My question is what is the point of the trade war. What does trump get from initiating/escalating it, or who is directing him to do it. Seems to be a net negative for all sectors of the economy.
I respect Krugman as an economist but not as a political pundit, he needs to dig harder than resorting to the age old "don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity". There is already some simple logic (trade war = tough = re elected) behind the decision, I just believe there is more to the story that we don't see.
Comparing him to insane kings from the 18th century just gets people to chuckle and move on, sweeping deeper critical thought under the rug.
To call him stupid or mad ends any line of further inquiry into why he does the things he does, and that to my mind is very, very dangerous.
He's sane/rational. He has motives for most of his actions from what I've observerd. I'm asking what the motive is behind his initiation and escalation of the trade war with China.
I'm not arguing that it's an intelligent thing to do, or that Trump is intelligent. I'm asking what his motive is. If he was irrational I would concede that perhaps there is no motive because he's disconnected from reality.
If this were true, he wouldn't be POTUS.
At best, you could say he was "elected according to the rules, procedures and processes of our democratic republic form of government, as defined by our Constitution".
That would be a fairly true statement.
It would also probably be a true statement to say that our Electoral College failed us in their primary purpose, which should be to assure that the POTUS which is elected nominally will serve the interest of all constituents, and not just some of them.
POTUS #43 could be said to have served all the citizens of the USA, even if they didn't agree with his policies; the same certainly cannot be said of this POTUS, not IMHO.
What, exactly, should "democratically elected" mean if not that exact sentence?
So now you keep saying he's stupid, and doesn't know what he's doing. I'll just keep reminding myself that he managed to get himself elected.
I don't consider him ignorant and dumb because I don't like aspects of his persona. I consider him ignorant and dumb because every time he opens his mouth or types something on twitter - what comes out is generally ignorant and dumb, assuming it is composed of actual words.
Misspellings are one thing - if that were the extent of things, I could probably just chuckle, even if I vehemently disagreed otherwise. It's more than that. It's often a stumbling incoherency to the messages, almost as if he's speaking in some form of "stream of consciousness" - just saying whatever is coming to his mind - and it is composed of very simplistic words and phrasing, at best.
Worse - he's been shown to literally lie within a single sentence or paragraph (most of the time, it takes him hours or days to go from one "truth" to something 180 degrees opposite). He either doesn't know he does it (bad enough), or he has two independent personalities warring inside his mind (worse), or he knows and just doesn't give a f--k (worst, imho) - for all we know, it could be the trifecta.
None of this points to him being a leader of or for anyone or anything, let alone somebody who should have his person anywhere near our nuclear arsenal.
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Something else that is interesting - and I know its completely anecdotal and probably not really true.
But - it has often been noted that being POTUS tends (or seems to) age a person. They go in looking spry and hale, and exit - well, chastened, and visibly older. Even after only a single term.
Should Trump make it through his term (possible) - and/or should he get another term (I atheist pray not - but who really knows?) - note how he looks afterwards. Right now, he doesn't really look any different than when he started. Maybe that's bias on my part, but I really don't think being POTUS has changed him in the "usual manner" that we have seen of past POTUS's.
This itself should be a concern, if there is any truth to the concept. It either means he's not actually doing the incredibly hard and difficult work of being POTUS, or the usual stress of being POTUS - all the concerns for the welfare of the citizens and the country, and more - do not and have not meant anything to him; ie - he doesn't care, and that hasn't translated to stress that would affect bodily changes. Or - he's a sociopath who revels in the issues, and wants more. Any of these possibilities should be worrisome to the electorate.
And Krugman’s articles of late seem not be rooted in logical, rationale thought but rather leading with ideology and emotions.
> First, look at the whole piece. It was a thing for the Times magazine's 100th anniversary, written as if by someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting; I mean, there are lines in there about St. Petersburg having more skyscrapers than New York, which was not a prediction, just a thought-provoker.
* https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-int...
That was the year Apple was still on the ropes (Microsoft's investment was in 1997), Google was just kicked off by a $100K cheque by Bechtolsheim, Amazon was four years old, and Facebook didn't even exist.
Give it a rest, it's been over twenty years:
> I must have tossed it off quickly (at the time I was mainly focused on the Asian financial crisis!), then later conflated it in my memory with the NYT piece. Anyway, I was clearly trying to be provocative, and got it wrong, which happens to all of us sometimes.
