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[martinuzz]

EU is formally complaining with the WTO, for the tariffs are against WTO agreements.

[sluissa]

Indeed. that is one of the many and multitudinous consequences of tariffs.

(Or rather, "Cheap goods!!" is one of the siren songs of free trade. Depends on how you look at it.)

If you look at it from the perspective of:  We tried free trade, and it was like crack cocaine. Yes, there was a big rush, and lots of energy, but now we are hopelessly hooked on being high just to feel normal.  (EG, we are hopelessly dependent upon the cheaper prices of goods, just to feel normal.)

and less of: "Congratulations, now you are gonna experience super withdrawal. Enjoy your shakes, paranoia, and uncontrollable itching."

it makes sense to think of the tariff as an intervention, and not as a "bad."

There are two sides to every story, and treating "Cheap goods!" as a universal "good thing" is dangerous as shit. (again, when there are serious issues with cheap products in the free world market, flooding the domestic market because of removal of trade barriers, local producers simply cannot compete, and they go out of business. Those jobs simply vanish from the economy; they are infeasible to sustain. It can be argued that new jobs of equal value will be created by the economic opportunities of marketing the cheaper goods in the domestic setting, but this is not exactly true; If the more expensive goods were driving more economic activity, (due to full supply line-wide opportunities, and larger sums of money changing hands per exchange), and demand is not sufficient to widely expand the product line with the cheaper foriegn goods to make up with economies of scale, you have just reduced the local economy with the free trade. (Again, because there is less total money exchanging hands now.)

 Problem is, if you want an intervention against cheap goods, raw materials is a dumb way to target that. You're just making your own goods more expensive while failing to cut off the source of the cheap goods. Like telling an alcoholic to go on a diet. Regardless of if the diet may do good in the long term, the pressing issue is the alcoholism and adding the stress of a diet may only make the alcoholism worse.

[smjjames]

Indeed. that is one of the many and multitudinous consequences of tariffs.

(Or rather, "Cheap goods!!" is one of the siren songs of free trade. Depends on how you look at it.)

If you look at it from the perspective of:  We tried free trade, and it was like crack cocaine. Yes, there was a big rush, and lots of energy, but now we are hopelessly hooked on being high just to feel normal.  (EG, we are hopelessly dependent upon the cheaper prices of goods, just to feel normal.)

and less of: "Congratulations, now you are gonna experience super withdrawal. Enjoy your shakes, paranoia, and uncontrollable itching."

it makes sense to think of the tariff as an intervention, and not as a "bad."

There are two sides to every story, and treating "Cheap goods!" as a universal "good thing" is dangerous as shit. (again, when there are serious issues with cheap products in the free world market, flooding the domestic market because of removal of trade barriers, local producers simply cannot compete, and they go out of business. Those jobs simply vanish from the economy; they are infeasible to sustain. It can be argued that new jobs of equal value will be created by the economic opportunities of marketing the cheaper goods in the domestic setting, but this is not exactly true; If the more expensive goods were driving more economic activity, (due to full supply line-wide opportunities, and larger sums of money changing hands per exchange), and demand is not sufficient to widely expand the product line with the cheaper foriegn goods to make up with economies of scale, you have just reduced the local economy with the free trade. (Again, because there is less total money exchanging hands now.)

 Problem is, if you want an intervention against cheap goods, raw materials is a dumb way to target that. You're just making your own goods more expensive while failing to cut off the source of the cheap goods. Like telling an alcoholic to go on a diet. Regardless of if the diet may do good in the long term, the pressing issue is the alcoholism and adding the stress of a diet may only make the alcoholism worse.

Well, more like an intervention against cheap raw materials (inputs/intermediate products) rather than cheap goods (end products). Yes, I know it's an end product for the steel and aluminum industries, but I'm referring to finished goods that don't undergo any further proccessing.

I read a NYT article saying that the main problem with the steel and aluminum industries is that they've failed to take the breathing room to modernize and become more efiicient, thus they've been unable to compete. As Scriver said, subsidies seem like a better tool for propping up the steel and aluminum industries.

[sluissa]

I would be hesitant to offer subsidies to a raw material industry. We've seen that go extremely poorly in the oil industry. And farmers become dependent on them for basic survival.

