MISLEADING TITLE - I saw the entire interview.
RINOS still control Congress.
For Kevin McCarthy “Leader” is just a title in the GOPe.
I thought every Irishman in Congress was a Democrat.
Is that why you pushed for such legislation under Obola?
Oh. You didnt' push for such legislation under Obola?
RINOs vs. Trump? I think I know who’d win that one.
The “35% tariff” was a negotiating ploy, as there is no way it could be imposed in the current political climate. But there are other barriers that could, and should, be erected against unfair trade practices for which there is no compensation, like the practice of “dumping” products that are made for export at artificially low prices.
Ford can build all the small cars it wants to in Mexico, they just cannot be sold in the US. They shall have to develop markets in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Chile or Paraguay. Maybe even Cuba, once the economic situation there gets realigned. The so-called “free trade agreement” between the US and Mexico is in abiding need of being vastly overhauled.
There was a time when Mexican-manufactured Volkswagen Beetles could not be imported to the US, because of other market limitations having nothing at all to do with tariffs or taxation or a lot of other factors.
no shock. he’s a card carrying member of the gope “free-trader” (as in, pay me and you get in free-trader) cheap labor express club.
Should McCarthy become an obstructionist to Trump’s Americanism, I would expect a mega Trump rally in McCarthy’s congressional district.
Then good old never trumpet should be relegated to the back bench
It is a mistake to imagine that an entity called the GOP is getting control of the presidency, both houses of congress, and our state governments. A good part of that GOP - most of it - is on a whole different page from the people who turned out in droves to put Donald Trump in office.
McCarthy is from California. A state that is not Republican yet he is the number two Republican in the house.
We need a Department of Tariffs staffed with really smart people to decide on all the cases that arise deserving of this new fee.
This is how Trump is going to do it.
When he gains the leverage over wayward US companies, the opposition, and the rest who oppose, Trump will push his advantage all the way to get the win. That’s when he will do it. The Press is very stupid, or they think you cannot figure out Trump. The 35% tariff won’t be used totally across the board.
McCarthy hasn’t worked a real job in his life.
“I think that’s a better way to solve the problem than getting in a trade war over a 35-percent tariff,”
The question is if there is a better way then why didn’t they do it? Why did they cave to obama every step of the way?
Karl Denninger at Market-Ticker has a proposal for an adjustable tariff depending on the amount of labor or regulatory arbitrage a company is seeking to benefit from:
The media has...pointed out that the cost of assembling air conditioners -- that is, manufacturing labor -- in Mexico is about $3/hour. Incidentally it's probably not much more for assembling cars.There are two options folks:
1. Make it uneconomic for companies to take such an action by causing the cost of labor there to reach effective parity with the cost here, in which case the offshoring of labor will disappear
OR
2. Accept a $3/hour wage here in America as the labor rate to assemble air conditioners in Indiana.
The logic and math on this is pretty simple; if a company can have labor performed for $3/hour they will not pay $20/hour. Nobody in their right mind will. The problem is that you can always find a third-world ****hole where the rate of labor is $3/hour or less.
As such you either drag your wage rate down to that price or you make it uneconomic for companies to do this sort of thing.
The same is true for environmental laws. It costs money to not dump your toxic waste into the water, air or on the land. If you can place your factory in a location where such dumping is not illegal and does not lead you to go to prison then you will do so and thus the "cost" of producing that good or service appears to fall.
It did not, however, actually go down. Instead the producer shifted the cost onto the people who live there in that environment without their consent.
The answer to both problems is, as I pointed out in Leverage, to impose wage and environmental parity tariffs in an across-the-board fashion. If the cost of labor in the United States is $20/hour and in Mexico it is $3/hour for comparable work then determine how many man-hours go into assembling an air conditioner, multiply by $17 and that's the tariff on said air conditioner.
If companies are in fact moving factories because it's "better" for their global supply chain or somesuch (which is the usual excuse) then this will not change their decision. They will still put the factory there and pay the tariff, since it will not disadvantage them.
However, if the real reason is that they're exploiting the $3/hour wage then the factory will either not leave at all or will come back to the United States.
Do the same for environmental parity -- if the ability to pollute in location "A" .vs. not being able to pollute in the United States provides a "savings" of $100 million a year and the factory produces 1 million things in a year then the per-item tariff is $100.
If the Donor Class agenda of integrating the US labor market into the Third World labor market in order to reduce labor cost on items sold into the US market continues, then ultimately US working class wages will clear at the level prevailing in the Third World.
Kevin McCarthy was great in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Oh, wait, never mind.
Hey Kevin, guess what dimwit? You’ll now be dealing with a genius negotiator. If a negotiator (doesn’t have to be a genius) says he wants 35%, he’s thinking he’ll settle for 25% and then he’ll let you think you won.
You may slash corporate taxes to zero if you want and the corporations themselves will thank you for it but it will do nothing to encourage them to keep manufacturing in the U.S. So long as manufacturing offshore costs them less than manufacturing here then they always be tempted to move their business offshore. The only thing that will discourage them is the stick, selectively applied, either by shaming the company or taxing the goods they bring back in some way or some other method. Trump is well aware of that.