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Full Event: Donald Trump/Newt Gingrich Rally in Cincinnati, OH (7-6-16)
YouTube ^ | 7/6/16 | Donald Trump

Posted on 07/07/2016 9:16:44 AM PDT by Jim W N

[Begin at 1:07:30 into the speech. Speaking of Carrier Air Conditioner which relocated to Mexico.]

"Every single time you make a beautiful air conditioner and want to sell it to the United States, there will be a 35% tax on it."

(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: economy; freemarket
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To: Jim 0216

You have to “fight” because “free trade” isn’t free.

I speak with too many Libertarian businessmen who simply cannot engage in any kind of “free trade” at all. EVERY country has rules, regulations, tariffs, and other advantages they try to give their own businesses. They keep American products out, penalize them, etc.

McKinley, TR, Harding, and Coolidge all used tariffs as a means to force other countries to, in fact, permit “free trade.” The great “free trade” example, England from 1830-1900, in fact relied on the Royal Navy to open up all markets (just as we did after 1945 until the 1990s).

So, yes. If you have a situation where you have true free trade, no tariffs are needed. We do not have that.

Beyond that, Washington, Lincoln, Reagan ALL knew that even with “free trade,” you simply cannot allow an industrial base to disappear. There are too many national security issues to hand over electronics, steel, aircraft production, shipbuilding and so on to other countries just because they might “do it cheaper.”

So it has been an American tradition to “protect” national defense-related industries because when you need them, you need them and there is often (as in WW II) no time to “ramp up.”

If American companies know they can’t just up and leave, and that in fact they are a part of this country, they will start acting like it and prices, in fact, will come down.


121 posted on 07/07/2016 4:37:16 PM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually" (Hendrix))
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To: Jim 0216

Can’t disagree, but we appear to have a majority of the Population that does not share those sentiments.

If they did, Obama would still be a Junior Senator, the Courts would still stand for Law, Order and adherence to the Constitution, the Schools and Colleges would promote respect for America’s role in the World and the Democrats would be a voice in the wilderness.

As for me, hope for the best and expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed. If Hillary makes it in, non compliance to Tyranny will be the order of the day.


122 posted on 07/07/2016 5:13:40 PM PDT by Kickass Conservative (There is nothing Democratic about the Democrat Party. (Or the GOPe))
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To: LS
“protect” national defense-related industries

Valid national defense issues are an exception to government staying out of the market economy.

But other than that exception, freedom demands that companies as well as individuals may go wherever they want - and they will end up going where there is the most freedom in the market economy - that is the history of America up until now. Trying to stop them is basically unconstitutional socialist/totalitarian actions and has NOTHING do do with attacking the root causes of what's making them leave in the first place. As Reagan said, "Government is not the solution, government is the problem."

123 posted on 07/07/2016 5:53:49 PM PDT by Jim W N
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To: Kickass Conservative

Hillary’s going down to Chinatown IMO. I don’t think she’s going to make to the general election and some believe that, just in case, the DNC may be ready to prop Obama up for a third term, Constitution be damned - they ignore it anyway.


124 posted on 07/07/2016 5:56:10 PM PDT by Jim W N
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To: Jim 0216

“Currency manipulation and trade restrictions are not core issues causing businesses to flee our country.”

Both give huge advantages to foreign manufacturers so I have no idea why you believe that.


125 posted on 07/08/2016 6:44:01 AM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: Pelham

The issue here is not how foreign currency manipulation or foreign trade restrictions affect U.S. companies.

The issue here is nobody including Trump can explain how government-forced higher prices to the American consumer attack the core issues of why companies are fleeing the U.S. even if those core issues included foreign currency manipulation or foreign trade restrictions.


126 posted on 07/08/2016 8:46:15 AM PDT by Jim W N
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To: Jim 0216

“The issue here is nobody including Trump can explain how government-forced higher prices to the American consumer”

Not everyone is obsessed with cheap prices. America did very well in the days before globalism when it was an essentially self sufficient economy. The American middle class was at its broadest and the Rust Belt was not a wasteland, it was filled with small manufacturing of the sort now decimated by our recent trade policies.

American conservatives of the era when National Review regularly published Wilhelm Roepke realized that cheap prices are not the end-all and be-all of a healthy economy and society. Our trade rivals understand this, which is why they pursue policies that ensure employment for their own people.


127 posted on 07/08/2016 9:15:18 AM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: Pelham

That’s wonderful.

Now, how do government-forced higher prices to the American consumer attack the core issues of why companies are fleeing the U.S.?


