The Trump administration’s trade wars are crushing U.S. small businesses

  The great American historian Barbara Tuchman once described folly in government as the pursuit of policies contrary to a country’s own interests and despite the availability of feasible alternatives. Folly, as Tuchman noted, is more than just a one-off bad decision; rather, it is the consistent implementation of a policy that achieves the opposite of what is intended. The Trump administration’s unprecedented trade war rises to this level of mismanagement.

  President Donald Trump’s embrace of tariffs to a level not seen in more than a century, supposedly to foster the redevelopment of the country’s industrial base, will do the opposite of what he intends it to do. It will crush U.S. small businesses, particularly those engaged in manufacturing, decimating the backbone of American industry and of countless communities across the country. Already, corporate bankruptcies are up 7.38 percent year over year, commercial freight contracts have plummeted, ports are empty, and hiring has been frozen across several different industries.

The age of deilocracy

  By middle school, we’re all taught that the word “democracy” combines “demos,” the Greek word for people, with “kratos,” meaning rule.

  Rule of the people.

  That doesn’t describe the government we live under.

  Alabamians say they want Medicaid expansion. They don’t seem keen on the state’s effective abortion ban. If you let Alabama voters decide whether the state should have a lottery, odds are that it would pass, and it wouldn’t be close.

Tariffs are never a good idea, those on aluminum are especially bad

  Aluminum prices are up 59% from a year ago, and America’s 10% tariffs on the metal are not relieving any headaches at beer and non-alcoholic beverage manufacturers.

  The tariffs were originally put in place in 2018, ostensibly to protect domestic aluminum producers. The theory was that China and other foreign producers were “dumping” aluminum into the U.S. at low prices below cost to capture market share and supposedly drive American producers of aluminum out of business.

‘Slow-minded and bewildered’: Donald Trump builds barriers to peace and prosperity

  The U.S. president “had no plan, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever”, according to one of the world’s most influential economists.

  He was “in many respects, perhaps inevitably, ill-informed”. He was “slow-minded and bewildered”, and failed to remedy these defects by seeking advice. He gathered around him businessmen, “inexperienced in public affairs” and “only called in irregularly”.

How much damage will come from this trade war?

  First, the good news: the U.S. and world economies have not imploded, so far, as fallout from the rising trade tensions between the Trump administration and Xi Jinping’s government in China. Now, the bad news: there is no certainty that this will not play itself out as a serious and damaging trade war between the two countries that might spill over into grievous harm to many other parts of the world as well.

  From the day that Donald Trump became president, he has been telling the American people and everyone else that he believes that national economic prosperity requires seeing international trade as a zero-sum game. In his mind, the buying and selling of goods and the investing of capital across political lines on a map of the world is economic combat creating winners and losers.

Donald Trump - Trade dictator

  President Trump announced that he is upping his trade war against China by imposing another $300 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods. According to the Washington Post, Trump said that his tariffs would begin at 10 percent on such products as cellphones, television sets, toilet seats, and pillows but could increase to 25 percent. As Trump adviser Peter Navarro declared, “We love tariffs. Tariffs are a wonderful thing.”

  Okay, so our nation’s Republican president loves taxes, which is precisely what tariffs are. No surprise there. Despite their customary “reduce taxes” rhetoric, Republicans have long been supporters of big spending, along with the taxes to fund them — income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, tariffs, excise taxes, property taxes, poll taxes, sales taxes, inflation taxes, and, well, every other forcible extraction of money from people to fund the ever-voracious needs of the federal government.

Who actually pays tariffs?

  Donald Trump’s economic ignorance knows no bounds. And especially when it comes to the subject of trade.

  Trade is always a win-win proposition. In every exchange, each party gives up something valued less for something valued more. Each party to a transaction values differently the goods or services being exchanged. Each party anticipates a gain from the exchange or there would be no commerce between the two parties. And each party will repeat the exchange again if its estimated gain has proved to be satisfactory.

Trump’s trade wars destroy our freedom

  Given President Trump’s trade wars against China and other countries, the natural tendency is to focus on Chinese and American producers and consumers as the victims of Trump’s destructive trade folly.

