Trump Presidency | Summarized

[chasfh]

11 hours ago, ewsieg said:

And let me fully explain my thoughts because in some ways, I understand Trumps complaint.  Other countries have take advantage of us and in turn, our corporate overlords have ensured the gov't doesn't push back to much so they can get their advantage too. 

Would you please explain how other countries have been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump? 

[Tiger337]

27 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Would you please explain how other countries have been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump? 

The United States is the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, so I have the same question.  I am certainly not going to take the word of a lying sack of **** like Trump.  

[chasfh]

41 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

The United States is the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, so I have the same question.  I am certainly not going to take the word of a lying sack of **** like Trump.  

I just sometimes feel like phrases like that are used merely as a punchline, that nobody gives it any real thought, that people just accept the statement on an as is basis because they’ve heard it over and over. I would honestly like someone to explain to me exactly how the US has been taken advantage of by smaller, less wealthy countries in terms of trade. I’m listening. 

[Netnerd]

Just imagine how it sounds to the rest of the world's nations when Donald complains that WE are the victim of others' exploitation or strong-arming.

[ewsieg]

8 hours ago, chasfh said:

Would you please explain how other countries have been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump? 

The entire point of trade is to take advantage of what you have to offer.  So China has been able to offer cheap labor.  In return we have cheaper access to products that had originally been manufactured here.  So we lose manufacturing jobs, but the overall benefit is supposedly evened out by the cheaper cost of living.  The UAW says we can still keep some of those jobs here, but corporations like Target, Walmart, Meijer, etc enjoys having that cheap product to sell and they tend to win out.  Plus since it's made cheaply, it tends to break more, thus you have to buy it more often.  In the end, are you getting the benefit you were promised?

At that is just an example of what trade mismatch can bring.  

Now if you want to look at advantage, look at what Trump is doing with the gov't.  He's cutting so many workers in areas that the service they provide can't be provided anymore.  Yet he can say he isn't cutting the service, he can point to paperwork showing it's fully funded.  In the end though, he is putting up a barrier to getting that service executed.  Many countries have done this to avoid a trade war, they simply build obstacles that they can say are outside of trade itself, and use those obstacles against only those they want to keep out.  

[chasfh]

15 hours ago, ewsieg said:

The entire point of trade is to take advantage of what you have to offer.  So China has been able to offer cheap labor.  In return we have cheaper access to products that had originally been manufactured here.  So we lose manufacturing jobs, but the overall benefit is supposedly evened out by the cheaper cost of living.  The UAW says we can still keep some of those jobs here, but corporations like Target, Walmart, Meijer, etc enjoys having that cheap product to sell and they tend to win out.  Plus since it's made cheaply, it tends to break more, thus you have to buy it more often.  In the end, are you getting the benefit you were promised?

At that is just an example of what trade mismatch can bring.  

Now if you want to look at advantage, look at what Trump is doing with the gov't.  He's cutting so many workers in areas that the service they provide can't be provided anymore.  Yet he can say he isn't cutting the service, he can point to paperwork showing it's fully funded.  In the end though, he is putting up a barrier to getting that service executed.  Many countries have done this to avoid a trade war, they simply build obstacles that they can say are outside of trade itself, and use those obstacles against only those they want to keep out.  

I don’t mean theoretically. I mean in actuality. How have other countries been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump, in actuality?

[Edman85]

If anything, by exploiting their cheap labor and lax labor laws, we (or at least our corporations) have been the ones who have been exploiting those countries.

[gehringer_2]

21 hours ago, ewsieg said:

The entire point of trade is to take advantage of what you have to offer.  S

 

the theory of 'competitive advantage' has largely been shown to be a fallacy however. It may be true of a few things where global resource distribution make a difference, and it has some truth for labor intensive industries, but even with labor, with modern tech application of capital can largely negate labor cost differentials. Most nations with active economic policy create (or don't create) favorable environments for the industries they want to drive and these policy actions by governments over time do far more to create (or not) whatever advantage is seen in reality as compared to any 'naturally' exiting conditions. Plus, it is simply true that for a large segment of the the most valuable products  - particularly high tech manufacturing, the existing order of production around the world is virtually 100% created/synthetic. There is no place in the world where such work is advantaged by nature.

