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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
One thing I’ve noticed is that over the course of his twenty-five years hanging around the fringes of politics, he has frequently mentioned trade imbalances.
Clearly he feels Americans are not getting as much as they are giving.
He even mentioned it in his interview with Oprah in 1988. So his concern has nothing to do with this year’s race.
But I worry that he has not kept up with global macroeconomics. Like the senior citizen anti-war protesters in 2003, he may be stuck in the past on this issue.
The currency market is, like arbitrage, a very complicated area of modern finance.
I wish I understood it better so I could figure out if he is making sense or not.
I might add to the Libertarian contingent much in evidence here on this thread, Conservatism is not a Utopian-based belief system – it is precisely the opposite, an empirically based belief system. The absolutist adherence to pure free trade is not in the Conservative playbook. Free-trade works well, generally, so is much favored by conservatives, but there are other values that should leaven its appeal.
Whenever the pundits become hysterical about the falling dollar, my stockbroker husband always laughs and says that when the value of the dollar is going down, it is actually good news. It is when the value of the dollar is going up that we all need to worry. People in other countries seek out the dollar only they fear for their own currencies, when there is global unrest and turmoil. :) :)
There will always be winners and losers in any economy. The question is who decides? Are the W. Va. coal miners any less hurt because Obama made the choice instead of the free market? Tariffs bring no relief to them do they? Trump’s tariffs sound more like spiteful vengeance than any kind of solution.
Rubio suggested the closest thing I’ve heard to and answer, in saying we need more “welders and less philosophers” and was met with yawns and arguments about the value of philosophy. If this won’t cut it then what could gov. realistically do?
I thought my analogy said everything that needed to be said. It is creative destruction. Most loss of manufacturing jobs is caused by new technology, not by trade. Are we supposed to stall progress so people don’t lose their jobs? Or is it better to encourage people to retrain into higher value-added jobs? It is not perfect and some people fall behind but it is not a reason to throw out the whole system. I also don’t share your disdain for the “theoretical” and the “academic”. Some of it is fluff but a lot of it is good. By contrast, a theory that would force manufacturing of iPhones inside the US and would make us pay $1,500 for an iPhone, well, that’s a bad theory.
That is entirely dependent on why dollar is falling.
I know.
It was just funny. :) :)
Not yet, not yet. They had more time. He made a promising start though.
Double post, sorry
In what world is it true we lose election after election? While it is true we have lost the last 2 presidential election, we won the two prior and currently control both houses of Congress and more state houses and governorships than we have in decades.
Could you define what makes these jobs “good”. What is your criteria?
Yes, that’s boorish. Donald Todd says Trump is learning not to do so many boorish acts. Maybe he is and that would be a good thing. If Trump had actually served his fellow Americans(or anyone else), in any fashion, when he was a young adult he might have already learned these things. Such behavior is frequent among those who inherit wealth, regardless of their given talents, because of an absence of experiences that can engender empathy and our recent societal standards have approved this behavior.
And, the post title is boorish as well.
Agree. Avoiding this kind of click-baiting headline is expressly why Ricochet was founded. Absolutely deplorable, especially from an editor. This site is turning into a #NeverTrump screed-ville. I am starting to tune out Claire’s posts as she seems to be turning into a “my way or the highway” type of writer.
Should I mourn the advances in agricultural that enables my father to farm thousands of acres (and feed countless lives) vs seeing my family farm only a strip of field in one family of hundreds working (and feeding far fewer individuals) on Latifundas (I assume those past jobs as serfs were “good” jobs)? Technological advances and trade have only benefited everyone.
When a sector drastically increases production to the point that it requires far fewer manpower that manpower is freed to improve other sectors and work in other sectors. An example of this is industrialization.
The difference was not that people magically decided to live in cities for factory jobs but that farming itself was improving in yield and required far fewer men, women, and children while factories were being constructed which required labor and had previously not been accessible due to the skill required for the work.
Increases in production and trade have enabled countless individuals to live lives that would have been fantasy 100 years ago.
The issue is not trade but costs and barriers imposed on society by the state which act to hamper new innovation and reallocation in order to protect those “good” jobs.
And this is what we see in the US. Most of the country moves on, much of it doesn’t clinging to memories of secure union jobs working at the Westinghouse meter plant that was closed in 1989 and converted to a warehouse for Hyundai service parts.
Americans are right real hourly wages have not risen, but the cost of Chinese stuff saves us about $4-5,000 a year in direct and hidden costs, along with the more disciplined, volume delivery chains (Walmart). The costs of much of what we buy – clothing, comparable transportation (without safety, quality, and benefits improvements), and housing has not risen that much. Food is more expensive and less expensive. Services and medicine are more costly — but those don’t compete with foreign sources and technology is more developed. Drugs are more expensive and benefits much, much greater.
