re: Breaking: China offers a way to eliminate US trade imbalance. HAIL TRUMP!

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You have been wrong on this the whole way man!

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That is not true.

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Just admit you purchased a spoonful of lies

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That is not true either.

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You thought wrong.

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That is true. I did not think anyone was really talking about the trade deficit as it was not a significant issue in the directive.

I will tell you that even with the concession on the deficit Trump will not agree to back off unless he gets something on the more important to him issue of US companies investing in China and IP theft in China.

My very right contention has been that the American people and economy should not be punished with tariffs for the benefit of a few multinational companies doing business in China.

I bet you if somehow it comes down to this trade imbalance deal or IP protection and easier investment rules in China he will favor the latter. Hopefully he gets both.

Either way I do not see him implementing the March tariffs.

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We have allowed our trading partners to use the American people as their social security system,

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Nothing is further from the truth than that statement right there. The simplest way I can explain it to you is they send us capital goods whether it is Christmas lights or high grade electronics and we send them US dollars. That is a good deal for Americans because we print the dollars.

If somehow we could count the debt of ours they buy toward the trade deficit for accounting purposes you would see the deficit is not near as much as you think.

Even when they do not use their excess dollars to buy our debt they are using them to buy things like oil on world markets and the dollars sort of find their way back one way or another.

The deficit that is important is the spending deficit. Imagine the investments in the US our trade partners would have to be making and the goods they would be buying with their excess dollars if the Treasury was not making trillions of dollars of debt available for them to buy.

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If your definition of free trade

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through tariffs and protectionism,

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not free trade

that's like, the definition of not being free trade

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We have allowed our trading partners to use the American people as their social security system,

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yeah with our military spending. not our trade

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and folks like you want it to continue, even if it means destroying most of our manufacturers, and our capability to manufacture.

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we're either 1 or 2 (depending on how you define it) in the world. how is our manufacturing "destroyed" when it's so massive?

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We need real reform not payoffs

define "real reform"

please do so without using unexplained catch phrases like "currency manipulation

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This doesn’t solve their ip theft, forced technology transfer, product dumping, high tariff and trade barriers, etc

How about you fricking trust the person that got them to put this offer on the table. You're no one, your opinion is meaningless, as a matter of fact you liking this deal makes me cringe a little and want more.

It shouldn’t be about the trade deficit, it should be about the conditions that allow China to undermine all other producers. If they are going to maintain their protectionist practices, and only allow a six year window to allow one exception, and go back to normal then that’s a giant failure. 6 years for the Chinese to go back to the old ways? frick. That.

The world’s supply chain needs a 20 year shift where honest actors are allowed to get their goods to market, and that only happens if China takes a huge, and sustained hit. This is why reciprocal tariffs are mostly a good thing. They maintain competitive balance and let the best producers produce. It’s sad that the Republican think tanks have perpetuated this “China’s protectionism is basically foreign aid” Bull shite line for 20 years and every armchair economist bought that stupid reductive statement hook, line and sinker.

Had the Republicans maintained any sense of measured economics outside of some PE dweebs with a CFA level one parroting “EBITDA”, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. The idea that the US shouldn’t manufacture shite because we are an “advanced” and “service” economy is also one giant line of bullshite. The Germans didn’t concede manufacturing to the Chinese wholesale. I mean they’ve moved plenty of factories to Bratislava for the cheap labor, but they have “Industry 4.0” and some of the most advanced factories in the world. The fact the US doesn’t is shameful. The idea that letting China build stuff is some “free market” ideal, when they don’t act to protect the free market as well, is dumb.

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not free trade

that's like, the definition of not being free trade

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Right, which is why allowing our trading partners to use tariffs and protectionism to exacerbate massive trade deficits with us is stupid, and hurts Americans. It's also why folks like IB shouldn't oppose using the same device our so called friends use, to reduce those massive deficits, and open up foreign markets for American goods.

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yeah with our military spending. not our trade

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That too, but also our trade. We allow our trading partners to bottleneck our goods to them, while they expect an open market here.

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we're either 1 or 2 (depending on how you define it) in the world. how is our manufacturing "destroyed" when it's so massive?

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Because it is becoming much more assembling, than manufacturing. We assemble crap that is manufactured elsewhere, for the most part. If we don't do something about it, that will go away in time as well. Does anyone really think that being dependent upon the outside world for nearly everything is a sound future for our kids? Do you know what happens to the queen bee, when the drones abandon her?

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The deficit was something like 350 billion this year I think. Somebody check that

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trade data not being fully updated during partial shutdown

it'll probably end up right at -400 bil for calendar 2018 though for goods

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So who steps in and buys our ever-increasing debt?

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Probably the same people buying it now, majority of our debt is domestically owned, and of the foreign debt chini owns about 1.2 trillion....chump change.