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.
Why I Might Choose Clinton Over Trump
I can’t stand Hillary Clinton. She is a criminal that should be behind bars for life. However, nothing in her views (as fluid as they are) makes me think she would start a trade war with China. On the other hand, Donald Trump has made demagoguery of China a feature of his campaign. Larry Kudlow’s reassurances notwithstanding, there is a real significant possibility that Trump embraces the same devastating protectionism that kicked the great depression into high gear. In my opinion, nothing is as dangerous to our general prosperity and security as this. Therefore, until I can feel moderately sure that Trump won’t start a trade war, I can’t support him or even stand by and not vote against him.
Please tell me why I’m wrong, Ricochet. I hate the idea that our system has declined to the point that we have for vote for criminals to save us from disaster.
-E
Published in General
It is a shame that access to our market is our most powerful tool. I also stopped caring about being called a protectionist. It does not bother the Chinese , or the Japanese or the Indians. They would rather increase wealth than care about what they are called. The US used to have that attitude, when we became an economic world power. Now we let labels scare us.
Most countries practice some sort of currency manipulation – the levers include the interest rates the reserve bank sets and the notes they print for use. Both of these can be used to push the value of a currency down, thereby making it easier for it to weather economic shocks and crises. It isn’t actually illegal – or even untoward. If Governments didn’t do this they’d not be doing their job.
TKC- I suspect that this is where I reveal myself as one of those hated free-trade theorists, but I actually think we benefit in aggregate from our trade with China. To the extent that American industry has a hard time competing with Chinese manufacturing, it isn’t due to Chinese cheating. Europe has the same rules governing its trade with China and it doesn’t have nearly the level of trade deficit with China that we do. Why is that?
I know it means little to you free traders, but I have first hand experience in steel fabrication that says you are wildly incorrect. Subsidized finished steel to Chinese competitors at iron ore prices allowed them to bankrupt an industry of small to mid sized companies over a decade. Most of the machinery was sold for ten cents on the dollar to .. China.
Yes it was dumping and that was what convinced me that Milton Friedman never heard of a balance sheet when he said dumping was no problem. Economists unfortunately only look at transaction data and not asset depletion. Fortunately, economists do not run companies for that reason.
Labor cost was marginal and their transport cost to our market was huge. They won because our government did not recognize the industry as donors of scale, so they were on their own.
All those wal mart frying pans? Made with what used to be our equipment.
The Europeans understand asset values and protect them. Their governments trade negotiators are fiercely nationalistic.
The Economist’s policy section rated the risk of a Trump presidency as one of the top 10 risks to the global economy.
So, C and E, you are right.
Now cue the Trump people to say, “oh, but he didn’t mean what he said . . . “
In the general ranking of things, the Supreme Court has to rank below millions of people potentially starving around the world. Or our getting nuked.
Again, if you want us to vote for the Republican candidate, you should work extremely hard from now on to make Ted Cruz that candidate.
Sorry, and I hope the fall from the basement window isn’t too far, but I’m saying it. #nevertrump. I too fear that he will start a devastating trade war. And I also fear that he will start a shooting war. I’m not at all sure that Trump understands the difference between firing off a nasty tweet and firing off a nuclear missile, but given his narcissism and his uncontrollable temper, I don’t want to find out.
We’ll have no influence on Hillary and we know she is a radical progressive, will allow in more undocumented Democrats etc. etc. expanding Washington power. We know this. What do we know about Trump? He’s a thug but an empty vessel. He builds buildings but isn’t the architect, construction worker, engineer or designer, so he is used to relying on people who know what their doing. He’s probably also a crook, but maybe, unlike Hillary, we can make him our crook. Think Pinochet. He was a completely empty vessel, had no idea once he took over Chile, but US trained economists from Catolica gave him a program which he carried out and Chile underwent the only market revolution in the continent. David Lange in New Zealand was a left wing Socialist P.M. but had to do something about New Zealand being forced out of the Commonwealth and it’s subsidies and market access. His Minister of Finance, Douglas, gave him a market based set of reforms that transformed the place in short order. Even Lee Kuan Yew led the Singapore Socialist party, but in a tiny entrepôt island socialism made no sense, of course he was brilliant so it’s a bad example, but reality has a way of driving policy when it must. If we get to the point where Cruz cannot win, then to get conservative support we must demand a court appointment and conservative cabinet member or two.
