[jimjam]

Tariffs on Canadian softwood have pushed up lumber prices, adding a Trump Tax of $6,000 to the cost of building a new home. Every $1,000 increase prices out about 150,000 households.

[Politiks]

About a year ago amidst the hysteria surrounding Trump's win I tried to predict the future of his administration. Predicting the future is pretty much an impossible job but it is somewhat easier when operating in the realm of economics. Economics (money) closely mirrors human behavior. The dynamics are relatively simple. Money is an addictive substance. The more you have, the more comfort and pleasure you get. Another consideration that facilitates the prediction of economic "history" is the truism that history repeats itself. This is not the fashionable Trump bashing. I am attempting to be empirical. An elusive target for sure but, I am trying.
Trump is not stupid and he is very successful. He became president .... something a moron cannot do. Here is the thing. He is a gut/instinct operator. Generally does not "need" advice. #one. He is adept at operating in a rather confined and small environment surrounded by family and faithful people who know not to differ from him. #two. He is now performing in a greatly different economic environment. National and, more significantly, global environment. He being rather inflexible and over confident, I surmised would do poorly in a world economic environment. He is still playing to his vaunted "base". His base hardly covers the globe. China has been screwing steel workers in Ohio. True. Solution: slap a tariff on Chinese steel which will impede the flow of steel into America. True. No way of course will China be passive to this. There is a big world out there and China is going to dominate it with their strategic economic plan that looks years ahead.
It is a real possibility as they buy more soybeans from Brazil,more planes from Europe they sell them more television sets. We lose jobs in South Carolina , Iowa and our consumer products become far more expensive. This in turn hurts the retail sector, etc, etc.
Yes we may produce more TV sets here , solar panels, shoes etc but they are going to be more expensive with no opportunity for export , we are simply not compeititive.
How can we be, our infrastructure is inadequate, our education system totally broken , our health care costs thrust a large cost on our commercial sector.
I have travelled in Asia , they are light years ahead in all these areas.

The world economic system is not perfect but ....... it is working. Trump's actions are a threat to the functioning of the world economic order. Businessmen prefer predictability which generally assures safety of their assets. Trump's methods which have produced success in his confined world involved unpredictability. These methods will, obviously, cause unpredictability in the world economic system. Businessmen will withdraw their money from the economic system and put it under their bed. Look at the current stock market and see this process starting. We are not there yet but it seems the process has begun.

This looks like Smoot-Hawley redux and, as it seems, Trump is no student of history. His knowledge base appears to be confined to Fox "news" on tv.

Stay tuned, this will be interesting.

Brazil has elections this year and what comes out will influence the global market either for the Globalists or Euroasian delight, time will tell. A unlikely alignment with Trump can't be discarded and is a real possibility. Since the 18th century and since Mercosur will go where Brazil goes, we might have a 180 degree change in politics. Brazil is giving signs to be FEDEUP with the FED and CB influence there's 2 strong candidates very hostile to the banking powers and their argument is mostly who pays for the entire system is USA and Brazil, the first with a external debt that can't be explained and was never audited by external and neutral entities,the other with a public debt under the same conditions.

[jimjam]

Looks maybe that Donald may want to make America great again by giving us the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act #2. Not to be confused with Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act #1 which provided the overture for The Great Depression in 1929.

(I hear that Mexico has a plan to boycott products in areas that voted for The Great Man. )

[Godstud]

Count on your gas prices rising, too, as Trump continues the tariffs and other countries start "returning the favour". Canada exports most of its oil to the USA.

[blackjack21]

Tariffs on Canadian softwood have pushed up lumber prices, adding a Trump Tax of $6,000 to the cost of building a new home. Every $1,000 increase prices out about 150,000 households.

Awesome! Housing prices are going up.

Count on your gas prices rising, too, as Trump continues the tariffs and other countries start "returning the favour". Canada exports most of its oil to the USA.

Oil is traded on the world market... Canada can't exactly slap an export tariff on oil, and they'd just be losing business anyway. The US is closing in on oil independence anyway.

US Oil Output Jumps To Record High In March

U.S. crude oil production jumped 215,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) to 10.47 million bbl/d in March, the highest on record, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a monthly report on May 31.

Trump is making America great again!

[Godstud]

The USA stock markets tend to disagree with what you are saying, @blackjack21.

US stock markets sink on China trade war fears
The major indexes as well as tech stocks tumbled despite Trump officials downplaying any likelihood new tariffs would be enacted
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... na-tariffs

[One Degree]

Tempest in a teapot. Europe retaliating with tariffs on Harley’s and Levi’s is hilarious. Ask Russians how much they were willing to pay for Levi’s. Harley Davidson spent most of their history with a backlog of orders they could not keep up with. Both are purely luxury prestige products. The higher price will simply increase their demand.

