4 ms·

"Because it doesn't work" is the short answer. The primary effect of a tariff is a price increase. Price increases are rarely a great thing for the economy--bu

"Because it doesn't work" is the short answer. The primary effect of a tariff is a price increase. Price increases are rarely a great thing for the economy--businesses buy less stuff or build less stuff, and people lose jobs because of that. The second effect is that you get retaliatory tariffs. I live in North Carolina--big pork and soybean country, with a lot of exporting to China. With Chinese tariffs, our farmers lose out on tons of sales to China. We've now reached a point where the government is taxing US citizens to pay farmers who can't sell goods to China, to avoid a political backlash. Its insanity. Worse than insanity, it's basically bribery, so that the politician who caused this damage can try to avoid losing an election in two years.

ng12 8y ago
It's easy for me to say because I don't know any soybean farmers but the solution seems obvious: soybean farms are fat that needs to be trimmed. Out of all the industry we've shipped to China the only thing we're losing out on is some of the soybean market?
- hyperpape 8y ago
  Ah yes, standing up for the people of the US by deciding which of them are "fat" that needs to be "trimmed". Here's a further list of "fat" that you can "trim" (https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/list_of_chinese_retaliatory_tariffs_on_the_united_states_-_june_15_2018.pdf https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/list_of_chinese_...).
  - ng12 8y ago
    We already decided thousands of jobs are better done in China. Either way somebody loses out.
    - ineedasername 8y ago
      We have record unemployment and until the market fluctuations of these past few weeks, arguably the strongest economy ever and the biggest in the world. I don't know what loses you mean. That fewer people spend their career in a factory? There's disruption yes as our economy transitions to other jobs, but the net trend for everyone is upwards.
      - ng12 8y ago
        > the net trend for everyone is upwards. Not true. Unemployment is low at the peak of the longest bull run in history, sure. The problem is wage growth is static, or even dropping: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...
        ineedasername 8y ago
        You're picking one metric out of many, that is too simple to represent the entire system. The gestalt is positive. Stagnant wage growth is only a piece of the picture: with so many people employed it's still a net increase in the national payroll. Stagnant wages are a problem, it mean a lot of the benefits of the bull economy are probably not being distributed very equitably, but that by itself does not represent the trend.
- pm90 8y ago
  Farm subsidies are considered national security expenses because growing your own food is a national security issue. In other words there are some fat you want to keep because some fat keeps you warm through winter and when you don’t have food.
- cthalupa 8y ago
  >soybean farms are fat that needs to be trimmed. How does this follow? A legitimate business that when left alone has no problem doing perfectly fine that becomes unsustainable after heavy handed attempts by politicians screw things up for them is fat that needs to be trimmed? And that's just retaliatory tariffs. Let's look at the ones we've done to ourselves: Steel. So, now steel from China is a lot more expensive. Encourages domestic creation of steel, right? Cool. It's still more expensive. And that means a lot of businesses that actually make something with steel are starting to hurt. So, the businesses that actually build stuff instead of the businesses that dealt with a commodity are in danger of going under or laying off people. There's far more people already hurting from the steel tariffs in the US than the most possible that could benefit under the theoretical best case scenario for steel manufacturing in the US. None of this makes any sense whatsoever.
  - ng12 8y ago
    > A legitimate business that when left alone has no problem doing perfectly fine There's a hidden assumption here: they're doing fine when doing business with China is cheap. That comes with a cost (especially when China is not willing to play fair w.r.t. IP law and gov intervention). I'm not worried about soybeans, I'm worried about the cost in terms of American jobs of keeping soybean farmers in business.
    - cthalupa 8y ago
      I don't understand why you think tariffs are likely to create a net positive in American jobs. That certainly has not been the case so far, and would have been even worse without the US government now using taxes to subsidize businesses that the tariffs are screwing over. If curbing China's loose interpretation of intellection property rights was a goal, then withdrawing from the TPP makes zero sense, because a huge portion of the deal was limiting Chinese trade influence in the rest of Asia and providing a coalition to combat Chinese IP theft. We passed up a strategy that had a good chance of resulting in a checkmate for one where we're sacrificing knights and bishops to take pawns. Or at this point, maybe we've enabled friendly fire for chess somehow and are now taking our own pawns. Like I said before: None of this makes sense. Actual economists are baffled.
- ineedasername 8y ago
  So businesses that were doing fine until heavy handed government intervention represent "fat" to be trimmed? I don't follow that line of thinking.
ineedasername 8y ago
And it seems those bailouts to farmers are in excess of any projected tariff revenue. At the same time that China, purchasing elsewhere, pays a higher price than pre-tariffs. Everyone loses, a negative sum situation.

