Why Is The Tariff Issue Controversial?
Setting aside that it could depend on the size of the tariff and the product involved, if you stick to one proposal at a
Hai guiz why do tariffs suck tho sounds like AMERICANS WILL BUY AMERICAN now why is this issue so bad guiz we should tariff everyone free money for all savings passed to us!
Tariffs are controversial among people who understand what kind of legal environment we actually live in because they can conflict with international "trade" agreements, thereby threatening the mechanisms of economic cooperation established by corporations (and their lackeys in government) to allow them to more efficiently enslave people and rape the planet. When the world's leading superpower who supports international financial regulatory institutions like the WTO or IMF, and who has implemented a wide ranging regime of investors rights we call trade agreements, starts acting unilaterally insane that is inherently controversial.
Tariffs are controversial among people who understand what kind of legal environment we actually live in because they can conflict with international "trade" agreements, thereby threatening the mechanisms of economic cooperation established by corporations (and their lackeys in government) to allow them to more efficiently enslave people and rape the planet. When the world's le
Reading your posts can be tough after a long day of work but I think I agree with you.
Tariffs put forth on the international trade system is going to pressure the multinational corporations over the domestic worker and its industry and the WTO and IMF enforce trade agreements that benefit the larger global corps by allowing the outsourcing of jobs and suppresing wages.
And increasing domestic investment and productions also allows for the govt the opportunity to collect more money which will be needed in the longrun - but we have no idea how this would work in real life. But those key industries need to be protected but instead the entire world operates half of its production through Faang and that consolidation has been happening for a while now and your lefties have been promoting that acceleration for the only reason imo being that they really have no clue how any of this **** works - it's the local community's brick and mortar pizza shop that we have to make impossible to operate or just burn it down to prove a point because we just happen to be the stupidest mother ****ers on the planet because we saw a michael parenti quote once and don't actually know wtf it meant.
I'm in a discord with a professional bond trader who is eating this tariff **** up. Thinks its getting Trump everything he wants.
I'm not sold, but hes a sharp guy so I'm trying to let him cook.
I still don't see the end game here. If in 2025 GDP is down and deficit spending isn't then this year was a failure imo
I'm in a discord with a professional bond trader who is eating this tariff **** up. Thinks its getting Trump everything he wants.
I'm not sold, but hes a sharp guy so I'm trying to let him cook.
I still don't see the end game here. If in 2025 GDP is down and deficit spending isn't then this year was a failure imo
How about this for an explanation:
1) He expected Trump to win the election.
2) He expected Trump to levy tariffs.
3) He knew how the bond market would respond to tariffs.
4) On the assumption that Trump would win, he got into positions before the election that were highly likely to be profitable if Trump won and implemented tariffs.
5) Trump won and in fact implemented tariffs.
6) Because of 4 and 5, he has killed it over the last month or so.
7) His main goal in life is to make money.
8) Because of 5, 6, and 7, he is very happy with Trump.
or) The trading floor is playing tariff bingo
Trump is killing our economy simply because he had a bad idea from the start and he is too stubborn to admit he was wrong. I know tons of conservative Republicans and all of them think he is an idiot and I can debate with them why they voted for him over Harris all day long but none of them think he knows what he’s doing and all of them agree that his economic policies are absolutely asinine. Anyone who would defend his handling of the economy right now is simply a partisan hack and is not a serious person.
Trump is killing our economy simply because he had a bad idea from the start and he is too stubborn to admit he was wrong. I know tons of conservative Republicans and all of them think he is an idiot and I can debate with them why they voted for him over Harris all day long but none of them think he knows what he’s doing and all of them agree that his economic policies ar
We've had some 150 years of production and trade becoming increasingly internationalized, this will take time to unwind.
So, people just need to sit back and relax as the process unfolds.
I'd say 5-6 market collapses, a world-wide depression, a few dozens recessions, perhaps a world war if we're in the mood, the collapse of the UN, and finally a few generations going by to get used to it all, and then we might be back to the happy early 1800s.
Let's just hope nobody's got imperialistic ambitions! That could really screw up the time-schedule. Nobody could be that stupid though, so I think we are good.
