Tit for Tat Tariffs - The US versus the World

[eclipsenow]

No. Probably if it is anything like the rest of Biden's "Build Back Better" plan, it was likely a scam to launder money and accomplish nothing.

Scam? Got any evidence for that wild tinfoil hat assertion? You know the thing about not nearing false witness. Please retract it.

IRA accomplished heaps. The Dow Jones ramped up. after COVID.

It would have revolutionised America over time without destroying international good will.

Are you seriously saying you think Trump's tariffs are good for America? Do you have any idea of the economies of scale he is turning his back on and the higher prices you'll pay for domestic products instead?

 

[Oompa Loompa]

When you're the President you can do what you want. You can grab the world by it's...

Horns?

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Got any evidence for that wild tinfoil hat assertion?

Yes. But it isn't worth wasting my time to share it with you, because I am absolutely certain it will accomplish nothing.

 

[7thKeeper]

Yes. But it isn't worth wasting my time to share it with you, because I am absolutely certain it will accomplish nothing.

Aaah, yes. The "you don't know her, I met her at camp" defense.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

TARIFFS ARE ALL STICK - what about using a carrot instead?
Instead of punishing allies - what about rewarding friends at home? That’s what Biden was doing through the Inflation Reduction Act. It gave tax cuts to essential IT and computer chip manufacturing and energy and industrial sectors across America. It was stimulating the right industries without punishing allies. It also encouraged ‘friend-shoring’ to keep potential military allies on side in the new Cold War with China. Billions were being invested in battery manufacture, and would have produced so many by 2030 America could hypothetically have supplied ALL new cars with EV batteries. It created jobs and incentivised economic competitiveness without punishing vital trading partners.
Inflation Reduction Act - Wikipedia

It avoided Negative Spillovers.
Protectionist tariffs tend to have widespread, negative repercussions. They mess up supply chains, increase input costs, and spark trade wars that hurt America’s own exports. It’s messy. It generates bad will - reducing America’s reputation and soft power. Look how overseas papers are writing about the American President!

“Tariff Man” is acting like a paranoid 12-year-old bully who is convinced that everyone has wronged him, and he wants revenge. But the president’s instrument of revenge – massive tariffs – is going to do serious damage to the US and global economies. Stock market investors are convinced that’s the case, with Wall Street and world stock markets losing trillions of dollars in value in recent days as a result of Trump’s obsession.​

The president has escalated his risky, vengeful trade war even though the US economy was in strong shape when he took office – the jobless rate was just 4.1%, inflation was below 3% and US economic growth was the strongest in the industrial world, with its stock market at record levels. So it’s unclear whether the US economy needed the shock treatment that Trump is inflicting. The price increases resulting from his tariffs – which are a tax on imports – will cost the average American family $3,800 a year, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.”​

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ could mean recession in the US and pain worldwide | Steven Greenhouse​

The Global Effort to Make an American Microchip (Published 2024)

The United States is investing $39 billion to help build factories. But even after U.S. facilities are built, chip manufacturing will remain decidedly global. See how.

www.nytimes.com

The carrot has been tried and failed.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Aaah, yes. The "you don't know her, I met her at camp" defense.

I have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[KCfromNC]

It is a very weird concept to punish your suppliers your trade partners for making things of value and desirable quality and price that your people want it and are willing to pay for it with money. What's wrong with that?

Perhaps the people making the decisions confuse trade deficits with budget deficits? It's one of the more flattering explanations I've seen for Trump's economic policy.

 

[stevil]

Perhaps the people making the decisions confuse trade deficits with budget deficits? It's one of the more flattering explanations I've seen for Trump's economic policy.

Some people are like "Well Trump is a brilliant business man, we just need to be patient and trust that it will turn out well in the end."

The thing is, many ventures Trump has done, have gone bankrupt, some have been shutdown by the courts because they were scams. Trump is no economist, he certainly isn't a great businessman, he is a guy who just thinks he somehow knows stuff and speaks with confidence and so some people get fooled and thing Trump knows what he is talking about.

People should be looking to history, has this ever happened before, where widespread tariffs are slapped onto your main trading partners? If it has happened, what was the result of the tariffs, did it make the economy better?

Funnily enough this has happened before. A long time ago, pre World War 2, actually shortly before World War 2, just very shortly before The Great Depression.

