Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade War

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_cinepro
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _cinepro »

EAllusion wrote:This is such a mainstream view in economics that this is why Trump can only hire absolutely crackpots and charlatans to defend his position he seems to barely understand himself. There was a time when Republicanism could at least claim the mantle of standing for economic literacy, but that's long since past, and now we're into fantasy land.


This is definitely one area where everyone should be against Trump.
_Chap
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _Chap »

cinepro wrote:
EAllusion wrote:This is such a mainstream view in economics that this is why Trump can only hire absolutely crackpots and charlatans to defend his position he seems to barely understand himself. There was a time when Republicanism could at least claim the mantle of standing for economic literacy, but that's long since past, and now we're into fantasy land.


This is definitely one area where everyone should be against Trump.


So why aren't they?

Why isn't congress moving to block the President's power to throw tax dollars around to put sticking plasters on the obvious consequences of his wrecking the US's international trading relationships?
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Some Schmo
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _Some Schmo »

cinepro wrote: This is definitely one area where everyone should be against Trump.

You say this as though there are areas people should be with Drumpf.

The only thing Drumpf does that I agree with is to eat terribly unhealthful food and never exercise. I love that he does that. I'm just waiting for it to catch up with him.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_canpakes
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _canpakes »

Chap wrote:
cinepro wrote:This is definitely one area where everyone should be against Trump.

So why aren't they?

God told them to vote for Trump. How could they God be wrong?
_Maksutov
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _Maksutov »

Trump moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. :eek:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_ajax18
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _ajax18 »

This is definitely one area where everyone should be against Trump.



Billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel described the consequences of contemporary globalization as being at odds with its proponents’ promises during a Wednesday speech at Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit in Washington, DC.
Thiel credited President Donald Trump with challenging the orthodoxy of support for globalization:

[Donald Trump] has called into question some sacred ideas that actually do need to be questioned a great deal. … I want to focus on one in particular, which was sort of the Bush-Clinton dynasty consensus for twenty years, from 1988 to 2008, at least. It was this idea that globalization is both true and good and good, desirable. I’m going to try to unpack that a little bit and suggest why criticizing that idea is sort of an incredibly healthy corrective in our society.
Thiel offered his definition of “globalization”:

[Globalization] is one of these words that can mean a lot of different things. I think the main sense behind it is that we’re heading towards a world with no borders, a unified world, a relatively homogeneous world in which the differences between people and countries will go away; a more equal world, in some ways.

Thiel noted globalization’s enjoyment of bipartisan political support across Republican and Democrat administrations following the Soviet Union’s collapse:

The way this was conceived in 1989 after the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall was that it was going to be a world in which liberal democracy prevailed, a world in which U.S. and multinational institutions would play a leading role. … The way the Clintons and Bushes would talk about it was that it was both a fact, a fact of life, or maybe that it had already happened, and that it was a moral imperative, and we had to work really hard to make it happen. It was sort of like the way people talked about communism in the 1900s; it was inevitable and you had to join the communist revolution. … They believed it was a done deal, it was inevitable, and you had to sort of make sure you were on the right side of history, and that you worked to help globalization happen.

Thiel said globalization’s harms became more apparent in the last decade:

The abstractions around globalization often obscured all these ways in which things weren’t quite working. I think if we sort of look on the last decade, the tide has really gone out on us, and it has been going the other way for some time. We can think of the Financial crisis in 2008 as a failure of globalization.

Thiel described the Trump administration’s approach to globalization as a “realistic” countermeasure against the failed idealism of “pro-globalization” advocates:

Immigration and trade debates have come back with incredible force in the last few years. The pro-globalization side always deals in incredible abstractions, in theory how this stuff works perfectly, and then the sort of realistic Trump administration version of it is always to point out some of the very specific failings that we have to work on better.

