There's a lot of attempting to connect tariffs to high prices. Of course no item has an actual tariff price on it. The only real complaints with merit are for luxury items that have little costs on this end, wine costing hundreds costs hundreds more. Realistically, in my normy life, almost all my costs are for services here.
Car and house insurance, real estate taxes, tuition for the kids, if I had a mortgage, car payments or credit card debt, I'd be paying interest, I do pay full tuition for two kids. Someone should do a study as to how much we actually spend on imported goods.
We did buy a fridge this year, old one was 20 years old, powers that be wanted a new one. It's not something you buy every year. I also bought an ipad for the youngest, she does homework on it, phone is for social media. All our phones are 3 years old and we won't be getting new ones for a while. Iphones don't wear out much.
I think the whole tariff thing is overblown. If the fridge and iphones cost twice as much it wouldn't compare to our fixed costs of insurance, taxes, tuition, etc. Costs spread out over years are small amounts per month.
At the end of the day the USA has to begin some sort of national policy on trade that assures a domestic capacity to produce at least a small percent of everything. Never again should we be caught out with no ability to make covid masks, or rare earth magnets.
To do this we might well have to subsidize some industries to keep them operating, probably best done via tariffs. Soybean sales are unimportant. Low income wages are more important than anyone realizes, and as Oren says, without tariffs, wages push ever more manufacturing offshore.
We can't exist as a country selling each other equities. We have to make stuff.
Counterpoint: Progressives specifically dislike Trump's brain dead, corrupt application of tariffs, which hurt American workers (just ask soybean farmers how the tariffs are working out for them) and require tax-payer bailouts. Unlike Trump supporters, those that oppose his tariffs are able to see that he's a stooge that gets out-maneuvered regularly in every so-called trade deal - especially those with China - accomplishing nothing other than leaving the U.S in a weaker position.
Take the latest trade "deal" with China. Once again, Trump was unable to secure any sort of enforceable guarantee that China would actually fulfill its promise to buy more American agricultural products. He's made this mistake twice now. That's how dumb he is. Second, the current tariff regime in place with China actually exempts key products like consumer electronics, meaning that these are only subject to the 10% "fentanyl" tariff. On the other hand, much higher "reciprocal" tariffs remain in place with other trading partners - including the UK, Australia, Europe and Canada (some of whom we had a trade surplus with!). If the goal is to incentivize high-tech manufacturing capacity outside of China - either onshore or to allied countries - how exactly is this going to work when the tariffs on those other countries for electronics are now *higher* than those on China?
Trump's plan is very very dumb, and this is before we even get to the outright corruption. Remind me: how does it help American workers to pardon a shady crypto billionaire who was in jail because his company was laundering money for unsavory actors like the Iranian regime and the drug cartels? How does it help American workers to bail out Argentina to the tune of $20B because that country's president said nice things about Trump?
Look, I know the folks at American Compass must be watching in horror as the wheels come off the Trump administration and the corruption is conducted in broad daylight now. You went "all in" on the bullshit premise of right-wing populism, that the Republican party under Trump was a "multicultural working class coalition" only to learn that racists and bigots have permeated every level of Republican governance, from local, state to federal. And now Trump is building himself a gaudy Whitehouse ballroom with shady, opaque funding sources while throwing "Great Gatsby" themed parties at the same time Americans are faced with higher prices, layoffs, and out of control healthcare costs. Manufacturing jobs are actually down, not up, and his tariff regime has been a total failure and he doesn't seem to care at all. He's openly saying now that as long as the stock market is up, things are good. That's no different than what the supply-siders used to say when they dominated the republican party.
So I'd suggest you take some time to reflect - seriously reflect - on how you failed to see what most progressives always had: That Trump is conman and a fool, and has been since the 1980's when he was a tabloid fixture and failed casino operator. And that a Trump promise - like the ones he made on the campaign to address affordability - are worthless.