Is this the same Economist’s policy section that endorsed Obama for President in 2012 on the strength of the economic miracle that is the ACA?
I am not arguing for Trump, just better sources to discredit his trade position.
I think it was pro-trade Mark Levin who asked how Trump thinks he can start a trade war all by himself?
China and the United States probably need each other anyway. Restrictions can probably only go so far. There was President George W. Bush’s 2002 steel tariff. “Both the George H. W. Bush administration and the Reagan administration also imposed import limits on steel.” The world didn’t end after that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff
Here’s a recent Larry Kudlow article from just 7 days ago:
http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/larry-kudlow-trade-china-president/2016/03/17/id/719631/
As to the trade war. There is in fact a problem which we have not dealt with. The problem has multiple causes but progressive policies are at it’s heart. We encumber entrepreneurial activity, create uncertainty, repress small business, over regulate our economy in general, extract rents from big and little business, impose high taxes and spend stupidly. Moreover, we pay people not to work and if they do not live in the right neighborhoods we choose not to educate them. We spend billions on something we call college education which is really a consumer good with little content. These insane policies slow growth and make adjustment to change, trade, new technology, demographic change exceedingly more difficult than it needs to be. We run trade deficits with the world because we spend more than we save. The rest of the world runs surpluses with us because they save more than they spend and drive their growth through export led growth. We stimulate our economy by spending more and saving less and that all, repeat all leads to an increase in external debt and imports. These are all things we can address with domestic policies. A trade war will make them all worse. Protectionism in any form will make them all worse.
Think of it as choosing between a compound fracture of the tibia (Trump) vs. stage 4 pancreatic cancer (Clinton).
I’ll take the fracture.
But if you seriously think Trump would be worse (however you define worse) for the country than Clinton, vote for Clinton to spare the country a Trump presidency. Then own the next 8 years of The Clinton Crime Family™ holding the reins of the Executive branch. It will be as bad as you can imagine, probably worse.
Agree 100%.
E: I don’t get the worry about a Trump trade deal. Congress must approve trade deals. We are not electing a dictator (although Obama has pushed the Executive branch to that level with no resistance from Congress). Trump can’t act on his own on this.
Pro tip: Hillary is and will be a disaster – she will save us from nothing. I will return once again to my favorite Kevin Williamson quote: The Clintons are the penicillin-resistant syphilis of American politics. We must be rid of these people.
Hillary is an evil person. Trump may be naive, narcissistic, and dumb but he isn’t evil like Hillary.
Pinochet?
I’m not going to comment on the Trump <–> Pinochet ’empty vessel,’ he’s-a-crook-but-let’s-make-him-our-crook strategy.
Just Google Pinochet human rights abuses. ‘Nuff said.
The New Zealand experiment was flawed, generated massive job losses and economic misery, and resulted in a spectacular falling out over policy (Douglas favored currency devaluation, de-regulation and the removal of both subsidies and tariffs) between Lange and Roger Douglas, who resigned his position as finance minister in 1987. Much of Lange’s economic plan was then not carried out, or it was undone, and Lange’s legacy is mixed, and often viewed as failed.
BTW, isn’t Singapore the place where they flay people alive in the public squares?
None of these examples reassures me much. When the best argument for Trump is ‘better the devil we don’t know,’ and the devil is Donald Trump, then perhaps it’s time to call it a day.
This is a really good conversation, y’all.
Included in the vast category of Things About Which I Know Nothing is trade…so I can’t enter in, only listen admiringly.
I wish the whole country had been discussing the issues (all of them) in this way for the past year.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but a trade war with China would require congressional action, right? The Prez can’t simply impose tariffs on a whim, can it?
