So what have we gotten from Donald Trump’s trade war?
How about $7.8 billion less in economic activity:
President Donald Trump’s trade battles cost the U.S. economy $7.8 billion in lost gross domestic product in 2018, a study by a team of economists at leading American universities published this week showed.
Authors of the paper said they analyzed the short-run impact of Trump’s actions and found that imports from targeted countries declined 31.5 percent while targeted U.S. exports fell by 11 percent. They also found that annual consumer and producer losses from higher costs of imports totaled $68.8 billion.
“After accounting for higher tariff revenue and gains to domestic producers from higher prices, the aggregate welfare loss was $7.8 billion,” or 0.04 percent of GDP, the researchers said [“Trump’s Trade War Cost U.S. Economy $7.8 Billion in 2018: Study,” Reuters via KELO Radio, 2019.03.15].
How about less buying power for the working class:
President Donald Trump’s former economic adviser Gary Cohn strongly criticized the administration’s trade policies, slamming tariffs as harmful to the economy and pointing to a record-setting trade deficit in 2018.
“Tariffs don’t work. If anything, they hurt the economy, because if you’re a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend,” Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who served as Trump’s first director of the National Economic Council, told Freakonomics radio in an interview broadcast Wednesday, CNBC reported. “If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy” [Jason Lemon, “Trump’s Former Economic Adviser Slams Administration over Trade War, Says Tariffs ‘Hurt the Economy’,” Newsweek, 2019.03.14].
How about a bigger trade deficit:
One reason to play up the goods trade deficit dollar figure is of course that President Donald Trump played it up constantly on the campaign trail in 2016, and he intimated that he would reduce it quickly. Instead, it has risen, not just in dollars but also as a share of GDP. Pretty much anyone with a passing knowledge of macroeconomics could have predicted that this would be the likely result of moves by Trump and Congress to stimulate the U.S. economy with bigger federal deficits. This stimulus seems to have worked, at least temporarily, and now — as the top White House economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, put it over the weekend — “the U.S. is bound to have a trade deficit in goods with the rest of the world because we are growing much faster than they are growing and so we are buying more of their goods.” That Trump himself did not see this coming is another indication that, as someone recently said, the man doesn’t understand much about macroeconomics [Justin Fox, “Trump Is Actually Making the Trade Deficit Bigger,” Bloomberg, 2019.03.14].
How about our reckless protectionism and negative leadership fueling a global economic slump:
First, rising tariffs will directly lower trade volumes and negatively affect multinational companies located in the United States and China. After the two world largest economies tariffs on each other, the trade between them and the world trade greatly declined. IMF estimates that the world trade volume will reduce to 4% in 2019, which is 0.1% lower from the estimation in October and 1.3% lower from the 2017 volume. Additionally, in a surveyconducted by AmCham Shanghai last September, 60% of the 432 American respondents believed that the tariffs would hurt their companies in China. They ranked the “loss of profits” (50.8%), the “higher production costs” (47.1%), and the “decreased demand for products” (41.8) as the top three worries. Some companies, such as GoPro Inc., announced their intention to move its manufacturing factories out of China in December.
Second, people’s estimation about trade risks has changed dramatically in the last six months, which poses a huge threat to the global economy. People’s confidence in economic liberalism has been shaken greatly. After one country embraces protectionism by building trade barriers, the security dilemma will seduce other countries to adopt “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies. The increasing uncertainty will reduce people’s confidence in trade and thus decrease global investment. In the 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, nearly 30% of CEOs predicted a global economy decline, compared with a 5% last year [Rong Qin, “Is a New Global Economic Storm Brewing?” Diplomatic Courier, 2019.03.15].
In typical Newspeak, Big Brother Trump seeks to “Make America Great Again” by diminishing everyone’s economy.
At trump’s Mar-a-Largo, which translated into Chinese means whorehouse, the Chinese supply the women and the influence. The wealthy elite sometimes get busted though as the owner of the New England Patriots got taped dealing with the Chinese madam who sits at the right hand of trump when he is there.
If you have $100,000.00 bucks laying around and want influence, here ya go.
“The letter, circulated to dozens of wealthy entrepreneurs in China last week, looked official. Topped with the insignia of a real Republican committee raising money for the party and President Trump’s reelection campaign, it purported to offer a handshake and a one-on-one photo with the president for $100,000 — a “VVIP” trip “to be remembered for a lifetime.”
The invitation, which Republican Party officials say they had nothing to do with, was not the only such offer. At least two other China-based companies circulated similar solicitations in the past week, offering access to Trump at an official fundraiser in Dallas on May 31, and charging two or three times the price of a ticket.” Washington Post May 25, 2018
Dick Cheney once said that “Deficits don’t matter” and then we went into the meltdown of 2008. We are at it again…all under Republican leadership. The cycle continues farmers. You’re so screwed until a Democrat takes office in January 2021. You all better vote for that Democrat as well…if you want to survive, just like you did after President Obama took office. Times started to get good again…don’t forget that.
“People’s confidence in economic liberalism has been shaken greatly.”
How do tariffs and protectionism equal “economic liberalism”?
One part of the economic equation nearly always omitted when discussing economic slumps is the role of massive executive compensation and meager labor wages. The first could be cut by half across the board while incurring no hardships. The resulting freed up $ could be redirected in 2 ways- higher wages and lower costs to the consumer for the product.
Debbonomics. You’re welcome.
(Greedy SOBs always tick me off.😡)
When trump voters drive around with bumper stickers that say “deplorable and proud of it”, they deserve every possible kind of intercourse that trump gives them. For the rest of us, we just watch and wait for 2020.( and no sympathy or empathy required for their ignorance).
