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Trump's Bullshit Trade Tantrums

Trump Is Losing His Trade Wars: The pain is real, but the coercion isn’t.


...So why can’t Trump impose his economic will?

There are, I’d argue, three reasons.

First, belief that we can easily win trade wars reflects the same kind of solipsism that has so disastrously warped our Iran policy...

In particular, the idea that China of all nations will agree to a deal that looks like a humiliating capitulation to America is just crazy...


Second, Trump’s “tariff men” are living in the past, out of touch with the realities of the modern economy. They talk nostalgically about the policies of William McKinley. But back then the question, “Where was this thing made?” generally had a simple answer. These days, almost every manufactured good is the product of a global value chain that crosses multiple national borders...


Finally, Trump’s trade war is unpopular — in fact, it polls remarkably poorly — and so is he.

This leaves him politically vulnerable to foreign retaliation. China may not buy as much from America as it sells, but its agricultural market is crucial to farm-state voters Trump desperately needs to hold on to. So Trump’s vision of an easy trade victory is turning into a political war of attrition that he, personally, is probably less able to sustain than China’s leadership, even though China’s economy is feeling the pain...


Trump’s trade wars are vastly bigger than the trade wars of the past, but they’ll probably have the same result. No doubt Trump will try to spin some trivial foreign concessions as a great victory, but the actual result will just be to make everyone poorer. At the same time, Trump’s casual trashing of past trade agreements has badly damaged American credibility, and weakened the international rule of law.

Oh, and did I mention that McKinley’s tariffs were deeply unpopular, even at the time? In fact, in his final speech on the subject, McKinley offered what sounds like a direct response to — and rejection of — Trumpism, declaring that “commercial wars are unprofitable,” and calling for “good will and friendly trade relations.”
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ConnorEl said:
Trump Is Losing His Trade Wars: The pain is real, but the coercion isn’t.
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"...did I mention that McKinley’s tariffs were deeply unpopular, even at the time? In fact, in his final speech on the subject, McKinley offered what sounds like a direct response to — and rejection of — Trumpism, declaring that “commercial wars are unprofitable,” and calling for “good will and friendly trade relations.”

Tariffs have always been controversial in American history, and large numbers of people have always opposed them, for various reasons. The Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930, by cutting American import and export trade by roughly half, is considered by many historians to have made the Great Depression significantly worse.
 
Trump's signature foreign policy efforts are his attempts to somehow impose his will on both China and Iran. In both cases, the first thing he did was pull out of Obama era "bad deals" (TPP and Iran nuclear deal), and the second thing he did was start unilaterally imposing what he thought were tough guy sanctions. It's now clear that this unilateralist approach is not only not working, but actively backfiring.

The Iranians have accelerated, not reduced, their troublemaking in the region, and are now getting back to uranium enrichment. Our allies can't or won't help us constrain Iran, because we blew up their deal in their faces.

While Trump plays checkers with tariffs, China is playing chess by negotiating favorable trade deals with other countries and dropping its tariffs on non-US products to replace what it has bought from the US. If Trump had stayed in the TPP, he would have a group of Asian trade partners to counter China's moves, which he probably doesn't even understand.

that doesn't even address the long-term issues created by his cuddling with various autocrats.

Trump is shaping up as one of the worst foreign policy presidents of all time.
 
Highland Deac said:
"...did I mention that McKinley’s tariffs were deeply unpopular, even at the time? In fact, in his final speech on the subject, McKinley offered what sounds like a direct response to — and rejection of — Trumpism, declaring that “commercial wars are unprofitable,” and calling for “good will and friendly trade relations.”

Tariffs have always been controversial in American history, and large numbers of people have always opposed them, for various reasons. The Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930, by cutting American import and export trade by roughly half, is considered by many historians to have made the Great Depression significantly worse.
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I'm not disagreeing with you in the least. But more than half of the serious Dem contenders for the nomination are generally anti free trade as well. Not sure where Pete stands on the issue, but Warren, Harris and Sanders are all anti NAFTA and TPP.
 
Highland Deac said:
"...did I mention that McKinley’s tariffs were deeply unpopular, even at the time? In fact, in his final speech on the subject, McKinley offered what sounds like a direct response to — and rejection of — Trumpism, declaring that “commercial wars are unprofitable,” and calling for “good will and friendly trade relations.”