Trump says high tariffs may have prevented the Great Depression. History says different

In the early days of the Great Depression, Rep. Willis Hawley, a Republican from Oregon, and Utah Republican Sen. Reed Smoot thought they had landed on a way to protect American farmers and manufacturers from foreign competition: tariffs. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff...

www.yahoo.com

President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, even as many economists warned that the levies would prompt retaliatory tariffs from other countries, which is precisely what happened. The U.S. economy plunged deeper into a devastating financial crisis that it would not pull out of until World War II.

Most historians look back on Smoot-Hawley as a mistake that made a bad economic climate much worse.




Like Trump, Hoover was elected largely because of his business acumen. An international mining engineer, financier and humanitarian, he took office in 1929 like an energetic CEO, eager to promote public-private partnerships and use the levers of government to promote economic growth.

“Anyone not only can be rich, but ought to be rich,” he declared in his inaugural address before convening a special session of Congress to better protect U.S. farmers with “limited changes of the tariff.”

Instead, the 31st president got the Great Depression.


There was actually a time before that time that someone else tried high tariffs
The Tariff Act of 1890 raised taxes to 49.5% on 1,500-plus items. Championing the move was the “Napoleon of Protectionism,” William McKinley, an Ohio Republican congressman who would be elected president in 1896 and one of Trump's heroes.

But that move caused prices to rise and the U.S. economy to fall. It worsened after the Panic of 1893, when unemployment reached 25%. Historians referred to the period as the “great depression” until it was superseded by the actual Great Depression.


But maybe this time will be different, because, because, well because, well, umm, this time we got Trump and Trump knows stuff that no one else does....

 

[eclipsenow]

The Global Effort to Make an American Microchip (Published 2024)

The United States is investing $39 billion to help build factories. But even after U.S. facilities are built, chip manufacturing will remain decidedly global. See how.

www.nytimes.com

The carrot has been tried and failed.

You have asserted this many times, but you do so contrary to the evidence.

Consider the following graph was JUST AFTER a 1 in 100 year pandemic where the previous President had WILLFULLY sabotaged the FEMA department for pandemics so the USA was woefully unprepared and understocked in PPE. (And Trump blamed the doctors and nurses! My daughter in law is a nurse and she was traumatized by this attitude coming out of America.)

Compare the first MAGA years with Biden's IRA years! You tell me which had more investment!

Once again we see that there are data and facts and real world policies that work on the one hand - and flights of fantasy and malicious spitefulness from the MAGA President on the other!

As of February 2024, annual investment in new manufacturing facilities hit nearly $225 billion dollars, a record high even after adjusting for inflation. This spike in private investment is the direct result of bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor production and Democrats’ bold action to invest in American-made clean energy and manufacturing. This made-in-America manufacturing boom is already supporting jobs and communities across the country.​

​

Democrats passed supportive policies that have directly led to record levels of manufacturing investment, even after adjusting for inflation. ​

• The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS Act) are driving investment in domestic manufacturing of things like semiconductors, electric vehicle (EV) batteries, and wind turbines.
• This boost in support has led to a boom in manufacturing construction investment. As of February 2024, there was nearly $223 billion in inflation-adjusted annual U.S. manufacturing construction investment, more than twice the investment in February 2020 or January 2021.

• Treasury reported on the initial increase in real total manufacturing construction as of April 2023, and spending has continued to rise in the months that followed.
• Though the previous president often bragged about reshoring American manufacturing, annual investment actually fell during his time in office.

Fact Sheet: The Manufacturing Renaissance That Will Drive the Economy of the Future - Fact Sheet: The Manufacturing Renaissance That Will Drive the Economy of the Future - United States Joint Economic Committee

www.jec.senate.gov

 

[essentialsaltes]

Tariffs on China set to rise to 104% after it misses Trump's deadline​

 

[eclipsenow]

The thing is, many ventures Trump has done, have gone bankrupt, some have been shutdown by the courts because they were scams.

I hear you!

Trump is no economist,

That's the weird thing. He has an economics degree! But he refuses to let the world see his marks. Also - he was probably too busy chasing girls at track and field. He loved running - but somehow managed to do so with those 'heel spurs' that stopped him going to Vietnam!

