I think he wanted a ~10% tariff on everyone but China, with protections against pass-throughs. When they retaliated with their own big tariff (and sale of USTs), it gave him an excuse to keep theirs higher. The big ruckus tells industry he means it, and maybe Congress will codify something that doesn't seem outrageous now.
MFN status for China began under GHWB, but they bought Clinton using the Chinese Riady family of Indonesia. Got loads of tech and the WTO from that crook. AmSpec was all over it.
"giving up some of the Presidents’ power to Congress"
Did he? Hasn't it been the other way around since FDR? They forced the Prez to renew emergency measures annually around Nixon's exit.
My thoughts are that I have no idea what is going on with tariffs, but I am just so happy that President Trump is our president that this sort of thing doesn't bother me at all. I like the idea of reciprocal tariffs as a rule, but they also don't make sense to me.
"Instead, I concentrate on subjects where being right is bad for your career, so I don’t have as much competition (although, I’m happy to say, it is building)."
As long as you can avoid claiming to be a better poet than Shakespeare I think you'll be OK.
That didn't work out for Aleister Crowley either. But, you know, do what you will.
Seriously, that sounds quite sensible.
Not being an economist myself but just trying to learn enough to keep my 401k above 25x expenses, I figure I could see the advantage of *some* tariffs for strategic industries (if you can't build cars in peace you can't build tanks in war), but 100 percent levies on foreign countries seem over the top.
From whatever value anonymous dudes on the Internet have, the problems here are (1) the cult of personality on the right, (2) the increasing subordination of expertise to politics on the left (and right), and (3) mass polarization that means you have to agree with everything your side says.
Seems like "Democracy" is pretty bad at coming up with good long term strategies -- which means time frames of decades and centuries, not 2 or 4 or 6 year elections cycles--- including economic ones. Over the last century or so, the winners in US elections have generally adopted a "buy votes with debt" strategy. Which is ultimately unsustainable and which has brought the US to its current debt-ridden situation.
That touches a small set of my pet peeves & amusing things. His parents named him Aristocle; his nickname as a (pro) wrestler was "Broad-Shouldered" -- Platon. No need to translate Platon into Latin as Plato. The correct translation of Politika is "Governance", and he advocated absolute monarchy, not republican government. :)
Modern scholarship tends to reject the "Aristocles" story.[14][15][13][16] Plato always called himself Platon. Platon was a fairly common name (31 instances are known from Athens alone),[17] including people named before Plato was born. Robin Waterfield states that Plato was not a nickname, but a perfectly normal name, and "the common practice of naming a son after his grandfather was reserved for the eldest son", not Plato.[13] According to Debra Nails, Plato's grandfather was the Aristocles who was archon in 605/4.[18]
Not to disagree nor agree with your post, but every Wikipedia article with more than 3 paragraphs that I read while researching English place names has at least one error.
This is a good take: how can you carry out long term plans when leadership changes every four years? Maybe it was easier in the American past when the parties weren’t so hostile to each other, but that hasn’t been the case for some time. When I think about this, I’m often reminded of Herman Goering’s contention at the Nuremberg Trials that democracy had failed in Germany for similar reasons and that a dictatorship was the only way to get anything done. Not advocating nazism him, just the sentiment that this is a drawback of democracy.
Goering wasn't put on trial because democracy failed. He was just angling for excuses. What led him to swallow the cyanide pill was his letter to Heydrich on July 31, 1941.
Dictatorship can me quicker and more decisive. That's why the Romans had it for emergencies. I don't see many examples of successful dictatorships and the Soviets and Maoists were famous for their five year plans and ten year plans and great leaps forward. Sure it's tougher for a democracy but with common culture and goals we can have functional plans.
And c'mon, democracy had failed the Germans? They had only tried for decade and then the great depression hit. You can't blame that on German democracy!
Everyone should be aware of the facist critique (re parliaments, free speech, and party competition), even though not necessarily persuaded that dictatorships work. Germany came out of the Great Depression shortly after the Nazis took over, but fascism did not pull any other government out of depression, and I have no idea what the Nazis did that was helpful for their economy. (They didn't start large-scale rearmament until 1938). Ref Hitler's Social Revolution by David Schoenbaum.
That's not a democracy thing. Communist regimes were really bad at long term planning despite running centrally planned economies. People in power want to do whatever strikes their fancy and they want to do it now.
