Tuesday, June 26, 2018

The Coming Trump Trade War Conspiracy Theories


Paul Krugman will probably end up being very correct about this. He writes:
The Trump administration appears to be headed for a trade war on three fronts. As far as anyone can tell, it is simultaneously going to take on China, the European Union and our partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement. The economic fallout will be ugly.

But that’s probably not the whole story: There’s also likely to be ugly political fallout, not just abroad but here at home, too. In fact, I predict that as the downsides of hard-line trade policy become apparent, we’ll see a nasty search by President Trump and company for people to scapegoat. In fact, that search has already started.

To understand what’s coming, you need to understand two crucial points.
Read the rest here.

1 comment:

  1. I watched a very good episode of the Mark Levin show on Sunday night ("Life, Liberty and Levin" on Fox, every Sunday). He had a very sharp, fairly articulate, free-market/capitalistic economics professor on from the University of Michigan, who explained why tariffs and protectionism are bad, why there is no such thing as "unfair trade" and "trade imbalances," and why free, open trade raises the standard of living. Mark Levin was 95% in agreement with him, and all in all it was a fine discussion (not as great as the kick-off show a few months ago, with Walter Williams as the guest). Mark Levin is a typical neocon when it comes to foreign policy, but on economics he appears to be very laissez-faire/free-market.
    In fact, here is the very episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFUkcgH-t-Y

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