Posted on 07/03/2019 11:53:16 PM PDT by cba123
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit rose to a five-month high in May as the politically sensitive imbalances with China and Mexico widened.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the gap between the goods and services the U.S. sells and what it buys from foreign countries rose 8.4% to $55.5 billion in May, the highest since December. Exports increased 2% to $210.6 billion on rising shipments of soybeans, aircraft and cars. But imports climbed more — 3.3% to $266.2 billion — on an increase in crude oil and cellphones.
The deficit in the trade of goods with Mexico rose 18.1% to a record $9.6 billion. The goods gap with China widened 12.2% to $30.2 billion.
President Donald Trump has sought to reduce America's persistent trade deficit, which he sees as a sign of economic weakness and the result of bad trade agreements crafted by naive U.S. negotiators. He has slapped tariffs on foreign steel, aluminum, dishwashers, solar panels and on thousands of Chinese goods. He also has renegotiated a trade pact with Canada and Mexico that awaits approval by Congress.
And his team has conducted 11 rounds of talks with China aimed at pressuring Beijing to curb its aggressive push to challenge American technological dominance, an effort that allegedly includes cybertheft and forcing foreign firms to hand over trade secrets.
(please see link, for full story)
(Excerpt) Read more at vindy.com ...
When?
We need to STOP importing things from China, and start making them for ourselves, once again.
To heck with China.
Yeah, this is getting worrisome,
Every time Trump raises the tsariffs Us companies increase their purchasess.
Makes no sense.
If Trump persists, then eventually American companies will spring up and make stuff too, at competitive prices. That won't happen overnight... it will take some years. In the meantime, Americans with more money will buy more stuff no matter who makes it.
It won’t matter if more Americans are buying for stuff, if it is all imported.
For real.
China is cleaning our clock. Big time.
> eventually American companies will spring up and make stuff too, at competitive prices <
I don’t see how that’s possible without tariffs.
Maybe 10 years ago I saw a news story about a small US company that made door locks for US cars. Then the Chinese entered the market. They sold their door locks for much less than just the production cost of the US-made locks.
Were the Chinese locks as good as the US ones? No. But they were good enough.
The American who owned the US company was almost crying on camera. He said that to keep his company afloat, he was going to have to fire all his US employees, and move production to China.
Ping
More proof that Twitterman’s socialistic tariffs are a complete dud he should embrace free trade free market capitalism economy.
Buy American.
Really.
Trump, you ran, and you won, on this issue.
Free trade works, when everybody is on a level playing field. However, it doesn’t work when you’re trying to compete with a slave economy that produces goods from stolen patents.
The only way America can compete against China, if you want absolute free trade, would be to do what they do and enslave the American population and demand production levels with the threat of death if one fails to meet their quota.
Otherwise, China will eventually take every factory from America it can, until it owns 100% of productive capacity and America has none.
I’ll buy whatever I want to buy from whomever has the best deals American or Non-American I don’t believe in the buy American crony capitalist socialist nonsense. Trump lost and lost badly on this issue he can only manipulate the numbers for so long until the laws of economics catches.
Tariffs are not fair trade they are crony capitalist and socialistic in nature.
They never work at all
Buy American.
And if you don’t, China owns America.
Knockoff the nationalist socialist China owns American b.s. if Trump really wanted to beat Communist Red China, he had a super two house majority to do so he could have completely eliminated the income tax, the corporate taxes, the Welfare state, undo every regulation that staffles or stops economic growth what coulda shoulda but he didn’t.
What do you think Trump is trying to do? If you have a better solution, please share with the rest of us.
Overseas importers are hedge-buying / stocking up on imported goods before tariffs kick in.
I have been a Trump supporter since before he came down that escalator.
But this, really, sucks.
Really.
(sorry can I say that?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_United_States_history
Yup. Not too many folks around here have studied American economic history or bothered to research the topic.
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