Posted on 06/07/2019 7:53:56 PM PDT by Brown Deer
> “Consumers from the country imposing the tariffs suffer either by settling for inferior quality or artificially higher prices. In doing so, tariffs tend to lower the standard of living of the tariff-imposing country.”
You have it backwards. Standard of living is determined largely by a country’s productivity and competitiveness, among other things; and it, in turn, determines what kind of goods people can afford, not the other way around. Consumers who can afford to pay more will not put up with inferior goods, tariffs or not.
And prices are largely determined by SUPPLY and DEMAND, not costs.
> “The importing country, however, can go elsewhere to sell their goods.”
Where else can China sell their 500B dollars’ worth of goods if not in the US? If there were new markets in which they could sell, don’t you think they would have already done so while they are selling to us? I’d say even 20% of the 500B would be hard to replace.
By the way, please don’t confuse others by repeatedly referring to “importing country” when you meant exporting country.
> “the country imposing the tariffs will eventually eliminate them because the tariffs harm their own economy.”
One will be hard-pressed to find any specific data to support the claim that imposing tariffs harms their own economy, since there are always winners and losers. But the case can easily be made that tariffs are useful tools that can serve many purposes.
> “Tariffs are illusory….
the threat of tariffs was/is real, but the effect hurts the tariff-imposing country more than the importing country”
Is the Mexico response to the tariff threat illusory?
Are the detrimental effects on the Chinese economy so far illusory? (By the way, Samsung is just starting to lay off workers in their last factory in China, having closed the other factory last December.)
It is very curious that you keep asserting that tariffs are a hoax and illusory while ignoring the tremendous results real tariffs on China and threatened tariffs on Mexico have already achieved for us. I doubt Milton Friedman will do anyone any good if they are not even interested in honestly looking at the real world cases unfolding before their eyes.
> “But tariffs fail to solve the root causes of our economic woes which lie squarely at the feet of the federal government”
Questions:
What do you think is the root causes of our economic woes? And how do you think they can be solved??
“See? No tariffs needed now. Trump didn’t want to impose tariffs.”
Trump is a genius. He needed to play carrot/stick diplomacy but he didn’t have a carrot, so he made one using his stick.
Trump: “Do this, or I will take your carrot. “
Mexico: “No, don’t take our carrot, we’ll do this.”
This isn’t going to work and we will be back to tariffs in 3 months. Forest Trump will learn.
Those small minded myopic quarterly thinking pea brains like jim will be gone soon. Instead of a flag draped coffin for him and his ilk, we will paste their final 401K statement to it. It's what they are most proud of.
“Doesn’t our stupid law require that they are released here to await hearing IF they set foot in the country?”
Out Constitution entitles them to due process, if they set foot in the country. Under the Constitution, they are considered “US Persons” (not citizens), and that entitles everyone in our jurisdiction to some objective legal treatment.
They do not (constitutionally) have to be released prior to their adjudication though - other factors lead to their release.
Ratified treaties (The United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees) establish a right to request asylum, and lay out some requirements for handling such cases.
Those treaties don’t require that applicants be released before their cases are judged either.
No legislation requires release of asylum applicants pending their adjudication either.
The interpretation of some US judges, and the sheer number of cases backlogged, is why they are released. Hundreds of thousands of cases are backlogged, and the wait is typically years for cases to be heard and settled. Just too many to house and feed.
Also, a Judge decided that it is too harsh/unjustified to hold children in detention for so long, and the Government entered into a consent decree (under President Bill Clinton/AG Janet Reno), called the Flores Agreement, that children would not be held longer than 20 days, if they could be placed with someone in the USA.
Other court rulings restricted family separation, which resulted in adults being quickly released, if they had a “Get Out of Jail Free” child with them. There was also a rash of people falsely claiming to be under 19 to qualify for release.
Thanks.
Im still trying to understand what now allows us to return them to mesico.
Ialso thought the various treaties required asylum seekers to do that in the first country they came to. That being mesico.
That's what the Left thinks. They HATE Trump's ability to say what he says directly to the people without the Delusional Lying Leftist Media misrepresenting and lying about what he says.
God bless Trump for using every means at his disposal to say what he needs and wants to say and the American People needs to hear, avoiding the Delusional Lying Leftist Media. I love it. And I don't think I'm alone.
“What do you think is the root causes of our economic woes? “
Thank you for asking. The short answer is mainly the federal government. To show how, we’ll use the auto industry as an example.
