Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread
- Thread starter nycfan
- Start date
- Replies: 12K
- Views: 324K
- Politics
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
Trump is addicted to the idea that he can strong arm other countries into subsidizing America. Tariffs are just the new Wall. Mexico will pay. Foreign countries will be taxed like they've never seen but will continue to do business with us for some reason.
And I suspect that's some of his appeal to the MAGA chuds, who desperately wish they could strong arm other people into doing what they want and get frustrated when they fail. This accounts for a fair bit of the gender gap, I would think (though abortion is obviously the more obvious choice).
And I suspect that's some of his appeal to the MAGA chuds, who desperately wish they could strong arm other people into doing what they want and get frustrated when they fail. This accounts for a fair bit of the gender gap, I would think (though abortion is obviously the more obvious choice).
SnoopRob
Iconic Member
- Messages
- 2,391
TODAY:
And it’s not inflationary!
His undergraduate degree is in economics and yet someone in an intro econ class would be able to recognize how preposterous his claims are.
heelinhell
Iconic Member
- Messages
- 1,217
We're talking about a guy who called Mike Flynn at 3am to ask him if a strong dollar was a good thing or a bad thing
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
Too bad it's mostly false. It's hard to take anyone seriously on the topic of tariffs when they don't even mention GATT. The U.S. was dismantling tariffs and non-tariff barriers since 1950. JFK asked for, and received, authority to conduct trade negotiations and the so-called Kennedy round of GATT negotiations produced significant reduction of barriers to trade.A buddy of mine shared this article which I found to be a great read on the history of tariffs.
Why Trump Is Wrong & Alexander Hamilton Was Right About Tariffs
Just because Trump was conceptually right about tariffs (but terribly wrong in how he executed them) doesn’t mean we should all freak out at any mention of them...hartmannreport.com
Kennedy Round - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
This assclown -- who the fuck is he, by the way? -- apparently thinks "the rust belt" started under Reagan. It most certainly did not. American steel and car industries started going south in the 1960s and 1970s, not in 1980.
Ddseddse
Esteemed Member
- Messages
- 685
My issue with free trade is that it was sold as if the proposition that being a net positive was equivalent to "a rising tide lifts all boats" when that was/is patently false.Too bad it's mostly false. It's hard to take anyone seriously on the topic of tariffs when they don't even mention GATT. The U.S. was dismantling tariffs and non-tariff barriers since 1950. JFK asked for, and received, authority to conduct trade negotiations and the so-called Kennedy round of GATT negotiations produced significant reduction of barriers to trade.
Kennedy Round - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
This assclown -- who the fuck is he, by the way? -- apparently thinks "the rust belt" started under Reagan. It most certainly did not. American steel and car industries started going south in the 1960s and 1970s, not in 1980.
Free trade is indubitably a *net positive*, but it damn sure holes a hell of a lot of boats in the process of raising a lot of other boats to varying degrees (the varying degrees of which contribute to income inequality).
Last edited:
Well, strings were pulled to let him transfer in to Wharton and we know that he's promised to sue anyone in an official position who reveals anything about his grades or test scores, so I think he got a gentleman's degree with all that entailed.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
Reading that pablum again is painful. That guy -- who has a degree in homeopathy, unironically -- knows absolutely nothing about economics or history. And as usual, the tariff promoters get caught in their own illogic. He simultaneously wants to claim that a) there was 'plenty" of international trade with high tariffs and b) tariffs protected US industry. Well, which is it? Tariffs protect US industry only by keeping foreign products out. If we have lots of international trade, then tariffs aren't doing their job.A buddy of mine shared this article which I found to be a great read on the history of tariffs.
Why Trump Is Wrong & Alexander Hamilton Was Right About Tariffs
Just because Trump was conceptually right about tariffs (but terribly wrong in how he executed them) doesn’t mean we should all freak out at any mention of them...hartmannreport.com
The only thing that tires me more than idiots babbling on topics they don't remotely understand are the people who just lap it up because they like what they hear. As this guy demonstrates, it's not only a MAGA phenomenon.
Almost all economists across the ideological spectrum agree that tariffs are value-destroying. One exception was an economist at U Mass-Amherst. He was one of the few pro-tariff economists out there. His name? Peter Navarro.
Economists have studied import-substitution policies (which is what Hartmann is proposing, though he almost certainly doesn't know it because he's probably never heard the phrase). Almost everywhere and at all times, they fail. Those policies are what bankrupted South America in the 1970s.
It is possible, though rare, that developing countries can use trade barriers to develop nascent industries. It doesn't usually work like that, and it also usually requires an authoritarian government. China, for instance, used trade barriers during its economic industrialization. It did so by hoarding a huge stash of foreign currency (mostly dollars) and keeping the citizenry impoverished because the fruits of their labor were being held in centrally managed bank accounts. Trade barriers also helped pummel the Japanese economy in the late 80s and 1990s -- a destructive period that the country still has not fully recovered from.
In any event, the US is not a nascent economy. We gain nothing from tariffs except higher prices and shittier products. Again, there are cases to be made for tariffing for the purpose of national security, but let's not pretend that it's costless. When the US government tariffs chip technology, to protect domestic production so that pandemics or foreign governments can't bring American industry to its knees -- I mean, sure but there is a cost. The powers that be believe the national security benefits to be worth the costs. Perhaps. I can't really say.
And finally, a question I always put to the tariff crowd and one they never answer. Why not have domestic tariffs? Why shouldn't North Carolina tariff goods from Michigan? Why shouldn't Durham or Chapel Hill tariff goods from Eastern NC? If tariffing Canadian lumber is such a good idea, why doesn't NC tariff Georgia's lumber?