128 posted on 07/08/2016 9:17:25 AM PDT by Jim W N
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To: Jim 0216

“Now, how do government-forced higher prices to the American consumer attack the core issues of why companies are fleeing the U.S.?”

You’ve been asserting your premise all along, a classic logical fallacy. For one thing the price of American manufactures don’t rise, but import prices do. Any reduction of domestic costs will have to come from reducing the regulatory burden on American firms, something that Trump has long been advocating.

Tariffs impose on foreign manufactures some of the externality costs that American companies have to deal with, which include taxes to support unemployment resulting from mass deindustrialization. Tariffs also reduce the advantage of labor arbitrage and currency devaluation. Without these there is less of an advantage for companies to relocate outside of the country.

For decades we’ve been trying the policy of doing nothing to equalize the cost advantage of relocating outside the country. The results are in. It hasn’t resulted in any reduction in the American regulatory burden, it has resulted only in widespread chronic unemployment. It’s time to try something else. Something in line with what the first Congress saw fit to pass and which was standard American practice for a century and a half.


129 posted on 07/08/2016 9:52:10 AM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: Jim 0216

I keep hearing the complaint of “higher prices”.

When all of those companies moved offshore, the price of their products did not go down. If anything, they went UP, and the only thing that went down was the quality.


130 posted on 07/08/2016 10:15:24 AM PDT by factoryrat (We are the producers, the creators. Grow it, mine it, build it.)
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To: Pelham

That’s all wonderful too, but you fail to address the primary question (not a “premise”) asked at the beginning of this posted article:

“How do government-forced higher prices (caused by tariffs like the one Trump will lay on Carrier) to the American consumer attack the core issues of why companies are fleeing the U.S.?”

You call this question a “logical fallacy” but your reasoning is confused. I might agree with you about logical fallacy in the sense that Trump’s answer here makes no sense. But tariffs are the major part of Trump’s answer to business leaving the country. If you call that fallacious then we’re in agreement. That is the premise of this whole freaking thread.


131 posted on 07/08/2016 10:15:45 AM PDT by Jim W N
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To: Jim 0216; dragnet2; LS

Jim here is just repeating his little mantra over and over like a parrot. There is no use engaging him because he’s not discussing anything, he’s just mouthing his own party line as if it’s gospel. It’s like talking to a Moonie. Well at least his church has one true believer, him.

He’s convinced himself that the sole reason that companies offshore is due to government policy here in the states.

He’s impervious to addressing the mercantile export policies that our competitors employ because that would mean that ‘free trade’ isn’t at stake and that it’s not dependent upon our policies alone. So he pretends that market-closing behavior like China uses simply doesn’t exist. The only issue is to keep America from similary protecting our manufacturing industries and employment for our people, as China does theirs. He’ll just keep parroting ‘higher prices to American consumers’ as if that’s the sole concern in the world. It’s his one little drum and he beats it non-stop.

The choicest bit of this whole thing is finding accusing others of evading his questions. Priceless. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Well, onward and upward to the glorious libertarian future! Where we all get to buy what’s cheapest, which as we all now know is The Highest Good. Move over Plato and Aristotle, you’ve been dethroned.


132 posted on 07/10/2016 12:08:56 AM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: Pelham; Jim 0216; LS
You described him better than I. He painted himself into a corner, and why he has to keep repeating the same canned message. The parrot needs a cracker. ☺
133 posted on 07/10/2016 2:14:56 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Pelham

You know, I certainly haven’t studied this in detail, but increasingly I am thinking that all the good and productive elements of Reaganomics concealed the harms of free trade and possibly without “free trade” the Reagan years might have been even greater.


134 posted on 07/10/2016 6:03:10 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually" (Hendrix))
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To: LS

I suspect that you are on the right trail here.

During Reagan there was only one major trade rival employing a sophisticated industry-targeting export model and that of course was Japan. And Reagan did in fact recognize that there was an issue for us with Japan’s trade strategy and employed a few tariffs. Unfortunately these were temporary solutions that didn’t get to the root of the problem, which is the vulnerability of American firms at being targeted by nation states using a targeted export strategy.

The problem would only get much worse after Reagan left office. During Reagan China, Korea, the Asian Tigers, and the Soviet empire were still not factors in world trade. They would be soon. The Asian group had watched and learned from Japan’s ‘visible hand’ export model and copied it. The big jewel to be had was access to the vast American home market, while they denied our firms access to their own home markets. We let them do it by repeating something like our pal Jim’s Dr Pangloss libertarian mantra.