Moderate chnace of WWIII but otherwise excellent chance the economy will look stronger in 3-4 years time
Trump is a ****ing disaster but that doesn't mean the economy wont be surging
chez, are you recommending that a reasonable person relying on your forecast..... a liquidation of all US stock holdings until 3-4 years in the future?
I wouldn't recommend anyone rely on it but if correct it would argue for investing not liquidating.
Moderate chnace of WWIII but otherwise excellent chance the economy will look stronger in 3-4 years time
Trump is a ****ing disaster but that doesn't mean the economy wont be surging
Nobody can explain the lever to get to surging
Weird assumption to make when his policies are objectively regressive, we are slashing revenues substantially, and trying to reduce spending in the margins
I've laid out multiple cases (not necessarily here) why everything going on is bad and nobody can refute anything I'm saying yet people still come to what appears to be an absurd conclusion
Actions that I think should have been taken that would be significantly better than what is happening now:
- Work in good faith with our trade partners to negotiate better economic terms
- Force the EU to militarize on friendly terms so they happily spend trillions in our military industrial complex
- Raise taxes by 10% across the board and actually enforce taxation of corporations and the rich (this one action would likely wipe out the deficit for the most part)
- Some combination of all 3 while working to reduce spending in a non-destructive way
Aligning ourselves with a broke Russia while antagonizing all our closest allies and creating a massive unemployment event while simultaneously reducing taxation for the rich .... none of that makes any sense
I dont think it's about levers.
The underlying conditions are nothing to do with trump. Tech is hitting a few minor tipping points: Companies are finding ways to profit from AI/etc and companies/governments are investing fortunes in it. A big chunk of this is going to the USA. Trump is pushing downhill on this. In the short term opposing regulation and scaring the world is adding fuel to a part of the economy that was taking off anyway.
The tariffs will do harm but they are being abused to push trumps interests - that's primarily the interest of his 'friends' - the big tech companies, blackrock etc etc are likely to do well from it. It's hard to know what the net will look like but I think it's very unlikely to outweight the above . Most of the other big economic harms from trump - climate change, lack of regulations etc take much longer to really hit hard.
In addition I dont think we have the Madoffs, Enrons, Worldcoms etc about at them moment or the massive leverage of the past (no LTCMs about). So when shocks hit the economy we will see some wealth destroyed but not the exposure of huge amounts of wealth that never existed in the first place.
I'm not betting on it but that's why I expect the economy to be doing pretty well in 3-4 years.
lol, Knucks...
Canadian farm and food products
BEIJING (AP) — China on Saturday announced retaliatory tariffs on some Canadian farm and food imports, after Canada imposed duties in October on Chinese-made electric vehicles and steel and aluminum products.
The new duties become effective March 20, according to a statement by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council. Additional 100% tariffs will be imposed on Canadian rapeseed oil, oil cakes and peas, and additional 25% tariffs will apply to pork and aquatic products.
Im have mix feeling about Larry summers but imo he did pretty good here .
4m-> Penalizing Canada aluminum and steal producers at the expense of way more Americans jobs depending on these resources struck home for me shrug
devaluing the dollar is smart!
Since you want point by point:
Tariffs address a different externality. The basic premise is that domestic production has value beyond what market prices reflect. A corporation deciding whether to close a factory in Ohio and relocate manufacturing to China, or a consumer deciding whether to stop buying a made-in-America brand in favor of cheaper imports, will probably not consider the broader importance of making things in America. To the individual actor, the logical choice is to do whatever saves the most money. But those individual decisions add up to collective economic, political, and societal harms. To the extent that tariffs combat those harms, they accordingly bring collective benefits.
The problem is that the harms are immediate and easy to implement, while the benefits are long term and difficult to alleviate. To give an example: I manufacture a widget, and for cost reasons I have chosen to do so in China. The new tariffs mean that I immediately have to raise the price, and see the impact on demand of the new price. If it's significant enough, I may have to consider moving the manufacturing to the USA; however, this means long term investment in supply chain, factory, hiring workers, etc, which means a multi year process for a Presidential decision that may be gone in 3 years. Most likely, I'm just going to jack up the prices and try to survive for 3 years, and I won't move one bit of the manufacturing back here. Every subsequent argument he makes in this section is about the value of domestic manufacturing, which is irrelevant if tariffs don't lead to increase in domestic manufacturing.
ah but he's ready for me...