Hourly workers also are eligible for more Federal benefits and more health care that are not directly counted in average real hourly wages. When I see how people live today, few are doing worse than they were say 20 years ago if they avoided crime, alcohol, drugs, stayed in school and did not have children too soon.
Woody Allen is wrong. Life is not 90% about showing up. It is about discipline.
Who is advocating this – I must have missed the comment?
I, now, advocate that we should have some tariffs in place for trade with China, to be adjusted up or down based on a number of factors:
Everybody on Ricochet knows this stuff.
Well said,
Mr. Burke.….I mean Arcane. Definitely soaring today through this thread. Accountability. Tough grading. Good discipline. Glad I did not make a post today. You are on. You are sharp! Don’t sit down lest you cut the upholstery. ;-)But,…true conservatism is pretty wedded to free markets unless they are not really free (corrupted by people like Donald Trump paying bribes, favors or lucre to politicians), operating at advantage or disrupted by catastrophe. Free markets should not be allowed to sacrifice the most important bounds and obligations we have to family, community, society, and past and future generations. Which also generally support the efficiency of perfect competition – free markets.
So you are right, and conservatism is too.
Libertarian doctrine is beyond my IQ. 50 Shades of Gray. :-0
Agree with all except 3 which is too hard to measure. Two years ago, we were convinced that the yuan was undervalued. Now it is the opposite.
So do you concede that I am right? (I am a bit confused) Why are you arguing against free trade then? Free trade does not annihilate another’s job (or that specific job, not their chances at employment), advances in production does.
GWBush just barely won, by the narrowest of margins. We have no mandate to foster and extend free trade because we don’t reckon the cost to those hit hardest by its impacts. If Obama had been half sane we’d have no chance in the forthcoming election. Had James Webb been President the last 7 yrs we’d be looking at losing control of Congress to boot.
I don’t see how two individuals freely producing, trading, and consuming goods could ever logically imply damage to a family or a community for that matter. Does it not actually increase or engender good will between two individuals (regardless of their area, creed, or ethnicity) or groups and thus further’s the love between men?
Its consensual, to the benefit of both, and does no harm. I fail to see how free trade is a bad thing to be honest. When I trade my dollars for that pizza at Pizza Hut, I want the Pizza more than the dollars and they want the dollars more than the Pizza. We are both made better off.
Likewise this can be said of those individuals and businesses purchasing from China to the USA (and why are they representative of the entire USA when considering trade, why do they equal the USA, they are only some of the USA)
Thanks for the compliments (I think). So, JM, do you have an opinion about China’s trade policies over the last couple of decades? When folks here talk about “Free” trade, does that word mean what they think it means, as regards China trade policy?
I’m not. I’m arguing that it be conducted in balance with other values. We, conservatives need to be a bit more invested in the fate of our blue collar workers who, perhaps very unfairly, lose their jobs to Chinese cheap labor. The impact on our manufacturing communities needs to be felt more broadly then it is.
The Chinese have been granted an unbelievable boon in having unfettered access to our markets and we negotiated nothing in return. Just stupid. All because we had implicit faith that the open door policy would liberalize China, willy nilly. Well so it did, until it didn’t any longer.
As soon as the liberalization stopped, if not sooner, we should have had tariffs in place that we dialed up or down depending on how China conducted itself. Now we have a massive military to contend with over there, mostly paid for by clean, crisp American dollars. And our manufacturing sector has been gutted (or so I hear – confess to be somewhat accepting of the conventional wisdom on this score.)
No one else trades with China? All their might is our sin (not their own free will)?
Manufacturing is not gone from America. It has changed, some of it left and some of it has been upgraded. We still produce plenty of goods and have trade surpluses with other nations.
If you are looking for blame on the loss of blue collar jobs, then look at the congressional archives.
You know what it means when someone barely wins? It means he didn’t lose.
As for your counter factuals, they are not falsifiable so not worth discussing.
I’m with PHenry – I would call the headline slander, but that’s just me – and didn’t Susan mention can we get back to some civility? Calling someone a Nazi that is running for president? Ok – well I think we have bigger problems brewing – it seems there is a lot of talk stateside about the Republican elites banding their cash and hurling attack ads at both Trump & Cruz (?) and there’s some rumor about a brokered convention – whatever that is. Talk radio is all over it saying “dislike whatever candidate you want, but the will of the people – their vote – determines who is president”. People that are wanting to jump in now had their chance when we had 17 people running – states have already voted.
Republicans going to this extent to attack the remaining candidates that the people prefer to this point, instead of using their resources against Hillary, is sickening – it’s alienating people even further from the party. So I’m saying its just not helpful to use the Nazi analogy, but you can if you want.
If you were stateside, you would hear the rumbling from an ear to the ground – a runaway train – on it are our freedoms and liberties to exercise the democratic process. I think both conventions are going to be volatile – just what we need more of, instead of a positive experience for our country. After 8 years of Obama, we don’t need volatile.
Toretto’s Law applies to politics as well as racing.
Isn’t truth a defense against slander and libel?