Freedom vs Tariffs

Do you agree with Ron Paul? Do tariffs hurt our economy?

twitter.com/RonPaul/status/969708931651006464

off course they hurt the economy

no libertarians are retarded on trade

It isn't a question of whether or not it hurts our economy, its a question of how badly.
US steel vendors will sell at current rate + tariff amount
Engineers will be forced to value-engineer their projects, switching to wood wherever possible
Concrete workers have no option to lighten the miles of reinforcement they must buy
Overall construction will reduce substantially (30-50%) from current levels
This is a disaster in the making unless its just a bluff to give him more leverage on foreign trade negotiations

You don't need to be a libertarian to understand what this approach does

Why the fuck would I ever trust a libertarian on the economy or anything really?

where was this nigger when the real nigger raised tariff in 2016

But user, there is no steel industry in America anymore, it was killed over twenty years ago by outsourcing. That's why you get all of your steel from us.

hurts the worker to not have a job because its cheaper to buy from china.
id rather pay a little more than not have a job

Don't trust him then. Just sit back and watch.

Why do libertarians support slave labor? Why are libertarians so evil?

Cool, so what happens when you quadruple the output of a basically non-existent industry?
The sum of industries and trades that use steel who will be deincentivized by this price-hike absolutely DWARF actual steel producers.
The entire construction sector will be decimated, just like the last time.
Anybody with any connection whatsoever to industries that use steel know what's coming.
Contracts are already in limbo just because this was announced.

But unemployment is at a 45 year low. Best possible circumstance is that people with low skills will leave bad jobs to enter the steel industry, but it's more likely that all we'll do is sink a huge amount of money into revitalizing our 30 year old steel industry infrastructure that wont be half as good as other countries' - all at the expense of auto and construction jobs.

What do you think is going to happen to US auto-workers, fabricators, erectors, detailers, concrete workers, decking manufacturers, lumber manufacturers, engineers, architects, etc etc etc?
Their jobs are going to be fucking slashed.
The increased hiring of steel producers will not even touch 1/100th of what is lost in other trades and industries.

Best circumstance is that Don is bluffing for leverage
Next best is long-term normalization at the expense of current economic growth
Most likely is exactly what you mentioned

Are there any lolbretarian billionaires?

Ron has decried tariffs literally every time they're suggested, including during Obama's years.

Tariffs do hurt but sometimes are necessary. We cant risk becoming wholly depending on foreign steel.

It's really refreshing to see a caricature of Trump that isn't le orange toupee man with tiny hands.

Construction slowing down is a good thing considering the housing bubble we are heading to (yet again).
Whether you like it or not America needs a steel industry. Steel is too essential to the functionings of a country to have to rely on outsourcing for it.

We've been dependent on foreign steel for a long time.
Even after this tariff, the price of American steel will be 100% determined by the price of foreign steel.
There is never going to be a situation where American steel becomes competitive to the point that they start selling beneath the price of foreign steel + tariff.
What is happening here is American steel producers are being subsidized by the rest of the construction & manufacturing sectors.
They will complete any projects & orders that they're unable to renegotiate, then they'll pinch their pennies and wait out the tariff.
I give it 1 year, and it will cost Trump his roaring economy ahead of 2020.
If he's not bluffing, this is a disaster for both the USA and Trump.

>that wont be half as good as other countries'
I keep seeing this repeated with absolutely no argument backing it. Care to share why you think America is incapable of having a functional Steel industry?

Every other country seems to be able to do it. Why not America?

Housing? Who the fucking is building steel-frame houses?
Not only that, building houses drives DOWN the prices of homes. Availability SHRINKS the bubble you fuckwit.
Don't post if you don't know what you're talking about.

WRONG. It's not a tax on us, it's making certain imported items more expensive. So we're more likely to buy products made in the US. I mean if you have two products with similar prices, most of us will buy American if given the choice.

Let's not forget, many countries put tariffs on our goods too.

>Americans have a right to buy cheap steel from a country that plans on destroying America.
no sorry gonna have to try some better logic there.

