Let me tell you a true story. I was driving through Ohio on the day before the election and I prayed silently twice for a low turnout among democrats in the swing states so that Trump would win. That’s exactly what happened. Now we need to make sure we keep control of both houses of congress in November and reelect DJT in 2020.
The right way to do trade negotiations is the way the US and Europeans handled negotiations with China around 2010, only tougher this time. They met with the Chinese trade negotiators and basically just told them “you have to start buying more products from us, or we’ll have to restrict imports severely from China.” It worked, of course, and China started importing Ferraris and BMWs from Europe, and more semiconductor products, farm products, and SUVs from America. The negotiations were out of the public arena, didn’t rattle the financial markets and corporate guys, and we got results. Now it’s way past time for round two of the same kind of group negotiations with China and Japan.
It’s like the old saying about the True Karate Master, who never has to use karate (because he’s so tough nobody wants to fight him). We need to go in there with our allies, quietly, away from the media, and tell them what we’re going to do, if they don’t open their markets and buy more products from us and cut the trade deficit. That will work again if it’s done the right way, and then we don’t rattle the financial markets and cause middle class people to take losses in the stock market, and we don’t cause delays in capital projects by business.
So like the True Karate Master, if we negotiate with our allies the right way, we only have to threaten to impose tariffs, away from the news media. We never have to actually impose a tariff because they know we’ll actually do it, and so they’ll make concessions first.