Posted on 03/05/2018 6:15:30 AM PST by reaganaut1
Ronald Reagan was the protectionist Donald Trump might want to be, yet didn’t provoke market panic or a trade war.
Reagan slapped import quotas on cars, motorcycles, forklifts, memory chips, color TVs, machine tools, textiles, steel, Canadian lumber and mushrooms. There was no market meltdown. Donald Trump hit foreign steel and aluminum, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 600 points on Thursday and Friday.
Reagan was no genius administrator ( Herbert Hoover was) so that’s not the difference. Though he promised Michigan auto workers help with Japanese imports and was grateful when they voted for him, he never kidded himself that America’s problems were somebody else’s fault rather than homegrown.
Trade was less important in those days, before China’s rise and the globalization of the world’s assembly line, but that wasn’t the reason either. The 1987 crash proved soon enough that investors were ready to panic if trade partners (Germany and the U.S.) got into a serious tiff.
The real difference is that Reagan’s protectionist devices were negotiated. They were acts of cartel creation, not unlike the cartels that have been known to spring up illegally when industries under strain seek to preserve capacity while avoiding price wars. Mr. Reagan used quotas, not tariffs. He kept the peace by inviting America’s trade partners to share in excess profits at the expense of American consumers. (Recall that one upshot was a nationwide bribery-and-kickback scandal when Honda Accords were in short supply.)
This was unattractive but it wasn’t a disaster, and Reagan’s protectionism quickly fell away when a global upswing began.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Apparently the WSJ doesn’t remember the trade wars over ICs and computers
But we had an industry then
The Dow Index move of 600 points is background noise.
The globalists are beginning to rachet up their assault. They have no loyalty except to the dollar.
So if we Tax Countries that use cheap labor, child labor or slave labor to produce products imported to the US in an effort to even the playing field, it is Bad. But if we Demand at the Point of a Gun 30%-50% of EVERY DOLLAR our Citizens earn through their personal labor, everyone is just fine and dandy??
And those same countries put their own import tax on our stuff.
The globaliists notion of free trade is other countries can tax our goods up the wazoo but we can’t do reciprocal taxation of their goods.
Got it.
Jenkins apparently doesn’t realize that Trump IS negotiating.
Rupert Murdoch’s blog HATES Trump ...
This panic is nothing but the sharks on Wall St and the speculators having a baby because they might not be able to rob people like they’ve been doing for years. Nothing but blood sucking scumbags.
This is no different than oil prices shooting up because the Iranians do some stupid sh*t in the Straights of Hormuz or threaten to take out a ship. All of the sudden some speculator poops his pants and the price of oil goes thru the roof. Only, the sissy doesn’t realize or care that one carrier group could turn Iran into a parking lot.
But, I guess under obama, knowing that he wasn’t going to do anything, that was the thinking. I think those rules have been changed.
Tariffs are bad economics-—period. It’s not debatable
For who? The globalist elite. For American workers and businesses, not so much.
Tariffs are bad economics-—period. It’s not debatable
***
Tell that to the other countries putting tariffs on all of the US goods instead.
Some people erroneously believe that the WSJ is an American newspaper.
I see the WSJ as a non-aligned nation lacking any actual territory, but seeking its own interests rather than those of the United States.
“Tariffs are bad economics-—period. It’s not debatable”
The very first substantive bill passed by the First Congress of the United States was The Tariff Act of 1789, an openly protectionist revenue bill authored by Alexander Hamilton and signed into law by George Washington.
The United States not only didn’t suffer economically, it became the major world economic power over the next century and a quarter while tariffs were the sole source of income for the gov’t.
The USA accounted for 1.8% of the world’s economy in 1820, 8.9% in 1870, and 19.1% in 1913.
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