>Availability SHRINKS the bubble you fuckwit.
You don't understand what a bubble is. A bunch of empty houses is an investment bubble. The local housing prices sky rockets when the construction moves in, and tanks when they start trying to firesale their shit. This is happening in Texas as we speak.

The thought that we should leave one industry festering in its grave for the sake of another one is retarded, and will only lead to issues down the road.
Or do you really think America will have a prosperous future when such a basic commodity HAS to be outsourced? That is not what makes a robust economy, quite the opposite in fact.

Its a tax on literally every single American company that uses steel for any reason.
Do you think the cost of steel will be:
American = $100
Foreign = $125
It won't. American steel will also be 125% of current. Its happened before, and it will happen this time too.
That means every company, every developer, every anybody that was considering a project or product just had all their numbers thrown in the trash.
Hmm, maybe I won't expand our HQ
Hmm, maybe I'll manufacture this in Mexico
ETC
Furthermore, yes, other countries impose tariffs on us, and they'll increase them now.
So figure another
Hmm, I don't think those exports we were planning are going to work out
This is cascading wave of deincentivized economic activity, and its a disaster for literally everyone in the country except American producers of raw steel & aluminum
This is cutting of a nose to spite a face, its blowing your own fucking head off to spite your face

I am also having dejavu when I read opinions about this, except replace steel with oil.
>America does not need to drill for oil
>just buy it from the Middle East!
>American oil will cost too much anyway it's not worth it!

OK sure we could. If we start now we could be just a few years away from being able to meet all our own steel needs with American steel. It would be a massive infrastructural project to be producing steel and aluminum the way other countries are doing. Steel companies could certainly expand on debt and investment - they will have a captive consumer base because foreign steel is "artificially" more expensive, and maybe the debt gets paid off. But what does that actually GET us?
At best, we'll get people out of lame service-sector jobs and into industrial jobs, at worst, the extra prices built into steel will cause jobs to dry up, as I said, in auto and construction and the blue collar workers will now be working making steel rather than buildings made of steel. Generally a country's economy is doing better if they are selling more finished luxury goods like cars and buildings, as compared to raw materials. The profit margins are better if you have a branded, expertise-driven product that can't be competed with. So why do we want to rewind our economy to the 1960s?

So our only course of action is to sit back and let others fuck us over trade? Such a helpful one you are.

This is almost verbatim of the argument ~25 years ago against American Oil.

This. I support Dr paul but until we get fair trade nationalism it is.

People who don't like the steel tariffs are high time preferred sub humans.

I'm sure people will be just fine with them when production catches up with demand and all that money goes back into us monetary circulation.

>There is never going to be a situation where American steel becomes competitive to the point that they start selling beneath the price of foreign steel + tariff.
This is the stupidest, most naive and ignorant thinking.

Listen faggots, steel really isn't terribly hard to make anymore. The problem is that for generations now the traitorous Democrats have made so many environmental and resource extraction/processing regulations making it cost prohibitive to make anything real in America, granting an ARTIFICIAL COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE to places like China.

All those regulations can be torn up, and many have been. If you're betting on economic downturn in response to fucking steel tariffs without looking at the wider context here you are going to lose your ass.
There's a lot that Trump can do to make it profitable to produce steel in America even at low prices.

The problem with you narrow minded faggots is you just see "Oh the price of steel from China is cheaper so lemme macroAynRandEconomicAdamSmitheeRicardo this shit and AHAHA we should buy steel from China to maximize growth! I'm so brilliant! the 19th century really did know everything" but you faggots never look at the FUCKING GOVERNMENT POLICIES that make it so that China can produce steel cheaper than you can.
>Change the policies
>Change the price
>Change the rational evaluation
It isn't fucking rocket science you dumb shits.

Since when does Canada plan on destroying America? (hint: go look at who we actually buy steel from)

In a sense, yes, but I imagine he's only after maximizing profits, not american competitiveness, ala globalist

Yes. I agree

And what leads to the empty houses?
Getting sucked into unaffordable mortgages.
>The thought that we should leave one industry festering in its grave for the sake of another one
One? Try hundreds.
American steel isn't coming back. Its just not. If we could repeal dozens of environmental and labor regulations on top of this, it would have the slimmest of chances.
As it stands, it will temporarily increase to price-gouge this opportunity until the tariff is removed after the economy suffers too much.
I've seen it, all of it before.

