truthiness

Lindsey Graham says we should endure the pain of Trump's tariffs:
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/458734-graham-america-must-accept-the-pain-that-comes-in-standing-up-to

The pain comes to you (and me) at $1000/year:
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/us-china-trade-war-donald-trump-tariffs-cost-shoppers-1000-2019-9-1028490870

That is now at the curret lunacy--of course, it could be more if the Chinese won't "cooperate." Not a lot to ask real patriots to endure for the good of__________(fill in the blank).

Radiance3

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Senator Graham is right. We must endure a little pain to push the tariffs to fix the trade imbalance.

For so many years China had taken advantage over the US on the trade imbalance, and the intellectual property. The prior administration over looked it, denied the problems exist. Or perhaps they didn't know how to fix it. But president Trump knows how. And that is what he is doing now. Put up the tariffs.

Due to trade imbalance, every year China amassed about $650 billion for almost 30 years. This was how China got wealthy almost over taking the US GDP for a brief period. US GDP $21 trillion at present, while China GDP $15 trillion. China is second most advanced next to the US while Japan is 3rd. How did China got so fast? Due to the taking advantage of the trade with the US, and stealing of our intellectual properties.

Corporations and all kinds of businesses must put up a little cost of their budget to correct these problems. This is a crisis. If not corrected, we many not be able to restore our economic status over China.

Corporations can create business alternatives, or planning incentives to create more revenue until we are able to balance our trade with China. We must take a little of our budget to spend more, buy all US made products for higher quality rather than buying the cheap China products made of cheap labor and inferior materials.

We must understand that these actions are essential for the sake of restoring back our status for a balanced trade with China. Unless corrected, we will never be able to catch up with China.

Show more patriotism to our own country. Rewards will come later after we have fixed these problems.

EconomistDon

"People who are getting the many jobs that are returning to America".

Japan and then China have been stealing factory jobs from America since the 1970s. That's because they pay their workers 25 cents on the dollar compared with America's union wages. America's factories have collapsed as a result. At the beginning of the 20th century, Bethlehem Steel was the largest steel producer in the world. They are now bankrupt, thanks to Japanese steel dumping. US Steel, the world's second largest steel producer, stayed afloat by buying Marathon Oil decades ago. America's auto industry was also decimated by imports. America imports 75 Japanese cars for every ONE American car shipped to Japan. Detroit was once a thriving city, thanks to auto manufacturing. It now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. China got into the act years later, but now dumps ship loads of cheap junk on our shores. Walmart is loaded primarily with Chinese goods. Those goods were once "made in America". China not only puts tariffs on American goods, they outright BAN many American goods. America's trade balance with China is nearly 5 to 1 in favor of China. The only two items that trade well to China are food and pharmaceuticals. This means that China has very little leverage in a tariff battle. They have no choice but to cave in to US demands on trade.

Adding tariffs on imported goods naturally increases the prices of goods, but it paves the way for sale of more American-made goods. And those sales gains result in more factory production here at home and more jobs for America's middle-class workers. For all those who are huffing and puffing about higher prices, I say "shame on you" for not caring about jobs for American workers. You are truly selfish!

Seth

Spot on!

Seth

badbob85037

For that $1000 more you won't be buying China crap and you won't be buying it again 3 months down the road when it breaks. I have ran across so many products China has made copies of and as far as I know have gotten away with it. The blank "Not financing our own destruction"

Trumpnotthestormiestpres Loc: L.A.

I saw an episode of the Profit the other day. they were combining the candy shop Sweet Pete's and Farrell's ice cream parlor.
the profit shark wanted every eyeline filled with things for the customer to buy under $10. He took them to the toy import Mart and there was tons of stuff. Plastic toys in little Brite colors. Wanna guess where all that shiny stuff was made? Hard nosed business planners look for the bottom dollar.

Vessels leaving PyongYang daily with containers full of this stuff.

But with the correction of a tariff the real price will soon be on those goods. The imposed cost of s***e labor , govt tax, and suppressed costs of doing business internal to China.This is no longer invisible external social cost.

I don't want to buy my nieces toys with invisible trails of lifeblood on them . I won't feel good playing tennis or skiing with Sports equipment made by half blind 90 year old men with no healthcare.

