I would encourage everyone to read this.   It's written from the point of view of a free trader, and it lays out the considerable problems we would have if we engaged in a real trade war with China.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps...2018-04-03

"Nobody wins from a trade war. When a nation seeks to punish another country with tariffs on its goods, exporters in the target country suffer, but so do consumers and import-consuming industries in the country imposing the tariffs. In fact, they may suffer more economic damage than the targeted country. If the targeted country retaliates, the damage is compounded further in both countries.

"This is exactly what is unfolding with the Trump administration’s aggressive trade actions against China, and the stakes are high. China is America’s third largest export market for goods. The Chinese tariffs announced this week hit $3 billion worth of U.S. exports, from nuts, fruits, and wine, to steel pipe. The next round could take aim at the $12 billion in soybeans, $16 billion in civilian aircraft, and $30 billion in industrial supplies that U.S. producers exported to China in 2017.

"Almost half of the $505 billion Americans imported from China last year were household goods that are staples of a working family’s budget, such as cell phones, toys, furniture, apparel and footwear. Tariffs on those items will hit tens of millions of Americans right in their pocketbooks.

"The bilateral deficit with China has always been a misleading measure of the trade relationship. The deficit is not driven by differing trade policies, but by such underlying factors as national rates of saving and investment, and the normal demand of consumers.

"In China, national savings exceed total investment, so its surplus savings flow across the Pacific to invest in the United States. When the Chinese purchase U.S. Treasury bonds TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.49%  , it helps our federal government fund its military and other operations with lower borrowing costs. It also prevents the federal government’s insatiable appetite for debt from crowding out private domestic investment."

---

It goes a little deeper than this article alludes to. This is not just about an overall trade balance with China. This is about realigning import/export costs of specific sectors that numerous countries have taken the US to the cleaners on. This is more about fair trade than free trade from this administrations point of view. Will it achieve their wanted result? Hard to say but we can expect an initial cost adjustment early on in some sectors which could bring slightly highers costs. Time will tell if it balances in the future. At least there will be a tangible reason for rising costs of goods versus the arbitrary one normally fed to us.

---

At the end of the day, this whole trade war may wind up being a lot more bark than bite. This is how Trump negotiates. Take an extreme position, and let them come to the table.

---

Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

At the end of the day, this whole trade war may wind up being a lot more bark than bite.  This is how Trump negotiates.  Take an extreme position, and let them come to the table.

Pretty much.  He's not the typical career politician who plays by the customary book.

He's not afraid to knock the enemy off center to get leverage.  It's in Art of the Deal.  It's just business.

When folks overreact to Trump, it's Trump forcing their hand.  Both friend and foe.  He then comes back closer to the center, which relieves them and he gets what he wanted to begin with.

He pulls the rod, then reels in the slack line.

To me, his Twitter is like a duck call.  He quacks, and they all come flying in.  And he picks them off.

---

"You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud."

At the end of the day, this whole trade war may wind up being a lot more bark than bite.  This is how Trump negotiates.  Take an extreme position, and let them come to the table.

Pretty much.  He's not the typical career politician who plays by the customary book.

He's not afraid to knock the enemy off center to get leverage.  It's in Art of the Deal.  It's just business.

When folks overreact to Trump, it's Trump forcing their hand.  Both friend and foe.  He then comes back closer to the center, which relieves them and he gets what he wanted to begin with.

He pulls the rod, then reels in the slack line.

To me, his Twitter is like a duck call.  He quacks, and they all come flying in.  And he picks them off.

Would someone please explain to me why so many people buy into the myth that Donald is some kind of great deal maker? How so. What great deals?

Sure, he's a great promoter, but so is Don King. He's made his name into a brand and sells that, to slap on hotels and golf courses. That's a great deal maker?

We know there is a book by that name, but Trump didn't write it. I doubt he's read it. He apparently doesn't read much.

Things seem to go much better when Donald keeps his mouth shut. When he talks trade war they have to send out poor Larry Kudlow to say, in so many words, "Ignore the guy with orange hair. We haven't imposed tariffs yet, and perhaps we never will." Just to save Wall Street.

But Donald has achieved one thing - he has some people thinking he's playing three-dimensional chess when he's really just bloviating.

---

The sun's not yellow, it's chicken.

North Korea is one clear example for those who aren't suffering from TDS/mental illness, or are completely ignorant of current events.

---

"You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud."

North Korea is one clear example for those who aren't suffering from TDS/mental illness, or are completely ignorant of current events.

Did they give up their nuclear weapons?  How did I miss that?

---

North Korea is one clear example for those who aren't suffering from TDS/mental illness, or are completely ignorant of current events.

Did they give up their nuclear weapons?  How did I miss that?

TDS can be cured.  All it needs is a healthy dose of reality.

---

"You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud."

Did they give up their nuclear weapons?  How did I miss that?

TDS can be cured.  All it needs is a healthy dose of reality.

I like your avatar, though.  One of the greatest movies of all time.

---

On the subject of tariffs, one only need to look up the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The kicker is both of those guys lost their re-election bids.

