A new alliance

The Rev. Billy Graham , the Christian evangelist whose worldwide crusades and role as adviser to decades of U.S. presidents made him one of the best known religious figures of his time, died Wednesday at age 99 at his home in Montreat, N.C.

Seriously, bummer on Billy Graham. RIP.

Prediction: If such a deal ever becomes reality, a few years from now American nationalists will denounce it for "shipping our jobs to India."

Whenever there is free trade between poor countries and rich countries, this tends to lead to trade deficits in the rich countries. It's based on the sophisticated economic theory that people prefer cheap shit over shit that is expensive.

I'm just curious, what makes you prefer this to NAFTA? Or, for that matter, TPP?

Nafta caused jobs to go to Mexico and the TPP helps our enemy; China. American nationalists are the backbone of America. Its just sad that progressives have become the enemy within.

Always liked The Reverend Billy Graham he will be missed.

Agree 25. 99 is amazing. 15 years longer than any guy in my family ever made it.

I’m not opposed to trade deals. I’m opposed to unbalanced trade deals that allow our trade “partners” to export goods to us while blocking trade from the US to them. TPP and NAFTA are unbalanced. I trust that the new deals will have identical provisions for trade in both directions.

And, I don’t mind, and expect, we’ll run a trade deficit with India. I just want us both to play by the same rules.

^ I’m assuming those goods aren’t raw materials that our business use to create finished products. Bc then I can see why we’d do that. Or, if those finished goods were used in service industry, so that the savings was able to be passed on the our consumers and help businesses to stay competitive.

Japan and Australia are advanced countries with strong economies - India def has a lot of poverty but still has the 6th-largest economy in the world

I prefer to pay less for goods and services.

Billy Graham is a hero to TUSCLers?

@skibum609,

If NAFTA sent jobs to Mexico, where do you think this new deal will send jobs?

Also, the explicit goal of TPP was to counter China, not to help it. China was not a party to the deal. And China doesn't exactly feel like my enemy when they sell me low-priced goods. Perhaps the governments in Beijing and Washington don't like each other, but the folks out in the hinterlands seem to do a lot of peaceful trading nonetheless.

And lastly, I think you mean patriots, not nationalists. There's no racial or ethnic connotation in patriotism. That's the difference.

Australia still manufactures and sells El Camino type vehicles. I’d like to see those sold in the US.

@mark94,

I don't see where Nafta was unbalanced. This is straight from Wikipedia:

"The goal of NAFTA was to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The implementation of NAFTA on January 1, 1994 brought the immediate elimination of tariffs on more than one-half of Mexico's exports to the U.S. and more than one-third of U.S. exports to Mexico. Within 10 years of the implementation of the agreement, all U.S.-Mexico tariffs were to be eliminated except for some U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico to be phased out within 15 years. Most U.S.-Canada trade was already duty-free. NAFTA also sought to eliminate non-tariff trade barriers and to protect the intellectual property rights on traded products."

The biggest issue with NAFTA is the loophole that lets other countries funnel their goods through Canada or Mexico, thereby avoiding the trade deals they have directly with the US.

So, China can steal our intellectual property, manipulate their currency, subsidize their exports, and avoid any penalty by using Canada as a shipping address on its way to the US. Both Mexico and Canada refuse to negotiate on this point because they know they lose any trade leverage with China if this changes.

I'm surprised dickroman hasn't chimed in with a comment about NAMBLA

^^^Why should he when he can count on you;))

@ flag, I know right. Where’s our resident genius?? Prolly playing on his mom’s sofa (oh.. I mean sail boat).

@mark94,

I understand what you're saying. It doesn't bother me at all, but I understand it. If this phenomenon were widespread, then all the cheap junk that I buy would say Made in Canada or Made in Mexico. But it doesn't: it still says Made in China.

China mostly sells us cheap finished products, clothing, and appliances, whereas Mexico mostly sells us fully assembled "American" cars and agricultural products, and Canada sells us natural resources, chemicals, and heavy machinery. Not much overlap. Once in a great while, I find a shirt that says Made in Canada, but it's the exception, not the rule.

Regardless, I guarantee that the same identical issue will happen with the new trading agreement. What makes you think it won't? If Canada won't do it, why would Australia?

I'm still trying to figure out how this post relates to anything.

Was it just an attempt to try to impress people with your worldly knowledge.

I think free trade should include sending LeBron to Miami again #MMGA Make Miami Great Again.
Btw is LeBron the GOAT or the goat

Fuck you Jackie

@flagooner,

I think if SJG can post about expanding Marxist consciousness among Mexican carnival workers or whatever, surely mark can post something that at least one other person here gives a decent shit about. (Not that SJG isn't always interesting, too.)

"Was it just an attempt to try to impress people with your worldly knowledge.?"
__________
Most likely something @Mark93 heard on Fox News.

Most of are experts on international trade, @Flag. You're just out of place, out of your league.