[jimjam]

Tempest in a teapot. Europe retaliating with tariffs on Harley’s and Levi’s is hilarious. Ask Russians how much they were willing to pay for Levi’s. Harley Davidson spent most of their history with a backlog of orders they could not keep up with. Both are purely luxury prestige products. The higher price will simply increase their demand.

umm ......before this easy to win war is over China, Mexico, Canada and all or most of Europe (Trump's favorite punching bag after Mexico) will be retaliating with a bit more than motorcycles and pants. These countries are not run by morons.

[Zamuel]

Tempest in a teapot. Europe retaliating with tariffs on Harley’s and Levi’s is hilarious. Ask Russians how much they were willing to pay for Levi’s. Harley Davidson spent most of their history with a backlog of orders they could not keep up with. Both are purely luxury prestige products. The higher price will simply increase their demand.

I guess you haven't heard "Harley" is going bankrupt and Levi's market share is WAY down.

Cowboy boots are still thriving though.

Zam

[Atlantis]

Tempest in a teapot. Europe retaliating with tariffs on Harley’s and Levi’s is hilarious. Ask Russians how much they were willing to pay for Levi’s. Harley Davidson spent most of their history with a backlog of orders they could not keep up with. Both are purely luxury prestige products. The higher price will simply increase their demand.

The EU is using the same tactics it used 15 years ago, when GWB introduced similar tariffs. He withdrew the tariffs after a few months because they hurt US users of steel more than they benefited US steel makers. Thousands of US jobs were lost as a result.

Imposing a broad tariff on basic products like steel is impossible without hurting your own economy. Targeted tariffs on luxury item won't hurt the EU, but will make life difficult for some key GOP representatives.

The value of the tariffs on those luxury items is tailored to exactly correspond to the EU's anticipated losses due to the tariffs on steel. "Balancing measures" like that are perfectly legal under WTO rules. The US tariffs are not legal.

So far, Mexico, Canada, the EU, Japan, India and a few others have announced they will take measures against the US. I'm sure China and Russia will join us in due time.

I know you think the EU is weak because we don't go around bombing other countries to kingdom come. But there is another type of strength ...

When we get our Margrethe Vestager to go after US multinationals, it'll be a bloodbath on Wallstreet. You have to hit where it hurts. Steel is of no importance. We aren't in the 19th century. Perhaps you ought to update The Donald.

[jimjam]

When we get our Margrethe Vestager to go after US multinationals, it'll be a bloodbath on Wallstreet

Trump has been shitting on Europe for quite some time now. He, obviously, has some lessons to learn and, obviously, does not know it.

Someone asked Margrethe Vestager if she’ll be warier of acting against American companies now that Donald Trump is president. The audience tittered uneasily, as Europeans tend to do at such events whenever Trump is mentioned.

Nothing would change, she replied. “We’re not going hard at U.S. companies specifically. It’s not your flag that matters to us. What really matters is: If you want to do business in Europe, you play by the European rule book.”

This was another of her well-worn aphorisms, but it masked the latest international wrinkles. Trump has already shown himself to be volatile on trade policy, reflexively defensive of U.S. interests, and an intermittent advocate of the collapse of the EU. His protectionist swagger has rattled Brussels; in March, Jean-Claude Juncker, the chief of the European Commission, warned that relations with Washington “have entered into a sort of estrangement,” and that any American tariffs on European products will trigger swift reciprocal action.

“Vestager has stuck her neck out quite a lot,” a lobbyist in Brussels says. “If there is a trade war with the U.S., she will be in the eye of the storm.”

[Atlantis]

Trump has already shown himself to be volatile on trade policy, reflexively defensive of U.S. interests, and an intermittent advocate of the collapse of the EU.

Trump doesn't understand, or pretends not to understand, that US economic interests are more vulnerable than European economic interests. The US does have a large deficit in goods trade with the EU, but that is matched by a large US surplus in trade in service and earnings US companies repatriate from Europe.

While cross-border trade in goods is well established since centuries and is today regulated by the WTO and innumerable treaties, trade in services depends on the goodwill of trade parties to give access to each other markets. That access can be easily changed by unilateral legislation, as Trump has demonstrated with his tax reform. There is nothing to stop the EU from regulating and taxing US multinationals out off existence.

The best strategy for the EU will be to reciprocate tit for tat US tariffs on goods, while at the same time, gradually tightening the screws on US multinational service providers. Anti-monopoly measures against the US's quasi-monopolies, stricter privacy rules, new regulations of data exchanges and a digital tax on Internet companies would put pressure on US multinationals, while at the same time giving the EU independent tax resources and allowing European competitors to get a foothold in the market. Thanks to Trump we may achieve all these things, which are unlikely to be reversed even if there were to be a truce in the trade war.

The only thing Trump can do to damage Europe is to start another war, for example against Iran.

[MistyTiger]

Gee, Trump is sure good for the Stock market. Prices are falling down and only going up a tiny tiny bit. I'm so glad I don't have much in stocks or I'd be losing BIG.

I saw a headline that he wants to put a tariff on German cars. Is he apeshit crazy or what? That's just idiotic and insane and there are just not enough adjectives to express how stupid that is and how much that would hurt Americans.