---

Would someone please explain to me why so many people buy into the myth that Donald is some kind of great deal maker? How so. What great deals?

Sure, he's a great promoter, but so is Don King. He's made his name into a brand and sells that, to slap on hotels and golf courses. That's a great deal maker?

We know there is a book by that name, but Trump didn't write it. I doubt he's read it. He apparently doesn't read much.

Things seem to go much better when Donald keeps his mouth shut. When he talks trade war they have to send out poor Larry Kudlow to say, in so many words, "Ignore the guy with orange hair. We haven't imposed tariffs yet, and perhaps we never will." Just to save Wall Street.

But Donald has achieved one thing - he has some people thinking he's playing three-dimensional chess when he's really just bloviating.

Come on, don't be so harsh on the Donny Boy! It takes fantastic intelligence and superior business acumen to bankrupt a casino.

---

Would someone please explain to me why so many people buy into the myth that Donald is some kind of great deal maker? How so. What great deals?

Sure, he's a great promoter, but so is Don King. He's made his name into a brand and sells that, to slap on hotels and golf courses. That's a great deal maker?

We know there is a book by that name, but Trump didn't write it. I doubt he's read it. He apparently doesn't read much.

Things seem to go much better when Donald keeps his mouth shut. When he talks trade war they have to send out poor Larry Kudlow to say, in so many words, "Ignore the guy with orange hair. We haven't imposed tariffs yet, and perhaps we never will." Just to save Wall Street.

But Donald has achieved one thing - he has some people thinking he's playing three-dimensional chess when he's really just bloviating.

Come on, don't be so harsh on the Donny Boy! It takes fantastic intelligence and superior business acumen to bankrupt a casino.

Casinos.

His casino group filed for bankruptcy at 1.7 billion in debt.  I'm somehow failing to see the art in that deal.

---

I would encourage everyone to read this.   It's written from the point of view of a free trader, and it lays out the considerable problems we would have if we engaged in a real trade war with China.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps...2018-04-03

"Nobody wins from a trade war. When a nation seeks to punish another country with tariffs on its goods, exporters in the target country suffer, but so do consumers and import-consuming industries in the country imposing the tariffs. In fact, they may suffer more economic damage than the targeted country. If the targeted country retaliates, the damage is compounded further in both countries.

"This is exactly what is unfolding with the Trump administration’s aggressive trade actions against China, and the stakes are high. China is America’s third largest export market for goods. The Chinese tariffs announced this week hit $3 billion worth of U.S. exports, from nuts, fruits, and wine, to steel pipe. The next round could take aim at the $12 billion in soybeans, $16 billion in civilian aircraft, and $30 billion in industrial supplies that U.S. producers exported to China in 2017.

"Almost half of the $505 billion Americans imported from China last year were household goods that are staples of a working family’s budget, such as cell phones, toys, furniture, apparel and footwear. Tariffs on those items will hit tens of millions of Americans right in their pocketbooks.

"The bilateral deficit with China has always been a misleading measure of the trade relationship. The deficit is not driven by differing trade policies, but by such underlying factors as national rates of saving and investment, and the normal demand of consumers.

"In China, national savings exceed total investment, so its surplus savings flow across the Pacific to invest in the United States. When the Chinese purchase U.S. Treasury bonds TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.49%  , it helps our federal government fund its military and other operations with lower borrowing costs. It also prevents the federal government’s insatiable appetite for debt from crowding out private domestic investment."

From your article:

The right way to approach trade with China is not to provoke an unwinnable trade war, but to seek international cooperation to address issues of mutual interest. In cooperation with other advanced economies, the United States should seek to encourage reform in China to address issues of intellectual property and steel overcapacity.

Such cooperation can yield beneficial results without the mutually destructive effects of a trade war.

How clueless can the author be? The US has been using just those approaches he recommends for the previous three administrations, with no success. Will Trump's threat of a trade war succeed? Maybe, maybe not, but at least it has a chance, rather than an approach that has a 24 year record of failure.

Or maybe you are among those who think that just letting China continue to steal intellectual property is a better alternative? That's certainly a valid position to take, although it wouldn't be my position.

---

                                                                          

"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

He really should focus on the intellectual property. If he can put a stop to it, then he'd save us a lot of money, and he'd get to call himself a winner. Expecting a zero balance or surplus with every country is unreasonable, and I'd like to think he knows that, so I think he's using these tariffs to gain leverage elsewhere.

---

Would someone please explain to me why so many people buy into the myth that Donald is some kind of great deal maker? How so. What great deals?

He must be a great deal maker to be able to stay out of jail given the list of illegal activities & resulting lawsuits that he's compiled over the years ...  money helps, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_affa...nald_Trump

---

In my continuing efforts to educate the uninformed and the misinformed, here is another article about a trade war with China.  

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ina-217830

" The words just now are a shadow of the actions that most of us rightly fear, and it is vital that we all take a deep breath and make a concerted effort to distinguish threats, bluster and modest action from a global trade war that echoes the retrenchment of the 1930s. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 levied duties of close to 60 percent on nearly 20,000 products, leading U.S. trade with the world to plunge nearly 75 percent. That was a trade war. What we are seeing today might be the first signs of one, but we are a long way from real conflict.

