Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Trump is a Nazi, Only More Elitist
Okay, I’ll admit: The headline here is clickbait.
But here’s a data point which I think proves Donald J. Trump — if, in fact, this needs proof — is blowing steam out of his pie-hole. (I’m not trying to dive into the Trump vs. GOPe argument. I’m just trying to help Rob run a business here. I want people to read this post, think about the data point I’m writing about, and then join Ricochet.)
Chinese exports plunged 20 percent last month:
The weaker trade figures will be a fresh blow for Beijing’s economic policymakers who are trying to persuade markets around the world that the nation’s economy is sound.
The economy grew at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century last year and analysts are also worried about the weakness of the nation’s currency and capital flowing out of the country.
Among China’s key exports, labour-intensive products such as toys and shoes fell 12.4 per cent in the first two months of the year.
Exports of cars decreased 33.5 per cent, the customs administration said.
“It’s really frightening to see trade fall like this,” said Zhou Hao, an economist at Commerzbank in Singapore. “Net exports, on the surface, don’t matter much for China’s headline growth, but the real role of exports for China is far bigger if employment and the related value chain are considered.”
China just doesn’t look to me like it’s killing us:
China used to be a currency manipulator to our detriment. (Remember when Mitt Romney was banging on about that? He was probably blowing steam out of his pie-hole, too. I think it was true, but that was in about 2007. Probably wasn’t true by 2012.)
Anyway, they’re not anymore, or if they’re manipulating it, it’s to our benefit. Now they seem to be propping the yuan up, not holding it down. So if anything, Chinese exports are now artificially expensive — which is one reason their trade is plummeting.
I just don’t think they’re killing us. Look:
The trend seems pretty clear. We’re doing well from China having MFN status. How else could those charts and those trendlines be interpreted?
Anyone have a different interpretation?
Published in Economics, Foreign Policy, General
-No $4!t
I would have sworn I wasn’t on Buzzfeed.
No, no, no, Claire. They are clearly ripping us off. Donald Trump has told us this and have you seen his polls? They are very good. We know we give them valuable money and what do we get in return? What? Can you name one thing? Donald Trump can’t and he is a business God!
The aqueduct?
Claire,
Don’t know how much time you have spend in the central kingdom. China has many small and medium sized businesses that produce things that lose money. Market share is a precept most Asians believe in for cultural reasons. They will beg, borrow and steal to keep share. They will lose money or break even or generate marginal profit contribution. However with the downturn domestically in China many of these products, be they plastic artificial pine boughs for Christmas trees, thin glass displays, polyester elastomeric track suits or baseball caps, are not carrying their weight. So many Chinese firms are being disintermediated. Cutting down on exports may actually restore some liquidity to the system. We are seeing a shake out in the private sector. China needs a shake out in the public sector as well – but that is not happening.
This news is not all that will be made of it. And there is bad side to this. Americans make the controllers, software, and precision equipment and tools to produce all this marginal Chinese production. So we will sell less of that.
Having said this – Trump has no understanding of foreign trade, business beyond swindle real estate deals in NYC, or being a CEO of anything. The Trump brand is cult driven and Trump is actually killing his brand long term with his candidacy. His name is over sold and like any “premium” brand over selling your brand name cheapens it in the eyes of the consumer.
Yeah, I suspect they’re trying to move investment into the service sector — trying to balance the economy, in other words. And maybe also trying to keep the yuan from taking a nosedive because they want to preserve its reputation for stability in the currency markets.
It’s a long tradition in this country for some people to seek personal gain by exaggerating problems that have peaked and are fading. Remember how Russia was going to take over the world in 1980? Then it was Japan in 1990? Now it is China. And it’s always the other’s fault. It’s never our fault because we are bloated, undereducated, corrupt or deep in debt. Trump is an absolute disaster on economics. If it could be done, the Wharton School would revoke his degree. But there is no such thing as malpractice in economics.
Ugh, Claire, don’t make the Trumpy send you to the Cornfield…
Uh-oh.
Oh, Trumpy, it’s a good thing you did. Yes it’s a very good thing!
I’m not sure I want to be part of Ricochet if the people you are trying to recruit are OK with calling Republican candidates Nazis.
