Is it time for a trade war with China?

[Charles_Main]

Is it time for us to TAX and TARIFF Chinese imports. They do it to ours already, and they are Deliberately working the Currency Markets to devalue their currency against ours and keep the trade Deficit HUGE.

If we are ever going to pay off our Debt, Which China Owns much of, The only way may be a trade war with China. IMO

 

[loosecannon]

Krugman made the bone head mistake of suggesting the same thing about 4 months ago. He is really losing it.

The problem is that global trade and economic activity is stalling.

If you initiate a trade war between the world's two largest trading partners you risk the entire world's economy.

Economies can be very fragile when they are reliant on credit, esp interbank credit. Once you stop the flow again it can be impossible to start it again.

That's what happened in the 30's and it was in part triggered by trade wars and tarrifs.

On the other hand we desperately need the renminbi depegged from the dollar so that the entire recovery doesn't occur only within Asia.

We could boycott Chinese goods at the consumer level demanding they unpeg and stop currency manipulation.

That would send a REAL message to China.

 

[Douger]

It makes no difference. You no longer produce anything so you're stuck buying Chinese either way.
If they unpeg their currency you'll find out what an economic Armageddon looks like !

 

[uscitizen]

Let me put it this way.
Is it time for our store shelves to be virtually barren?

 

[Big Black Dog]

You don't get out of debt to China by continually borrowing money from them. Time to stop spending so much of that money we don't have and borrowing it. I don't think a Trade War would help as much as us becoming more financially responsible.

 

[Toro]

This is a bad idea.

We don't need trade wars during recessions. We don't need them at any time, especially during this recession.

 

[loosecannon]

It makes no difference. You no longer produce anything so you're stuck buying Chinese either way.
If they unpeg their currency you'll find out what an economic Armageddon looks like !

Most of what we buy from China we don't need. We buy it because it is so dirt cheap it is hard to resist.

Buy American.

 

[uscitizen]

Yep we don't need these computers we are typing on....

 

[loosecannon]

Yep we don't need these computers we are typing on....

we don't need those dirt cheap computers we are typing on either.

We could do without both, but we could especially afford to pay three times as much for our units made in the USA.

Do you think the Chinese laborers who make our units can afford to own them even at 1/7 retail price?

If they can, they are paying a much larger % of their salary than we are.