Friday, July 14, 2017
The Idiotic Way Trump Plans to Deal with Steel "Dumping"
It is simply driving President Donald Trump crazy that some other countries may have a policy to subsidy steel sales which results in the ability of Americans to buy steel at cheap prices,
"They're dumping steel and destroying our steel industry, they've been doing it for decades, and I'm stopping it. It'll stop," he told reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight from the United States to France, Reuters reported on Thursday. "There are two ways -- quotas and tariffs. Maybe I'll do both."
In this case, Trump is a victim of Lump of Labor Fallacy thinking, which holds that there is a fixed amount of work in any country and once a specific type of job is eliminated there is no potential for alternatives jobs to open up.
Unless wages are at zero, there are always jobs---and a general climbing standard of living if outside forces result in a product being made available at a cheaper price so that workers in an economy are freed up to perform other jobs.
This is so obvious that even most economists who are apologists for nearly all government interventions are against it.
Former Federal Reserve Chairmen Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan and other top economists urged the president against imposing new tariffs on foreign steel imports to the United States in a letter published by the American Action Forum on Wednesday. Fifteen former chairs of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in warned that additional tariffs would damage diplomatic relations and the U.S. economy. They said tariffs would raises costs for manufacturers, reduce employment in manufacturing and increase prices for consumers.
"We urge you to avoid a policy that would likely incur greater economic and diplomatic costs than any conceivable national security gain," they wrote.
-RW
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All Democrats seem to believe in some form of a "lump of wealth" reality. The Bernie nutcases go nuts at the slightest suggestion of a few percentage points off the tax rates of the "rich". There's only so much wealth out there and the rich stole it all. It's up to the government to grab it back. And this process must be enforced daily.
ReplyDeleteTrump is an Archie Bunker Democrat. Official Democrats are Meathead Democrats. It's them against us, all 499 of us.
─ Trump is a victim of Lump of Labor Fallacy thinking [...] ─
ReplyDeleteTrumpistas, victims of economic ignorance and prone to faulty thinking?
Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so!