So as Batman always so perfectly states…If you want to know who committed a crime, just find out who benefits the most.
IN this instance, a trade war hurts everyone already involved in the trading. Who benefits? Those who are NOT part of the trading to begin with. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc etc. Basically all the nations no one was willing to trade with for a variety of reasons. And the first question to ask is “Who started this?” and it is of course Trump. The dots are not hard to connect here at all.
It will benefit Canada and Mexico as well. As long as it’s not steel, aluminum or cars, we will still do a huge amount of trade with the US.
If Trump takes on H-D or especially the auto manufacturers for protecting their business interests and shareholders by creating focused taxes that hurt their bottom line, they will bury him. He’s too vain at this point to see it and the Repubs have too much fear/stupidity inertia to confront him over it.
Or, one could say that the spending by Reagan and Bush Sr. led to a prosperous economy with high tax receipts that allowed Clinton to briefly run budget surpluses, while Bush Jr. inherited the “casino economy” created by Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall and the passing of the CFMA and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, etc., etc. The partisan game is boring; stop trying to play it. All of these people subscribe to basically the same ideology (neoliberal capitalism). Minor differences in policy don’t change the main trend:
Actually, that chart backs up Maddow, the part you highlighted especially. The 2009 budget was passed by the GOP while Bush was in office. Obama’s first budget would have been in 2010, and you can see that for the most part, the deficit does get smaller year after year under his term except for a bump in 2016. Then it’s set to upswing under Trump.
Congress has the power to raise and lower taxes, not the White House, so he would need Congress to do it. Maybe Trump thinks Harley will be taxed if they import those EU-produced bikes back into the US, but that was not their plan, those bikes are for the EU market. In other words, Trump is just blabbering and boasting as usual.
Given how spineless and self serving the Republican-dominated Congress is, it could happen. I don’t expect it to in the short term, but they have proven to be capable of screwing up everything they touch.
Um, the budget is set the year prior. It’s also not a nimble sportscar that changes direction at the flick of the driver’s wrists. Look at the inflection points and trajectory, then align them with presidential terms in office, and Maddow is exactly right, especially the section you showed.
It’s funny how history (sorta) repeats. I’m currently supporting a research project by designing high-speed optoelectronic amplifiers disturbingly similar to ones I designed in the 70s, and now this.
When I was a kid, by far the cheapest way for me to get parts like resistors and capacitors was to cannibalize surplus (like, WWII) military electronics, which my father could get for nothing when the Air Force scrapped a load of them. Now, the best bet for makers might be to design stuff strictly as a vehicle for parts until the collaborators can figure a loophole for component collections by way of Canada and Mexico.
I like to remind people it takes about 18months for the economy to shift directions based on presidential influence.
So first bit of Bush’s years was Clinton’s remnant influence. First couple years of Obama was Bush’s remnant influence. And we are right at the point we’re Obama’s administration’s influence is beginning to wain. Which is why the amazing market we saw steadily for nearly 3 years has begun to crack. And we are now having some terrible days. Trumps influence is beginning to be felt.
The day China calls in its debt is the day it’s over for the greenback and thus for the U.S. – the USD without reserve currency status means a whole lot of things collapse.
Right now China’s economy is locked symbiotically with America’s to the point where they leave it alone, but an escalated trade war combined with trouble in the South China Sea might prompt them to think “screw it, let’s burn them down and take the heat.”
I believe Japan holds a huge (yuge?) chunk of US debt, about the same as China, though it only takes one major player to crash the whole house of cards. Trump doesn’t realize the dangerous game he’s playing, and the financially and politically ignorant arrogance of his cabinet doesn’t help.
If it doesn’t affect Il Douche personally he doesn’t care. If it ever came to pass I’m sure he’d get all kinds of hotel and real estate deals from the Chinese and Russians and Gulf monarchs as a “reward.” The frightening thing is that the only thing preventing him from buying in fully to the advice of a protectionist kook like Peter Navarro (known amongst economists as “Peter Rabbit”) is the Wall Street greedhead Steve Mnuchin, whose policies could tank the economy in a different way.
The budget is part of that, but the stimulus is also - an extra-budget $787 billion.
Anyway, WHY are you trying to win this contest? Are you a deficit hawk? A fiscal conservative? My guess is no; you should be happy that your favored party is willing to run deficits in a recession. Instead you’re reflexively trying to “win” for your “side” without bothering to examine why you are arguing.
