Just a quick search, I couldn't find any mainstream, usually Republican leaning economists, magazines, or newspapers that said it was a good idea.
> Mostly the tariffs are/were very inconvenient for US business that manufactured in China.
So you’re generalizing your experience from a “company you run” to a country with a $19.39 trillion GDP....
The burden we do pay isn't so bad. It can substitute for other taxes. We used to do this in a big way, funding the country without an income tax. The local employment is pretty good too. Those industrial jobs, for example steelworkers, are reducing income inequality.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/07/trumps-st...
In that case what about Forbes?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ikebrannon/2018/07/02/steel-tar...
This isn't even a political conflict along the liberal/non-liberal axis though, so Forbes doesn't change a thing. I'm sure you've heard of the uniparty, demipublicans, republicrats, and so on. The leaders of multinational corporations have a globalist mindset. Aside from desiring regulatory capture to suppress competition, they also have a libertarian mindset. Very few media sources and very few politicians break from either mindset by much, except some hot air from some politicians. Politicians don't last long if they anger the large multinational corporations.
There is almost nobody with interests aligned with the American worker. Of the few who are, many would admit to loving the tariffs only if somebody like Bernie Sanders had imposed them. Generally, all of those with a big voice (media and politicians) would gladly wipe out American jobs in exchange for greater profit. This is short-term thinking, ignoring the slow collapse of the nation and the changing balance of world power.
Are you also in favor of laws in some states that don't allow people to pump their own gas to save jobs?
Brilliant.
That's because tariffs aren't a traditionally right wing, "free market" position. This is actually an economic view that Trump shares with Bernie Sanders.
"The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world."
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/the-trans-pacific-tr...
And Trump seems to have agreed with that as well.
"China ... dumps its excess aluminum and steel on the world market at super-discounted prices. The United States, in conjunction with European allies and others, has repeatedly over the past decade negotiated with China to stop defying the rules it agreed to abide by when it gained entrance to the World Trade Organization in 2001. China repeatedly has said it would. And then it doesn’t."
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21027/union_steel_tari...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/07/trumps-st...
There are other inefficiencies in the US economy, jobs that are preserved or are high paying solely because existing laws limit competition, limit participation by potential additional workers, etc
The real issue here is not "Have these tariffs caused our economy to deviate from pure efficiency?" It's "Which special groups are allowed to have their own interests protected and extended by law and by government action?" This stuff is happening all over the economy.
http://www.aei.org/publication/2009-tire-tariffs-cost-us-con...
This is one of those cases and his tweet is correct, they can just wait this out until the next election after someone new gets in and we do a 180.
No. Chuck Schumer, one of Trump's major political rivals tweeted this in response his tweet on tariffs:
> Hang tough on China, President @realDonaldTrump. Don’t back down.
> Strength is the only way to win with China.
https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1125143336837206016
The US isn't going to do a 180 until a pro-business Republican or a Libertarian sits in the Oval Office, and its unlikely that will happen next cycle unless Trump dies or is impeached.
Reducing new borrowings and doing dramatic gestures to reduce debt? No, he is not doing that. US deficit shot up dramatically as giant loads of new t-bills went into circulation, and financial players got strong signal on US interest rates.
To reduce the trade deficit, the first thing to do is to reduce the fiscal deficit — a thing that has little to do with trade.
Lets say that the Fed has not been exactly lawful with the way they sling money. And you know it because you've put someone in charge that could take a look. So you have the justification for shutting it down. Wouldn't you max your "credit card" out if you knew you were going to be able to cut it up?
Trump knows debt better than anyone on this planet. Don't let him fool you.
Aside from the actual topic at hand — China — the big pillars of Economic growth, immigration, healthcare, North Korea, the Middle East, national security, ISIS, and NATO are all massive issues that US continues to struggle with and has for decades (well, ISIS is a recent spinoff of an older problem).
Trump has set a great direction in Iraq/Afghanistan (get the hell out). Trump has worked marvels with Kim (when was the last nuclear test?). Trump made great strides in recognizing the truth on the growth with the embassy move to Jerusalem and judging by the latest hystrionics by Hamas might be zeroing in on the greatest deal of his life in the Middle East. Trumps purpose with the travel ban was forcing better intelligence/screening of incoming passengers and we’ve got the data sharing he wanted. NATO countries are paying more than ever. The ISIS caliphate is defeated.
