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It's not that surprising if you understand that Trump has never been anti-trade. The goal of the tariffs has always been "balanced trade": getting other countri

It's not that surprising if you understand that Trump has never been anti-trade. The goal of the tariffs has always been "balanced trade": getting other countries to renegotiate the imbalanced trade deals setup by previous administrations of both parties for the benefit of their friends who made bank on the imbalance. Whether or not we agree that "balanced trade" is a good idea or his methods are a good way of getting it, that's been the stated goal from the start, contra the media hysteria. Other countries aren't stupid, so they know that, and while they're naturally reluctant to give up the sweet deals they've had with the US consumer market, they don't want to give up access to that market. That gives that market a lot of power in the discussion, power which simply hasn't been exercised before now because the people at the top liked the status quo.

mindslight 1y ago
"Balanced trade" is still just a concept from the Trump fictional universe though, alongside other nonsense like needing physical goods making for a strong bargaining position. Outside of the fictional universe "balanced trade" means very little, because it doesn't take into account services, imaginary property, or our special ability to trade away long-term IOUs in a currency that we can arbitrarily devalue when need be. I do completely agree with the foundation of the argument that our privileged position as the world reserve currency has been used to hollow out our industrial base, put the screws to labor, and gut the distributed main street economy. But if you want to right the ship you have to get "up" correct first, and the Trump fictional universe definition of "up" is very obviously not correct. Actually achieving this specious metric of "balanced trade" would mean basically destroying the economy we do have. So this administration claiming this as their metric of success means it's very hard to tell if/when they will/would abandon it to pull out of a death spiral.
IAmGraydon 1y ago
>Whether or not we agree that "balanced trade" is a good idea or his methods are a good way of getting it, that's been the stated goal from the start, contra the media hysteria. Oh, so it's not moving manufacturing back to the US? Because a week ago that's what you guys said it was about. I can hardly keep up with the goalpost moving. As of right now, it appears that he created a crisis, was forced out of his position, and is patting himself on the back for "fixing it". Absolutely nothing has been accomplished except to show the world that he is not a man of his word and that the economic environment is highly unstable and could be vaporized overnight by a tweet. If I'm missing something here, please correct me.

mindslight 1y ago

"Balanced trade" is still just a concept from the Trump fictional universe though, alongside other nonsense like needing physical goods making for a strong bargaining position. Outside of the fictional universe "balanced trade" means very little, because it doesn't take into account services, imaginary property, or our special ability to trade away long-term IOUs in a currency that we can arbitrarily devalue when need be. I do completely agree with the foundation of the argument that our privileged position as the world reserve currency has been used to hollow out our industrial base, put the screws to labor, and gut the distributed main street economy. But if you want to right the ship you have to get "up" correct first, and the Trump fictional universe definition of "up" is very obviously not correct. Actually achieving this specious metric of "balanced trade" would mean basically destroying the economy we do have. So this administration claiming this as their metric of success means it's very hard to tell if/when they will/would abandon it to pull out of a death spiral.

IAmGraydon 1y ago

>Whether or not we agree that "balanced trade" is a good idea or his methods are a good way of getting it, that's been the stated goal from the start, contra the media hysteria. Oh, so it's not moving manufacturing back to the US? Because a week ago that's what you guys said it was about. I can hardly keep up with the goalpost moving. As of right now, it appears that he created a crisis, was forced out of his position, and is patting himself on the back for "fixing it". Absolutely nothing has been accomplished except to show the world that he is not a man of his word and that the economic environment is highly unstable and could be vaporized overnight by a tweet. If I'm missing something here, please correct me.