Trump Domestic Policy - Budgets, etc

[Moiraine]

30 minutes ago, jsneb83 said:

I never understood how anyone could believe that a billionaire from New York would give a crap about farmers

 

A billionaire from New York could give a crap about farmers, but I'm not sure why anyone with a brain can't see through Trump to see that he doesn't.

[TGHusker]

Thanks Trump.  We are winning so much we cannot stand all of the winning.

 

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/china-gears-weaponize-rare-earths-002041977.html

 

Quote

 

Beijing is gearing up to use its dominance of rare earths to hit back in its deepening trade war with Washington.

A flurry of Chinese media reports on Wednesday, including an editorial in the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party, raised the prospect of Beijing cutting exports of the commodities that are critical in defense, energy, electronics and automobile sectors. The world’s biggest producer, China supplies about 80% of U.S. imports of rare earths, which are used in a host of applications from smartphones to electric vehicles and wind turbines.

The threat to weaponize strategic materials ratchets up the tension between the world’s two biggest economies before an expected meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at the G-20 meeting next month. It shows how China is weighing its options after the U.S. blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co., cutting off the supply of American components it needs to make its smartphones and networking gear.

“China, as the dominant producer of rare earths, has shown in the past that it can use rare earths as a bargaining chip when it comes to multilateral negotiations,” said George Bauk, Chief Executive Officer of Northern Minerals Ltd., which is producing rare earth carbonate from a pilot-scale project in Western Australia.

The U.S. shouldn’t underestimate China’s ability to fight the trade war, the People’s Daily said in an editorial Wednesday that used some historically significant language on the weight of China’s intent.

 

 

[TGHusker]

Trump:  "Let me hold a 1x12 in front of my face and you try to break it."       This is essentially the Trump economic program.  We throw tariffs at a country, now Mexico - again, thinking it will hurt them when in fact it hurts us.  What an idiot.   He has come to believe that this is his 'big stick'.  His tough boy act is only hurting the USA. 

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/us-stock-futures-fall-after-trump-announces-new-tariffs-on-mexico.html
 

Quote

 

Stocks tanked on Friday as investors feared President Donald Trump’s surprise threat of tariffs on all Mexico imports, amid a worsening trade war with China, could risk sending the U.S. economy into a recession.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 300 points lower, while the S&P 500 slid 1.2%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.3%. The S&P 500 was already down 5.3% this month through Thursday after trade talks fell apart with China and rhetoric on both sides worsened in May.

 

“President Trump’s latest trade bombshell … might turn out to be a short-lived threat that is quickly defused by commitments on border security, but it nonetheless looks damaging at a number of levels,” Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, wrote in a note. “At the big picture level, it suggests that Trump trade policy might well mean a permanent state of endemic uncertainty and instability in the global trading system not simply a hard-headed sequential re-set of prior arrangements that started with Mexico and proceeds via China to Europe and Japan.”

 

 

Quote

 

On Thursday evening, Trump announced the U.S. would impose a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports from June 10 until illegal immigration across the southern border was stopped.

 

 

Donald J. Trump

 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

 · 14h

 

On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied,......at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.

 

The White House added in a statement that tariffs would be raised if the immigration issue persisted, with the charges set to increase even further if Mexico fails to take “dramatic action” to reduce or eliminate the problem.

Mexico is one of the U.S. largest trade partners. The U.S. imports every year billions of dollars worth of chemicals, transportation equipment and other goods from Mexico.

 

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

1 hour ago, TGHusker said:

Trump:  "Let me hold a 1x12 in front of my face and you try to break it."       This is essentially the Trump economic program.  We throw tariffs at a country, now Mexico - again, thinking it will hurt them when in fact it hurts us.  What an idiot.   He has come to believe that this is his 'big stick'.  His tough boy act is only hurting the USA. 

 

Trump to Mexico = I'm pissed at you so I'm going to punish Americans.

[RedDenver]

 

[schriznoeder]

I just went to order a new RTIC cooler (made in China), and was faced with this fun surprise. So much winning.