In the matter of Trump v. Clinton, it comes down to what sort of personality you want in the White House, with the hope that they’d be limited by a non-insane congress.
I think they’d both be terrible, but having already shown utter contempt for the laws of the nation and complete fecklessness when it comes to making important decisions regarding personnel deployed overseas, and an eagerness to take contributions from foreign interests, a President Clinton might be a razor’s edge bit worse.
Say what you will about Trump, but a tendency to dither when lives are on the line probably wouldn’t be one of his vices, and he has no need to pander to foreign businesspeople for campaign contributions. Whether he’s use personal email to transmit classified information remains to be seen. Does he even know how to use a Blackberry? ;-)
Call me cynical, but I don’t see congress giving a President Clinton the same sort of push-back that it would likely give a President Trump. She’d likely get a wider berth from congress to wallow in her own crapulence.
Brent, no. That was The Economist magazine. This is their independent research organization.
If you think voting for a criminal who has sacrificed other peoples’ lives to protect her political ambitions is going to save you, I don’t think there’s anything that can be said that will change your mind.
Agreed that currency manipulation is not the extreme thing it was when there were dual exchange rates, etc.
It is diplomatic to talk about currency manipulation rather than point out tariffs. Tariffs have concentrated beneficiaries. Entire Chinese industries exist because of tariffs. If Trump pointed that out, the workers in those industries would burn down the US embassy.
Vague references to “currency manipulation” do not alarm specific Chinese.
We are a nation of Walmart shoppers, though? Also the Chinese investing cash into our economy isn’t exactly bleeding assets. They can’t remove mines or buildings. Also how will we regain comparative advantage in manufacturing compared to China back? At best we can raise tariffs in the US and produce and buy domestically. I don’t see us competing with Chinese made goods in Germany though. Will Americans want those manufacturing jobs if they are 10$ an hour jobs?
I think the real world economics of this still don’t favor the kinds of things you seem to want. In which case the level of Government disruption needed to bring reality in line would I think create more harm than good. As it always does in such cases.
That shifted it into second gear.
High gear was the New Deal socialism. That was what made the depression particularly long/bad in the US vs. Europe.
Please read Camille Paglia in today’s Salon (an unlikely source, eh?) …
This is why Trump’s winning, and why I won’t vote for Hillary (excerpts):
I will never cast my vote for a corrupt and incompetent candidate whose every policy is poll-tested in advance … [winning only because of the] Democratic National Committee[‘s] shameless manipulation and racketeering.
There is a huge gap between the teeth-gnashing fulminations of the anti-Trump mainstream media and the perfectly reasonable Trump supporters whom I hear calling into radio talk shows.
I don’t think I could ever pull the ballot for Hillary, but Trump’s latest escapade with the photo comparison of his wife and a particularly bad shot of Heidi Cruz was a new low even for him. The man is despicable, unfit to hold office even at a municipal level. I am completely disgusted with him and anyone who can continue to believe that he could possibly be worthy of the office of President of the United States.
Cuz I’ve read that a “trade war”, and a little protectionism , are only disastrous when the balance of trade is fairly equal. Now, it’s not. So those policies would help not hurt our economy at home. Trump is the only candidate who understands this.
#NeverClinton
#NeverTrump
I will vote for US Representative to stop either, and vote for Texas state candidates to preserve the most vibrant economy and greatest state in these United States.
I’m no Trump fan. But you believe Hillary won’t do what she’s promised, but think Trump is locked into doing exactly the things he has floated as possibilities but not promises? No thanks. If Trump is the Republican candidate, he gets my vote.
Can someone tell me where there’s an on-line community who supports limited government principals and talks about how to find and elect candidates that support those founding principals?
I know Trump is a problem but so is Hillary, and I think we’re in this tight spot today, at least in part, because the republican party moved leftward (big government republicanism) and crony-ward, and decided they were tired of their own base.
Unless those naughty GOPe folks live up to their Machiavellian reputation and save us from Trump, I anticipate abstaining in November. However, I have despairing moments when I consider voting for HRC. Sorry, Trumpsters, but your guy is just that bad.