When Il Douche comes out and says the Exxon/Russia deal to drill the Arctic and sell that sweet crude would be just the thing to help America’s coal miners…
So far as I have been able to determine, there’s no trade distortion between us and the EU:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=856478
There are food subsidies within each nation and a flat tariff of 1.6%, but that includes the US. We have those same things. Justin Trudeau was quoted, during the G7 summit, saying something to the effect of, “Not even subsidies!?” And that’s presumably because he had just explained to Trump that outside of some minor subsidies to make sure that each nation had food security that there actually wasn’t anything but wide open free trade between the US, Canada, and the EU, which left Trump with no recourse except to say, “Well then, let’s remove the subsidies.”
It makes zero sense for Trump to suggest that food subsidies be removed, unless you assume that it was his only place to go after “You have unfair trade rules against us!” and having it pointed out that that wasn’t true. And yeah, maybe a year and a half ago, we could all believe that Trump didn’t know that there was no unfair trade rules against the US, but by now even he can’t have avoided being informed that there weren’t by his own experts. And one presumes that he would have run the idea of zero market distortion past his experts and they would have pointed out that each country needs food security and just a tiny amount of protectionism just to make sure that in an emergency - an embargo, and extreme weather event, war, etc. - that there’s a sufficient internal market to be able to survive, so you may as well ask the leaders to tear their own heads off their necks as ask for a change beyond what we have. And even if he wanted to negotiate a no-nothing rule, the political potential of removing things like corn subsidies in the US is completely impossible. Not to mention that this is all the exact opposite of the protectionist, pro-America trade setup that Trump asked for.
Trump went into the meeting with no intention of achieving anything nor proposal for something that he wanted. He had to rely on bald lies and preposterous ideas that went against every known aim that he might have been angling for. And we could say that the G7 meeting and his statements there are all just grandstanding for the sake of making headlines, but that doesn’t explain the actual tariffs.
What is Trump actually asking for? What does he want the EU and Canada to give him? By all indications, the only thing he has asked for are things that are illusory. Saying, “I want you to give us a fair deal.” When there is already a fair deal in place, isn’t a sufficient answer. Just because you’ve implied that it isn’t fair doesn’t make it so, and Trump is in the position to be aware that it ain’t so. And he hasn’t offered anything beyond the illusion.
The only thing that remains is provocation for provocations sake. And again, that makes sense if we’re just talking about the G7 meeting. But it doesn’t explain how we end up in the position where the United States is under self-imposed sanctions. How does shooting ourselves in the foot and then staring at everyone and saying, “Come on now y’all, I’ll do it again! You know I will!” And waving the gun at our other foot, how does that accomplish something? Doing it without posing any request makes no sense. Turning the gun on yourself makes no sense.
ISTM at first glance that the VAT issue is more complicated than the treatment in that thread. (Specifically, both domestic products and imports pay the tax, but the proceeds are used solely for domestic purposes, which in part offsets items that US employers typically pay, e.g. healthcare - this makes US products less competitive.) But I could be wrong about this, and let’s assume that Trump is 100% wrong about all of this.
The fact is that when people have deeply held convictions for 4 decades, they are reluctant to give them up when confronted with the facts, especially when the issues have some complexity and thus give room to fudge. This applies to people a lot better educated and more intellectually flexible than Trump. You can see some of it on this very MB. 
I don’t think there’s any reason to look further than that.
These measures hurt both sides. It’s not shooting yourself in the foot. It’s a game of chicken. What Trump believes is that the US has been the patsy in the game for too long, and by making clear that we would never impose sanctions due to the overriding free trade concerns, that we’ve given the opportunity for others to cheat a bit here and there, knowing that when push came to shove the US would be afraid to start a trade war. His thinking is that it’s the US’ turn to be the reckless ones in the game, and let others be the responsible ones.
Would this same argument apply to sales tax applied in the US to imports?
In theory it could. But the key question starts from the other side of the equation.
Are the foreign companies selling things in the US paying for things which the US government pays on behalf of the local companies? If this is so, then they’re at a competitive disadvantage. And this is in part funded by a tax which these foreign companies pay (whether directly or indirectly via a tax on the purchasers) then they would be subsidizing the competitive disadvantage.
I don’t know that the answer to the question is “yes”, however.
And in any event, this is an off-the-cuff thought about something that’s not really germane to the issue here.
If you are talking about healthcare, then you are correct that US companies are at a severe disadvantage compared to other countries where the employer is not made to be responsible for covering the fiscal cost of their employee’s health needs.
I’m not sure how that can be resolved. We cannot exactly demand that all the other countries in the world give up their universal healthcare coverage. They’d point to us as the example of what that’s a terrible idea.
I wonder if the fungibility of money would impact this question at all.
The question mushrooms, to be sure.
Now, now. Don’t get all (t)ruffled up over it.
I’ll try to give this a deeper thunk later (though I’ll note that VAT doesn’t explain Canada), but what about these?
