Posted on 01/14/2017 7:14:50 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
If the Roman emperors ruled by edict, President-elect Donald Trump appears poised to rule by tweet. Even before taking office, Trump has discovered he can move the world’s largest global corporations with simple, 140-character tweets. And though his aggressive approach is winning politically, good politics doesn’t necessarily mean good economics.
Voters see Trump fulfilling his campaign promises to close America’s borders and bring jobs back home. He is using the bully pulpit to stand up for workers by taking on the most powerful American companies, including Ford (F, +0.32%), General Motors (GM, -0.45%), Toyota (TM, +0.14%), Boeing (BA, +0.34%), Lockheed Martin (LMT, +0.76%), and United Technologies (UTX, -0.54%)/Carrier.
Thus far, no CEOs have had the courage to stand up to Trump. General Motors CEO Mary Barra has said the company’s small-car production will remain in Mexico, but it could only be a matter of time before she’s forced to change course. Trump’s sudden tweets likely worry many CEOs who fear they may be his next target. Right now, most have just tried to stay out of his way. Some, like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne, have put forth peace offerings to invest more in the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
That’s funny, because your understanding of economics and history shows you know little.
Ping to these later posts in the ongoing economic debate.
You are a Keynesian, no?
Not at all. I am a Free Trader who is a realist.
Also, I’m a “practical libertarian.”
Why would being against Free Trade make someone a Keynesian?
Not if you want tariffs on top of income taxes, you’re not. Libertarian is a neat sounding epithet but to be credible you have to talk like a libertarian.
Your pulling figures out of your a$$. A prodigious a$$ at that.
Rump head, the Great Depression started in 1929. You can try to rewriting history but you will have few believers of your BS.
Free Trade is a religion to these zealots. It is a belief system not an economic theory. It is hard to debate these Nazi because they will not even acknowledge their another pints of view. Fascist all.
It is one of their favorite tricks.
One could suppose that Free Traders wanted the penalty against income tax instead of imports to push more people into becoming destitute or dependent upon others. You certainly prefer the income tax to excise taxes, it appears. I don't.
Since the excise tax was greatly reduced to ostensibly help free trade proponents as the income tax came into being, we are now in a world with both taxes. Since we have both legally available, we should minimize the income tax and have parity with it in the excise tax, which should be levied across the board at the same rate as that of either the income and business tax. If we could reduce the income tax to 5%, the excise tax could be the same. If we had a National Sales Tax, we could get rid of the excise and income/business taxes, to the extent that our regulations did not put an added burden our our home industries and businesses over that of lesser regulated business products from other countries.
Eliminating what the federal government “provides” minimizes the tax burden.
Ideally, I would like the US to be more like Singapore or the former Hong Kong, but with an adequate defense. We should go all out being the capitalists we are bred to be and not the socialists we have become (ironically, since the income tax was passed to reduce the excise tax).
I refuse to descend to your level and call you the nitwit you are.
Oh man that hurt so much. Not sure I will recover.
Nazis. Fascists. Anyone who pulls the Nazi card obviously has nothing sensible to say.
So prove me wrong, so who has lost in the last 30 years due to Free Trade and globalization and off shoring for the cheapest labor rates possible and no tariff protections? Anyone?
What would you have? Effectively, the US as it now stands.
More tariffs and less income taxes.
1.Pass all of it to you customers.
2.Pass part of it on to your customers and keep some for profit.
3.Keep all of it as profit.
Well 1. wouldn't make sense. What would be the point of offshoring if your bottom line remains the same? If you are doing just to keep up with your competition and your bottom line profit remains the same then the whole offshoring experiment thing is simply a way of making Americans unemployed. Really sick sh+!.
That's not how it works.
If one is overpriced in the marketplace, all else being equal, sales will eventually shrink to a point where the business implodes. Been there, done that. Once one loses competitive scale of manufacture, unless some little "niche" can be found (sort of violating the "all else being equal" part), the death spiral accelerates.
If one already is competitive in the marketplace, then, again all else being equal, a "new" lower cost to customers gains one more customers. Profit per sale might not increase, but total profit will. Also, larger scale of manufacture in most cases improves profit (or competitive advantage) further. Been there, done that, too.
Of course, the above is greatly oversimplified vs. reality, in many instances. If what I've explained is "3d chess", compared to your "2d" analysis, then reality is often more like "4d". For example, "momentum" in the marketplace can be a very significant factor.
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