I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
All of that is true but it's just not that easy to build a factory, find people to run it, get the machinery necessary…and hope that the winds don't change with the next administration.
Factory building isn't a 3-5 year plan. It's. 20-30 year plan at minimum.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
All of that is true but it's just not that easy to build a factory, find people to run it, get the machinery necessary…and hope that the winds don't change with the next administration.
Factory building isn't a 3-5 year plan. It's. 20-30 year plan at minimum.
China faced that exact problem 25 years ago. They fixed it (with a lot of help from western investment). It would have never happened without clear leadership from sovereign powers. What we have to do now is change the direction that investment goes. That will again take clear leadership from sovereign powers. Trump is doing his part. The new trade agreements will do the rest.
What we can't do is say "we can't." If we make hard choices and stick to them, it will happen.
I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
All of that is true but it's just not that easy to build a factory, find people to run it, get the machinery necessary…and hope that the winds don't change with the next administration.
Factory building isn't a 3-5 year plan. It's. 20-30 year plan at minimum.
China faced that exact problem 25 years ago. They fixed it (with a lot of help from western investment). It would have never happened without clear leadership from sovereign powers. What we have to do now is change the direction that investment goes. That will again take clear leadership from sovereign powers. Trump is doing his part. The new trade agreements will do the rest.
What we can't do is say "we can't." If we make hard choices and stick to them, it will happen.
China did that through state controls, forced labor and they did it in an environment with no OSHA/etc.
We CAN do anything. The question is whether it makes sense to do it. It's a soar with your strengths thing.
Look, if you can build iPhones in the U.S. and they cost roughly the same amount of money then it's completely no brainer but I'm assuming if that could happen Apple would have already done it.
Foxconn owns the old GM Lordstown facility, I drive by it every day.
That doesn't change that is problematic to make capital investments of that size when the directives could change in 3 years. In a manufacturing world 3 years is like 2 mins. You could agree to build them here and never even produce a unit in 3 years. Then what?
I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
Sure they can. Just pick a site and go through Development Review. That could take 3.5 easy. Hell, design could be 1.5 years easy.
I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
Sure they can. Just pick a site and go through Development Review. That could take 3.5 easy. Hell, design could be 1.5 years easy.
It could be 6 months in Ohio just to get the site testing done that allows for water/septic/sewer
Sky News reports that more than 50 000 Russian troops have started amassing at the border with Ukraine near Kharkiv, including several elite formations.
An attempt to break through Ukraine’s defensive lines & advance toward Ukraine’s 2nd-largest city could be imminent pic.twitter.com/v63Jgz0LLr
Sky News reports that more than 50 000 Russian troops have started amassing at the border with Ukraine near Kharkiv, including several elite formations.
An attempt to break through Ukraine’s defensive lines & advance toward Ukraine’s 2nd-largest city could be imminent pic.twitter.com/v63Jgz0LLr
I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
Sure they can. Just pick a site and go through Development Review. That could take 3.5 easy. Hell, design could be 1.5 years easy.
It could be 6 months in Ohio just to get the site testing done that allows for water/septic/sewer
True, of course. All depends on if they really want to do it and where. You can move something through as fast or as slow as the political will allows.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
"Stand with anyone when he is right; Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
"Stand with anyone when he is right; Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
Where do you get this stuff ?
The US has allowed other countries to totally rip off the American taxpayers for decades. We have tolerated unfair trade practices that forced many US companies and factories to shut down or go overseas.
In both cases thousands of American jobs were lost.
Now all you care about is the price of Wal Mart cheap crap and the return on your stock investments.
Well big guy this problem didn't happen overnight and it won't be fixed overnight.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
Now all you care about is the price of Wal Mart cheap crap and the return on your stock investments.
Yes. Guilty as charged. I will not apologize for buying cheap products at Wal-Mart that hopefully will never be made in the USA. Yes, the returns on my stock investments are very important to me. I will not apologize for that. Sorry. Want my family to thrive. I want to leave a legacy for my family after my lifetime in the workforce.
