Slashdot Mirror
Trump Announces $60 Billion Tariff on Chinese High-Tech and Other Goods (techcrunch.com)
Following months of investigations by the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the Trump administration announced on Thursday at a White House briefing that the administration intends to place about $60 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods, with the bulk of them likely to be focused on the high-tech industry. The White House will announce a final list of goods subject to the tariffs in the next few weeks. From a report: "We've lost over a fairly short period of time, 60,000 factories in our country. Closed, shuttered, gone. Six million jobs at least, gone. And now they are starting to come back," President Trump said during the briefing. "The word that I want to use is reciprocal -- when they charge 25 percent for a car to go in, and we charge 2 percent for their car to come into the United States, that's not good. That's how China rebuilt itself."
Can’t be sad about this one.
Because otherwise how are we going to be able to afford all these now more expensive trinkets and toys?
Oh. Wait. We're not supposed to. It's supposed to further expand the wealth gap and pretty much finish off the US middle class.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Post your address
Tariffs on Chinese garbage will kill the WMT stock price.
Trade barriers are a bonehead move. Always were, always will be.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is not good for anyone, as the slew of economists and economic reporters have been putting out there for the last few weeks.
But more than that it's every day Americans who are going to be paying for it. 20-30% more on every electronic device, gadget, previously untariffed good that was imported, all to do what? Temporarily prop up industries / companies here in the US that won't significantly change their employment levels, capital investment in manufacturing, or supply chains in time until these tariffs are lifted?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"..the blind, hateful liberals.."
There is no need for this trash talk unless your are a hateful person yourself.
Wonder if he even knows...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
but every word out of his mouth is a lie, and his administration makes a point of dissing science and information.
We're in a war with Afghanistan
We're in a war with Pakistan
We're in a war with Libya
We're involved in the war in Somalia
We're involved in the war in Syria
We're involved in the Yemeni Civil War
We have a war on drugs
We have a war on terrorism
Christians like to believe there's a war on Christmas
Why not add a trade war to the list. The others aren't ending anytime soon, but we're bored of hearing about them so we need a new war to talk about.
Would it not leave everyone blind?
If China lowered their tariffs, who of you thinks the USA would do likewise and not just keep the money as politicians love to do? I want a show of hands.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Against good-faith trading partner, it is boneheaded move. Against China, that is anything but open market themselves it is not.
China imposes them on us. And the memo states that tariffs are to be put in place only when things are unfair. If China doesn't want these tariffs, they can drop their own.
The plan is to match tariffs, all the way down to 0. If you don't want these tariffs, you can ask China to drop their own, which would make us drop ours.
Fair is fair, is it not?
(Actually, it's not, because their workers are treated like slaves and they shit all over the environment. We should be imposing higher tariffs on them than they are on us while those things are true.)
Yes trade barriers are very bad.
Which is why these reciprocal tariffs against China will hopefully force China to abandon it's xenophobic, racist, and anti-free market trade barriers that it has maintained for years and years.
So Trump is clearly trying to end China's boneheaded move of having trade barriers against U.S. products.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Then they will just buy $60 billion worth of airplanes from Airbus. We just pissed off Europe not long ago. And they will import chicken feet and other farm products from somewhere else.
So here's the thing, as consumers we have to ask ourselves an important question especially for the folks who can afford it. (If you're close to poverty then it's understandable that you don't have choices.) But for those of you that can afford it, would you buy a cheap gizmo or a more expensive gizmo supporting your own home country? I prefer to buy locally made stuff myself if I can find it at a "reasonable" price.
55 45 6 N 37 37 4 E
Trade wars are generally not good for the economy. As happy as I would be too stick it to the Chinese companies, I fear this will do more harm than good. I think it would be better to create incentives, and hold US companies to them, to keep production in America. Igniting a trade way under the guise of national security isn't a smart move but I would expect that coming from a president who's mental agree is that of an elementary school child.
I miss the days of decency and cooperation.
Fact: You're not old enough to remember such times.
go pop some non-chinese popcorn, sit back and watch.
Trade sanctions are what they are. If the imbalance of trade is that bad, maybe we could start making things in the US for a change.
Of course there would need to be a literal shit-ton of legislation to incentivize businesses to manufacture here, not including robots.
So Trump is clearly trying to end China's boneheaded move of having trade barriers against U.S. products.
What is it that we make that a) the chinese want to buy, and b) can even afford?
If every Trump-voting flag-waving buy-American Walmart-shopper just stopped buying the low-priced chinese-made crap that Walmart flogs, we'd probably be orders-of-magnatude ahead of where we are now.
But you know that's not going to happen.
Nuke it from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The economies are so interlinked that any real trade war could create unstable and unpredictable times.
... that anything could happen... the problem is it may not be able to be predictable. ... is more than likely just pretending to know and guessing.
The US owes so much debt now, that if China starts dumping accumulated debt they could force a spike in interest rates that basically throw the US into a hard recession.
