Quote:
Originally Posted by biggunsmallbrains
Trump actually let out that little nugget of “wisdom” today. I’ve never heard of anyone advocating for trade wars before. Is that some sort of real voodoo economics thing? Generally trade is a win win proposition, especially for such an ardently capitalist country as America. Trump seems to think the opposite and that we can easily win one to boot.
The concept of a win-win deal to Trump seems completely lost on him. As if you can only ever have one winner in something. For a guy that can’t even get his own wife to sleep with him, I doubt he’ll be winning a lot of trade wars.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1GE1PM |
I am not a Trump guy, at least I did not vote for him. His personal behavior makes me uncomfortable and I am periodically embarrassed by it. However, on the policy front, his efforts and accomplishments so far have been better than any president I have seen in my lifetime - including Reagan. Also, as much as his enemies like to call him "dumb," he has been outsmarting them - in mass and on worldwide television - a lot more than they have been outsmarting him. So I guess I am conflicted. However, in terms of the substance of his agenda - forgetting his personality for the time being - he appears to be the right person at the right time for our country.
This move by Trump is very interesting and I appreciate you starting a thread on it in this way. I have read almost nothing on this yet, so my comments are my just sense of what is going on here.
Trump ran on "Fair trade," which I hope we can all agree is a good idea. All my life I agreed with the Republican "Free Trade" mantra, because the alternative appeared to be "Isolationism," which is in fact "dumb". Trump's "Fair trade" is the third way.
Actually, to be fair, what Trump describes as "Fair trade" is what people like me just assumed that the conservative economic geniuses meant when they talked about "Free trade". That is, we thought that multi-lateral trade agreements were a way to evenhandedly lower the trade burden around the world to make everyone's markets more accessible in a way that did not take advantage of anyone. Also, we thought that our national leaders would be minding the store, making sure we were getting the best trade arrangements possible, and that they would be constantly watching and taking steps to make sure would not be taken advantage of.
In fact, the Chinese and other countries have been abusing these globalist arrangements to take advantage of our nation and our markets. It is time for an adjustment to this pattern of behavior and it is my sense that this move is the beginning of those adjustments.
The tarriffs imposed by Trump are intended to disrupt the globalist status quo, to grab the focused attention of the countries engaging in this unfair behavior, and force them to establish the precedent that they will bilaterally engage with us to correct their behavior in a way that is economically beneficial for both them and us.
I do not believe that Trump is trying to "win" a trade war in the sense that he thinks he can unilaterally impose sanctions or tarriffs and not have other countries respond in kind. He is trying to "win" a revision in our trade relationships so that they are conducted in a spirit of fairness, without one side or the other drastically abusing their domestic power to unfairly disadvantage the other, which has been happening.
If that is in fact what Trump is doing, that seems like a very "fair" and reasonable expectation. My question is, why haven't our national leaders - our presidents of both parties - been doing this all along? Why if these establishment types are supposed to be so good at what they do, do we have to have to elect a disruptor like Trump to come in and clean up these people mess in order to get this stuff done?
It does need to be done. Yes, it disrupts the globalist status quo, which upsets the establishment globalist elite, which is in fact not as bad a thing as they are trying to make it out to be. Also, if there is a better way to get these objectives accomplished, I am not seeing it.
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