[Libertarian353]

Trying too hard there, ''Danny'' .

I have to, you're not the only person to accuse me of being someone I'm not. But if you think I'm EM you're welcome to think so.

God of course is wonderful

Yes He is. I was raised Lutheran but my sons are non-denominational.

Bacon is terrible

Yep, you're commie through and through.

guns are great because they mean potential revolution, but you're an Ancap, like Victoribus?

Yes, I believe in property rights and free association. Also government causes a lot of poverty and wars.

Victoribus Spolia has at least an internal consistency to his ideology that I have not seen in yours.

Well we just met each other for the first time, give it a few weeks.

[annatar1914]

Well L, you said;

I have to, you're not the only person to accuse me of being someone I'm not. But if you think I'm EM you're welcome to think so.

I didn't say you were EM, I said you were ''trying too hard''. Most people are often accused of being someone they are not, and sometimes they just take it to the next level. As it is, EM was a guy who didn't have it all together, if you know what I mean. Something of a Bullshitarian.

Yes He is. I was raised Lutheranb ut my sons are non-denominational.

Which means they're perfectly consistent, kind of Protestant Churches unto themselves . But yes, God is good, all the time.

Yep, you're commie through and through.

I am what I am, as long as it isn't ham.

Yes, I believe in property rights

Theft.

and free association.

Anarchy.

Also government causes a lot of poverty and wars.

People, they cause a lot of poverty and wars. And when less restrained, they congeal their efforts into a system of exploitation, Capitalism.

Well we just met each other for the first time, give it a few weeks.

I usually give it a few weeks

[Zamuel]

My name is Danny Wolff, I'm from Eugene, Oregon. I'm Ancap, I love God, Bacon and Guns.

Well I love those things to + Guitars ... I think ancap is a beautiful fantasy, but when I follow it through it always leads to warlords requiring mercenaries to protect the property they've stolen from honest people and from there to monarchism and enslavement. (?) Nobody seems to be paying much attention to the thread (big surprise) so why not tell me what you think Trump should do if he were tilted towards ancap?

Zam

[Finfinder]

It's interesting that China's tarrifs are targetting industries which are strongest in states which supported Trump. Clever move.

Interesting, keeping a campaign promise is now considered clever.

[Rugoz]

Are trade deficits the real issue?

A good question, because I cannot tell anymore. America's current account deficit is a legitimate concern, but Trump's little tariff tit-for-tat with China will do little to reduce it. It's the excess capital inflow that keeps the dollar strong and American exports expensive. In order to reduce it, America will have to save more and spend less.

Here's an interesting article:

Trump’s Tariffs Aren’t the Only Way to Shrink the Trade Gap

Is there a better way to reduce the U.S. trade deficit than raising duties on imports? A lot of economists say yes. Some of their ideas are old, some new, and some a little strange. All have been given new life by the Trump administration’s tariff offensive, which has sparked fears of a global trade war.

Economists who specialize in trade, coming from both the right and the left, mostly agree with President Trump that big and persistent U.S. trade deficits are a problem, particularly for American workers whose jobs have been displaced by imports. But trade experts say he’s wrong to imply deficits are necessarily a sign that a trade partner is cheating. Mexico, for instance, has a surplus with the U.S., but it runs a deficit with the world as a whole in its current account, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services.

Alternatives to jacking up tariffs range from buying foreign currencies in huge volumes to push down the value of the dollar and make American products more competitive, to Warren Buffett’s long-standing proposal to require importers to buy certificates to bring goods into the country.

The newest idea, and one of the most intriguing, is called the market access charge. It’s a tax that would be applied to all foreign purchases of U.S. assets (possibly excluding currency trading to avoid a fight with Wall Street). The level would be set at perhaps half a percent—high enough to discourage inflows of speculative capital but low enough not to discourage foreign investments in long-term assets such as factories. The hope is that dollars diverted from hot-money investments would be spent on American goods and services. The Federal Reserve would administer the access charge, raising or lowering it as needed, and would keep it in place until the current account was in balance.

The idea was conceived by John Hansen, a retired World Bank adviser. The Coalition for a Prosperous America, an organization that represents import-threatened companies and unions, endorsed the market access charge last year. Hansen says the coalition’s representatives talked it up in 130 meetings with congressional staffers in mid-March and got strong interest. The charge could succeed in shrinking trade deficits, says Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the centrist Peterson Institute for International Economics. One advantage, he says, is that “it’s completely legal under international law.” Robert Scott of the labor-supported Economic Policy Institute has also come out in favor. Big banks, however, would likely oppose it, and the public might dislike it for making imports more costly and raising interest rates.

