Posted on 03/04/2018 8:00:35 AM PST by Kaslin
I’ve heard all this internationalist slop x 30 years while watching American jobs flee our shores, China become a superpower and our trade deficit explode. Sorry, your trade policies were kicked to the curb on 11/8/16 and they aren’t coming back. It’s now OUR turn.
Go Trump!
A country needs an electronics industry in order to survive
The USA didn't import hardly anything from any foreign country all the way up to 1970. CNN and the media people to think we need to “trade” with China so that America will be destroyed.
Wrong. It will save jobs that are threatened to be lost now, as well as, saving necessary industries for this country to remain. The cost to consumers will be offset by the handouts needed for those lost jobs. Just like Reagan did for Harley Davidson & semi-condictors. In 1977 and again in 1979 President Jimmy Carter’s administration established minimum prices at which foreign-produced steel could be sold. In 1984, when it seemed as if the whole steel industry was on the brink of extinction the Reagan administration tightened America’s trade policies further by negotiating quotas with foreign countries.
So there are 3 options, tariffs, quotas, or price controls, and Reagan used tariffs & quotas, while Carter employed only price controls.
Cost some jobs yes. But think of jobs created by decent wages for more steel workers plus the quality of the steel.
Our infrastructure has suffered with low quality foreign steel.
None of which has happened, nor will happen. Ever negotiate?
It takes the most treasonous form of idiocy to assert that the amount of protectionism required to maintain military preparedness is somehow wrong, damaging, or optional.
I don't know how you could come to that conclusion from what I posted. I asked if we are currently having a problem supplying our military needs from our current steel and aluminum base? But while we're on the subject, you are aware that we already depend on foreign sources for some of our defense needs?
NOte that Kudlow did not oppose French imposed tariffs on Chinese steel implemented two years ago and approved by the EU.
We'll see this week, won't we?
“Americans like negative taxed imported goods”
Except when their job gets exported.
As usual, Kudlow is mired in his econ theories and seems incapable of including factors such as national defense and domestic jobs in his opinions.
Sometimes I agree with Kudlow, but over the years he has been one of the biggest, give China whatever it wants advocates with a public forum.
Throw away your econ books, Larry, and try to learn more about national defense needs and what it takes to remain an independent, sovereign nation.
I call B.S.
Read the article. We export steel and Canada is a dominant supplier of our imports.
Do you think the fracking industry was a result of tariffs against foreign oil? If we’d have put tariffs on foreign oil, I’d wager domestic oil companies would have been much more powerful and would have discouraged independent oil drillers from ever starting the fracking revolution that saved our butts.
Tariffs are a terrible idea and directly tax our own people while making our own exports less competitive.
As for “fair” trade, one person’s fair is another person’s squealing unfairness. That’s called competition. Someone is always losing to someone else.
Larry Kudlow has more economic knowledge in his little finger than the combined knowledge of his critics in here.
Trump is wrong on this one, just as Reagan was. Hopefully he’ll recant and avoid the prospect of a trade war.
Until he does, beware the stock market. It really doesn’t like this sort of messing around.
>>Yes, tariffs are taxes and steel and aluminum are strategic commodities which we need to be able to produce for ourselves.<<
To the extent that is true, direct subsidies are far more effective and more easily justified.
And they work. Just look at the overbuilding we’re getting of wind and solar power. Not that these are strategic, but subsidies work.
We should decide whether any particular product is in danger of being outsourced solely to despotic countries (not Canada, for example) and subsidize the minimum amount of production determined to be necessary for maintenance of the capability. Production can always be ramped up in time of war as WWII proved beyond doubt.
And right now, the current domestic steel and aluminum industry are sufficiently established that no subsidy would be necessary. Nor are tariffs, an even worse idea than subsidies.
Ah, so now we’re traitors. Thanks for that.
Unless this is very very very selective all it’s going to mean is that whatever that product is if made out of something being subjected to that tax.
It’s going to cost you more.
Plus the country affected will retaliate by putting taxes on stuff we send them and it will cost them more. Usually it hurts our Agri business. Creating inflation and slows down economic development.
It strikes me what Trump is looking at are those thousands of small manufacturers who’ve gone out of business because of the expansion of cheap Chinese imports (of which many were design knock offs) into this country. Remember the Obama quote on MANUFACTURING IS FINISHED IN THE US.
But that was a slow gradual process when it began. Then accelerated by policy. So it should be when as we’re trying to bring small industry back.
Certain key manufacturing and re-manufacturing processes essential to defense should be targeted first and done on a very very limited basis. Because a wholesale approach would wreck our economy.
So you don’t mind paying one way(subsidize), just the other way(tariff) is bad?
Good point. Kudlow picks up a weekly check from CNBC so that could explain things.
Targeted tariffs imposed on certain raw materials do nothing but pit one U.S. industry against another. I don’t see how protecting Alcoa and U.S. Steel to the detriment of Ford and Carrier makes any sense from an economic perspective.
Kudlow (and Stephen Moore and Art Laffer who also co-wrote this piece) was an early and strong supporter of Trump in 2016. You conveniently forgot that fact.
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