Posted on 03/02/2018 7:28:44 AM PST by SeekAndFind
This is a screw job on your ally and neighbor, Canada. Canada is the largest steel exporter to the US. Also the largest importer of steel from the US (with a $2B surplus in favor of the US). I guess we’ll have to slap a 25% tariff on US steel entering Canada.
Does it improve US security to piss off your allies? Does it decrease US security if some of the materials you depend on come from allies like Canada? Like we’d ever refuse the US access to these supplies in a time of war?
Levin and I agree on this lurching action. It is too much, too fast and terribly inflationary. It smacks of Smoot-Hawley in too many ways. Nobody, especially Trump, cares what I think but this is a wrong headed move that will shock the economy in the short term and do very little good in the long term. It will make us even less competitive in the world. It is in the same family as isolationism.
If a tariff was not good to support the domestic oil industry when it was down on its knees why is it good for steel and aluminum. The oil industry found its own way to compete and did. It took a long time but they did it and now look where we are.
This steel and aluminum tariff is a bad idea and will come to no good.
When the Federal Reserve taxes all Americans by manipulating interest rates, Levin doesn’t care.
Redistribution from industries that use steel (auto, trucks plumbing, shipbuilding aviation, rail ) to companies that produce steel.
Picking winners and losers
Is he going to put Tariffs on all those steel products too ?
Yes. Trump needs weapons he can use for trade negotiations.
It is the OPPOSITE of what you wrote. I hear him almost everyday on my drive home.
Then he's a hypocrite - how is it harmful to Americans to restrict foreign steel but not to restrict foreign labor? All his arguments for the former apply to the latter.
I benefit greatly buying cheap industrial parts off EBay. However, I can fully see that this guts American industry.
It’s unpatriotic to protect US workers from unfair overseas competition?
When I think that Hillary came close to being president but Trump stopped her, I don’t care what Trump does. He’ll always have my support.
Mark, Trump got no money from the steel industry. Hillary might have, though. So there’s no “crony capitalism,” here.
Second, taxes raised on imports can be used to reduce income taxes. In our current situation, companies got a huge tax break. Some of those monies are being made up on imports. Why do you think it is better to tax reportable income over foreign goods from countries who tax our goods going there?
Why do you hate America, Mark?
Steel, like oil, is vital for our nation’s survival. I don’t like the fact we’ve been too dependent on other countries for a vital natural resource like oil or a made product like when we have the capability to produce both here. I don’t like the idea of tarrifs, but damn it we got to stick up for our own industries now!
I take no position on whether this will work out or not. I can’t tell, so I’ll just wait and see.
“..Trumps tax cuts ad regulation reform will more than offset pressure to raise prices on consumers.”
Possibly, but state and local governments are looking at the extra money people may have and are thinking of raising their own taxes. This means we will just end up treading water.
If we're at war with North Korea some day - China's not going to sell us steel... either will Russia or a slew of other places...
Even if the world just knows we can't produce our own war equipment that knowledge puts us at risk.
Trump's in this for the long run - and so are all of us whether we acknowledge it or not.
Foreign countries promise economic retaliation. What does this mean? It means America will overcome economic retaliation by producing Goods and services from within. Like it used to be. I don’t see a downside.
I love how this tariff is smoking out the globalist sellouts. Our worst cultural flaw is that everything here is for sale. Including our souls.
I like Mark Levin, but he’s not a great economist.
Trump is a Boss. Bosses make hard, often unpopular decisions. Bosses have the b’s to pull it off and wait for their decisions to be justified.
Meanwhile, the Worker Bees (who ain’t got the b’s) kvetch and drone.
So it’s a net “wash” between Canada and the US, in your own words.
In essense, you just told the world, “No Harm, No Foul.”
I’m with you.
Do we want to be a country of global trade lawyers and international bankers or a country of scientists, engineers, and manufacturing experts and supporting trades?
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