Trump Foreign Policy

[BigRedBuster]

 

Quote

 

The Trump-Kim Summit in Singapore may have accomplished many things. But President Donald Trump is perhaps the biggest winner, political scientist Ian Bremmer told CNBC. 

"Trump clearly gets what he wants more than the United States does," Bremmer said on "Power Lunch" Tuesday. "Trump wanted to make history. He wanted to do something no other president could do. He wanted to say, 'This was about me, and I made this happen.'"

"It's probably the biggest thing he's accomplished since he's become president, so far, in foreign policy," said Bremmer, who is president and founder of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm.

 

 

All about him.

 

[TGHusker]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Here is something I'm waiting to see.

 

Trump has created this entire battle amongst all of our best allies and trading partners claiming they are unfair to America and basically trying to demonize them into some type of economic terrorists against us.

 

So....now....let's say NK opens up their economy and society while getting rid of their nukes.

 

To do that, Trump is going to have to promise Kim Jong-Un something economically.  You know that's going to be bigly promises to pump money into the country, buy lots of things from them...etc.  We WILL end up with a trade deficit with them.  Their products and natural resources are going to be cheap and their public doesn't have any money to buy anything.

So....is he all of a sudden going to be saying a trade deficit with them is a HUGELY great deal for America?

 

 

The first business in - Trump Tower and Resorts" on the beach. 

[TGHusker]

Winners and losers in the agreement:

 

 

https://www.axios.com/china-japan-south-korea-trump-kim-summit-singapore-8af1dc01-54be-4ac6-a057-7296c4ae1a2c.html

Quote

 

China and North Korea are the clear winners from the Trump-Kim summit, while U.S. allies South Korea and Japan emerged the losers.

Why it matters: Experts are concerned that the terms of President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s Singapore agreement help U.S. adversaries and hurt allies.

 

 

[knapplc]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Trump has created this entire battle amongst all of our best allies and trading partners claiming they are unfair to America and basically trying to demonize them into some type of economic terrorists against us.

 

I'm going to admit that I know nothing about international trade, but I'm going to just hazard a guess that the reason America buys far more foreign goods than foreign countries buy of our goods is because we consume far more than any other nation.

 

We are a nation built on consumption, unique among our trading partners.  It would be nearly impossible for our trade to be at or nearly balanced unless other countries ramp up their consumption to at or near American levels.

 

Is that crazy, or am I on to something?

[TGHusker]

another list of winners / losers

 

 

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/12/17450974/trump-kim-jong-un-summit-winners

 

[TGHusker]

1 minute ago, knapplc said:

 

I'm going to admit that I know nothing about international trade, but I'm going to just hazard a guess that the reason America buys far more foreign goods than foreign countries buy of our goods is because we consume far more than any other nation.

 

We are a nation built on consumption, unique among our trading partners.  It would be nearly impossible for our trade to be at or nearly balanced unless other countries ramp up their consumption to at or near American levels.

 

Is that crazy, or am I on to something?

Not crazy at all (at least on this issue - just couldn't resist)  The fact is before WW 2 96% of what we consumed as a nation we produced.  One of the bones Nixon threw to other nations when we got completely off the gold standard  and allowed our currency to 'float' in 73(I believe it was 73) was that we would buy more goods from other countries.  And we've been seeing deficits since. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Moiraine]

3 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

I'm going to admit that I know nothing about international trade, but I'm going to just hazard a guess that the reason America buys far more foreign goods than foreign countries buy of our goods is because we consume far more than any other nation.

 

We are a nation built on consumption, unique among our trading partners.  It would be nearly impossible for our trade to be at or nearly balanced unless other countries ramp up their consumption to at or near American levels.

 

Is that crazy, or am I on to something?

 

 

That was one of my conclusions too. We're buying all sorts of s#!t people in lots of other countries have no idea they need. Like vegetable keepers:

 

 

 

I think Trump thinks trade is a zero-sum game, and that's not the case. If we have a deficit it doesn't necessarily mean we're getting screwed and the other country is winning.

