Showing posts with label tariffs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tariffs. Show all posts

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Bloomberg economic model forecasts 25% tariffs between democratic and autocratic countries would roll back globalization to 1990s levels and leave the world 3.5% poorer

Arguably that would be a good thing for American workers, but Bloomberg doesn't care about that.
 
For three decades, a defining feature of the world economy has been its ability to churn out ever more goods at ever lower prices. The entry of more than a billion workers from China and the former Soviet bloc into the global labor market, coupled with falling trade barriers and hyper-efficient logistics, produced an age of abundance for many.But the last four years have brought an escalating series of disruptions. Tariffs multiplied during the US-China trade war. The pandemic brought lockdowns. And now, sanctions and export controls are upending the supply of commodities and goods.All of this risks leaving advanced economies facing a problem they thought they’d vanquished long ago: that of scarcity. Emerging nations could see more acute threats to energy and food security, like the ones already causing turmoil in countries from Sri Lanka to Peru. And everyone will have to grapple with higher prices.

More.

The story never mentions how those newly introduced extra billion plus workers reduced economic outcomes for the already established middle classes around the world, especially in America where the full time job of the 1990s became a thing of the past.

If I'm repeating myself, I don't care.

 


 

 

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

This bad Greer take is like George W. Bush saying you're either with us or against us in his war on terror

Tariffs are especially called for against communists qua communists, but Trump would be just fine with free trade with the Chicoms as long as it were truly free. Trump has no there there.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Jeffrey Snider: The whole global economy is in trouble, and it isn't because of a few billion in US tariffs on Chinese goods

Rather it is because hundreds of billions of dollars worth of liquidity keep disappearing since the Great Financial Crisis.

Sunday, May 19, 2019

What's happened to Justin Amash is simple: He'll be off the political stage in 2021 so he has nothing left to lose

Democrats are about to redistrict him out of a job, he's isolated himself in his own party over five terms, Trump's tariffs threaten the family's Chinese tool business fortune, and his best friends are the likes of WaPo's Jennifer Rubin and union president Randi Weingarten. Might as well go all in against Trump and help deprive him of a win in Michigan while losing re-election to MI-03 or as the inglorious Libertarian Party candidate for president in 2020. It's what libertarians are best at and live to do: spoil elections. Or, just switch to the Democrat Party and go on living like Arlen Specter. Republicans could hasten things along by kicking him out of the party.










Monday, August 20, 2018

China eating America's lunch for 25 years by following exactly the protectionist strategy free traders say will destroy US

Jeff Ferry here in USA Today says free traders can't explain China's success because their free trade ideology blinds them to how protectionism has made China great:

China has been eating America’s lunch for a quarter-century. And they’ve done it by following exactly the strategy that pundits and free traders now suggest will be destructive to the US economy. ... Unless Washington stands up to China now, the trajectory of the past 25 years points to a troubling, continued decline for America’s working families. And so, for those who suggest that tariffs are a mistake, they need merely look at China’s rise for an instructive rethink.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Turkey won't let Rev. Andrew Brunson go, Trump retaliates with tariffs as promised, Turkish lira plunges

Hooah President Trump!

The story is here.

Brunson had been imprisoned for a year and a half and is reportedly now under house arrest. The tyrannical government of Erdogan allegedly pressured his own parishioners to testify against him falsely under threats.

More here.

A country headed by the likes of Erdogan is not fit to be a NATO member country.

Monday, June 25, 2018

The Trump administration doesn't get it that the Chinese trade system is a strategic threat

And neither does the Politico story excerpted below. China faces an unpredictable foe in Trump and his tariff threats, but China is playing the long game of imperial expansion and domination and only seeks a path navigating through what it knows is the temporary and incoherent threat Trump represents. Trump does not bring a fundamental rethinking of China. Once he is gone the US trade stance will return, unfortunately, to the status quo ante, continuing the hollowing out of the West by enriching a few who sell these communist liars and thieves the rope they'll use to hang the rest of us.

From the story here:

The administration in May said it wanted China to commit to reducing the trade deficit by $200 billion by 2020. It also asked China to stop subsidizing high-tech sectors like robotics and alternative energy vehicles identified in its China’s strategic economic plan, cut tariffs on “all products in non-critical sectors” to levels at or below U.S. duties and assure that it would not challenge U.S. actions taken in intellectual property disputes.

Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s chief [trade] negotiator, said at the time that it wasn’t his goal to “change the Chinese system,” despite his long list of criticisms of that system.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

JP Morgan: US tariffs on China to have only modest impact on US economy

From the story here:

Investment bank JPMorgan estimated in a report on Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs on China would have only modest effects on the broader U.S. economy. It based its analysis on a 12 percent average U.S. tariff on $450 billion of imports from China, estimating that this would add just 0.4 percentage points to U.S. consumer price inflation if the additional costs of the duties were passed on to consumers in their entirety.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Trump plays hardball with China, latest threatened tariffs impossible to match

Bloomberg reports here:

President urges levies on $100 billion more of Chinese goods . . . Were China to want to match Trump’s latest threat, it wouldn’t have enough American goods imports to target. It could take other measures like curbing package tours or student transfers to the U.S., or hamper American companies operating in China.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Robert Shiller: Great Depression tariffs did not plausibly, directly affect economic growth in a major degree

Everywhere we turn we hear the opposite. It's standard operating procedure to blame protectionism for the Great Depression. Shiller knows it can't be demonstrated from the data. Hence the psychological argument. 

