re: Trade Data Shows Trump’s Tariffs Are Working

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Our economic situation looks nothing like it did when we were founded

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Strawman

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Nope. He specifically argued it was the same world.

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Nah. Its the same world, just different policies.

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Not true. You are claiming the policies are the same, thus socialism.

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How much did the USSR import from the US?

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Nah. Its the same world

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At the absolute absurdity of this statement I should just stop engaging, and maybe I will soon. Good grief.

You know, slavery was legal for most of the time period you are claiming is the same wold we live in now. If you think widespread forced labor doesn't change an economic context, you are beyond reason.

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Thats not relevant.

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Sure it is. In order to opine on whether tariffs are a good idea given the context of 2026, you have to be alive in 2026. You keep saying you are standing with them, but that's impossible if they've been dead for 200 years unless you mean that you're standing with them on affirming tariffs in the context of the time period in which they were alive.

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Either they are like Bernie or they are not. Which is it?

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I have no idea. They're dead. I can't ask them. That's the point.

(Notice how I actually answered your direct question.)

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Not at all.

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No? We're not discussing tariffs applied in the present?

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The USA marched from there to the industrial power of the world with those policies in place.. modern history sir.

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So what? You seem to be making the argument that because tariffs existed when America ascended to economic prominence that the tariffs were the reason for that.

That's an obvious fallacy. If the Red Sox win on a day that it rained, that doesn't mean that the rain is what made them win.

Secondly, America didn't achieve absolute economic global hegemony until after the two World Wars, for reasons i assume I don't have to go into.

Third, even if tariffs helped the US grow up economically (they did), that doesn't mean they are still appropriate. That's exactly why what happened in 1778 or 1890 is irrelevant.

This is not a discussion about tariffs being universally all good or all bad in every circumstance. This is about whether tariffs are good or bad for America right now.

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Free trade has killed wealth

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What a moronic statement.

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Historical data shows that U.S. national wealth followed a relatively flat, gradual trajectory for its first 150 years before experiencing a massive, exponential surge following World War II, culminating in an estimated total net worth of over $150 trillion by 2025.

Because comprehensive, centralized data tracking modern "household net worth" did not exist before the Federal Reserve began tracking it in the mid-20th century, economic historians measure the country's earlier wealth trajectory using Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and historical census valuations.

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. Sources: Federal Reserve's Financial Accounts of the United States and FRED Economic Database

Again, you've bought this myth that the government should collude with labor unions to create an economic wage bubble that enables unskilled workers to make $80,000 a year for standing by a conveyor belt and watching rubber gaskets pass by all day.

It's a leftist, socialist desire, by definition.

That's exactly why I posted several pages back, if that's what you want, frick tariffs. Just pass a federal minimum wage of $40 an hour. Or $50. Or $100.

Again, for some reason reason y'all can understand the side effects of doing that, but remain oblivious to the side effects of tariffs.

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Of course they can.

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Maybe if you're creating a hypothetical system with honest actors, of which China is not.

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Regardless, the Chinese neither play by rules of western trade, nor are they inclined to as long as we lack resolve to press the issue.

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Proving my point.

How would a trade deal get them to stop IP theft, given your own words?

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Folks here like yourself who seem to care little for anything but today's consumer costs

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It's a lot more than that. Lower consumer costs mean more money going towards our highly productive areas of our economy that other countries can't compete with.

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don't really GARA about Chinese infringements

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I do, especially since they most affect those highly productive areas of our economy.

But I also understand there isn't much we can do about it, the individual actors understand the risks/costs, and continue to engage in behaviors that get their property stolen by China. That's an individual-level decision for a person who sees the world through non-Leftist lenses.

Exactly

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Cease transacting with them, fractionally or in toto. Easier said than done

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Yep. Isolationism definitely worked out great for the soviet bloc. But hey, the vacuum tube electronics were awesome!

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Whose definition? Yours? Again if its socialism now its socialism then.

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I'll concede this point as being poor word choice on my part. It's not socialist. It IS leftist. Leftists look to the government to actively intervene to ensure success for individuals, which is what you are doing. In fact, you've argued that people can't be successful without it (against all the facts to the contrary.)

And yes, if Thomas Jefferson had said, "You know, the proper purview of the government is to intervene to assist in artificially creating an artificially inflated labor bubble so that anybody who can fog a mirror can make (whatever the equivalent of $80,000 a year was back then). Those guys who swamp out the stables all day? They deserve to make as much as the local judge or doctor. That's the American way!"