Sounds like you love Donald Trump so much you are going to leave everything to him and his family. That is so very sweet of you.
**** that. To each his own.
"Stand with anyone when he is right; Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
Now all you care about is the price of Wal Mart cheap crap and the return on your stock investments.
Yes. Guilty as charged. I will not apologize for buying cheap products at Wal-Mart that hopefully will never be made in the USA. Yes, the returns on my stock investments are very important to me. I will not apologize for that. Sorry. Want my family to thrive. I want to leave a legacy for my family after my lifetime in the workforce.
Sounds like you love Donald Trump so much you are going to leave everything to him and his family. That is so very sweet of you.
Trump was not my first or even 3rd choice.
However he has greatly exceeded my expectations so far.
Tariffs have protected the US standard of living for most of its existence.
Only after WW 1 and especially after WW2 did we get away from it. The results have been the disappearance of the US middle class.
Have read others attempt to explain the job losses to you; however you either don't care or can't comprehend the realities involved.
Fortunately Trump, Vance, Rubio and Scott do understand. However the corrections needed are politically risky.
Which is why of course other presidents have merely kicked the can down the road.
Thankfully this administration has the guts to lead a spoiled and often ignorant electorate.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
Now all you care about is the price of Wal Mart cheap crap and the return on your stock investments.
Yes. Guilty as charged. I will not apologize for buying cheap products at Wal-Mart that hopefully will never be made in the USA. Yes, the returns on my stock investments are very important to me. I will not apologize for that. Sorry. Want my family to thrive. I want to leave a legacy for my family after my lifetime in the workforce.
Sounds like you love Donald Trump so much you are going to leave everything to him and his family. That is so very sweet of you.
Trump was not my first or even 3rd choice.
However he has greatly exceeded my expectations so far.
Tariffs have protected the US standard of living for most of its existence.
Only after WW 1 and especially after WW2 did we get away from it. The results have been the disappearance of the US middle class.
Have read others attempt to explain the job losses to you; however you either don't care or can't comprehend the realities involved.
Fortunately Trump, Vance, Rubio and Scott do understand. However the corrections needed are politically risky.
Which is why of course other presidents have merely kicked the can down the road.
Thankfully this administration has the guts to lead a spoiled and often ignorant electorate.
Well said.
Facebook Groups at; Memories of: Dallas, Texas, Football in Texas, Texas Music, Through a Texas Lens and also Dallas History Guild. Come visit!
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
"Stand with anyone when he is right; Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
149 pages, and all those people insulting the President (and his team) have not yet offered a single specific alternative plan.
Seems they imagine we can just do what failed in the last three decades, and magically solve everything.
Alternate Plan? How about putting in a budget that is less than last year's. Trump's actual budget, not what he says but what he submitted to Congress, is a bloated mess. This DOGE stuff is distraction. He submitted the largest defense budget in history! Why aren't you guys screaming about the Military Industrial Complex getting fatter? Not a thing now?
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
You know we live in a great country when people paid $30 an hour are in poverty. (According to the logic of KAI.) In the words of your not yet late great President, "C'mon Maaannnnnnnn!!!!!!
You should seriously think about moving to California. Sounds like you would fit in well there.
"Stand with anyone when he is right; Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
Now all you care about is the price of Wal Mart cheap crap and the return on your stock investments.
Yes. Guilty as charged. I will not apologize for buying cheap products at Wal-Mart that hopefully will never be made in the USA. Yes, the returns on my stock investments are very important to me. I will not apologize for that. Sorry. Want my family to thrive. I want to leave a legacy for my family after my lifetime in the workforce.
Sounds like you love Donald Trump so much you are going to leave everything to him and his family. That is so very sweet of you.
Trump was not my first or even 3rd choice.
However he has greatly exceeded my expectations so far.
Tariffs have protected the US standard of living for most of its existence.
Only after WW 1 and especially after WW2 did we get away from it. The results have been the disappearance of the US middle class.
Have read others attempt to explain the job losses to you; however you either don't care or can't comprehend the realities involved.
