Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Last Night's Victory Speech By Donald Trump: Crush China, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam and India, in Trade

Last night from Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump, during his victory speech after winning primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Illinois, once again demonstrated his complete failure to understand free trade and comparative advantage.

He said, "Apple and all these companies will be making their products in the US."

He specifically singled out China, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam and India as "unfair" trade competitors.

He reminded the audience of how he announced his candidacy," "When we came down the escalators, it was about trade and borders."

And he indicated his crony relationships continue to develop. He mentioned again that he had talked with House Speaker Paul Ryan ("a tremendous call") and he provided new information, "I spoke with Mitch McConnell today...had a great conversation. The fact is we need to bring our party together, We have to bring it together"

  -RW

5 comments:

  1. also crush the American consumers who buy from retailers who buy from Mexico, China, India etc.

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  2. I don’t understand why Trump doesn’t take the Rand Paul approach - instead of threatening US corporations by raising their taxes, entice them with lower taxes in order to remain stateside. This is a win-win for the corporation AND the consumer. The only loser in this scenario would be Uncle Sam and who cares about him?

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  3. With all due respect the economic theory of comparative advantage ONLY applies when there is a level playing field, namely comparable environmental laws, labor laws etc. If one county, for example, allows its underaged citizens to be chained to a sewing machine it is unfair to use the theory of comparative advantage. How can our companies in the US compete with that?

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  4. It's difficult to tell who is more scary, Hillary or Trump. Hillary is more of the same with a definite emphasis on growing government domestically and continuing the atrocious U.S. foreign policy. Trump sometimes seems more reasoned on foreign policy (although it's hard to tell). However, he's a disaster on foreign trade. He might be better on domestic policies other than trade.

    The real question, in my mind, on Trump is "Is he a delegator?" If he's a true delegator (delegates, and lets the appointed actor carry out the policy without micromanaging) , he will be extremely efficient in his presidency. If he is a micromanager, he will almost certainly be a spectacular failure -- spectacular failure being the good thing in this analysis.

    Previously, I thought he was a delegator, but your Target Liberty entry quotes employees who say he's a micromanager. It also quotes employees who say he's not, so it's difficult to know for sure.

    If you could depend on Congress to stop Hillary, it would be a no-brainer to pull for her. However, we all know Republicans, and Hillary will likely get quite a few bad things through. Trump's a crap-shoot.

    Either way, we have a high, to very-high, probability of being fucked.

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