Immigration reform and healthcare he has fought hard battles and wants to keep fighting. There’s recent progress on the great DACA bargain. Trump wants to get true historic immigration reform on that list, and he continues to push for a real Republican answer to healthcare while chipping away at the margins for things like drug pricing.
Oh yeah, and the economy has literally never been better, and never been better for everyone across the income scale. He fought the Fed hard to ensure real wages would rise for the low and middle class when they tried to squash it with rate hikes.
Trumps strategy with China is sound (despite the talking heads all saying tariffs don’t work) and he had the leverage going into this negotiation to get important concessions.
All this, while the whole time being called a Russian traitor from across the aisle. Crazy times we live in.
(Minor edit: I want to emphasize I'm not trying to challenge for any political chargement, even though this is a politically charged area. I'm mostly interested because this is drastically different from my understanding, and believe this is an educated viewpoint from different sources that I lack in my life. I'm looking to be appropriately enriched by being informed of other information I've been left ignorant on.)
> Trump has set a great direction in Iraq/Afghanistan (get the hell out).
This has concerns about leaving (yet another) power gap, no?
> Trump has worked marvels with Kim (when was the last nuclear test?)
Didn't Kim absolutely walk away from the most recent meeting with Trump with absolutely no deals made whatsoever?
> Trumps purpose with the travel ban was forcing better intelligence/screening of incoming passengers and we’ve got the data sharing he wanted.
I didn't know that increased surveillance was a good thing. Also, if his was to increase surveillance it disrupted a lot of people's lives, careers, etc. I don't know if that was the best strategic way to go about this given other, less-disruptive manners.
> NATO countries are paying more than ever.
Why is this a good thing?
> The ISIS caliphate is defeated.
Is this attributable to Trump?
> Trump wants to get true historic immigration reform on that list
What is that historic immigration reform specifically? I hear stuff about separating families at the border, children getting 'lost', and biometric screenings to verify families. Is that the reform? Is there reform I haven't heard about from the MSM?
> continues to push for a real Republican answer to healthcare while chipping away at the margins for things like drug pricing
I thought the Republican answer was to repeal ACA, which makes healthcare deniable to people with pre-existing conditions again, among other things. What are other proposed solutions?
> the economy has literally never been better, and never been better for everyone across the income scale
Is this attributable to anything Trump specifically did? I agree this is good, but I'm not sure if this is something Trump did. I'm not an economist, btw!
> Trumps strategy with China is sound (despite the talking heads all saying tariffs don’t work) and he had the leverage going into this negotiation to get important concessions.
We're going into an article where China is actually not giving any concessions and in fact has reneged on almost all of them. So I'm... confused?
If you have sources I'd love to be educated since you seem to have much greater insight into this than me, and are getting different conclusions than I am, possibly because my sources are not covering the things your sources are! Could you tell me where you're getting your sources? Thanks.
[We should be using less oil every year, but as much as possible it should be US oil (we have to trade for varieties of oil that our refineries are setup to make gas from).]
2. We do not have a peace treaty with Kim, but relations are still markedly improved, particularly between North and South Korea. Kim was threatening to nuke Guam not that long ago, and testing missiles and underground nukes constantly. We’ve stepped back from the precipice. Kim walking away is part of the negotiating. Even if Trump is ultimately not 100% successful, his hard line and hard charging rhetoric still accomplished a lot with North Korea and didn’t give up anything.
3. Information sharing on who is coming into the country is essential for TSA to do their job. They need more than just the basic passenger manifests to know about who is traveling. This isn’t about illegal mass surveillance but basic systems we already had in place for many countries which were missing from even higher risk countries.
Trump absolutely uses disruption as a tool to effect rapid change. It’s impossible to know if he could have forced the countries on the travel ban list to put the systems in place without the ban to force action.
4. Yes, NATO is crucially important and the US is paying more than our fair share. There is a specific % of GDP countries are expected to pay and the US far exceeds it.
5. If ISIS was thriving you bet that it would be Trump’s fault. Generally the President at the time gets the blame and the credit for the result of wars, being the Commander in Chief.
6. Specifically Trump wants to stop incentivizing illegal immigration by closing loopholes like Catch and Release at the border, as well as increased border security, to disincentivize people and especially families from attempting the trip. Bringing a child along should not be a free ticket to remain if you are merely an economic migrant.