Fortunately Trump, Vance, Rubio and Scott do understand. However the corrections needed are politically risky.
Which is why of course other presidents have merely kicked the can down the road.
Thankfully this administration has the guts to lead a spoiled and often ignorant electorate.
People buying into political myths is fascinating to me.
Let's start with the myth that America has been "ripped off." No one forced U.S. companies to move overseas, they responded to global competition and consumer preferences, particularly for lower prices. And who benefits most from those lower prices? The very working and middle-class Americans that you guys claim to defend. In fact, access to cheaper goods is effectively a tax cut for millions of families. Every dollar saved on essentials like clothing, electronics, or groceries stretches a paycheck further. That purchasing power is not "cheap crap", it's real, daily economic relief for the American household.
You mention job losses, and yes, certain regions and industries have been disrupted. But the bigger picture tells a different story. The U.S. has maintained some of the lowest unemployment rates in the world for the last 40 years, including historic lows in recent years. Meanwhile, GDP has exploded, our standard of living has surged, and our economy remains the most productive, innovative, and desirable for global investment.
You can't selectively mourn a 1970s manufacturing plant while ignoring the millions of jobs created in tech, logistics, health care, and professional services, all made possible by our dominance of an integrated global economy. And you certainly can't claim to champion the American worker while advocating for policies (like tariffs) that raise consumer prices and shrink purchasing power.
The myths that have created the disdain of economic globalism (like a coordinated conspiracy to hollow out the Middle Class) are because there's a fundamental lack of understanding of why and how it happened. It happened primarily because of technology, much of which we innovated and continue to dominate. Things like the internet, satellite communications, real-time logistics, containerized shipping, automation, and global payment systems shrank time and distance. This wasn't government policy, these were technological inevitabilities that companies leveraged to optimize production, lower costs, and meet rising domestic and global demand. And while that shifted certain kinds of jobs abroad, it also unlocked entirely new industries at home like software, e-commerce, fintech, energy, cloud infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and AI. These sectors didn't just replace jobs, they paid more, scaled faster, and positioned the U.S. as the brain and capital of the global economy.
We need to stop looking back to bygone eras and try to stay and get ahead of the future economy,
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
Now all you care about is the price of Wal Mart cheap crap and the return on your stock investments.
Yes. Guilty as charged. I will not apologize for buying cheap products at Wal-Mart that hopefully will never be made in the USA. Yes, the returns on my stock investments are very important to me. I will not apologize for that. Sorry. Want my family to thrive. I want to leave a legacy for my family after my lifetime in the workforce.
Sounds like you love Donald Trump so much you are going to leave everything to him and his family. That is so very sweet of you.
I wonder if that is even possible. Assembled here maybe but made here…not so sure
We don't have the labor sills or plant capacity to handle much of it now. Will take time to develop that. Trump is using the bully pulpit to pressure Apple to "start" coming home.....to force them to make the decision to move a greater percentage of their supply chain inside the USA.
Apple has already announced it's moving US oriented production out of China and into India by the end of next year. That's a benefit to the US. But it would be an even bigger benefit if Apple does that as a part of a larger plan to move (say) half of that production home over the next 36-60 months. Even getting 10-20 percentage points more of the supply chain inside the US would be a huge benefit.
Apple has 3.5yrs more Trump do deal with. They can't just ignore it. They have to mitigate risks.
All of that is true but it's just not that easy to build a factory, find people to run it, get the machinery necessary…and hope that the winds don't change with the next administration.
Factory building isn't a 3-5 year plan. It's. 20-30 year plan at minimum.
China faced that exact problem 25 years ago. They fixed it (with a lot of help from western investment). It would have never happened without clear leadership from sovereign powers. What we have to do now is change the direction that investment goes. That will again take clear leadership from sovereign powers. Trump is doing his part. The new trade agreements will do the rest.
What we can't do is say "we can't." If we make hard choices and stick to them, it will happen.