It could lead to a currency war as China could hit back with devaluation equivalent to the tariffs.
The Chinese banks are not very transparent - and if the current swoon turns into a worldwide stock market crash - could be the start of another Asian crisis (we just cannot know) if it is prolonged.
Companies cannot just turn on a dime and change manufacturing (i.e. move it to other locations), so it could spike inflation and it could also disrupt major American companies supply.
Or it could just be taken in stride. The problem is that the markets were already overly exuberant, and there are many bubbles that could be popped
Anyone that claims to know what will happen
Or if his reasoning is to "make things more even"... does he even understand what the hell that means? Especially in a global economic environment. SMH on this guy's logic. Where the hell is he getting his guidance from??
Probably from the squirrel hiding as his toupe, controlling him like the rat in Ratatouille.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Remember that tax cut you guys gave the wealthy, with those temporary peanuts for you... well those peanuts are being snatched back by the administration! SO WEIRD! Could never have seen it coming! Enjoy that extra few bucks a week!
the jobs aren't coming back. Not very many anyway. Any factories built here will be run by robots. On the other hand we might end up bringing back the pollution.
The trouble with tariffs is they don't work as half measures. If you want to do isolationism like Brazil does that's fine. But get ready for $1500 Playstations and $3000 video cards. That's why you can still buy a Sega Megadrive in Brazil without irony.
Oh, one more thing. Any chance these tariffs will be passed on to me in the form of services like roads, schools or healthcare? Given the $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut we just did (83% of which went to the 1%) I'm guessing no. It's just like the lottery. They claim the money will go to services but then they shuffle it around and turn it into tax cuts for the rich.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I think Trump is pretty much a piece of shit as a human being, but, on this, I think he is on the right track. China needs our soybeans more than we need their shitty toasters that don't last a year.
Where do you think the parts are made that you will use to repair that formerly-cheap, now-expensive tech bauble?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Everything Trump does is a childish ego response to prove he has a bigger dick.
Like the majority of EVERYTHING that is sold in the US is made in China. So how's this in any way good for Americans and American companies?
Of course ... Would be much nicer if things were not offloaded to China constantly as that's usually the first step in loss of the quality of a product.
You're answering your own question.
The proposed tariffs are reciprocal.
If China doesn't like them, they can lower the tariffs they impose on us, and we will respond in kind.
Alternatively, China can keep being unfair, which should cause manufacturing to move away from China and either to the US or to somewhere with more equitable trade agreements. Such changes will take time to play out, of course. But Trump has been shouting about bringing manufacturing back to the US for years now. If he can do it, it'll be a huge boon to our economy.
We've lost over a fairly short period of time, 60,000 factories in our country. Closed, shuttered, gone. Six million jobs at least, gone. And now they are starting to come back," President Trump said during the briefing.
Factories gone for things that can be made much less expensively over seas, gone from a now more services-oriented US economy. Many, perhaps most, of those jobs won't be coming back and, if they do, US consumers will pay a steep price. Trump is longing for a World that was, but has now moved on.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Painting everyone with the same brush and insulting them is not conductive of spreading truth.
Beside speculating on the behavior of others as if they all conformed to your projected image, what truth did you intend to state?
I never understood why people sign their posts.
-jcr
Globalists are always pro free trade, the easier to sell out their fellow countryman. Not hard really.
.... from eastern EU, with love :), thanks !
:>
not joking
Trade barriers are a bonehead move. Always were, always will be. Even when dealing with dealing with Fascist Regimes, Communist Dictatorships, Massive Genocidal Maniacs, Murderous Muslim Theocracies, State Sponsors of Terrorism, Countries deploying State-sponsored Hackers to loot IP, companies forced to share their IP merely to sell in the country, Human Rights Abusers, and Kleptocracies.
Remember, Trade barriers are a bonehead move. Always were, always will be.
And we them. Example 25% on trucks.
A $1 part will be $2. An entire $600 widget will be $800.
Not sure who does your taxes but average tax returns are several thousand dollars in refunds.
That's charming. So, somebody making ten million a year gets a million dollars in lower taxes, and one thousand middle class people get one dollar lower taxes. Net result: average tax cut one thousand dollars!
Would be more useful to look at the median tax cut.
You are wrongly assume that perpetual growth, infinite resources, and non-zero sum trade are real/possible outside of MBA spreadsheets.
It happens that in post WW2 period it was mostly true, but this will not remain so indefinitely. Strong China is a long-term threat to the Western World. Trading with China, on unequal footing, makes China grow more than us. Hence, long-term a trade war with China is better than uneven trade with China.
Since when China is an Ally?
Except you're also cunts that like to play "technicality" bullshit. You don't have "tariffs" for many products... but you have "select partners", "regulations", and "subsidies" for a lot of areas. You can take the tariffs down to zero, but no one can compete with your corn price because you want to keep your farmers happy, and only a select club can sell you beef and lemons, because of "regulations" on the quality of the product.
