U.S. and China agree to slash reciprocal tariffs in major step toward easing trade war

[ALiberalModerate]

I hear yah. I used the exact same analogy when Biden put tariffs on aluminum and steel... it was hilarious to watch low information people try to defend it.

But 60 cents tax, that funds roads and Healthcare and services on a 2 dollar plastic toy also doesn't bother me too much.

While I agree that Biden's tariffs were a mistake as well, they were an order of magnitude smaller related to the overall economy. The Trump tariffs are by far the largest government intervention into the economy for the entire post-war era. In fact, the only time in American history there has been a larger intervention in the economy, was the WW2 economic mobilization.

 

[Chomsky]

sorry. mised your thread I started one in Breaking News as well

Not at all. I've done, too.

You can request mods to merge the threads, by using the report function.

And yeah, when I posted I was surprised no one else had posted before me.

 

[BirdinHand]

Taxes pay for services that benefit all Americans, and many others across the world through aid and programs run by the US.

They fund education and research and defense and medicine and food and housing for low income people and a thousand other things.

Lowering taxes, while a Republican ideals, reduces the benefits that can be offered.

But go MAGA and your stupid tax cuts.

Now Trump has SLASHED many of those things our taxes funded, is making life MORE expensive for Americans, and will add trillions to the debt to hand out more tax cuts for his rich buddies.

So much winning!

 

[Metric Mouse]

While I agree that Biden's tariffs were a mistake as well, they were an order of magnitude smaller related to the overall economy. The Trump tariffs are by far the largest government intervention into the economy for the entire post-war era. In fact, the only time in American history there has been a larger intervention in the economy, was the WW2 economic mobilization.

It's super dumb to watch Trump pull a Biden. It sucks. Both were so horrible and outdated with their ideas.

Thankfully neither will ever be elected again.

 

[Chomsky]

You know what could fund American domestic initiatives?

Not continuing to cut taxes for the rich EVERY SINGLE TIME the GOP gets in power.

Every time in my lifetime - we cut taxes for the riches and EVERY SINGLE TIME the middle class gets f*cked.

And EVERY SINGLE TIME the GINI coefficients for wealth disparity and wage stagnation increases.


But hey…THIS time is MAGICALLY going to do the same thing and magically yield a different result

And now Trump has a new bogeyman to use as an excuse to further tax us - China!

 

[Chomsky]

Lowering taxes has this effect.

Trump just lowered taxes people pay on Chinese goods. He also tried to raise them, but people got mad.

I am pretty pro tax; it seems to work, but people don't like paying them, for sure.

No he didn't. They're at 30%.

 

[Chomsky]

Out of this temporary reprieve? That it’s cheaper for China to buy American goods than it is for Americans to buy Chinese goods is a great thing for exporters and domestic farmers in particular.

No, what does he get out of tariffs?

 

[Napoleon]

While MAGA has us going down these type of rabbit hole debate tangents, the overarching element is MAGA never proved trade with China a bad thing.

They've adamantly asserted and asserted as if fact, but never proved a dayem thing!

There isn’t a rabbit hole. If anything, this is a matter of people not feeling like they have to state the obvious. Trading with China is bad because it isn’t a level playing field. The global market is not even close to competitive because of how much the Chinese government owns and subsidizes their industries. Domestic producers are either undermined by cheap Chinese imports to the point of near extinction or bought by Chinese companies.

Consequently, our economy has become so dependent on Chinese imports and manufacturing that it cannot function without those things. The pandemic exposed just how dependent we’ve become on them. That a foreign country has that much leverage is an economic, national security, and strategic catastrophe. And the only way to recover from that is to try to induce a revival in American manufacturing by making Chinese products more expensive.

 

[Taylor]

The point is that trade deficits are a terrible metric of an economy's performance.

GDP is a metric for economic performance. A trade deficit means we're buying more than we sell. In your example, you'd be buying more groceries (or whatever) than you make selling your labor.

