I have an issue with the theory theroy, though I am not as Hamiltonian as I used to be.
That being, taxes, regulations, and tariffs are all a cost, the tax and regulatory burdens were already high, and I don't think that we have actually cut them yet.
I'm sure that the hasty, negotiated, adn iterate a bit approach is probably best. Because we can't afford to let the cuts stall out, so we can't go slow there, and because the markets will have certainty when things settle, so it is better to do this side fast as well.
The previous regime's free trade policy on human trafficking and on fentanyl trafficking is also something I find unacceptable. Those trades are net losers for the US economy. Canada and Mexico were partnering on that, and they need incentive to accommodate the new regime.
UK's Labour writing mouth checks on behalf of Canada maybe, impartially, merits a bit of vindictiveness or coercion.
I also have a theoretical reservation about Trump planning to do good things, and accomplishing them on purpose. Applies to any actor when the stuff acted on is complicated enough. Maybe this is simpler than I estimate it. Maybe Trump has a level of verifiable skill that I am not accounting for. I think odds could be even that Trump has skill beyond what I understand, and that Trump has reason to think he has the skill, but does not. (OTOH, that forecast is complicated, and also this isn't my own main trained/experienced skill, so one guess is that I have messed up.)
There's an argument that the fentanyl costs aren't high enough to disrupt the economy significantly stopping that trade. Which may simply be that I haven't checked the death rate.
I don't think we can put an upper bound on the human trafficking industrial costs so easily. There are several models there, and if there are/were millions or tens of millions of slaves here in the US, subsidized by the Federal government, and buying food here, we aren't talking just one set of books, or a single effect.
Tariffs probably are bad for Americans, and bad for people living in countries that are not effective in their negotiations.
I think the Dane, the Spaniard, and the Dutchman need to understand that we were finding a lot of dead people in the desert, and that unknown or unmeasureable economic and other effects may be a wee bit important in American calculations or priorities.
That said, at first I was buying some of the arguments against tariffs. Am I seeing the factors I did not calculate previously, or am I just talking myself into liking what my team is doing? I don't entirely want to trust myself.
I think Trump 2.0 is a lot smarter and better advised than Trump 1.0 and that a lot of his enemies have drunk their own Koolaid so they think he is in fact stupid when he certainly isn't.
Whether that's enough I don't know, but I don't want to bet against him yet
Yeah, I think that was me getting snarled up in triple think insanity.
I'm crediting him with being an out of the box thinker, and perhaps a genius. To the best of my knowledge, genius does have limits.
The more important aspect of that point to me, is that the opposition is sure that their 'credentialed smart peopel' 'who have made the good or wise choices' are and have. Knowing about the limits of human knowledge, there are aspects where we can be pretty confident that this is untrue.
So I try to learn from that, and not just automatically make that same mistake. (I'm extremely arrogant about my ability to sort things out from first principles, and at times am wildly overconfident.)
Anyhow, I've hit the place where I am not sure how to evaluate my thinking on that side point.
I think the more important points about the slavery and the drugs stand on their own.
“I also have a theoretical reservation about Trump planning to do good things, and accomplishing them on purpose. Applies to any actor when the stuff acted on is complicated enough. Maybe this is simpler than I estimate it. Maybe Trump has a level of verifiable skill that I am not accounting for. “
My friend do you realize that Trump has a heap of people working for him? His personality and personal qualities are not the issue. It’s about the quality of his people.
Thank you for this. Gives me more ammo in my fights against the tariff naysayers. I find that the stat on how few Americans own that much stock especially important. Yes, taking money from the few rich and spreading it out throughout the land is something that needs to be done. Shocking to hear myself think this but is not a situation where their financial success is due to these few outperforming the rest of us.
Read earlier today that more than 50 countries have called to ask for negotiations on the tariffs. I think this bolsters your thinking that the tariffs are just his opening bid, as it were.
One of the most striking things about the criticism of the tariffs and economic policy is the lack of proposed alternatives. The US has been slowly headed for a fiscal calamity for decades, and it was exponentially accelerated by the Biden administration (with malice I think). Do these critics not see this? Do they really think the stock market is the real indicator of economic health (or perhaps it's the only one that matters to them)? The burden of the debt, inflation, the lack of meaningful work for middle class people, illegal immigration and the tax it places on social welfare and education programs are about to crush the economy, and what's left of the middle class. Tariffs may be the answer or not, but to continue what the US has been doing the last 30 years is only going to make matters worse.
