The Donald Trump Score Card

China has a 25% tariff on all American cars entering their country and we have a tariff of 2.5%. They manipulate their currency and yet we leave ours alone. I know corporations have made a fortune off these trade deals, but I don't think a 400 billion dollar yearly trade deficit is sustainable. There will be some dislocations in the short run, but I think Trump is showing guts to stand up to the corporations when it comes to trade.

 

Check out the very end of this video. Melania has to remind Trump to put his hand on his heart. I actually think she has a quite a bit of control over him. She also picked up the pieces after the LaBron James incident and was vocally against separating immigrants a day before Trump changed his tune.


As far as trade goes. 97% of all the clothes we wear come from outside the country. If anything ever happens with the shipping lanes Americans will literally be without clothing. These deals are incredibly short sighted imo.

 

What Is the Trade Deficit?
It’s not a scorecard, and reducing it won’t necessarily be good for jobs.
by Neil Irwin
June 9, 2018

What Is the Trade Deficit?

excerpt:

"If you want to think of it in terms of winners and losers, you could justifiably reverse Mr. Trump’s preferred framing: “Those losers in Mexico gave us $69 billion more stuff than we gave them last year. Ha, ha, ha. We’re winners.”

What does that have to do with savings and investment?

When a country runs a trade deficit, there is a countervailing force. Think back to our pretend countries. BananaLand has a $1 million trade deficit with CarNation. But that means that car producers in CarNation are sitting on an extra $1 million a year in income.

Something has to happen with that $1 million. If CarNation doesn’t want the value of its currency to rise, it has to take that $1 million trade surplus and plow it back into BananaLand. There are different ways it could do that. People in CarNation could buy stocks or bonds in BananaLand, or companies in CarNation could invest in factories in BananaLand, or the government of CarNation could buy assets directly.

In effect, the flow of capital is the reverse of the flow of goods. And the trade deficit will be shaped not just by the mechanics of what products people in the two countries buy, but also by unrelated investment and savings decisions. The cause and effect goes both directions.

So, for example, if a country enacts a giant tax cut that increases its budget deficit, it is effectively lowering its savings rate — which tends to increase its trade deficit.

That, of course, is exactly the fiscal policy choice the United States has made, so the tax cut passed late last year will tend to increase the trade deficit relative to its level if tax rates had remained unchanged."

 

What Is the Trade Deficit?
It’s not a scorecard, and reducing it won’t necessarily be good for jobs.
by Neil Irwin
June 9, 2018

What Is the Trade Deficit?

excerpt:

"But don’t trade deficits mean fewer jobs?

Maybe.

It is true that a trade deficit subtracts from a country’s gross domestic product. G.D.P. measures the value of goods and services produced within a country’s borders, so when a country is selling less stuff abroad than it buys from abroad, the country is making less stuff, and as a result there are fewer jobs. This piece of the Trump theory of trade is true.

But the flow of capital into the country — the inverse of the trade deficit — creates benefits that can be good for jobs, by encouraging more domestic investment.

This isn’t just an abstraction. It’s what has happened between the United States and China for the last couple of decades. China has had consistent trade surpluses, but it did not want its currency to rise in a way that would undermine its exporters. So money has flowed from China into the United States — both from the Chinese government’s purchases of United States Treasury bonds and more recently in the form of direct investment from Chinese companies into the United States."

 

What Is the Trade Deficit?
It’s not a scorecard, and reducing it won’t necessarily be good for jobs.
by Neil Irwin
June 9, 2018

What Is the Trade Deficit?

excerpt:

"So which is it?

It depends on what the country does with the investment that comes in.

In theory, that money could go toward long-lasting investments with positive economic returns: new factories and equipment; education for the work force; new roads and bridges, or repairs and improvements to existing ones.

Unfortunately, how countries use these capital inflows is not always so fruitful. In the United States, the influx of foreign capital in the mid-2000s went in large part to fuel an unsustainable housing and mortgage bubble. Greece’s capital inflows in the same time period went to fund bloated public spending.

When the world is flinging money at you, it’s important to use it for something productive. It’s not that trade deficits (and the capital inflows that are their flip side) don’t matter — but just knowing the numbers doesn’t tell you much about whether they are good, bad or indifferent."

 

Donald Trump's China Tariffs Don't Apply to Ivanka
by McKenna Moore
July 9, 2018

Donald Trump's China Tariffs Don't Apply to Ivanka

excerpt:

"Despite her father’s rallying cry to “buy American and hire American,” 100% of Ivanka Trump’s fashion products were made overseas—at least until early 2017.

And now her goods are avoiding the sweeping tariffs enacted by President Trump in his trade war with China. On Friday morning, Trump implemented $34 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods ranging from auto parts to medical devices, according to the Huffington Post.

Clothing and shoes, like those imported by Ivanka Trump’s company, were spared."

 

China won’t repeat Japan’s Plaza Accord mistake
Source:Global Times
Published: 2018/3/28 21:00:55

China won’t repeat Japan’s Plaza Accord mistake - Global Times

excerpt:

"The structural differences between China and Japan also make it difficult for the US to strike China with tariffs. Back in the 1980s, Japan's manufacturing industry dealt a heavy blow to the US. With trade high on the agenda, the Japanese government allowed free movement of short-term capital to address the loan issue while limiting long-term capital that directly invested in Japan. It hence invested in almost the whole manufacturing industry and exported products to the US, making it easy for Washington to hit the economy with tariffs and exchange action.

