Debt Rattle April 25 2017
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Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1972 • Trump Slaps 20% Duty on Canada Lumber, Intensifying Trade Fight (BBG) • Trump Summons Entire Senate To White
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 25 2017]I know of one company in Astoria, Oregon, that will be crippled by Trump’s 20% soft wood tariff.
They produce cedar windows of a very high quality, which are already quite expensive; they import cedar from Canada because they cannot buy from U.S.; because the U.S. destroyed their cedar forests by over harvesting.
Trump’s a blithering idiot, destined to bring the U.S. nothing but grief…
Get him gone…/trump-said-to-plan-20-tariff-on-canadian-softwood-lumber
The $C is already at a 30% disadvantage.
Don’t give away the lumber.
Don’t negotiate.
Sell more lumber to China.Therefore, Canada should charge 20%, or match the charge by the USA, on all the companies selling lumber to the USA.
Use the money collected to help the lumber workers.
I’m really ignorant about the softwood lumber.
If the USA imposes a 20% cost, who pays it?
I was under the impression that the consumer always pays?
Why would the seller absorb the cost increase?
If the seller cannot make money on the sale of the soft wood, why would they keep selling?
Duhhhh!This sound like the Mexican import border tax … The USA consumer pays the higher price.
Just heard the same thing about the Steel industry. “National Security” for the steel industry? Pfffft!! What for? The U.S. doesn’t have a steel industry anymore. It’ll just antagonize China. Start a trade war. It’s just going to raise prices on the customer. Who is this going to help? What a maroon!
Who is it going to help? Wasn’t everyone upset when the industry moved OUT? Didn’t it measurably — and I hope we’re not still arguing about this — kill jobs, destroy the economies of cities and whole states? Like 40 of them? But now it’s terrible if industry moves back in? National Security? Never heard anything so dumb. It’s not like you make warships, tanks, planes, missiles, railroads, factories out of steel…oh wait, I forgot, you DO need those things to have an army. It IS an issue of national security. That and virtually every other industry because we don’t have any, and bringing them home will piss everyone off inside and outside the borders. Buyers and sellers. Owners and workers. But it has to be done. Or should we be nice and just give away our last 500 jobs too?
Okay, wood n stuff. Not much different. You’d have to look case by case what happens, where it is, who’s affected, what it means, who pays. That’s why generally you need an invisible hand. But after the heavy and visible hand of government has been central planning the motion and price of most goods for 100 years, markets are so distorted it’s very hard to tell what the consequences are. Cedar stops to one factory: bad. Wood conflict halts imports and leads to more logging and other wood processing factories here: good. More logging leads to deforestation: bad. Less deforestation in Canada: good. Limits lead to higher prices, choking demand: good. Choking demand means job loss in retail: bad. etc.
But let’s go one deeper. Suppose you knew that there was about to be a massive economic and political dislocation, I dunno, because one had been predicted and delayed by using ever-increasing violence and intervention for 40-100 years. Suppose you had the brains God gave a rock and realized other nations would cut you off and ring-fence your economy when that happens. Suppose you came late to the ball and had only 6 months to adjust a 100-year trend. And heck, suppose you hate NATFA to boot, because it legally undermines the very concept of sovereignty. So maybe you’d try any plausible excuse to kick-start home industry before Canada won’t ship us a Loonie? Maybe get Canada and Mexico so annoyed with the non-help, self-serving capriciousness of NATFA they’ll tear it up themselves in disgust and never sign again? Maybe that helps Canada too because this customer is going away one way or the other, and Justin now has someone to blame, something to act on? And maybe knowing we’re at the peak of the world’s greatest ever housing bubble, with 25M empty houses in the US alone, losing a window-making factory doesn’t seem so bad compared to having 200 nations try to forcibly collect the $200T the U.S. fraudulently loaned them?
Just saying there’s a lot of moving parts, winners, losers, competing priorities to consider. And no free lunch.
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