Other concepts directly target the strength of the dollar, which harms domestic producers by making U.S. goods and services more expensive. Gagnon and Peterson Institute co-founder Fred Bergsten propose that when the U.S. is running a big trade deficit, the Department of the Treasury should intervene decisively in currency markets to reduce the dollar’s value. Gagnon says the strategy should eventually make money for the government, because the foreign currencies acquired in the process would be worth more in dollars when the dollar sinks to its trade-balancing level.

Buffett’s import certificate idea has caught the fancy of many economists since he first pitched it in an essay in Fortune magazine in 2003. It’s essentially the same concept as that which underpins carbon-emission trading. Companies would receive import certificates based on the value of their exports that they could then sell to other companies. The system would discourage imports by making them more costly.

Buffett’s plan also resembles countertrade, which the Soviet Union used for decades to eke out scarce hard currency, observes David Colander, a Middlebury College economist. In a barterlike arrangement, every import into the Soviet Union had to be balanced with an export. The system was clunky and bureaucratic, but it did ensure that the Soviets never ran short on dollars and other major currencies.

A variant of Buffett’s plan, designed by Vladimir Masch, a Soviet planner who emigrated in 1972 and went on to work at Bell Laboratories, is called compensated free trade. Rather than putting the onus on companies, compensated free trade would require the governments of surplus nations to make payments to the U.S. for exceeding targeted surpluses. The U.S. could set the payment levels unilaterally.

The threat of a trade war is making once outré ideas seem relatively reasonable. Masch says he used to be told compensated free trade would never fly politically, but that was before Trump. “You can never say never in politics,” he says. Levy Economics Institute President Dimitri Papadimitriou agrees that such ideas have greater relevance in these times: “I would suspect that a Buffett-type plan would have a much better hearing now. It would certainly be much more preferable and less dangerous than the one just signed by executive order.”

The trouble with many of these ideas is that government intervention is bound to have unintended consequences—a sharp increase in smuggling, for instance. And having to balance imports and exports at all times would deprive the U.S. government of options, says Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The dollars that foreigners use to buy American goods and services wouldn’t be available to finance, say, a big American infrastructure program or other investment.

Fortunately, Setser says, there are proven ways to shrink trade deficits that are less extreme. He advocates changing tax laws to discourage offshoring and going after foreign trading practices that really are cheating, such as unwarranted intervention to suppress a currency’s value or theft of intellectual property.

The quickest way to achieve more balanced trade, though, would be to shrink the U.S. budget deficit, say Setser and Dartmouth College economist Douglas Irwin, among others. Budget deficits force the U.S. to borrow more from abroad because domestic savings are insufficient to cover government spending and other needs. Trade deficits are the flip side of excess borrowing from abroad.

The $1.5 trillion tax cut that Trump signed at the end of 2017 will only make the U.S. trade deficit worse, experts say. It overstimulates an economy that’s already running hot, with a jobless rate of just 4.1 percent, which is bound to suck in even more imports from abroad.

In fact, many economists say, now is not the best time to attempt a reduction in the U.S. trade deficit. An American widget factory that’s already running flat-out wouldn’t have the capacity to meet domestic demand if Washington curtailed imports of widgets. It’s still important for U.S. negotiators to fight genuinely unfair foreign trade practices because they harm individual sectors, but a sharp drop in the overall trade gap now would probably stoke inflation. So while there are plenty of ideas for better orchestrating trade flows, the best thing for Trump to do right now might be … nothing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -trade-gap

[annatar1914]

Well I love those things to + Guitars ... I think ancap is a beautiful fantasy, but when I follow it through it always leads to warlords requiring mercenaries to protect the property they've stolen from honest people and from there to monarchism and enslavement. (?) Nobody seems to be paying much attention to the thread (big surprise) so why not tell me what you think Trump should do if he were tilted towards ancap?

Zam

Pretty much what he's doing could be geared towards that outcome, actually. Haden't given it much thought from that angle, what he would do if he wanted to bring the State down, all States, to bring about an Ancap world...

[Libertarian353]

I didn't say you were EM, I said you were ''trying too hard''.

