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After all the battles over statistics, the baseline reality is they don’t matter to ordinary people. The Biden administration tried and failed to convince people that it was a good economy. It failed because people know what’s in their wallets, they know what the cost of the things they want to buy is, and much of the population doesn’t care about all the other numbers.
The public certainly doesn’t believe this is a good economy, but after all the doom and gloom, the tariff economic disaster that ‘experts’ and the media are trying to wishcast into being… isn’t actually showing up. To their disappointment.
Economy Consumer prices rise 2.7% annually in July, less than expected amid tariff worries – CNBC
Sorry, CNBC.
We’re not seeing any kind of major pricing surges. But the market has had plenty of time to price this in. Unlike COVID and post-COVID inflation, this isn’t a case of unpredictable chaos, and this time around the government didn’t make the dumb mistake of just sending everyone a bunch of checks. The housing market is still a mess and our economy is heavily dependent on China, but that cuts both ways, meaning that China is also dependent on us.
President Trump is taking some big gambles, he’s revamping a global economic system that past administrations allowed to be rigged against us as part of convincing everyone else to join in, and the media is rooting for him to fail, not just because they hate him, but because they love the globalist system and they hate America.
Once again the M.S. Media continues to fake the news and rig the Polls
To really understand tariffs, one has to dig into their history, not just apply modern economic theory. Tariffs have existed since pre-history, and all through history. There hasn’t really been a tariff free period in history, free trade was just a beautiful idea that wasn’t realized in reality.
Yes, they’re a part of civilization. President McKinley’s Tariff Act of 1890 helped agriculture, exports and manufacturing so much it helped make America the most powerful and richest country in the world, along with the Works of “the Titans of industry,” Carnegie, Rockefeller Morgan, Vanderbilt and to a much lesser degree, Ford. The Titans contributed by far the most to America’s standard of living and wealth but tariffs work. McKinley raised them from 39% to 49%.
What were they when Trump came along? Close to zero on every product and every country? In many cases they WERE zero.
Yeah, they even had tariffs in Sicily before they had written records, which historians inferred somehow from their coinage. So tariffs go back into prehistory 🙂
Yeah, remember the hongo illiterate African tribes charged anybody they could pressure that Burton described? I bet even cavemen had some for of tariffs.
I finally figured out why glass beads were used as money. The Phoenicians had a monopoly on the technology for making colored glass beads for awhile, so they really did have some value.
Free trade has actually meant that other countries get to dump their cheap products into US markets at prices cheaper than similar domestically produced products while we look the other way and do and say nothing. It’s no more complicated than that. It’s how and why China took over most US markets and our politicians encouraged it (e.g., NAFTA.) (Gee, dumb and naive me I can’t imagine why they would do that…!)
Any other explanation is just sophistry and bullsh*t to bamboozle those who don’t have a solid understanding of the issues underlying so-called “free trade.”
Yes, and while America let them dump their products, they’ve long charged huge tariffs on us, sometimes so onerous that a product can’t be sold, like cars in Europe. Some countries even prevent us from selling certain goods, like Harley Davidons in India…..even though their’s a HD plant there!
Economics is an industry peopled by intellectual mediocrities. They tend to have religious type devotion to their texts. Their mantra is “free trade”. Hysteria becomes evident when there is any deviation from the scriptures.
Free trade did not exist in the US from our creation until today. The greatest industrial growth in history began in 1870 and continued until 1914. The average tariff in the era was about 40%
China and Japan have grown well with huge tariffs as well as the EU. The US citizen has been supporting the world since 1945. It is time to come home.
Generally speaking conomists are as reliable as witch doctors and voodoo houngans. And they always think they’re right, no matter how often they’re proved wrong, like lil’ Paul Krugman and George Swill. Of course they’re both serial liars and that doesn’t help their predictions any more than their incompetence.
Oh, excellent points. Never rely on predictions from economists and other “experts” for your investments (lessons learned the hard way 🙂
Invest in Newsmax. It’s a sure bet. It went from $10. to over $200. in it’s first week. The last time I checked tt was less than that but still far more than $10. THe only reason Newsmax isn’t more popular than Fox is because it isn’t on sucky cable and most people don’t know it exists. Even so, it’s number three or four in ratings and will continue to pick up viewers, which increases its stock value.
I learned of a website that tracks the investments of the Pelosis and other top investors. I saw the CEO of the website and TV and he said that Paul and Nancy Pelosi are the grand champions of investment. Gee, I wonder how they managed that? 😛 I don’t remember the name of the website but you could find it with a web search.
I’d say investing in the same companies that the Pelosis do is a sure bet.
A former Australian Finance Minister and later Governor General, who had an economics degree, once commented that Economics was voodoo and that very, very few people, including economists, had anything more than a very, very limited understanding of it.
I’ve known a number of very highly placed and influential economists who have stated straight out the the mainstream Keynesian view of economics is so far out of contact with reality that it is nothing more than fantasy fiction.
That Governor General is 100% correct.
In my life time and experience, the only honest and objective economists I’m aware of is F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams.
“If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.” ― Friedrich Hayek
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” ― Milton Friedman
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” ― Milton Friedman
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” ― Thomas Sowell
“I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.” ― Thomas Sowell
“Government has no resources of its own…government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong.” ― Walter E. Williams
“What our nation needs is a separation of “business and state”…That would mean crony capitalism and crony socialism could not survive.” ― Walter E. Williams
Good quotes. I’ve never heard of Williams but I’ve read some of what the rest have written. It’s nice to know not all economists are quacks.