That's not to say that sometimes it doesn't make sense to go into debt for long term growth (as is still often the case with higher education). That's a debate actually worth having. But to claim that the trade deficit is like buying from a grocery store or that it's simply a 30% tax on Americans is just simply wrong and doesn't really advance the debate.

Poor nations often have a trade surplus with other countries because their citizens cannot afford to consume as much.

Which more often than not indicates exploitation - a narrow export sector with very little domestic benefit, where the people who benefit (or are hurt by tariffs) are largely foreign corporations or the very powerful.

 

[Chomsky]

America has peaked. They will never manufacture anything again.

I said away from China. Note the difference? Biden placed tarrifs on aluminum and steel and other products - notice how no one opened up new smelters?

It was a myth old white men told themselves.

Then why go through all this, Metric Mouse?

We should play to our strengths, not try to compete with the cheapest manufacturing labor.

 

[Taylor]

Oh B.S. The U.S. is 14% of China's export market,

And by far their largest market. Next in line is Vietnam with 4%

 

[lynnwinslow]

Well, call them out. That's the point of a debate site; they can't possibly defend their position, can they?

LOL, thanks for your advice about how to use the site! First, let me hop out of the turnip truck and I'll get right to it!

 

[Peacenik]

I'm still at a loss to understand what is it he's getting out of this?

Dysfunctional Donald is playing Whack-A-Mole with fictitious reasons why Republicans are supposedly better at handling the economy.

Originally it was we had to kick the immigrants out of America because they were stealing the jobs of Americans, and lowering wages.

Immigrants were attacked and deported, but wages got no better.

Then it became "unfair trade," supposedly because our trade partners with lower labor rates were not buying as much from the US as we were from them. The problem with that idea is they don't have the economic base to buy more from the US because they pay such lower labor wages.

Now it is becoming apparent that adding tariffs to imports is not going to improve the US economy at all. Instead, it's causing inflation.

All of this is dancing around the real reason the US economy is not better than it is. Extreme wealth inequality.

The wealthy in America have been very successful at extracting the wealth of the 99%. The simple fact is that leads to the 99% having less wealth to spend. When consumers can't buy things there is less consumerism. That leads to a smaller economy.

If the wealthiest want consumers to buy more they are going to have to support policies that lead to consumers having more wealth.

The real problem for the richest Class is they already won the Class War but they don't know when to quit.

They have already extracted vast amounts of wealth from consumers and now they wonder why they can't extract more. They are having trouble grasping the simple fact that people are already buying everything they can afford to buy. If they don't have any more discretionary money they stop buying.

All of this is just window dressing for the one fact Republicans don't want to admit. The real reason they want control of the US government is to prevent it from taxing the rich more and promoting the general welfare.

 

[Chomsky]

How can it be decreasing?

We lowered tariffs; won't it increase? Doesn't everyone want the cheap products from China?

Is supporting China bad, in your opinion? What are you even arguing?

My specific point here was in rebutting your "building China's Navy" assertion.

 

[uptower]

I prefer the less circumspect headline, just for the lulz:

Markets Celebrate Total Trump Surrender on Signature Policy

The U.S. agreed to temporarily lower tariffs on Chinese products while the two sides negotiate.

www.thedailybeast.com

 

[Chomsky]

From tariffs on China at 145% to 30%. It is the mirror of a Seinfeld episode when Castanza negotiated the deal for LESS money for a TV pilot with NBC. What say you red hats, you stupid door stops.

Hey, those red hats went from 145% tax to 30%!

BTW - Are you aware that pre-tariff, those hats cost fifty bucks? Seriously? Fifty bucks for a cheap Chinese made baseball cap?

How does he get away with it?

 

[ALiberalModerate]

GDP is a metric for economic performance. A trade deficit means we're buying more than we sell. In your example, you'd be buying more groceries (or whatever) than you make selling your labor.