Shirts made in China that cost $78 . From knit fabric made and shirts sewn in China but are finished in america. made in America don't ya know.
Really they are Made under the table in Los Feliz where the sewing machine operators stitch the pony on. Booya.

The Jones New York triacetate in black is made in every -stan out there. I looked at the fabric labels one day. What we can't make p0ly blend ringspun and fabricated nylon knit in the States?

yeah I can get a suit at Macy's for under a hundred bucks. But I don't want ppl in Chechnya to drink iron oxides or their countryside to ingest dye-saturated drinking water for it.

Doesn't feel as good.

yes ppl are upset because we've gotten used to having things cheap. why can't cheap toys and mini lunchboxes and candy lollipops be made in the USA instead of so cheaply around the globe.

I used to spend a hundred bucks at the drugstore And the grocery store for what I can get at the 99 cents only store. For less than half. There had to be a catch somewhere.

At the 99 cents store I got makeup as good as Dept store stuff for a dollar a tube? I spent $20 bucks for 6 months worth of makeup that cost me six to sixteen dollars a bottle. I even slept in it and I didn't break out.

At the those prices I could have a life. I could buy everything I needed and do it every time . My paycheck stretched further.

Wow that was living. But I couldn't find a second job because all of the retail outlets we're cutting back. I needed to pay my student loans .

None of the companies I grew up with were even based in North America anymore. I was going to interviews with companies I had never heard of.
Oh and I had to speak Spanish because of all the under the table labor they employed. Companies stayed afloat replacing two thirds of their labor force with illiterate immigrants who don't know what a whistleblower is.

Yeah life is affordable if you can find a company that is not about to dissolve.Or find an employer not doing business exploiting Some unethical perspective of their markets.

One part of the economy changes because hidden gears are shifting elsewhere. We are dependent on cheap goods because North American manufacturers won't give up bloated business models.

why invest in a chancy garmento Enterprise or novelty manufacturer when you can avoid dealing with a union and overseas operations mutes your involvement to a deposit in the bank.

PeterS

How are tariffs going to fix a trade imbalance? China can never import the same amount that we buy from them? 1) their economy is smaller than ours and 2) our wages are 10 times what theirs are making our products far more expensive then the majority of Chinese can buy. If you are looking at balanced trade you need to look to the European Union where their total economy is similar to ours and wages are similar to ours so they should be able to buy and hopefully want an equal amount of products that we sell. China on the other hand simply is in no position to buy the same amounts of goods that we buy from them. Trump is feeding you a pipe dream and the question is why are you buying it...

With that said, why does it matter if we have a trade imbalance? We are at full employment so China isn't hurting us in that area so why do we need China to buy from us what we buy from them? Where are we going to find the labor to build the goods and services that you are talking about?

DaWg44

Maybe people will quit buying Nike’s. Of course Nike will say there are being made in Vietnam.

Since China is a C*******t country they have had to at least pay lip service to unions over time increasing wages, cutting into the Capitalists’ rulers’ incomes.

Ever wonder why China has been so harsh on Tibetan monks, kept Tibet so isolated? The headwaters of 5 of the major rivers in Asia are all in Tibet. By controlling two of them the Mekong & Indus, China has an ace in the hole in every poker game w/ Vietnam & India.

China has been outsourcing to Vietnam for years to sustain their profit margins. There may be independent companies in Vietnam. I have no way of knowing. It is easy to look up the variations in the size of The Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s Rice Basket.

Big Kahuna

The pain of a lopsided tariff advantage to the Chinese for many decades and having this lopsided agreement aiding the Chinese military build up by billions $$$$$ each year so that they could bury us is much more painful than a measly $$$1,000. You are short sided in your thinking and obviously can't see the bigger picture.

America 1 Loc: South Miami

The real lunacy is to allow the imbalance to continue.
Your business us paying out $5.00 and taking in $1.00, how long are you going to stay in business?