You're not a free market. Don't go about bullying everyone into thinking you are. We're not stupid.
This is just sort of insightful commentary I come here to Slashdot to read. Are you a professional pundit?
The Alt-Right Universe. It's a bit of an odd place...down is up, left is right, anyone with a degree is over-educated.
"What is it that we make that a) the chinese want to buy, and b) can even afford?"
$15 Billion+ of soybeans a year for starters.
A billion or two of corn a year.
Same for coal.
Plus many other things.
And that does not include things exported to china from other countries who imported the raw materials from us.
There is a imbalance, and I agree that american have lowered our standards.
Remember when 'Dad' would only buy a $15+ single craftsman wrench because 'I'm not going to buy another one'?
Now he gets a $4 set of 5+ crap wrenches that lasts one project at most. Then waddles down to the Wally Mart to buy yet another crappy pile of junk that will not last.
But don't forget that a trade war means farmers, coal miners, and many others will suffer.
To quote our dear leader.
'It's complicated... Who knew?'
For fuck's sake, why would you want Trump to do anything? Ever noticed anything he touches gets slimed?
You're assuming he's painting with a broad brush. Maybe he really is just targeting his comments at hateful liberals as opposed to reasonable liberals. Then again, maybe he is radiating into 4pi and damn the consequences.
Globalists are always pro free trade, the easier to sell out their fellow countryman. Not hard really.
And what about your fellow country who depend on Global Trade? We don't count? I work in aerospace; this is gonna suck real bad for us. If you wanna buy a jet engine, you have to go to Pratt&Whitney (US), GE (US) or Rolls Royce (GB). We do things ALL over the World. That's right, the US has 66% of the World Wide Jet engine market.
Sure Trump saved a few hundred jobs in the Rust Belt - Maaayyyyyybe. But at the cost of thousands in other places?
Steel making is a cheap commodity. Jet engines are a high margin high tech endeavor.
World trade is globalist. And denying it only hurts ourselves.
"Traitor" is definitely too strong a word here, since the "treason" was against conservatives, and even then, before the election HE TOLD everyone that he was going to push leftist economic policies. Apparently people just didn't believe him, so they feel betrayed if tey voted for him.
I think a lot of conservatives vote Republican just out of habit, because when they grew up, the Rs were more to the right on economic issues than the Ds. Over the last few decades, the parties have traded a lot of lefts and rights, where Democrats tend to be more conservative than Republicans on most things now (not everything, but most things), but voters don't keep up.
But keeping up is voters' responsibility. If they wanted free markets instead of centralized economic planning, it was up to them to vote for someone else. They didn't have to vote for the pinko.
The other people who might say he was a traitor, would be the Republican party itself (as opposed to Republican voters), simply based on his platform being so opposed to their own. But the time to nip that in the bud was during the primaries, because that's when the "treason" happened. If they felt strongly enough about it, they shouldn't have licensed him their trademark.
Imagine if Bernie Sanders, while in the Democratic Party, were to tell everyone he was going to repeal all gun control, eliminate the safety net, lower taxes, and execute any women caught getting abortions. Then imagine he got elected and actually did those things. Plenty of Democrats would be shouting "TREASON!!!" Same with Trump, having all this Soviet flavor but running and winning as a Republican.
Anyway, voters, if you're into free markets, you know what to do: don't vote for Republicans anymore. That was your grandfather's strategy. If you really want to support freedom, then vote Libertarian. If you want to take a step toward freedom but not totally commit, then vote Democrat. And if you have communist leanings, Trump's flavor of Republicans are still there, and there are even some Democrats on the left too still, but you need to study the candidates carefully.
And if you're a Republican Party person and you resent this "treason" then you either better get back to the "rigging" that Trump accused you of in 2016, or accept that you aren't in control of the platform anymore, because your voters are swinging further and further to the left.
Why? you guys are on $5/hour, my hourly wage is $30/hour. From where I sit in Australia, an American phone would be pretty cheap.
Read the fucking memo you clown.
Section 1. Tariffs. (a) The Trade Representative should take all appropriate action under section 301 of the Act (19 U.S.C. 2411) to address the acts, policies, and practices of China that are unreasonable or discriminatory and that burden or restrict U.S. commerce. The Trade Representative shall consider whether such action should include increased tariffs on goods from China.
Haven't paid much attention to the guts of modern electronics/appliances I take it... Maybe you can jerry a toaster, but much of the rest requires some seriously specialized equipment/skills. This isn't the '50's any more and precious little was designed with repairability in mind.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Design and construction has already begun. I don't want a wall, but he's moving forward with it like he said.
Damn, and I was thinking you were going to post 41 56 54 N 87 39 19 W just for the lulz.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Things like laptops (not Smurface junk) have replaceable circuit boards for a lot of things. Also, most failures are things like display cables breaking or power connectors coming unsoldered. They can typically be fixed with a bit of ingenuity.
