4 ms·

In fact, borrowing $16 billion from China to give it to farmers hurt by tariffs against China.

RhodesianHunter 7y ago
Most of our borrowing we do from ourselves, so technically only some fraction of that came from China. But yeah, your point is still a good one.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Out of interest, could you share the context for why you chose your username?
  - RhodesianHunter 7y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Ridgeback https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Ridgeback
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      Ahh, was just checking my assumptions. I have members of my family who still complain about having to call Zimbabwe Zimbabwe and who have old SA flags from the '70's, despite them not being from Africa, if you catch my drift, so I was not so subtly digging. For reference, I find it about as disconcerting as if someone decided to call themselves 'ConstantinopleKnight', or similar. If my uncle called himself 'RhodesianHunter' online, he would definitely not be referencing the dog breed.
      - RhodesianHunter 7y ago
        I've used this username in various forms pretty much since usernames were a thing. It's only in the past couple of years that people have started asking me about it in this context. Is there a reason as far as you know that the history of Rhodesia has suddenly become more interesting to people with no real connection? I'm sadly going to have to pick something else next time around.
        inflatableDodo 7y ago
        Well, in the UK we have the people who long for the heyday of empire as well as the folk who treat skin tone as a sports team, and both groups are on the telly a lot more recently, though I don't think have actually increased in number. As an indication of the connotations, some people here may refer to Zimbabwe as Rhodesia as an indication that they support aparthied and some others may do it out of a misguided nostalgia for the days when we were in charge of stuff.
        jonhendry18 7y ago
        Dylan Roof, the white supremacist perpetrator of the 2015 Charleston church shooting, had a website called "The Last Rhodesian" and wore a jacket with Rhodesian and apartheid-era South African emblems.
        RhodesianHunter 7y ago
        Sigh. That's too bad. Thanks for the info!
ebog 7y ago
Maybe I don't get your point but a tariff is a tax, and US consumers pay for a lot of that tax. So this is effectively a super inefficient redistribution of wealth to farmers from everyone else in the country.
- jonhendry18 7y ago
  That's all true. But the tariffs China places on US agricultural products aren't a tax on US consumers, and don't produce revenue for the US. So American farmers are losing export sales due to Chinese tariffs, the sting of which Trump is trying to reduce by paying the farmers. Those payments probably aren't funded by tariff revenue collected by the US. So they'll probably be paid for through borrowing. Which may mean borrowing from China.

Most of our borrowing we do from ourselves, so technically only some fraction of that came from China. But yeah, your point is still a good one.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
Out of interest, could you share the context for why you chose your username?
- RhodesianHunter 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Ridgeback https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Ridgeback
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Ahh, was just checking my assumptions. I have members of my family who still complain about having to call Zimbabwe Zimbabwe and who have old SA flags from the '70's, despite them not being from Africa, if you catch my drift, so I was not so subtly digging. For reference, I find it about as disconcerting as if someone decided to call themselves 'ConstantinopleKnight', or similar. If my uncle called himself 'RhodesianHunter' online, he would definitely not be referencing the dog breed.
    - RhodesianHunter 7y ago
      I've used this username in various forms pretty much since usernames were a thing. It's only in the past couple of years that people have started asking me about it in this context. Is there a reason as far as you know that the history of Rhodesia has suddenly become more interesting to people with no real connection? I'm sadly going to have to pick something else next time around.
      - inflatableDodo 7y ago
        Well, in the UK we have the people who long for the heyday of empire as well as the folk who treat skin tone as a sports team, and both groups are on the telly a lot more recently, though I don't think have actually increased in number. As an indication of the connotations, some people here may refer to Zimbabwe as Rhodesia as an indication that they support aparthied and some others may do it out of a misguided nostalgia for the days when we were in charge of stuff.
      - jonhendry18 7y ago
        Dylan Roof, the white supremacist perpetrator of the 2015 Charleston church shooting, had a website called "The Last Rhodesian" and wore a jacket with Rhodesian and apartheid-era South African emblems.
        RhodesianHunter 7y ago
        Sigh. That's too bad. Thanks for the info!

ebog 7y ago

Maybe I don't get your point but a tariff is a tax, and US consumers pay for a lot of that tax. So this is effectively a super inefficient redistribution of wealth to farmers from everyone else in the country.

jonhendry18 7y ago
That's all true. But the tariffs China places on US agricultural products aren't a tax on US consumers, and don't produce revenue for the US. So American farmers are losing export sales due to Chinese tariffs, the sting of which Trump is trying to reduce by paying the farmers. Those payments probably aren't funded by tariff revenue collected by the US. So they'll probably be paid for through borrowing. Which may mean borrowing from China.