Posted on 08/23/2019 5:16:11 PM PDT by CincyRichieRich
China is suffering a serious food shortage due to the Asian Swine Flu epidemic that has destroyed 90% of their pigs. As a result they were not going to be buying much of the soybean harvest anyway since much of it is imported as soybean meal and fed to hogs. What they really need is pork and without their own hogs the middle class Chinese are going to have to pay the tariffs or go without. There isn’t anywhere near enough pork production outside the US to meet their demand which will drive prices even higher. Their food inflation is already above 9% and this will add to their pain.
Expect a full court press by the financial media to talk up the inevitability of a recession. They don’t have to convince the average American just the top CEOs that watch their networks to get them to pull back on capital expenditures and hiring. Once the job growth monthly statistics trend reverses the MSM will beat the drum for recession and panic people to vote against Trump.
Be happy to. Be nice if you actually meant wanting some substantive answers instead of the fluff you usually get about these tariffs. nevertheless, here goes...
Tariffs are a palliative, not curative, measure. They make people feel good as though something is really being done to help our economy. But tariffs absolutely fail to address the ROOT causes of our economic woes and why businesses have fled the U.S. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, not the EU, China, or the Man in the Moon, is the MAIN reason for our failure to compete in the marketplace. Federally protected unions, high taxes, regulations, minimum wage, subsidies, and a weak dollar all have converged to “bind and gag” American business and drive industry from our shores. Kill these mostly unconstitutional and boneheaded acts and policies and you’ve gone a long way to fixing the problem. Trump has directly addressed some of these problems. ALL need to be abolished.
In the meantime, as “curative protective tariffs” is a fiction, so are the inflammatory and fictional phrases that are oft repeated, such as “trade imbalance”, a fiction, trying to pound submissive support for protective tariffs into the hearers. But “trade imbalance” as an issue is a fiction.
For example, if growers in Washington State (WS) choose to sell cherries and China chooses to buy them at an agreed price and quantity, WS has exercised its freedom to sell in the marketplace regardless of how much the Chinese government has interfered on the Chinese buying side. WS finds profit in selling to China at the accepted and agreed upon price regardless. Both WS and China see a benefit to themselves in the transaction or else at least WS would not voluntarily sell to China.
And if U.S. companies voluntarily choose to buy hammers from China it is only because it is in U.S. companies’ best business interest to do so regardless of whatever the Chinese government is doing. If U.S buyers are not benefited by the transaction they will not engage in it.
The voluntary buying and selling in the marketplace free from government interference creates wealth to the side or sides of the transaction that is/are free from government interference. Our economy is not adversely affected if there’s a net inflow of goods and services (”trade imbalance”). Those goods and services go right to work into domestic buying and selling creating investment and production making our economy stronger and better regardless of what China does on their end.
As GM has said, “tariffs could hike vehicle prices and reduce sales. Even if automakers opted not to pass on higher costs ‘this could still lead to less investment, fewer jobs, and lower wages for our employees. The carry-on effect of less investment and a smaller workforce could delay breakthrough technologies’.”
“Protective tariffs” not only don’t solve the core issues I listed here and in an earlier post, they make matters worse.
Protective tariffs” not only don’t solve the core issues I listed here and in an earlier post, they make matters worse.
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I don’t think PDJT has said these are permanent, nor do I believe you have an Apple’s to Apple’s argument. Academia doesn’t work here...years of imbalance, intellectual theft, moving pegs, etc. Beat them, then ease off once they play by our rules. There is no other way. Again, you have presented academia, not a framework for an alternative solution. Tactics, not theory works here. They are communists, brutal, moral compass-missing dictators. Books suck in this war.
Your post is a good one, but I believe there is a broader strategy at work here. I believe Trump’s primary goal all along is not to take any “curative” actions to get China in line. It’s to permanently undermine China by pushing most of its industry to other countries (not necessarily the U.S., though there will be some incidental relocation here).
Blown away.
They’ll just steal and kill more dogs.
Yes. Exactly.
Exactly. Trump’s plans to force China into a “good” (for us) trade deal.
We hold all the cards. China wants to try and play tough, but they are losing this war.
Trust Trump. I do.
Whatever crap China sells us, I can do without or will be happy to pay more for quality “made in the USA” stuff.
Economics is only 1-dimension of the struggle between China & the US. I’m sure you recognize this. And yes, this trade war is expensive, but consider the alternative — a full-blown shooting war down-the-line — which would be ruinously expensive to both sides.
A trade war now vs. a full-blown shooting war later is a false dichotomy.
As I said in an earlier post, China is politically a threat to be taken seriously and dealt with seriously. But economically, China is an easy straw-man. Part of the reason is the confusion between the free market and national political sovereignty and the Lying Leftist Media helps keep that confusion going.
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