I've picked up more than one piece of electronics from the street -- perfect working order except the AC plug had a broken prong. People can't even be arsed to replace a plug these days.
You just explained the difference between a politician with economical (and diplomatic) sense and Trump.
The diplomat would have send and envoy to China and publicly suggested they lower their duties on American imports.
Behind closed doors he would have added that otherwise the US would implement reciprocal tariffs.
It would have taken a few weeks or months but China would not feel like they were being raped and saving face is a BIG thing in the Far East.
Now the Chinese will be forced to save their face in ways unpleasant for both sides.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I hate trump and basically everything has done but keep this crap off slashdot go over to 4chan /r/the_donald to post this hate.
Looking forward to all those agricultural subsidies that the USA has being removed along with the agricultural tariffs they put on other countries agricultural products.
For those who are curious:
55 45 6 N 37 37 4 E puts you in Moscow
41 56 54 N 87 39 19 W puts you at Wrigley Field in Chicago
I am not going to address your first paragraph because it's pointless.
A strong China is good for the world over, let alone the "Western world". They are now our 3rd largest customer. And thanks to NAFTA, Canada and Mexico are both our 1st and 2nd largest customers. 50 years ago, people would have laughed if told that China would beat the UK in purchasing US goods, let alone by a massive margin. China is now strong enough to help Africa more than the US & EU could and are shouldering that burden with us.
A stable and strong Canada, EU, and Mexico have been a boon for the US! Mx was worse than China for a long time. The trade agreements brought them up out of poverty and eventually made them fine partners.
We produce and export more because of China purchasing our stuff. They been the single largest driver of our economic growth over the last decade. You may think it is too low but it would have been worse without China! Raising tariffs on China, steel, and aluminum just benefits those small sectors of the market by taxing the broader and larger sectors that have built on top of them.
This is why trade agreements even lower barriers at all over time. The economies become dependent on the trade and build upon them with the freed up capital and resources. The larger parts of the economy can then focus on the next level of inefficiencies and remove barriers there to build & integrate further. Take chicken feet for example. You couldn't sell to China 20 years ago when most of their population was still farming and needed that industry protected else they would have nothing to live by. Now that they are working in cities and factories, the chicken feet industry can have lower tariffs because that sector isn't as important in the overall livelihood. Such was the case with Wine & Beer tariffs in the EU. As was the case with corn to Mexico. Eventually the US will do it with sugar imports.
This is how we got to where we are with UK, Germany, EU, Mexico, Canada, and even China. Even within the EU, they haven't had this many decades of stability and safety ever. Given time, China and other countries will lower their tariffs over time. But you can't force it. They will naturally do it when it's mutually beneficial like all others have done in the past.
Now look at the other side. Countries that others don't play with and are isolationists. Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Somalia, etc. All have to race across the globe to find kindred spirits and whine to get any attention.
I understand the desire to strike back, but do you have anything to support the notion that these specific actions are going to be beneficial? We're pretty tightly coupled with China. Most of our manufacturing is done there, especially all the dirty stuff nobody likes doing. Cheap Chinese goods have been the only thing keeping the American worker from noticing the last 40 years of wage stagnation (well, noticing it any more than they already have). Do you have hard numbers on how this will translate to higher wages? I'm not expecting a raft of new manufacturing jobs and neither should you. Even the Chinese are automating. So if there's no new jobs and no new demand for American workers how is this going to raise wages enough to account for the increase cost of consumer goods?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
a tariff tied to environmental and worker conditions (and by environmental I mean clean air and water, not "Save the Whales" environmental).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Hint: reasonable liberals are already labeled "alt right" and "fascist" by hard leftists who took over that side of the isle about a decade ago. Shitting on them from the other side is merely going to alienate potential allies.
This is exactly what economists said he should have done instead of a blind protectionist tariff on steel and aluminum. How can you argue against mirroring the exact tariffs imposed on US goods overseas?
Where do you think the parts are made that you will use to repair that formerly-cheap, now-expensive tech bauble?
South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, just like where all the parts that were sent to China to be assembled in a cheap container before being shipped to the US. Those three nations also collect the lion's share of the money for such products, much more than China gets for being the last step of assembly. Really, we want the jobs that are in those three nations, not the cheap labor China is still doing. Of course, that would mean educating our people, boosting our industry, and advancing our technology so we can make better products than them.
Somehow, this idiot actually thinks that power can be transferred from capital to labor (or vice versa) by imposing tariffs on imported goods???
Where do you get that idea? It's nothing to do with capital vs labor, it's to do with Chinese capital vs USA capital. Labor can get stuffed. We here in the USA are capitalists, not socialists. It's all about capital. If we wanted labor over capital we'd just tax labor at a lower rate than capital. That hasn't happened in living memory. We don't want labor to have a voice - we're pretty much all against labor unions. We don't want labor to earn anything - we're for automation and against minimum wages. We don't care if labor gets sick and dies - we are generally against universal health care.