Thiel framed the status quo of international trade as “totally at odds” with the promises of “free trade theory”:

In theory, free trade means that you shouldn’t have big trade deficits because you should be exporting about as much as you’re importing, and in fact the trade theory suggests that the U.S. should have trade surpluses in a globalizing world because you’ll be investing money in emerging market countries as they converge. That’s sort of how globalization works in theory, and this is sort of how globalization worked in the 19th century. In 1900, Great Britain was the center of globalization, and it had a trade surplus of two percent of GDP [and] a current accounts surplus at four percent of GDP, and the money got invested from Britain into faster growing countries like Argentina or Russia … but that whole thing didn’t work out when World War I started, but that’s in theory what it should look like. Instead, we have a world where the U.S. has massive trade deficits with China. We export a $100 billion a year to China, import $475 billion, and then the other side of that is the $375 billion gets sent from China to invest in the U.S., so you have this really weird dynamic where the money is sort of flowing uphill from a fast-growing China into a slower growing U.S. and an even slower growing Japan and Eastern Europe. That fact tells you that whatever the free trade theory says, what is actually happening is totally at odds with that.

Thiel concluded, “Immigration [and] trade, in theory they’re great. In practice, they’re not working remotely the way they’re advertised.”

https://www.breitbart.com/big-governmen ... -deficits/

Can you explain why you disagree with this Cinepro?
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_Themis
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _Themis »

ajax18 wrote:Can you explain why you disagree with this Cinepro?

He never gave any supporting evidence and made some false claims. The financial crisis 2008 had nothing to do with globalization and everything to do with deregulation of the financial industry in the US. It was homegrown problem that pulled the whole world into recession. Trade deficits are the norm for richer nations compared to poorer ones, but most agree that there are some trade issues with China.

[Globalization] is one of these words that can mean a lot of different things. I think the main sense behind it is that we’re heading towards a world with no borders, a unified world, a relatively homogeneous world in which the differences between people and countries will go away; a more equal world, in some ways.

Why would this be a bad thing Ajax? If the world today except for the US were teleported to another planet never to return you would have this definition of earth today.
42
_Maksutov
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _Maksutov »

He's taking cues from the Mormons. Screw up something, deny it, then finally admit it and claim to be cleaning it up and want all kinds of praise and credit. :lol:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_cinepro
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _cinepro »

ajax18 wrote:Can you explain why you disagree with this Cinepro?


I disagree that there is anything worrisome about the so-called "trade deficit" with any country.

We export a $100 billion a year to China, import $475 billion, and then the other side of that is the $375 billion gets sent from China to invest in the U.S., so you have this really weird dynamic where the money is sort of flowing uphill from a fast-growing China into a slower growing U.S. and an even slower growing Japan and Eastern Europe. That fact tells you that whatever the free trade theory says, what is actually happening is totally at odds with that.


Worrying about the amount of trade back and forth between two countries is about the stupidest thing I can imagine, economically speaking. Because there are more than two countries in the world. In a free-trade system, the system is designed so everything balances out. So what if China sells us more than we sell them?

And ultimately, countries don't trade with each other. It's the people in the countries that trade with each other. So trade restrictions are restrictions on the people in a country, limiting their freedom to make the best choices for them (and other consumers). So a "trade war" isn't really a "war" against another country. It's a "war" against the citizens of America being able to make the choices they want in what to buy or sell. If I am building a building and can choose between Chinese steel, Canadian steel, European steel and American steel, I am much "freer" as a consumer than if I can only choose from European and American steel.

I also don't understand why we care if a country (say, Japan) restricts access to American goods or services (say, American grown rice). In that situation, it is the people of Japan who are made poorer by having their choice in rice (and competition in the rice market) restricted. It may slightly hurt American rice farmers, but they still have access to the market in other free trade countries. I don't begrudge the US from appealing to Japan to lower their trade barriers, but doing so would be to Japan's greater benefit, not just the America's.

In short, countries that restrict trade, or make traded goods more expensive, are poorer than countries with freer trade. Their people pay more for fewer choices (i.e. less freedom).

Relevant Podcast

Relevant article.
_subgenius
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Re: Trump Bails out Farmers: $12 billion because of Trade Washington

Post by _subgenius »

Kevin Graham wrote:Gotta love how this is done because it is an "emergency"! What's the emergency, exactly? Someone's bottom line didn't meet expectations? No one is starving because of this.

Thousands of American citizens are still without electricity in Puerto Rico. But to give them a billion would be to throw the budget out of whack, right?

1. Yeah, keep telling yourself that agriculture business is mostly CEO and not many employess.
2. A billion to PR? for what exactly? You made such a noise when one of the few qualified businesses got a contract to help and therefore tweeted the solution into being a problem. The money was there but people like you thought the money would be better spent by the corrupt politicians that made PR so vulnerable than by the boogey man of compeent business.
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