Richard Hanania: "While protectionists focus on jobs their policies save, they ignore the much larger harms inflicted on the rest of society. Steel tariffs imposed by the Bush administration in 2002–2003 were found to have cost 168,000 jobs in industries that have steel as inputs, more than the total number of jobs in the entire steel industry. The first Trump administration’s washing machine tariffs created 1,800 jobs, at the cost to consumers of $820,000 for each job."
I understand that you have bought into the free trade argument but ask who is paying to secure all those foreign supply chains feeding those foreign factories. The French got run out of North Africa and aren't going back in.
One reason that will step back and watch it burn is that no other European countries were willing to help fight the terrorists. The second is that its political suicide to cut pensions and health to defend foreign supply chains.
The same will happen writ large as we run out of money and have to choose between cutting Medicare or defending foreign supply chains against pirates and terrorists.
The deficit increased by close to $1T in just two months and that pathetic little gimp Mike Johnson and his daddy Trump own this. Revenue from tariffs isn't nearly enough to put a dent in the deficit. DOGE was a complete joke, so much so that Republicans don't even want to talk about it anymore. And Trump seems to be walking the U.S into what will be an expensive and illegal war with Venezuela.
Your TDS is showing. Biden piled on massive debts. We will see of we go into Venezuela. What we were doing about stopping the drug smuggling was costing us a fortune and failing. Similar to many other issues. The mainstream politicians seem incable of changing anything.
So would you rather we just keep walking into bankruptcy or try something different.
"TDS" to explain criticism of Trump is the argument the small minded and intellectually lazy make. Biden's not in office, if you haven't noticed, and the Trump admin is just piling on debt at a faster clip than ever.
Small minded is the fantasy that we had a better option to vote for. The queen of word salad along with most of the rest of the current Democrats lack any vision other then clinging to power. I keep hoping for a split between the diversity-crats and what's left of the more serious democrats.
Meanwhile we are still having to run out the un-reformed Neo-cons on the right. Disconnecting trade from mutual defense, rule of law and shared values may have been a good idea but then so was socialism. Reality has proved "free" trade to be a massive tragedy of the commons.
You've now compared Trump to the Biden administration, which is no longer in power and never will be again, and to a hypothetical Harris administration. What you seem incapable of doing is evaluating the president we now have *by the standards he set for himself*:
1. He said he'd bring down prices. He hasn't.
2. He said tariffs would make the U.S rich and reduce the deficit. They aren't. The deficit is getting bigger.
3. He and his former bestie, Elon Musk, said that DOGE would reduce government spending by 3T. Then it was 1T. It came nowhere close to that.
4. He said the tariffs would result in glorious new trade deals. They haven't. Read the details of this latest agreement with China, if you can even call it that. Its basically an unenforceable letter of intent.
5. He said he'd avoid the foreign wars that the neocons pushed. He hasn't. He's threatening war with Venezuela without congressional approval.
Your argument seems to be that Trump was the "least worst" option and that despite his sleaziness and corruption, at least we'd get some actual progress on all the items I just listed above. If the American people are being asked to support the Trump family enriching themselves with shady crypto deals, abusing the pardon system, and putting cranks like RFK Jr. in charge of health policy, then its really not too much to ask that he actually deliver on the promises he himself made, over and over and over again, on the campaign trail.
Instead, he hasn't delivered on any of it, which is why the American Compass people are now referring to Trump's economic policy results as delicate "green shoots" rather than meaningful accomplishments.
So you're okay with America running itself into bankruptcy and watching the world spiral into chaos as long as we do it at a slightly slower rate. Don't get me wrong, Trump is only half right. We need to re-write trade policy to reward honest and responsible allies. What we're currently doing is rewarding corrupt and irresponsible actors.
But we can't get to where we need to go from where we are. The political right is shifting because much of what we're doing is failing. The biggest problem, as usual, is all the vested interests that are making a buck on the current policies. It was always going to take an unorthodox leader to get us out of the rut we had gotten ourselves into.
Trump is annoying but much like Lincoln, FDR, or Reagan, the bigger issue is moving the entrenched powers to remove their self imposed blinders.
I know one thing that is underreported. How angry union members are with the Democratic party on the sheer opposition to the reciprocal tariffs.
