Trump, NAFTA, and Tariffs, "Those jobs are gone and they're not coming back"

a reply to: marg6043

Are you sure about that?

Following diplomatic negotiations dating back to 1990 among the three nations, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas, each responsible for spearheading and promoting the agreement, ceremonially signed the agreement in their respective capitals on December 17, 1992.[7] The signed agreement then needed to be ratified by each nation's legislative or parliamentary branch.

Wikipedia

But, you know -- I realize actual history doesn't matter anymore if it doesn't support your beliefs.

a reply to: dragonridr

youre forgetting that youre talking about countries who produce A LOT and export A LOT........

You start slapping on tariffs when we DONT produce very much and import 80 percent of what we have, along with our struggling dollar and huge debt.......

Youre looking at worse than Great Depression issues in the making........

originally posted by: ManBehindTheMask
a reply to: dragonridr

youre forgetting that youre talking about countries who produce A LOT and export A LOT........

You start slapping on tariffs when we DONT produce very much and import 80 percent of what we have, along with our struggling dollar and huge debt.......

Youre looking at worse than Great Depression issues in the making........

Your just showing you don't know what your talking about . The us is the 3rd major exporter in the world. Number one is China Number two is the EU. The US experts over 1.5 trillion a year. It takes 22 nations working together to Beat US or they would be second in the world. The reason China is first is a massive trade imbalance with China. They have tariffs on all US imports.

So now that you know tariffs sound in order at least with China. Or they can remove there's and we can compete either way

a reply to: dragonridr

Why does any country have a tariff on any other country? Well the #1 reason for any modern government program is more power for the ruling class. A tariff brings government revenues and therefore more power. Has there been a country that has not grown in power and scope until its collapse or conquering by a competing power? If so I'm very interested to hear about it.

Of course all government programs have sad attempts at justification that are rammed through by a populace that will believe anything they are told. The stated excuse for tariffs is that you have to protect jobs. For businesses, the stated excuse for a tariff is that it protects businesses. The problem is neither jobs nor businesses need special government protections in a an economy that grows in a healthy way.

The economy is very complex and only by studying what actually happens after tariffs have been implemented in the past can you predict what will happen under a tariff to any given country if it is implemented. So unless Trump is going off of a wide body of study of past tariff programs results, he is doing something stupid with his tariff programs. The nice thing about economic policy is that it is something approaching an actual science, as opposed to the rest of politics which is as a science a junk science (political science is what they jokingly call it).

The economic studies out there on tariffs are entirely satisfactory to tell us what we can expect from a new tariff. Is it possible Trump will implement a policy based on what works? I doubt it because Trump is all about people not policies. If we wanted sound policies that would have been Ron Paul not Donald Trump.