Not that this would ever fly in the US, nor would it be easily transitioned to, but strategic natural resources (and probably their direct refined products(i.e. iron - steel, oil - fuel, etc.)), especially those that find themselves in markets where it's hard to compete, should probably be moved over into a government controlled system of some sort. This does risk a level of government corruption that is difficult to fight. But it would be no less damaging nor harder to fight than the current private corruption that goes on and it could be argued if you limit the grift to those directly involved, you cut out at least a few middleman layers of already existing corruption and inefficiency. Fewer targets means you can point out individuals who are corrupt rather than just waving generally at a corrupt system. Individuals can be dealt with. Systems are harder to break.

[PTTG??]

Let's not give Trump the pretension that the tariffs were a considered move. If he had some idea of the consequences of implementing them, he would have sought buy-in from allies and developed something more internally consistent than a huge tariff on every country except for, you know, the one that actually imports all the steel.

And if you look at the approach he's taking, he's just asking for bribes, as the tariffs go into effect in 15 days and can be disabled by request from each individual nation.

On a more fundamental level, the era of nationalist protectionism is long past. We do need restrictions in global trade, but they must be to protect the world from market instabilities and climate damage, and to protect human rights.

[sluissa]

Let's not give Trump the pretension that the tariffs were a considered move. If he had some idea of the consequences of implementing them, he would have sought buy-in from allies and developed something more internally consistent than a huge tariff on every country except for, you know, the one that actually imports all the steel.

And if you look at the approach he's taking, he's just asking for bribes, as the tariffs go into effect in 15 days and can be disabled by request from each individual nation.

On a more fundamental level, the era of nationalist protectionism is long past. We do need restrictions in global trade, but they must be to protect the world from market instabilities and climate damage, and to protect human rights.

I think we need to look back towards economic nationalist protectionism. Not notably against other nations, but against supranational corporations who hold far too much power across far too many borders. We are drifting towards the Robocop/Alien/Blade Runner/Rollerball(1975) corporate led dystopian future. In some ways we're already there.

[misko27]

Again, none of these tariffs are those things. PTTG is right; this isn't a considered move, and it's not surprising Gary Cohn resigned over them. The only arguments for the tariffs are hypothetical arguments about how some specific types of tariffs (namely, all the types tHat aren't being imposed) could be good/useful/productive, and not that these specific tariffs will do anything good whatsoever. Because they won't. You can barely even pretend that they will. And it's nuts.

I swear to god, Trump is gonna take a healthy economy, shit on it, and dump it on a successor who will get blamed for everything. I can see it coming right now, and it pisses me off. I was reading an article in the NY Times about black people leaving white Evangelical Megachurches, and one of the pastors in there seriously argued that Trump has been good for black people because of how low black unemployment has gotten.

(Unrelated, but the sheer size of Evangelical's moral blindspot about Trump boggles my mind. Was it like this for W? )

[martinuzz]

In an attempt to start a discussion about violence in video games and their effect on the behaviour of children, prompted by the Florida highschool shooting, Trump had this video made and played it, after a meeting behind closed doors with representatives of the gaming industry.
The White House released no further statement after the meeting, just the video, which Trump also played at the beginning of the meeting.

warning graphical content
https://youtu.be/0C_IBSuXIoo

[smjjames]

I don't think Evangelicals embraced Bush 43 in the same way as they did Trump. Or at least Bush didn't tap into the feedback loop and actively fuel it as Trump did.

Trump will definetly try to pin failing economy or whatever failings on his successor, especially if it's a democrat (does anybody think he'll observe the customary laying low and letting their successor do their thing?). But the way it works is that the previous President (rightly or wrongly) gets the blame for economic problems while the successor gets graded for their own term.

It doesn't look like other countries have pulled the trigger (so to speak) on their side yet, so, it's kind of a wait and see mode.

In an attempt to start a discussion about violence in video games and their effect on the behaviour of children, prompted by the Florida highschool shooting, Trump had this video made and played it, after a meeting behind closed doors with representatives of the gaming industry.
The White House released no further statement after the meeting, just the video, which Trump also played at the beginning of the meeting.

warning graphical content
https://youtu.be/0C_IBSuXIoo

A good chunk of that is clearly from cinematics rather than gameplay. Also, I read that the video game industries didn't get a chance to talk much, so, it was just opponents mostly screaming at the CEOs.