ng12 8y ago

It's easy for me to say because I don't know any soybean farmers but the solution seems obvious: soybean farms are fat that needs to be trimmed. Out of all the industry we've shipped to China the only thing we're losing out on is some of the soybean market?

hyperpape 8y ago
Ah yes, standing up for the people of the US by deciding which of them are "fat" that needs to be "trimmed". Here's a further list of "fat" that you can "trim" (https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/list_of_chinese_retaliatory_tariffs_on_the_united_states_-_june_15_2018.pdf https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/list_of_chinese_...).
- ng12 8y ago
  We already decided thousands of jobs are better done in China. Either way somebody loses out.
  - ineedasername 8y ago
    We have record unemployment and until the market fluctuations of these past few weeks, arguably the strongest economy ever and the biggest in the world. I don't know what loses you mean. That fewer people spend their career in a factory? There's disruption yes as our economy transitions to other jobs, but the net trend for everyone is upwards.
    - ng12 8y ago
      > the net trend for everyone is upwards. Not true. Unemployment is low at the peak of the longest bull run in history, sure. The problem is wage growth is static, or even dropping: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...
      - ineedasername 8y ago
        You're picking one metric out of many, that is too simple to represent the entire system. The gestalt is positive. Stagnant wage growth is only a piece of the picture: with so many people employed it's still a net increase in the national payroll. Stagnant wages are a problem, it mean a lot of the benefits of the bull economy are probably not being distributed very equitably, but that by itself does not represent the trend.
pm90 8y ago
Farm subsidies are considered national security expenses because growing your own food is a national security issue. In other words there are some fat you want to keep because some fat keeps you warm through winter and when you don’t have food.
cthalupa 8y ago
>soybean farms are fat that needs to be trimmed. How does this follow? A legitimate business that when left alone has no problem doing perfectly fine that becomes unsustainable after heavy handed attempts by politicians screw things up for them is fat that needs to be trimmed? And that's just retaliatory tariffs. Let's look at the ones we've done to ourselves: Steel. So, now steel from China is a lot more expensive. Encourages domestic creation of steel, right? Cool. It's still more expensive. And that means a lot of businesses that actually make something with steel are starting to hurt. So, the businesses that actually build stuff instead of the businesses that dealt with a commodity are in danger of going under or laying off people. There's far more people already hurting from the steel tariffs in the US than the most possible that could benefit under the theoretical best case scenario for steel manufacturing in the US. None of this makes any sense whatsoever.
- ng12 8y ago
  > A legitimate business that when left alone has no problem doing perfectly fine There's a hidden assumption here: they're doing fine when doing business with China is cheap. That comes with a cost (especially when China is not willing to play fair w.r.t. IP law and gov intervention). I'm not worried about soybeans, I'm worried about the cost in terms of American jobs of keeping soybean farmers in business.
  - cthalupa 8y ago
    I don't understand why you think tariffs are likely to create a net positive in American jobs. That certainly has not been the case so far, and would have been even worse without the US government now using taxes to subsidize businesses that the tariffs are screwing over. If curbing China's loose interpretation of intellection property rights was a goal, then withdrawing from the TPP makes zero sense, because a huge portion of the deal was limiting Chinese trade influence in the rest of Asia and providing a coalition to combat Chinese IP theft. We passed up a strategy that had a good chance of resulting in a checkmate for one where we're sacrificing knights and bishops to take pawns. Or at this point, maybe we've enabled friendly fire for chess somehow and are now taking our own pawns. Like I said before: None of this makes sense. Actual economists are baffled.
ineedasername 8y ago
So businesses that were doing fine until heavy handed government intervention represent "fat" to be trimmed? I don't follow that line of thinking.

ineedasername 8y ago

And it seems those bailouts to farmers are in excess of any projected tariff revenue. At the same time that China, purchasing elsewhere, pays a higher price than pre-tariffs. Everyone loses, a negative sum situation.