The media called it a manufactured crisis because they don’t want to talk about bad policy incentivizing dangerous behavior which is leading to a humanitarian crisis. The border is totally inundated with illegal immigrant families coming over, and those people need to be processed and accounted for even if you are going to turn around and just release them into the interior.
7. The Republican plan was always stated by Trump as repeal and replace. The Republican platform does stand for protecting pre-existing conditions. There are a lot of things that are not great about ACA, mostly around Medicaid expansion and how the credits work as effectively one of the biggest tax increases on the middle class ever. By the way, it is problematic if you protect pre-existing conditions to the point where someone doesn’t need to buy insurance until they get sick. ACA tried to prevent this with enrollment periods, but it can be gamed.
8. On the economy there are a massive number of things Trump has done. The biggest and most visible was going to war with the Fed when they badly misjudged with rate hikes. But slashing regulation mainly, and the tax cuts, played a big part.
9. Back to China, notably, Lou He did not cancel his trip. It’s too early to call, but past approaches have absolutely failed and the China markets took a much bigger hit after the new tariffs news came out than the US. IMO China will only respect a hardline negotiator who they know can and will use blunt instruments to force them to make concessions. I don’t know if Trump ultimately prevails but I think it’s the best chance we’ve got.
This is some intense shilling. For better or worse, the trend of US oil production just continued under Trump.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-his...
Obviously the US produced oil before Trump. But oil production has increased remarkably in the last couple years, and support for expanded drilling access and pipelines is a part of that. Agreed, for better or worse. It’s hardly controversial that Trump is pro domestic oil production. Just look at Bolton’s comments at the recent Arctic summit!
Oil could increase more under a Trump presidency than any other in history. Certainly under a barrel/mo basis if not also as a percentage increase YoY.
Your cited graph is hardly definitive. A long period of stagnation followed by hypergrowth, reconciliation in 2015, and then more hypergrowth.
I personally feel people dismiss these issues because trump talks about fixing them. They seem to think admitting a problem trump is talking about is real means they support trump. That's absolutely crazy. Then again Republicans did the same with Obama though.
It's almost taboo to think the world should not be looked at either from a left or right perspective. Truth is what the party tells you.
Welcome to US politics. It’s very sad that a lot of people buy into this.
What do we do about a Chinese Government that is responsible for the largest transfer of wealth in human history through theft of western IP and Technology? Do we just keep doing business as usual and ignore the unfair trade practices and forced technology transfers? Do we ignore Muslim Internment camps, slave labor, political oppression, etc?
So what do you think? Should the USA capitulate, what's your plan?
1. Poor execution & personnel at odds with each other leaking play-by-play details has led to a lot of market fluctuation and difficulty for the market to price in the "real world". Anyone exposed to this gets a first hand look at the monetary cost of this. 2. Real impacts of the tariffs felt by american manufacturing & farmers as well as american consumers. If trump wanted an extended trade war he should have been much more upfront with people & prepared to cushion it. You say it's "some tariffs" but this minimizes real household struggles. 3. General impacts of "losing the people". He's a highly polarizing leader; anywhere from beat street to wall street to pennsylvania ave, people who don't get along with others will find it very difficult to be trusted on any given issue even when they're right. This is a near-constant in life, some people manage to be a net-benefit with that attitude but it's usually by leaning on other crutches like being highly gifted. Trump isn't that person.
GDP growing around 3%.
US net exports up about $55b.
Unemployment 50 year low.
Minority unemployment record low.
Non-farm payrolls up by about 3%.
Business confidence (Fed Ind Businesses) highest in 45 years.
(sources)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/trump-administration-accomplishme...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/how-trump-has-set-economic-g...
> China deserves the pain train for backpedalling.
Fine, I'll accept your premise here. Now, on the flip side:
Why do I deserve "the pain train" for what's happening with China? Why should I and others I know suffer for this?
> I don't understand the hate Trump gets for doing what needs to be done.
Because things for me were good before, and now they are less good as a direct result of things he's doing. Trump isn't doing anything to alleviate that, and if he is, I'm not seeing the results.
Finally, he serves me, so I have every right to demand results. He made lots of promises, and he's failed many of them already.
So answer my questions. Especially with the context of him not saying we'd have to suffer for his failures.
One shitpost tweet crashed SZSC by 7%, most of China couldn't even read it. Trump is in a position of power at least with this negotiation.
China deserves the pain train for backpedalling.