They call Economics the “Dismal Science” but I always thought of it as a beautiful science.
I can’t help but notice that economists have pushed the tariff inflation apocalypse narrative in the same way that medical doctors pushed the Covid apocalypse narrative. Both repeat lies that go against their own training and which everyone can see with their own eyes are obviously untrue. Both have remedies which do maximum damage to the people and society they claim to be helping. In the case of economists it is free trade and mass immigration. For doctors it was masking, social isolation and clot shots. Now I ask myself, how is it that over 90% of highly educated, trained and experienced professionals just tow the line without question?
Please address this question. If in fact those countries exporting to the U.S. eat the entirety of the tariffs, and none of it is paid for ultimately by the American consumer in the form of higher prices, why would any production move to the U.S.?
Second question. If foreign firms are to invest in the U.S. , how can they get the dollars they need to invest if they do not have a trade surplus with the U.S.?
Third question: Is the large U.S. capital account surplus a bad thing, and if so, why?
There is no “towing the line.” A tariff is a tax. A tax is a cost. If you raise the cost of doing something, you get less of it. If you subsidize something, e.g. purchases of electric vehicles, you get more of it.
Voluntary transactions only take place when both parties expect to be better off. When you prevent voluntary transactions, you make both parties that no longer transact worse off.
There was a solid reason the Founding Fathers prohibited one state from imposing tariffs on goods imported from other states. If tariffs are, net, desirable for the government imposing tariffs, shouldn’t one state be permitted to impose tariffs on goods from other states? There is a logical reason many companies have moved production to right=to-work states.
Al Gore won the debate with Ross “Giant Sucking Sound” Perot, when he pulled out a photo of Smoot and Hawley. The U.S. did not end up being worse off because of NAFTA. One need look no further than the GDP growth rates or unemployment rates after NAFTA passed to recognize that.
1. Obviously they move production to the U.S. so they don’t have to eat the tariff.
2. Trump has already proved he can attract foreign investment to the U.S. They will invest money in the U.S. if the investment will make more money for them. The U.S. runs trades deficits but still invests in foreign countries.
3. The U.S. capital account surplus is not a bad thing by itself, it is the trade deficit(current account) that has harmed the middle class and decimated our manufacturing jobs.
The fact is we don’t need more mass dumped cheap imported goods to undercut domestic production. I am ok with getting less of that. The addition of Smoot Hawley put the tariff rate around 60%. It was the retaliation by other countries that exacerbated the effect, something we are not experiencing now. Also, SH resulted in only about a 4% increase in prices only on imports. NAFTA was a disaster for millions of Americans, but a boon for the multinational corporations, wealthy, and well-connected.
It’s no surprise that evil liar Al Bondigas uses wetback food as his screen name. He probably gets off on the fact that using them for cheap labor vastly cheapens the quality of life for the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Neocon scum don’t care about their fellow Americans at all. Not a whit. Turd meatballs like Al don’t even consider us fellows.
H. Ross Perot won the debate against Al Gore, who has been wrong about most everything else also 🙂
Yes, Perot destroyed Al Snore. That “You’re going to hear a giant sucking sound” comment was hilarious, especially with his accent, and it was the catch phrase of the day. Hell, even George Bush destroyed Al Bore.
First, prices HAVEN’T risen and a shitload of production is moving to America.
Second, a shitload of foreign firms are investing in the US……to the tune of over a trillion dollars.
Third, WTF are you blathering about?
A tariff is not a tax and only neocon scum claim it is. Tariffs do NOT raise the cost of doing things and subsidies help only the parasites who receive them not the public or the country.
Onerous tariffs were imposed on America for over fifty years and only economists and other neocons claimed America was better off when it clearly wasn’t. Expectations are as meaningless as your comments.
The states are all part of America, not foreign countries. Your point is deranged.
Ross Perot DESTROYED Global Climate Warming Change Al Bore, the inventor of the world wide web. Claiming that NAFTA didn’t make America infinitely worse off is like saying illegal immigration hasn’t either. Bore wasn’t elected so bringing him up is retarded.
Everything you wrote is a lie. You’re quite probably the dumbest commentator at FPM. Stupidity is supposed to have limits but apparently you’re the exception to the rule.
Reminded me of the rare occasions when my grandmother would prepare meatballs for us for dinner. I would silently think “Oh, no. Meatballs.” That’s probably why I turned into a vegetarian 🙂
People keep complaining about “high prices” for nearly everything and the left tries to blame it on PRESIDENT TRUMP and his Economic Strategies. The BASELINE for today’s prices of most everything is much higher than when PRESIDENT TRUMP left office and the biden bunglers began their rape of America! I would love to see prices reducing back down to 2019 levels with only TODAY’S inflation rate moving them upwards, but Joe and his “ability to f things up” might not ever be reversed.
The hysteria over Tariffs?? Those Nations are not stupid! They were absolutely financially raping the US – for DECADES! All PRESIDENT TRUMP has done is sort of “leveling the field”, but all those Nations realize that maybe a little “gentle raping” of the US is better than NO raping at all! I find it refreshing that the leftists have to admit it’s working – must be a bitter pill to swallow!
Whether one loves Trump or hates him, the difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is truly astonishing. Personally, I am really enjoying the show.
Let’s have some fun with the lefty whiners about tariffs: The big fans of modern monetary theory say that taxes could be used to counter the inflationary aspects of printing money. Looks as if the Trump plan is working without raising a dime of tax increases directly on our citizens.