 

Made up scenario time: Let's say Neverland ships us a bunch of diamonds and gold and metal and plastic they don't know what to do with and it costs $1B. Then Apple turns it into fancy new tech gadgets out of the raw materials and sells the gadgets for $10B. But we have a law (and we really do have laws like this) preventing our technology from being sold back to Neverland or any other country. We can only sell it domestically. So we have a $1B deficit with Neverland, but we're definitely not losing. They still have a pile of raw material. We have technology. And the Americans buying this technology from Apple aren't losing either. Maybe the technology makes produce grow 10x faster and allows farmers to have 5 different growing seasons over 1 summer. So we suddenly, due to this tech, have a giant surplus of food, which drastically drives down the domestic cost of food. Farmers aren't working any harder, yet now people can buy all the groceries they need in a week for only $20, which ends up saving them way more $ than the tech cost them. The farmers can make the same amount of money by, let's say, exporting an extra $500M of food outside the country. EVERYONE wins, including Neverland, but we have a $500M trade deficit to Neverland.

 

I know there have to be real life examples like this that are maybe not as extreme but show the same thing. America has a lot of products it makes from raw materials, but doesn't have enough of these raw materials without foreign trade, and lots of these products make our lives easier and allow us to be more productive doing other things. We can import items and use them solely for domestic purposes and still "win."

 

I would imagine the difference becomes more pronounced when you have a bunch of countries creating a lot of raw materials (e.g. China) and another country turning those raw materials into things (Us).

 

[RedDenver]

4 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

I'm going to admit that I know nothing about international trade, but I'm going to just hazard a guess that the reason America buys far more foreign goods than foreign countries buy of our goods is because we consume far more than any other nation.

 

We are a nation built on consumption, unique among our trading partners.  It would be nearly impossible for our trade to be at or nearly balanced unless other countries ramp up their consumption to at or near American levels.

 

Is that crazy, or am I on to something?

You're correct. We're the largest economy in the world, so it's not surprising we are also the largest consumer.

 

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

 

I think Trump thinks trade is a zero-sum game, and that's not the case.

 

Actually trade is a zero-sum game. For there to be countries that have a trade surplus, there must be countries with a trade deficit.

 

But you are correct that Trump thinks there are winners and losers based solely off deficit or surplus trading, but that's not the case.

[Moiraine]

20 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

Actually trade is a zero-sum game. For there to be countries that have a trade surplus, there must be countries with a trade deficit.

 

But you are correct that Trump thinks there are winners and losers based solely off deficit or surplus trading, but that's not the case.

 

 

As far as trade deficit/surplus only sum, yes. But not trade in general as in who makes money off of trade, which is what I meant. i.e. one country benefiting from trade (in general - not positive/negative deficit) does not mean the other country is doing the opposite. They can both be benefiting economically and often times are. In fact all countries in the world could potentially be making money because money is just a representation of an exchange of goods and different countries place different values on different goods.

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

As far as trade deficit/surplus only sum, yes. But not trade in general as in who makes money off of trade, which is what I meant. i.e. one country benefiting from trade (in general - not positive/negative deficit) does not mean the other country is doing the opposite. They can both be benefiting economically and often times are. In fact all countries in the world could potentially be making money because money is just a representation of an exchange of goods and different countries place different values on different goods.

Correct. I was pointing out that surplus/deficit is zero-sum.

[Moiraine]

2 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

Correct. I was pointing out that surplus/deficit is zero-sum.

 

 

I think Trump thinks trade overall is zero-sum, so if we have a trade deficit, it means we are losing in trade, period.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[jsneb83]

4 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

One has his name on it and the other didn't, what's contradicting about that? 

[Danny Bateman]

He's pretty obviously compromised by something at this point, right? Either Putin has something on him or he's so insecure he just wants to go down this road to show he can.

 

Either way, this is very bad. The U.S. president is either a Russian puppet or a useful idiot. We've got to band together and oust this cancer before it metastasizes too much further.

 

 

 

[Moiraine]

29 minutes ago, Clifford Franklin said:

He's pretty obviously compromised by something at this point, right? Either Putin has something on him or he's so insecure he just wants to go down this road to show he can.

 

Either way, this is very bad. The U.S. president is either a Russian puppet or a useful idiot. We've got to band together and oust this cancer before it metastasizes too much further.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a dream come true for Putin. He can't have possibly imagined things would work out this well. What Trump said applies to lots of areas of former soviet states. 

 

By that same logic, it's fine if we're invaded by England because we speak English and a lot of us like England.