Right. When exactly has any of SV's stupid attempts at AI actually panned out? Self driving cars running people over, Siri, Alexa, Bixby, Cortana, Google replacing any jobs yet? If AI in SV were actually good we would see it by now. It's all vapor just like the dotcom shit was in 1999.
....and the market dropped 700 points. If Trump's headed for another bankruptcy, he wants to take us all with him.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
Doesnt trump and his several members of his family sell various "made in china" goods (trump shirts, etc).
If "Made in the USA" is so important, why isnt his own stuff made there? Do as i say and not as i do?
I look forward to China being stupid and putting 60 billion on us. Then trump can hit them with another $120 B making it 180 B. All china can do is add another 60B.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If every Trump-voting flag-waving buy-American Walmart-shopper just stopped buying the low-priced chinese-made crap that Walmart flogs, we'd probably be orders-of-magnatude ahead of where we are now.
They probably will, when it becomes high-priced "Chinese-made crap".
Then they'll whine louder that the reason they can't afford anything anymore is because illegal immigrants are sucking up all the well paying jobs. It couldn't possibly be because glorious leader did a fuck.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
>> Journalists need to do their jobs and publicly call this guy on the carpet.
> What colour is the sky on your planet?
If you break that sentence apart, you could argue that the GP was half right :-p
--- Mercutio was right.
Since both USA and China are WTO members, I wonder how Trump administration thinks they can avoid retaliation through WTO arbitration.
Trade wars lead to depressions.
And I ain't talkin bout the kind they prescribe pills for either.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That's funny. $5/hour in the U.S. is half the minimum wage. The median household income in the U.S. is slightly higher than it is in Australia.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
China can even the playing field by dropping their own tariffs. If not, well. . . too fucking bad. They have the means to fix this, they just elect not to.
Seriously, why the hell would any country tolerate doing business with China when their polices are blatantly designed to promote Chinese Companies over foreign ones ? As long as China continues this behavior, I have zero issues with cutting them off from the markets they are so obviously screwing over.
Once sales of their top money makers cease, it won't take long for them to realize how dependent their economy is on getting the rest of the world to buy their crap. No sales = no money = economy going to hell in a hurry.
So, to any country ( not just China ) that plays these games, I say bring it on.
You want to be treated fairly ? We only expect the same in return.
Which, really isn't that much to ask.
That's his second lead attorney...
And he apparently plans to "fucking do it his way".
You know... his way.
Trigger warning: You may get an urge to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger from all the cringe in that clip.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Why don't you try to tell me how the embargo on Cuba brought Castro down, you brain-dead putz?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
China owns a lot of the USA; they have serious power now.
The WTO was bad in so many ways and they don't seem to be making things fair or allowing corrections to be made... I wonder if Trump even is aware of the WTO?
The whole interconnected mess is likely not fixable without a bad bad transition period. It looks like we are headed for a shake up that is not planned. All that avoidance and procrastination I guess was for nothing?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
A strong China is good for the world over, let alone the "Western world". They are now our 3rd largest customer.
Why do you refer to yourself in the third person?
What is it that we make that a) the chinese want to buy, and b) can even afford?
Exactly. So observant of you; obviously, this is why we having nothing to lose.
Genius.
Yeah, they were a lot smoother... like slick turds. Trump is an egomaniac and a mysoginistic jerk... and, it would seem, far more genuine than either of those creeps. I don't know which was the bigger farce; Bush pretending to be conservative or Obama pretending to be liberal.
How dare we let times change! We need to get the jobs back to the conservative leaning blacksmiths and carriage makers! Let's slap tariffs on all cars, planes, buses, trucks, ships, canal barges, helicopters, train engines, and anything else not drawn by horse or mule! Oh wait, what about all the Republican boilermakers who lost their jobs when steam locomotives fell out of fashion? OK, no tariffs on steam locomotives, which will also bring back millions of coal mine jobs and employ billions in steel workers for new rails. Oh, wait, what about all the Diesel engine makers? OK, no tariffs on Diesel engines so that trillions of ultraright Diesel engine mechanics get their jobs back! Oh, wait..... And here we thought Reagonomics was the dumbest idea ever!
Actually, he is not moving forward like he said. He asks billions from US tax payers despite multiple times promising that he will make Mexico pay for it. He also promised in his self-dictated "Contract with America" to get this project going in the first 100 days. Other than some ugly prototypes nothing got done. Worse even, this project totally misses the point. The majority of illegal immigration occurs via official border crossings. Building a wall will also destroy the livelihood of thousands of US farmers who will lose their farm land along the border because the wall cannot be built in flood planes and sanctuaries. This is what happens when an utterly clueless guy calls the shots and spends over 25% of his time in office on golf courses costing the tax payers over a million for each trip.
I look at this, and I really start to wonder - are the policy decisions being based on Tom Clancy novels?