That's not to say that sometimes it doesn't make sense to go into debt for long term growth (as is still often the case with higher education). That's a debate actually worth having. But to claim that the trade deficit is like buying from a grocery store or that it's simply a 30% tax on Americans is just simply wrong and doesn't really advance the debate.


Which more often than not indicates exploitation - a narrow export sector with very little domestic benefit, where the people who benefit (or are hurt by tariffs) are largely foreign corporations or the very powerful.

That post is so profoundly ignorant of economics I don’t even know where to begin.

 

[Taylor]

My specific point here was in rebutting your "building China's Navy" assertion.

We injected $361.1 billion into their economy last year, that accounts for more than 1/3 of their total trade surplus and could cover their entire military budget.

 

[Taylor]

That post is so profoundly ignorant of economics I don’t even know where to begin.

If this were true, you *would* know where to begin. You need to read a bit more on trade deficits.

 

[Revelation]

We injected $361.1 billion into their economy last year, that accounts for more than 1/3 of their total trade surplus.

meh, this is good news...

we need more trade and less wars....

Trump says China will 'open up' to U.S. businesses, suspend trade barriers
By Kevin Breuninger

CNBC

---

3 hours ago

• President Donald Trump said China “agreed to open” after the two countries agreed to temporarily slash most of the tariffs on each other’s goods.
• Trump said that was “maybe the most important thing” to come out of trade talks with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer and their Chinese counterparts.
• The U.S. and Chinese officials said they struck an agreement to pause most tariffs and other trade barriers for 90 days.

 

[Irredentist]

There isn’t a rabbit hole. If anything, this is a matter of people not feeling like they have to state the obvious. Trading with China is bad because it isn’t a level playing field. The global market is not even close to competitive because of how much the Chinese government owns and subsidizes their industries. Domestic producers are either undermined by cheap Chinese imports to the point of near extinction or bought by Chinese companies.

Consequently, our economy has become so dependent on Chinese imports and manufacturing that it cannot function without those things. The pandemic exposed just how dependent we’ve become on them. That a foreign country has that much leverage is an economic, national security, and strategic catastrophe. And the only way to recover from that is to try to induce a revival in American manufacturing by making Chinese products more expensive.

If you seriously want to revive American manufacturing, then you need to subsidize American industries with federal money, exactly like the Chinese are doing. You can't just raise tariffs and then hope for the best. That's not gonna work. You'll end up trashing the quality of life for working class Americans, in exchange for nothing at all.

 

[Gatsby]

I'm just not super pro China.

If no production is moved from China, then you win. But at least higher taxes mean more money to fund government initiatives; the US has a very low tax rate compared to much of the rest of the developed world

Tariffs are the absolute worst form of taxation.

 

[Irredentist]

GDP is a metric for economic performance. A trade deficit means we're buying more than we sell. In your example, you'd be buying more groceries (or whatever) than you make selling your labor.

That's not to say that sometimes it doesn't make sense to go into debt for long term growth (as is still often the case with higher education). That's a debate actually worth having. But to claim that the trade deficit is like buying from a grocery store or that it's simply a 30% tax on Americans is just simply wrong and doesn't really advance the debate.


Which more often than not indicates exploitation - a narrow export sector with very little domestic benefit, where the people who benefit (or are hurt by tariffs) are largely foreign corporations or the very powerful.

I don't think a trade deficit is necessarily a bad thing, at least not for consumers. Imports are a good thing. Consumers WANT to have access to goods from around the world at affordable prices. We don't want or need to produce everything ourselves.

 

[Taylor]

I don't think a trade deficit is necessarily a bad thing, at least not for consumers. Imports are a good thing. Consumers WANT to have access to goods from around the world at affordable prices. We don't want or need to produce everything ourselves.

You can have imports while maintaining a healthy trade balance. A trade imbalance simply means you're buying more than you're selling.

 

[Airyaman]