There's a lot of attempting to connect tariffs to high prices. Of course no item has an actual tariff price on it. The only real complaints with merit are for luxury items that have little costs on this end, wine costing hundreds costs hundreds more. Realistically, in my normy life, almost all my costs are for services here.
Car and house insurance, real estate taxes, tuition for the kids, if I had a mortgage, car payments or credit card debt, I'd be paying interest, I do pay full tuition for two kids. Someone should do a study as to how much we actually spend on imported goods.
We did buy a fridge this year, old one was 20 years old, powers that be wanted a new one. It's not something you buy every year. I also bought an ipad for the youngest, she does homework on it, phone is for social media. All our phones are 3 years old and we won't be getting new ones for a while. Iphones don't wear out much.
I think the whole tariff thing is overblown. If the fridge and iphones cost twice as much it wouldn't compare to our fixed costs of insurance, taxes, tuition, etc. Costs spread out over years are small amounts per month.
At the end of the day the USA has to begin some sort of national policy on trade that assures a domestic capacity to produce at least a small percent of everything. Never again should we be caught out with no ability to make covid masks, or rare earth magnets.
To do this we might well have to subsidize some industries to keep them operating, probably best done via tariffs. Soybean sales are unimportant. Low income wages are more important than anyone realizes, and as Oren says, without tariffs, wages push ever more manufacturing offshore.
We can't exist as a country selling each other equities. We have to make stuff.
Counterpoint: Progressives specifically dislike Trump's brain dead, corrupt application of tariffs, which hurt American workers (just ask soybean farmers how the tariffs are working out for them) and require tax-payer bailouts. Unlike Trump supporters, those that oppose his tariffs are able to see that he's a stooge that gets out-maneuvered regularly in every so-called trade deal - especially those with China - accomplishing nothing other than leaving the U.S in a weaker position.
Take the latest trade "deal" with China. Once again, Trump was unable to secure any sort of enforceable guarantee that China would actually fulfill its promise to buy more American agricultural products. He's made this mistake twice now. That's how dumb he is. Second, the current tariff regime in place with China actually exempts key products like consumer electronics, meaning that these are only subject to the 10% "fentanyl" tariff. On the other hand, much higher "reciprocal" tariffs remain in place with other trading partners - including the UK, Australia, Europe and Canada (some of whom we had a trade surplus with!). If the goal is to incentivize high-tech manufacturing capacity outside of China - either onshore or to allied countries - how exactly is this going to work when the tariffs on those other countries for electronics are now *higher* than those on China?
Trump's plan is very very dumb, and this is before we even get to the outright corruption. Remind me: how does it help American workers to pardon a shady crypto billionaire who was in jail because his company was laundering money for unsavory actors like the Iranian regime and the drug cartels? How does it help American workers to bail out Argentina to the tune of $20B because that country's president said nice things about Trump?
Look, I know the folks at American Compass must be watching in horror as the wheels come off the Trump administration and the corruption is conducted in broad daylight now. You went "all in" on the bullshit premise of right-wing populism, that the Republican party under Trump was a "multicultural working class coalition" only to learn that racists and bigots have permeated every level of Republican governance, from local, state to federal. And now Trump is building himself a gaudy Whitehouse ballroom with shady, opaque funding sources while throwing "Great Gatsby" themed parties at the same time Americans are faced with higher prices, layoffs, and out of control healthcare costs. Manufacturing jobs are actually down, not up, and his tariff regime has been a total failure and he doesn't seem to care at all. He's openly saying now that as long as the stock market is up, things are good. That's no different than what the supply-siders used to say when they dominated the republican party.
So I'd suggest you take some time to reflect - seriously reflect - on how you failed to see what most progressives always had: That Trump is conman and a fool, and has been since the 1980's when he was a tabloid fixture and failed casino operator. And that a Trump promise - like the ones he made on the campaign to address affordability - are worthless.
