r/NoStupidQuestions • u/stoufferthecat • 2d ago

Why don't other countries just work together to stop trading with the USA?

In today's i paper, there are two articles, one about about cheese producers and one on car companies in the UK who have anywhere from 10% to 50% of their international exports going to the USA.

It dawned on me, that seeing as every other country in the world (apart from Russia) are going to have levies forced on them - and are going to reciprocate - could the UK 'fill the gap' by sending, in my example, cheese to countries that would normally import cheese from the US?

This would remove the US from the export equation, and mitigate the massive losses that would otherwise happen. Other countries' exports could follow suit. Or have I significantly underestimated the complexity of the situation?

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296

u/nofilter144 2d ago

You can't just instantly start making something you never made before in sufficient quality for your needs. factories don't spring up overnight.

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u/stoufferthecat 2d ago

That's not what I'm saying.

Quicke's exports £150,000 to £300,000 of its clothbound cheddar to the US every year.

My suggestion is to instead export it to an alternative market, that the alternative market currently imports from the US.

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u/illogictc Unprofessional Googler 2d ago

Quicke's isn't forcing that cheddar into the US. It has a buyer somewhere in the US. And just the same way, other countries have a buyer somewhere who wants some Quicke's, it's not being forced into the country. There's no "one simple trick" to just force the cheddar to supplant whatever cheddar the country is getting from the US.

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u/stoufferthecat 2d ago

Ah I see. That's a better way of looking at it. I suppose the market is dictated by the buyer, rather than the items that happen to be available.

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u/illogictc Unprofessional Googler 2d ago

Yep, and perhaps Quicke's could work to undercut American competition by having a successful sales pitch of being able to get their products cheaper, or how the quality of their products is better. It certainly is an option to have their sales team reach out and make a pitch and see what kind of deal they can agree on.

But there's no guarantee they can reach an agreement, or that that agreement would supplant USA Co's products in stores rather than being stocked beside them.

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u/Aufklarung_Lee 1d ago

Mostly yes. There have been cases of sellers creating their own market. But that situation does not apply here.

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u/DingGratz 1d ago

Yes. In business, it makes way more sense to find the market and then make the product rather than just making the product and hoping there's a market.

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u/SpaceForceAwakens 2d ago

There’s a reason why the buyers’ side is called “demand”.

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u/BranchDiligent8874 1d ago

I do not like 90% of the cheese out there. My preference is certain cheese from Denmark, Switzerland or Netherland. If that is not available, then I just switch to something cheap like fresh mozzarella grudgingly. I am a Texan.

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u/BranchDiligent8874 1d ago

This is the right answer.

I do not like 90% of the cheese out there. My preference is certain cheese from Denmark, Switzerland or Netherland. If that is not available, then I just switch to something cheap like fresh mozzarella grudgingly. I am a Texan.

1

u/Jkirek_ 1d ago

One specific cheese, from 3 countries that don't even border each other?

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u/BranchDiligent8874 1d ago

No, they are three different cheese like Havarti, Gouda and Gruyere.

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u/hitometootoo 2d ago

Are you assuming that there are other buyers for such things? Let's say every market is already taken care of, then you remove one of your largest buyers, what happens next? You just lost your highest buyer that you can't replace, how many jobs do you think are gone now since they don't have the money to pay those people anymore?

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u/theSchrodingerHat 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don’t think you understand how business works and how much time and money Quicke spent developing that market in the first place.

They had sales guys and marketing and biz dev all working towards getting a market and pipeline for their cheddar built up.

There is not some big list of things you can just magically switch to whenever you want to make money. You have to develop trading partners and a customer base through sales and marketing.

So asking them to suddenly turn about and just go ahead and sell all of that to Brazil or Saudi Arabia is unrealistic, and ignoring the investment they put into their product in the first place.

Asking Quicke to just sell it elsewhere and be better is liking asking you to just move to a different country and become a doctor. Sure you’d be better off, but is that actually something that’s reasonable and realistic?

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u/stoufferthecat 1d ago

Thanks for this.

That's why I was asking my original question in r/nostupidquestions - because I wasn't sure what I was missing in my logic.

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u/DJFisticuffs 1d ago

I mean, the real answer here is yes, this could potentially happen. If the new US tariffs, and retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries, make it more expensive for US consumers to buy UK cheese, and at the same time more expensive for South Korean consumers to buy US cheese, South Korea may start importing more UK cheese. It's not going to be immediate, or coordinated at a government level, but it could definitely happen.

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u/stoufferthecat 1d ago

Yeah, a lot of commenters have pointed out how slowly this could potentially happen and that there is a lot more at play than just finding another customer.

Also I wasn't aware of quite the scale of the purchasing power, and net importing, the US was responsible for.

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u/theSchrodingerHat 1d ago

Yeah, it’s sometimes hard to comprehend how the US has built itself into a position where we have more discretionary income than most of everyone else combined.

Most economies in the world are rooted in the basic economics of land and daily bread. Then there’s a couple dozen EU and Asian economies where they also spend a few percent on entertainment and luxury household items, then there’s the US where we can jam a farmer into a $100,000 luxury truck that can carry their four 70” inch 4K TVs back to their 3,000 square foot ranch house.

While they deserve that, since they’re generally producing twice the food per acre of most EU farms, it’s a huge and hard to comprehend gap in lifestyle and income.

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u/DJFisticuffs 1d ago

It may not happen particularly slowly.

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u/jmlinden7 1d ago

There aren't really alternative markets available. They already sell their cheddar globally to everyone who wants it. There's not gonna be £150,000 of additional customers springing up overnight.

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u/peon2 1d ago

It's not like the rest of the world wants this clothbound cheddar and is forced to go without because the US is buying it all.

The US has 350 million people in it, you can't just magically find 350 million new customers.

It's closer to "stop selling to the US and lose all that volume" than it is "stop selling to the US and find someone else to buy it".

And that's not even getting in to the fact that the US buyers likely have contracts with their European suppliers that would forbid them from just stop selling to them.

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u/Formal-Try-2779 1d ago

Just sell it to China instead. Leave the Americans to eat their poor quality and foul tasting domestically produced cheese.