Well, and they should also talk about how tariffs hurts Americans.
Somehow, Donald Trump has gotten his followers to think raising their taxes is a good thing.
I would argue that where something is made is not as important as the company it benefits for me to purchase it.
Not that I would ever buy a car that wasn’t used, anyways. That first bit of depreciation always seems to make used worth it.
That’s a separate point from what I was saying but I’ll grant you it’s an important point. Too many discussions about the American “economy” tend to focus on the economy of American corporate executives. Even if we accept the notion that tariffs benefit America, we should acknowledge that they actually only benefit the handful of Americans who own a manufacturing company.
It’s the same thing with other economic “good news”. When typical Trumpers brag about how great a job Trump is doing because of high stock market prices, I feel like asking them how big their personal portfolio is.
Easier question is, are you just using the DOW to determine how well things are going, or if not what metrics are you using?
Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and China are (or have been) mercantalistic. As are Germany and other protectionist export oriented economies.
Mercantilism, according to Laura LaHay, in the Library of Economics and Liberty, “is economic nationalism for the purpose of building a wealthy and powerful state.” Economist Adam Smith coined the term mercantile system.
It can only last as long as the trading partners allow it to last. Sometimes they don’t have a choice but to allow the mercantile behaviour and that may be the case with America’s trading partners right now because it would be devastating to their economy if an actual trade war broke out.
Perhaps in America’s case it is more correct to call it protectionism rather than mercantalism because we are trying to get back to a balanced position rather than improve on an already good position.
Britain was an empire and you were a colony, you would not be a colony as the 51st through 60th states.
Trump had a unique message; most of the other 20 Republican candidates had slight variations of the same message. I expect to see the Republican party become more protectionist, more isolationist, less benevolent on the international stage. The new Republican party would have parked the tanks on the Iraqi oilfields and sucked them dry. The new Republican party would be more Machiavelli/Sun Tzu and less City on a Hill
Not much more than usual and they are not experiencing a lot more success than usual.
The thing about a democracy is that we do in fact start over every 2 years, 4 and 6 years. The only thing that is not subject to the election cycle is SCOTUS.
I think we should be fine. I suspect that when we elect our next Democratic Government, things will revert to normalcy.
I don’t see anyone moving away from the USA. People don’t really choose their trading partners so much as they pursue business opportunities. And right now, America is still the people you do business with to make money.
They’re just words… by our commander in chief. But still just bullshit words. He’s an embarrassing buffoon but hopefully he will serve as a cautionary tale to the rest of the world and future generations.
fair enough. It was insulting but that is this president’s stock in trade. Like some of the posters on this board he discovered that insults carry a lot of mileage and costs little in the near term.
I seriously doubt that Napoleon would have sold the Louisiana Purchase to Great Britain, but what’s with “the 51st through 60th states”?
Protectionism is not mercantilism. Mercantilism is the economic theory that there is only a finite amount of wealth in the world based on physical commodities like land or gold. People build up wealth by taking it from other people; the only way one person grows richer is if somebody else becomes poorer. Mercantilism then goes on to expend this to a national scale; nations need to compete against other nations in grabbing the most resources. If they don’t, those other nations will grab the resources first and become more powerful than the nation that practices restraint. Mercantilism was the economic theory that justified the first wave of imperialism. It also justified the exploitation of colonies because it said that if the home country spend money on the colonies, it would end up poorer and weaker. So the home countries had to ensure that money flowed from the colonies to the home country rather than the other way around.
Mercantilism essentially denied the possibility that you could create new wealth. So there was no point in investment; you weren’t putting money into something with the expectation it would become more valuable. All you were doing was spending money, which was then lost. The closest thing to an investment was doing something like buying a gun so you could go out and rob people and thereby get more money than the gun cost you. But that was just redistributing wealth not creating it.
Adam Smith threw this theory out when he pointed out that it was possible to create wealth. You can invest money and become richer without somebody else having to lose the money you’re gaining. For example, rather than buying a gun to rob people, you can buy some metal and wood and build a gun which you then sell. You’re happy because you sold the gun for more than you paid for the raw materials. The guy who bought the gun is happy because the gun is more valuable to him than the raw materials would have been. You have a transaction where both parties ended up with more than they started with; you have created wealth. This is capitalism and pretty much everyone believes in it, even people like the communists who don’t like it.
What happened in East Asia is sometimes called neomercantilism, which is not mercantilism. It’s basically just capitalism but with some restrictions on free trade.
But the subject was “dealt” with before he took office. The only rumblings of a Trade war were ones he (and some others on the right) created.
Gee, Dr. Trump ever since you stopped punching me in the face my nose pain went away, your a medical miracle worker!
This is just part of Trumps SOP
- Threaten to take action that would create a disaster
- get talked down by cooler heads
- decide against moves in step 1
- claim credit for averting disaster predicted in step 1.