Some small part of that is that any other major manufacturing country except us had to massively rebuild their heavy industry completely after WWII. Somewhere around the late 50s, they had made a serious recovery and had the use of modernized technology and refining capabilities while we watched in our complacency as ours went obsolescent.Too bad it's mostly false. It's hard to take anyone seriously on the topic of tariffs when they don't even mention GATT. The U.S. was dismantling tariffs and non-tariff barriers since 1950. JFK asked for, and received, authority to conduct trade negotiations and the so-called Kennedy round of GATT negotiations produced significant reduction of barriers to trade.
Kennedy Round - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
This assclown -- who the fuck is he, by the way? -- apparently thinks "the rust belt" started under Reagan. It most certainly did not. American steel and car industries started going south in the 1960s and 1970s, not in 1980.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
It's more true than false. There are no policies that are win-win for everyone, but free trade is close, over the long term. I get what you're saying, but I think the idea that trade badly hurt the working class just doesn't hold water.
Free trade did not cause American manufacturing to fall on hard times in the 1970s. Arguably, tariffs contributed to the fail because they had allowed American industry to become lazy and lacking innovation. The job losses in manufacturing were much more related to increased productivity than foreign competition per se. There has been evidence that the accession of China to the WTO created a shock to American manufacturing and caused plants to close. Whatever the merits of that view (it's contested; I take no side), that shock has passed. The American job market has very clearly recovered.
I should add that a bigger contributor to the decline of the Rust Belt wasn't competition from overseas -- it was competition from right-to-work states in the American South. Alabama was the original Mexico.
Just as the minimum wage is a really crappy anti-poverty policy, so too are tariffs a really crappy job-protection policy. The minimum wage is justified on other grounds. Tariffs just aren't.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
This is an expected result of trade barriers. In fact, it's the norm. You're right to point to WWII, and you'd model the effect you cite as a massive set of non-tariff barriers to trade that began to expire in the 1960s.
- Messages
- 2,171
Why? Many of the parts they need for assembly of their vehicles are imported, so the tariff will hit those components, increase their costs and make their cars non-competitive. It’s the same for US brands, they all import a ton of components. Even when the auto manufacturers buy components from US based companies such as Dana, Eaton, Borg Warner, Federal Mogul, etc., it doesn’t mean those parts were manufactured in the US. They will also get hit with the stupid Trump tariffs. He’s such a dumbass.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
I suspect the comment was sarcastic.
SnoopRob
Iconic Member
- Messages
- 2,391
I found this to be an interesting (but unsourced or uncited) claim in the article...A buddy of mine shared this article which I found to be a great read on the history of tariffs.
Why Trump Is Wrong & Alexander Hamilton Was Right About Tariffs
Just because Trump was conceptually right about tariffs (but terribly wrong in how he executed them) doesn’t mean we should all freak out at any mention of them...hartmannreport.com
And, of course, that’s how America became the richest country in the world, and the loss of tariffs is a major part of why our standard of living has slipped so badly over these past 44 years of our neoliberal Reaganism experiment.
I'd like to see a study or, better, multiple studies which investigate this claim. I can certainly see that one could make the claim that the costs of certain goods have may have risen at a rate higher than median wage increases over that time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the standard of living has fallen. It would be interesting to see some evidence that weighs the difficulty of meeting a basic standard of living from 1980 to now against the advances in the products we consume now and the associated advances in standard of living due to those product advances.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 5,639
Which claim? That the standard of living has fallen, or that tariffs caused whatever happened over those 44 years? On the first:
A Comparison of Living Standards across the United States of America [the standard of living in all states increased from 1999 to 2015]
On the second, there have been hundreds of studies. Whether tariffs were actually vital to the success of the U.S. in the post Civil War period (highly doubtful, in my view -- immigration was the source of wealth), they do not promote economic success in today's world.
This is how our stupid EC and Senate system completely warps our society. We don't actually need more "manufacturing jobs" in the US. There's nothing special about a manufacturing job. If we elected the presidency by popular vote, and had a unicameral legislature, nobody would give a fuck about "manufacturing jobs." The issue becomes a focus of attention because a bunch of blue collar workers in swing states want to return to a mythologized halcyon past. So we get all this bullshit about restoring manufacturing jobs, from both parties, really.
It used to be the American dream for an immigrant (or immigrant family) to come to America, work in a factory, and try to set up kids or grandkids to escape that life and find white-collar employment. That's what upward mobility has always meant. Now, in large parts of the country, the American dream is apparently to work in the same dead-end factory job from age 18 onward. Note that if you ever speak to the people who work in factories, they don't much like their jobs, their companies or the work. But we wouldn't want anything to change!
My grandfather grew up in the Seattle area. He saved up some money during the war. Then he and a business partner bought two garbage trucks to serve a rapidly growing area called "Everett," and also a few more outlying communities. They were garbage men. And with some wisdom and savings, they were able to sell their business and retire in their 50s. My grandma invested in the stock market and by the 1980s, they had turned the garbage business into a sizeable nest egg. With that money, they paid for college for all their kids. They seeded my aunt and uncle's electronics manufacturing business (my uncle is an electrical engineer), but then they had some differences in philosophy. My aunt took the business. My uncle, using some of his parents' money, got an advanced degree and started working for a small startup in Idaho called . . . Micron.
[Note: My father managed to blow much of the money that went to my mom, trying to be an options trader. By his account, he lost about $500K doing options trading over a decade; my mom puts the losses at just over a million. Looking over his trading records, I estimated more like $1.5M though that was going by trades and not account values. Probably my mom 's estimate is best ]
That's what the American dream used to be. I guess, to MAGA, not so much. Dead end factory jobs forever, I guess.
dukeman92
Honored Member
- Messages
- 994
After he damn near bankrupt them with his tariffs during his last term.