China did that through state controls, forced labor and they did it in an environment with no OSHA/etc. True, but there was a lot more than that at play. We exercised a lot of macroeconomic policy to facilitate the offshoring of jobs to China, in statute as well as in diplomacy & international organizations. Remember, all trade occurs under rule agreed upon by sovereign powers....
We CAN do anything. The question is whether it makes sense to do it. It's a soar with your strengths thing. That's the "relative strength" argument, and it is cogent. It can be in one's interest to outsource production of things one does well if it allows resources to flow to things one does even better. But that is manifestly not the dynamic at play when one has massive and escalating structural deficits.
Look, if you can build iPhones in the U.S. and they cost roughly the same amount of money then it's completely no brainer but I'm assuming if that could happen Apple would have already done it. Tim Cook spoke to that recently - the reason iPhones are not made in the US today has nothing to do with labor cost. No real difference there. The reason is that by not having made any iPhones at all here for so long, we do not have the skillsets needed to staff production lines of any significance RIGHT NOW. So that's why Apple is moving its China production to India - to exploit existing skills to maintain output during transition. Left unspoken but clearly a significant factor too is sunk costs - the plant capacity in China is paid for. Why move until it is no longer maintainable? (answer - geopolitics. We cannot be so dependent on a nation clearly intent on challenging our interests in Asia.)
Foxconn owns the old GM Lordstown facility, I drive by it every day.
That doesn't change that is problematic to make capital investments of that size when the directives could change in 3 years. In a manufacturing world 3 years is like 2 mins. You could agree to build them here and never even produce a unit in 3 years. Then what? The prudent CEO will manage that risk by limiting exposure, by increasing the percentage of his/her supply chain inside the USA. That insulates against any future shock related to war, famine, pestilence, or choleric political leaders (no, not like Trump....like XI, Putin, the Mullahs, etc....) Trump used the bully pulpit this past week to needle Cook to not falter - bring more jobs home. Well done, Mr. President
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. All these corporate leaders know the "offshore to China" phase is over. Left to their own devices, they'd let their depreciated operations there wind down slowly. That is not a problem with beach balls and ink pens but it is hardly in our interests to dawdle with key industries. We need to move with alacrity to get self-reliant on pharmaceuticals, on metal production, on shipbuilding, etc......strategically important things, to include tech, AI, robotics, etc... The BBB will help with that, but we are at a 1946 moment on trade. The old order is dead. Its not smoldering in heaps of rubble like 1946, but it quite obvious that a new order will emerge from the ongoing trade negotiations. Your grandkids and mine will study what is being put in place today as the natural order of things, just like I did in 1978-84 about the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods, the IMF/World Bank, etc.....a policy regime designed to rebuild and grow Western Civilization in the face of a looming communist threat. For the ensuing 50 years, policy and statute served that world order. And now it's done, a spent force, the problems it was built to solve have been defeated. And so a new order is needed, to deal with current problems. What Trump is doing with legislation and trade today is not a finished product. There will be more statute and treaty on these subjects, by this admin, the next, and the ones after that. And they will all track in the same direction - more supply chain at home; less supply chain abroad. Note Biden undid none of the first Trump admin deals/tariffs. Left them virtually untouched. (There is more of a bi-partisan consensus on trade than meets the eye.......) Robotics basically eliminate labor cost differentials between countries (which was the predicate for globalism at its outset). Ergo is is imperative to lead the way on robotics. Which requires leading the way on AI. Which requires exponential growth in energy production. Which will kill the green new deal dead as s doornail. That much is pretty clear. If you have stocks in wind or solar production, you need to sell now. Years of rust ahead.
Look at Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia week before last and the parade of corporate leaders in pageantry over trillions dollars of Arab investment. Why did that happen? Because China is allied with Iran, who is the boogeyman of the Arab mind. Trump exploited regional rivalries to line up investment to leap ahead of China in the race for AI, robotics, etc....... Chess moves. He's doing a very good job.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once & awhile, you could miss it." --Ferris Bueller.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
You know we live in a great country when people paid $30 an hour are in poverty. (According to the logic of KAI.) In the words of your not yet late great President, "C'mon Maaannnnnnnn!!!!!!