I would submit that all governments run by people suck at long term management planning regardless of being authoritarian or more democratic. It’s all about the incentives and the prohibitions against driving your country into the ground. The Pelosi Era supported by the new monetary policy seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
The Trump Administration is going to add $2 trillion to the national debt in FY 25 and another $2 trillionn to the national debt in F?Y26. There is no way to cut enough spending to balance the budget. The only way is to increase taxes and have a higher rate of tax collections. For 45 years, the Republicans have claimed that the U.S. can grow its way out of deficit spending and have been wrong every time.
"CBO now projects that deficit spending for FY25 will reach a staggering $1.9 trillion, the third-highest figure in American history. The FY 2025 deficit amounts to 6.2 percent of GDP (the 50-year average is 3.8"
"The expected federal budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) is projected to be around $2.5 trillion, or about 6% of GDP. This is higher than the $1.9 trillion deficit projected for the current fiscal year, 2025. While the deficit is expected to remain relatively flat as a percentage of GDP over the next decade, the annual deficit will increase to $2.5 trillion. "
In reality, the second Trump Administration is going to add $8 trillion to the national debt. The Republicans believe that they can have a big spending government while never paying taxes.
SS spending should level off when the much smaller 1965 and after birth cohorts begin collecting it and more early Boomers kick the bucket. Expect more death-with-dignity propaganda soon to save Medicare.
Because the FY26 budget will be solely the responsibility of the Republicans in the House, and Senate, and the White House.
The laying off of the enforcement division of the IRS and the Justice Department means that there will be less taxes received. extending the Trump tax cuts from 2017 will cost more. His Golden Dome will cost more. And what happens if the U.S. starts shooting at Iran?
And on stop of anything else, the world is beginning to realize that Trump may try to default on the federal debt as a political stunt.
> Seems like "Democracy" is pretty bad at coming up with good long term strategies <
Maybe. But the United States industrialized and developed the largest and most technologically advanced economy in the world under a regime of high tariffs during the 19th century, when we were a heck of a lot *more* democratic, the government a heck of a lot *more* responsive to the people's will than it is now with bureaucracy and kritarchy--"experts"--in charge.
So it would seem that having republican government--the nation's responsible men, trying to run things "for ourselves and our posterity" can work pretty well.
But that when you allow anti-nationalist trader and rent-seekers to gain power and influence then ... shockingly! ... you get policies which favor trading and rent-seeking and are not in the long term interest of you and your posterity--the nation.
All of us old farts moaning on X since Apr 2 seem to have forgotten the traditional investing rule of thumb of 100% minus your age in equities due to their volatility. Fifteen years of near zero interest rates will do that, but I'll bet most of the histrionics were partisan.
If I just stick to American history, the results of the tariff era had better results for the average American than the shift to income taxes and outsourcing has for Americans. I just hope the corresponding tax cuts go into effect or the near term squeeze waiting for factories will be more painful.
Personally I've always been ok with the idea to pay more for something like a Toyota over a domestic car due to tariffs. You can drive them into the ground so in the long run you've easily covered the difference and if it helped keep thousands of good jobs in the US it would be a win win, and add one more win if I am paying less income taxes so I can make these purchasing decisions myself. Toyota was a bit proactive by building plants in the south already, so it has already been an overall plus for Americans. I joke a bit when people chide me for not "buying American" but in many cases can respond that it was at least assembled in the US by US labor versus their Mexican assembled "domestic".
Immigration of course has a big impact here and so far I'm pretty happy with the administration's work here.
Bottom line, since no one else will, I have to side with Trump as being the only one to implement Buchananite policies on these topics. I hope Pat is still healthy enough to be able to see it.
These are all good points. I would also support an immigration pause to let everyone assimilate like the USA did at the turn of the last century.
The thing is that the 1950-1970 era wasn't just special because of tariffs, we were also the only world power left undamaged by WW2. So we had a huge edge. We're not getting that back, especially as we no longer have the goodwill from Europe we did back then.
Neoliberalism came around to deal with the stagflation of the 70s. It had its own set of problems which we're all familiar with.
> "we were also the only world power left undamaged by WW2. So we had a huge edge. We're not getting that back"
Europe seems determined to give the US that edge back by damaging itself as much as possible over the Ukraine. Of course the US helped by blowing up Central Europe's gas pipelines, which Europe is apparently fine with.
