Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies
- This topic has 6 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
René Magritte Empire of light 1950 There’s not a shade of a doubt that I’m not an expert on tariffs, trade barriers and subsidies, and I’d be t
[See the full post at: Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies]Interest groups cooperate in the setting of tariffs. There are individual industry deals. Businesses seek protection from local, state and national governments. They can get it in various ways.
Foreign car makers have chosen to build plants in the U.S. for decades. Others have given up on this market: Peugeot, Renault, Citroen. Ford will stop making passenger cars except for the Mustang, Focus and C-max hybrid. I wonder what they’ll race in NASCAR? Maybe NASCAR will race SUVs in the future like the truck series. I never understood that.
As for agriculture, it has been reported that US dairy producers now have a whopping 1.39 billion-pound surplus of cheese; 4.6 pounds per American. At the same time there is over production, there’s risk to herds due to overuse of antibiotics. Then there’s the whole GMO thing and a consumer desire to get back to some sort of organic purity. Robotic bug and crop pickers will handle this.
The U.S. financed itself, infrastructure building and protected its young industry from cheap British goods with tariff revenue. The South didn’t like paying higher rates for goods it’s cotton made in order to build the textile industry in the North. Eventually they’d inherit it before it went offshore.
Countries can’t/aren’t supposed to do that today. They are too late to the game, so they must settle for whatever jobs they can buy. This is true within countries as well as between them. Everyone wants foreign investment, most certainly the U.S. too. Tariffs create this incentive. Agriculture is a bit different.
The trade game, as I understand vaguely from reading of the WTO, has become weighted toward guaranteeing profit for vendors, enabling them to override local regulation that was harmful to their sales. They could sue the country for damages.
U.S. public-private partnerships often have a guaranteed profit built in.
We can thank the MBAs, their spreadsheets, and the lawyers for all of this. Their risk-limiting moves transfer the risk to the “we the people” governments. When legislators actually knew the game, having played it while gaining seniority and having knowledgeable staff, not just lobbyists, there was a balance of power.
Now they run on memes and neither they nor staff even read the legislation. In the case of the TPP, they couldn’t read it.
Puerto Rico was not prepared for Hurricane Maria. World trade may not be prepared for the New art-of-the Deal MegaStorm Donald. With such 24/7/365 disruption, there’s just one calm day every four years, leap year’s February 29, though that may not be the day.
Let us hang on. “Hang on Sloopy” goes the song.
No intent of honesty in reporting. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean the other guy doesn’t have a point or a plan.
Example: “Trump Plans 25% Tariff On Up To $200BN In Foreign Cars As Advisors Helpless To Stop Him”
This line is wildly common. It’s a soup of click-bait assumptions.
A) that a 25% tariff automatically isn’t a good thing. We reporters have been wrong about everything for 20 years, but not this time. WE know best.
B) if it’s a bad thing it’s not just that he’s whacking them to get them to table.
But most importantly,
C) that the Presidency is a job where you do whatever your advisors tell you. The Cabinet, the Intel agencies, the Chamber of Commerce, Congressmen, Angela Merkel, Obama — doesn’t matter who. Doesn’t matter that in reality, they all disagree with each other, so no matter who you pick one group will always be “helpless” to “stop” the Trumpnado. Because whatever he does, push, pull, or go sideways, is always and forever wrong simply because he does it. There’s no article, “Half of Trump’s Cabinet Pleased He Chose Their Side While the Other Half Sulks in Rejection This Time”, a much more plausible headline.But there’s more. There’s the assumption that the President MUST obey the always-wrong, hopelessly-discredited, war-crime Intel agencies; he’s REQUIRED to obey CNN pundits. You see, it’s not that the head of the executive branch, the President, as the CEO and executor of Congress’s will, is the boss of the Department of Justice, with complete hiring and firing power over the CIA, the FBI, etc….no. You see, REALLY the President works FOR the CIA and FBI and their leaking handmaiden CNN and he does whatever THEY say. Trump is their employee, the waterboy, just as Eisenhower and Kennedy warned.
But what does THAT say? It implies that — Russia notwithstanding — we don’t really have elections. The American people have no voice. There’s no sense in electing Trump since he’s only allowed to obey the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats of the CIA and FBI anyway and NOT the people of the United States.
…And they say, with two years of headlines like this, about how the American people should be overrun, overruled, ignored, defied, stymied, attacked in form and body, that there’s no bias, there’s no deep state. How can there be a deep state? Donald Trump just needs to obey everything N.Y. Think Tanks and D.C. advisors say and do everything CNN and Raytheon tells him to do, and it’ll be fine.
…Newsflash: if we wanted his ADVISORS’ policies enacted, we would have elected THEM. The electorate wants HIS policies, and to spank every D.C. advisor red and send them home with feathers. If you hadn’t noticed — yet! — that’s why they elected him: to crush every D.C. pundit to powder and destroy everything they ever made. Things like a 4:1 tariff ratio acting AGAINST every American from Pasadena to Philly. The one that makes Flint too poor to afford water while they yuk it up at $100,000 fundraisers. As with President Kennedy and CIA Director Dulles, we’re just having a little argument about who works for whom.
Why do we need more trade? If 65% (pick a number) of the increased income goes to 1% and the world requires almost 100 million barrels of oil per day to move it around, we should argue for less trade.
I agree food independence is important. But why the ever increasing number of cars? You’d think the proponents of free trade believe in infinite growth on a finite planet.
Free trade provides benefit, though, for those at the top. The rest want to be there. No fun if you get there and cannot outsource all the unpleasant stuff for low wages.
“If you ask me, communities and countries should always make sure they remain in control of all their basic necessities”
As you well know, the Egyptians cannot export their massive horticultural potential to Europe – tomatoes, onions, new potatoes, lettuce, flowers, cucumbers etc. – as that would put out of business many of the farmers of southern Europe (who depend on cheap illegal migrants from Africa to grow the stuff) and the Netherlands. Egypt is an open-air glasshouse that needs no gas for heating.
On the other hand, you wll find that Greek, Italian and Spanish tinned vegetables dominant in much of Africa. That is outrageous. Not only do they prevent Africans from exporting, but they destroy any indigent attempts to move up the food chain.
Common Agricultural Policy is another of the things that is encouraging illegal migration to Europe. People cannot earn a living in their own country because of this malevolent policy.
Tariffs are beyond me. So is exiting the EU. There are experts who do know the details. The Wealthy and Multi-national Institutions have them on retainer. So naturally the Elite have a leg up in trade negotiations. Democratic government is intended to counter balance the Oligarchy. However, when government deregulates over the last 40 years and doesn’t hire the experts to protect the people; inequality grows by leap and bounds. The Trump and May governments have reached the ultimate level of incompetency; lost in myths; unaware of reality.
In the west the game is rigged in favor of the few and against the majority.
Sovereignty is under attack everywhere and the bitter pill the west must swallow is Russia, China, and Iran; who maintain as sovereign nations. India and Pakistan? So far, so good, but for how long is anybody’s guess.
The countries of Africa are presently being contested.
Usian’s are probably, individually, the least sovereign humans walking the planet…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.