If you look at Chinese goods internationally, those that were not produced under a contract with strict quality control requirements but were exported as finished goods by a Chinese concern to some market-they are just junk.
Are Trump's beautiful tariffs
- Thread starter snarlcakes
- Start date
No offense to HarpoMarxist but Marxists loved to debate quality vs quantity. Is it best to produce more of low quality products or less higher quality products. More junk was always the winner. Then the famous quote attributed to Stalin-Quantity has a quality of its own.
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Put a fresh coat of paint on the junk and charge a premium...then people have to replace the junk constantly (aka more sales). win win
Where Trump got his ideas on tariffs, from a made-up expert economist, cited by a liar who made him up to sell books
Do you require your news sources to be "hot"?
Do you jack off to Laura Ingraham? To the whole Fox & Friends crew?
You're right, it has been 50 - 60 years and during that time, we've been treating the rest of the world like they are still recovering from WWII and feel free to protect their own country's manufacturing and industry.Honestly, Danc, these accusations are just untrue.. But I think we need to be on the same page and figure out these definitions of unfair trade practices, slave labour, currency manipulation and shell companies.
As far as unfair trade practices go:
There are no 'free markets' in the world. There are no saints. (See above.) The US wrote the rules for the WTO, clearly to extract maximum benefits or advantages for the US.
Singapore, my adopted home, for example, is considered one of the freest markets in the world. (The US is ranked 12th in the world only.) Yet it's being tariffed by Trump, despite the US having a trade surplus with Singapore. I guess it doesnt pay to have the 2nd freest markets in the world. (Hong Kong being the 1st.) Technically, can Singapore claim that the US has unfair practices?
Its not a pissing contest discussion on who is the freest. Ultimately what you have are basically every country trying to extract as much negotiated benefit as possible, including the US.
But my point here is that these tariffs make no sense when you consider what the stated objective is – bringing back manufacturing.
I work in a world (tech startups) where ideas, competition, etc are pretty cut-throat, and I have been killed more than I have succeeded.
But I can also see where tariffs will be beneficial for some countries – whether to protect some cultural tradition like the Japanese and their rice planting sector or the protection of a burgeoning or infant cottage industrial sector – but with a time limit.
What Trump is doing is trying to reverse something that has been going on for a good 50-60 years now. And in reality, trade is at best a symptom of it.
There was both a corporate cultural shift to tax reforms and a change in CEO compensation packages to growing activist shareholders – and then some – that made Corporate America want to maximise profits, especially in the short term, at the cost of investing in the future. Remember Jack Welch? He was the poster child of all this.
Just look at GE and what has happened to manufacturing in America.
It's all self-inflicted coupled with a massive dollop of greed and legalised corruption where tax reforms benefit only a certain group of people.
Just giving lip service, as our politicians have done for the last 50 - 60 years have produced no results. It's clear that a major disruption needed to take place to get the world's attention, and in that, Trump has succeeded. He's started a world diaglog on trade, and this is good for us. He always said there would be short term pain, and that's what this is. Experts have been telling us the stock market has been way overvalued and now they have a reason to sell. This was going to happen now or in a few years when interest on our national debt soared even more.
Whatever happened to the argument Trump just wanted to be President to help his rich friends?
When was the last time you could reach your dick? 20 plus years ago big boy? You just rest all the blubber on your wife’s head? Like you two are at the farm? In the mud
If they want to have their own circle jerk, who cares?
FFS the US is the largest market in the world, by far. You think they're going to shut us out? Puh-leaze.
Good points. Many of these arguments remind me of the old story about a guy falling off a building and at every floor he says-Okay so far.
In order to keep prices of products cheap and competitive….China subsidizes oil to their industrials. They buy at market and sell for $20 under
Uh, have you checked the price of oil lately?
Inflation is the least of our problems.
Crude oil at 4 year low at about $60/bbl so back to where it was a few months after Biden took office.
Thank you for posting this. My comments are more in line with Cohen. Friedman talks about benefits and costs to the consumer. He is right when limited to a consumer but as. Cohen points out in order to be a consumer you must also be a producer. If there is nothing to produce at your location so can’t be a producer then you also can’t be a consumer. Your options are then to be a ward of the state or work for menial wage and be an impoverished consumer.
Also in actual global politics there persistently are those countries that seek to displace you from a pre eminent position. If your industrial base is no longer capable of producing all the products you require to defend your position, albeit economically or militarily, then unlikely to maintain your position vis a vis those that seek to replace you. I am no fan of federal involvement in the economy but there is no other entity capable of looking after the strategic interests of the country. In those cases where strategic interests are threatened then only the Federal government has the capacity to intercede.
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I believe the Soviet Union faced this problem of maintaining strategic production by building totally self contained strategic production facilities. Titanium and other ores entered from one end and a finished titanium hulled sub exited the other end. Inefficient but effective.
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Your side is whining about the price of oil going under $60.
That ain't inflationary.
Interesting. She's never done a thing for me. She's attractive, but the shwing just isn't there.Are you taking about Laura "instant erection"
Ingraham?
I don't have a side. Just don't like Trump. Drops much more and domestic drillers will not be happy.
Are you taking about Laura "instant erection"
Ingraham?
I remember watching this segment some years ago.
I'm only a couple minutes into it here. But I have to comment about Cohen's remark about Japan -- that they've been very successful with a high rate of government intervention. This was filmed in 1980. Interesting to look at how what he's touting unfolded.
Here's a comparison of per capita GDP. Something broke in Japan around 1994 or so. It's now $82K to $34K.
What might one of the culprits be? Well, if you think our debt situation is bad, we're pikers compared to the Japanese. But we're working hard to catch up -- our budget deficits aren't far from doubling theirs lately (as % GDP).
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