94% of people entering a civil solidarity pact (PACS) are opposite-sex pairs. Also, note that marriage in some countries is not limited to two people. Polygamy has a long history; polygyny (one husband, plural wives) is common; polyandry (one wife, plural husbands) less so. The references in Group marriage might help you find out more about how various societies have dealt with adults in mutual relationship. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:36, 12 June 2018 (UTC)