bediger4000 7 days ago

More tariff hermeneutics. Trump is not well, and he's never been economically literate, and he does not care about the USA as a whole. Nothing more to it than that.

  • walterbell 7 days ago

    Stephen Miran (chair of Council of Economic Advisers) has a 40-page paper on tariffs, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43589350

    https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump...

    > Currently a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management LP and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and his dissertation advisor was Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the Reagan administration.

    > Miran.. points to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence.” He adds that during that time the U.S. dollar rose to offset the macroeconomic impact of the tariffs and resulted in significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury.. “The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” the report said. “As the financial markets digested the news, the Chinese renminbi depreciated against the dollar over this period by 13.7 per cent, so that the after-tariff USD import price rose by 4.1 per cent.”

Terr_ 7 days ago

> Trump must have something more in mind [...] Trump’s vision [...] On first glance, Trump’s tariffs look arbitrary and unconnected [...] Trump’s plan makes perfect sense, however, if the real goal

Nah, this is yet another conservative think-tank dude [0] trying to desperately sane-wash the recent actions of the US Republican party.

Each of these various apologists asks us to have faith that their proposed grand and subtle clockwork plan is operating behind the scenes... by actively ignoring the incoherent [1] actions and statements coming out of this administration. No, we've already had 4 years of Trump, it's silly to suggest he had enlightenment into an economic idiot-savant while we weren't looking.

______

[0] https://heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/st-karnick/

[1] For example, when they claim (A) the taxes on imports would "replace" the Federal Income Tax with "6 trillion dollars" and also claim (B) the import taxes will quickly restore US manufacturing so that nobody does any importing to be taxed on. Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is that a bullshitter is bullshitting.

  • walterbell 7 days ago

    _This_ specific article is about balanced trade, not income tax.

    Before the WTO, there were bilateral agreements between countries. After the WTO ground to a halt over the past decade, due to India and others, there were again bilateral agreements, then attempts at regional agreements like the TPP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership and a parallel agreement among other Asian countries.

    Setting aside short-term posturing, the best case going forward is trade agreements among groups of countries, to avoid the N-way combinatorial explosion of bilateral agreements among 100+ countries. That could be trading blocs anchored by US, China or other groups with complementary trade objectives.

Qem 7 days ago

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/3073/

  • walterbell 7 days ago

    > Venmo

    All hail currency markets which enable physical goods to be traded.

    Time will tell whether hedge fund duels are more efficient than other forms of conflict resolution.

    • bigyabai 7 days ago

      Efficient at what? You have to be specific, because many definitions of the word "conflict" have no immediate resolution in sight.

      • walterbell 7 days ago

        In this specific case, stabilizing currency markets.

        > many definitions of the word "conflict" have no immediate resolution in sight

        Some ancient duels ended the life of one party, and thus the conflict.

        • bigyabai 6 days ago

          Stabilizing currency markets is a terrible excuse, you might as well justify a genocide by saying you prevented future war. Currency value is based on a wide variety of things and tariffs aren't going to alleviate the underlying devaluation of American currency. It will barely finance the treasury as-is.

          • walterbell 6 days ago

            Are you in the wrong subthread? This one is about venmo lidar scans.

            > underlying devaluation of American currency

            Outside of XKCD cartoons, there are years of data showing that exporters can devalue their currency to make their exports more competitive. This took place in the first round of tariffs, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43661441

            Current short term (days, not years) movement in the bond market is due to selling and unwinding by Europe and Japan, not China.