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A lot of the anti-tariff stuff is Chamber of Commerce financed articles strategically placed in various outlets to try and persuade Americans tariffs are bad,bad,bad. All the "experts" with all their "studies".....just like all the credentialed experts told us all this bullshit about Trump. I just don't believe it anymore.
Multi-nationals don't want to lose access to cheaper labor and established manufacuturing plants in China. China and Europe have used tariffs for decades. They never had issues because it worked to their advantage. Now its an issue in the US because the US multinationals (who control large sections of the US media) don't like it. Trump is actually trying to help the working class (sorry now they are called the "less educated")
It even going so far as the Chinese or Chinese funded think tanks writing editorials in heartland newspapers telling us how wrong-headed Trump's economic plan is. I don't know who will win this trade war and of course there will be some losers in the US (jegga's Ford example) but it is either fight China or surrender manufacturing a willingly take it up the ass like Obama and his predecessors did. For now, I quite like a non-democratic no free speech state like China quietly and internally squealing like a stuck pig.
One more thing - Democrats have one sign. It's says "Everyone Is A Ra_ist." This way they can easily switch between a "c" and a "p" depending who they want to slander.
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Kirwan said:
Either way, Trump was supposed to be a disaster and he clearly hasn’t been.
Predictions of Trump being a disaster as President misunderstood the Office of President, rather than Trump.
Outside of immediate and catastrophic military action or being constitutionally removed from the position it's hard to see how a President could judged a disaster (in the moment) after less than two years.
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Frank said:
A lot of the anti-tariff stuff is Chamber of Commerce financed articles strategically placed in various outlets to try and persuade Americans tariffs are bad,bad,bad. All the "experts" with all their "studies".....just like all the credentialed experts told us all this bullshit about Trump. I just don't believe it anymore.
The problem with this level of ignorance is it's obvious no amount of information will change your mind.
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Frank said:
They almost certainly won't take the Senate, the toss-up seats are almost all in states Trump won. The Republicans should gain a few.
Eerily similar comments were made prior to the Presidential Election when the same polling aggregators projected a 70%+ chance of winning and potentially flipping some red states for the first time in a long time.
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We might soon find out even more about whether these "experts" are right with all their "studies" about tariffs. Canada may not be as well placed in the short term as China to ride anything out though...
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12132808
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Typical article casting Trump as the bad and Trudeau as reasonable. Totally omitting detailed analysis of what Canada does with dairy quotas.
You'd think a U.S paper would care about America interests. Yeah, nah.
(actually pretty typical of NZ Herald sourcing stories from the Trump hating Washington Post)Tariffs are being used as a stick to make these countries behave. Open up their barriers.
Canada will bend the knee or lose its auto industry.
They have virtually no leverage.
My theory on Trudeau is he is willing to let his workers suffer so he can be seen as the anti-Trump to appease his far left base.
Idiot. -
jegga said:
Hard to sympathise with the Canadians
A Trudeau is such a douche
B they are very protectionist about things like their dairy industry
C Trudeau is a doucheI'd have thought the Canadians were the easy target to pick off before taking on China!
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jegga said:
Hard to sympathise with the Canadians
A Trudeau is such a douche
B they are very protectionist about things like their dairy industry
C Trudeau is a doucheLiving in Canada - decidedly anti-Trudeau. A couple of things.
Supply Management which is tied in with this is a joke and should be dismantled as it was in Australia in the 90's. This has been the cause of a very recent schism in conservative ranks with the second highest polling candidate for Conservative leader at the last ballot leaving the party.
The health/quality of milk argument purported by many Canadians is BS. Yes Canadian standards are higher but, most* US dairy is well within Canadian standards (*only shitty farms in the poorer areas of the mid-south that are unlikely to export fall short).
That said, the subsidies that US farmers receive - particularly when it comes to grain - have no equivalent in Canada. To my mind there is no difference with government interference at the tariff level or with exorbitant government subsidies.
I do not see Canada folding on this, both major parties support the hardline approach on dairy specifically, the path to abolish these tariffs is long and likely to be halted by the midterms (and even if NAFTA is scrapped it reverts to the previous bilateral agreement of which the tariffs were a part, that too would need to be overturned).
From a personal perspective I'm just a Kiwi raised fella who wouldn't mind some grass-fed dairy for a change (obviously the Canadian climate does not allow for it) - but I can understand why Canada is taking such a hardline approach to this and rightly so.
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antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Kirwan said:
Either way, Trump was supposed to be a disaster and he clearly hasn’t been.
I'd ignore the economic punditry coming from MSNBC etc. The fact of the matter is free trade benefits all who participate. Applying tariffs and rampant protectionism will only cause harm in the long run as it punishes the productive areas of an economy to prop up the unproductive. I'm sure Americans don't actually want to find everything now costs 30% more at Walmart for example.
The problem is that it was never free trade. This was a complete illusion. In any case I don't see China wanting to have a protracted trade war. They're fucked too if Americans stop buying their shit
It was freer trade than now which is really the point. You'll be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks increasing tariffs is good for an economy.
Furthermore, China owns about a fifth of US debt owned by foreigners. Coincidentally the USA is just under a fifth of China's trade. To counteract a tariff of 10%, China as a net lender can simply purchase more treasury bonds, keeping the yuan low. This basically offsets the tariff.
If America doesn't sell debt to China, their consumer goods increase in price. If China sold some of this debt, US interest rates would have upward pressure, hurting the economy. It's a dangerous game to be playing.
Then you will concede it isn't fair trade i the slightest?
I'm talking about free trade.
Sorry, I meant free trade. How was what existed free trade?