If he had said that back then, I would say the same thing about him that I am saying about you now.

You know why he didn't say that, or anything like it? Because that wasn't the purpose of the tariffs back then. You know why that wasn't the purpose of the tariffs back then? because the country and the whole world was vastly different.

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Its the same world with different policies put in place by the federal gov.

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No it isn't, and I've posted why in detail. This is going to be my last post on the topic with you, because it's obvious you are wrong, you are very economically illiterate, and the fact that you keep saying moronic things like, "It's the same world that it was in 1776" is so moronic that I believe you are trolling at this point. It's either that or you are really, really stupid, and I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

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Thats a strawman.

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That's how you say, "I don't know what a strawman is," without actually saying those words.

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If its socialism, it was socialism then.

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It's leftism. And it would have been then, too, but no one was employing tariffs back then so that a guy who barely finished whatever the basic baseline education was back then (it's high school now) could make the same amount of money that an educated professional or a business owner who took risks could make for doing work that a trained chimp could do.

But that's exactly what you want now.

That's you, right? You're an older guy, didn't go to college, were an adult in the 70s when the local textile mill or tire plant relocated out of country, right? Or maybe you were a kid and your parents or some of their friends lost their jobs. Maybe you or your parents didn't actually work there, but the town revolved around the plant and you saw a bunch of people go from the penthouse to the outhouse, right? Devastated the town like the makings of a Bruce Springsteen song from the Nebraska album, right?

You've got the have some kind of personal connection to this, because you are not arguing from principles (you don't seem to actually be familiar with any economic principles) and no amount of facts dissuade you.

If that's true, here's the reality. I don't care what your daddy said about it, the problem wasn't mean ole free trade.

The key word in free trade isn't "trade." It's "free."

Money represents value and the exchange of value. Free trade allows people to make their own decisions about exchanging value. You have something I want, I'm willing to exchange so much value for it, if you're willing to take that much value for it, then we make a deal. if not—if the value you're willing to exchange isn't enough for me to want to exchange for it, then we just don't make a deal and both walk away.

It's like consensual sex.

Protectionism is more like rape. (Really it's more like paying the local thugs "protection money," but I was trying to stay within the same analogy.)

It's the opposite of people making their own choices about exchanging value. It's the government saying, "Nope, I don't care whether you're willing to exchange that much value to get what you want, I'm not allowing it. If you want that, you have to exchange what the going rate is plus what I tell you to pay."

That's what you are begging for, even saying that Americans can't be successful without. The government standing around forcing people to exchange too much value for what you offer them (in this case, unskilled labor).

Free trade says, if you want to make a good, solid, middle class living, you need to come up with marketable skills that are worth exchanging for the value that buys that living. Either through education, entrepreneurial courage, exceptional work ethic, something that others will value and want to exchange that much with you for it.

Protectionism (at least in the context of the largest economy in the world with the greatest economic opportunity in the world) says, nah, frick that, that's for suckers. Let's get the giverment to collect thug money from the entire population so that we can examine rubber dog shite going by on a conveyor belt all day for flaws and make a comfortable middle class living doing it.

So all of that is to say, it was you (or your daddy or your uncle or cousin or whoever you had a personal connection with who lost their job in a plant that relocated) who were ripping everyone else off (with the government's help) while you were getting paid above market value for your labor. Losing your job was normalizing the situation and returning to consensual sex rather than forced thuggary.

And that goes for people outside the US. They will be willing to do unskilled labor jobs for less than people here. Because their economy is different. $6 an hour is unlivable here, but a Chinese factory worker lives better on that than a comparable factory worker here does on $17 an hour. That's just the reality of the situation.

That's why it's the same as minimum wage. Minimum wage paying jobs aren't supposed to be careers. They fill a labor gap for students, retired people, people in between career jobs, etc. They shouldn't be expected to pay a "living wage."

Unskilled labor factory jobs shouldn't be expected to pay middle class wages either. Not in the context of this economy.

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To say the US held the same monetary and economic power it did in the late 1700s as it does today is silly.

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Did you somehow interpret my comments as specific to economic power, or even to the US per se?

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You mean have the US government ban trade with China?

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Not necessarily. China is highly export dependent, and is so at the expense of law abiding counterparties. As such, the counterparties have ability to force lawful behavior through inclining tariffs or trade restrictions. To this point, they simply have lacked the general will to do so.