Ricochet is, for me, a place to get away from the more hysterical and irrational PC hate mongers and discuss some actual issues, rather than tar and feather and smear and hyperventilate.
I thought we were the adults. It seems we were only one popular outsider away from being just like the Democrats.
I don’t support Trump, I think most of the issue based arguments against him are valid and significant. I hope to God he never becomes president. But if the only way we can express that is with Nazi, Racist, Evil Rich type smears, we have lost even if he isn’t president.
Lets all try to remember the point here is to stop Hillary and the Democrats, not to vilify the frontrunner, and by implication, all his supporters. It is NOT helpful.
Tongue in cheek or not, there should be a little more respect for the evil that was Hitler and the millions of his victims. As I said on another thread, comparing Trump to Hitler is akin to comparing a wolf whistle to a rape.
Oh, forgot. China is still killing us with exports. The gap may be better, but it is still yuuuge.
And it doesn’t matter what we know or think …. or the facts. What matters is that plant down in Unionville closed that used to make motor rotors and 200 people lost their jobs – oh, say…. 22 years ago. Unionville never recovered and the main street is boarded up. And everything we buy from China at Walmart falls apart. So, we are indeed getting killed by China – in our minds. Public perception is everything and people are angry about this – for better or worse.
China’s trade balance is tricky. Here is how it works: Japan, Korea, Taiwan design, China fabricates the parts/components and ships them to Japan, Korea, or Taiwan for assembly and American firms in turn sell them (Walmart, importers, re-branding, or brand management firms). In some important cases, American firms design and Japan, Korea, or Taiwan assemble before shipping them to American customers or to the US for final – mostly automated – assembly. If China’s exports of the good, profitable components are down, it represents the soft global economy and inventory chain re-balancing and not necessarily a serious long term problem for China. A decline of cheap, unprofitable, Chinese junk exports is not a victory for us.
The US is still a big final importer of Chinese products directly and indirectly – thank you Apple, Google, and Microsoft, the auto companies, American industry and service companies!
Sorry, I went back and corrected – China is having shake out of sorts in the private sector, and what I meant to say is “China nees a shake out in the public sector as well…”
It does not affect your response – but it improves my karma. Nemaste.
I’m not getting this post.
First you go overboard with your headline – offending Trump supporters probably, ya think.
Secondly, forgive my ignorance on economics, but how does showing increased US exports to China, with no companion chart on US imports from China, mean anything?
Thirdly, that China having a current economic irregularity/recession whatever you want to call it, doesn’t really dispel criticism of its unfavorable trade polices over the last couple of decades, does it?
Fourthly, you have any idea how we can afford to buff up our Pacific military posture to deter any Chinese military ‘adventurism’? Maybe a small tariff on Chinese imports might help a bit, seeing trade with us pays for their military buildup to a considerable degree. We can always relax tariffs elsewhere to avoid Smoot-Hawley effects can’t we?
Fifthly, you have any thoughts on loss of US manufacturing jobs to China over these same couple of decades?
Surely Godwin would be spinning in his grave by now save for the fact that he hasn’t been buried yet … which is probably just as well since he’s apparently still alive.
In 2015 China sent us $480 billion of goods and we send them around $120 billion of goods. The so-called trade deficit was $365 billion. Trump exaggerates that number by more than 50%, stating it as around $580 billion, as I recall from listening to him on the stump and in debates.
To Trump, they stole our money. “They are killing us on trade.” We get so much stuff from them. They work hard, live in poverty, and send all of their stuff to us. We buy Chinese goods voluntarily, like Trump’s hats, because they are good value for the price. All they get is our money, which eventually they will have to spend on stuff from us (directly or indirectly).
This is a great deal for us. They are the ones getting killed on trade. Trump doesn’t understand even a little bit of it, or worse, he does and he is a demagogic liar.
Not everyone in the US benefits from trade imbalances of this sort. Care to reflect on the losers a bit?
Claire,
The headline is not helpful.
James Madison:
This exact event happened to my hometown in the 1980’s. The city elders had said for 10 years that we didn’t need to recruit new business. We were really a bedroom community of Big City 30 miles away. We need to keep things nice and peaceful. Then Magnavox closed it’s plant and moved overseas. The local mines closed because they couldn’t produce a product profitably due to union wages. Main Street now looks like London during the Blitz. Change always comes.