Tariffs are a really hard thing to nail down. If country A gives it's farmers a 20% subsidy to grow soybeans, is that comparable to telling country B that they need to pay a 20% duty if they want to import them to country A?
The first of those is hard to nail down. How do you know what that subsidy is, and who is getting it? Maybe farmer X gets it, because his daughter is sleeping with the local government official, while farmer Y does not.
The second case is more obvious - if you want to collect that duty, you need to tell the importer they need to pay for it.
Then you get into definitions of what the goods actually are. We've run into that up here in Canada with disputes with the US over how much useful wood comes out of a tree.
Lets not forget quality as well. A pound of Wagyu beef costs a lot more than a pound of normal beef. American corn fed beef is different than American non-corn fed beef. Trees in Canada are a bit more dense, due to the different growing times. If people don't want to buy your goods due to a lower quality product, and you want to buy theirs because it's a good quality product, you'll get the producers of the lower end items screaming about unfair trade practices.
Is importing a pound of Waygu beef equal to exporting 1 pound of regular beef? from a dollar perspective, no.
Good luck with all of this. Me, I'm going to the library to check out a couple more Clancy novels to see what you're in line for next.
Such trade-centric view is naive. Geopolitical power brings prosperity, not trade. More powerful China means less powerful US. This means US has less means to impose ts will and extract resources outside its borders. This means people inside US get less prosperous.
Mexico and Canada are neighbors and allies. They also happen to be democratic countries that are closely allied to US interests. It is possible to make a case that better-off Canada and Mexico will benefit US. I don't think you could ever make such case for China.
If China's trade barriers are so egregious, how do they manage a trade deficit with 4 of their 5 largest trading partners?
Completely correct, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan etc(along with the US) make all the parts and make all the money, but China gets all the blame.
The US has extracted more resources from China in the last 20 years for IOUs than it has in the last 200. After WWII we got little to nothing but IOUs from the EU block. Granted helping them rebuild has given us and the world one of our strongest and longest trading blocks.
Mexico gives us more illegal drugs than another country. A few decades before NAFTA, we didn't treat them much different than other poor countries. We would fund, equip, and prop up political figures that leaned American to fight drug cartels. Once funding dried up, the government would fall, drugs come back to that area, and we would repeat. That's working out like shit in other countries.
Through the benefits of trade, their economy and government have gotten much stronger. They are strong enough and self incentivized to fight the cartels on their own and cooperate better with us. Through trade, we have common goals of stability, peace, and growth.
For the type of "political" power you are talking about, there is no better example than the USSR and the Cold War. We all know how that ended up.
Like the one where they won't export the rare-earth metals needed to manufacture these goods?
Can't build stuff in the US if we can't get the materials.
"Conservatives" generally are hateful. And they never seem to actually want to conserve anything.
Which is why these reciprocal tariffs against China will hopefully force China to abandon it's xenophobic, racist, and anti-free market trade barriers that it has maintained for years and years.
Oh you sweet summer child.
We need to convert him to Taoism.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hint: there are darn few hard leftists in the US. Sanders is about as far left as they come, and Sanders is centrist by the standards of most of the rest of the developed world. The Left doesn't control much in Congress, even when Democrats are in power.
Nor do leftists call reasonable liberals "alt-right" and "fascist". We reserve those for the insane right wing. If you want to call those folks "reasonable", you should probably get out more.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Think of all the insecure men and their hangups caused by their misconceptions on manhood... and how some special plastic surgery or good therapy (unlikely) would have changed the world today.
Myths about tiny hands or untrained men being poor lovers should addressed so we don't end up with more big problems stemming from petty personal shortcomings...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
World domination... well, the 3rd globally reaching economic empire in history may be worth a steep price or taking a great risk. Especially if one is being nudged in that direction by the great empire falling apart before your eyes.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
(Actually, it's not, because their workers are treated like slaves and they shit all over the environment. We should be imposing higher tariffs on them than they are on us while those things are true.)
I'll agree on that assuming you intend to send all of the proceeds to the workers whose plight you are using to justify them.
In fact, it seems correct to use that approach for all tariffs. If the companies are able to undercut ours because they are underpaying employees or not following the same safety practices, the moral thing to do would be to demand they treat their employees the same as companies here. Level the playing field by leveling the playing field. Require that all companies selling here be licensed and submit to inspections to attain the license.
Doesn't anyone else question whether this is being done to help American companies or helping American companies is the excuse to grab billions of dollars in tariffs? Which will all be charged to the American consumer? Is that not a new hidden tax on Americans that will take a higher percentage of the income from those in the lowest economic brackets (as do most sales taxes)?
is even a tiny little bit communist? They're a Kleptocracy that borrowed Marx's rhetoric. Nothing more. Calling them anything else gives their government more credit than it deserves.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That makes sense, but how do you know that didn't happen?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> Nor do leftists call reasonable liberals "alt-right" and "fascist". We reserve those for the insane right wing.
