Posted on 12/13/2016 2:45:00 AM PST by expat_panama
No. Wake up and read. C. Edmund is a complete a-hole who was a user on FR and zotted during the primaries for being an insufferable prick.
“If someone gets a chance, please explain to the group why trade deficits are bad”
Why aren’t all the nations in the world in friendly competition trying to accrue trade deficits, if it is such a non-thing, or possibly a good thing?
The reason China manipulates their currency is to avoid having trade deficits.
“No one, not even President Donald Trump’s policies and his customs agents, should stand in the way of such customer/manufacturer decisions, made by anyone.”
Correct, but in accordance with the historic economic policy that made the United States the economic powerhouse of the world, sometimes they can pay a tax, as we all do, when we purchase something.
“A Trump-style tariff placed on Rolls in the 1990s might have been cheered, but it would have likely prevented the company from having many of the seven thousand employees they now have in this country.”
It would more likely have hastened the event.
“Government tampering always has unforeseen consequences.”
Certainly, as in the NAFTA agreement, which is government tampering on steroids. One of the consequences of NAFTA that definitely was NOT unforeseen was American manufacturing rushing into Mexico, taking jobs and wages with them, the very REVERSE of the tedious explanation given of what happened when Trump bought British engines.
“To be honest, trade deficits are mathematical facts, but they can be misleading, or meaningless, figures in the first place, as they only include a small part of the reality equation.’
Let me ask again, why are all nations seeking to avoid trade deficits and correspondingly trying to get the upper hand in trade deals?
“Damn all this winning.”
So dramatic, which is why I could not read all this crap. I am sure that American manufacturing is greater than fifty years ago simply because our population has doubled. But if the manufacturing had stayed here, it would be much greater.
All these Never-Trumpers will contort themselves into pretzels trying to deny the fact that the United States has lost incredible numbers of manufacturing jobs in the past fifteen years, and they were not robotic jobs. These are jobs requiring workers who are paid wages.
This thread would be useless without at least one link to the authors FR page;
http://www.freerepublic.com/~cedmundwright/index?U=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freerepublic.com%2Fperl%2Fpings
When you’re rich, you drive a Rolls Royce. When you’re very rich, your jet is powered by Rolls Royce engines.
the fallacy in your post is that nations don’t have trade deficits. Individuals and companies have an imbalance of trade. That imbalance is called a deficit for the buyer but isn’t sovereign.
The imbalances are a fact of business life and are benign
Yeah, that was my question too and here you go asking me! Maybe someone else here can help us out.
Glaring false meme (outright lie) since Trump proposed the high tariff for companies that decided to leave the U.S.
So many pundits that can't make a rational argument without adding some lies to the mix....
It's true that we do make more than ever and require fewer people to do it. It's through automation and robotics. The Big Three are prime examples of both.
I had an uncle (passed away) who owned a machine shop. At one point he employed some 20+ people. His last year in business it was down to 8. He did it through computer automation and some robotics and was turning out more product with fewer people. All he needed people for at the end was to keep the machines stocked, cleaned and oiled and the place clean.
Now it's happening in Information Technology through automation and artificial intelligence. I'm watching the people around me become fewer and fewer over the years. Soon they'll be coming for me telling me I'm no longer required as I'll be replaced by A.I. as will most if not all of my coworkers.
Ahhh, our digital/robotic overlords are going to be good to us aren't they?!
Bingo. Also, if you look at Honda, Toyota and Kia for example, all three manufacture the cars that they sell in the United States, in the United States.
Ex-Wife's (soon to be anyway....thank God!) Honda Odyssey was manufactured in Alabama. Fine, fine vehicle.
Contrast that to my GMC Envoy which was made in CANADA. I won't go into what a stinking POS that vehicle is.
I have always thought that, just casually looking, the idea that trade deficits are good defies common sense.
We all use to be taught that whenever you buy a product made offshore, the money and the job goes offshore.
But there is a new dispensation that says if you are a pure conservative, you should favor the de-industrialization of the United States because the new dispensation decrees that to protect American manufacturing is government interference in the free market, as if the Chinese communists give a damn about the free market. I once read an epistle by a free trade evangelist who maintained that even if every country in the world maintains their tariff protection, the United States should not itself have tariff protection. For him, our good works and sincerity would convert the world to our more righteous point of view.
” never come back”
Not quite true. They just got done buying a pot full of soybeans at a fairly decent price.
An excellent point, which also applies to one of the UK variants of the F-4 Phantom II, the F-4J, which carried twin Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans that were more powerful than the US GE J-79s and allowed the “J” model to operate off smaller British carriers.
He probably said that during the campaign, along with something about leaving NAFTA. After the election his greatagain.gov site at first had this:
Trade Reform
Free trade is good as long as it is fair trade. American workers are the best in the world. On a level playing field, we can compete, and win. Yet, too many American jobs have been lost over the last decade because of trade deals that do not put Americans first. Factories have closed and jobs have moved overseas because the government has imposed crushing regulations and taxes, while it negotiated trade deals that incentivized American companies to make things abroad, where environmental and labor protections are minimal and wages are low.
The Trump Administration will reverse decades of policies that have pushed jobs out of our country. The new Administration will make it more desirable for companies to stay, create jobs here, pay taxes here, and rebuild our economy. Our workers and the communities that support them will thrive again, as more and more companies compete to set up manufacturing in the U.S., to hire our young people and give them hope and a real shot at prosperity again. America will become, once more, a destination for jobs, production and innovation and will once more show economic leadership in the world.
--but in today's current site even the idea of just renegotiating NAFTA (forget the 35% tariffs) is gone. What we can say is that if anyone doesn't like Trump, all they have to do is wait a few hours.
-—Do the Chinese make better steel?-—
*****************
I’ve mentioned it before but I have experience with Chinese made nails that shatter when hit with a hammer... Steel manufacturers in China have no concept of quality control... I wouldn’t trust any grading system where they grade their own product.
We make more what than ever in the U.S.? Smart phones? Appliances? Autos? Clothing? Customer service reps? Jewelry? Furniture?
Not quite true. They just got done buying a pot full of soybeans ...
Maybe we just want to say it's completely untrue. China has its own currency, all they can use dollars for is for buying stuff from the U.S. All the dollars come back, and a 'trade deficit' is when we sell stocks, bonds, and buildings and they sell us goods'n'services.
Still haven’t answered my question—WHAT are U.S. manufacturers making? Widgets?
This is what lots of folks say so let's look at it.
Juan Valdez grows Colombian coffee. Americans buy the coffee w/ dollars. Some how I don't see any American job leaving the U.S. Juan goes to the neighborhood supermarket and tries to buy Columbian chocolate and the grocer tells him that he needs pesos and not dollars. All that Juan can do with his dollars is buy American food from an American, or (more probably) go to the bank and change his dollars for pesos so the dollars can be bot by someone else who's buying American stuff.
Are we together on this?
Yeah, they come from a factory in Georgia, but the total U.S. goods produced in the U.S. this past year has been over $4T. There's more at The Top 10 Manufactured Products In America's $2 Trillion Export Industry, or you can just google "what does the U.S. manufacture?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.