Posted on 08/26/2015 5:47:02 PM PDT by WilliamIII
Here's a historical fact that Donald Trump, and many voters attracted to him, may not know: The last American president who was a trade protectionist was Republican Herbert Hoover.
Does Trump aspire to be a 21st century Hoover with a modernized platform of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff that helped send the U.S. and world economy into a decade-long depression and a collapse of the banking system?
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
“I don’t see this as being a central plank in the conservative platform.”
Well, what is then?
According to Trump, opposing gay marriage and defunding Planned Parenthood aren’t central either. So if we abandon our conservative economic positions, and our conservative social positions, what is left? Border control and populism? Is that conservatism?
“If other countries shut the US out of their markets the US has to respond.”
Perhaps, but other countries wouldn’t be able to take advantage of us to anywhere near the degree that they do if we had more sensible tax, labor, and environmental policies. China is a vulture waiting to feed on our corpse, but China is not the disease that is killing us.
-PJ
>> Today, trade can happen overnight if necessary, changing the dynamic of what can be traded <<
Well, sure, the speed of change is definitely faster, and the resulting temporary disruptions may be more noticeable and sometimes more unsettling that they would have been a century or two ago. In the contemporary world, severe political pressures do sometimes result, especially when we’re in an Obama-induced period of subpar economic growth.
But I think the underlying logic of the matter doesn’t change. And it’s not all just “theory” — since the empirical data still show that nations with open trading economies do better than nations that live under relatively autarkic conditions.
-PJ
B.) He has rightfully called same sex marriage a states issue and has stated that he opposes gay marriage benefits. what more do you want?
“what more do you want?”
Oh, I don’t know, maybe a conservative who actually fights for our principles rather than passing the buck because he thinks it might hurt him at the polls.
You prefer the old Calvary charge straight up the middle in broad day light approach. I prefer to low crawl on my belly in the dead of night. The Calvary charge never works.
I think that’s right, and unless you were aware of the role of banking system collapse in creating the Great Depression you wouldn’t recognize the danger that Bernanke spotted in the Summer of 2008.
When Lehman began to implode and money market funds broke the buck you had the beginnings of a vicious spiral that could have spread all through the banking system if something wasn’t done to stop it.
TARP and other solutions were needed but the problem I think I see is that they weren’t designed properly and they allowed taxpayer funds to be looted. But that blame probably lies with Bush’s Treasury Secretary and his close ties to the financial community. I don’t think the program was managed by Bernanke.
“The Calvary charge never works.”
Except when the progressives do it, then it always seems to work. With conservatives? Can’t say, they seem to scared to even try it.
the progressives lie their asses off and then “evolve” their positions when the timing is right.
The United States’ greatest export is capitalism.
Woe to those wishing its halt, for they’re the ones who will quickly embrace communism.
Yeah, Trimp has no clue about the economy. Let’s see what’s in YOUR wallet, Kudlow?
Do you get your platitudes from the back of a union flyer? I happen to like my coffee from Brazil, bananas from Ecuador and Chile, etc. because I don't want communist crapholes exporting cocaine by-products and importing communism in my backyard.
China and the Federal Reserve wouldn't own so much of our debt if we didn't create it in the first place.
Reagan did refer to the Laffer Curve....but that was a tax rate issue, not a trade issue.
Having said that, I like Trump a little more with his free trade statements....and I am glad he has Laffer giving him advice, if he does. Those are good signs.
>> unless you were aware of the role of banking system collapse in creating the Great Depression you wouldn’t recognize the danger that Bernanke spotted in the Summer of 2008 <<
Exactly. Due to his years of research on the issue, Bernanke probably had more expertise about banking panics and the associated market collapses than any other living person, with the possible exception of Anna Schwartz. In other words, it appears that he was exactly the right man, at the right place, at the right time.
Therefore, in spite of all the terrible criticisms that Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and others were leveling at Bernanke a few years ago, his aggressive policy at the Fed didn’t engender inflation, and it may have saved us from a 1930’s style depression. I think he need not worry about his place in history.
The only thing Kudlow’s wrong about is immigration, except for the part where he admits it depresses some wages of U.S. jobs.
All we have to do is cut American layabouts off of the welfare, housing subsidies, food stamps, Obamacare, Obamaphones, etc. and they will take the jobs like picking crops that they currently mistakenly think they’re “too good for.”
We also need greatly reduced immigration and kicking all the illegals out, otherwise nothing Kudlow wants will ever come true. South America is left-wing commie land. They couldn’t even find a conservative Catholic there to be pope. Unless we get them out of our country, we will have nothing but more commies like Hugo Chavez and Barry Soetoro ever elected again.
Should Missouri say that they will no longer have free trade with the other 49 states, and keep all their industries, jobs, workers, money and products in their state? Of course not. Sounds a lot like the iron curtain around the U.S.S.R.
Any conservative knows the benefits of competition. The more people you have competing to make better products, the better and cheaper those products will get for the consumer.
And the consumer vastly outnumbers the people who work for a company. How many people buy Oreos vs. produce them? If you put everyone's name who watched a movie in the end credits, it would probably take days to run through instead of 5 minutes. Benefitting the consumer is much more important than benefitting the worker. Every worker works for only one company, but buys products from countless companies.
The welfare state is the source of all our economic problems. The high taxes hurt businesses and hurt our standard of living. And that is driven in no small part by a flood of poor illegals coming in to steal government services. Every country's immigration policy is designed to keep out a flood of poor people, even ours. But no one's enforcing it.
More specifically, I'm talking about finished products trade and unavailable natural resources trade.
I am NOT talking about shipping our chickens and beef to China for them to process and ship back to us. I am NOT talking about shipping our lumber to China for them to make furniture to skip back to us.
-PJ
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