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

Chomsky said:
Then why go through all this, Metric Mouse?

We should play to our strengths, not try to compete with the cheapest manufacturing labor.
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That's what we should be doing. When we decided to push the dollar as the default currency for international trade, we were sold the idea that we would move away from manufacturing and instead upskill our labor into more technologically forward endeavors and production. Go to college, get a good job, etc. That's what we should do, we should lean hard into science, engineering, and other more advanced technology, development, and innovation. It's not time to go backwards, it's time to actually fulfill that bill of goods we were previously sold.
 
Wouldn't lowering (or eliminating) corporate tax rates have a similar outcome? It may, at least, offset some of the impact of tarriffs.
 
Taylor said:
You can have imports while maintaining a healthy trade balance. A trade imbalance simply means you're buying more than you're selling.
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But it's okay to buy more than we sell. We don't need our trade to be balanced. There are plenty of ways to make money, other than by exporting manufactured goods.
 
SuperDS77 said:
Wouldn't lowering (or eliminating) corporate tax rates have a similar outcome? It may, at least, offset some of the impact of tarriffs.
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Well Trump seems to think he can EO magic price decreases, so why doesn't he just EO corporations to lower prices?

lol
 
SuperDS77 said:
What about the other side of the equation of less tariffs being applied to American goods?
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Yes, Americans will pay more for products, Chinese consumers will pay less.
 

Besides the niches that are of strategic national interest (health, defense, IP property), I have yet to see it demonstrated that free trade hurts Americans.

We American citizens enjoy one of the highest qualities of life on the planet, brought to us by free trade.

Besides the niches I referenced in my first sentence, to which we are willing to pay a premium, attempting to bring general manufacturing of various & sundry items back to America is a fool's errand. It will never happen. Attempts at the tax levels required to precipitate that would only impoverishing the American people.
 

Thirty percent is way too much. There will still be Trump-caused inflation that will hurt those at lower economic levels the most. The guy is a flaming idiot.
 
No one group that I've ever seen is as gullible and short sighted as MAGA.

They're like Amway's targets.
 
SuperDS77 said:
Wouldn't lowering (or eliminating) corporate tax rates have a similar outcome? It may, at least, offset some of the impact of tarriffs.
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Possibly, but that's not gonna do anything about the exponentially higher cost of labor in America, or the higher cost of materials, or the higher cost of building factories. All of these factors compound each other to make domestic manufacturing unfeasible for most products, other than strategic industries.
 
If we’re being honest about the problem statement, the problem is that the American manufacturing industry was murdered by unions and labor laws. That’s why we’re dependent on China, Southeast Asia, and India - because Americans demand that somebody be exploited so the widgets they want to buy are dirt cheap. That’s really why they’re howling now about tariffs and why we’re in this predicament in the first place.

You talk about “trashing the quality of life”but that quality of life is built on foreign slave labor. Whether it’s by tariffs or “fair” and humane working conditions - Americans need to get used to the idea of paying what that costs if we’re ever going to get our economic independence and resiliency back.
 
Taylor said:
If this were true, you *would* know where to begin. You need to read a bit more on trade deficits.
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There is nothing wrong with a trade deficit. We are a country that has ran trade deficits on goods for decades, yet we have an economy that is the envy of the world. Moreover, on services, where there is a much, much higher margin than in goods, we have a trade surplus.

Take the following example. An outdoor goods company outsources the production of its tents, hiking poles, and outwear to China. It has exact standards on how it's goods are produced, and it has made various manufacturers in China compete on the production of those goods. As a result, those manufacturers have an average of 5% markup on those goods. That outdoor goods company imports them and puts anywhere from 30% to 300% markup on them. Thus the outdoor goods company captures much more economic benefit from those goods than the Chinese companies that made them. Moreover, to keep the Chinese manufacturing companies competitive, the Chinese government has to pursue economic policies that artificially lower wages there. In contrast, Americans have seen their wages increase for decades to the point where the average American earns more than the average Western European, the average Canadian, the average Japanese citizen, and the average Aussie.

While there is an argument for near-shoring critical technology, there is no economic issues at all with running a general trade deficit. Would you rather be a software engineer at Apple, or someone sorting plastic soldiers into bags that will be sold for 2 dollars each in the west?
 
Ikari said:
Well Trump seems to think he can EO magic price decreases, so why doesn't he just EO corporations to lower prices?

lol
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So you support lowering corporate taxes since they increase the cost of doing business in the USA? I agree!
 
SuperDS77 said:
What about the other side of the equation of less tariffs being applied to American goods?
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British and Chinese citizens say "thanks!".
 
SuperDS77 said:
So you support lowering corporate taxes since they increase the cost of doing business in the USA? I agree!
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But the whole point of the tariffs...well part of the point we were being sold on....was all the money we're going to make. How are we going to make money by offsetting any gains from tariffs by lowering corporate taxes?

lol
 
gman said:
We’re talking about China here. Hellooooo.
We’ve been f****d around by China long enough. Just like the border, he’s doing something about it.
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THANK GOD!

If not for Trump doing something, who else would have shot the US in the foot?
 
gman said:
We’re talking about China here. Hellooooo.
We’ve been f****d around by China long enough. Just like the border, he’s doing something about it.
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He's not doing anything but costing me money
 
Ikari said:
But the whole point of the tariffs...well part of the point we were being sold on....was all the money we're going to make. How are we going to make money by offsetting any gains from tariffs by lowering corporate taxes?

lol
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Increasing economic output and lowering prices thereby creating an improved standard of living.
 
Taylor said:
or that it's simply a 30% tax on Americans is just simply wrong and doesn't really advance the debate.
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Taylor said:
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.
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It might be fair to attempt to argue "tariffs serve a strategic purpose" or some other argument.

But tariffs are indeed a tax born by the citizens of the host country. Those taxes are paid domestically by the purchaser, upon receipt of the goods in Customs.
 
SuperDS77 said:
So you support lowering corporate taxes since they increase the cost of doing business in the USA? I agree!
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Have you ever noticed that lowering costs is not identical to lowering prices?​
 
SuperDS77 said:
Increasing economic output and lowering prices thereby creating an improved standard of living.
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But if you're just balancing out what could be gains, how are we improving anything? It sounds more like maintaining a status quo.

lol
 
Actually, Americans DON'T need to get used to that. We're perfectly fine relying on foreign workers being paid pennies to produce cheap goods that we buy at Amazon and Walmart. Americans prefer it that way, and so do I.
 
Metric Mouse said:
Good news. Hopefully this shifts some production away from China.
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Who would be stupid enough to invest in building new factories and production facilities in this environment? You do not know how much your basic building materials are going to cost from one week to the next. Or perhaps you build out your billion-dollar manufacturing plant only for the President to kiss and make up with a rival country and sign a new trade agreement where your competitors can manufacture the same product for half the cost, leaving you with a production facility that is makes products too costly for Americans to buy.
 
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