This just caught one of my eyes, in Texas Tesla cannot sell vehicles directly to Texans. Texans have bought thousands of Teslas but all come from other states. Now Texas is being pressured to prevent Tesla from servicing their own vehicles in state. I thought wingnuts were jolly good to go on free market principles.
https://electrek.co/2019/03/16/tesla-service-ban-texas/
Trump is going after both GM and the labor union official for the closure of the GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/17/trump-criticizes-gm-over-lordstown-ohio-facility-closure.html
The problem with just making more Chevy Cruzes is that you can’t keep manufacturing cars that people will not buy, regardless of how good of a car it is. Similar to building a lot more wind turbines if they do not deliver energy when people demand it.
What he could do is purchase Cruzes for government use, or get China to buy more of them…but that is not going to happen.
trump is clearly intoxicated on his Adderall, the union dude contacted him directly, according to your link.
“Green has written two letters to Trump asking him to save the plant and its jobs, local TV stations WKBN reported in February. In a February letter shared by the news outlet, Green implored Trump to make a case for the facility. Green noted that the president had not responded to a first letter he sent in July 2018.
“While this may not seem that important to you, it will have a devastating impact on many families, business and communities, especially here in the Mahoning Valley, a place that I call home,” the union official wrote to the president.”
As long as folks want the Silverado’s and the F-250’s, kind of hard to sell a compact here. China and the rest of the world are building electric and small cars for their consumers, we are not. So why bother to open a plant that cannot sell a product? Hey, didn’t Russia used to do that same thing? But of course it did. We are getting so alike, I wonder why.
I know Green had to give it a shot, but what a total waste of time to write a letter pleading for help from that wackjob. Frantic Flaccid Fool does not care about anyone but himself, unless you’ve got piles of $$$ for him.
The Strategic Air Command is flooded! One third of Offutt Air Force Base is underwater.
Not a peep from the creep called trump, too busy squeezing his twitter.
“Even the U.S. Air Force couldn’t stop the Mighty Missouri River from flooding Offutt Air Force Base.
Between Saturday night and early Sunday, the 55th Wing called off a 30-hour, round-the-clock sandbagging effort because the floodwaters were rising too fast.
“It was a lost cause. We gave up,” said Tech. Sgt. Rachelle Blake, a 55th Wing spokeswoman.
By Sunday morning, one-third of the base was underwater, she said. Thirty buildings, including the 55th Wing headquarters and the two major aircraft maintenance facilities, had been flooded with up to 8 feet of water, and 30 more structures damaged. About 3,000 feet of the base’s 11,700-foot runway was submerged. No one, though, had been injured.” https://www.omaha.com/news/military/one-third-of-offutt-underwater-at-least-buildings-damaged-in/article_631f9b34-5271-50e8-b5eb-19f488daaf32.html
What failed leadership from the artificial intelligence in Washington. The flood no one dare speaketh of https://weather.com/news/news/2019-03-16-deadly-flooding-midwest-impacts
Paul Krugman said,
“Consider the following example: pre-tariff, the U.S. imports some good from China that costs $100. Then the Trump administration imposes a 25% tariff, raising the price to consumers to $125. If we just keep importing that good from China, consumers lose $25 per unit purchased – but the government raises an extra $25 in taxes, leaving overall national income unchanged.
“Suppose, however, that importers shift to a more expensive source that isn’t subject to the tariff; suppose, for example, that they can buy the good from Vietnam for $115. Then consumers only lose $15 – but there is no tariff revenue, so that $15 is a loss for the nation as a whole….
“Putting it all together, the Trump tariffs have raised consumer prices, rather than depressing foreign earnings. Some revenue has been gained, but there has also been what amounts to tax avoidance as consumers turn to other, untaxed sources of what we used to import. But this tax avoidance itself comes at a cost, so the U.S. as a whole is left poorer.
“Now, the numbers aren’t that big. The new paper puts the net welfare loss at $1.4 billion a month, or $17 billion a year; that’s less than 0.1 percent of U.S. GDP. But winning it isn’t.
“On Saturday economists from Columbia, Princeton, and the New York Federal Reserve released a paper, “The impact of the 2018 trade war on U.S. prices and welfare,” that used detailed import data to assess the tariffs’ impact. (The paper, by the way, is a beautiful piece of work.) The conclusion: to a first approximation, foreigners paid none of the bill, U.S. companies and consumers paid all of it. And the losses to U.S. consumers exceeded the revenue from the new tariffs, so the tariffs made America poorer overall.”
The US president ineptly, arrogantly and stupidly trashed the US economy.
American Soybean Association:
“The value of U.S. soybean exports to China has grown 26-fold in 10 years, from $414 million in 1996 to $14 billion in 2017. China imported 31 percent of U.S. production in 2017, equal to 60 percent of total U.S exports and nearly one in every three rows of harvested beans. Over the next 10 years, Chinese demand for soybeans is expected to account for most of the growth in global soybean trade, making it a prime market for the U.S. and other countries.
“U.S. soybean growers have realized a nearly 20 percent drop in soy prices since the threat of tariffs began last summer, and the future of soy growers’ relationship with China continues to be in jeopardy. China has pursued new means to procure soybeans and other protein crops, including maximizing soybean imports from other exporting countries, particularly Brazil.
“Growers have taken to Twitter and other social platforms today with the hashtag #185DaysStillNeedTrade, along with the popular #RescindtheTariffs hashtag to continue demanding that the Administration bring an end to its lingering trade war with China and help restore certainty and stability to the soy industry.”
Since trump is such a great business man, I would purpose that GM give him the plant with the condition that the trump family must operate the factory for 10 years building cars. The fortune that the trump family claims to have will disappear as will the trump minions who are killed and maimed on the highways when they buy the cars