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#10 | Posted by chiligordo at 2025-05-03 06:20 PM
Short term pain for long term gain.
Pain is obvious. What makes you think it's only short term? Because we'll get used to it, so won't feel it as much?
1. What exactly would constitute "long term gain" (even if achievable by businesses-killing, inflationary tariffs) because Trump has not defined it.
2. Expect about as much "long term gain" from Trump as was promised by his numerous failed businesses, including first DJT public company.
The trade deficits and resulting debt must be addressed or else Americans will end up picking cotton on Chinese-owned plantations.
This is nonsense - "[national] trade deficits" don't result in fiscal deficits and debt - you're conflating different things: real, government fiscal / budget deficits (government spending and having to borrow more money than it brings in from various sources) with purely statistical "[national] trade deficits / surpluses" (balance of trade, i.e., buying and selling goods and services by people and businesses who happen to live in "other" countries, mostly unencumbered by protectionist tariffs) - that's just parroting our seriously economically illiterate Influencer-in-Chief.
In fact, "[national] trade deficits" actually allowed / subsidized disinflationary expansion of our economic growth and helped finance fiscal budget deficits, and firmed up USD as world's "reserve currency" through non-inflationary growth of US money supply. Trade "deficits" is a non-issue, a "fake problem":
drudge.com - Bipartisan Bill to Give Congress More Power over Tariffs
drudge.com - Fact Check: Trump's False Claims About Tariffs
drudge.com - Is Trump Trying to Engineer a Recession?
scholar.harvard.edu - Truth About Trade Deficits / "Fake Problem" - [PDF, 3 pgs] - October 7, 2018
www.cato.org - Ignore the Politicians: Trade Deficits Don't Really Matter - Aug 29, 2024
"This is a fallacious claim because trade deficits don't really matter - not between countries and not between you and your local grocery store."
Trump's weird obsession / bizarre "idee fixe" with "trade deficits" is just a distraction from US budget deficits and his family self-dealing with crypto (including using his position and US Treasury to increase and pump his crime family's holdings) which also stands to benefit from destruction of USD as "reserve currency" from his policies - "Trump crypto-fascism" gets a literal meaning.
www.latimes.com - What will Trump's tariffs 'liberate' us from? - LAT, 2025-03-31
www.latimes.com - Democrats decry the 'chaos' of Trump's trade war but are OK with some tariffs - LAT, 2025-04-13
Even Trump's two main tariffs hawks, besides being wrong on substance and long-term consequences, can't agree on reasons for them:
blog.irvingjimenez.com - Trade Differences in the Approaches of Navarro and Miran - 2025-04-21
Shows how much bullcrap all these "strategies" are.
1970s - "Back to the future"
Play stupid games - win stupid prizes
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