With the current immterest in tariffs and Tariff Agreements, maybe this review will be instructive.




Link to original video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...eM&time_continue=248

I agree with the premise of free trade. One cannot credibly argue with Milton Friedman on that.

My issue and what I would love to hear his opinion on is that we don't have free trade. We have very unfair trade thru deals negotiated to give foreign countries access to our consumers while severely restricting US companies access to their consumers.

In Friedman's example, the Japanese can't spend the dollars they receive for steel on American goods because the Japanese government put huge tariffs on US goods and they can't be competitive in the Japanese market.

Trump is using tariffs to force reciprocal trade deals, and that is what I am in favor of - reciprocal trade. If they restrict their markets, we restrict ours. If they open their markets to our goods, we open our markets to their goods.

Free trade in theory works great - trade where it's only free one way does not work.

This, to Bama's point, is what pisses me off so much about how the never-Trumpers take to things like Twitter and news media and talk about how Tariffs are the devil and never work.

Sure, ass, in a perfect world they don't work.

Something else to consider is that there are hidden costs to trade.

We trade buy a lot of goods from China, too much.

For every dollar of goods we buy, we increase the damage to the environment, reduce wages and employment in the US, have to increase taxes to raise military spending to match China’s rise...

And most importantly, will pay for this trade in blood, as there will be a war with China, and American men and women will suffer as a result, no matter the outcome.

quote:

Originally posted by Veeper:

Sure, ass, in a perfect world they don't work.

In the real world, they don't work either. The old Smoot-Hawley tariffs are the model. They fucked up trade for decades and while they didn't cause the Great Depression, they made it worse. All they did was trigger waves of retaliation which caused more harm to the U.S. economy than any benefit. Even if our tariffs were in response to some unfair trade practice from another country, they don't cure the problem - they just make it worse.

Economists on all sides the political spectrum agree that international tariffs do not succesfully protect any economy.

I've worked in the steel industry all my life so you know my opinion. I've studied and lived this for a long time. Industry makes the US stronger, its what developed the country. You need to dig stuff out of the ground and make something out of it. Now 80% service employment, what a joke. Quotas would have been a better way to go though. Not going to get sucked into this....nope.

The first industry article about the 232 tariff impact I read when it was first announced that the Canada and Mexico would be exempted predicted a loss of 5 jobs for every steel job "saved". Roughly 145,000 jobs. Now that the dust has settled so to speak and they're not, the chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce has predicted the loss of up to 500,000 jobs as a result.

You all knew that every steel producer in the US raised their prices as soon as it was announced right?
And with the panic buying everybody gets to wait a lot longer now for the product right?
The simple truth is that the US does not produce enough steel to meet its needs. Look it up.
Even if they ran 24/7 at 100% capacity, which they would never do to help keep the prices up.
We have to import steel.

Every nation on earth thinks Chinese overproduction is fucking up the market. The Chinese in fact do not disagree.
But this sticking it to our "allies" will only result in more "offshoring".
Have you seen Monterrey Mexico lately?

Disclaimer: I've been peddling this stuff for 22 years, and currently I sell "boutique" grades of stainless that were invented in Europe and 97% of which are made in Europe.
Specialized shiny stuff you've never heard of: for niche markets like oil/gas production, paper/pulp production, and gold/phosphate mining.
We're kind of up to speed on this stuff.

It's great to finally have a president with common sense.

Trump, China and trade: Who blinks first?

THE HILL > China and trade: Who blinks first?



>>> https://thehill.com/homenews/a...ade-who-blinks-first



Neither President Trump nor Chinese President Xi Jinping are showing any sign they’ll cave in the escalating trade dispute between the world’s two most important economics, portending a standoff that could last months or even years."

Years? I think not.

I think major issues will be resolved soon after the G20 - enough to get a draft written for a prototype agreement. Then it will be further tweaked "as time goes by" (credit to Casa Blanca).

"

quote:

The simple truth is that the US does not produce enough steel to meet its needs. Look it up.
Even if they ran 24/7 at 100% capacity, which they would never do to help keep the prices up.
We have to import steel.

This is why we need subsidize/tariff/protect steel. I like Friedman, and yes free trade in theory would be best, it's not possible in the real world. Let's say it is possible for the sake of argument. Let's say we've been kicking ass on this whole globalism thing and take it to it's ultimate conclusion. The US is getting the cheapest steel ever made. Somehow that cheap steel has spurred other businesses in the US and those aggregated gains offset the total loss of our steel industry.

After 15 years of Utopia from cheap steel we find ourselves involved in WW3,. Kind of sucks if we can't produce steel while at war. It's not a light switch you can turn on/off, once gone it'd be very hard to restart.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

The simple truth is that the US does not produce enough steel to meet its needs. Look it up.
Even if they ran 24/7 at 100% capacity, which they would never do to help keep the prices up.
We have to import steel.

This is why we need subsidize/tariff/protect steel. I like Friedman, and yes free trade in theory would be best, it's not possible in the real world. Let's say it is possible for the sake of argument. Let's say we've been kicking ass on this whole globalism thing and take it to it's ultimate conclusion. The US is getting the cheapest steel ever made. Somehow that cheap steel has spurred other businesses in the US and those aggregated gains offset the total loss of our steel industry.

After 15 years of Utopia from cheap steel we find ourselves involved in WW3,. Kind of sucks if we can't produce steel while at war. It's not a light switch you can turn on/off, once gone it'd be very hard to restart.

^^^^^Agreed !

Part of MAGA is rebuilding our basic industries. Moving away from a "high tech economy" (making & importing a lot of electronic games and similar junk) which distracts everyone from the real world. - Then returning to a real economy (manufacturing of practical products).