* https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff...
How wise were you when you were twenty years younger than you are now? Sheesh.
Kudos from his base, enhances his "tough guy" image, helps his 2020 campaign.
But I don't think it's that simple, he's clearly a coin operated guy so which coin is operating him to escalate this trade war?
His base really can't put 2 and 2 together. You seem to think it's obvious that tariffs will cause prices to rise, but you seriously underestimate just how stupid these people are.
If you really think the average voter is competent at economic matters, I have a bridge to sell you...
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739...
> 1 In 4 Americans Thinks The Sun Goes Around The Earth, Survey Says
i.e. about as much as voted for each of Trump/Clinton in the last election (which also taught us, amongst other things, that surveys are not to be trusted...)
I don't think they are stupid. But they are gullible and have been brainwashed. Their world view has been warped into something that just is not based in reality anymore ("invasions", "climate change doesn't exist", etc). This is not unlike what happens to people who get suckered into joining a cult...
So when Trump keeps saying that "China pays for the tariffs" - which is an obvious and outright lie because American consumers pay for them, it is a straight up tax on consumption - his base believes it. And somehow they don't - won't - put 2 and 2 together and connect the rising prices with the tariffs, because that would invalidate their worldview.
Isn't that just another way of saying someone is stupid? I'd say a serious lack of critical thinking skills qualifies as "stupidity".
Kinda reminds me of the people who say that they aren't susceptible to advertisement.
Many of the individuals supporting the trade war and tariffs know that it's causing them problems, but as far as they're concerned it's worth it to stop China from "screwing them over" or "taking advantage of them". This is not, in fact, an unusual thing- people are are frequently willing to take some personal pain to punish what they believe is wrongdoing or failure to adhere to social norms.
I happen to be on the side that believes the tariffs and trade war are doing more harm than good, but labeling those who disagree as stupid is exactly the sort of thing that leads to resentment, failure to communicate, and polarization, none of which are valuable.
There's even a term for this in economics, called Animosity, which leads to economic imbalance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_discrimination#Animos...
A country exists with a racial divide, let's say blue/green.
A blue person abuses a green person.
The green person does not fight back, and takes the abuse, knowing they are powerless in the society.
A different blue person, blue person #2, attacks the original blue person. This puts bp#2 at legal and physical risk, even though they were never under any threat of subjugation or abuse from the original attacker.
Blue person #2 would be said to have acted in a form of reciprocal altruism for the green person. This type of behavior is often seen, even in situations where BP#2 has little or nothing to personally gain, was never at any risk, and could potentially receive large negative consequences personally for their actions.
Clearly blue person #2 was also acting in a manner of animosity, that (more generalized) could or not be considered discrimination, economic or otherwise.
I would even go as far to say, it might be a case of them believing that they are taking short-term losses to come out ahead of this in the long-term. Whether it will turn out this way in reality, we will see, but that line of thinking actually does make sense.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-25/under-tru...
[2] https://time.com/5651345/rusal-investment-braidy-kentucky/
[3] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3013549/ru...
One of those is outright IP theft. One especially egregious form of that is by OEM manufacturers in China getting specs from foreign firms in the US and Europe then manufacturing knockoffs under their own brand name on the same lines as the ones they're making under contract. China has agreed to curtail this in their industries. Another form of outright IP theft is paying industrial spies to go to other countries and leak government and corporate documents back to China in an elaborate espionage system.
Another practice which China has already announced it is ending (and may have ended without the trade war eventually anyway) is forcing foreign companies to form foreign/domestic partnerships with Chinese companies in exchange for access to manufacture or sell goods in China. Often this involved cross-licensing agreements for IP, meaning companies like AMD had to license their patents and copyrights to Chinese companies or but shut out of the market.
Stop stealing our intellectual property
Stop forcing technology transfers
Stop hacking our computers and steal our trade secrets
Stop dumping into our markets and putting our companies out of business
Stop their state-owned enterprises from heavy subsidies
Stop the fentanyl
Stop the currency manipulation
[0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/trumps-china-tariffs-not...
Currency control comes with being a sovereign nation. Our government and the Federal Reserve in the US issue more or less new money into the economy and raise or lower interest rates to control the strength of the US dollar all the time.
I'm not sure dumping is a real problem for most products. Ones that are dumped are often cheaper in the first place because of the other problems, because it's easy to sell cheap when you didn't pay for research, development, design, or industrial engineering for the product. Other dumped products are often such low quality that they could be driven out of the market with consumer rights laws and lemon laws.