You might, but a lot of liberals bunch everyone to right of Mao as racist troglodytes. You know, "deplorables" and "bitter clingers" and such. And "racist", a charge which is used so often that it's lost all meaning. Yeah, Trump insults people all the time, but he usually insults individuals and not broad swaths of the electorate like the most prominent leaders on the left.
I don't have a problem with the commenter upstream complaining about "hateful" liberals, because many of them are. In my exchanges with people over the last couple decades, I've seen far more hatred and bigotry on the left than on the right. You can't paint everyone with the same brush, but narrow-mindedness and hatefulness and ignorance are widespread among every political stripe.
The reason why I didn't like Trump is that he's too much like Obama: a narcissist who thinks he's smarter than he is and can't keep from shooting his mouth off. Obama's insults were usually more veiled and subtle, but he was no less toxic a person than Trump in my opinion, and no more careful about what he said when off the teleprompter. He did a lot to help set back race relations almost to where they were in the late 60s.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> This isn't the '50's any more and precious little was designed with repairability in mind.
You know this isn't as true as I used to think. I was able to replace the screen on my Google Nexus 7 tablet. Twice, because I was enough of an idiot to break it twice. Yeah, it would have been about half the cost of the tablet if it were fairly new, but after a couple of years, the parts were cheap enough (~$40 for a combined screen and digitizer) to make it worth the risk of not being able to replace it. The whole process took me about 2 and a half hours, but it wasn't hard, just tedious.
I also have a Samsung Galaxy 4 Mini and my son (who's been trained in electronics repair) replaced the power jack for me (a common point of failure on devices in my experience). When he gave it back to me the sound wasn't working, and I was able to go in and reseat the speaker module and everything was fine. It only took a few minutes. He also replaced the screen on my wife's LG phone (again, a few years old so the replacement was very cheap). Then I replaced the battery on my Samsung with a higher capacity one that came with an expanded back enclosure (because the new battery is about twice as big) and it's like having a new phone. Now it can go for 2-3 days without charging.
I was surprised in both cases that the components in these devices were a lot more modular and accessible than your average laptop (which once you get beyond the hard drive and RAM become like neurosurgery to work with). I had that Nexus tablet stripped down literally to a metal frame and a pile of components and was able to reassemble it without problem just by following a video on YouTube.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25. However a number of states have passed a higher minimum wage.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
And once more we have problems with the dual meanings of "socialism". Originally, socialism was about the workers owning the means of production, which effectively means the government controlling them, and that doesn't work. More recently, it's about the government taking care of people without needing to control the basic economy, and that's what most European socialists are, as well as Sanders. The economies remain capitalist, companies are mostly private, but the government provides a lot more services for people.
Nordic countries are heavily socialist in the more modern meaning. I haven't observed them objecting to the term. They're also some of the happiest countries in the world. They're doing some things very right.
Sanders is calling for things like universal health care, free education, and other things that are a matter of course in many other countries, who seem to be doing just fine. I don't see the point in you insisting that he be considered "hard left", since he certainly wouldn't be in many (perhaps most) developed countries. Most capitalist democracies would be way to the left if Sanders is "hard left", so it doesn't seem to be a useful definition.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actual duality is not what you state. That is the common result of the propaganda in US coming from both sides. The conservative side trying to push for things like "no universal healthcare" and so on, that is genuinely beneficial try to paint it at socialism. And therefore, the states that have it are, you guessed it, "socialist".
Then you have the actual socialists, who see this usage, and embrace it from the other end. "Look at me, I'm Bernie Sanders, and I'm an actual socialist. And I'm just like Denmark, as conservatives have so long advertised". Except that you're not. You're a socialist. And Denmark is a free market capitalist state.
If you ever even remotely consider that our states are socialist, you're being had. Badly. Socialists in our countries are commonly in the small far left parties. Social Democrats are NOT socialists by any measure. If you ever get told that Social Democracy is about socialism, you're being lied to.
You just conceded my point, by claiming that some people use a definition of "socialism" that isn't the economic one, but one which is compatible with free-market capitalism. Meanings show up in the dictionary when lots of people use them. You;'re saying that you don't like or accept one of the commonly used meanings.
You also seem to confuse the two. I haven't noticed Sanders pushing for government control of the means of production. I've noticed him advocating social programs. By your definition, he's a Social Democrat., not a socialist in the economic sense.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The fact that you twisted the meaning of my words to the incredible extent that you did demonstrates just how acute your cognitive dissonance is. I said nothing that could be even remotely interpreted as what you did. All I stated is that there is currently a convergence of interests from two sides of political spectrum which caused a socialism to be viewed in a certain way. With people like you falling victim to it.
You missed that message entirely, in spite of it being clearly spelled out, and instead twisted it into the weird "you just don't understand socialism" contortion.
