Politicians talk of trade deficit as if it were something we are in debt over or some other sort of bad overall pattern. Between Texas and Tennesssee, which one has a trade deficit? Does anyone care? Should they? Between (i) individuals and firms in Texas and (ii) individuals and firms in Tennessee, they have free trade, trade as they fit, and each comes out ahead in each exchange. Last year Argentina won a free trade deal with EU, and this year, they are trying to win free trade with the US (zero tariffs). That is the way to go. Let us try freedom.
Yeah, I’m running a massive trade deficit with my grocery store, because I keep buying lots of stuff from them, but they don’t buy anything from me.
Some people are arguing that we should outsource low-paying jobs like manufacturing to other countries while we concentrate on high-paying jobs like finance. Besides the sense of “we don’t want to get our hands dirty by working with actual stuff, we want to work in nice office jobs,” the problem they’re overlooking is that money-printing is distorting the economy making certain jobs (such as finance) pay artificially high while others (such as manufacturing) pay artificially low. The solution to this problem is not tariffs, though; it’s to stop printing money.
If Trump is serious about tariffs replacing the income tax, he should see if he can get Congress to allow people to take tax credits for tariff payments.
2 hours ago, Boydstun said:
Politicians talk of trade deficit as if it were something we are in debt over or some other sort of bad overall pattern. Between Texas and Tennesssee, which one has a trade deficit? Does anyone care? Should they? Between (i) individuals and firms in Texas and (ii) individuals and firms in Tennessee, they have free trade, trade as they fit, and each comes out ahead in each exchange. Last year Argentina won a free trade deal with EU, and this year, they are trying to win free trade with the US (zero tariffs). That is the way to go. Let us try freedom.
The “trade deficit” is only one column of the accounting. It is the current account. There is also the “capital” account, and they balance. If we buy $50 Billion more in goods than Canada buys from us, we have a $50 Billion trade deficit. But what does Canada do with the extra $50 Billion? If they did nothing with it, why would the give us goods in return for it? What they do with it is invest it into US investments like stock, property, treasuries, etc. That is the capital account which balances with the current account. There is no “deficit.”
The trade deficit just means that the US is more attractive for investments to Canadians than Canada is to the US.
Tax hikes by other names: Inflation, Tariff.
South Africa’s been loading 60 percent on US imports while its exports there have been til now surcharged little in return? Did not know this.
There’s method in the semi-reciprocity madness. We’ll see most countries scrambling to drop import tariffs to stay in the lucrative US market I fancy.
https://youtu.be/qaU43ACtpyo?si=YdsaRH2onCHjiW3d
I wouldn’t buy what you guys call an orange even if it were free.
11 hours ago, whYNOT said:
There’s method in the semi-reciprocity madness. We’ll see most countries scrambling to drop import tariffs to stay in the lucrative US market I fancy.
There’s no method. Trump administration is mistakenly calling the trade deficits that US has with other countries as “tariffs” on the US and imposing tariffs based on this. There’s nothing reciprocal about this. These are not based on actual tariffs imposed on USA. Here are the tariff numbers:
Here is how the Trump administration calculated it (I added the last two columns on Excel, the rest are from Wikipedia
Idiot Americans are wrongly calling the trade imbalance as “tariffs”. They are calling the ‘trade imbalance’/import*100 as “tariffs charged to the USA” (they’re not) and then initiating tariffs. These aren’t reciprocal trariffs. These are just new tariffs, completely initiated by the US and unrelated to tariffs by other countries. Americans are calling it reciprocal tariffs because they want to feel like a victim (countries do impose tariffs on others but these numbers aren’t that). Americans are trash enough to pretend to be a victim while also pretending to be kind while initiating theft (hence the fake “semi-reciprocal” claim). It’s like the old American claim of spreading freedom while toppling more socialist democracies. US is initiating tariffs and blaming others and dumb conservatives believe whatever the government says.
Countries will not be scrambling to reduce tariffs because these “reciprocal tariffs” are not a response to tariffs initiated by other countries (that’s just American propaganda). If these were actual reciprocal tariffs, then it might have led some countries to reduce their trade barriers, but these aren’t that. These are tariffs initiated against the competitive advantages of other countries. Some countries will have a competitive advantage no matter what, so they’ll be tariffed by the US even if they have zero import tariffs (since the tariffs are based on trade imbalance). If anything, other countries are likely to impose reciprocal tariffs against these tariffs initiated by USA (the alternative would be for countries to destroy their own competitive advantage). No country is going to destroy their own competitive advantage to get lower tariff rates from the US. Ideally, they would impose real reciprocal traiffs against the fake reciprocal tariffs of the US and decouple from the US (as US will tariff others regardless of if other countries have import tariffs or not). An even better solution would be to stop using USD as international currecy as most countries will now have no reason to trade with the US as the US will tariff their competitive advantage. That would stop the nonsensical flow of money from the rest of the world into the overvalued US stock market, which is pretty much an artificial bubble.