Given his malignant narcissism - he probably despised the lecturers as fools compared to his own natural brilliance - and I wonder how many classes he actually attended and whether daddy bailed him out with a few golden handshakes behind closed doors? When you've got your first million dollars by 8 years old from POCKET MONEY - I guess you get a "special sense" of your place in the world.

he certainly isn't a great businessman, he is a guy who just thinks he somehow knows stuff and speaks with confidence and so some people get fooled and thing Trump knows what he is talking about.

People should be looking to history, has this ever happened before, where widespread tariffs are slapped onto your main trading partners? If it has happened, what was the result of the tariffs, did it make the economy better?

Exactly! This is my favourite Aussie investigative journalist.
Australia only got colour TV's a DECADE after everyone else because we had high tariffs trying to protect our domestic electronics industry. But it seems 'economies of scale' are an inescapable fact of life. That means there are some countries with huge workforces and lower currencies where labour is comparatively cheap - and these things can SCALE BIG TIME! Does anyone believe 330 million Americans can domestically create economies of scale for their own market while China has 1.4 billion people selling cheap manufactured goods to the entire planet!

Funnily enough this has happened before. A long time ago, pre World War 2, actually shortly before World War 2, just very shortly before The Great Depression.

Trump says high tariffs may have prevented the Great Depression. History says different

In the early days of the Great Depression, Rep. Willis Hawley, a Republican from Oregon, and Utah Republican Sen. Reed Smoot thought they had landed on a way to protect American farmers and manufacturers from foreign competition: tariffs. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff...

www.yahoo.com

President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, even as many economists warned that the levies would prompt retaliatory tariffs from other countries, which is precisely what happened. The U.S. economy plunged deeper into a devastating financial crisis that it would not pull out of until World War II.

Most historians look back on Smoot-Hawley as a mistake that made a bad economic climate much worse.

Like Trump, Hoover was elected largely because of his business acumen. An international mining engineer, financier and humanitarian, he took office in 1929 like an energetic CEO, eager to promote public-private partnerships and use the levers of government to promote economic growth.

“Anyone not only can be rich, but ought to be rich,” he declared in his inaugural address before convening a special session of Congress to better protect U.S. farmers with “limited changes of the tariff.”

Instead, the 31st president got the Great Depression.

There was actually a time before that time that someone else tried high tariffs
The Tariff Act of 1890 raised taxes to 49.5% on 1,500-plus items. Championing the move was the “Napoleon of Protectionism,” William McKinley, an Ohio Republican congressman who would be elected president in 1896 and one of Trump's heroes.

But that move caused prices to rise and the U.S. economy to fall. It worsened after the Panic of 1893, when unemployment reached 25%. Historians referred to the period as the “great depression” until it was superseded by the actual Great Depression.

But maybe this time will be different, because, because, well because, well, umm, this time we got Trump and Trump knows stuff that no one else does....

Wow - I've got to stop listening to all my ancient history podcasts and catch up on some modern stuff. There was a Great Depression before the Great Depression? Caused by tariffs? Thanks! That's going 'straight to the pool room!' (Do you know the Aussie reference? It's a few decades old now - but it's from a movie a bit like an Aussie version of "Hunt for the Wilderpeople". Not in plot - but in vibe.)

Also - Trump knows stuff all right! He'll tell you himself. He'll tell other experts how to do their job - what they should investigate - because HIS brain thought of it!

Trump took the podium and said, "I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute—one minute—and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."

We Can’t Believe We Have to Say This, but Please Do Not Drink Bleach to ‘Clean Out’ Coronavirus

Even the makers of Lysol have weighed in: Seriously, please don't do this.

www.glamour.com

Do tariffs work?

"Maybe someone should look into that."

 

[Oompa Loompa]

You have asserted this many times, but you do so contrary to the evidence.

Consider the following graph was JUST AFTER a 1 in 100 year pandemic where the previous President had WILLFULLY sabotaged the FEMA department for pandemics so the USA was woefully unprepared and understocked in PPE. (And Trump blamed the doctors and nurses! My daughter in law is a nurse and she was traumatized by this attitude coming out of America.)

Compare the first MAGA years with Biden's IRA years! You tell me which had more investment!

