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I'm less concerned about the 2020 election than I am with the state of my 401K. Not a fan of market timing ... but this is beyond the market into meltdown territory.
My concern, as well. Beyond frightening. Pension funds and individual investors have huge investments in multi-national corporations and have finally developed a belief in the global economy - and now this?????!!!! Ye gads. People will be leaving the stock market in droves, myself included. I'm actually looking into annuities, tonight, because of this. I'm probably too heavily invested in equities for my age. With maniac Trump at the helm, clearly a course correction is necessary.
For those who don't know how DEVASTATING a market crash can be, know that when stock values decline, so does capital for business to function and expand. Liquidity crisis ensues. Which brings on....
A recession/depression ensues with all manner of unpleasant and long-lasting consequences. Remember 2008 and the years thereafter. It can happen again.
This is VERY SERIOUS STUFF and will affect everyone - with the working stiff paying the biggest price - again. Any job-creating benefit from tax reform will be lost. No company will repatriate money and invest in business here in a climate so hostile to world trade. They will, once again, just sit on the cash.
As Americans, we can take a hit, but with our market being the best destination for the world’s products
We're slipping clearly into second-tier territory in the developed world, and there will still be people who think this arrogantly.
It's really like this. We place tariffs on imports, we get retaliatory tariffs placed on our exports.
In the best-case scenario we have a zero-sum game. Anything gained in one place will be lost in another. We might create some steel jobs, but at the expense of Harley-Davidson going bankrupt because they can't sell their bikes abroad for anything approaching a competitive price.
This is just one broad example, but in the aggregate will be played out like so. A thousand jobs gained here, a thousand jobs lost here, and we have government picking winners and losers in the market.
It's something that should make any self-respecting conservative's skin crawl, but we're too wrapped up in the Stockholm syndrome-y "well we could have had Hillary" justification.
Unfair Trade of Steel & Aluminum = Steel produced by processes and subsidies that would be illegal in the USA and where there are barriers to the same steel produced in the USA being sold there. (same for AL)
What 'processes and subsidies' are Canadian steel manufacturers using that would be illegal in the US?
And if that's the issue, why did we also place tariffs on all nations?
Also if illegal subsidies were the issue, why did Trump enact it under the guise of "national security" instead of the reasons you outlined?
It looks like Trump's authority stemmed from a Commerce investigation that concluded imported metal threatens national security by degrading the American industrial base - hence all such imports even from our allies are now deemed a threat although Trump appears to have the authority to exempt specific countries.
Never mind that the industrial heartland is more threatened by a wide range of imports from China (but Chinese steel only minimally) and having to deal with threatened retaliation from countries other than China on multiple non-metal products is not going to help the heartland but instead expose it to *more* downstream damage.
Never mind that inequities under NAFTA are currently under negotiation and how, one wonders, might this impact THAT process.
Never mind that Mattis (the Defense Secretary) not to mention Gary Cohn (the director of the National Economic Council) are opposed to where Cohn may resign. So was Rob Porter and it was his unexpected departure that may finally have let Trump lose. No wonder Kelly was so anxious to hold onto Porter, another voice of reason.
Whatever the reasoning, it's politics and not anything rooted in economic reality.
Bush put steel tariffs in place and pulled them back within two years after it was clear it helped some domestic steel producers, but was essentially a drag on the rest of the economy. It was, too, purely a calculated political move to enhance his standing in the Rust Belt when he ran for re-election. It was good for nobody but some politicians and some narrow business interests at the expense of everyone else. Protectionism is failure.
Whatever the reasoning, it's politics and not anything rooted in economic reality.
Bush put steel tariffs in place and pulled them back within two years after it was clear it helped some domestic steel producers, but was essentially a drag on the rest of the economy. It was, too, purely a calculated political move to enhance his standing in the Rust Belt when he ran for re-election. It was good for nobody but some politicians and some narrow business interests at the expense of everyone else. Protectionism is failure.
America was fined $2 billion by the WTO for Bush's mistake. Nobody wins a trade war. I know Trump is maybe a little intellectually challenged, but you would have thought that he would have listened to his advisors, most of whom told him that it would be a mistake to impose tariffs in this way.
Simply put, I don’t buy the technology argument. I think we lost most of those jobs due to greed.
As I’ve said in other threads, the Germans have managed to have a very strong steel manufacturing sector since the late 40’s. They’ve NEVER allowed dumping of cheap steel imports into Germany. They protect their jobs despite super high employee costs that make ours look like a joke. They’ve got 80 something million people crammed into a nation the size of Oregon, so they’re quite comparable to us, and yet, they manage to have a thriving manufacturing sector because German firms believe in a social responsibility to their countrymen’s well being. Americans only care about the bottom line.
This is a great piece on the German model. Here is a small excerpt:
The US steel industry really stands out: over the period 1972-2002, it witnessed impressive productivity growth – 28% compared with the median of 3% – and this while the sector contracted by 35%. The starkest difference was the drop in employment of 80% compared with a decline of 5% for the average sector.
In fact, we can directly attribute almost half of the aggregate productivity growth in steel to the entry of this new technology.
We find that minimill plants were significantly more productive than traditional steel plants, and that this productivity premium initiated a reallocation process whereby minimills displaced the older technology inimill plants were significantly more productive than traditional steel plants, and that this productivity premium initiated a reallocation process whereby minimills displaced the older technology known as vertically integrated production. The reallocation of output was responsible for about a third of the increase in the industry’s total factor productivity. In addition, the productivity of minimills steadily increased.
Do I need to explain comparative advantage, and how it applies, and why it means that 'there are no winners to a trade war' ?
Dude, stop acting like you’re Mort Zuckerman. Comparative Advantage is baby stuff. You’re not impressing me with that nonsense.
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