China Tariffs

If the market stabilizes it can work if the market continues to gyrate crazier and crazier, Trump is going to lose a large amount of voters my age close to retirement.

He might lose your vote? I thought you were one of the deplorables. ;-)

Just saw an ASU Econ professor talking about this. He said this is a transition we’ve seen many times in history. A developing economy steals intellectual property but is eventually forced to play by the rules. The US did this by stealing England’s industrial technology in the 1800s. Japan in the 1970s. Korea in the 1980s.

It can take up to 30 years before the developing country agrees to play by the rules. He guessed that it will take 15 years before China agrees, though the tariff rates may go down gradually as negotiations continue.

Another thing the prof said is that a 25% tariff might result in modest price increases. A $700 washer might increase to $740, for example. He doesn’t think the tariffs will slow down the US economy.

@ flagooner he’ll never get my vote, I’ll vote for bozo the clown or J. Fred Muggs before I’d give him a vote.

J Fred Muggs. You and I may be the only people who know who that is.

^;)

I have a friend that wound up eating dinner next to Donald Jr. and a couple of his friends the other night. After about an hour and a few drinks, he heard him say with a big grin on his face that the world is finally beginning to realize that he's not the dumbest Donald in the Trump family after all. His friends burst out in laughter and they all toasted before taking a long swig from their drinks.

I had a friend that committed suicide after doing some subcontract work at his first AC casino he, didn’t get paid for almost one million dollars worth of finishes, as a result he went broke paying his vendors and subcontractors sadly he took his own life after losing his home.

My daughter is the sourcing manager for a clothing company with over a $billion in sales. She started moving manufacturing to Seoul, Jakarta, & Singapore several months ago.

A friend from college went to work in SE Asia after college and worked in that area for over a decade - he said you had to be on your toes when dealing w/ the Chinese b/c they were always trying to put one over on you and cheat you some how.

Now is the time to hold China accountable - if not now when - one would assume their economy will only grow and get stronger as well as their military (just as a matter of having a population of 4x the US) - the bigger and stronger they get the more they will feel free to do as they please.

Vietnam has definitely been syphoning off the cheap labor work away from China along with Indonesia from back when Obama was President.

I'm pretty mixed on Trump's strategy. I wish we had someone smarter and more level headed in charge. Trump wants to look strong more than make smart choices.

^ Let’s hold them accountable when you’re ready to retire, or find a better way, tariffs don’t work, anyone who thinks otherwise is just not paying attention. Read the story of the Great Depression the precipitating event, the root cause was Smoot-Halley, we needed a world war to recover.

There's been complaints about China for 20 years and no one has held them accountable - at best the Chinese will nod their head "yes we'll do better" but they know it's BS and they continue to do as they please - Trump has his faults, but up to now I prefer his in your face strategy when dealing w/ the likes of China which does not play fair, vs the avg politician that often just tries to be politically correct and not offend anyone b/c all they want is to continue to get reelected.

Post WWII the US was better off than anyone else and at that time it made sense to help out other countries - but currently the US has a $22-trillion debt which is only gonna get bigger - I'm no foreign-policy expert but it feels too-many countries have mooched off the US for too-long; many of those countries are very strong now compared to post WWII and it's time they started to pull their weight rather than leaving it mostly to the US

^ You seem to be advocating the idea of using a machete to filet a sardine.

^ nothing else has worked - in the past it's been all talk and no action - no reason to believe anything will change any other way

China wants to control their region including imposing their way over international waters - being soft and politically correct I think will have a bigger consequence down the road than standing up to them now - history states rogue states w/ big ambitions rarely if ever get in-line out of their own volition

Trump actually is the one doing away with the thing that works the Investment treaties, they make intellectual property theft actionable, he has been abrogating them as a means of creating chaos, no other reason orderly markets sort these google.com out all of the time.

I agree with Papi that our 22 trillion dollar debt will hobble this country in the future, however many other nations have a debt to GDP ratio worse than ours. I heard Warren Buffett on this topic a while back and it made sense. I wish I better understood it.

Don't listen to Warren Buffet - listen to your fellow TUSCLers

^ I agree with that as well, yet they took a tax cut and increased that debt, instead of paying it down with the surplus created by the strong economy, and we have no budget and haven’t had one in years, the deficit is going to become our problem sooner rather than later, and it’s ludi to think you can spend your way out of debt.

^ ludi=Ludicrous

Per the link below, only Japan and Italy are G20 countries w/ higher debt/GDP than the US:

en.wikipedia.org

^ you have to click on the little arrows on the table in the link above to sort it by debt/GDP

^ Goddamn right spending your way out of debt ask your grandparents how that works!

This is my opinion if Trump does manage to get re-elected Americans will have booked passage on the second voyage of the Titanic and everyone knows how the first voyage ended.

^ Don't let your hatred of the man bias your thinking. Trump could discover a cure for cancer and you'd argue that it's only 95% effective.

Under our past president we'd probably be appologizing to the chinese for making it difficult to steal our intellectual property.

^I doubt that Trump will discover his own ass, even if you gave him a flashlight and a mirror.

I’ll give Trump credit for one thing, he has highlighted the problems with the DOJ and his administration is a credible argument for the DOJ to be taken out of the executive branch and be made completely independent of political matters either by separate selection committee or some other mechanism for appointing an Attorney General and other directors for the FBI and the rest of the agencies that make up the DOJ.

Much of China’s business is run by high level people in the Communist party. In order to meet terms of a trade agreement, the Chinese will need to stop subsidizing these businesses. Basically, the 1,000 most powerful people in China will need to agree to stop being corrupt. That’s not going to happen. Oh, they’ll pretend to do this to buy some time, but they’ll never actually do it. Trump knows this.

I think the likeliest outcome will be the tariffs will stay in place for years while businesses move to SE Asia and India. The Chinese debt bubble will eventually pop, causing political turmoil and rebellion.

I am not a Trump fan by any stretch of the imagination, but even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.

This, I think, is one of those nuts. China has been abusing the world with its trade practices for years. They are also attempting to annex the entire South China Sea. Their theft of our, and the rest of the world's, intellectual property has been endemic for years.

This will no doubt cause us some pain, particularly our farmers. However, even with increased tariffs, our soybean production will still likely have a cost and volume advantage in the Chinese market. A key here is that we will have alternate sources of supply for manufactured goods; Chinese options will be far more limited.

While we're at it, let's also start gradually phasing in requirements that 50 % of imports to the US be carried on board US flag ships. That's my 2¢.

Here is just one example of Chinese spying involving the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center.

In 2015, federal investigators informed several research institutions that they employed professors who were violating supporting agency policies. In 2017, the cancer center gave the FBI "computer hard drives containing emails for several of its staff members." Last month's report says that The National Institutes of Health provided evidence "describing conflicts of interest or unreported foreign income by five faculty members." As a result of the FBI and internal investigation, the center fired three scientists identified as trying to help China steal "U.S. scientific research."

And this: "In the past 18 months ... 10 MD Anderson senior researchers or administrators of Chinese descent have retired, resigned or been placed on administrative leave."