>Libertarians predict steel will soar if tariffs are imposed.
>Tariffs are impossed
>Steel plummets.

Really makes me think.

>globalization
>good

as a libertarian, Ron Paul can fuck of on this issue

And you still haven't even brought up the deteriorating quality of Chinese steel in your scenario.
>And what leads to the empty houses?
Mass construction based on perceived population growth due to immigration rates. Construction firms believe it is a good investment because they think there will be people coming able to afford said houses.

They vastly overestimate the validity of those numbers, and lose their ass on their construction investments. They then try to salvage said investment, which tanks housing prices in the area.

You are stuck 10 years in the past buddy, welcome to 2018. We have a different bubble now.

It's literally welfare. If you're anti-globalism, you're policies are inherently going to hurt the economy to provide handouts.

Fuck us over on trade?
We're taking advantage of nations who are making HUGE sacrifices to sell steel at a low price.
We have hundreds of trades and industries who are thriving precisely because of this.
You are too focused on ONE industry, just like you are on oil, without considering the effect on everybody else.
Is is so hard to fathom that other nations are set up to produce for cheaper, and that its helpful to everyone?

You do have to be a libertarian to believe allowing the third world to fuck you is free trade though.

Yeah the globalist free trade monkeys pissing on tariffs are just the
>1. faggot export-import jews who profit from all these trade imbalances
>2. idiot undergrads who actually believe the bullshit exim jews pay universities to teach students in econ 101

>HUGE sacrafices
retard detected

Lmao at trumpcucks defending their new higher prices what deluded fucking cucks

>China and Brazil make huge sacrifices to sell steel at a low price
you can't possibly be this delusional, right? They don't sacrifice jack shit, the only reason American Steel is more expensive is because of our environmental regulations.

Yes goy, don't protect domestic businesses. If you do, everything collapses. The only possible course of action is to wait and die slowly on our current course, my friend. Anything else is annudah shoah!

>The problem is that for generations now the traitorous Democrats have made so many environmental and resource extraction/processing regulations making it cost prohibitive to make anything real in America
Yes this is true, but if were so easy to ditch this overhead Trump would have done it first.
It isn't easy, and the economy will stall while republicans attempt to address just a small percentage of what needs to be torn out in order for American steel to be competitively priced.

The fear mongering tactic they used back then for oil was muh gas prices.

Yet here we are still with the cheapest gas prices of the world, and majority producer. Funny how that works.

WAAAHHH Why can't I get my cheap shit from Wal-mart.
The free market is about allowing the third world to undercut us while paying lipservice to the American worker!!!

I'm happy others are seeing this for what it is, because shit like this drives me crazy. Your statement is exactly what they want to happen.

Such good goyim we are.

kek

China is done, this is a smart move by trump.

Tariffs if done right help the local economy.
Yup which is why libertarians only get 10% of the nations retard vote.

i'm with pitchfork pat on this one

They dont sacrifice shit. The US used to be a production based economy back after world war 2 because the rest of the world was in shambles and only we were healthy. We rode that gravy train for a few decades but eventually as europe and asia rebuilt, they made producing cheaper and competitive. This was fine, because the US moved on to something better: Services. We no longer sold materials, we sold ideas. Let the chinks pay their workers a paltry sum compared to our wages and sell cheap steel and other materials. They put together hardware, we come up with the idea for it.

Look at the fucking iphone, they put the parts together but we write the software for it. Wanting to become a production based economy instead of strengthening our services and pushing for the future (AI/Deep learning, for example) is essentially asking to handicap ourselves.

>but if were so easy to ditch this overhead Trump would have done it first.
He did, you shill. Cutting regulations was literally the first thing he did in office.
But the damage has been done, and the steel industry is dead. It requires more than just cutting the noose to revive the corpse.

I believe this is true. Take a $1 candy bar, double the import cost on what is required to pay it and the businesses will just bump it up to $2. You're still going to eat the candy bar you fat fuck, don't lie.

