pull down to refresh
100 sats \ 15 replies \ @028559d218 8 Apr \ on: Tariffs as a Pragmatic Compromise econ
Tariffs would be great, if they didn't make people poorer, have governments pick winners and losers, and artificially drive up prices of domestic goods while impoverishing your tax base and killing your exports through trade retaliation.
Lets assume a libertarian paradise. I have 20M slaves to work in my factories. Further, I have lots of marginal land, so I don't really care about environmental damage.
We are trading partners and you thankfully adhere to a free trade ideology. My factories are able to undercut yours by 50%. But, for good measure I add a tax to any goods you produce that are sold in my territory. Also for extra good measure, I fund various "political" campaigns to that are aimed at your territories....in essence they promote environmental + labor rights concepts...the goal is to agitate your public to favor strict regulation of environmental and labor issues....thus ensuring that my 50% advantage is permanent.
Over the last 40 years, I've basically captured your entire manufacturing base.
Your move.
reply
Not a bad way of framing it
reply
excellent metaphor
reply
Most of the job losses in manufacturing... have been due to automation not trade. And this is in all developed economies, for example the US Europe and other places..
The height of manufacturing 'employment' in the United States was in the 1970s... the height of manufacturing output was in ~2018. Clearly, fewer humans are making more things due to automation, robots and machines. Everything else is becoming more automated, machine-like, and digitized... so why wouldn't manufacturing?
That's why manufacturing output in the US peaked starting in the 1970s before China even entered the WTO... and the US nearly makes more things than ever... just with fewer people.
But the Trump administration never mentions this.
Over the last 30 years, the US has transitioned to a 'service' economy rather than a 'goods' economy - producing services like software, cloud computing, IP, AI, financial services... and tons of technology. For example the Mag 7 is all tech companies... which produce mostly services.
Not that the US produces "all the software" obviously, but it makes the vast majority compared to Europe, and it's only recently that China has started to catch up.
And last year, as a matter of fact the total trade deficit in goods and services was approximately 900 billion in the United States. While this sounds like a lot, Apple alone is a multi-trillion dollar company so it puts the 900 billion into context.
For 2024, the goods and services deficit was $918.4 billion, up $133.5 billion from $784.9 billion in 2023. Exports were $3,191.6 billion, up $119.8 billion from 2023. Imports were $4,110.0 billion, up $253.3 billion from 2023.
People all over use American IT products, run Windows or Mac, read American books, watch US TV and Movies... subscribe to Netflix, all those things are services and aren't even included in the 'trade deficits' the President keeps touting.
By your own admission you have... slaves and slaves barely get paid if at all. Meaning they can't buy anything, they can't import much, they can't pay much in the way of taxes, and they have no money (capital) with which to invest.
So noone wants to buy your bonds, capital flees the country at the first chance it gets, and every economics-book says your country is 'low wage' and 'low productivity' which means your corporate bonds are junk.
Making 'expensive' 'high-wage' stuff may have its costs... but it has huge benefits including higher standard of living, and different types of work compared to working in slave-factories.
reply
are burkas hand crafted or mass produced in a madrasa?
serious question
can men wear burkas or only women? or does it depend on gender identity?
which chapter of the koran covers gender identity and trans issues?
more serious questions...
reply
I may have triggered a devout Muslim
Trigger alert: seek bomb shelter
reply
You're contrasting against free trade, which doesn't exist, so none of those things you're worried about are introduced by adding tariffs from here... they're the status quo.
reply
so just to be clear... does the us manufacture more, or less, than they did back in the 1970s?
reply
In terms of what exactly? Percentage of GDP? Does assembling foreign parts count?
Whatever fake data you might contrive to rationalize big L losertarian virtue signals doesn't matter, the fact remains that the national security apparatus has identified and is responding to the existential threat of the currency war.
Just because you don't like guns doesn't mean violence doesn't exist, same applies to currency wars, they're simply pre-kinetic.
Losertarians are habitually ineffective, so i know laying down and dying in the face of existential threat comes easy... so long as they can virtue signal all the way down. Fortunately no one is listening to them, because they're just as enured to a false reality as the 57 gender people.
reply
Somehow the economic leadership in the United States, whether from malice, ignorance, stupidity, or compromise...
Has gone full retard.
The 'economic policy' of the White House is complete and total incoherence, utterly self-defeating and inconsistent.
Sure Bitcoiners will eventually "be fine" - but the world is changing very fast. And somehow people, including some Americans, think that trashing alliances, trashing the dollar, taking on unsustainable debt, and taxing your citizens to death will "make you richer" but it's totally the opposite.
I believe that when it's all over... Bitcoin will be the only thing left standing - Great for Bitcoiners of course - but it is a total unraveling of US economic leadership and world trade for reasons I just don't understand.
reply
Someone already posted that retarded article
I just don't understand
Because you're thinking very, VERY small.
All roads lead to Bitcoin yes, but not by accident, by design. It's a currency war, get that through your head.
Unless you've been in a SCIF recently you're just clueless as to the objectives and the steps toward achieving them, it's not them who are stupid, it's anyone who believes the WWE is real and that there's no script.
reply
Dude there is no script. I honestly believe the US administration is just making things up as they go. Trump doesn't like free trade so his toadies are making it up as they go to comply with that.
But there are huge costs.
I actually really like the article. I think it's 100% on point