Friday, December 23, 2016

These Are the Scary Views of Trump's Director of Trade

The man simply has no understanding of how free trade raises the standard of living and that it makes no sense to limit such trade.

The Financial Times reports:
Bombers, emblazoned with the words “illegal export subsidies”, cross the Pacific and drop bombs on US factories. A naval battery with barrels labelled “currency manipulation” joins the bombardment.

“The Chinese government has used these weapons of job destruction to launch a sustained and devastating attack on America’s factories and jobs,” intones Martin Sheen, the voiceover for the animation.

This is Death by China, a 2013 documentary film by author, economist and soon to be White House trade guru Peter Navarro.

“Please help defend America and protect your family: Don’t buy made in China,” Mr Navarro tells viewers in an introduction to the film posted online earlier this year. In case anyone misses his point, seconds later a dagger with a 100-renminbi note wrapped around its hilt is plunged into a map of the US.

Once viewed as fringe thinking from a strident economic nationalist, Mr Navarro’s oeuvre is drawing urgent new scrutiny from those seeking clues into how Donald Trump and his administration are about to rewrite the rules of global trade, take on China and transform the world’s most important bilateral economic relationship.

With the naming on Wednesday of Mr Navarro, a longtime critic of US-China policy, to lead a new National Trade Council in the White House, the president-elect sent a signal that he intends to deliver on some of his most bombastic economic promises on trade.
  Navarro is a quack.

Here is Don Boudreaux on free trade:



  -RW

1 comment:

  1. I have a theory that Trump (or the people behind him like GS) know that the US is headed for some serious inflation due to the extreme increase in the money supply over the past 8-10 years so they are ginning up a trade war with China involving protectionist policies that will coincide with/lead to higher prices for consumers and thus be an alternate vector of blame to distract people from the Fed.

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