>It isn't a question of whether or not it hurts our economy, its a question of how badly.
lol

>US steel [producers] will sell at current rate + tariff amount
>there's no domestic competition
lol

>Overall construction will reduce substantially (30-50%) from current levels
lolno

>This is a disaster in the making
lolno

Why will jobs be slashed? Are you saying demand will drop Because of higher prices?

I would instead just start my own candy bar business and sell them for $1 now that the competition is more expensive.

That way I get candy bars for free.

>And you still haven't even brought up the deteriorating quality of Chinese steel in your scenario.
Nobody who signs a contract cares. Literally nobody. They care about price. End of story.
>You are stuck 10 years in the past buddy, welcome to 2018. We have a different bubble now.
Ah yes, the 'different' bubble that is 'yet again' happening. Tell me more.
>you can't possibly be this delusional, right? They don't sacrifice jack shit
Their environmental conditions, labor conditions, and federal subsidies are the sacrifices they make to sell steel at the rate they do.
These are choices Americans have been unwilling to waver on, and I'm sure in two years when the economy is in the shit and commercial construction is half what it is now, its those choices you'll be blaming for why the tariff didn't work.

Oh, the things I would do to have less Chinese imports.

Name the price

Diversifying our energy mix so we aren't held hostage by OPEC isn't the same thing as moving somewhat-okay steel jobs from Canada and Brazil to the USA. Also we didn't really get to extricate ourselves from the middle east as predicted because the military industrial complex is too important to senators. What are you saying exactly about our renewed oil industry? Maybe my bias is that I'm not an poor Uber driver who wishes he had a good old union job, what do you see as the benefit?

All things being equal it would hurt our economy. But the chinese have been using proxies to dump steel for years, with the single minded intent to put our foundries out of business so they can begin to jack prices back up as the sole remaining producer.

>Nobody who signs a contract cares. Literally nobody. They care about price. End of story.
Bullshit. Liabilities cost real money, as do repairs. People pay extra for quality steel to avoid these cost down the line. Stop talking out of your fucking ass, shill.
>Their environmental conditions, labor conditions, and federal subsidies are the sacrifices they make to sell steel at the rate they do.
Those don't sound like sacrifices. Those sound like slaves.

>He did, you shill. Cutting regulations was literally the first thing he did in office.
What he did is nowhere near what it would take to make American steel production competitive, even with the tariff.
Furthermore, competitive or not, the rate we're discussing is still 125% of current rates, which will decimate commercial construction no matter what Trump accomplishes.
Literally the only way this works is if its just a bluff for leverage. That's it.
I'm sure if it is just a bluff and Trump negotiates something in a trade deal, everyone hear will be saying how brilliant it was, rather than that they supported this economically suicidal tariff idea before.

It would depend on what your profit margin is. Maybe all the labor costs, machinery, etc might might be too pressing on you to achieve creating a $1 candy bar.

American's (humans in general) are stupid and see something more expensive as a higher quality. Why do you think niggers pay $200 for shoes?

>>>Its a tax on literally every single American company that uses steel for any reason
No

>We can trade our clean air and water and OSHA regs to have China's economic growth! Everyone knows that Chinese steel jobs are the envy of the WORLD

>ron paul
>/ourguy/
never was.

Oh hey look, this guy thinks a trade deficit is an indicator of economic success.

Nearly all the countrys we trade with have tarrifs on American goods to protect their domestic industrys. So tired of Lolbergs being useful idiots for communists

Oil and Steel are the two industries that made America what it was going into the World Wars.

20-30 years ago the same rhetoric you are hearing about steel right now was being said about oil.
>America can't possibly produce oil competitively
>America should just import all of its oil
>It's better this way!
Yet here we are today, having done none of that and instead bolstered our Oil Industry to become majority producer.

So now it is time to do the same thing with our steel. There is no real reason to not have American Steel, just like there is no real reason to not have American Oil. They are all literally just globalist kike plans to choke out the American Economy.

the rich Chinese nation controllers can stand to lose PLENTY

slap em on

This!

