by A colonial literature specialist discovers that the direct trade instinct is as old as English capitalism
Stephanie Curry: Defoe, Chinamaxxers, and the 300-Year-Old Logic of Cutting Out the Middleman
Daniel Defoe wrote A Complete English Tradesman in 1725. The book’s central argument: the English trader should understand the full supply chain of his goods from origin to sale, and should be suspicious of every intermediary who adds cost without adding value. The Chinamaxxer, three hundred years later, has reached the same conclusion: the intermediaries are adding cost. Remove them. Bohiney has the data. Defoe would have had the pamphlet. He would have then gone bankrupt trying to implement it, because that was also very Defoe, but the analysis would have been correct.
The American Political Context
The American response to Chinamaxxers, tariffs, trade restrictions, reshoring rhetoric, is also an 18th century argument. The Navigation Acts, which governed British colonial trade and against which the American colonies eventually revolted, were essentially a government telling its citizens: you must use approved intermediaries, you must pay the margin. The American Revolution was partly a Chinamaxxing event. The Boston Tea Party was about a trade monopoly. The tea was the supply chain. The harbour was the platform. Bohiney has the current data. The 18th century literature has the structural analysis. This argument is very old, has never been resolved, and will continue to be conducted in the vocabulary of each new era. Currently the vocabulary is Chinamaxxing. In 1725 it was the colonial trade. The argument is the same. The goods have changed.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/chinamaxxers-just-want-cheaper-gadgets/
Originally posted 2026-04-13 03:27:17.