China is in a different situation. A certain proportion of its export-oriented manufacturing enterprises are foreign-funded. They import raw materials and export manufactured products to foreign countries. The only thing they do in China is assembling or processing. So it seems that China has exported a lot of goods to the US which are dominated by foreign, even US companies. By this rationale, Washington will not see the expected results by imposing tariffs on China. Instead, the tariff move will hurt the well-being of its own people."

 

An article about the failed U.S. attempt to decrease its trade deficit with Japan using various measures including manipulating the dollar using the Plaza Accord. Japan and Saudi Arabia were scapegoats of Trump in the 1980's.


China's Japanese Lesson For Fighting Trump's Trade War
Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, Contributor
Aug 5, 2018, 08:00pm

China's Japanese Lesson For Fighting Trump's Trade War

excerpts:

"Between 1976 to 1989, the U.S. launched 20 investigations under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 (the very same Section 301 that the Trump administration is now invoking) against Japan’s exports to the U.S., not only in autos, but also in steel, telecom, pharmaceutical, semiconductors, and others. The Japanese government backed down and agreed to a series of oxymoronically termed “voluntary restraints” on exports on all the disputed items.

When America’s trade deficit with Japan failed to decline despite such voluntary restraints, the U.S. government then pressured Japan to import more from the U.S. Again, the Japanese government accommodated America’s demand by loosening monetary policy to encourage more domestic consumption. Japanese domestic consumption did rise, especially in the property market, fueled by rising debts based on low interest rates, but didn’t do much to increase imports from America.

This led to the third and last act of the trade war. The U.S. government accused Japan of manipulating its currency, keeping the yen’s exchange rate low against the U.S. dollar, thus giving Japanese exporters an unfair advantage. Japan was coerced to appreciate its currency at the Plaza Accord in September 1985. This was the agreement engineered by the U.S. as the chief currency manipulator with Japan, France, West Germany, and the U.K. as accomplices to varying degrees of reluctance, to jointly depreciate the U.S. dollar against the yen and the German mark. As far as currency manipulation goes, the Plaza Accord worked. Between 1985 and 1988, the yen appreciated 88% against the U.S. dollar, according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve."


"Beijing cannot fail to take note that America’s trade deficit with Japan did not disappear even though the Japanese government caved in to all the demands from the U.S."

 

LeBron James was born in Ohio.

Time to send in Melania retroactively again to try to smooth over the boneheaded remarks of Trump, the stable genius who supposedly is ten steps ahead of everyone else.


Stable Genius: Trump Insults LeBron Before Campaigning in Ohio
Nothing like feuding with the hometown hero of the state you want to vote Republican.
by Emma Stefansky
August 4, 2018 1:03 pm

Stable Genius: Trump Insults LeBron Before Campaigning in Ohio

 

I agree it’s time again for Melania his high priced hooker and gold digger from Slovenia to save his bacon once again

 

Trump: 0
Hollywood: 1

8-7-18

The West Hollywood City Council passed a resolution to remove President Donald Trump‘s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, according to the city’s mayor.

 

I support this, but unfortunately the star is out of their jurisdiction. At this point it's only a recommendation to the city of LA. Do the right thing LA. Trump hates us anyway.

 

That's only because people kept vandalizing it. Someone painted a a swastika over it...most recently it was reduced to a pothole with a pickax. It's more about public safety than being anti-Trump.

Then again, West Hollywood did honor both Stormy Daniels and Kathy Griffin. I got no problem with Stormy, and I used to love Kathy for being such an important gay ally, but to honor after and, basically, for her severed Trump head bit was wrong in my opinion. I was really pissed when the city counsel gave her the "key to the city"

Bullshit

 

Trump initially claimed to be a uniter.


Donald Trump celebrates victory, calls for national unity
Everett Rosenfeld
Published 2:51 AM ET Wed, 9 Nov 2016 Updated 7:32 AM ET Wed, 9 Nov 2016

Donald Trump celebrates victory, calls for national unity

excerpt:

"Republican president-elect Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd as Vice president-elect Mike Pence looks on during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City.

Donald Trump declared victory early Wednesday, saying Hillary Clinton had conceded the election and that it's time for the nation "to come together as one united people."

Trump, who NBC News projected will win the election, made his remarks from his invite-only election party at the New York Hilton.

The Republican congratulated his Democratic rival, saying that she waged "a very very hard-fought campaign." He also commended her for having "worked very long and very hard" over her political career.

"Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division — have to get together," he said. "To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.""

 

Muslim groups will be absent as Donald Trump hosts Iftar dinner
Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington
Wed 6 Jun 2018 06.00 EDT

Muslim groups will be absent as Donald Trump hosts Iftar dinner

excerpt:

"Last year, Trump broke with decades of precedent by forgoing the annual Iftar dinner – a bipartisan tradition that formally began with Bill Clinton in the 1990s but has conceptual roots tracing as far back as under Thomas Jefferson in 1805.

When the White House confirmed earlier this week that Trump would, in fact, throw the event this year, most Muslim civic organizations were caught off guard. The White House declined to provide a list of attendees when reached by the Guardian, although the press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said roughly 30 to 40 guests were expected.

Muslim leaders and advocates who had typically been on the guest list in years past said they were not invited and only learned of Trump’s plans to hold the dinner through press reports.

“There has been no real engagement, no real effort to even invite members of our faith communities, to have conversations with the White House or administration,” said Hoda Hawa, the director of policy and advocacy at the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

MPAC, which works to promote pro-Muslim policies in government and elevate Muslim voices across various industries, was not invited by Trump’s White House despite having representatives at the Iftar under previous administrations. Irrespective of the snub, Hawa said she could not foresee a scenario in which the group would have found it appropriate to attend under the current president."

 

Gay Trump supporters?