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My two cents is that if this had been, from the start, a dedicated effort to decouple the US economy from Chinese producers, for national / economic security re
by sanderjd 1y ago
My two cents is that if this had been, from the start, a dedicated effort to decouple the US economy from Chinese producers, for national / economic security reasons, then they might have been able to convince me that the short term pain might result in something long-term beneficial.
The major problem they have with that, though, is that they started with Mexico and Canada, and then progressed to declaring (trade) war on the entire world, moves which are exactly the wrong thing if the goal was to painfully but beneficially decouple with China. In order to achieve that goal, we would have needed to strengthen our trading appliances with other countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. But they've done exactly the opposite.
(Note, though, that even this strategy wouldn't be getting much if any love from economists. It's hard to find credible economists who think tariffs are anything but dumb, economically. But we would see a lot more support from foreign policy folks, many of whom do think that economic decoupling from China would be good for non-economic reasons, despite being painful economically.)
- tootie 1y agoRenegotiating trade with Mexico and Canada was one of his most prominent achievements of his first term. Fair to say that deal wasn't substantially different from NAFTA, but it was a deal that he approved. To come back a few years later and blow it up as being completely unfair is just screaming that he is acting on pure emotion and not logic. Even if he were capable of giving a coherent justification for his actions, he's proven himself to be a completely unreliable negotiating partner. Other countries are refusing to deal with any intermediaries like Lutnick or Navarro because they are all pushing separate agendas and Trump has not held to any of them. They're just going to wait for him (or Congress) to break.
- sanderjd 1y agoYep, the giant Canada tariffs, in particular, as his first act on trade, was probably the most deeply weird and inexplicable thing I've seen a major world leader do in my lifetime. I've seen lots of policies I've disagreed with or despised, but very few that are just weird.
- donavanm 1y agoDont forget the dualities of “nato article 5 is for suckers, theyre on their own” followed by “europe needs to pay us for nato protection.” Then “nato needs to increase defense spending and take care of themselves” followed by “you need to buy us defense products!” Believing the stated (“sane washed”) strategic goals only makes the actions more damning as evidence of incompetence.