OTOH, the relative environmental irresponsibility allowed in in the developing world is an issue. I think there is absolutely a place for a trade regime that demands that environmental or safety externalities avoided oversees be charged back to the price of goods, but I've yet to see an implementation of it.

Edited April 6 by gehringer_2

[ewsieg]

7 hours ago, chasfh said:

I don’t mean theoretically. I mean in actuality. How have other countries been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump, in actuality?

I almost gave a few anecdotes, but I'm cognizant that even with those, there are arguments against it being a trade issue.  For instance currency manipulation, is it a trade issue?  IMO, yes, but it's not only done for trade purposes.  Even Obama focused on trade and did so because he felt there were issues which put the US at a disadvantage.  (TPP gained traction under Obama).

In the end, it was your party that for most of my adult life was more amenable to tariffs.  If you want to argue your party is stupid, I'll happily concede and give you the win for this argument.   🙂

In the end, I'm not defending Trump.  Rather you want to believe that people felt the US was on the wrong side of trade agreements in the past or not, my issue and complaint is with how he's handling it.

[Edman85]

One more day of insanity is fine by me, as the funds I sold on Friday don't get reinvested into new funds until the market closes tomorrow. I'd rather not buy after the recovery. Just need dip**** to not turn tail on the tariffs for another day or so.

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, ewsieg said:

I almost gave a few anecdotes, but I'm cognizant that even with those, there are arguments against it being a trade issue.  For instance currency manipulation, is it a trade issue?  IMO, yes, but it's not only done for trade purposes.  Even Obama focused on trade and did so because he felt there were issues which put the US at a disadvantage.  (TPP gained traction under Obama).

In the end, it was your party that for most of my adult life was more amenable to tariffs.  If you want to argue your party is stupid, I'll happily concede and give you the win for this argument.   🙂

In the end, I'm not defending Trump.  Rather you want to believe that people felt the US was on the wrong side of trade agreements in the past or not, my issue and complaint is with how he's handling it.

So, nothing. I see. I was genuinely interested to see whether you would come up with any examples because I myself didn’t know of any. But it looks as though there aren’t any after all. At least not until someone can come up with some upon request.

You also seem to have an awful lot to say about what I am (apparently some party hack) and what I want to believe. And not what I declaratively believe, but what I want to believe, which is some cute mind-reading ****. Not to put too fine a point on it, the other guy is what people who run out of things to say about the actual issues talk about.

[ewsieg]

Note the smiley face at the end was to note a tongue in cheek comment.

As for examples, I just didn't want to go down a rabbit hole of giving an example which could be looked at several different ways and getting into an argument of which way is the best way to look at it.  Overall I'm just talking about trade barriers that aren't tariffs themselves and it's something the US even does, because everyone does it.  With Trump, I'm not even saying he's right that the US is routinely on the bad end of those barriers, but simply that there has been an argument, at times by both sides of our political parties, stating we are on the wrong end. I can guarantee other countries can give arguments stating they are actually on the wrong end and I'm conceding that point.

Broad examples are currency manipulation (china did this a lot for a long time, unless i'm wrong, I don't think that's considered as big of an issue now.  Trumps tariff action may end up making this an issue again as others may move away from the dollar as the standard), quotas, administrative barriers (think required permits/licenses that simply don't get processed), bribery (some Jersey folks might just call that the cost of doing business), even censorship can be a barrier.  

 

 

[chasfh]

My bottom line is, until someone gives me examples of how other countries are taking advantage of the US that should lead to worldwide tariffs in response, I won’t believe it’s actually happening.

[ewsieg]

6 hours ago, chasfh said:

My bottom line is, until someone gives me examples of how other countries are taking advantage of the US that should lead to worldwide tariffs in response, I won’t believe it’s actually happening.

Ok, so I can't provide examples which justifies how Trump is handling this, thus why his tariffs "won" worst of the week.