But tariffs don’t work….

Someone check on Roger and SFP. They will be on arkancide watch.

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Someone check on Roger and SFP. They will be on arkancide watch.

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Rogerthefluffer dunked on by Catturd again

From what I can tell almost every tariff Trump has levied against other countries is in direct response to those countries tariffs against the US.....yet there are people on this forum, who claim they are conservatives, at the same time believe running a nearly $1 trillion trade imbalance is beneficial to the nation, the US economy and street level Americans.

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From what I can tell almost every tariff Trump has levied against other countries is in direct response to those countries tariffs against the US.....yet there are people on this forum, who claim they are conservatives, at the same time believe running a nearly $1 trillion trade imbalance is beneficial to the nation, the US economy and street level Americans.

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Here is the argument from leftist economists.......its an accounting issue. For every debit there is a credit, so at the end of the day its a non issue.

Sounds good right. The only problem is we pay cash for their products and they turn around and buy US companies and real estate, build factories in the US with our money, etc. We are selling our soul.

And its not just "tariffs" also VAT tax in countries. And these things they do to block US companies. I heard a speech by one of our negotiators and its a myriad of things to block US companies.

For example, they know a John Deere tractor will stop within 40 feet. So they pass a regulation that any imported tractors must stop within 30 feet. And there are 1000s of these throughout the world.

We are the largest customers in the world, I dont think it should be fair, heck I think we should charge a premium to sell in our country.

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Here is the argument from leftist economists

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Like Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman?

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A trade deficit means you're rich.

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Come on man. That's just a cop out. You know damn well what he meant.

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Come on man. That's just a cop out. You know damn well what he meant.

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We literally got into this last night. Trade deficits mean jack shite.

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Too many people have yet to grasp the full implications of that, even in the twenty-first century. If the goods and services available to the American people are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a “deficit” or “surplus” in the international balance of trade.

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– Thomas Sowell, 2015. Basic Economics, 5th Edition, p. 476-477

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He asked the group a simple question: If China and India become wealthier, is that a threat to America? The general consensus seemed to be yes, illustrating how zero-sum thinking is endemic to this discussion. Adam Smith eloquently wrote about this in 1776 in his seminal book, The Wealth of Nations:

Each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss. Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity.

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Being a creditor or debtor nation simply has no correlation with a country’s standard of living. Thomas Sowell exposes this fallacious concept in Basic Economics:

In general, international deficits and surpluses have had virtually no correlation with the performance of most nations’ economies. Germany and France have had international trade surpluses while their unemployment rates were in double digits. Japan’s postwar rise to economic prominence on the world stage included years when it ran deficits, as well as years when it ran surpluses. The United States was the biggest debtor nation in the world during its rise to industrial supremacy, became a creditor as a result of lending money to its European allies during the First World War, and has been both a debtor and a creditor at various times since. Through it all, the American standard of living has remained the highest in the world, unaffected by whether it was a creditor or a debtor nation.

No one revealed the specious reasoning behind balance-of-trade concerns better than the French economist, statesman, and author Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), whom the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter said was “the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived.”

Bastiat used entertaining fables and carried the logic of the proponents of protectionism to their logical extreme, with biting wit. One of his most famous essays, “Petition of the Candlemakers,” was a parody letter from the manufacturers of “candles, tapers, lanterns … and generally of everything connected with lighting,” arguing against the unfair competition—since since its price was zero—of the sun.

Bastiat understood that exports were merely the price we pay for imports, and having to work harder to pay for those imports did not lead to wealth. Using impeccable logic, Bastiat wondered if exports are good and imports are bad, would the best outcome be for the ships carrying goods between countries to sink at sea, hence creating exports with no imports?

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The gains from trade are what we import, not export. The purpose of production, in the final analysis, is consumption. The more imports we can acquire for fewer exports, the wealthier we are, either as individuals or as a country.

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Again, not my argument. This is basic Friedman/Sowell stuff. I'm just an adherent to the 2 greatest American economists in history

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What if we understand it to mean any cost increase will be more than offset by jobs and wage growth which lessens the tax burden

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An older me wonders if we really have to pay higher process to have domestic products, or, if that's been a massive propaganda push by people making money hand over fist having shite made in 3 world countries.

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But tariffs don’t work….

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Work for what?

It gets old listening to people act like something happening means something is working.