Flagooner: it’s a free country. If you don’t like my posts, don’t read them. If you don’t think I’ll ever post something worthwhile, put me on ignore. But, taking the time to post that you don’t understand why someone covered a topic seems counter to what this ( largely unmoderated) forum is all about. I mean, if we only allowed topics that everyone agreed with, this would be a pretty boring and short forum.

The country is far from free.

I'm willing to bet dickroman would take offense to your comment. He spilled a lot of blood so that you can enjoy your liberties.

Is the Macarena still commonly danced at weddings?

^^^ not the Macarena oh nooooooo....................
I don’t know if LeBron is the goat or the kid.

Alrighty, now that all the important people have had a chance to weigh in, and we've even had the obligatory stolen pedophile references...

Here's my questions for mark94:

If what you're saying is true and if it's a serious problem, then why doesn't the US just bring the matter to the WTO? Claiming that a product comes from one country when it really comes from another is a violation of the WTO's Rules of Origin.

But it doesn't even have to get that far. You see, Nafta leaves it up to American Customs officials to decide which goods are entitled to preferential tariff treatment. So it's just not a big deal. And if it is, then we can fix the problem ourselves.

I wish that Billy Graham's son Franklin was half the man his father was.

The rules of origin are in place, but have a low bar for establishing local content. For example, under the “roll up” rule, a car that has 62% local content is considered 100% local for purposes of 0% tariff. Also, there is further flexibility in how to calculate what is local content. That’s the loophole that the administration is trying to close.

I can provide further detail if Flagooner is interested.

Oh yes please, this is so interesting.

@flagooner your up!

Sorry I was busy watching reruns of the 700 club.

Hasn't that been the diplomatic lines for a long time now.

And no, protectionsim isn't patriotism, basic econ. We just need to cushion the transitions. Learn to adapt, basic nature.

India is the big shift. We’ve kicked Pakistan to the curb and gone all in on India. India used to play Russia off against the US, but they seem ready to go all in on America.
Australia has sold most of its raw goods to a developing China for 30 years. Now, it will shift more attention to India as it accelerates it’s infrastructure spending.
Japan has had limited involvement in India as it focused on other parts of Asia. That too might change.

@mark94,

Someone's moving the goal posts again. At first, you were complaining about China selling products to Canada and then Canada directly reselling them to us (while pretending that they're Canadian products to get around American tariffs). But now you're complaining about Canadian businessmen merely using too much Chinese raw material in their exports. That's a different issue.

There's no such thing as 100% domestic materials. After all, where did the oil come from that powered the machines that made the product in the first place? And which country produced the machines on the assembly line in the factory? Oh, and where did the fertilizer that was used to grow the food to feed the workers come from? As you can see, this gets really silly, really fast. If we insisted on such a standard, all global trade would grind to a halt as customs agents pause to inspect the origins of every ingredient with a fine-toothed comb.

Plus other countries would no doubt stop American goods at their borders, too, claiming that we're selling American products with Filipino and Guatemalan inputs, etc. Every trade deal would become moot. It's just not practical. And your standard would hold people and businesses all over the world hostage to maniacal governments looking for a geopolitical edge; trade deals are supposed to prevent this kind of nonsense from happening.

Hey mark and BHF, Get the tube sock out

"Australia, India, Japan, and the US"

???

Expanding the supply side? Is that what is being sought? That doesn't help anything. That's just a distraction.

The US has agreements with Mexico because we have a long common border, and we have a shared destiny, and so we do have to work together.

And we have treaties with Asia because we are already very heavy trading partners, though it is via container ships.

Now yes, there is much which should be changed about these treaties. But this alliance with only India, Australia, and Japan, no point to that, except maybe that Trump wants to maintain economic stratification.

SJG

@san_jose_guy said

"Expanding the supply side?... That doesn't help anything."

So you mean you prefer high consumer prices? Anyway, I'm happy to hear that Trump is pursuing additional trade deals, which is yet more evidence that he is allowing congressional Republicans and Mike Pence to dictate policy for him. (As Mitch McConnell recently put it, Trump will sign anything they put in front of him.) But I guarantee that this new deal will be very similar to Nafta in substance, which means that his base will be complaining about it in a few years. I'm sure they'll find a way to blame someone else though.

"So you mean you prefer high consumer prices?"

Increasing the supply side in order to lower consumer prices? Mostly the competition for consumer markets is already very tough. No benefit in expanding the supply side just to drive down wages. Usually that just results in firms collapsing and concentration of ownership, offsetting whatever might have been sought.

I now proclaim the end of The United States of America, and the beginning of the United Nations Of The Americas.

Trump and the Republicans have brought us to the breaking point, to the point of no return.

SJG

Fergie Performs The U.S. National Anthem / 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5cOvyDp…

I guess I don't really care for this, the song being one of my favorite for learning keyboards. Hers is a rather standard jazz adaptation, but I don't like it. I like the song as it is usually played and intended. So I'm not offended and I am not saying that she is wrong. I just don't really care for it.

Runs from C to G an octave and a fifth above. More often runs from Bb to F.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M21tnQ8P…

Battle Hymn Of The Republic, restored as folk music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPbgTz9p…

John Brown's Body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSn3Ndd…