Well I just assume you didn't believe me, I apologize then.

Most people are often accused of being someone they are not, and sometimes they just take it to the next level.

I guess, but that doesn't always means they're lying.

As it is, EM was a guy who didn't have it all together, if you know what I mean. Something of a Bullshitarian.

Well I assume from what I heard; He's a Pan-Africanist who wants the restoration of the Ethiopian monarchy.

Which means they're perfectly consistent, kind of Protestant Churches unto themselves . But yes, God is good, all the time.

Ah, that Catholic wit. At least we believe there's an Afterlife for evil people, unlike your Pope.

I am what I am, as long as it isn't ham.

Churchill said the pig is our equals and I incline to agree with him.

Theft.

So the natives who own the land was thieves?

Anarchy.

Well isn't that the final stage of communism?

People, they cause a lot of poverty and wars. And when less restrained, they congeal their efforts into a system of exploitation, Capitalism.

True but the government is more focus and does more damage than an anarchist society. Remember the government(ruled by lobyists) caused more poverty and misery. Nestle or the other companies controlled the american government.

I usually give it a few weeks

So we in an agreement.

[Godstud]

Being an average businessman does not give you economic knowledge about countries. Trump's out of his depth, but his ego won't allow him to keep his fat fucking mouth shut, and leave well-enough, alone.

The tariffs will bite the USA in the ass. His policies have already dropped investment and the stock market. He's effectively put the brakes on the US economy.

I see a Trump-caused recession in the near future, for the USA.

[Zamuel]

A good question, because I cannot tell anymore. America's current account deficit is a legitimate concern, but Trump's little tariff tit-for-tat with China will do little to reduce it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -trade-gap

I (and many trade experts) agree. There are much smarter ways to correct the situation. But they don't put the rope around the Chinese neck that is going to strangle them when unemployment and recession result. If things continue on the path being established they are going to have serious civil unrest within a year ... How are they going to deal with that? I think Trump wants to maneuver them.

Zam

[Zamuel]

I see a Trump-caused recession in the near future, for the USA.

Like, maybe around midterm election time? Hey the GOP got nuthin else to run on ...

Zam

[One Degree]

The continued fantasy Trump is an idiot and will eventually destroy this or that is getting kind of pathetic.
His policies are working. His polls are now at 50% favorability. Obama was at 45% at this point.
The US has always suffered from erratic foreign policies. We change direction with every election. We have survived them all. What Trump is doing has been our policy in the past. He is not doing anything unusual, just not what liberals would do.
Edit: before someone says, “we are discussing economics, not foreign policy”, we are discussing his foreign policy on the economy. The economy has survived our erratic behavior and will again.

[Libertarian353]

@One Degree

You know a country is doom, if One Degree says trump doing a good job.

[One Degree]

@One Degree

You know a country is doom, if One Degree says trump doing a good job.

I see you are still having difficulty with reading comprehension. I actually never expressed a personal opinion on whether he was doing a good job.

[Libertarian353]

I see you are still having difficulty with reading comprehension.

It is now?

I actually never expressed a personal opinion on whether he was doing a good job.

I could tell you prefer him over Hilary(granted I hated them both, I voted Hilary).

[Rancid]

Interesting, keeping a campaign promise is now considered clever.

I guess you didn't understand what I wrote.....

I was talking about China's response. Maybe this will help you a little.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/04/trump-states-would-be-hit-hard-by-new-chinese-tariffs.html

[Crantag]

I (and many trade experts) agree. There are much smarter ways to correct the situation. But they don't put the rope around the Chinese neck that is going to strangle them when unemployment and recession result. If things continue on the path being established they are going to have serious civil unrest within a year ... How are they going to deal with that? I think Trump wants to maneuver them.

Zam

China weathered the 2008-9 global financial crisis, which saw a shock to demand for Chinese exports which is likely unlike anything that these little tariffs are likely to cause.





It sort of seems as though the Chinese economy re-balanced itself in response to the shock.

The US export market is unreliable over the long term in any event. If the trade war deepens it could be an artificial abbreviating of the boon time which China has enjoyed in America. China has already been engaged in expanding its export outlets through bilateral trade agreements which utilize trading which is not denominated in dollars. These are known as 'Bilateral RMB Swap Agreements'.