Once again we see that there are data and facts and real world policies that work on the one hand - and flights of fantasy and malicious spitefulness from the MAGA President on the other!

As of February 2024, annual investment in new manufacturing facilities hit nearly $225 billion dollars, a record high even after adjusting for inflation. This spike in private investment is the direct result of bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor production and Democrats’ bold action to invest in American-made clean energy and manufacturing. This made-in-America manufacturing boom is already supporting jobs and communities across the country.​

​

Democrats passed supportive policies that have directly led to record levels of manufacturing investment, even after adjusting for inflation. ​

• The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS Act) are driving investment in domestic manufacturing of things like semiconductors, electric vehicle (EV) batteries, and wind turbines.
• This boost in support has led to a boom in manufacturing construction investment. As of February 2024, there was nearly $223 billion in inflation-adjusted annual U.S. manufacturing construction investment, more than twice the investment in February 2020 or January 2021.

View attachment 363298​

• Treasury reported on the initial increase in real total manufacturing construction as of April 2023, and spending has continued to rise in the months that followed.
• Though the previous president often bragged about reshoring American manufacturing, annual investment actually fell during his time in office.

Fact Sheet: The Manufacturing Renaissance That Will Drive the Economy of the Future - Fact Sheet: The Manufacturing Renaissance That Will Drive the Economy of the Future - United States Joint Economic Committee

www.jec.senate.gov

Yay! We spent more money with nothing to show for it!

 

[Say it aint so]

Tariffs on China set to rise to 104% after it misses Trump's deadline​

If everyone is going scorched earth, what would happen if China just announces plans to cash out the US debt they own, and stop buying US T-bills. Imagine what that stock market response would look like.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Do tariffs work?

"Maybe someone should look into that."

Here you go.

 

[eclipsenow]

Yay! We spent more money with nothing to show for it!

You need to get out more. I'm Australian - and even I remember the many shots of the many new factories under construction across the States. Haven't you seen those news stories? Or do you only watch Fox Propaganda Outlet?

EG: There were enough battery factories under construction that by 2030 it would have been 15 TIMES the batteries you produce now. It's spread across many sectors, but (for illustration purposes only) the volume would have been enough for EVERY NEW CAR in the USA after 2030 to be 100% electric.

Have you really not seen all this? It's real. Or it was. How many of these are going to close now because of market crashes and consumer confidence falling and general unpredictable Trump Brain-Blurt chaos?

 

[stevil]

Really good, well worth watching.

How can a person with an economics degree think that import taxes i.e. Tariffs are paid for by the foreign country?

Either Trump doesn't know how tariffs operate and his Father bought his degree.
Or more likely Trump does know he is lying but also knows most of his supporters are the poorly educated and just hold him up as an all knowing Oracle and believe everything he tells them, he also knows the Far right media companies that that exclusively watch are going to back up his narrative, no one there will fact check him.

 

[eclipsenow]

Really good, well worth watching.

How can a person with an economics degree think that import taxes i.e. Tariffs are paid for by the foreign country?

Either Trump doesn't know how tariffs operate and his Father bought his degree.
Or more likely Trump does know he is lying but also knows most of his supporters are the poorly educated and just hold him up as an all knowing Oracle and believe everything he tells them, he also knows the Far right media companies that that exclusively watch are going to back up his narrative, no one there will fact check him.

Matt is great - I love his sense of humour. He used to go to my church before he moved up to Newcastle. I'm kind a glad he got away before I knew how good he was - otherwise my rather 'enthusiastic' climate activism might have tempted me to 'suggest' various doomsday stories to him!

To him, I'd be like...

 

[SavedByGrace3]

We have been in a trade/tariff war for years; we just haven't been fighting back.

 

[eclipsenow]

We have been in a trade/tariff war for years; we just haven't been fighting back.

Are you really saying America is hard done by in all these instances?

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Are you really saying America is hard done by in all these instances?

Look at the current national debt. Countries have been sucking the lifeblood out our economy for decades. The only reason why the stock market is as high as it is now is because past presidents knew we were getting hosed but ignored the problem because the profits were too good. Also, the problem worsened with the irresponsible deficit spending and money printing that artificially propped up the economy and stock prices. This was unsustainable and if Trump didn't do something now, everything would have collapsed (self corrected) in a short time.