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ThinkProgress: Trump confidant dumped millions in steel-related stock last week (Also the Trade War thread)

No Excuses

By No Excuses
in The Tailgate

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visionary

visionary

Posted
Posted

This kind of makes Canada look dumb for needing something that probably should have been obvious to be revealed to them.  Also it hardly seems insulting compared to a lot of nonsense Trump has said about Canada. Maybe it makes Canada look weak for letting Trump bully them. Of course it makes us look bad, but it’s not shocking since Trump is a known as asshole that hates our allies and doesn’t really believe in mutually beneficial deals.

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PeterMP

PeterMP

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Posted (edited)

@Destino

or maybe it was @zoony

once posted asking about the true tariff differences between countries.

 

I have no idea how this number is calculated and therefore its accuracy, but thought it was interesting:

 

http://timharford.com/2018/07/the-topsy-turvy-logic-of-trumps-trade-tirades/

 

"The narrow truth in Mr Trump’s tweet is that there are some unconscionably high tariffs around. Beyond a small quota, Canada’s average tariff on dairy imports is well over 200 per cent. The broad falsehood is the idea that only the US levies low tariffs. American tariffs are indeed low — the World Trade Organisation estimates that its weighted average tariff rate is 2.4 per cent. But at 3.1 per cent, average Canadian tariffs are only slightly higher, as are those of the EU (and therefore France, Germany, Italy and the UK). Japan’s tariffs are lower than the US.

 

Real obstacles to trade are higher than this, partly because there are regulatory differences that are hard to quantify, and partly because by looking at a weighted average tariff, we put less weight on any trade that has been squeezed by trade barriers. Still, tariffs between rich countries are low and there is nothing obviously unfair about the situation. If Canada’s average tariff of 3.1 per cent is cause for a trade war, it is hard to imagine a victory for either side being anything other than pyrrhic."

 

And to make the point as I did then, the US farm bill is a form of protectionism.  Seeing that Japan has low tariffs, but we still have a trade deficit with them is likely partly due to their efficiency laws which end up having a protectionism component to them and the differences in market size, which combine help drive differences in efforts of companies and to penetrate those markets (Japanese companies have a lot of incentive to become part of the much larger and more static US market, while US companies have much less incentive to try to compete in the smaller Japanese market and constantly meet their efficiency standards) and other issues:

 

"There is the US trade deficit. This is the result of the world’s insatiable desire to invest in US assets, coupled with the American consumer’s preference to spend rather than save. It has little to do with tariffs on milk powder or anything else."

Edited by PeterMP
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