Freer than now, i.e. less tariffs.
Ignorance like this is hard to cure. Typical small picture syndrome.
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antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Kirwan said:
Either way, Trump was supposed to be a disaster and he clearly hasn’t been.
I'd ignore the economic punditry coming from MSNBC etc. The fact of the matter is free trade benefits all who participate. Applying tariffs and rampant protectionism will only cause harm in the long run as it punishes the productive areas of an economy to prop up the unproductive. I'm sure Americans don't actually want to find everything now costs 30% more at Walmart for example.
The problem is that it was never free trade. This was a complete illusion. In any case I don't see China wanting to have a protracted trade war. They're fucked too if Americans stop buying their shit
It was freer trade than now which is really the point. You'll be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks increasing tariffs is good for an economy.
Furthermore, China owns about a fifth of US debt owned by foreigners. Coincidentally the USA is just under a fifth of China's trade. To counteract a tariff of 10%, China as a net lender can simply purchase more treasury bonds, keeping the yuan low. This basically offsets the tariff.
If America doesn't sell debt to China, their consumer goods increase in price. If China sold some of this debt, US interest rates would have upward pressure, hurting the economy. It's a dangerous game to be playing.
Then you will concede it isn't fair trade i the slightest?
I'm talking about free trade.
Sorry, I meant free trade. How was what existed free trade?
Freer than now, i.e. less tariffs.
Seems that Trump is using tariffs to extract a better deal, i. e. something that more closely resembles free trade. Or is every administration obligated to always accept the status quo no matter what?
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Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
antipodean said:
Rancid Schnitzel said:
Then you will concede it isn't fair trade i the slightest?
I'm talking about free trade.
Sorry, I meant free trade. How was what existed free trade?
Freer than now, i.e. less tariffs.
Seems that Trump is using tariffs to extract a better deal, i. e. something that more closely resembles free trade. Or is every administration obligated to always accept the status quo no matter what?
A better deal for whom? Let's look at some examples:
Frank said:
Tariffs are being used as a stick to make these countries behave. Open up their barriers.
Canada will bend the knee or lose its auto industry.The funny part is NAFTA reduced barriers for the auto-industry and the introduction of steel tariffs is causing pain for American companies and consumers. '“From Ford’s perspective the metals tariffs took about $1 billion in profit from us,” CEO James Hackett said at a Bloomberg conference in New York, “The irony of which is we source most of that in the U.S. today anyway. If it goes on any longer, it will do more damage.”
Higher U.S. steel prices have resulted in “hundreds of millions of dollars” in additional annual costs, Rick Schostek, executive vice president of Honda North America, told the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, even as more than 90 percent of steel in its vehicles assembled in the United States is made domestically.'
As a result of NAFTA the automobile industry is fully integrated across the three countries. Undoing all this would take longer than simply waiting to see what the next administration would do.
rotated said:
That said, the subsidies that US farmers receive - particularly when it comes to grain - have no equivalent in Canada. To my mind there is no difference with government interference at the tariff level or with exorbitant government subsidies.
America's farm subsidies are massive:
'The federal government spends more than $20 billion a year on subsidies for farm businesses. About 39 percent of the nation's 2.1 million farms receive subsidies, with the lion's share of the handouts going to the largest producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.'
The evidence is clear that they redistribute wealth, create a moral hazard and even the US Grain Council doesn't want tariffs imposed:
“In the longer term, US agriculture must have a stable and coherent trade policy to thrive. The world is watching what our country does next – and markets have long memories.
“Agriculture is a positive contributor to the balance of trade, and the international marketplace offers the best available opportunity for growth in the US agriculture sector and the US economy as a whole.
“We will also continue to be in close contact with leaders at the US Department of Agriculture, the Office of the US Trade Representative and the White House who know how critical open markets are to our industry and have been attentive to our concerns.”
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US multi-nationals with their armies of lobbyists wrote NAFTA. The structured it so they could mostly make the goods in China, then ship to Mexico or Canada for final assembly - for it then to be imported into the US tariff-free. This is the main reason why Canada and Mexico have grown a lot. They have been used as conduits for Chinese goods.
The key point is the rules of origin. i.e., how much of the good is made off-shore (China vs how much in Canada or Mexico)
Trump's trade team want a higher percentage made in the NAFTA countries.
Canada doesn't want to increase it (along with reducing their dairy quotas).Canada is about to be taught a lesson.
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Christ, now 2 men claiming they were in fact the ones who abused the 1st woman who accused Kavagnah. And now a 3rd woman who pops up right after Kavanagh releases his calendar from that time. Her story has more holes than Swiss cheese. This whole thing is absolutely sickening.
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@rancid-schnitzel You'll not like reading the Senate interview with Kavanaugh. Senator Feinstein has a lot to answer for.
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Gee, they went after the wrong guy. Excellent speech, and very damning on the Democrats involved in this smear campaign.
Have to be amused that when they pinned down the date and location of the assault, the guy has detailed calendar and diary entries of what he was doing in 1982. Makes you wonder if that's going be a requirement for anybody considering public office in the future.
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Rocky Rockbottom said:
Frank said:
This is an innocent man.
i dunno, the chick was pretty convincing. why the fuck would she bother putting herself through that shit to make that up? sounded pretty damning to me. Especially the "hand over the mouth and laughing" bit.
in contrast, Homeboy and Graham kind of shit the bed and, ironically, went "full chick" and lapsed into histrionics
No matter, the Repubs will rush the vote thru and get their boy in tomorrow
She could well believe it was him, memory is not reliable. There is no additional evidence, and her friend has refuted her recollection.
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