If this was a war, we'd be eating chop suey, wearing caps with a red star instead of MAGA, and banging a gong at some temple. What's going on now is a negotiation and for the first time, we have a leader who's used to winning those. There is a globalist lobbying outfit called the "Trade Partnership" bandying about wild figures about how America will be "hurt" by tariffing China.....and it's bullshit. Larry Kudlow says the govt. group who knows what it's doing says the cost to American consumers is nowhere near what these clowns are saying and the Fake News rodents are eating with a spoon. Bottom line? Trump is trying to disrupt and move the world supply chain from China into SE Asia and Indonesia...that will break China's back. So try to remember you're an American, stand behind your president, and understand a tiny ouch now will result in orgasmic ecstasy down the road in an even hotter economy all around you.
This isn't a "negotiation". Trump doesn't have the FIRST clue on how to conduct a negotiation. Trump, the Biggest Loser in American business history, is the WORST negotiator I've ever seen, and I've worked with the kind of people that Trump purports to be - a big bucks real estate genius, none of whom ever conducted their business the way Trump has, and all of whom make Donnie Boy look like the chump change artist he is. I worked in the real estate department of one of the biggest law firms in the world, where they have an entire section of one department working on deals which impact the economy.
I worked with one guy who picked up most of his biggest clients because he cleaned their lawyers' clocks in a negotiation. I sat back and learned from the best. Trump started his trade negotiation with China by pulling out of the TPP Partnership, which dealth with ALL of the issues that Trump is now re-negotiating, including patent protectsions. Trump, sharp negotiator that he is, pulled out of the TPP
without first reading it to see what was in it. Once his staff saw what it did, Trump then asked to get back in, and the remaining members of the TPP, who had already signed the Agreement without the US, had now moved on the the legislative phase of implentation, and told Trump to go **** himself.
When trading partners want to renegotiate existing deals, they first ask for a meeting, and if the other side refuses to renegotiate, they then slap tariffs on as a
last resort. Trump started his "negotiation" with China, who had already negotiated many of the things Trump was asking for in the TPP, had already indicated a willingness to sit down and negotiate these issues, but instead, Trump goes to the last resort tactic, as an opening gambit.
This is like his walking out of the negotiating meeting with Nancy Pelosi, that lead to the government shut down. Do you call that whole fiasco a "win" for the President. This one is going to end much much worse for Trump, than the government shut down. The government had to bail out mid-Western farmers to the tune of $80 billion last year, and farmers are starting to get foreclosure notices. They don't have a rich Daddy who can bail them out of the losses they've sustained since Trump started his trade war.
Americans can't just start buying the consumer goods they now import from China because the US economy no longer has the means of production. 30 years ago, there were 17,000 unionized garment workers in the City of Toronto. Today, there are
none. ZERO
. The plants where workers sewed the dresses, suits and children's wear, are now chi chi lofts with cute building names reminescent of the Fashion District past. The fabric wholesale stores, and suppliers are also gone, their spaces taken over by mega-chain corporate fashion, trading on the "fashion district" reputation. Pattern makers and cutters, the highly paid skilled trades the design industry relies on, are in very short supply, as in almost non-existent, and totally overwhelmed with work. Fabric mills have closed and sold off their equipment, as have all of the suppliers for thread and yard goods.
As recently as 2002, I could take my designs to a pattern maker and have commercial patterns made for them, and then take the pattern to a jobber and get as few as 100 units of that pattern made to my specificiation. Now I have to send my patterns to China, and watch them sell them to others, or forget about trying to develop my own line. It is now physcially impossible to create a line of clothing and have it manufactured in North America, without starting from scratch. The skills are gone baby. The skills are gone.