Posted on 01/28/2016 5:12:03 PM PST by Kaslin
Donald Trump has been savaged by economists and media aligned with establishment candidates for tough positions on trade—including a 45 percent tariff on imports to force China to the negotiating table.
Actually, he's got it right.
Establishment Democrats and Republicans embrace free trade because it puts free markets first with benefits any decently trained economist should extoll. Unfortunately, trade with China and many nations is hardly market-driven.
It hurts U.S. growth and victimizes America's families.
Obama's six-year expansion has averaged 2.2 percent annual economic growth and added 13.6 million jobs. Coming off a similar bout with double-digit unemployment, Reagan delivered 4.6 percent growth and in a smaller economy, added 18.1 million jobs.
Now conditions in China threaten to derail the U.S. recovery. Beijing’s statisticians report China’s growth slowed to 6.9 percent in 2015, down from double digits a few years ago. Western estimates are as low as 4 percent, and much of that is decadent.
Building apartments and office complexes that attract no tenants, and entire ghost cities, count in China's GDP tally but add little to productivity. Wasteful outlays have boosted debt to 260 percent of GDP.
Nervous about a looming credit crisis, Chinese investors are heading for the doors—selling yuan for dollars to invest in overseas real estate and securities. This panics global stock markets and pushes down the yuan against the dollar—making Chinese goods artificially more price competitive against American-made products than underlying costs warrant.
For all the talk of a faltering dragon, U.S. imports from China were up, exports down and the bilateral trade deficit increased nearly $25 billion in 2015—killing 200,000 American jobs.
Crippling debt is epidemic among emerging economies, as many borrowed in a mad race to expand manufacturing. Like Japan and the European Union, they now seek to cope with excess capacity and crushing interest payments by cheapening their currencies to juice exports and ship unemployment to America.
Those strategies have pushed U.S. manufacturing into recession—employment in export-focused durable goods is down 35,000 since June.
Trade should work better for America. We have a highly productive workforce and generate most of the world's cutting edge innovations, but commerce doesn't happen in a vacuum. Governments put up tariffs, impose tough regulations on foreign goods and investment, and offer businesses subsidies to export more.
That's why American automobile and electronics manufacturers locate in China, and the same goes in other Asian venues.
How tough conditions are for U.S.-based industry is strongly determined by international trade agreements—those administered by the World Trade Organization and deals struck with individual countries.
The Obama Administration heralded the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement as creating "countless new opportunities for U.S. exporters to sell more Made-in-America goods, services and agricultural products to Korean customers - and to support more good jobs here at home." Since implemented in 2012, imports from Korea have risen much more than exports, and the bilateral trade deficit is up about $16 billion—destroying 130,000 good-paying American jobs.
Now the Obama Administration is making similarly fanciful claims to win congressional approval for a Trans-Pacific Partnership . It would establish free trade with 11 other nations, including Japan, without cleaning up subsidies and currency manipulation.
Overall, the U.S. trade deficit exceeds $500 billion a year and kills about 4 million jobs. Lost manufacturing takes a big bite out of R&D spending and that goes a long way toward explaining why growth is so disappointing and median family incomes are down $4000 since 2000.
Trump's proposals for fixing trade—starting with China—address the salient issues of currency, trade barriers and subsidies. Those echo Mitt Romney's 2012 platform—and candidate Obama in 2008—but threaten entrenched interests in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Trump is hardly reckless on trade—just a long needed agent for change.
Everybody needs to put on their long pants and understand that tariffs are taxes in American consumers and not good policy for limited government types.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Put your big girl pants on and stand up.
Stand up Chuck?
Yea, protective tariffs worked so well just before the Great Depression.
The idea that tariffs are always bad is a truly tragic error that “everyone” believes. Tariffs did not cause the Great Depression, and today is NOT 1930 in any event.
(GD was more likely caused by global financial power attempting to force the exchange rates back to pre-WWI levels through radical deflation. This was a British and American banking maneuver.)
