The Consequences of Defeat in an Economic War

Economy In Crisis ^ | August 31, 2016 | George Barlow

[American in Israel]

If a country wants to impoverish their own people by mountains of trade tariffs how does that hurt you to purchase their cheaper goods? Did it some how suck some value out of your purchase?

Did you think that America would collapse if “dung burning dog eaters” did not buy our goods?

Do you realize that China can make a CF light bulb cheaper than we pay in government fees to get the permits to even open the doors because of the mercury content?

That you can not mine below the water table in Alaska because water out of a six inch or less hole is a well for drinking water and water out of a 7 inch or more hole is a mine and is poisonous and must be contained in double lined containment ponds?

The problem with China competing with America in manufacturing has nothing to do with how smart they are and a hell of a lot to do with how STUPID we are.

Taxing us more is not going to make us smarter. If you think a trade tariff or tax on imported goods is not going to be paid by the consumer you are part of the problem.

So example one is useless because it was not about american trade tariffs, and example two is not about trade tariffs at all.

While politics and trade are entwined, it still does not invalidate the HISTORY of the destruction of TRADE caused by TARIFFS.

The free market system outperforms socialist schemes by both Communists and Fascists or our modern day nanny state which is a LBGT byproduct of Crony Capitalism in a Progressive pants suit.

You want tariffs so bad, charge yourself a dollar for every Chinese product you buy and mail it to the IRS as a donation. That will fix it.

[central_va]

We ran a $24Billion trade deficit in ‘15 with little S. Korea. Come on you CAN google can’t you?

[indthkr]

Economics bump for later....

[nathanbedford]

As I tried to demonstrate in this reply of some days ago, trade requires a delicate balance between top-down, elite over-management of the economy on the one hand and passivity in the face of national decline on the other hand. That delicate balance is complicated by the fact that, inevitably, a trade deal favors one section of the economy to the disadvantage of another sector of the economy.

My point in the following reply is to focus our attention where it belongs and to submit the process to constitutional norm:

As we emerge from the campaign and move closer to actually dealing with trade issues, we begin to see there is more than one side to the story.

Trade is almost never a pure win-win situation. Inevitably, the deal itself favors one segment of our economy at the risk to other segments of the economy. It should not be surprising that consumers benefited from cheaper goods and foodstuffs while some manufacturing concerns were adversely affected. Some agricultural producers were harmed while others prospered in a newly created market. Drivers enjoyed cheaper gasoline prices while automobile manufacturers suffered. Some automobile suppliers prospered while others were harmed.

The point? Sweeping generalizations about trade deals are demagogic and the only way to intelligently deal with the matter is to get deep into the weeds and make everything transparent because ultimately the economics become political issues. In a representative democracy, we expect that the people shall have a voice in the matter the disposition of which should not be left to elitist minority to negotiate a fait accompli for the rest of us, whether by way of an omnibus healthcare bill or a take it or leave it trade package.

Economics becomes politics when we regard the macro scale of trade. On the one hand there is the obvious need to protect the status of the country as a leading manufacturer in the world and generator of technology, or to watch the country slip into degraded status. In other words, it is a political question whether we engage in mercantilism.

On the other hand there is an obvious danger in a top-down managed economy examples of which we have seen over and over ultimately fail. We need only consider our own history in the Great Depression and all of the top-down nostrums imposed on the economy by elitists who only prolonged the misery. We look at the Soviet Union, we look at Japan and we see in the latter case a nation that in the 1970s we thought was destined to master the world become the victim of its own sclerosis. We look at China today and we see the upside numbers of extraordinary growth but we do not necessarily see the internal corruption and decay which might well lead to a very hard landing.

The question of the degree to which we will manage the economy from the top down in the name of trade is one which should be honestly debated, and it was not in the last election. To overstate the matter, we heard only one side of the story, loss of manufacturing jobs, but we did not equally hear the upside to global trade.

If we are to manage trade according to the results of the last election, we should ask ourselves who should manage it, whether the executive or legislative, or both, and upon what principles? For whose benefit? And how will the people be informed of the consequences? We should make an informed decision as a nation about how much we are willing to risk loss of liberty and corruption through the crony capitalism associated with a top-down managed economy and how much we are willing to risk national decay if we take no action.

[central_va]

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