Jump to content
Washington Football Team Logo
Extremeskins

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


No Excuses

Recommended Posts

At least when he did his harmful rollback of environmental protections allowing coal to be strip mined at will, I could take comfort knowing that automation would mean few if any new jobs would go to the ****ty communities that voted for him, and that the inbred residents supporting 19th century endeavors would be the first to get literally poisoned by those policies, at least the ones who didn't die from opioid overdoses after replacing treatment centers and regulations on pharmaceutical companies with 1970s lock'em up war on drugs strategy. The tariffs on raw materials and potential trade war is gonna screw over real jobs and further erode our manufacturing base.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Wonder how all his voters will feel when his protectionist policies mean that they lose their jobs, and their healthcare, food, and homes?

you know exactly how they will feel.

it will be INSERT LATEST BIG NAME DEMOCRAT's fault, no matter what.

 

These people are simply too ****ing stupid to see it any other way.

the only hope for them is a plague.

 

~Bang

  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, visionary said:

 

 

I actually had a thought, a few decades back, that rather changed my feelings about balance of trade.  Might be a good time/place to share it.  

 

My conclusion is that it's impossible to actually run a balance of trade deficit for very long.  

 

I start with a simple, hypothetical, transaction.  Say the US buys a billion widgets from China.  

 

Now the US has a billion widgets, and China has a billion dollar bills.  

 

Those dollars have to come back to the US.  Because they are worthless pieces of paper everywhere else.  

 

The only things China can do with those dollars are:  

 

1) Buy something from the US

2) Sell them to somebody else who wants to buy something from the US.

3) Put a match to them.  

 

Therefore, that balance of trade deficit?  It's coming back to the US.  It's just getting spent on something that isn't getting counted in the balance of trade numbers.  Maybe China is buying real estate in the US.  Maybe they're investing it in the US stock market or US treasuries.  (Although all that does is postpone the day when they have to buy something with it.  Buy T-bills, and a few years from now, China will simply own a few more dollars.)  

 

Maybe they're buying US companies.  

 

I just saw a post in the immigration thread, about foreign students in US universities.  I'd bet that that represents cash flowing into the US, but not being counted as an export.  

 

But that money is coming back, and getting spent on something.  It has to be.  It's just not getting counted in the balance of trade statistic.  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had the misfortune of listening to Peter Navarro this morning on Chris Wallace's show. Even Wallace was exasperated at the stupidity of this person. At one point it went something like this:

 

Wallace: What do you have to say about the EU threatening retaliatory measures against US products?

 

Navarro: They won't do that.

 

Wallace: They are saying they will.

 

Navarro: They are joking, everyone love's America.

 

Stupidity on a whole another level.

  • Sad 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, No Excuses said:

I had the misfortune of listening to Peter Navarro this morning on Chris Wallace's show. Even Wallace was exasperated at the stupidity of this person. At one point it went something like this:

 

Wallace: What do you have to say about the EU threatening retaliatory measures against US products?

 

Navarro: They won't do that.

 

Wallace: They are saying they will.

 

Navarro: They are joking, everyone love's America.

 

Stupidity on a whole another level.

 

Navarro is perfect, you almost couldn't have constructed a better bot to demonstrate exactly what the mindset of these people is. They are not simply indifferent to logic or common sense, they are blithely unaware of its existence. They babble on in their bubble of bull**** without even understanding that anyone could disagree. Laffer is another one, they wander around spouting these idiotic ideas and ideals without a care or cost. In other times they would have been wolf food as they got lost in the forest but nowadays they have access to so many blank canvases that are willing to be splattered with dirt and call it art.

 

I fully support each and every one of them going on camera and leaving a record of their complicity in this nightmare.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/trump-tariff-americans-jobs.html?referer=https://news.google.com/

 

We’ve seen this before. In 2002, President George W. Bush implemented his own steel tariffs. As expected, the taxes jacked up the price of domestic steel and temporarily boosted the industry’s profits. Steel-consuming industries, however, weren’t so lucky. According to an estimate from the nonpartisan Trade Partnership Worldwide, a staggering 200,000 people lost their jobs in downstream industries by the following year. That’s more workers than the entire steel industry had at the time.

 

 Instead of bringing jobs back to America and fighting off imports, the tariffs led to more jobs shipped abroad and more imports of final, rather than raw, goods. In other words, if your company uses steel to make pipes or refrigerators, you may decide to simply produce your own products abroad rather than paying artificially inflated prices on steel in order to make them in the U.S.A.

.........

 

 

Never mind that we import more steel from 10 other nations than from China, or that domestic steel’s market share represents an impressive 70 percent. Nor is it a national security issue: Only 3 percent of that production goes toward the military.

 

 

Never mind that domestic steel profits and production have steadily risen since 2010, or that we already have more than 160 special duties on steel imports in place. These moguls demanded more protection and obtained satisfaction.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/3/2018 at 5:43 PM, zoony said:

Can we vet the claims that the EU imposes non reciprocal tarriffs on us autos?

 

It's true.

 

The EU levies a 10% tariff on all imported automobiles.

 

The US levies a 2.5% tariff on all imported automobiles, but a 25% tariff on imported pick up trucks and commercial vans which effectively shuts out a lot of Volkswagen and Mercedes products in the US.

 

The trade off is that many European automakers have opened production plants in the US, employing thousands of people. I don't believe our automakers do the same in Europe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...