"That makes it an opportune time not to go any further. It may be, of course, that the Trump White House has in this arena found an ideal outlet for its tendency to speak loudly and carry a small stick."

"Trade statistics are highly problematic—we tend to fixate on the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S deficits, when in fact a large percentage of that is U.S. companies assembling items nominally “made in China” and then selling them in America. The iPhone is perhaps the best example. It is treated as a U.S. import from China at its announced import price of more than $200, but as many economists have shown, only a fraction of that goes to China. The rest is distributed among global suppliers and Apple itself, but arcane “country of origin rules” make it seem otherwise. That is true for almost all products others than commodities and agricultural goods. Our current trade numbers reflect supply chains of the 1950s but how goods are actually made in the 21st century."

"The final problem with the tariffs is that China is the fastest-growing export market for American goods and perhaps the largest potential market for U.S. services. Those services include Chinese tourism to the United States and Chinese students studying here, whose economic ripple effects are surely under-reported (a Chinese student paying rent shows up in no trade number, for instance). And those numbers don’t include China investing tens of billions in the U.S. to buy companies with its surplus dollars, nor its trillion-dollar investment in U.S. bonds."

---

No wonder iPhones suck. Made in China garbage.

---

In my continuing efforts to educate the uninformed and the misinformed, here is another article about a trade war with China.  

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ina-217830

" The words just now are a shadow of the actions that most of us rightly fear, and it is vital that we all take a deep breath and make a concerted effort to distinguish threats, bluster and modest action from a global trade war that echoes the retrenchment of the 1930s. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 levied duties of close to 60 percent on nearly 20,000 products, leading U.S. trade with the world to plunge nearly 75 percent. That was a trade war. What we are seeing today might be the first signs of one, but we are a long way from real conflict.

"That makes it an opportune time not to go any further. It may be, of course, that the Trump White House has in this arena found an ideal outlet for its tendency to speak loudly and carry a small stick."

"Trade statistics are highly problematic—we tend to fixate on the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S deficits, when in fact a large percentage of that is U.S. companies assembling items nominally “made in China” and then selling them in America. The iPhone is perhaps the best example. It is treated as a U.S. import from China at its announced import price of more than $200, but as many economists have shown, only a fraction of that goes to China. The rest is distributed among global suppliers and Apple itself, but arcane “country of origin rules” make it seem otherwise. That is true for almost all products others than commodities and agricultural goods. Our current trade numbers reflect supply chains of the 1950s but how goods are actually made in the 21st century."

"The final problem with the tariffs is that China is the fastest-growing export market for American goods and perhaps the largest potential market for U.S. services. Those services include Chinese tourism to the United States and Chinese students studying here, whose economic ripple effects are surely under-reported (a Chinese student paying rent shows up in no trade number, for instance). And those numbers don’t include China investing tens of billions in the U.S. to buy companies with its surplus dollars, nor its trillion-dollar investment in U.S. bonds."

Funny there's no mention of the theft of intellectual property by China. Are you OK with that?

---

                                                                          

"Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?"

Even if Trump's trade war is lunacy, at least he is doing something. Kick the hornet's nest and change the dynamic. It's not like he is risking a robust economy or anything.

---

In my continuing efforts to educate the uninformed and the misinformed, here is another article about a trade war with China.  

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ina-217830

" The words just now are a shadow of the actions that most of us rightly fear, and it is vital that we all take a deep breath and make a concerted effort to distinguish threats, bluster and modest action from a global trade war that echoes the retrenchment of the 1930s. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 levied duties of close to 60 percent on nearly 20,000 products, leading U.S. trade with the world to plunge nearly 75 percent. That was a trade war. What we are seeing today might be the first signs of one, but we are a long way from real conflict.

"That makes it an opportune time not to go any further. It may be, of course, that the Trump White House has in this arena found an ideal outlet for its tendency to speak loudly and carry a small stick."

"Trade statistics are highly problematic—we tend to fixate on the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S deficits, when in fact a large percentage of that is U.S. companies assembling items nominally “made in China” and then selling them in America. The iPhone is perhaps the best example. It is treated as a U.S. import from China at its announced import price of more than $200, but as many economists have shown, only a fraction of that goes to China. The rest is distributed among global suppliers and Apple itself, but arcane “country of origin rules” make it seem otherwise. That is true for almost all products others than commodities and agricultural goods. Our current trade numbers reflect supply chains of the 1950s but how goods are actually made in the 21st century."

"The final problem with the tariffs is that China is the fastest-growing export market for American goods and perhaps the largest potential market for U.S. services. Those services include Chinese tourism to the United States and Chinese students studying here, whose economic ripple effects are surely under-reported (a Chinese student paying rent shows up in no trade number, for instance). And those numbers don’t include China investing tens of billions in the U.S. to buy companies with its surplus dollars, nor its trillion-dollar investment in U.S. bonds."

Funny there's no mention of the theft of intellectual property by China. Are you OK with that?

It's in the article.

---