We actually need to fix our draconian environmental, taxing, and labor regulations if we expect companies to come back and to stay back. Because I expect the tariffs to level off to a point where it won't much matter what country you produce from once the other countries realize that Trump means it. Spitballing.
Which is I suspect the blue states are going to see even faster declines while most of the red states see increases. I expect Trump and many red state legistlatures/governors to cut a lot of these regulations
Excellent! Long, as you noted and thought provoking. I played three sudoku games while reading as breaks to consider and contemplate. ;-)
I think you, sitting on the edge of Asia, can see the forest for the trees far better than many or even most in the middle of it, in say, Washington or Brussels. I feel the same way looking down from up here atop the world.
I suspect the tariffs and other 7+ quakes on the Richer scale ground zeroed here in the U.S. today may well, in the middle and long term work out for the benefit of the rest of the world as well. Looking at the last twenty of so years a change may well be good for all.
As I've stated elsewhere, I don't know if Trump's tactics will work for his goals - stated or otherwise. But I have seen him turn "conventional wisdom" by "the experts" into confetti so many times now that I'm willing to give him a long leash on this. And given his rising popularity in the polls, a bunch of other people apparently are too.
I'm a DIYer. I like to buy tools so that I can do work more efficiently. I prefer to buy tools from brand names I recognize because I expect to get better quality than cheap Chinese knockoffs from Harbor Freight or Amazon.
Until you start looking at the country of manufacture of those big brand name tools. Most of them have been bought up by big conglomerates, which immediately started off-shoring manufacture to increase profits. The majority of those big brand name tools are made in the same freaking Chinese factories as the Harbor Freight knockoffs you can get for half the price.
When I pick up a brand name tool and it says "Made in the USA" rather than "Made in China", I'll pay those big brand name prices for them. When it's the same cheap Chinese made crap I can get on Amazon, I'm not paying just to pad the profit statement of the conglomerate that owns that big brand name.
That's what Trump's tariffs mean to me: getting production back in the US so I have the option of paying more for high quality tools and equipment rather than my only options being cheap Chinese crap or expensive Chinese crap.
I have an issue with the theory theroy, though I am not as Hamiltonian as I used to be.
That being, taxes, regulations, and tariffs are all a cost, the tax and regulatory burdens were already high, and I don't think that we have actually cut them yet.
I'm sure that the hasty, negotiated, adn iterate a bit approach is probably best. Because we can't afford to let the cuts stall out, so we can't go slow there, and because the markets will have certainty when things settle, so it is better to do this side fast as well.
The previous regime's free trade policy on human trafficking and on fentanyl trafficking is also something I find unacceptable. Those trades are net losers for the US economy. Canada and Mexico were partnering on that, and they need incentive to accommodate the new regime.
UK's Labour writing mouth checks on behalf of Canada maybe, impartially, merits a bit of vindictiveness or coercion.
I also have a theoretical reservation about Trump planning to do good things, and accomplishing them on purpose. Applies to any actor when the stuff acted on is complicated enough. Maybe this is simpler than I estimate it. Maybe Trump has a level of verifiable skill that I am not accounting for. I think odds could be even that Trump has skill beyond what I understand, and that Trump has reason to think he has the skill, but does not. (OTOH, that forecast is complicated, and also this isn't my own main trained/experienced skill, so one guess is that I have messed up.)
There's an argument that the fentanyl costs aren't high enough to disrupt the economy significantly stopping that trade. Which may simply be that I haven't checked the death rate.
I don't think we can put an upper bound on the human trafficking industrial costs so easily. There are several models there, and if there are/were millions or tens of millions of slaves here in the US, subsidized by the Federal government, and buying food here, we aren't talking just one set of books, or a single effect.
Tariffs probably are bad for Americans, and bad for people living in countries that are not effective in their negotiations.
I think the Dane, the Spaniard, and the Dutchman need to understand that we were finding a lot of dead people in the desert, and that unknown or unmeasureable economic and other effects may be a wee bit important in American calculations or priorities.
That said, at first I was buying some of the arguments against tariffs. Am I seeing the factors I did not calculate previously, or am I just talking myself into liking what my team is doing? I don't entirely want to trust myself.
I think Trump 2.0 is a lot smarter and better advised than Trump 1.0 and that a lot of his enemies have drunk their own Koolaid so they think he is in fact stupid when he certainly isn't.
Whether that's enough I don't know, but I don't want to bet against him yet
Yeah, I think that was me getting snarled up in triple think insanity.