You should seriously think about moving to California. Sounds like you would fit in well there.
Dude ; get real.
I currently pay my summer part time help 30 dollars an hour.
But their parents pay for college.
With today's costs…….30 dollars an hour doesn't provide much over the most minimal of necessities.
Many such people work two jobs just to get by.
Now on some level you already know all this. So you are just being ridiculous.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
Slave labor? What BS from a young fella who has NO experience in the subject matter as he just keeps parroting the Trump BS. I can only speak to China and Vietnam. China's "slave labor " as you call it is nothing more than another Trump/Maga rally cry. I ran 5 factories in China that produced well over $3B in revenue. The products manufactured were very high end electronics..PCBs, PCBAS, phones, medical devices, switching/roughting, metal, injection molded plastics ect., so I know a little about it. In large factories, dorms and 3 square meals per day are provided as part of compensation. People come from many rural areas of China living on nothing. They are provided, room, board, car mechanic services ect. The are very good jobs for these folks and they are glad to have them. Hell, here in Merca, we can't even get our good white and black folk to cut their own grass. Apples and Oranges. Tinny, lets hear your hands on experience in this subject or are you just talking out your Arse again , when you know nothing. It has been established that you have NO experience in this activity.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
You know we live in a great country when people paid $30 an hour are in poverty. (According to the logic of KAI.) In the words of your not yet late great President, "C'mon Maaannnnnnnn!!!!!!
You should seriously think about moving to California. Sounds like you would fit in well there.
Dude ; get real.
I currently pay my summer part time help 30 dollars an hour.
But their parents pay for college.
With today's costs…….30 dollars an hour doesn't provide much over the most minimal of necessities.
Many such people work two jobs just to get by.
Now on some level you already know all this. So you are just being ridiculous.
You are the reason we will soon have $25 Happy Meals and $8,000 I-Phones. The ironic part is that many of the Trump tariff cheerleaders will have to take out payday loans to pay for them. Sooooooo much winning!
"Stand with anyone when he is right; Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
You know we live in a great country when people paid $30 an hour are in poverty. (According to the logic of KAI.) In the words of your not yet late great President, "C'mon Maaannnnnnnn!!!!!!
You should seriously think about moving to California. Sounds like you would fit in well there.
Dude ; get real.
I currently pay my summer part time help 30 dollars an hour.
But their parents pay for college.
With today's costs…….30 dollars an hour doesn't provide much over the most minimal of necessities.
Many such people work two jobs just to get by.
Now on some level you already know all this. So you are just being ridiculous.
You are the reason we will soon have $25 Happy Meals and $8,000 I-Phones. The ironic part is that many of the Trump tariff cheerleaders will have to take out payday loans to pay for them. Sooooooo much winning!
More of your pointless word jumbles. I pay what is needed to keep good / loyal workers.
The point remains your 'full employment' is not a legitimate assessment.
Too many Americans would be more accurately described as the working poor. Working 40-60 hours a week to have a taxable income of less than 60k per year.
And for a family of four a taxable income of 60k doesn't come close to getting it done.
I don't have a high opinion of Vance...but his autobiography gives a compelling decription on how the loss of manufacturing jobs is destroying middle America; destroying small town America.
But if all one cares about is his China made Wal Mart crap no amount of literature or data will work its way through.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
You know we live in a great country when people paid $30 an hour are in poverty. (According to the logic of KAI.) In the words of your not yet late great President, "C'mon Maaannnnnnnn!!!!!!
You should seriously think about moving to California. Sounds like you would fit in well there.
Dude ; get real.
I currently pay my summer part time help 30 dollars an hour.
But their parents pay for college.
With today's costs…….30 dollars an hour doesn't provide much over the most minimal of necessities.
Many such people work two jobs just to get by.
Now on some level you already know all this. So you are just being ridiculous.
You pay your help $62,400 a year? That is about what an entry level Engineer makes in FL.