The only “method” is that this is a transfer of income from US consumers to their own domestic corporations (if the corporations can produce goods slightly below the tariff rate). Capitalists are trying to destroy free trade, as they have always done throughout history: by tariffs, mercantalism, colonialism, protectionism and other rent seeking behaviors.
Edit: WSJ reported on this: “The tariffs are pegged to amounts it said other countries impose on the U.S. In many cases, those amounts appear to match a basic formula: the size of a country’s goods-trade imbalance with the U.S., divided by how much America imports from that nation.” These aren’t reciprocal tariffs, and there’s no way for other countries to counter these tariffs except by decoupling from the US (the alternative being to reduce their own competitive advantage, which no country will do).
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2 hours ago, human_murda said:
Here is how the Trump administration calculated it (I added the last two columns on Excel, the rest are from Wikipedia
I first used 2023 numbers. Here are the 2024 numbers these fake “tariffs charged to the USA” and the fake “semi-reciprocal tariffs” and pretend kindness are calculated from (last three columns are mine):
Countries below 10% got a 10% minimum. Those 10% aren’t actual tariffs either, just something made up by brain dead Americans.
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On 3/15/2025 at 11:00 AM, Boydstun said:
Last year Argentina won a free trade deal with EU, and this year, they are trying to win free trade with the US (zero tariffs). That is the way to go. Let us try freedom.
There are no free trade agreements anymore. Trump is imposing tariffs on all countries that have trade agreements with the US. Trump made up fake tariff numbers for countries that have little to no import tariffs for US goods. US has broken FTAs with every single country. All previous free trade agreements of the US are now null and void and countries probably won’t sign FTAs with the US anytime soon.
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Quote
‘“With today’s announcement, U.S. tariffs will approach levels not seen since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which incited a global trade war and deepened the Great Depression,” said Scott Lincicome and Colin Grabow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.’
This is Scott’s more off-the-cuff reaction to Trump’s supposedly “reciprocal” (they aren’t) tariffs. They:
Impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans without public/congressional input
Are based on secret calculations that have little, if any, connection to actual foreign trade barriers
Ignore all US tariff/non-tariff barriers, which in some cases are quite high
Are justified by a “national emergency” that reflects a total misunderstanding of how trade deficits work
Disregard US trade agreement commitments, including ones made by Trump himself
Will make us all poorer, and likely do real & lasting harm to the US economy (including in manufacturing)
Embolden our adversaries around the world
And those are just the ones off the top of my head."
[Barro](https://www.joshbarro.com/p/liberation-through-massive-tariffs?fbclid=IwY2xjawJc4exleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHuT_UaRY1S0PgRG8aSjC908eaBIyQKjaMKUGG4qk9BIv8ofpF6zKCAZW-vSH_aem_H1dOgxgpE6x4_bScQZ0mIw)
President Trump has threatened US Auto makers if they raise their prices. This is the closest to Mr. Thompson in power since President Nixon’s Wage and Price Controls. With the economic crisis Trump’s tariff’s will bring about over the next year and with the history of what happened to the Republican Congress in 1890 when they triggered this sort of wreckage, the current President may attempt another fake “national emergency” to interfere with the 2026 election. This could bring us closest to the dark days of Atlas Shrugged since the book was written. No, we don’t need a John Galt rescue. We need citizens saying with Galt to this Administration “get the hell out of my way.”
Let us try freedom.
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2 hours ago, Boydstun said:
President Trump has threatened US Auto makers if they raise their prices. This is the closest to Mr. Thompson in power since President Nixon’s Wage and Price Controls. With the economic crisis Trump’s tariff’s will bring about over the next year and with the history of what happened to the Republican Congress in 1890 when they triggered this sort of wreckage, the current President may attempt another fake “national emergency” to interfere with the 2026 election. This could bring us closest to the dark days of Atlas Shrugged since the book was written. No, we don’t need a John Galt rescue. We need citizens saying with Galt to this Administration “get the hell out of my way.”
Let us try freedom.
This, but this reddit user made an insightful point:
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3 hours ago, Boydstun said:
President Trump has threatened US Auto makers if they raise their prices.
Quote
President Trump on Saturday denied reports alleging he urged auto CEOs not to raise costs amid tariffs on foreign-made cars, instead doubling down on his decision to increase levies in an effort to create an American manufacturing boom.