Richard Hanania: "While protectionists focus on jobs their policies save, they ignore the much larger harms inflicted on the rest of society. Steel tariffs imposed by the Bush administration in 2002–2003 were found to have cost 168,000 jobs in industries that have steel as inputs, more than the total number of jobs in the entire steel industry. The first Trump administration’s washing machine tariffs created 1,800 jobs, at the cost to consumers of $820,000 for each job."
I understand that you have bought into the free trade argument but ask who is paying to secure all those foreign supply chains feeding those foreign factories. The French got run out of North Africa and aren't going back in.
One reason that will step back and watch it burn is that no other European countries were willing to help fight the terrorists. The second is that its political suicide to cut pensions and health to defend foreign supply chains.
The same will happen writ large as we run out of money and have to choose between cutting Medicare or defending foreign supply chains against pirates and terrorists.
The deficit increased by close to $1T in just two months and that pathetic little gimp Mike Johnson and his daddy Trump own this. Revenue from tariffs isn't nearly enough to put a dent in the deficit. DOGE was a complete joke, so much so that Republicans don't even want to talk about it anymore. And Trump seems to be walking the U.S into what will be an expensive and illegal war with Venezuela.
Your TDS is showing. Biden piled on massive debts. We will see of we go into Venezuela. What we were doing about stopping the drug smuggling was costing us a fortune and failing. Similar to many other issues. The mainstream politicians seem incable of changing anything.
So would you rather we just keep walking into bankruptcy or try something different.
"TDS" to explain criticism of Trump is the argument the small minded and intellectually lazy make. Biden's not in office, if you haven't noticed, and the Trump admin is just piling on debt at a faster clip than ever.
Small minded is the fantasy that we had a better option to vote for. The queen of word salad along with most of the rest of the current Democrats lack any vision other then clinging to power. I keep hoping for a split between the diversity-crats and what's left of the more serious democrats.
Meanwhile we are still having to run out the un-reformed Neo-cons on the right. Disconnecting trade from mutual defense, rule of law and shared values may have been a good idea but then so was socialism. Reality has proved "free" trade to be a massive tragedy of the commons.
Much like socialism.
You've now compared Trump to the Biden administration, which is no longer in power and never will be again, and to a hypothetical Harris administration. What you seem incapable of doing is evaluating the president we now have *by the standards he set for himself*:
1. He said he'd bring down prices. He hasn't.
2. He said tariffs would make the U.S rich and reduce the deficit. They aren't. The deficit is getting bigger.
3. He and his former bestie, Elon Musk, said that DOGE would reduce government spending by 3T. Then it was 1T. It came nowhere close to that.
4. He said the tariffs would result in glorious new trade deals. They haven't. Read the details of this latest agreement with China, if you can even call it that. Its basically an unenforceable letter of intent.
5. He said he'd avoid the foreign wars that the neocons pushed. He hasn't. He's threatening war with Venezuela without congressional approval.
Your argument seems to be that Trump was the "least worst" option and that despite his sleaziness and corruption, at least we'd get some actual progress on all the items I just listed above. If the American people are being asked to support the Trump family enriching themselves with shady crypto deals, abusing the pardon system, and putting cranks like RFK Jr. in charge of health policy, then its really not too much to ask that he actually deliver on the promises he himself made, over and over and over again, on the campaign trail.
Instead, he hasn't delivered on any of it, which is why the American Compass people are now referring to Trump's economic policy results as delicate "green shoots" rather than meaningful accomplishments.
We’re running out of money faster under Trump than we were under Biden.
So you're okay with America running itself into bankruptcy and watching the world spiral into chaos as long as we do it at a slightly slower rate. Don't get me wrong, Trump is only half right. We need to re-write trade policy to reward honest and responsible allies. What we're currently doing is rewarding corrupt and irresponsible actors.
But we can't get to where we need to go from where we are. The political right is shifting because much of what we're doing is failing. The biggest problem, as usual, is all the vested interests that are making a buck on the current policies. It was always going to take an unorthodox leader to get us out of the rut we had gotten ourselves into.
Trump is annoying but much like Lincoln, FDR, or Reagan, the bigger issue is moving the entrenched powers to remove their self imposed blinders.