Posted on 03/09/2018 7:03:56 AM PST by Kaslin
Rep. Markwayne Mullin: Trump isn’t starting a trade war, he’s helping to restore ‘Made in America’!
President Trump isn’t starting a trade war, and if you think he is—you’re blind to the fact that we are already in the middle of one.
Last year, the United States grew its trade deficit to $566 billion. The president is bringing everyone to the negotiating table. After the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act last December, we now have one of the most competitive tax codes in the world. It’s important that we use it to our advantage when it comes to trading goods with other countries. While other countries will continue to look out for their own best interests, I’m grateful President Trump is looking out for ours.
When our car manufacturers market cars in China, there is a 25 percent tariff added to the cost. This is not free or fair trade. However, China believes they shouldn’t be paying tariffs on products that come to the United States. Other countries feel similarly. The trade deals these countries operate under are drastically in their favor. These countries want free trade when it comes to trading with the United States, but they do not extend the same to us when we try to sell products to their countries. They claim they do this in order to protect their working class. Shouldn’t we be doing the same?
tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff
The GOP would be shooting themselves in the foot again, and any democrats going along with this. It basically is a slap in the face of the blue collar worker.
Trump again has outsmarted them.
HOORAY President Donald J. Trump. Stable genius BUMP!
Barone is either a dumb ass or a liar. How could the GD follow Smoot Hawley? Smoot Hawley went into effect in 1931 almost 2 YEARS AFTER THE START OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
Only 4.3% of the economy was involed with Internationale trade at the time and Smoot-Hawley passage which only affected about 1/3 of that (agricultural imports mostly) so Barone is arguing that a slight rise in tariffs affecting 1% of the rural economy was a major factor? Ridiculous. Smoot-Hawley had, if anything, a slight stimulative effect on American farming and no major impact on anything else. International trade dropped because overall demand dropped following the crash.
The desperate globalists themselves know they are lying when they trot that one out.
Here's hoping Gary Cohn really is in line for a Cabinet position as the rumors have indicated - that would take their "Trump is so bad even a great economic advisor felt the need to quit" meme and put it where the sun don't shine --- along with all their other thoughts.
Anyone who pretends what has been pursued since WWII was free trade is either dishonest or profoundly ignorant. We've had a bunch of negotiated trade agreements, negotiated by many nations which have no intention of practicing free trade now, or ever.
We finally have a president who recognizes this and says it out loud, and points out how past US presidents and congresses have accepted unfair, one-sided deals that have done great harm to the US industrial base including industries critical to our national security.
We're now hearing the squealing of those who benefited from those bad for the US, overall, trade agreements, and also a collection of folks who had the free trade/comparative advantage theories crammed into their heads in college and can't see beyond the theories to assess how it has and will continue to damage the US.
When Smoot-Hawley was enacted in 1930 the US ran about a 40% surplus in our balance of trade.
Today we run about a 40% deficit in the balance of over $2 trillion in trade.
That’s a LOT of buffer before any projected retaliation causes pain at the macroeconomic level.
“International trade dropped because overall demand dropped following the crash”
World-wide trade had collapsed before Smoot-Hawley went into effect. Complete collapse.
The main point of the article, the Fed decreased the money supply around 20% during the first three years following the stock market collapse of 1929. Well worth reading for general knowledge of the GD.
You really want to kick China, Inc. (aka: US chamber of commerce) where it really hurts?
Slap tariffs on auto parts, hardware and fasteners, finished electronic, and electronic components/semiconductors.
Oh, and do the same with Canada and Mexico, so the chicoms can’t launder goods through NAFTA countries either.
And spare me the bullshit about cost, labor, quality, regulations, etc.
I watched first hand as companies packed up their machinery and knowledge, and sold it to some government owned entity in china. The sole purpose was to increase their margin. Ask GM about “china pricing” as dictated to their tier suppliers.
The funny thing is: The price of their products only went UP.
That, along with rampant inflation, and a increasingly worthless dollar, has put the domestic manufacturing base in a real bad position.
It has become a vicious cycle.
Bookmark
Smoot-Hawley wasn’t the problem, it was the New Deal that kept the Depression going.
The 'bust' had to come, but the problem was the solution, instead of letting the Market correct itself, Hoover and then FDR got the government involved.
Whatever happened in the 1920s, the decisions of the Fed after the stock market crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression. Shrinking the money supply, then allowing the runs on banks and the bank failures created a banking and money supply crisis. Some older ancestors of mine described it as "nobody had any money". A schoolteacher ancestor was paid in script rather than dollars, script that merchants would then discount when used for purchases.
Near the bottom of the article linked in #13, this explanation is provided under the paragraph entitled: "The Road Not Taken".
Agreed 100%! Free trade is a bad joke that has been played on the American people for 65 yrs. Tariffs for the sake of tariffs is self-defeating, but targeted, retaliatory tariffs make perfect sense. If a foreign country is taxing our imports there is no free market correction available, it must be coerced.
If the rest of the world wanted totally free trade with US, I am all for it, either we compete or we loose, but when you have one bad trade deal after another where every country in the world but the US can impose tariffs and fees, that is not free trade that is our economist, elites and government selling us out to the highest bidder.
We have been in a trade war for decades and we have surrendered at every turn. So now we decided to, gasp, fight back with the same tactics used against us and the elites piss themselves on live tv, oh the horror, the great cost to the American people! You know those cheap imported products are great but if you as an American citizen don’t have a job or one that pays near nothing what the hell good are they being so cheap???
Free and Fair trade, that is the ticket!
One losing a Goldman Sachs stooge is WINNING as far as I am concerned.
I am not in the least concerned as Trump is NOT generally an ideologue. He is not abandoning free or fair trade. He is passing policy that benefits America and Americans by levelling the playing field.
Canada and Mexico have already been excluded and Trump said other countries are free to make their case.
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