It's pretty apt.
To be honest tariffs need to be gradual to encourage long-term investment. We don't want to suddenly raise tariffs by a shitload, that just disrupts the market and America won't be able to provide the capacity.

>this guy thinks a trade deficit is an indicator of economic success
Lol, literally the opposite.

You know literally nothing about economics and it shows.

Need to start pirating ships trading with foreign nations. Need to let these plebs recognize that free trade isn't free.

BINGO

Why the fuck would you want to sell hazelnuts when you can sell Nutella?

Yep. Literally every industry or trade that uses steel will value-engineer the projects on the books, and future projects are just that much less appealing because of their black/red ratio post-price-hike.

typical baby boomer that can't see beyond his next paycheck

>he fell for the globalist propaganda
wew. You know its possible to make steel without trashing the environment, right? How do Canada, France, and Germany do it?

Last I checked they have both environmental protection and steel industries.

CLF is a US steel producer. Their share price jumped from $7 to $8 yesterday when the announcement was made. The only steel price that dropped was foreign steel

Very happy my money isn't going to Chinese communists who plan to genocide the white race.

Wtf I love starving while I wait for a market correction thst won't come because of central banking so I have to die because subhuman liberaltarians are cancer now!

Wow /r/TheDonald really brought all the retards here. Foreign companies are already shelving plans for automotive plants here, and the price of everything from beer to airplane tickets will rise.

>Liabilities cost real money, as do repairs
This from the mong that wants to kill environmental regulations and get the smokestacks belching again.

Why put the tariffs in place when the local production capacity isn't nearly enough to meet demand ?

This doesn't affect China dumbass, most of our steel comes from Japan, South Korea, and Canada

nice strawman. Canada, France, and Germany are such environmental wastelands after all, right?

It becomes the impetus to increase capacity.

Inflated housing prices are not caused by a lack of construction, and can't be remedied by increasing housing starts. It's a speculative bubble created by the inrush of dollar holding foreign nationals looking to spend what they earned by exporting to the U.S. goods produced by offshored industry like steel and consumer manufactures like electronics.
Placing import tariffs on foreign goods reduces the housing bubble, because a reduction in the trade deficit means foreigners have less dollars to bid up the price of housing in U.S. urban centers and elsewhere. As a bonus, more people in the U.S. will be employed, and we will have more dollars circulating over here.

>Suddenly these costs aren't going to be passed on to the customer

You sound like Ben Shapiro. Next you'll be shilling that a new car costing $100 more is going to result in economic catastrophe. Some idiot on reddit the other day broke it down to the level of aluminum ladders being too expensive to paint houses anymore. Peak chicken little.

Trump ran on introducing tariffs and trade war with China. Some things matter more than the (((economy))) but boomers and neocons won't ever understand, so just keep scrolling.

If you aren't a retarded boomer or neocon, then you'll get the obvious logic that: Steel shipped from halfway around the world is only cheap because the countries producing it fuck their own people's wages. Arguing that the tariff will make foreign steel more expensive is the POINT, not a tax on Americans. Yes, if our only option was Chinese steel, then we would be passing the cost off to American businesses and the consumer.

We aren't though. The steel industry will come back and domestic steel will cost less and will reduce port traffic (which is currently overwhelmed and one of the sources of human trafficking).

If you're against the tariffs, you're on the side of Trudeau. Just remember that.

>he actually believes EPA regs contribute to clean air and water. also thinks having clean air and water is worth something when communist boots are stomping all over the world genociding the white race for not accepting communist rule.

it is like you want to be genocided, a fair trade for slightly lower prices!

>Bullshit. Liabilities cost real money, as do repairs. People pay extra for quality steel to avoid these cost down the line. Stop talking out of your fucking ass, shill.
I'm sure you're involved with commercial construction projects on a daily basis, yea? Tell me more about talking out my ass. I am watching projects get shelved just because this tariff is being discussed.
>Those don't sound like sacrifices. Those sound like slaves.
They're literal sacrifices and you're dodging by trying to appeal to morality now, which means you've lost the argument. Cheers.