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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised too. Given the bargaining positions, the question is what of ours did Trump give away to get China to agree. Or maybe long-term China is just happy to go back to things being calmer after Trump showed exactly how much they have us by the balls?

I thought this guy was prepared to just ride his bomb all the way down to the ground. In retrospect that was a bit foolish because he actually can't sit still, despite being such low energy in general (lol, another typical old person behavior pattern).

Is "the deal" entirely just market manipulation and flooding the zone with shit then? Or maybe Trump got more resistance than he planned to from the Fed, so now the goal is to try again in a few months? After he's figured out how to destroy that institution too, so he can mash the inflation button to paper over the markets again. (sheesh I would have never thought I'd be thankful for the Fed, strange times indeed)

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>sheesh I would have never thought I'd be thankful for the Fed, strange times indeed

That's a strange statement. If you live in America, you owe nearly everything you have and our position of power in the world to the Fed. Why would you not be thankful for it?

It's a fundamental driver of centralization and moral hazard, which steps in to directly support both legs of the heads-they-win tails-you-lose dynamic of our overfinancialized economy.

As I've gotten older I've softened on the criticism. Perhaps inflationary currency is inevitable due to Gresham's law, and we just have to accept it like we have to accept the centralization from manufacturing economies of scale. And I'd most certainly rather have the US maintain the world reserve currency than say China.

But still, this populist anger is coming from somewhere. I see legitimacy in many of the fundamental complaints of Trumpists. They just don't realize they're being conned by the same old trick of politicians acknowledging a problem to gain support while pushing a "solution" that will make the problem worse (but succeed at lining the politicians' pockets) - yet again. (similar to how they've been getting conned all along with this narrative of fake "fiscal responsibility" where just as much new money is printed, but it's dumped into the financial industry instead)

And I will say, aggressive assertions like "you owe nearly everything you have ... to the Fed" really harm the discourse. Preaching to the choir while alienating everyone else does nobody any favors.

But Trump already did a lot for them. What China fears the most is isolation, however unlikely that is.

It's not that surprising if you understand that Trump has never been anti-trade. The goal of the tariffs has always been "balanced trade": getting other countries to renegotiate the imbalanced trade deals setup by previous administrations of both parties for the benefit of their friends who made bank on the imbalance.

Whether or not we agree that "balanced trade" is a good idea or his methods are a good way of getting it, that's been the stated goal from the start, contra the media hysteria. Other countries aren't stupid, so they know that, and while they're naturally reluctant to give up the sweet deals they've had with the US consumer market, they don't want to give up access to that market. That gives that market a lot of power in the discussion, power which simply hasn't been exercised before now because the people at the top liked the status quo.

"Balanced trade" is still just a concept from the Trump fictional universe though, alongside other nonsense like needing physical goods making for a strong bargaining position. Outside of the fictional universe "balanced trade" means very little, because it doesn't take into account services, imaginary property, or our special ability to trade away long-term IOUs in a currency that we can arbitrarily devalue when need be.

I do completely agree with the foundation of the argument that our privileged position as the world reserve currency has been used to hollow out our industrial base, put the screws to labor, and gut the distributed main street economy. But if you want to right the ship you have to get "up" correct first, and the Trump fictional universe definition of "up" is very obviously not correct.

Actually achieving this specious metric of "balanced trade" would mean basically destroying the economy we do have. So this administration claiming this as their metric of success means it's very hard to tell if/when they will/would abandon it to pull out of a death spiral.

>Whether or not we agree that "balanced trade" is a good idea or his methods are a good way of getting it, that's been the stated goal from the start, contra the media hysteria.

Oh, so it's not moving manufacturing back to the US? Because a week ago that's what you guys said it was about. I can hardly keep up with the goalpost moving. As of right now, it appears that he created a crisis, was forced out of his position, and is patting himself on the back for "fixing it". Absolutely nothing has been accomplished except to show the world that he is not a man of his word and that the economic environment is highly unstable and could be vaporized overnight by a tweet. If I'm missing something here, please correct me.

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