There is no convergence of interests from both sides of the political spectrum to view (ownership of the means of production by the workers or the state) in a new way. That's generally considered a Bad Idea. There is such a convergence to view (government intervention to help the disadvantaged) as worth arguing about. People are using socialism to mean a system in which the government will provide free education, worker protections, social safety nets, etc. These systems typically exist in countries that are economically free-market capitalist (because free-market capitalism with appropriate regulations is by far the best system we've got right now).
Sanders has pushed for things like government-paid college education, universal health care, and the like. He hasn't pushed for government ownership of the means of production. Yet, you claim he's a socialist. Therefore, you';re using the (government intervention to help the disadvantaged) meaning, or you're lying. Sanders is, by your definition, a Social Democrat.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
By that definition, US is already socialist. It already provides public education, worker protections, social safety nets, etc.
So we can easily dismiss your definition as absurd on merits.
P.S. One last time. A PM of a country that is actually built on the social democratic model had to openly rebuke Sanders for the claim you're making. This is the kind of diplomatic gesture that is never taken lightly, and is only done when there's a genuinely meaningful and damaging error being made on the part of one making the claim.
You can keep implying that Danish PM is a liar. It doesn't make him one. But it does make YOU one.
It's a definition I've seen in common use around here. It's more useful than the older definition. Being more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist linguist does not make me a liar, and I haven't accused anyone else of being a liar. Sanders is a Social Democrat by your definition. Social Democratic countries uniformly have capitalism and a free market.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I understand that you work in environment where people lie about the definition, as you already expressed with your opinions on Sanders.
Many people around you lying does not magically make their statements true. No matter how many times they insult people who actually are social democrats with their attempts at pretending that they are social democrats rather than socialists, as Sanders did in that one example.
Do you know how dictionaries come up with words and meanings? They look for how words are being used. If enough people use a word in one sense, dictionaries will change to list that sense as an alternate definition. English is a live language, and there is no authority somewhere that defines exactly what words mean once and for all. That sort of stuff is done only in places like France, and what that will do is split off an archaic government French from the main language.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Think about what you just said. You just said that socialism is ok, as long as you can change definition of social democracy to mean socialism.
There's a reason why Danish PM had to correct Sanders. Liars like him and you, who try to push murderous ideologies into realm of social acceptability by inventing new meanings to existing words should be called on it. Every time. Because such monstrous people should be called that which they are - people who walk the same murderous path and those before them walked.
If you think it murder capital, you need to read Gulag Archipelago. I'm fairly certain they do not kill people by working them to death in temperatures below minus sixty degrees celcius, on a starvation diet, while demanding complete and total ideological obedience. Where one word of critique leaves you with no food and housing, until you freeze to death.
And where nubmer of deaths was so great and irrelevance of human life so total, historians still can't agree even on how many zeroes they need to add to the end, nine or ten. Regardless, it was far more than nazi death camps.
How much do you get off on not reading it, because you're afraid it will demolish your ideology?
Socialism is OK, as long as it's what you call social democracy. The definition of social democracy hasn't changed, but socialism now has it as an alternate meaning. You're reversing what's happening.
I'm a bit of a descriptivist linguist, as opposed to a liar. You're the prescriptivist, and deliberately misunderstanding people.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
US prisons aren't good either, and includes things like Sheriff Joe's tent cities.
The reason the Soviet Union killed more people than Nazi Germany was that they had longer. Nazi Germany, from my best estimates, murdered at about twice the rate. It was so toxic that we had to end it rather than the Soviet Union, as many people before WWII wanted to do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Mr Sanders, we're not a socialist country. We're a market economy. Please stop lying about us and equating socialism with social democracy.
Your lying may work on adolescents in US, and that would be damaging for Nordic states in the future. Thank you.
Firecrackers aren't good either. Just like nukes. More stupid comparisons to follow, because really, most people in Soviet Union during Stalin's era who were FREE would love to go to a modern US jail. It would be a marked improvement. You could actually say the things you think, and not end up fearing that for doing so, you or your family will just vanish one day, and no one will know what happened. Which most likely means they'll be enslaved at work camp, worked to death if they shut up or freezing to death slowly in front of the people who all tell you that you're evil for doing so and therefore deserve your fate if they dare to say anything about system not being perfect.
Best killing efficiency so far is not in the hands of national socialists, but communists. Read about Pol Pot. He wiped out a third of his nation in just a few years. Not that you would do that, as that would force you to face just how monstrous and bloody the path you're walking on is. And this discussion demonstrated just how invested you are in walking this path to the bloody end.
On the bright side, after the institution of the order you're seeking, people like you become primary target for being too intelligent. Can't have equal outcomes when some people are better at thinking that others. Therefore, such enemies of the people must be purged for utopia to come. In the end, you will be the one standing in the snow in the work camp, because you dared to state things actually on your mind at some point, and someone overheard you.
That's the way it always ended up for intelligencia in socialist systems. And does to this day.