Explain Trump's trade policy to me

I support the Donald but don't understand where he's coming from on trade. Sure certain manufacturers go out of business after the removal of tariffs, but by and large living standards increase, goods become cheaper etc. Please justify Trump's socialist approach to trade.

>Socialist approach
Don't make me laugh.

Trump's approach is simple: the people come first.

If trade policies allow manufacturers to outsource jobs to other countries for cheap labor then they should be stopped.

If trade policies allow other countries to sell products created with cheap labor here and put our own business out of business then they should be stopped.

It's a very simple idea: a government of, by, and for the people should serve the people. It's not in the peoples' best interest to engage in trade that puts them out of work and destroys their livelihood.

You used to could raise a family of four on a single income, but now both parents working can barely afford two kids. That's because wages are stagnating. All these gains are going to the 1%, who have bought off our politicians.

>gdp is the only viable metric to measure economic success
>not consumer confidence or manufacturing strength
The meme that needs to end

China has surpassed the United States as the #1 world economy, yet they practice the strongest form of protectionism on the planet, with a combination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade equivalent to greater than 35% tariff on imports, while they have the freedom to sell their manufacture goods in the U.S. for virtually no added cost.

It's not just the Chinese, either. Virtually every other major trading partner of ours has got a lopsided trade deal with the U.S. that has them making out like bandits, and the U.S. citizenry sucking wind.

That's because the 1% have bought out our politicians, and they use bad trade deals like this to drain the U.S. of its wealth and house it in offshore tax havens after its laundered through their multi-national corporations.

People will tell you that there is no such thing as trade deficits, that it all balances out. And, in a way it does: everyone who has a positive balance of trade with the U.S. winds up with a surplus of our currency, which they turn around and use to outcompete U.S. citizens with for assets and services in their own nation, driving up the price of housing, and driving up the price of tuition.

The U.S. middle class is really caught in the middle of a whole bunch of shenanigans; anyone with a smattering of independent study on economics has discovered that for themselves.

Excellent point.

Most of the increase in GDP went to wealthy jews who fight for the trade deals.

Trump is wrong about trade. He is right that we are getting screwed in all these globalist programs. NAFTA, WTO, TPP, etc. But tariffs have literally been debunked for 200 years. It's the leftists that still push them because they pander to the "working man".

What people don't understand is that tariffs are a net loss for both economies. It's very simple economics. The tariff may protect certain industries and workers but the consumers ultimately pay more for the good at a lower quantity. Tariffs eliminate consumer surplus of trade to create a larger producer surplus. This is not an even swap and the market inefficiency created by the tariff manifests as a deadweight loss, ultimately harming the economy.

Trump is not a true capitalist for supporting this mercantalistic approach to trade and that genuinely bothers me.

This is all patently a lie.

What happened in 1973 that fundamentally changed the economy to end the parity if GDP and income growth? These massive changes don't happen for no reason.

1973 was the end of the gold standard. Since then the Fed has devalued our currency absurdly. Destruction of currency has doomed many empires in the past and we will be no different.

>not an argument

This is just econ 101. Sorry senpai

Trump's trade policy: get elected.

Once he's president, it all goes out the window, except he will fight to get 'good deals' whatever that means.

What this doesn't take into consideration is that while your top 1% is busy chasing slave labor everywhere in the world under "free" trade, back at home the condition of the working class has begun to deteriorate, and once it gets bad enough, a revolutionary proletariat forms, and they overthrow the government. This is why Karl Marx advocated the abolition of protectionism and the promotion of free trade, to accelerate the formation of the revolutionary proletariat. It's disastrous.

Consider murdering yourself one thousand and one times over, faggot.

Economists are voodoo workers just like climate "scientists"

>implying Karl Marx is an authority on economics

I've read Kapital. The guy was wrong about all of his economic theory. His very foundation was flawed. He imply that trade is zero sum in the first chapter. That already blows a hole most of what follows.


The reasons industry left the US is more complicated than that. Doing business.In the US is a fucking expensive headache. Detroit is the poster child for this. It is a city ran by labor unions. They made doing business there literally unprofitable. Throw in the fact that we have the corporate tax rate in the world and it's no wonder business left. We are not free market capitalists anymore. We have a broken economy that has been regulated until it fell to it's knees

>restricting freedoms for the people!

kill yourself commi.

didn't Wilson even say the he doomed our country after signing the FED act?

Most economists are in fact full of shit. They basically are tools of the state who make up fake equations that are so complicated nobody understands them but other economists full of shit. They do this because if they didn't convince everyone that econ was complicated they wouldn't have a job anymore.

But basic econ is actually pretty spot on. It's just a explanation for the basic reality of how markets work. Markets themselves are not voodoo and the broad patterns can generally be explained pretty well with basic econ. It gets all fucked up when economists are arrogant enough to think they can predict and control shit. They can't. It always ends in disaster. But the fundamentals of econ are pretty much red pills. The world makes a lot more sense once you understand it.

I'd recommend checking out Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

These are a bunch of canards.