  Keep in mind that in every trade, both sides benefit by improving their respective standard of living. That’s because in every trade, both traders give up something they value less for something they value more. Thus, standards of living can rise through the simple act of trade.

Democrats clueless on farm woes

  Last week, the Washington Post carried a story about five Democratic presidential candidates who took to a stage in Iowa to address an audience that was filled with farmers who are suffering severe economic and financial distress. The title of the article says it all: “No Democratic Candidate Has Been Able to Figure Out How to Help Farm Country.” The candidates were Julian Castro, John Delaney, Amy Klobuchar, Tim Ryan, and Elizabeth Warren.

  Not surprisingly, the five proposed “solutions” that involve more government intervention. They just don’t get it. They don’t understand that it is government intervention that is the root cause of farmers’ woes. How is more government intervention going to be the cure for a problem that is caused by government intervention? It’s like giving a patient who has swallowed poison more poison.

Seven implications of protectionism

  In a speech on the campaign trail in 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said about Hillary Clinton and trade,

    Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible deal after another, from NAFTA, to China to South Korea. It doesn’t matter. No matter where she went, the American worker was hurt and you’ll be hurt worse than ever before if she becomes president of the United States. That I can tell you.

  He then promised that a Trump administration would “end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people and the American worker.” “The era of economic surrender will finally be over,” he said. “You’re not going to see it anymore.”

  Donald Trump has now done what he accused Hillary Clinton of doing: He has unleashed a trade war.

Omnipotent government, not Trump, is the problem

  Many of the people who are critics of President Trump don’t realize that they themselves are partly responsible for much of what Trump is doing. That’s because over the years they have supported the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president. In doing so, they always assumed that their favorite ideal candidate would end up being the one wielding and exercising such powers. They assumed the risk that someone like Trump would end up being the one doing so.

  The United States was founded as a limited-government republic. What that means was that the charter that brought the federal government into existence strictly limited the powers of the president and the other branches of the government. The idea was that no one should be trusted with dictatorial powers, not even people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Richard M. Ebeling: Trump’s protectionist follies threaten a trade war

  President Donald Trump has announced the planned imposition of a new 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on foreign-made aluminum entering the United States. This has brought about threats of trade retaliation by a number of America’s trading partners. The menacing clouds of a possible trade war are showing themselves on the global horizon.

  Claiming that other countries are taking advantage of the U.S., as reflected in American trade deficits, Trump, in one of his infamous tweets, has declared that “trade wars  are good, and easy to win.” How and why? Trump asserted: “Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!”

Jacob G. Hornberger: Why do anti-immigrants favor protectionism?

  Okay, I get it: President Trump and his acolytes favor immigration controls because they don’t want people from s***hole countries coming into the United States. What doesn’t makes any sense is why they also favor tariffs, sanctions, embargoes, and other trade restrictions against those s***h countries. After all, by increasing economic misery in those countries, such measures only encourage more people from those countries to come to the United States, the exact opposite of what anti-immigrants want.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Trump’s dictatorial and destructive tariffs

  It’s amazing that it is still necessary to instruct U.S. presidents on the damage that tariffs do to people. You would think that by the time a person becomes a president of a country, he would be wise enough to know this. Even many progressives and conservatives have finally joined up with us libertarians in opposition to tariffs.

  The subject arises with President Trump’s unilateral decision to impose tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines. The targeted countries are China and South Korea (yes, the country that Trump and the U.S. national-security state say that they’re interested in protecting from North Korea).

Laurence M. Vance: Will tariffs make America great again?

  If there is one issue that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is outspoken about, it is U.S. trade policy.

  He says:

       You only have to look at our trade deficit to see that we are being taken to the cleaners by our trading partners. We need tougher negotiations, not protectionist walls around America. We need to ensure that foreign markets are as open to our products as our country is to theirs. Our long-term interests require that we cut better deals with our world trading partners.

       Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t win anymore. We don’t beat China in trade. We don’t beat Japan, with their millions and millions of cars coming into this country, in trade. We can’t beat Mexico, at the border or in trade.