The second big trap economists fall into when discussing tariffs is an obsessive and uncharacteristic focus on short-term consequences. In most situations, economists encourage people to think about long-term impacts, taking into account how the various affected parties will react to a policy and adjust over time. Will a free-trade deal cause factories to close? Yes, economists concede—but in the long run, they argue, the efficiency gains created by free trade will lead to new and better jobs.
This part is true - but only if the policies of the government stay stable. For the last 40 years, there have been individual exceptions, but overall a general trend towards freer trade between nations. As a result, companies have been taking long term decisions based on the expectation of free trade continuing makes sense, just as moving your jobs and manufacturing back to the USA would make sense if you believe that these tariffs (or some version that continues to heavily penalize international trade) will continue.
If you can easily domesticize production, the tariffs are fine - you likely increase costs, but you also create jobs and economic activity which is likely a wash. Putting a blanket tariff across all industries and giving companies no time to assess is nonsensical.
Finally...what if companies don't do anything and they just eat the tariffs. That's still good right because the government collects money!
In fact, if 1 million consumers each pay a $5 tariff, $5 million has not been set on fire—it has moved from their pockets to the U.S. Treasury. The nation is not necessarily any richer or poorer. Some other tax could be reduced by $5 million. The $5 million could be rebated to consumers. It could be invested in some other activity—say, building a new bridge—that might have benefits greater than the cost.
There is simply no way that adding the government as a middleman increases efficiency. Yes, something useful *could* be done with that $5M. Would you like to pay higher prices and trust that the government will use your excess spending well? Or would you rather just have lower prices and you'll figure out how to deal with it?
If you can easily domesticize production, the tariffs are fine - you likely increase costs, but you also create jobs and economic activity which is likely a wash.
no it isn't at all.
this is a very common misconception but it isn't at all, not in the slightest, not over the long term especially like ever.
tariffs wouldn't work (ie in aggregate they would cause a deterioration of living standards) even if moving production was absolutely free of cost for suppliers.
countries don't have potential infinite untapped GDP. there isn't an infinite pool of skilled unemployed people that "if only production came back here" could get reactivated immediately and become part of the productive process.
the vast majority of skilled people are always employed if they want to (even during recessions, more than 95% of them work of they want to, and in normal times literally everyone does unless between jobs in the actual sense, moving elsewhere).
a very large majority of normal people are (even during recessions, more than 90% of them work, if they want to).
the least productive members of society don't always have work in normal times and during recessions a significant portion of them don't. but those people can't magically become good manufacturing workers (and they need skilled people to manage them anyway). especially these days when low skilled manufacturing is disappearing as a job (because of automation, not because of trade).
then there is capital. there isn't necessarily often money standing there ready to be deployed at not-great ROE just unable to find allocation. there isn't a long line of people willing to out money hand over fist to build factories and to buy machines. not over the current amount of available capex.
but money can come from other countries yes.
people can't if your political plan is also to severely limit immigration (!!!!!).
it's completely ******ed to ask for manufacturing to move to the USA especially if you aren't willing and eager to let capital *and people* move en masse to the USA.
The monetary system reset is just beginning... tariffs are merely the first salvo in the process.
Concentration on the tariff portion as if its a negative is like trying to say that the color blue is better than the color green only because its a primary color.
The reaction of dollar decline and US based manufacturing coat basis is precisely what is intended.
The monetary system reset is just beginning... tariffs are merely the first salvo in the process.
Concentration on the tariff portion as if its a negative is like trying to say that the color blue is better than the color green only because its a primary color.
The reaction of dollar decline and US based manufacturing coat basis is precisely what is intended.
You know , the U.S. could of just lower rates by like 200% if they wanted the dollar to go down instead of cratering the entire world economy and it’s own ?
The monetary system reset is just beginning... tariffs are merely the first salvo in the process.
Concentration on the tariff portion as if its a negative is like trying to say that the color blue is better than the color green only because its a primary color.
The reaction of dollar decline and US based manufacturing coat basis is precisely what is intended.
what if some major bank or financial insitution collapses? We going to let it all fall down this time or can we even intervene again if we want to?