BTW speaking of problems that are fading, I guess T didn’t notice either that Mexican migration has stopped and reversed. They are not coming any more and we are going to miss them when the blonde cleaning lady will require 3x the wages.
and? What is “the rest of the story?”
They do actually benefit, they just don’t see directly, as they do a job loss. Which in and of itself is not often directly attributable to trade either. What about all the losers created through productivity gains? Second off losers are often just smaller winners. What animates people in this is often that one segment of the population is gaining wealth faster more so than that they are loosing any wealth in absolute terms.
People always seems happy to have less in absolute terms if it means having more in relative terms. I don’t get that mentality. Must be a result form years of being graded on a curve.
This is academic talk. We lost lots of ‘good’ jobs, that impacted a significant portion of our country, and pure free trade folks lose sight of the harm inflicted on that segment. It’s why Republicans lose elections, they demonstrate, just like you do, how indifferent we are to the adverse effects, just waving our hands and making general glowing observations about how everyone benefits from lower prices at Walmart. Conservatism is different from this kind of Republicanism. It cares for more things than just how to proliferate low prices at Walmart and Target.
Agree with Valiuth. When Apple introduced the iPhone, there were “adverse effects” on Blackberry. What do you suggest?
I suggest you address my point instead of making light of the matter. Just proves you can’t deal with the hard facts concerning loss of manufacturing jobs to China. Would destroy your nice little theoretical model of the advantages of perfect free trade. Can’t have that, can we.
No, it’s not. At least, not to any thoughtful conservative and what I used to think was the Republican party. When Thatcher took on the coal miners, she did so because Britain was a dysfunctional basket case. There was no alternative. The mining communities that were destroyed by this still haven’t recovered. No question about that. They lost to free trade — from imported cheaper coal, from China and Australia, to other energy sources. Britain, overall, was rescued from socialist paralysis and certain terminal decline, but the Yorkshire mining communities never recovered, and they’re bitter about it to this day. Many are the first to join nationalist and neo-Nazi movements, too.
I don’t think any sensate person would say there’s no cost to market economies, and that everyone is always enriched by them. But those of us who prefer to see markets make these decisions, instead of bureaucrats or trade union bosses, do so because they think, generally, that they allocate resources far more efficiently and in accord with more people’s real preferences. And do this so much better, in fact, that nations which try to protect their populations against market forces end up collapsing. (See: USSR, but also see Britain in the 1970s.)
No thoughtful person says, “Everyone’s a winner in a free market.” But anyone who looks at the evidence will say, “There’s no alternative.”
Well, you missed twice. Trump is not a nazi and he is not elitist. Trump is just a boor.
From a huge Trump detractor: the title of this post is horrible.
I thought Ricochet was premised on the notion that calling anyone a Nazi is not acceptable under any circumstances (unless the person is actually a card-carrying member of the Nazi party), including parody, satire, and clickbait. For this to be in the title of a post on the Main Feed written by a founding editor is disgraceful.
This is so infantile. You have a flair for the False Alternative, I must say, Ms. B. We lose election after election because you deal in nice abstract theory and don’t address real world impacts. As if the two choices you posit are the only two options. Scheisse, this level of reasoning debauches the Conservative brand. Where is the adult thread on Ricochet?
“those of us who prefer to see markets make these decisions, instead of bureaucrats or trade union bosses“? Sheesh, boy I must be really stupid if I don’t see that that is the inevitable result of undertaking consideration of some trade restrictions with China. How could I be so clueless?
China is a state run dictatorship that is building a massive military with money’s we spent at Walmart – a direct consequence of lax trade conditions over several decades, and you, merrily roll along thinking how clever you were to arrange for so robust an economic miracle. And we, generally free-traders, lose election after election to blue collar voter allegiance to a sympathetic Democrat party, in contrast to a tone-deaf Republican one.
The headline is designed to get my attention and to get me to read the article. It succeeded in achieving the first objective but is counterproductive with respect to the second. You got my attention, Ms. Berlinski, but only to comment on the headline. I can’t possibly take seriously the opinions of the author of that intemperate insult.
Loutish as Mr. Trump is, he doesn’t compare to the rogues gallery of Nazis. To suggest otherwise is characteristic of the false moral equivalence in which the left normally indulges. We’re better than that.