Ok, maybe Detroit, Michigan is bad, but there are plenty of right to work states where it is easy to set up automobile manufacturing. That is why the Nips have done so as the cost differential of their labor reached parity.

The red tape argument is a good one, because it is a ready made excuse to jump ship for sunnier climes, but the fact is that if we put in tariffs today, those red tape regulations would get sorted out in a hurry.

These are just excuses that corporate fat cats use to exploit the U.S. citizen.

Yeah, Karl Marx is no productive or beneficial economist. I've read Kapital, too. But he knows a thing or two about nation wrecking. He is the authority on that, and his prescriptions are definitely effective.

Check yourself, faggot.

protectionism means things are made in america. that makes america independent and it means more jobs for americans which means higher wages as jobs have to compete to get filled. it also means some things are a bit more expensive due to american environmental, workplace safety, and wage/healthcare regulations.

"free trade" means outsourcing jobs to deregulated regions where laborers will work for the least amount of money. this drives wages down in america, because there is less diversity in the types of jobs available.

trade deficit means that american money is flowing from american consumers out of the country or just directly into wall street driving the income inequality gap.

open borders saturates the labor pool even more driving wages down further and driving housing costs up.

trump wants to close borders and fight globalization and trade deficits with protectionism. basically the opposite of liberal/libertarian free trade bull shit that drives the income inequality gap.

>But tariffs have literally been debunked

i would agree with this, but the early founders - hamilton especially imposed tarriffs and other controls that improved the value of hte USD and improved the economic strength of the US

Yea I think so, years after his presidency

His trade policy is fuck you that's what

>da rich people a ebil but the government will save us!
>because their totally not the same people!

gdp per capita increasing doesn't really mean much to the average citizen if 95% of those gains go to top 5% of people or whatever

which is what happens when you remove trade and immigration restrictions. you empower the capitalists and owners and elites of each society to the detriment of the lower classes

this chart sums it up pretty nicely

By your own logic, you are fucked no matter what you do. If you don't believe in positive prescriptions, why the fuck would you come here to discuss issues like this? faggot.

First explain to me how Trump had a socialist approach to trade.

There's going to be large growth of manufacturing in Mexico, where all the illegals will Want to go back.

"increasing the size of the economy" is not the highest virtue to which a nation's trade, monetary and economic policies should necessarily be held

In what way if forcing consumers to pay a higher price for a lower quantity of goods beneficial? You're just screwing Peter to pay Paul

...

hmm what gives the rich people more power? when they have to create a product that you purchase and give them cash in order to pay people to do their bidding? or when the become a politician and can make laws that enforce their will while taxing you under threat of jail.

I'll come back in a few hours when you have thought about this.

This senpai

Price increases won't matter cause more people will have higher paying jobs so they can afford more since they'll have more spending power.

Only people in those tariffed industries. The increased price and lower quantity of that good is not outweighed. This is deadweight loss. Value that could have been created but never was

it can be argued that its justified when Paul makes 1mil a year and is unaccountable to voters and Peter makes 8/hr

will it reduce efficiency? yeah. will it decrease the size of the economy? also yeah. will it result in an increase in purchasing power for a majority of the people in the economy? quite possibly yeah

God what a shit President he was.
>created federal reserve
>Got reelected to stay out of WWI
>Gets us in WWI
>Started progressive tradition of intervention in foreign wars as a moral cause

It's shit and big business like Ford, GM and others that manufacture outside of the country will fight tooth and nail to keep fair trade.

I agree that NAFTA fucked us hard up here but it's too late to go back now.

>What is wealth redistribution?
And don't tell me Socialism cause there's more redistribution as corrective measure for Capitalist economies whereas there's actually little to no redistribution for Socialist economics.

People still won't like that. It doesn't matter how much money you have, people want to get shit as cheap as possible.

It sounds like a good idea in theory but people aren't willing to pay more, even at the cost of better jobs.

You also have to think, if they have higher paying jobs but everything costs more, what's the point in having higher paying jobs?

Is there any point in having a job that pays 20-30% more when everything is worth 20-30% more?

Why do people act like a necessarily vague policy isn't a policy? If Trump said "I'll impose a 40% tariff on Chinese products, all of them, forever", would you actually believe that? You can't. There's no possible way he can make any concrete policy on trade until he sits down at the table with other countries. He says our deals are bad and he wants to make better ones. He's a businessman. I can take that at face value.

I might like to hear specifically what's so bad about NAFTA that he disagrees with, but I guess if I really cared that much I could get off my ass and research it myself.

Free trade reduces the cost of labor. You supply labor by funding foreigners to work for less. The American people are a supply of labor.

When supply goes up price goes down. That's part of the reason we have stagnant wages for the past four decades.

Free trade is good for big companies and in turn good for the economy. But everyone who isn't in the top 0.01% gets fucked.

I've noticed a new shilling tactic:

I support/love/voting Trump but I don't understand/disagree with/ [policy, quote, whatever], justify/explain/debate me fgt.

I've noticed it a lot lately.

They always start with "I love Trump but..." and then they trash him.

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tfw you were posting in a shill thread all along and OP wasn't actually interested in participating in the discussion