I don't see other countries joining the fray with the US to target China for trade restrictions. For instance, lets see what that rightwing capitalist rag the Financial Times has to say.
It is up to China to save the global trading system

Japan is an example of a country with a pervasive anti-China bias which prevails in the society. How much longer are they going to put up with the prevailing framework, whereby "When the US catches a cold, Japan catches pneumonia"? Whenever Trump makes a stupid rant and Wall Street stocks tumble, the Nikkei stocks are right behind them and/or right in their lead to tumble.

Yet, Japan is not alone. The impacts of American excesses in impacting the economies of other countries just could be a catalyst for a further opening up to China.

On a sidenote, this just made the beat as well.
China Takes First Step In Paying For Crude Imports In Yuan

The petro-dollar is basically the backbone of America's supremacist position in international settlement. But the times they are a changing.

[Oberon]

For people who make a lot of noise about being educated and sophisticated, this board has a large number of people who put a lot of stock in 'Economics', as if it's a real science or something. Why not go back to Astrology, and everyone posting their star charts and how that tells us important stuff?

Trump's tariffs don't even remotely resemble Smoot-Hawley's, though a lot of Drama Queens writing filler for the Fake News tabloid industry find it fashionable to post hysterical predictions based on them.

[Crantag]

For people who make a lot of noise about being educated and sophisticated, this board has a large number of people who put a lot of stock in 'Economics', as if it's a real science or something. Why not go back to Astrology, and everyone posting their star charts and how that tells us important stuff?

Trump's tariffs don't even remotely resemble Smoot-Hawley's, though a lot of Drama Queens writing filler for the Fake News tabloid industry find it fashionable to post hysterical predictions based on them.

That was a pretty weak effort.

You are a vehement Trump cheerleader. The best you can do is compare economic data to astrology charts on the basis that it is based on economics? Pretty weak.

It is very clear that you are the sort that will contrive any 'analysis' to service your political biases.

Good for a laugh at least.

[annatar1914]

Hello L353, You said this by way of reply;

Well I just assume you didn't believe me, I apologize then.

No need for apology, I still don't know who you are

I guess, but that doesn't always means they're lying.

No, not always . But when it comes to the anonymity of the the interwebz people get sorely tempted to LARP.

Well I assume from what I heard; He's a Pan-Africanist who wants the restoration of the Ethiopian monarchy.

He was, or is. Funny thing was that he had absolutely no knowledge of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and minimal knowledge of Ethiopia or it's history. I figured he was some white kind from the Burbs role-playing.

Ah, that Catholic wit. At least we believe there's an Afterlife for evil people, unlike your Pope.

Actually, I'm Orthodox Christian, and probably more virulently anti-Papist than Ian Paisley (well, maybe not that much).

Churchill said the pig is our equals and I incline to agree with him.

I say that Churchill was equal to the Gaderene Swine of the Gospel anyway.

So the natives who own the land was thieves?

Frequently natives did not have the conception of property arrangements that Europeans had.

Well isn't that the final stage of communism?

No rule then but God's Rule, I figure. No need.

True but the government is more focus and does more damage than an anarchist society. Remember the government(ruled by lobyists) caused more poverty and misery. Nestle or the other companies controlled the american government.

Sure you're an Ancap, lol?

So we in an agreement.

Yeah, I'm a softie, give you a few weeks

[Zamuel]

China weathered the 2008-9 global financial crisis, which saw a shock to demand for Chinese exports which is likely unlike anything that these little tariffs are likely to cause.

Not talking about a financial crisis, talking about an employment crisis coupled with a drop in the modern standard of living Chinese workers now enjoy.

How many Chinese do you think are employed supplying American demand for cheap goods? Idle hands do the devils work, as China well knows. And there are all kinds of forbidden ideas floating around China just waiting for followers with time on their hands. Do you remember the "Old" repressive Chinese government? Think those displaced workers are going to cheerfully accept it's return?

The US export market is unreliable over the long term in any event

No, the US has been one of their largest and most predictable customers, a fact reflected by their dumping excess production here. "Dollar" stores and "Direct from China" web sites selling at below cost depress American production of plastics, wood, and trade metals. While ramping up China's employment stats they represse political dissatisfaction. Reducing productivity will destabilize the social balance and increase internal tensions ... Sounds like classic Trump to me.

I don't see other countries joining the fray with the US to target China for trade restrictions.

Not directly, but add superior American goods to international markets and a minor but significant market share (those willing to pay for quality) will slip from China's grasp.

Zam