[jimjam]

Herbert Hoover can now rest easy that he is no longer the worst Republican president ever. In the grip of the Great Depression, the 31st president was under intense political pressure to sign the Tariff Act of 1930, better known as Smoot-Hawley after its Republican authors in Congress. Hoover himself was a somewhat reluctant protectionist. And while 1,028 economists signed a petition imploring the president not to sign, he could not then know that “Smoot-Hawley” would become a byword for economic folly. Between 1930 and 1933, the value of global trade declined from $4.9 billion to $1.8 billion.

Gary Stein is C.E.O. of Houston-based Triple-S Steel, which sells about one million tons of steel products a year, mostly for construction and heavy manufacturing. He calls the tariffs “just juvenile.” “These guys in Washington don’t understand how real supply lines work,” he says. “You can’t crack the economy on the end of a whip like that when you are dealing with real jobs and real people and real products coming across borders. There’s a lot of special stuff that comes from only one mill, and now suddenly you can’t get it or it’s going to cost you 25 percent more.”

The administration is blowing up the foundations of global economic order with the same mindless glee as a child popping bubble wrap. Canada now intends to retaliate with $12.8 billion worth of its own tariffs. Mexico and the European Union are set to announce retaliatory levies of their own. And these are our friends.

[jimjam]

Justin Trudeau the Canadian Prime Minister said on Friday “The idea that the Canadian steel that’s in military, military vehicles in the United States, the Canadian aluminium that makes your fighter jets is somehow now a threat?” he said. “The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is quite frankly insulting and unacceptable.”

In response to the U.S. action, Canada retaliated on Thursday by announcing it would impose its own trade barriers on American steel, aluminium and other products. The Canadian foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said the new levies would match U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar.

“Our soldiers who had fought and died together on the beaches of World War II … and the mountains of Afghanistan, and have stood shoulder to shoulder in some of the most difficult places in the world, that are always there for each other, somehow — this is insulting to them,” Trudeau said during an interview with NBC News from his Parliament office in Ottawa.

[Zamuel]

Justin Trudeau the Canadian Prime Minister said on Friday “The idea that the Canadian steel that’s in military, military vehicles in the United States, the Canadian aluminium that makes your fighter jets is somehow now a threat?” he said. “The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is quite frankly insulting and unacceptable.”

Of course it is. However, we should all know by now not to take trump seriously. As with China, this is just a maneuver to allow some of his "prepositioned" friends to rake in profits from the general market confusion. Once they grabbed all they can, trump will "rethink" things and try and grab some notoriety by "Correcting" the problem.

Zam - WHO are you voting for in the midterms ?

[One Degree]

Herbert Hoover can now rest easy that he is no longer the worst Republican president ever. In the grip of the Great Depression, the 31st president was under intense political pressure to sign the Tariff Act of 1930, better known as Smoot-Hawley after its Republican authors in Congress. Hoover himself was a somewhat reluctant protectionist. And while 1,028 economists signed a petition imploring the president not to sign, he could not then know that “Smoot-Hawley” would become a byword for economic folly. Between 1930 and 1933, the value of global trade declined from $4.9 billion to $1.8 billion.

Gary Stein is C.E.O. of Houston-based Triple-S Steel, which sells about one million tons of steel products a year, mostly for construction and heavy manufacturing. He calls the tariffs “just juvenile.” “These guys in Washington don’t understand how real supply lines work,” he says. “You can’t crack the economy on the end of a whip like that when you are dealing with real jobs and real people and real products coming across borders. There’s a lot of special stuff that comes from only one mill, and now suddenly you can’t get it or it’s going to cost you 25 percent more.”

The administration is blowing up the foundations of global economic order with the same mindless glee as a child popping bubble wrap. Canada now intends to retaliate with $12.8 billion worth of its own tariffs. Mexico and the European Union are set to announce retaliatory levies of their own. And these are our friends.

Really? You don’t think a drop off in world trade may have been related to a world wide depression? This has to be one of the most intellectually dishonest appraisals ever.

[jimjam]

Really? You don’t think a drop off in world trade may have been related to a world wide depression? This has to be one of the most intellectually dishonest appraisals ever.

Hmmm ... boy that 1930 bundle of tariffs certainly was a quick symptom of the depression that started about 1930 and ended about 1939.

"Intellectually dishonest" ............ very esoteric #1 Degree

[One Degree]

Hmmm ... boy that 1930 bundle of tariffs certainly was a quick symptom of the depression that started about 1930 and ended about 1939.

"Intellectually dishonest" ............ very esoteric #1 Degree

Most give October 29, 1929 as the starting date. There wasn’t any one thing that was going to magically turn around the forces already in place.

[Atlantis]

Really? You don’t think a drop off in world trade may have been related to a world wide depression? This has to be one of the most intellectually dishonest appraisals ever.

Don't they teach you anything at school? It's been established fact ever since that the recession was cause by protectionist measures.