I'm crediting him with being an out of the box thinker, and perhaps a genius. To the best of my knowledge, genius does have limits.
The more important aspect of that point to me, is that the opposition is sure that their 'credentialed smart peopel' 'who have made the good or wise choices' are and have. Knowing about the limits of human knowledge, there are aspects where we can be pretty confident that this is untrue.
So I try to learn from that, and not just automatically make that same mistake. (I'm extremely arrogant about my ability to sort things out from first principles, and at times am wildly overconfident.)
Anyhow, I've hit the place where I am not sure how to evaluate my thinking on that side point.
I think the more important points about the slavery and the drugs stand on their own.
“I also have a theoretical reservation about Trump planning to do good things, and accomplishing them on purpose. Applies to any actor when the stuff acted on is complicated enough. Maybe this is simpler than I estimate it. Maybe Trump has a level of verifiable skill that I am not accounting for. “
My friend do you realize that Trump has a heap of people working for him? His personality and personal qualities are not the issue. It’s about the quality of his people.
He also has been talking about many of these issues for years.
Thank you for this. Gives me more ammo in my fights against the tariff naysayers. I find that the stat on how few Americans own that much stock especially important. Yes, taking money from the few rich and spreading it out throughout the land is something that needs to be done. Shocking to hear myself think this but is not a situation where their financial success is due to these few outperforming the rest of us.
Read earlier today that more than 50 countries have called to ask for negotiations on the tariffs. I think this bolsters your thinking that the tariffs are just his opening bid, as it were.
One of the most striking things about the criticism of the tariffs and economic policy is the lack of proposed alternatives. The US has been slowly headed for a fiscal calamity for decades, and it was exponentially accelerated by the Biden administration (with malice I think). Do these critics not see this? Do they really think the stock market is the real indicator of economic health (or perhaps it's the only one that matters to them)? The burden of the debt, inflation, the lack of meaningful work for middle class people, illegal immigration and the tax it places on social welfare and education programs are about to crush the economy, and what's left of the middle class. Tariffs may be the answer or not, but to continue what the US has been doing the last 30 years is only going to make matters worse.
On that note - this is an excellent framing of what Trump 2.0 is trying to do to the USA, which is putting it through basically a (pre)bankruptcy workout - https://mylistens.substack.com/p/the-largest-workout-in-history
We actually need to fix our draconian environmental, taxing, and labor regulations if we expect companies to come back and to stay back. Because I expect the tariffs to level off to a point where it won't much matter what country you produce from once the other countries realize that Trump means it. Spitballing.
Which is I suspect the blue states are going to see even faster declines while most of the red states see increases. I expect Trump and many red state legistlatures/governors to cut a lot of these regulations
yep
Excellent! Long, as you noted and thought provoking. I played three sudoku games while reading as breaks to consider and contemplate. ;-)
I think you, sitting on the edge of Asia, can see the forest for the trees far better than many or even most in the middle of it, in say, Washington or Brussels. I feel the same way looking down from up here atop the world.
I suspect the tariffs and other 7+ quakes on the Richer scale ground zeroed here in the U.S. today may well, in the middle and long term work out for the benefit of the rest of the world as well. Looking at the last twenty of so years a change may well be good for all.
As I've stated elsewhere, I don't know if Trump's tactics will work for his goals - stated or otherwise. But I have seen him turn "conventional wisdom" by "the experts" into confetti so many times now that I'm willing to give him a long leash on this. And given his rising popularity in the polls, a bunch of other people apparently are too.
Putting it in personal terms:
I'm a DIYer. I like to buy tools so that I can do work more efficiently. I prefer to buy tools from brand names I recognize because I expect to get better quality than cheap Chinese knockoffs from Harbor Freight or Amazon.
Until you start looking at the country of manufacture of those big brand name tools. Most of them have been bought up by big conglomerates, which immediately started off-shoring manufacture to increase profits. The majority of those big brand name tools are made in the same freaking Chinese factories as the Harbor Freight knockoffs you can get for half the price.
When I pick up a brand name tool and it says "Made in the USA" rather than "Made in China", I'll pay those big brand name prices for them. When it's the same cheap Chinese made crap I can get on Amazon, I'm not paying just to pad the profit statement of the conglomerate that owns that big brand name.
That's what Trump's tariffs mean to me: getting production back in the US so I have the option of paying more for high quality tools and equipment rather than my only options being cheap Chinese crap or expensive Chinese crap.