Five Myths of Imports

[Indeependent]

The absurd premise of this thread, that somehow our trade deficit is a good thing, leads to the equally absurd converse,

that the nations that have trade surpluses with us are somehow suffering for it, and would be better off with trade deficits of their own.

That's not really a premise. Try again.

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

That it's good to be a truck driver or work on a dock.
Let's see TheRabbi do such.

 

[The Rabbi]

That's not really a premise. Try again.

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

That it's good to be a truck driver or work on a dock.
Let's see TheRabbi do such.

^^^Didnt read the article.

 

[JoeB131]

Underneath all the hypocritical prattle about the Sacred Founders and their Constitutional Intent which the fringe right offers unceasingly we see the real masters of the new GOP, the Koch Boys and International Big Business with its "free trade" malarky which has wiped out a generation of manufacturing and crippled the middle class.

George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was totally opposed to "free trade". The tariff he devised and which was passed in the first years of the new republic, had high duty on manufactured imports specifically to create manufacturing jobs for Americans. Southern slave owners didn't like it because they sold their cotton abroad, but the high protective tariff was the foundation of American policy until the arrival of reaganomics almost two centuries later. The policy of the Founding Fathers was pro-jobs and anti-free trade. Today's Republicans are too uneducated to know this and too dumb to understand it.

^^^^Didnt read the article

Can't take the WSJ seriously after a foreigner took it over, can you?

 

[NYcarbineer]

That's not really a premise. Try again.

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

That it's good to be a truck driver or work on a dock.
Let's see TheRabbi do such.

I guess he's trying to convince us that a few jobs working in warehouses handling imported appliances is better than a few million jobs working in factories building appliances.

 

[NYcarbineer]

That's not really a premise. Try again.

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

No, actually I do not agree trade deficits are bad nor that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficits, nor that low wages in other countries cause us any problems at all.
You were saying?

How are trade deficits good, again?

 

[The Rabbi]

Underneath all the hypocritical prattle about the Sacred Founders and their Constitutional Intent which the fringe right offers unceasingly we see the real masters of the new GOP, the Koch Boys and International Big Business with its "free trade" malarky which has wiped out a generation of manufacturing and crippled the middle class.

George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was totally opposed to "free trade". The tariff he devised and which was passed in the first years of the new republic, had high duty on manufactured imports specifically to create manufacturing jobs for Americans. Southern slave owners didn't like it because they sold their cotton abroad, but the high protective tariff was the foundation of American policy until the arrival of reaganomics almost two centuries later. The policy of the Founding Fathers was pro-jobs and anti-free trade. Today's Republicans are too uneducated to know this and too dumb to understand it.

^^^^Didnt read the article

Can't take the WSJ seriously after a foreigner took it over, can you?

Your avatar should say "Captain Oblivious"

 

[The Rabbi]

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

That it's good to be a truck driver or work on a dock.
Let's see TheRabbi do such.

I guess he's trying to convince us that a few jobs working in warehouses handling imported appliances is better than a few million jobs working in factories building appliances.

Either/Or Fallacy.
Rabbi Rules!

 

[The Rabbi]

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

No, actually I do not agree trade deficits are bad nor that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficits, nor that low wages in other countries cause us any problems at all.
You were saying?

How are trade deficits good, again?

Didnt bother reading the article, right?

OK. Let's say there was no foreign trade in this country at all. Then a company called Apple starts up. They can't get computer chips here so they import them from Taiwan. They spend $1M on computer chips. That makes our trade deficit $1M. Apple takes the chips, creates iPads with them, and sells the product for $20M. They make a $7M profit on it. The country is richer by $7M because we are running a trade deficit of $1M.
Show me where we are worse off.

 

[bripat9643]

So you agree that trade deficits are bad, and that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficit.

What WAS the point of your thread anyway?

No, actually I do not agree trade deficits are bad nor that low wages in other countries exacerbate our trade deficits, nor that low wages in other countries cause us any problems at all.
You were saying?

How are trade deficits good, again?

A trade deficit means that we get lots of cheap goods and services while our trading partners get nothing but worthless scraps of paper in return.

 

[The Rabbi]

People are locked into a mercantilist mindset that if we run a trade deficit we'll export all our money and there will be nothing left.

 

[whitehall]

The choice of phrases is important in trying to make a political point. The phrase "almost half" is the same as "less than half" but if I said "less than half of non-oil imports to the US come from high wage developed countries" it would be true but it would change the whole argument.