You pay them $30 an hour for college kids? To do what???? That is way above poverty level, as is implied. In Colorado an entry level Engineer gets $35. Maybe you are a bit generous and not a good fit for the 80% rule.
China's economy has been struggling to recover since COVID. Worker protests have been on the rise for some time.
China is an ancient culture with a mindset that they are the civilized and everyone else is something less. Yes, they think long term - in centuries - but that is not in any real sense an tremendous advantage. It's tends to lead to "just do nothing and it'll all work out....time will bring things back our way."...etc....and other platitudes to justify inaction. Yes, they plan in 10yr horizons, but the overriding lesson of the 20th century is that central planning does not work. As you note, their demonstrations have been rising since COVID (in no small part because of growing imbalances in their own system. Supply chains have started to trickle away from China organically (for a longish list of reasons). That make them more rather than less vulnerable to stochastic disruptions like sudden tariff increases. All of that works to our favor.
Immediate term conditions also favor us. China has no hope of landing enough deals to replace our markets. There are no other markets like ours....a quarter of the entire world GDP. They will have to build production for other things, other places,(which will not come close to replacing what they stand to lose from getting frozen out of our market). Those problems require solutions on a timeline of years bordering on decades. And those years will not be kind to China. It is for a log period of decline, for a long-list of reasons.
China never honors trade agreements anyway. In that sense it's irrelevant whether a trade agreement is reached or not. One could argue that they'd probably rather cut a deal to regain certainty of what the rules are, so they can figure out how to skirt them and also know what to expect from us. And while they're grappling with what to do about that (short term thinking is not their strength, anyway), Trump will keep using the bully pulpit to force corporate leadership to realize that it's just too risky to have much exposure to China.
Trump critics must, to some degree, build a case with a predicate that China is strong without problems while we are weak and full of problems.....that it is is we who should tread more carefully, not China. That is an inversion of reality. EACH of us have strengths and weaknesses. I'd rather play our hand than theirs.
Agree that I like our hand much better than theirs. Primarily because they are so reliant on exports (are you coming around? lol). I fully acknowledge a whole host of problems that China has, which have been brewing for years. We have some weaknesses that China will expose, we just haven't been hit by them yet as they are lagging factors. I hope both can work out a reasoned solution to minimize the damage. When the world catches a cold, America gets sick too.
Have stated many, many times that our trade deficit is an advantage in trade negotiations, as those nations in surplus with us have no hope of replacing our markets (should they be frozen out), that even temporary disruptions would throw their economies into recession. (so they have powerful incentives to "compromise.")
reliance on exports for power (as China does and we once did) is a viable plan. reliance on imports for power (as we are doing) is a viable plan. both plans have pros/cons. You have to make sure the pros outweigh the cons relative to the geostrategic problems you face. BALANCE is never a bad idea. BALANCE creates few problems = sustainable indefinitely. And when you are unsustainably out of balance, every step back toward balance is a benefit.
Right now, we are wildly, unsustainably out of balance, decades of escalating structural trade deficits. And if we don't fix that, the strong dollar policy regime will fail, and we will be in the proverbial world of hurt. Same for key industries - mining, steel production, shipbuilding, etc... We are at shocking disadvantages versus our primary adversary. Trump is working those problems (and more) exceedingly well.
You continue to lack an understanding of capital markets. The idea that this "structural trade deficit" will collapse the dollar is completely disconnected from how the dollar maintains its strength, through capital demand, not a trade ledger. The moment other countries stop wanting U.S. assets is the moment we should worry, not when we're running a deficit in goods. If you're looking for the true existential threat to the dollar, it's not the trade deficit, it's the federal budget deficit. What threatens dollar stability isn't Americans buying too many goods from abroad; it's Congress spending far more than it raises in revenue year after year. So instead of torching trade flows that actually attract investment (which you tout for your man when it serves you) and support dollar strength, maybe focus on the one variable that is within our control, our inability to govern responsibly.