Tariffs have always been controversial in American history, and large numbers of people have always opposed them, for various reasons. The Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930, by cutting American import and export trade by roughly half, is considered by many historians to have made the Great Depression significantly worse.
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Thanks to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I understood this
 
Trump administration reveals details of $16 billion farm bailout in U.S. trade war

Agriculture Department chief economist Rob Johansson said that the payment rates are based on the USDA’s estimates of trade damage and that retaliatory tariffs have persisted longer than expected.

“We looked at trade over the past 10 years and determined the maximum amount of trade that a retaliating country could have had,” Johansson told reporters. “We do get larger amounts of damages [when we] look at the number of retaliatory tariffs and a number of non-tariff barriers that are affecting farmers.”
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avalon said:
Trump administration reveals details of $16 billion farm bailout in U.S. trade war
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Republicans (both leaders and the base) claim to hate and fear socialism, but they sure love getting that government money when times are tough. Apparently, socialism is only bad when LibDems are in power, or are running for office. Trumpites love to feed from the government trough - but it's AOC and her buddies who are the evil socialists who want to turn America into Venezuela.
 
Trump’s Secret Foreign Aid Program: He’s giving away billions to overseas investors.

Donald Trump often complains that the media don’t give him credit for his achievements. And I can think of at least one case where that’s true. As far I can tell, almost nobody is reporting that he has presided over a huge — but hidden — increase in foreign aid, the money America gives to foreigners. In fact, the hidden Trump program, currently running at around $40 billion a year, is probably the biggest giveaway to other nations since the Marshall Plan.

Unfortunately, the aid isn’t going either to poor countries or to America’s allies. Instead, it’s going to wealthy foreign investors.

Before I get there, let’s talk for a second about a claim Trump often makes about a highly visible part of his economic strategy, the tariffs he has imposed on imports from China and other countries. These tariffs, he has insisted again and again, are being paid by China and represent billions in gains to the United States.

This claim is, however, demonstrably false. Tariffs are normally paid by consumers in the importing country, not exporters. And we can confirm that this is what’s happening with the Trump tariffs: Prices of goods subject to those tariffs have risen sharply, roughly in line with the tariff increases, while prices of goods not subject to the new tariffs haven’t gone up.

So Trump’s tariffs aren’t a tax on foreigners, whatever he may think. On the other hand, his other policies have given selective foreigners [generally wealthy investors] a huge tax break...
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One of the biggest problems is Trump obvious lies go unchallenged. The tax cuts are the best example. Every day in 2011, House Republicans were all over the news telling Americans that Obamacare was killing people. Where are the House Democrats going after Trump’s obvious lies?
 
Seriously. If people will lend you money at low rates, it makes sense to borrow.

The economy isn’t a few simple charts.
 
WakeForestRanger said:
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There was a video that went around months ago of an Iowa farmer, overalls and all, handing his whole Trump check to Cory Booker. It was like $50.
 
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WakeForestRanger said:
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To be fair, it does make sense. Those that own the most farmland have the most to lose. They don't need the help as much, but if it is based on potential sales lost, that's how it works.
 
I just continue to be amused that all these anti-Socialist, Trumpite Real American farmers fight fiercely to keep all those sweet government subsidies and parity pricing coming their way, and now have their hands out for a government welfare program created just for them (due to Trump's disastrous trade war killing their profits). Apparently, socialism and "big government" is perfectly fine if it's going to benefit Republicans, Trumpites, and white rural folk. It's when the government programs are helping someone else that it's a problem.
 
redwing42 said:
To be fair, it does make sense. Those that own the most farmland have the most to lose. They don't need the help as much, but if it is based on potential sales lost, that's how it works.
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Yet they are the ones most able to absorb downswings, most likely to have diversified crops across all their acreage, most able to convert wholesale to another crop. If Joe Dirt has one farm that grows soybeans and that's what he's done for a generation, he's SOL.
 
dot com said:
Yet they are the ones most able to absorb downswings, most likely to have diversified crops across all their acreage, most able to convert wholesale to another crop. If Joe Dirt has one farm that grows soybeans and that's what he's done for a generation, he's SOL.
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And yet Joe Dirt and his wife will probably still find some way to rationalize voting for Trump again next year, even while they sell the farm because they can no longer afford the mortgage due to Trump's tariffs and trade wars.
 
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