“I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News.
“I couldn’t care less. I hope they raise their prices, because if they do, people are gonna buy American-made cars. We have plenty.”
The new name of the game, “RE-negotiation” of FTA’s - to zero/zero.
Who can tell, could such initiatives spell the beginning of the end for tariffs/protectionism? Though too much for now to expect any free-ish nation’s Gvt to drop out of trade agreements, duties and levies altogether.
An early start:
I, for one, am pleased the US has signaled it won’t any longer be presumed to be the globalist do-gooder. And it’s amusing that the socialist-Left is so concerned with “free” trade, competitiveness … and “Capitalism”!
12 hours ago, whYNOT said:
The new name of the game, “RE-negotiation” of FTA’s - to zero/zero.
. . .
Tony, do you know a place where President Trump has ever stated that is the way things should be: free trade? How is that negotiation with Argentina coming along? Their President has championed free trade flat out. All that is required from the US President is a simple “Yes”. What’s the hold up? No “let’s fight” photo-op from the heel-spur guy?
The recent posturing that the US is imposing tariffs in retaliation to tariffs specific to other countries has now played out to be just another big concocted lie. They looked for where there was a “trade deficit” and from its level called it a certain level of tariff against the US. So it turns out that it is the US who is introducing a tariff in the situation. Not in response to tariff, but in response to “trade deficit” as itemized upstream in this thread. All free exchanges are reciprocal even if one party is handing over money and the other side is handing over goods. Free trade is reciprocal. And we are not leftists just because we oppose the practices and policies of this President. He should declare against protectionism, withdraw all the tariffs he has introduced, and fire Navarro. Perhaps a year from now he will.
On 3/15/2025 at 5:00 PM, Boydstun said:
Politicians talk of trade deficit as if it were something we are in debt over or some other sort of bad overall pattern. Between Texas and Tennesssee, which one has a trade deficit? Does anyone care? Should they?
Well no, because Texas and Tennessee are governed by a single Constitution, the most relevant part of which is the Commerce Clause. For as long as it is enforced (denying states the right to regulate trade with other states), there is no reason for anyone to care.
However, in California, for example, there is a plan to ban the sale of gasoline powered cars by 2035. I assume that if SCOTUS allows that plan to be implemented, that’s a big enough violation of the principle that allowed the US to remain a federal union for 250 years, to cause serious infighting, including retaliation against goods produced in California.
I imagine that Texans will be pretty upset if gas powered cars become hard to come by, because California (and all the other blue states) banned them, thus making it hard for American manufacturers to compete. That’s obvious, isn’t it? If I’m a big car manufacturer, and I only have access to half the market you have access to, I’m not going to be able to compete against you, am I? Scale reduces production costs. Your bigger market is a significant advantage.
So, justifiably, Texans get upset. Texas continuing to blindly preach “free trade” with California, in the face of the reality that some Texans are in fact no longer able to market their products in that state, would be absurd. They would have to face up to the reality that the government of California has violated the rules.
That’s a big problem. In part because of the unfair trade deficit that would result from it, but that’s not the most important part of the problem. Car companies would complain about the numbers, but ordinary people wouldn’t care. The most important part of the problem is the influence California gains from this. This is power they’re well aware of. They are open about it. They are bragging about the fact that this will make them leaders. They are correct in this: they are leaders. By controlling trade, they get to control much more: they get to control the American way of life. Their decision will cause Texans to switch over to electric vehicles. That’s the only reason why they’re doing it. It’s not like California making the switch, by itself, would achieve their ambitions. Their ambitions are to control EVERYONE’s way of life, not just Californians’. That’s why the fairy tale they’re peddling is “the global catastrophe of climate change”. That’s the only kind of fairy tale that requires everyone on Earth to change their way of life to what they want it to be.
And if everyone else stands by and does nothing, it will likely work to some extent, because a big market like California banning gas powered cars, and then all the other blue states following suit, can kill gas engines.
The rational thing to do, in that scenario, for those states which don’t wish to be lead by California or by blue state politicians, is to retaliate and nullify the effect of this ban. It’s most definitely not to keep adhering to a now imaginary free trade principle, thus allowing Democrats to control the direction of the economy from that point on.
P.S. I understand that my example is a bit tedious and quite fictitious, but I think it explains what happens when trade is out of balance in terms of one side imposing far more regulation than the other. Perhaps it would’ve been better to just get to my real point: the EU has been doing exactly what I just described. For decades. That’s not fictitious. They’re 30 years ahead of California with this con. That’s why Trump is throwing a tantrum, not because he wants to kill global trade. He wants to wrestle control of it away from the EU bureaucrats who’ve been spreading their tentacles into every country that’s willing to negotiate what they call a “trade deal” … but what is actually an abdication of control of their economy to the EU bureaucracy.
