Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Wow, Did Krugman Get This Right Or What!


It doesn't happen often but Paul Krugman nailed this one.

Yesterday, the New York Times dropped a  Krugman opinion piece, The Great Soybean Conspiracy, in it he said:
So how will this conspiracy-minded administration react when domestic victims of its trade policy start complaining? ...

What I predict...is that it will start seeing villains under every bed. It will attribute the downsides of trade conflict not to its own actions, but to George Soros and the deep state. I’m not sure how they can work MS-13 into it, but they’ll surely try.

The point is that the politics of trade war will probably end up looking like Trump politics in general: a search for innocent people to demonize.
Less than 24 hours later, the demonization has begun by Trump, following news that because of the Trump launched trade war Harley-Davidson was moving some of its production overseas.

Trump immediately started lashing out at the motorcycle manufacturer and ended his tweetstorm with  a threat to tax the company like "never before" because "Harley-Davidson's should never be made anywhere other than America," when the company is opening up overseas only because it does want to not lose business as a result of Trump's trade war.
-RW  

3 comments:

  1. From the Detroit Free Press:

    The auto industry and everyone who relies on it should get ready for some pain if President Donald Trump follows through on a threat to levy tariffs on imported vehicles and parts.

    Moody's Investors Service said the move would harm the credit rating outlook for the global industry, highlighting the danger faced even by domestic automakers Ford and General Motors.

    "A 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles and parts would be negative for nearly every segment of the auto industry — carmakers, parts suppliers, car dealers and transportation companies — as it rippled across the globalized supply chain that we forecast will produce about 96.7 million light vehicles this year," according to the assessment released Monday.


    https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/25/moodys-tariffs-threaten-auto-industry/731677002/

    What will happen to Trumpie's 10,000 vote margin of victory in Michigan? The status of the auto industry is announced minute by minute on Detroit local news. And the New Democrat candidates waiting in the wings are of the Gang-of-Four/Khmer Rouge variety.

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  2. "What I predict...is that it will start seeing villains under every bed. It will attribute the downsides of trade conflict not to its own actions, but to"

    The left projects their behaviors on to others. That's all that Krugman did here. He projected what socialist states so often do. It's a stopped clock being right twice a day or even less given Trump's central planning leanings.

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  3. If my law school memories are intact, I am pretty sure Bills of Attainder are expressly prohibited in the U.S. Constitution.

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