The rest I can agree are real issues.
> I'm not sure we can blame our fentanyl problems on China any more than our cocaine problems on Colombia or our heroin problems on Mexico.
The scale of the operations suggest that the state is involved. It used to be the case that actual clandestine labs would produce a kilogram or drum of illicit substances here and there, which is what happens in some Canadian labs. However, we're regularly intercepting unprecedented amounts of fentanyl analogues from China.
There's literally no where else in the world where both the manufacturing ability and severe lack of accountability both exist to produce novel fentanyl analogues in excess.
Also, China is selling thousands of doses of fentanyl to individual American kids online, so there's that, too.
I lived in Missouri before we had to sign for psuedoephedrine. Trust me when I say busting a lab here and there doesn't stop production. Reports I've read say you can invest $4,000 to easily make a kilo of fentanyl and after cutting and distribution it's worth $1,500,000 ( such as https://www.gangsterismout.com/p/fentanyl-w18.html ). Carfentanyl is supposed to be basically as easy to make and about 100x as powerful. This leads me to believe no state sponsorship is required to quickly ramp up production. If you can sell a $4k investment for over a hundred million dollars, you can ramp up quite quickly for your next several thousand kilos.
Countries don't only impose import tariffs when trade wars get really ugly, either. Imagine all of OPEC hitting the US with export tariffs in their countries. Or imagine Mexico, Germany, Japan, and South Korea charging export tariffs on their car manufacturing for exports to the US. A 10% or 20% export tariff costs the consumer the same as an import tariff of the same amount, but the money goes to the exporting country's government, which if they want they can use to subsidize the industry being taxed. The target country can't credibly accuse you of dumping if you're intentionally charging them more than everyone else.
The US does a lot of outsourcing of parts and subassemblies. Then US companies import those to make into other products or assemble them into more complex systems. Those import costs go up under tariffs, and much of the demand goes down for the finished product when there are tit-for-tat tariffs to sell those overseas. Meanwhile if some country neither party is in a trade war with starts buying the parts and doing the final assembly, they can undercut US manufacturers' prices because they have lower taxes in place on those products.
It would take years to move all the vertical supply chains into the US and to do so would be extremely expensive. The low-cost labor from overseas would likely be replaced with factories with a much higher level of automation to keep the costs down. That's going to provide more professional jobs and highly skilled technical jobs and fewer low-skilled and trades jobs than people might like to imagine. All the while, the resources to build those new factories is higher from the tariffs unless we're building it all with domestic parts. There is no training program in place of which I'm aware to teach coal miners and steel mill workers to assemble things like motherboards and flat panel displays, either, which means the labor costs for those things is much higher than just the wages if those jobs aren't automated away.
People wonder where all this wealth inequality is coming from when it's as plain as day. The inequality is coming from the fact that large companies are taking jobs that were performed domestically, and shipping them overseas where there are less regulations and cheaper labor. They then sell that same good at the same price to the domestic consumer who no longer has that job. Do that with enough industries and only the people who actually own the company stand to come out on top. That is why the middle class is shrinking.
seems like there's a risk of:
higher labor and materials costs leading to higher prices, leading to lower sales, leading to reduced revenue, leading to workforce reductions, leading to lower sales, leading to reduced revenue, leading to workforce reductions...
ie a basic recession spiral.
Assertive alpha signaling and mammalian dominance gestures tell the parts of our brain that haven't changed since we were small tree rats that "this person knows what they're talking about, trust them, follow them." These parts of the brain are primitive and emotional and can easily override the rational mind. This is why charisma tends to beat substance even with audiences that really do know better.
Trump is assertiveness and dominance gestures and nothing else. There is no "there" there. He has no special understanding, no strategy other than "assert dominance" which all he knows how to do, and no plan.
Our only salvation in this is that many of the leaders of other nations are similarly empty.
Exactly, and this is why the Democrats keep losing elections. They just can't wrap their heads around this simple fact that you stated here. They keep thinking that if they pick candidates who can go on at length about policy, that voters will love this and not care about charisma, so they pick the most uncharismatic candidates they can find. Obama proved the DNC wrong when he "stole" the nomination from Hillary in the 2008 primaries, and showed that a candidate with a lot of charisma was what was needed to win the election.