I wonder how violence in gameplay is treated elsewhere around the world though. I do know that Germany has restrictions on it and they make the blood green instead of red because self flagellation.

I get the argument towards changing the culture a bit, but it doesn't help when they try to start discussion based on emotions and not fact.

[McTraveller]

In no particular order...

'Evangelicals' is such a huge heterogeneous group that I dislike when people say 'Evangelicals do X' or whatever.  Partly because I happen to be a member of a denomination that had the misfortune to pick 'Evangelical' as part of their name 30 years ago, but we're not anything like what most people think of when they hear that term.  Damn media.

Economic efficiency - any economist that says that lowest price for a single commodity without regard to effect of other aspects the economy isn't worth his diploma.

[PTTG??]

To be fair, Evangelicals did like Bush a little bit more than Trump, but in practice that just means that they're much, much more forgiving of Trump than they are of Bush. After all, the terrible things Bush did were to infidels.

[redwallzyl]

In no particular order...

'Evangelicals' is such a huge heterogeneous group that I dislike when people say 'Evangelicals do X' or whatever.  Partly because I happen to be a member of a denomination that had the misfortune to pick 'Evangelical' as part of their name 30 years ago, but we're not anything like what most people think of when they hear that term.  Damn media.

Economic efficiency - any economist that says that lowest price for a single commodity without regard to effect of other aspects the economy isn't worth his diploma.

The problem with economists is we have a whole generation of neoliberal trained economists currently shilling horrible models and obsessed with capitalism with little consideration that the economy is not the only part of society that matters. There is so much capitalist focous left over from the cold war of that it has given our culture with an obsession with blind ideas of progress and the magical market.

[Dunamisdeos]

*snip

'Evangelicals' is such a huge heterogeneous group that I dislike when people say 'Evangelicals do X' or whatever.  Partly because I happen to be a member of a denomination that had the misfortune to pick 'Evangelical' as part of their name 30 years ago, but we're not anything like what most people think of when they hear that term.  Damn media.

*snip*

Yeah, it seems like it's become a convenient word that means nothing and can be assigned to anything negative. Are you a Christian who agrees with me? You're cool. Oh, you don't? Evangelical, coincidentally the same label I assign to people who blow up abortion clinics. That's who I can treat you as now.

Also, I've found that (In my social circles) the same people who support Trump now also supported Bush, if a bit less rabidly. I attribute this to their reasoning of "I support anything not associated directly with liberalism/the Democrats" and also that Trump deliberately whips as many people as possible into a frothing rage during his regular breakfast routine.

I've also found that there's some desperate reverse justification in my Christian circles in regards to Trump, in that they A: Really want to support conservatism, and B: Right now that means supporting Trump then C: They need their current leader to be a Christian to justify their support to themselves. Hence, there's a huge rush of after-the-fact "Look, Trump is obviously religious, he just wants to do the Christian thing, here's a jpg of him and a church nearby, so if you don't support Trump you must hate Jesus".

The man is obviously about as much of a Christian as a ham sandwich is Jewish. I tell you hwat, the majority of my family is Christian and also firmly Democrat, and they are not fooled for a second.

[Bumber]

Nobody mentioned how Kim Jong Un is planning to meet with Trump by May? Possibly to discuss the removal of nukes?

4-d chess master gambit pays off. Trump Nobel Peace Prize, when?

[smjjames]

Nobody mentioned how Kim Jong Un is planning to meet with Trump by May? Possibly to discuss the removal of nukes?

4-d chess master gambit pays off. Trump Nobel Peace Prize, when?

That was relegated to the NK thread.

Doubt it. Kim is only coming to the table because he has negotiation leverage. The US refuses to concede any ground.

Given how the adminstration keeps bumbling around, it's gonna take an unholy effort to pull this off without screwing up. They seem to be backing off a little, or at least trying to solidfy themselves in their usual clumsy way.

It really will take an enormous effort to pull it off since they're running the state department in a near skeleton-crew state as this is exactly the time you want a fully staffed and smoothly running state department.