It’s a pretty unusual scenario where losing makes it easier to win. Usually, whoever’s winning can take advantage of their winning and win even more.
If a trade war is easy to win for any country that’s currently losing, why did the global economy not long ago achieve some kind of near-equilibrium?
I can’t even say this man thinks like a third grader. Third graders understand this. When the bully beats you up, you’re hurt and sore the next day and you’ll probably get beat up again.
This will end badly. And I don’t mean just this absurd notion of trade wars being good.
Trump is isolated and becoming more unhinged than he has been in his entire life. Influence on him is sporadic and short lived.
“tool and dye makers”?
“tool and dye makers”?
You know the colour “steel grey” ?
The Don was also going to make America great and at last glance, we have become a shithole country…
Contact DT. He has the best words and I’m sure he would be willing to negotiate a balanced, fair and free trade agreement with you.
The reaction is predictable, as I mentioned yesterday: collectively, we will target your agriculture. This will hit the GOP where it hurts, and it is your most obviously vulnerable industry. Your agribusiness is heavily subsidized and regulated, yet due to the vastly lower labour costs in places like Africa this industry also heavily depends on an international supply chain to remain competitive.
The most obvious example is potash. Most of the world’s potash (which fertilizes practically ALL of your farms) is in Canada - it’s also used prominently in aluminum manufacturing. The rest of the world’s potash is largely in Russia, former communist countries and China. The US is 95% import reliant, and there are no readily available alternatives.
This is the argument I’d be taking to the voters: Trump is going to kill your farms.
Trump reductionism is VERY appealing to other idiots (including many voters) who love to find scapegoats for their self-created misfortunes. I have compassion for people whose livelihoods are lost because their manufacturing jobs went elsewhere. They deserve a chance to make a decent living in another field of endeavor and if they need new skills or to move to do so, then the government policies should help them. But many don’t want that help; they just want things to go back to the way they were, even if they hated the work and it was dangerous or unhealthy.
So Trump knows it’s easy to win THOSE people over with broad but stupid gestures like tariffs on high-profile items like steel. But it’s really just a tax on American consumers and invites retaliatory measures. The efforts would be better pressed on getting trading partners to recognize that their own barriers just make it worse for everyone, but mostly their own people. This is where Berniecrats often go off the rails policy-wise, trying to offer the same Idiocracy as Trump. Save a few profile jobs here, lose three times as many quietly somewhere else. It’s good for a sugar high but not much else.
Obama had the right trade policy – not sexy but solid.
The tariffs are not a tax on American consumers. That phraseology may play well in sound bite arguments but it is a false analogy. A tax is paid to the government by the citizenry and is then ostensibly used to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Price increases due to the tariffs are paid to the manufacturer by the end user to offset its cost increases and do nothing to benefit the citizens.
There’s 7 billion people on this planet we can make and sell stuff to, and we want to piss and moan it’s not 1954 anymore.
This is basically where we’re at.
Just fix the year.
There are bonuses at stake!
I think that options activity should be looked at closely on this one. Its quite obvious that these statements would have an adverse effect on the market and detrimental to most investors (at least in the short term) unless of course you were a big holder of puts or shorting the market…
Maybe someone told him losing the PA special election would cost him GOP support. That would surely mean actual investigations.
I don’t know about the rest of you but my stocks have taken a big hit. This SOB might think being President is a cool reality TV show gig, but his attempts to entertain his retired base is costing me money. This is not amusing at all.
No, it’s a tax. It’s paid by whomever is importing the steel or aluminum into the country and it’s paid to the government. But the end result is higher prices on those goods produced using the imported steel/aluminum, so the cost gets passed on to us the consumers.
We already knew Trump never thinks about consequences, if he actually thinks at all…this trade war proposal is yet another example of Trump’s total incompetence, and November should take care of at least some of the Congressional inaction…while we wait for Mueller to finalize his end of the “deal”…
By the time his EPA gets done you won’t be able to drink it anyway.
A commenter at FT mentioned that Pennsylvania have an election in 11 days, this may be an attemp to lure the voters…
So, what you’re saying is: Trade Wars are easy to win if you’re not the biggest consumer of products from overseas and the US record for winning trade wars is roughly equivalent to our record for winning land wars in Asia…