In 2016 tariffs to help jump-start American manufacturing are as necessary as building the WALL. Both of these areas MUST be reversed to SAVE AMERICA.
I realize not everyone will agree, but to me the preeminent issue of our day is nationalism, the new conservatism.
bkmk
Raising taxes is almost never necessary.
Money from American consumers going into the hands of the federal government. That’s the bottom line. No thanks, Donald.
Many people here at FR can not wrap their heads around the fact that tariffs are direct transfers from consumers to the federal treasury. I don’t get it.
i also heard him i think last night or the night before give an accurate accounting of why college tuition is thru the roof.
Jeff Sessions To Debate Moderators: You Must Ask Candidates About Whether They Support Obamatrade
Breitbart ^ | 1/28/2016 | MATTHEW BOYLE
Posted on 1/28/2016, 5:36:22 PM by BlackFemaleArmyCaptain
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, is calling on Fox News debate moderators Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace to ask the GOP presidential candidates where they stand on Obamatrade.
“It absolutely is a critical issue for the future of America,” Sessions told Breitbart News in an exclusive phone interview late last week.
This is no little matter that needs to be decided in some secret room and secret negotiations. I don’t see how anybody that conducts a debate can fail to ask about this critical issue. It affects the long-term financial well-being of this country. People need to know how every one of these candidates, Republican and Democrat, feel about the trade agreements—and particularly the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic agreement and the Trade in Services Agreement. Are you for them or not? Then they [voters] can decide how to cast their vote. Isn’t that what debates are supposed to be about? To give the candidates a chance to explain how they feel and how they are going to conduct themselves if elected? I think it’s a huge matter.
Sessions noted the reason why these trade agreements should be a major focus of this final debate before the Iowa caucuses is because of the impact this issue will have on American workers and American sovereignty moving forward.
“This trade agreement would provide—this Trans Pacific agreement commission for example would provide—the Sultan of Brunei with the same vote as the President of the United States,” Sessions said.
The President could go and agree to the various things he might want to see happen like President Obama would agree to expanded immigration and Congress would be powerless to stop it.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3389997/posts
Exports were 4% of the GDP in 1930. A drop in the bucket.
Tariff discussions really bring out the income tax loving Free Traitors™.
The entire Chinese manufacturing "miracle" was a contrived economic plan executed via massive government collusion and interference. China going from a basket case resembling a huge North Korea to what appears to be a modern country almost overnight happened via US government intervention in collusion with the Chinese Communist government in order to rig the international manufacturing markets. The whole thing is fake and phony from the fake Chinese stock market, ghost cities, a currency that is pegged to the dollar, to the technology WE GAVE THEM.
The reason for this collusion was to forward the concept of a "New World Order" but in reality it was done to make China a real player on our side of the Cold War and to make the USSR face a real threat from an industrialized China. Well as it turned out the USSR collapsed under its own weight and what was a seemingly endless cold war did in fact end and all of the China industrial transfer policy became unnecessary but we were stuck with it and it sucks.
Part of the Trump "Nationalist" appeal is that the current trade situation we find ourselves in is very humiliating to the patriot. Seeing jobs and wealth bleed off to a Communist country and watching the GOPer's, that call themselves Conservative who are in reality just Establishment gloBULList Corporate hacks and paid off Free Traders, do absolutely nothing is nothing short of depressing. GOP sees nothing wrong with the status quo, that is not Conservative and its a big problem.
Tariffs are not mandatory, they are voluntary. Income taxes are mandatory, with failure to pay up under penalty of imprisonment. I prefer the former LIKE EVERY OTHER FOUNDING FATHER DID.
I would much rather be hired in a manufacturing company and earn a middle class salary, and pay 30-40% more for American made goods, than be collecting food stamps & government checks and shop for cheap Chinese stuff at Walmart.
They wouldn't be 30 - 40% more. The only difference is labor and labor is a very small part of manufacturing production costs. Maybe 5% more for domestic AT MOST. Better quality too. Chinese crap is junk.
They know, they just don’t care.
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