Why The U.S. Will Win The China Trade War
https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2019/08/12/why-us-will-win-china-trade-war/#5365c0b34139

China may have the most to lose, but the U.S. bargaining position is more politically vulnerable
In other words: No end in sight
And the Chinese can credibly claim that buckling under American pressure would be unacceptable to their domestic audience.
Studies of shooting wars indicate that they tend to continue until events on the ground reveal which side is likely to win. The same is surely true for trade wars.
Since neither side is clearly winning or losing, we have probably not seen the end of this conflict.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-has-the-upper-hand-in-the-us-china-trade-war-2019-08-05

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

Past Presidents had consulted experts on issues they were considering taking on, such as folks knowledgeable about Chinese culture, ideology and business practices. Trump consulted marketing and PR people to develop his trade policies. What could possibly go wrong?

Radiance3

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Pete, let us understand better why we need to correct the trade imbalance with China. Here are the facts. Please bear with me.
In 2018, US trade deficit with China was $419 billion. Reason for that was US imports from China was $540 billion, while China imports from US was $120 billion. Biggest items of US imports from China were computers/accessories, cell phones, apparels and footwear. Why? Lots of these imports were from US manufacturers, but shipped to China for cheaper labor. Then China shipped back to US, which US now considers them as imports.
On the other hand, China's biggest imports from US are commercial aircrafts, and soybeans.

Annual trade deficit with China increased in 2012, from $315 billion to $367.3 billion in 2015, fell to $346.9 in 2015. For 2 years eventually increased to $419.2 billion.

Why?:
1. China can produce so much consumer goods at lower cost than any other countries, due to low labor cost, due to lower standard of living. 2. Another is exchange rates they partially fix to the dollar. {They peg their yuan} so that prices of good exported to the US are so cheap, attractive to US consumers.

If this is not corrected, Americans will lose their jobs, and many US businesses will close.

China is the world's largest economy with 1.4 billion people. Their GDP per capital in 2017 was $16,600. While US per capita GDP per capita is $64,417. Due to our higher standard of living. High labor cost. Lower exports, with higher overhead means lower profits. Therefore lower taxes paid to the federal government. Lower taxes collected means budget deficit where our government expenditures are higher than revenue. Every time there is budget deficit, what does the Fed. do? Barrow money. Currently our national debts is about $21 trillion. And China is one of the highest lender to our debts of about $1.1 trillion. Many other sources of our debts are banks, the general public, or other countries like Japan and China.

When US companies exports are constantly lower than our imports, then we can lose our business, rise of unemployment.
That is why it is essential that our trade with China, the biggest economy in the world must be reduced or must be balance. This has been ignored for so many years., the problems have grown so much, more difficult to fix.

President Trump is correcting that right now. And tariffs are the only way to slow our imports. We must buy more of our own products to support this correction. China did issue tariffs imposition to our exports to them. Likewise president Trump increased the tariffs from 10% to 15% effective Sept. 1,2019.
The president also impost a 25% tariffs on imported steel.

With 1.4 billion people, China is desperate to have an edge over US economy to supplement its large population. China also has problem with Hong Kong rights now who wants to maintain their democratic system, though a system under China. Hong Kong is the golden goose for China, but trouble currently has eroded their wealth sources. In desperation, China may eventually give way to US to balance our trade deficit.

kemmer

The Levis I'm wearing were made in Lesotho. Macy's probably bought them for $6.95 and sold them for $44.

Trumpnotthestormiestpres Loc: L.A.

I worked in textiles. I saw fabric sold at 2.35 a yard sold to surfwear mfgrs and sent to S Africa for manufacture. and shipped back via cargo vessels.

why not dyed in Los Angeles? How can it be cheaper minus the cost of round trip world-to-world vessel import? Sheesh.

We need to start mfgr clothes again using American Apparel model. Get a bunch of those together and put it in Penney's or their own shop called . call it Poly shopping.

A shirt that costs 2.35 a yard pueced out and sewn costs seven dollars for labor. Dollar for t***sportation. That shirt comes out at maybe 12.50 generously allowing for cost.

But it retails for $38 in stores.

Pricing and mfgr models need to come down. You can find sk**led textile labor in Los Angeles same day workroom filled. No need to moan about bloated costs if you don't have a corporate layer of managers driving BMWs.

The first American manufacturer to do it will be a hero and a example and a standard.