Posted on 04/19/2025 7:09:40 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
Reciprocity is a word the ‘to tariff or not to tariff’ scholars choose to ignore sometimes.
A little do unto others as they do unto you is a solid biblical math equation.
Ann rand equated having an abortion with an appendectomy. After reading that it was tough to take anything she wrote with out thinking oh probably another whack job idea. Who is john galt turns out nobody cares
You’d charge a tariff on slave labor countries to account for cost difference obviously. A fair use of them.
What’s harder are softer anti-free market costs such as Europe’s paid summer vacation or US forced union participation or EPA, OSHA regs.
Per EPA and OSHA, more regs need to be eliminated. If replaced with reasonable safety measures, the equivalent cost of that should be tariffed.
Slavery is economically viable if you are willing to work them to death and replace. Also, what the ‘Ell has that practice got to do with capitalism, yah commie turd? Slavery has been a practice for centuries before any economic polity was in place. It was simply “might makes right” crappola. That is what it is now.
The CCP is willing to hire out its slaves to anyone , anywhere. That supposedly capitalist scum like Apple and Nike make use of it has nothing to do with an economic policy. It is just them corrupting a capitalist/free amket by establishing a monopoly (forbidden) and then killing the labor.
“Rand’s strikers returned only when the world begged them, having learned its lesson.”
As far as I remember at the end the main characters formed a semi utopian society Galt’s Gulch that was an enclave of capitalism is the midst of a collapsing US.
The major themes were excessive regulation and overtaxation. There wasn’t much about outsourcing, tariffs. The novel was set in a milieu of global authoritarianism.
The main theme was excessive government intervention and its adverse effects on businesses, prosperity.
Trump’s economic policies prominently support tax cuts and deregulation.
Resisting a bad actor such as China with its monopolistic policies, falsified
economic and corporate reports, bogus courts, currency manipulation, massive government subsidies which are intended to warp free trade and free markets to the benefit of the CCP would have been an anathema to Rand.
This guy’s book report deserves a D.
Did Ayn Rand and her fans ever addressed the issue of massive subsidies by the CCP of many key industries to corner the international market and bankrupt the competition?
Reports have documented significant subsidies, including preferential loans, equity infusions, land-use discounts, and direct cash grants.
For example, a study revealed over $50 billion in subsidies granted to Chinese steel producers. These subsidies have contributed to overcapacity in China’s steel industry, enabling producers to sell steel at lower prices internationally undercutting American steel producers.
Did she and her supporters ever address this, or are they OK with what the Chinese government is doing?
If our government weren’t stealing our money to give to themselves and their friends and they actually had budgets and were rewarded for spending less than their budget then our taxes would be less an we wouldn’t need as much to live on and our labor would be more competitive.
To me this is all about government theft by those in power.
Did Ayn Rand and her fans ever addressed the issue of massive subsidies by the CCP of many key industries to corner the international market and bankrupt the competition?
Reports have documented significant subsidies, including preferential loans, equity infusions, land-use discounts, and direct cash grants.
For example, a study revealed over $50 billion in subsidies granted to Chinese steel producers. These subsidies have contributed to overcapacity in China’s steel industry, enabling producers to sell steel at lower prices internationally undercutting American steel producers.
Did she and her supporters ever address this, or are they OK with what the Chinese government is doing? Should we simply ignore what the CCP us doing in the name of lower prices for American consumers?
Well, for one , she looked like Helen Thomas on one of the latter’s bad days. That has to put a dent in your relations with men.
What a claim!
Are you telling us that the technology they've used to lead much of the rest of the world in building items like EVs, built by robots, is slave driven, or that slaves make most of our pharmaceuticals that come from China? Or maybe, just maybe it's because we've gone around the world making endless wars, which have ended in disasters for the last 70 years, and all we've got to show for it is $36 trillion in debt that's about to sink us. Meanwhile, China has invested in building up its people and infrastructure.
After spending ourselves into oblivion making wars around the world, the massive debt is all we have to show for it, while China is building roads, high-speed rail, and bridges all over the world.
Chickens coming home to roost!
Tell us exactly how you know that China is producing with slaves. Please provide us with the details, not just an opinion.
Inquiring minds want to know.
I don’t know. Rand died in 1982. I never met her.
I knew some Objectivists in NYC. I don’t recall having a chat about state socialism.
That said, I DO know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism. Which detracts from my main point about tariffs.
Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t. It’s fine to argue the pros and cons. But let’s not ignore the baseline.
“Trump may very well bring tariffs down world-wide after the bitter pill is swallowed.”
