Tariffs Catch-All

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farce© said:
The hollowing out of the US middle class was accomplished to a much greater significance by decades of regressive tax policy than unfavorable trade policy.
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The corporate emphasis on shareholders over stakeholders is maybe the single most significant factor. Once stock price/profit became the singular purpose, employees, customers and the broader community were viewed as entities to take advantage of rather than take care of.
 

Trump tariff letters going to a dozen countries Monday​



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Bessent told Dana Bash on CNN this morning that the letters will say that the higher tariffs will go into effect t on August 1 if the countries don’t respond with an offer benefitting the USA. If so, they are really just extensions of the 90-day deadline that ends this week.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
The corporate emphasis on shareholders over stakeholders is maybe the single most significant factor. Once stock price/profit became the singular purpose, employees, customers and the broader community were viewed as entities to take advantage of rather than take care of.
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And that started under Ronald Reagan, who both at the time (I recall it vividly) and now is regarded as a saint by Republicans. There's schools, airports, and other buildings and places named in his honor. Reagan helped gut the middle and especially working class, but they still see him as a hero. Nothing ever seems to change with these people.
 
JosephFreeman said:
This tariff situation will ultimately end in better US trade deals. The fact that China, the second largest economy in the world gets special treatment from the WTO is dumb. Middle class in US has been hollowed out. Can the fix it? We’ll see.
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It 100% will not end in better trade deals. We already had the best trade deal of all time: GATT. And Trump scuttled it.

Seriously, there's no point worrying about the WTO. It's been dead since 2017. No signatory nation to either the GATT or the WTO Charter has ever thumbed its nose at GATT like Trump is doing now -- every single one of these "letters" is a treaty violation -- and thus the treaty is dead. Or at least our participation in it.

It would probably help if you'd like to define what you think a "better trade deal" would look like.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
The corporate emphasis on shareholders over stakeholders is maybe the single most significant factor. Once stock price/profit became the singular purpose, employees, customers and the broader community were viewed as entities to take advantage of rather than take care of.
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Speaking as a former professor of corporate law and corporate governance, I disagree with this. Stakeholders never had much presence in corporate law. There was some hand-waving about it in the late 1980s but that was basically to justify the poison pill.

Stakeholder theories of corporate governance just don't work well. Mostly they are a tool for managers to entrench themselves. Not to mention that stakeholder theories don't really make much sense in a world where so many companies have dispersed operations, including in other countries. And employees are doing pretty well for themselves at the upper management level, which is the only type of stakeholder who would realistically have any sway.
 
JosephFreeman said:
This tariff situation will ultimately end in better US trade deals. The fact that China, the second largest economy in the world gets special treatment from the WTO is dumb. Middle class in US has been hollowed out. Can the fix it? We’ll see.
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Just so we are clear, you believe that it is a good deal when businesses have to pay more for goods and materials.
 
ChileG said:
Just so we are clear, you believe that it is a good deal when businesses have to pay more for goods and materials.
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I just think we shouldn’t sublease factories in other countries to produce what we buy. The world is turning a little more introspective, and self sufficiency as much as you can get is a good thing.
 
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I have a question - does “aligning” with BRICS policies include being a BRICS country? Because that would mean tariffs on Russia when none were announced on April 2 …

Also, does that mean +10% on India? China? South Africa? Brazil? Iran? UAE? Indonesia? Egypt?
 
JosephFreeman said:
I just think we shouldn’t sublease factories in other countries to produce what we buy. The world is turning a little more introspective, and self sufficiency as much as you can get is a good thing.
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That’s not what you said, though. You said we would end up “with better trade deals.”
Tariffs mean we will pay more. All throughout history until now, paying more for the same product would normally be seen as a bad deal.
 
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