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Tariffs Catch-All

  • Thread starter Thread starter BubbaOtis
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 4K
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  • Politics 
apparently I'm wrong about Vietnam/US bilateral trade agreement. There is one. It was signed in 2001 but that was before Vietnam's accession to the WTO. So I'm not sure it's in effect any longer. WTO rules generally prohibit bilateral trade agreements as they violate MFN status, a core WTO principle (that Trump has destroyed for the US at least). I mean, who knows really. We used to have international trade law. Not so much any more.
 
altmin said:
The average salary in Vietnam is 17.3 million Vietnamese Dong (VND) per month or 697 USD/month.

What the hell are they going to be buying from the US?
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I've seen that line of reasoning, and I'm not sure I agree with it.
US has a trade surplus with many developing countries (or much smaller deficit). Peru and Guatemala have a similar GDP per capita as Vietnam and have a surplus with the US. There are many in that same range of GDP per capita that run very small deficits. Vietnam has the third highest trade imbalance with the US. Part of it is just a geographic reality...their imports are dominated by China, South Korea and Japan but their imports from the US are pretty darn low.
 
CRHeel94 said:
I've seen that line of reasoning, and I'm not sure I agree with it.
US has a trade surplus with many developing countries (or much smaller deficit). Peru and Guatemala have a similar GDP per capita as Vietnam and have a surplus with the US. There are many in that same range of GDP per capita that run very small deficits. Vietnam has the third highest trade imbalance with the US. Part of it is just a geographic reality...their imports are dominated by China, South Korea and Japan but their imports from the US are pretty darn low.
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I cannot speak to Peru, but Guatemala is a poor example because of all the remittances -- 20% of the GDP!

Remittances are measured on the current account, but they are more like a capital flow in function. If we count them as capital flows, then Guatemala would have a very substantial capital flow deficit and thus it would have a large current account surplus, just like Vietnam.

But unlike most capital flows, the remittances don't really finance capital projects, and thus they give Guatemala a surplus of dollars with no real outlet. So what happens is that Guatemala buys most of its oil from the U.S., and a lot of corn too. Those count as US exports but they aren't really specific to Guatemala. It's a world market and it's sort of random how the oil money flows, even without the remittance factor.

In general, the US has small trade surpluses with a lot of underdeveloped countries across the world, but remittances complicate the story a lot because they uncomfortably fit into the traditional current/capital accounting. I bet if remittances were zeroed out, the US would run small trade deficits. I have no idea about remittances from the US to Vietnam.
 
"Vietnam will pay a 20% tariff on any and all goods sent into our Territory..."

Does this dolt actually believe the government of the shipper pays the tariff, or is he just repeatedly lying so the stupid fools who support him will not understand that the importer (and US consumer) pay these tariffs? Is he actually this stupid or does he just think we are?
 
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