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Trump's Bullshit Trade Tantrums

Newenglanddeac

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http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...de-agriculture

Trump’s trade agenda is on a collision course with his rural voters’ economic interests

Rural America has backed Republicans for decades, but it gave unusually strong support to Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, with Iowa scoring the biggest D-to-R shift of any state in the union. It’s interesting, then, that one of the segments of the business community with the biggest concern about Trump’s policies is agribusiness. This sector enjoys traditional Republican priorities like lax environmental regulation and eliminating the estate tax, but could suffer enormously from trade wars that Trump might initiate.

One clear sign of that is a letter sent this week from a wide range of farm sector stakeholders, ranging from the North American Meat Institute to the American Soybean Association to the US Dry Bean Council urging Trump not to blow up NAFTA.

Beyond the specifics of NAFTA, the objective economic interests of rural America are systematically opposed to those of Trump’s beloved Rust Belt manufacturing workers. The farm sector is a large net exporter that depends heavily on foreign trade to sustain income and employment. It will inevitably bear the brunt of any retaliatory measures imposed by foreign countries on the United States. The result is that Trump’s policy agenda is on a collision course with one of the bulwarks of his political support.

America’s farmers love trade deals

The letter, though politely phrased, is unambiguous, arguing that the “increased market access under NAFTA has been a windfall for U.S. farmers, ranchers and food processors.”

It also makes the point that trade in general is central to economic opportunity in rural America because “with the productivity of U.S. agriculture growing faster than domestic demand, the U.S. food and agriculture industry — and the rural communities that depend on it — relies heavily on export markets to sustain prices and revenues.” Or in case that wasn’t clear: “growing exports have increasingly become a vital share and important source of value to U.S. production.”

Agribusiness had really been hoping the United States would ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, according to the Farm Bureau, would have increased net farm income by $4.4 billion annually.

The soybean industry is particularly worried about Trump’s policies, with American Soybean Association president Ron Moore issuing a statement condemning TPP withdrawal and noting that “we export more than half the soy we grow here in the United States, and still more in the form of meat and other products that are produced with our meal and oil.” Indeed, when the Peterson Institute for International Economics models the possible impact of trade war scenarios with China, it sees the soybean sector as bearing some of the most severe negative consequences since China could retaliate by curbing soybean imports.
 
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Hmm, it's almost as if trade agreements have more nuance than just net winners and losers.
 
Trump administration mulls changes to trade deficit calculations

"U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is mulling changes to how it calculates U.S. trade deficits in a way that would likely help bolster political arguments to renegotiate key trade deals, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people involved in the discussions.

The main idea being discussed is whether to exclude "re-exports" from the calculation of U.S. exports, sources told the newspaper. Re-exports refer to goods that are imported into the United States, then transferred to another country.

If the government adopted the new method, the deficit with Mexico would be nearly twice as high."



http://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...32d0&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
 
Angst in GOP over Trump's trade agenda

February 20, 2017 - 06:11 PM EST
Angst in GOP over Trump's trade agenda
Getty

Republican lawmakers are concerned about where President Trump is headed on trade and are asking who in the administration is in charge of policies that could affect their home-state economies.

...

“I talked to group of people from Texas today, from San Antonio, and I said the two things that concern me the most about the Texas economy are the negotiation of NAFTA and the border adjustment tax,” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) told reporters this past week.

“There’s some uncertainty about the direction of the administration,” Cornyn added in a later interview. “For my state it’s a big deal, and I would argue it’s also a big deal for the country. Six million American jobs depend on bi-national trade with Mexico alone.”



http://thehill.com/policy/finance/320187-angst-in-gop-over-trumps-trade-agenda
 
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/donald-trump-china-economics-trade

Economists have explained that if we raise our tariffs and create other protectionist barriers to the goods and services of other countries, in violation of our trade agreements, those other countries could and probably would retaliate—propelling the world into the kind of downward spiral that occurred 87 years ago when another Republican administration again went isolationist. Following that, U.S. exports fell by some 50 percent—contributing to our Great Depression.
 
Behind a paywall. Summary?
 
Behind a paywall. Summary?

Basically, Gary Cohn and the Goldman Sachs faction in the White House are having a big fight with Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon and his ilk over free trade versus economic nationalism. The outcome will determine how drastic the nation's trade policies change.
 
Trump's trade policy is very simple- pay his family a cut of everything you do and he'll back it.
 
Trump’s Trade Pullout Roils Rural America

The decision to pull out of the trade deal has become a double hit on places like Eagle Grove. The promised bump of $10 billion in agricultural output over 15 years, based on estimates by the U.S. International Trade Commission, won’t materialize. But Trump’s decision to withdraw from the pact also cleared the way for rival exporters such as Australia, New Zealand and the European Union to negotiate even lower tariffs with importing nations, creating potentially greater competitive advantages over U.S. exports.

A POLITICO analysis found that the 11 other TPP countries are now involved in a whopping 27 separate trade negotiations with each other, other major trading powers in the region like China and massive blocs like the EU. Those efforts range from exploratory conversations to deals already signed and awaiting ratification. Seven of the most significant deals for U.S. farmers were either launched or concluded in the five months since the United States withdrew from the TPP.

The EU’s deal is all the more noteworthy because American farmers were relying on the TPP — to which the EU was not a member — to give them an advantage over European competitors. But in a further rebuke to the United States, Tokyo decided within a matter of weeks to offer the European nations virtually the same agricultural access to its market that United States trade officials had spent two excruciating years extracting through near-monthly meetings with their Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of the broader TPP negotiations; the United States is now left out.

90
 
Yeah Bernie wasn't any better in a globalize world. Sorry simply being a person isn't a skill anymore.
 
Wait a second. The people that voted for Trump are now getting screwed over by him?

Color me shocked.
 
I thought our lunatic president was going to negotiate BETTER deals. Maybe he's working on those in Jersey this week.
 
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