Trump will be out of office by the time tariffs are fully implemented. By that time the gov will have pocketed the money and there will be no going back. Then the give can add the small army of intrusive minions needed to allow all of the rent seeking tariff cry babies exemptions. Such as a large steel maker who the vp loves who wants a steel monopoly but wants no tariffs on its imported steel slabs and raw materials. Or the farmers who want tariffs on food but not on ag imports.
There is no need to compete against slave labor. Ask the Confederate States. The US is a manufacturing powerhouse. We are number two behind China but blow them away in per captia output. The idea that we are going to have jobs jobs jobs because of this is ludicrous. We will get more factories but advanced manufacturing don’t take a lot people. Even though we keep setting records for manufacturing output we also keep setting record low employment in manufacturing.
The US subsidizes non-work and consumption by providing 7,000,000 workforce eligible adults the means to not work and even more “deserving” able bodied people collecting a sacred check. At the very same time we choke off output with rules regs enviro nonsense. How about we cut out the social spending? And take the shackles off of our economy? Since it is political suicide to cut social spending, including the sacred check, tariffs will help surpress demand. We will spend less and the government will take more and use the money to provide programs for people not to work.
Free Trade did not giveaway our energy intensive industries to China. We did that to ourselves. China builds a coal fired electric plant a week.
Free Trade did not gut our education system and gives us generations of illiterate and innumerate lazy people. Who is going to fill all of these factory jobs? Where I live we had $40/hr jobs at an auto glass plant. Guess who filed them? 2nd gen legal Mexicans. The locals wanted no part of the hot sweaty jobs on 3rd shift.
If we are at war with China then let so say and go Cold War. Cut them off and start the defense build up. But Trump can’t even stop iPhones.
This round of tariffs is Kabuki theatre. When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Like the gold standard and a friendly game of poker among strangers, free markets and free trade work only when the underlying rules are agreed to and no one steals or cheats. In the real world, those conditions are rarely the case. That being so, tariffs, taxes, and regulations are necessary and must be backed by force.
All tariffs on both sides could be dropped to zero, and American's still should not be competing with slave labor.
About two-thirds of the trade imbalance with China comes from the Chinese counterpart of ‘Buy American’.
People in China generally have the option of buying Chinese, and they do.
They don’t want to be seen as unpatriotic.
The 100% Chinese Huawei phone is bought, and the majority of the price American Apple phone isn’t.
Zeroing out Chinese tariffs and tossing out anti-American regulations entirely will not fix the ‘Buy Chinese’ problem.
Only variable tariffs based on trade deficits will be able to overcome Chinese resistance to buying American stuff, and then only partially.
American companies have a Chinese selling problem.
The American government has a cash flow problem.
trade deficits <-> budget deficits <-> too much vote buying
bigger payrolls -> smaller welfare rolls-> long-term US stability
Even if China was 100% (or even 90%) legally innocent does not excuse it from the need for reform.
Our problem is China’s problem too.
Rough international and domestic financial balance is a must for the USA (and most other countries). The ‘can’ can’t politically or economically be kicked much further down the road.
**Did Ayn Rand and her fans ever addressed the issue of massive subsidies by the CCP of many key industries to corner the international market and bankrupt the competition?**
I do remember Milton Friedman saying other countries subsidizing their industries doesn’t hurt us.
We via Congress need to decide what we want our economy to look like.
Don’t expect millions Americans to industrially sew. Sewing can done much cheaper elsewhere and poor countries need a sewn good export ability so they can buy American drugs and medical equipment.
Once we have made our plans, we can publish them and then make deals compatible with our plans.
Americans generally love imports, but our exports are insufficient to pay for them all.
Stuff we can make almost as cheaply as any country can needs to be made in the USA so we can import a maximal amount of stuff that can be made at much lower cost than is possible in the USA.
It needs to be understood that the issue is less about fairness and stuff and more about US governmental and international cash flow.
We are going to be creating a new Bretton Woods system.
Tariffs and import restrictions are part of that.
Allocating garment production quotas will allow ‘developing countries’ to actually develop and pay for drugs and food instead of USAID.
You mean free traitors like Reagan, Bush and Bush who supported NAFTA -- when we were duly warned by Ross Perot in the 90s of the consequences. So we had 20 or so years of NAFTA and then TPP telling manufacturers to spend billions and years moving to other parts of the world.
After all, it's not like we didn't enjoy cheaper TVs, toasters, Kias and oh so many other goods that we bought without a gun to our heads (voting with pocketbook).
Now we've done a 180 in a day and are telling those same businesses to spend another boatload and move that factory back here again. And, oh by the way, do it 90 days.
And so the cycle will begin again, like our own domestic automakers did in the 70s and 80s, when our production was fat and lazy, producing low-quality cars with bloated labor. And then, first the Japanese and then others took over the business.
Nothing new under the sun. What a massive boondoggle!
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