re: Why are "free traders" quiet about foreign tariffs but apoplectic about U.S. tariffs?

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Interesting statement. Detail that out for us.

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Sure. Small firms do not have the reserves to sustain tariffs. That's why the government is having to write checks to farmers. However, other small businesses are not so lucky because there isn't a mechanism to subsidize them.

The Koch brothers will never go bankrupt. Walmart will be fine. They can work around this stuff much more easily.

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What "reserves" are you talking about? Operating margin? Cash on hand as a % of operating expense?

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I work in corporate finance so I try to put things in journalist terms. However, most larger firms are accessing the effects of tariffs on margins and delaying any immediate action. There are teams of people looking at this stuff. This is both in terms of markets here and abroad. You are buying from and selling to places all over.

In short, large firms are less sensitive to short term changes in margins AND more adept at understanding how to react in the longer run.

Small firms often have no such luxuries. No sophisticated teams of analysts. And a much greater sensitivity to fluctuations in transaction costs. If China is a big buyer of a small firm, they are fricked. If China makes one part that you have to have and no one else can, you are fricked (the government actually has a tariff waiver program for this).

I don't think they hate America and I don't think they love it. They don't care. All they care about is cash in their pocket and if that means let Chop Suey make it for 2 bucks and hour and import for nothing rather than paying Bubba 15 an hour plus benefits then they're going with Chop Suey. That's what the Bush/Clinton trade deals were all about.

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I don't think they hate America and I don't think they love it. They don't care. All they care about is cash in their pocket and if that means let Chop Suey make it for 2 bucks and hour and import for nothing rather than paying Bubba 15 an hour plus benefits then they're going with Chop Suey. That's what the Bush/Clinton trade deals were all about.

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See, this is what people are talking about. Chop Suey can work for less than Joe Blow in America even if tariffs are 0% and other non-tariff barriers are adjusted too. Standards of living are different. It will never be completely even.

Do you truly want China to remove trade barriers or do you want protectionism for the US worker?

I feel like Trump is appealing to 2 different groups of people by using tariffs

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Would that be a PITA for facebook? Sure! But regulation would be a nearly insurmountable barrier to new entry.

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Because people like Zuckerberg would write the rules.

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pizzatiger

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whose alter is this?

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now it's been a year and a half

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and? is that supposed to be a long time?

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we're sending billions and billions to farmers

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for now. do you know anyone, particularly trump, who is advocating that this is permanent?

i don't get it. trump is trying to stop something that has been causing significant pain. he's also trying to help farmers in the short term so they don't feel the pain. explain to me how this is not EXACTLY how the govt should operate.

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Small firms often have no such luxuries

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and this is the same old story because orangemanbad people never mention that these particular companies were ALREADY feeling pain due to the existing situation. they act like these tariffs created pain out of nothing and trump was stupid for doing it.

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"NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TPP FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" - NPC90

Because the vast majority of those among us suffering from the delusion of the infallibility of the free market think the term means what it has been defined as by the GOP or the "conservative" movement in the United States over the last 70 some odd years.

There is no free market when one nation provides safe passage and secure markets for all other nations on earth. US workers and US businesses have suffered crippling self imposed tariffs since at least the end of the second world war but the investor class has hoodwinked some among us into worshipping at the alter of their version of the free market so they would have the opportunity to invest in shite holes (our presidents term) and exploit the people and natural resources in those shite holes with less risk than would otherwise exist if we hadn't been spending as much on "national security" as the next 20 or so nations combined for the last 70 some years.

Tariffs and protectionism of American jobs was a basic plank in the democratic party platform until Ronald Reagan lead some of all into thinking "conservativism", as defined by that same investor class, was the only way the United States could move forward in 1980. Bill Clinton squared that circle by leading the democratic party on a 27 year and running course of trying to out "conservative" the GOP by singing the praises of internationalism and free trade and trade deals. Meanwhile our defense system allows China to clean our clock...something a communist economy could not do without our assistance (defense spending allowing Chinese goods safe passage around the, world secure markets for those goods and near risk free investment for western capital), we have a socialist nation whose succor is paid for by US taxpayers, South Korea (Samsung couldn't exist without US Taxpayers holding China at bay) and those same US Taxpayers have been told, and many have bought in hook, line and sinker, that what we need is even more of this type of free trade.

Good, bad or indifferent Donald Trump has laid the lie to Reaganesque conservativism and thank god for that. We have seen what blue collar workers fed up with free trade and PC bullshite can do...and that lesson has not fallen on deaf ears within either party....

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I don't personally know a single small business owner who is opposed to reining asymmetrical Chinese trading habits in.

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I don't either. Most just disagree with using tariffs. Not mutually exclusive.