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Trump's Bullshit Trade Tantrums

There has never been anyone in the WH or Congress who has less understanding of trade than Trump. An eight year old would understand more after a five minute lesson.
 
I haven't kept up with this thread (my bad). But my question is how do our resident populist Dems feel about Trump's trade and tariff wars? Would Bernie's tariff wars be better than Trump's?
 
WFFaithful said:
"Stop being a condescending coastal elite telling me what my interests are. #MAGATrump2020"
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that's right! My interests are:

1) Saving cute little babies from being MURDERED by their liberal slut moms (because conservative girls and women never get abortions!)
2) Keeping my assault rifle for when the terrorists come, or some crazy teenager
3) preventing the evil liberals from forcing the government to give me health insurance! Im free goddamnit!
 
WakeandBake said:
that's right! My interests are:

1) Saving cute little babies from being MURDERED by their liberal slut moms (because conservative girls and women never get abortions!)
2) Keeping my assault rifle for when the terrorists come, or some crazy teenager who shares my background and beliefs
3) preventing the evil liberals from forcing the government to give me health insurance! Im free goddamnit!
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Addendum.
 
cville deac said:
I haven't kept up with this thread (my bad). But my question is how do our resident populist Dems feel about Trump's trade and tariff wars? Would Bernie's tariff wars be better than Trump's?
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I see no objectives for Trump's tariffs other than protectionism; Bernie was/would be focused on labor practices protections and environmental regulations. Unless countries implemented adequate labor laws (like safety or child labor laws) and environmental protections, goods from those countries would be taxed. I have no idea if that would have a similarly bad effect on the economy in the short run as Trump's tariff war, but they would have significant benefits to world in the long run.
 
birdman said:
I see no objectives for Trump's tariffs other than protectionism; Bernie was/would be focused on labor practices protections and environmental regulations. Unless countries implemented adequate labor laws (like safety or child labor laws) and environmental protections, goods from those countries would be taxed. I have no idea if that would have a similarly bad effect on the economy in the short run as Trump's tariff war, but they would have significant benefits to world in the long run.
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I forget, but didn't Obama's TPP have those items in there? I seem to recall it including environmental and human trafficking concerns. But I know Bernie was against it, and Hillary was for it before she was against it (consistency of course not really being a human trait).
 
birdman said:
I see no objectives for Trump's tariffs other than protectionism; Bernie was/would be focused on labor practices protections and environmental regulations. Unless countries implemented adequate labor laws (like safety or child labor laws) and environmental protections, goods from those countries would be taxed. I have no idea if that would have a similarly bad effect on the economy in the short run as Trump's tariff war, but they would have significant benefits to world in the long run.
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lol, I don’t think you get Bernie’s trade policies.
 
WFFaithful said:
China's hurting now!
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If you're going to take on China, which arguably needs to be done because they've engaged in unfair practices for years, this isn't the way to do it. You enter into the TPP, strengthen ties with Canada, Mexico and Western Europe and get all of those allies on board to combat China. You don't piss off all of our allies and you alone engage in a tariff war with China.
 
cville deac said:
If you're going to take on China, which arguably needs to be done because they've engaged in unfair practices for years, this isn't the way to do it. You enter into the TPP, strengthen ties with Canada, Mexico and Western Europe and get all of those allies on board to combat China. You don't piss off all of our allies and you alone engage in a tariff war with China.
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Trump’s got this
 
cville deac said:
If you're going to take on China, which arguably needs to be done because they've engaged in unfair practices for years, this isn't the way to do it. You enter into the TPP, strengthen ties with Canada, Mexico and Western Europe and get all of those allies on board to combat China. You don't piss off all of our allies and you alone engage in a tariff war with China.
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Well said.
 
Killing the Pax Americana: Trump’s trade war is about more than economics.


...I thought I might take a few minutes to address two misconceptions that, I believe, are coloring discussion of the trade conflict.

By the way, I don’t mean Trump’s misconceptions. As far as I can tell, he isn’t getting a single thing about trade policy right. He doesn’t know how tariffs work, or who pays them. He doesn’t understand what bilateral trade imbalances mean, or what causes them. He has a zero-sum view of trade that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned over the past two centuries. And to the (small) extent that he is making any coherent demands on China, they’re demands China can’t/won’t meet.

But Trump’s critics, while vastly more accurate than he is, also, I think, get a few things wrong, or at least overstate some risks while understating others. On one side, the short-run costs of trade war tend to be overstated. On the other, the long-term consequences of what’s happening are bigger than most people seem to realize.

In the short run, a tariff is a tax. Period...


...Maybe the larger point here is that there tends to be a certain amount of mysticism about trade policy, because the fact that it’s global and touches on one of the most famous insights in economics, the theory of comparative advantage, gives it an amount of mind space somewhat disproportionate to its actual economic importance. Yes, trade policy is important; but in terms of the strict economics it’s not more important than health policy, or fiscal policy, or policy in general.

I say this, by the way, as someone whose career as a professional economist was based mainly on research into international trade and finance. In general, people who actually work on these issues tend to assign them less importance than those who haven’t studied them closely.

All of this, however, is only about the strict economics of a trade war, which may be the least important aspect of what’s happening.

For trade policy isn’t just about economics. It’s also about democracy and peace...


And Trump’s trade war should correspondingly be seen as part and parcel of his embrace of foreign dictators, lack of respect for our allies, and evident contempt for democracy, at home as well as abroad.

But wait, you say: China is neither an ally nor a democracy, and it is in many ways a bad actor in world trade. Isn’t there a reasonable case for confronting China over its economic practices?

Yes, there is — or there would be if the tariffs on Chinese products were an isolated story, or better yet if Trump were assembling an alliance of nations to confront objectionable Chinese policies. But in fact Trump has been waging trade war against almost everyone, although at lower intensity. When you’re imposing tariffs on imports of Canadian steel, on the ludicrous pretense that they endanger national security, and are threatening to do the same to German autos, you’re not building a strategic coalition to deal with a misbehaving China...

What you’re doing, instead, is tearing down what’s left of the Pax Americana.

Wasn’t this inevitable in any case? I don’t think so. True, U.S. economic dominance has been eroding over time, not because we’re getting poorer, but because the rest of the world is getting richer. But there was reason to hope that a relatively peaceable international order could be sustained by an alliance of democratic powers. In fact, until a few years ago it seemed to me that we were seeing exactly that taking place for the world trading system, which was transitioning from largely benign U.S. hegemony to a comparably benign co-dominion by the U.S. and the E.U.

At this point, however, things look a lot bleaker. It’s not just Trump. And it’s not even just Trump plus Brexit. The Europeans are also turning out to be a big disappointment. As I said, if they can’t even deal with the likes of Viktor Orban within their own community, they’re definitely not up to providing the kind of leadership the world needs.

But where the Europeans are weak, Trump is malign. He’s working actively to make the world a more dangerous, less democratic place, with trade war just one manifestation of that drive. And the eventual negative consequences for America and the world will be much bigger than anything we can capture with economic modeling of the effects of tariffs.
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