[BigRedBuster]

10 hours ago, schriznoeder said:

I just went to order a new RTIC cooler (made in China), and was faced with this fun surprise. So much winning.

 

Well, since China is paying that tariff, send them a bill for $5.10.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[BigRedBuster]

Quote

“Job growth is moderating,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in a statement. “Labor shortages are impeding job growth, particularly at small companies, and layoffs at brick-and-mortar retailers are hurting.”

And yet....we don't want immigration of people who want to work.

[TGHusker]

Again- tariffs are just exercises in trying to hit oneself in the face.  Trump flippantly says our companies can source their goods from some place else.  Probably at inflated prices due to not having long term contracts as many businesses currently have with suppliers in Mexico and China.   You don't turn the switch quickly.

 

Of course Trump would combat higher prices for his business by buying the goods and then filing bankruptcy. What high price goods

[commando]

going to party like it's 1984

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Danny Bateman]

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

I'm currently reading Krugman's book Peddling Prosperity when he talks about how the field of economics changed from the 1960s/70s during Reagan's administration and up through the beginning of Clinton's (it was published in '93 IIRC).

 

In it he makes a distinction between serious academic economists who are concerned mainly with expanding knowledge with painstaking work and a political breed of economists known as "policy entrepreneurs" who use flimsy methods to produce appealing results they can sell to politicians as magic solutions for the economy.

 

He delves into the birth of supply-side economics that Reagan championed and it's wild. Supply side economics wasn't really backed by many serious economists - Robert Bartley, the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, largely created the movement himself with an ad hoc group of journalists, political staffers, consultants, etc. with a couple unconventional economists named Laffer (of the famous Laffer curve) and Mundell. Even with the backing of a couple actual economists, supply-side economics was mainly pushed in the pages of the WSJ and magazines rather than academic journals because it's still not taken very serious by most academic economists.

 

It's absolutely nuts that supply-side economics became the entire foundation of modern GOP economic thought. It's only good for those who stand to benefit from the answer always being "cut taxes."

[TGHusker]

Deficits are out of control - thanks to the tax cuts and increased spending.   Trump is doing what he does best - bankruptcy.

 

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/448220-may-deficit-surges-to-208b-42-percent-higher-than-last-year

 

[TGHusker]

21 hours ago, Danny Bateman said:

 

I'm currently reading Krugman's book Peddling Prosperity when he talks about how the field of economics changed from the 1960s/70s during Reagan's administration and up through the beginning of Clinton's (it was published in '93 IIRC).

 

In it he makes a distinction between serious academic economists who are concerned mainly with expanding knowledge with painstaking work and a political breed of economists known as "policy entrepreneurs" who use flimsy methods to produce appealing results they can sell to politicians as magic solutions for the economy.

 

He delves into the birth of supply-side economics that Reagan championed and it's wild. Supply side economics wasn't really backed by many serious economists - Robert Bartley, the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, largely created the movement himself with an ad hoc group of journalists, political staffers, consultants, etc. with a couple unconventional economists named Laffer (of the famous Laffer curve) and Mundell. Even with the backing of a couple actual economists, supply-side economics was mainly pushed in the pages of the WSJ and magazines rather than academic journals because it's still not taken very serious by most academic economists.

 

It's absolutely nuts that supply-side economics became the entire foundation of modern GOP economic thought. It's only good for those who stand to benefit from the answer always being "cut taxes."

Where the GOP went wrong is in making tax cuts a continued economic policy.  There is a point of diminishing returns and and even beyond that hurt.  Too much tax can be a wet blanket on growth, while too little taxation either stifles needed spending or runs up huge deficits as we never cut needed spending  - we always find more "needs' to spend money on.  As noted in my post above the deficits are out of control now - we haven't gotten the Reagan years growth but the tax cuts remain and spending has increased.    Even during the Reagan years there were targeted tax increases.    In the same way that it would be almost  blasphemy for a Dem to  say they were Pro-border wall, it is blasphemy for a GOPer to say they are pro-tax.   

Our partisan ways throw all reason out the window.