Reagan had some good people at Commerce who understood what is at stake, but they were ahead of their time so it would seem. I’d recommend to you Clyde Prestowitz and Alan Tonelson, they have studied this trade issue for years and I hope that they have some influence in a Trump administration. I haven’t followed them in recently but I see that Prestowitz has a website:

http://www.econstrat.org/

and so does Tonelson:

https://alantonelson.wordpress.com/

Stephen S Cohen was another economist/writer at the time who I valued- he wrote ‘Manufacturing Matters’ which could still be a worthwhile read. I see that he has a newer book out in 2010 ‘The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money’


135 posted on 07/10/2016 7:40:19 AM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: dragnet2; Pelham

The fact is I began this thread with a challenge to answer a simple question which you guys haven’t answered, because most likely the question cannot be answered.

It’s not a “mantra” or a “parrot” but a simple question which you have done everything except address and answer or admit it can’t be answered.

So you’ve managed to get around the condition that before you fire up your anti-free-market flamer throwers, you answer the question.

Then you get all pissed off because I won’t play nonsensical ring-around-the-rosy with you about subjects that are off point which you can easily do with a subject like economics.

The challenge is still there. The question goes to the heart of the issue and you have not answered affirmatively with a reasonable argument that actually can be discussed. You have shown you are unable or unwilling to have a reasonable on-point discussion here and like the Lefties, try to shift your lack of reason to the other side.

Have a good day.


136 posted on 07/10/2016 7:53:49 AM PDT by Jim W N
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To: Pelham

I know Prestowitz.

One theory I have is that “free trade” does indeed beat controlled trade all things being equal. This is especially true if a larger free trade power is competing against a smaller one (US vs. Japan). But if you have relative equals-—or one nation that is much larger (say, China) especially with a quasi-totalitarian government that can off-lay the negative impact of controlled trade on its population over a very long period of time (50-100 years), then everything changes.

The “free” society is eventually hollowed out before the negative impacts of “controlled” trade cause the totalitarian structure to crumble. Now, with the USSR, it was not trying to export products to compete directly with American goods. Quite the contrary, it was just trying to keep its own head above water, and diverting as much as 50% to its military. China is not doing that, and has not, done that.

China, unlike the USSR, is engaged in a Cold War but a war of trade, not military expansion. We should at the VERY least label many of our industries (autos, textiles, computers, aircraft) as “military necessities” and treat them as such, restricting patent transfers and ensuring that these industries are maintained. Even if true free traders like George Gilder or Thomas Sowell are correct, and we develop other industries to replace the industrial core, you cannot fight a war with disc drives and movies.


137 posted on 07/10/2016 9:21:36 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually" (Hendrix))
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To: LS

I agree with most of what you say, but I think that even in the case of the smaller power of Japan we had a real problem. Because the reality is that it wasn’t the large power of America competing with Japan, it was MITI and the keiretsus targeting individual American firms with no one helping them. Big brother America was mostly leaving them to their fate, the machine tool industry being one example, and the side with the power was the ministry of trade and the bank/industrial combines.

I especially agree that more industries have strategic importance that is dangerous to ignore. When my father was stationed at the Pentagon in the late ‘50s early ‘60s there was an office whose sole job was keeping tabs on companies in strategic industries, to make sure that they didn’t get purchased by foreign powers or get put out of business. The concept of institutional memory and the need to be able to innovate and improve in these industries was well understood. I have often wondered if we still have an office like that. I tend to doubt it.


138 posted on 07/10/2016 9:24:28 PM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: Jim 0216

It’s a mantra and you’ve been parroting it.

You refuse to address anything other than your monomaniacal obsession about cheapest prices, as if that is the end-all and be-all of international trade.

You’ve been answered numerous times on this thread, ‘cheapest prices’ isn’t the Highest Value. It’s the Highest Value only to you.


139 posted on 07/10/2016 9:43:48 PM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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To: Jim 0216

” but a simple question which you have done everything except address and answer or admit it can’t be answered.”

Well that part you have right- it can’t be answered because your ‘question’ is based on a logical fallacy.

You smuggle your conclusion into the premise of your argument, a favorite game of sloppy thinkers or clever rhetoricians. You might have more success with those not familiar with Copi’s Logic. Asserting the premise doesn’t get past me.

The conclusion that you like is that cheaper prices is the summum bonum, and you pose your question as if that is a given. It isn’t. Judging from your posts you’re not a clever rhetorician, and you could benefit from your own copy of Copi’s Logic..


140 posted on 07/10/2016 9:54:27 PM PDT by Pelham (Barack Obama, representing Islam since 2008)
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