Quoted here:

Shiller said he did not believe there would be a significant inflationary effect to the U.S. from steel and aluminum tariffs, but he warned that heated trade rhetoric from both sides could send the American economy reeling into a recession.

"When you ask about the size of the impact on the economy, I think a lot of it is more psychological than direct, unless they really slam on tariffs," he said. The Yale economist pointed to the "most famous tariff war of all" during the Great Depression, which he said did not "plausibly, directly" affect economic growth "in a major degree," but it may have helped "destroy confidence" and willingness to plan for the future.

"It's exactly those 'wait and see' attitudes that cause a recession," he explained.

Monday, October 2, 2017

A rare contribution to National Review suggests that the Congress is an idea whose time has passed

From the story by Jay Cost here:

To put it bluntly, Congress is not well suited for national economic planning, which is basically what pro-growth tax policies boil down to. As a matter of fact, Congress outsources a lot of economic planning — like environmental regulation — to the bureaucracy, because it knows it is not capable of handling such matters for itself. It keeps tax policy within the legislature primarily because that doubles as a way to distribute political benefits to key constituencies.

The problem is an institutional one. It is really not accurate to say that Congress is a “national legislature,” for there is no member in either chamber who is elected by the nation at large. Instead, it is the meeting place of representatives of discrete geographical constituencies. This inclines the legislature to parochial concerns rather than national ones — a tendency that is exacerbated by the fact that senators are apportioned equally among the states, regardless of population. Moreover, our campaign-finance system, whereby those who contribute most to political campaigns are those with pressing business before the Congress, gives each member of Congress yet another incentive to view policy problems from the perspective of a very small slice of the nation. ...

In the Report on Manufactures, submitted in 1791, Alexander Hamilton argued that Congress’s power to “lay and collect taxes . . . to provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States” validated his ambitious plan of national development. However, his political opponents thought he was grossly misreading what was originally intended to be an anodyne statement.

But the statement quoted from the Constitution is not anodyne.

It simply points out that the founders thought the national government's main job was to provide for the common defense. The founders never imagined the managerial and welfare state, which represents today over 80% of the budget. Direct taxes were sufficient to fund the small state they did imagine, along with tariffs and excises. The contemporary megastate is only imaginable with direct access to the citizens' pocketbooks, which the income tax has provided only since 1913.

The way forward is the way back. Ideally we should aim to abolish all the federal departments except for the original five (State, Treasury, Attorney General, Defense, Post Office Communications), and tax accordingly (imagine a tax cut of 80%), along with the income tax.

And perhaps we should think about abolishing the Congress too, since we now have well developed state governments which can be tasked with the things the US House and the US Senate cannot seem to cope with effectively any longer.

The greatest fear of the founders was a tyranny of the legislative, but what we've got is more akin to a farce of the legislative. We should think about ending it and let free-market capitalism do its work.  

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Do nothing US House begins 5-week vacation after Senate Obamacare repeal failure

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner once infamously said that Democrat President Obama had the right to set the agenda. But now that we have a Republican president, Republican Speaker Paul Ryan doesn't see it that way.

Slow-walking Trump's agenda isn't just a Democrat goal, it's an establishment goal. Republicans don't want to see it implemented anymore than the Democrats do, which is why Paul Ryan sabotaged Obamacare repeal in the Senate and promptly adjourned. His reassurances that the House wouldn't simply pass what the Senate passed supposedly were not good enough for John McCain.

But John McCain, who everyone knows is going to promptly die anyway, simply took one for the team. "Gee, what a guy. We get to run for reelection saying we voted for repeal and the dopes will believe us". 

Remember the agenda below from Trump? Seven months already have been blown on item 5, yet without success. Election 2018 is just 15 months away, and really 14 because August is a fait accompli. The prospects for getting nothing done by then of what Trump wants accomplished look better and better by the day, and that's just the way the establishment wants it.

   

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act.

An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

2. End The Offshoring Act.

Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act.

Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act.

Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act.

Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act.

Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

7. End Illegal Immigration Act.

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

8. Restoring Community Safety Act.

Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

9. Restoring National Security Act.

Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values.

10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act.

Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

F. H. Buckley doesn't have a clue how to kill the administrative state

Here. And I won't bore you with any of the impotent suggestions.

The only way to kill the administrative state is to cut off its food supply, which is taxes in quantity. That's why it took so long to get to the administrative state: The constitution effectively outlawed taxes in quantity by outlawing any taxation save for direct taxation and excises and tariffs.

We could start by abolishing withholding, on our way to abolishing the income tax. But frankly, this will require a revolution, including in thinking. And you won't find anything revolutionary from F. H. Buckley.

Real conservatives know that without the income tax there would be no administrative state to speak of. Fake conservatives pretend that we can have limited government short of abolishing it.