As long as only the EU engages in controls, and the US does not (or does much less of it), the EU gets to dictate what trade, and even production, looks like. Plain and simple. And, as a life time citizen of the EU, I assure you: that’s bad. Really bad. The EU lawmakers and bureaucrats aren’t at the center of the European political spectrum. They’re at the far left. The EU is where all the freshly indoctrinated political studies grads go to practice being politicians, before they grow into sane adults, fit for running for office in their home countries (new party members not quite fit for national elections can be hidden on EU candidacy lists, and people will just vote for them without informing themselves, since no one really cares about the EU elections).
Imagine the US federal government, if Congress and the White House was filled up with anonymous people not quite ready to run for important elections, who were elected with 90%+ of the voters unaware of their names, let alone their views, receiving next to no media coverage. And the little they receive comes from the friendly leftist journalists who hang out in Bruxelles and report on the latest EU plan to save the oceans by banning plastic bags.
There has never been an issue with plastic bags floating down European rivers and ending up in oceans, btw. EVER. We don’t throw our trash into the river. Never have. But they’re “saving the oceans” anyway.
This is who America is appointing as the leaders of globalism, by embracing so-called “free trade”. You guys think refraining from tariffs gets you free trade, but what you’re actually getting is European Marxists indirectly running a big chunk of your economy.
Here’s a more obvious (but far less significant) example: American movie studios often cater to the CCP. Sometimes in subtle ways (a map gets changed around to show some island as “part of China” instead of the independent nation it is), sometimes in very obvious ways, like ordering actors they employ to never mention concentration camps or genocide. Not because China can come and arrest them if they don’t, but because it can ban any movie, for any reason, from being shown in China.
Americans are now watching what is, to some extent, Chinese communist propaganda. Why? Because Rand Paul wants free trade, and he’s too stupid to realize what he’s getting from China ain’t it.
Really? That’s the “free trade” we mustn’t allow big bad Trump to interfere with? I say let him. Who knows, maybe he can bring these people to the table, get some rules in place to limit their power. Just please try to keep an eye on the stock market, Donald. Don’t overdo it with the God complex. I’m not a big fan of waking up 15% poorer than last night.
Man if I had a bazillion dollars I could get a loan and buy stock at bargain prices , probably even get a bot to do it. Hopefully the bot would diversify, soak up some renter seeking profits , but also get in on some consumer product manufacturers that have access to large population groups whose actions can be predicted following heuristics based on levels of cultural and socio economic homogeneity eg nations.
Are Chinese smart phones iPhones or do they just work like them?
16 hours ago, stansfield123 said:
. . .
As long as only the EU engages in controls, . . . the EU gets to dictate what trade, and even production, looks like. . . .
The EU let go of controls last year in finally accepting free trade with a bloc of countries in South America.* The USA has been offered that free trade deal from Argentina et al. but is not willing to try freedom. The USA could champion a free trade deal with EU just as the President of Argentina did last year and earlier, but the US leadership is not willing to try freedom.
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Trump denial <– But Trump, like all other politicians, only more so, and like many salespersons, lies a lot. What’s a lie, a denial of a threat in a phone call, to him? Nothing.
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Since when is the Commander in Chief of the US not allowed to dictate terms to foreign governments? The answer is when the power of the office is being used for personal gain by the wielder in the privilege of the wielding. Trump was impeached by a wholly partisan action on the claim he pressured a foreign government to act for his sole benefit, as if no positive result would accrue to the nation by uncovering past acts of government officials wielding the same privilege in order to secure personal benefit.
Trump claimed Biden was a skinflint who used and bragged about using the largess of the US taxpayer to get the Ukrainian government/oligarchs to do certain things for protecting a sweetheart deal his son had in the Ukrainian energy sector. Which on the face looks like it could well have been the case, but why would ‘evidence’ of such shenanigans be valuable to Trump or more pointedly only accrue him personal benefit? Proof of corruption of a political opponent is an advantage, but is it in itself illicit? Perhaps the procurement method? but that goes back to whether or not he Commander In Chief should or does hold such privilege, a consequentialist justification of the means based on the disposition of the ends, ie uncovering or trying to correct a corrupt wielding of privilege( power).
Now another reading is the Biden’s are actually patriots in that the family ties and deals kept eyes on the ground in Ukraine and China and South America and Romania and Azerbaijan and the domestic medical and art markets 