It sure looks like he’s just trying to break up the EU.
Might be willing to settle for NATO. He can check on that pretty soon.
That the GOP liars and haters in the House are committing treason by trying to stop investigation of possible Russian collusion is being discussed in the Pit. But it should also be documented here. Start by reviewing excerpts from the recent Strzok hearing (Love him or hate him, but the commentator in this clip is one of the best news sources for Americans otherwise caught in the Lie Machine.)
The first seems pretty straightforward. I’ve not looked into this in depth, but it seems reasonable that to the extent that GB remains tied to the EU it will restrict their ability to negotiate an independent deal with the US. Trump would like to have a separate deal with GB, so he’s not keen on having them locked into the EU.
As for the second, the impression I get is that the guy said some Trumpian stuff. OK. Even if you want to attribute that to Trump, the flip side is that Trump himself has just said some stuff that goes in the opposite direction and made much bigger waves (criticizing the Germans for having made an energy deal with Russia).
The bottom line is that Trump says a lot of unpolitic things and is a loose cannon on all fronts. If you cherry-pick all the things that you think serve Russian interests and ignore the rest, then perhaps you would appear to have something of a case, but looking at the bigger picture I’m not seeing it at all.
I take it we all have seen how the FBI was out to get trump well before he was elected.
Peter Strzok,a former senior official in the FBI’s counterintelligence division, wassubpoenaed Friday to appear before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committeesnextweek as part of a Congressional investigation into the Justice Departmentand decisions made during the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Strzokworked on the Clinton investigation and was part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian influence in the 2016election until he was removed after text messages were unearthed during an internal probe.
“(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right?” wrote Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, in a text to agent Peter Strzok just months before the presidential election.** “No. No he’s not,” Strzok said, per a report released last week. “We’ll stop it.”**
>>>Okay, how did he plan to stop it? Its time to get a warrant on this guy, and see who he’s connected to. The FBI can not pick sides or stop a political candidate.
I think most observers felt that the Strzok conspiracy theory that the Republicans were peddling did not fare terribly well in yesterday’s hearing. If fact, it’s fair to day that Strzok kicked their collective ass six ways from Sunday.
Well, we’ve certainly seen the Republicans repeating this unsubstantiated allegation in an effort to undermine the Mueller investigation. And we saw Strzok calling out them out for their hypocrisy, dishonesty and treason. So, you know, the hearings went well.
Interesting how you emphasize that Page was “an FBI lawyer” and Strzok an agent and neglect to mention that these were private messages between two people having an affair rather than any sort of official FBI communication. I mean, I’m sure you’re aware of the affair; the GOP have made quite a lot of noise about it, ironically in defense of a serial liar and adulterer.
Also, if that’s your standard of evidence required for an investigation, why are you continuing to insist there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia when Don Jr openly shared a message of him agreeing to meet with the Russia government to discuss their offer to help with the Trump campaign? That’s a much stronger level of evidence than the Strzok-Page emails, yet strangely you seem reluctant to have it investigated. Why is that?
Finally, one might point out that if the FBI wanted to ‘stop’ Trump winning, Comey wouldn’t have made an announcement about investigating Clinton while simultaneously neglecting to mention any investigations into Trump. It’s funny how the FBI pretty much gave Trump that last boost to win the election, yet the GOP are claiming that the FBI were somehow out to get Trump. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the substantial body of evidence they are gathering against Trump’s various associates and family members…
Unsubstantiated allegation? No sir, the anti-Trump FBI messages are authentic. If you okay with a political party weaponing the FBI, our Democracy is at stake. We just can not have this, and lets not be naïve, the people in question used FBI servers. Who else was in on this? Was Trump wired tapped at any time?
How long as Muller been investigating? A while. He has ZERO evidence of collusion on Trump. It’s really an abuse of power to catch lower level types who did something else wrong, not related to the initial charge and trying to squeeze the little guys for political points.
It has been the liberal’s wet dream to impeach Trump. 1 ) To force Trump out of office would require concrete evidence he did something wrong. There is Nothing. 2 ) A vote to remove him requires 75% of the senate. If you believe that will happen, I’ve got some beach front property on the moon to sell you.
I bet if we made Senate Republicans turn over every text, e-mail and phone message they sent during 2015-2016 there would be an avalanche of Trump hate revealed. They’re just hypocritical revisionists.
We haven’t even seen “that,” much less “how.”
The text message uses the word “We”, as in, “We’ll stop it.” It doesn’t specify who “we” is. Strzok claims it means, “We, the American voters.” Partisan Republicans claim he means, “We, the FBI.”
If you grant literally everything the partisans want, then sure, he believed the FBI would stop it.
But that doesn’t get us to “how.” How exactly was the FBI out to get Trump?
I mean, they could’ve just announced that he was under investigation, if they wanted to be out to get him. That’s what they did to Clinton.
Or maybe you think they used mind-control rays.
But you gotta actually explain the “how” if you want us to believe we’ve seen the “how.”