If our trade deficit truly is the powerful negotiating asset you claim it to be, and ironically, I agree with that framing, then why the need for sledgehammer tariffs? If we already hold the leverage, why are we posturing with 50% tariff threats like a desperate actor bluffing from a weak hand, rather than negotiating from a position of confidence and economic strength?
The truth is, you and much of the MAGA chorus have over-invested in this dystopian narrative of trade driven American decline, a narrative completely disconnected from economic reality. The U.S. economy generates and consumes 85% of its GDP domestically. That domestic engine alone is larger than any other economy in the world. We don't need to chase 1950s industrial supremacy to be strong, we already lead where it matters: in high-value manufacturing, aerospace, technology, intellectual property, capital markets, and services.
No serious economist is suggesting we outproduce China in bulk steel, and pretending we should is a misreading of modern strategic priorities. What we need is resilient, strategic production capacity, not a full-scale industrial re-enactment of a bygone era. His reversal on the Nippon Steel deal is a positive development in that direction.
Trump's trade approach isn't solving problems "exceedingly well", it's trying to reboot the CD-ROM era in a cloud-based economy. You don't strengthen the future by tethering it to a world that no longer exists. At least you've come around on the benefits of foreign investment (why our capital markets are a primary strength) that can actually fuel the types of industry we need.
Most well thought out and detailed post, ATL. Excellent explanation. Would give you five stars if I could. The heyday of tariffs in the U.S. was at a time when people drove a horse and buggy and outhouses were a luxury. We sure as Hell don't want to go back there. Trump is trying to impose a 20th century policy on a 21st century economy. It does not fit.
Trump is attempting to restore fair international trade relations.
Which were given away step by step beginning with the Marshal Plan at the end of WW2.
Yes, after World War II we quickly became the greatest country on earth. Reset from the Smoot -Hawley Act (tariffs) and the Great Depression. The United States is not a victim that has been so taken advantage of. No matter how many times Donald Trump says we are. As a proud American, playing the victim is just not acceptable to me. To each his own.
LOL, American blue collar workers having to compete against slave labor, child labor, pollutors, trade manipulators, IP and tech thieves, dystopian controlled societies. And why? Not because America had to. America could easily have a lead the West to ensure all international trading partners had decent standards. But no, the "proud American worker" was told to suck it up and look for a new jobs so globalists could profit.
I mean it's apparently wrong for the Western societies to pollute and steal, and to use child labor and near slavery and untenable working conditions. It's wrong that is, unless you are a globalist financier who just gets other nations people to be their slave.
You may want to pretend that you've not been taking advantage of, but our US society would look much healthier without a blind adherance to corporate globalist financiers who were happy to sell out our communities.
Don't worry tho, they're still in control, you'll get your faux gains while their inflation slowly outpaces your gains. So just relax, the financiers have a strangle hold on our economies. So you'll get back to the status quo of boom and bust cycles that are the norm for a debt based monetary system.
America is at close to full employment. The only people without a job don't want a job.
Donald Trump has convinced you we are victims. We are not. You are not alone. Our country is now made up of too many people not willing to work and too many curling up in the fetal position. I am fed up with this crap!!!
Far too many Americans are paid under 30 dollars an hour.
They are part of your 'full employment' but in reality are very poor.
You know we live in a great country when people paid $30 an hour are in poverty. (According to the logic of KAI.) In the words of your not yet late great President, "C'mon Maaannnnnnnn!!!!!!
You should seriously think about moving to California. Sounds like you would fit in well there.
Dude ; get real.
I currently pay my summer part time help 30 dollars an hour.
But their parents pay for college.
With today's costs…….30 dollars an hour doesn't provide much over the most minimal of necessities.
Many such people work two jobs just to get by.
Now on some level you already know all this. So you are just being ridiculous.
You pay your help $62,400 a year? That is about what an entry level Engineer makes in FL.
You pay them $30 an hour for college kids? To do what???? That is way above poverty level, as is implied. In Colorado an entry level Engineer gets $35. Maybe you are a bit generous and not a good fit for the 80% rule.