The REAL reasons foreign autos out-compete American autos began in the 60’s and 70’s when the fat-cat manufacturers in Detroit ignored warnings that foreign auto makers were innovating their engineering and manufacturing techniques. Detroit got lazy and did not want to be bothered until, as the story goes, one day an executive on a trip to the west coast in the 70’s was stunned to see so many Japanese cars on the road.
So the first reason for inferior American auto products was LACK OF COMPETITION.
When Detroit finally saw they had real foreign competition, it ran into another big problem – unconstitutionally federally protected unions. “UAW contracts bound and gagged the Big Three with costs and obligations that fatally restricted their ability to innovate and compete” https://cei.org/2013/07/29/empire-of-rust-how-the-uaw-killed-detroit.
So UNCONSTITUTIONALLY FEDERALLY PROTECTED UNIONS were the next reason for inferior American products that could not compete.
So what was the reaction? Of course, more government. In business, if you fail, you correct or die. In government, if you fail, you just call for more money and more government and you end up with an even greater degree of failure.
So what has government done? Imposed suffocating HIGH TAXES, unconstitutional dead-end REGULATIONS, unconstitutional business-and-job-killing FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE, and engaged in basically unconstitutional SUBSIDES (BRIBES) FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS. They also stupidly DESTABILIZE & DEVALUE THE DOLLAR. Result? A greater degree of failure.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, not the EU, China, or the Man in the Moon, is the MAIN reason for our failure to compete in the marketplace. Federally protected unions, high taxes, regulations, minimum wage, subsidies, and a weak dollar all have converged to “bind and gag” American business and drive industry from our shores. Kill these mostly unconstitutional and boneheaded acts and policies and you’ve gone a long way to fixing the problem. Trump has directly addressed some of these problems. ALL need to be abolished.
Anybody who thinks those who love freedom are traitors and anyone who loves the government economic interference of tariffs among other things, is a socialist. On FR you just a socialist in disguise.
Go way central_va, an increasingly Leftst stronghold.
Trump won all by himself. Congress didn’t lift a finger to help. Except the middle finger.
My biggest surprise was Ted Cruz’s reaction. I expected the RINO’s and even Rand Paul for objecting, but tariffs are an integral part of negotiations using the carrot/stick approach. This is a very common tactic in big commercial deal negotiation strategies, but with all the political rhetoric it can be confusing to politicos.
Even so, I would have imagined that Ted would have gotten on the horn with Trump to clarify a position that anyone who read “The Art of the Deal” would have completely understood.
No you big jerk, income taxes interfere in everyone's personal financial life. Tariffs are not progressive, consumption based tax and all true conservatives and patriots love them including George Washington.. You are globalist shill and scum of the earth like all of the US Senate and half of all Republicans in general..
If you trust Mexico then I guess it is a win.
Buzz off Dork.
Oooooo that hurt so much.
Try this: you’re a useful idiot of the Left and are total and compete waste of time.
You’re also on my No Fly Zone, so buzz off and stay off.
Of course I don’t trust Mexico, but I trust Trump. He can have those tariffs back on in a week :)
My problem is this... They should’ve always been applying for asylum in the first country they cross into other than their own (the one they are claiming they need asylum from). Let Mexico give them asylum.
.so some of these places have nobody over the age of 8 or under the age of 70 living in them anymore.”
In other words nobody lives there anymore.
Thank you for elaborating all the valid points showing how the government is behind the factors driving businesses and industries from our shores.
And I totally agree with your assessment: “Kill these mostly unconstitutional and boneheaded acts and policies and you’ve gone a long way to fixing the problem.”
However, we both know these policies will never go away unless we can get rid of all the career politicians and until the prevailing leftward trend is reversed. Though the President has been working hard to undo some of them, they will be long-term fixes and cannot address the urgent challenges we face, namely, the China threat and the border crisis.
Given such a reality, in order to support your vehement opposition to tariffs, in addition to academic theories, you will need to show us:
- How the tariffs have hurt us so far;
- How the tariffs have NOT hurt China so far; if you acknowledge they have a downturn, you’ll have to explain what causes it if not tariffs;
- A better alternative to tariffs if you, too, believe we should stop financing a hostile regime to the tune of hundreds of billions annually;
- Likewise, a better alternative to tariffs on Mexico to immediately address the border crisis (knowing that closing the border will not stop the flow of illegals);
By imposing tariffs on China, we are not blaming them, we are simply correcting the mistakes that were made. I think the President had also made this point.
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