I honestly don't even count the 50s-70s as a tariff era. Revenue was largely coming from income taxes by then.
I'm afraid a pause to assimilate wouldn't work again. White Christian Europeans were one thing, the floodgates from the third world is a completly different matter.
I spent some time today watching some interesting tariff related videos on the way back machine. The best two were of course, the three-way debate in which that crazy loon, Ross Perot talked about that great sucking sound, first from the south, where jobs were going to Mexico with low wages, no health care expenses, tax breaks, no environmental concerns and lots of workers who were not unionized. Then he talked about the sucking sound from the east where China, even worse in all the above categories was sucking jobs to themselves. Maybe if he didn't sound like a Texan and was pretty like Clinton, he would have aroused the country but alas, he wasn't and didn't.
The other video was of ole Chuck Shumer, speaking in Congress about the devastation to the working class of the loss of jobs when our companies offshored their businesses. Guess he changed his mind when the checks started getting bigger from those businesses and the Chinese, not the American unions.
Trump has seen all of this, and like me, lived all this probably not paying much attention since we didn't live where the factories used to be. He's paying attention now and trying to do something which is more than I can say about our leaders for the past 40 years. I guess he could, like Shumer, give a nice, impassioned speech and do absolutely nothing but he is a more action driven guy.
True but he wasn’t elected to anything. Now he’s putting his thoughts into action. I didn’t realize the destruction that had happened until I left the West Coast and traveled across the country for work. The empty factories everywhere were tragic and the toll taken showed the result of the globalization that had taken place.
The shabby sadness of so many midwestern/rust belt cities and towns is seriously underestimated.
I've lived overseas for most of my adult life, and coming back to see the decay in so many places I remember from my youth is shocking and disheartening.
I lived for a time in the Northeast. In northern Massachusetts I was in a town where Foster Grant was headquartered and the sunglasses were made. Huge brick buildings along the river standing empty ant the town barely existing. Two things, Union wages and EPA regulations on clean water. The company were tired of fighting the battles and up and moved to China. I’m not sure where the company is located but no manufacturing is done here. One story of thousands. I guess we have cheap sunglasses for the reward.
Everybody's got an opinion on tariffs, but I'm not convinced anyone really grasps all of their implications over differing periods of time. A tariff is a multifaceted economic concept that you can point to excitedly, from multiple perspectives, as a decisive, causal difference-maker.
All of this tariff-talk has reminded me how an economic/political issue can be an absolutely core value of one party -- and then somehow morph, surprisingly quickly, into a foundational belief of the other party.
I also understand that is difficult now with a few baked in entitlements blowing out any budget on day 1. I'd hate to be cynical enough to say that massive remigration and a demographic collapse may be the only way these can get under control in the long run, or else deficits forever.
You can say it, I just don't think you'll get 1950 again. What you'll get is massive inflation from the tariffs and a flight from the dollar and depression from the crash in the market. Beyond that who knows. The last batch of stagflation defeated the economic left for a few decades and led to the prior neoliberal era, but now the right (or at least the GOP) is going to be responsible, so I'm guessing we'll see either some kind of woke neoliberalism or a union-based leftism when the Democrats finally get back into power.
Yes, one reason I didn't write at length about tariffs is because I was having trouble juggling all the conceptual balls at the same time in my brain. For example, in this short piece, I didn't touch at all on the tax revenue aspect.
Similarly, I have written some in the past about tariffs as particularly good for corporate campaign donations, as Mark Hanna would tell you. But I also like the idea of a flat tariff on everything to keep corruption down. But I also like the idea of a policy focusing on some industries (e.g., we want to be good at making drones) more than others (garments are good for the third world, and what little good reshoring shirt-making would do Americans, I'd rather the people in tropical poverty have that as the first step on the ladder into the industrial era.
The question of how much national self-sufficiency in certain manufacturing areas is needed is obviously a big one. But then that opens up huge vistas of other maybe this/maybe that factors: for example, is it better for the USA to have, say, steel mills and ship-building capacities safe at home, just in case they're needed for a war later?
And don't even get me started on agricultural products. In vauntedly-Republican Sioux County, Iowa, my ancestral homeland, everybody's all for free trade (or they were until recently, I guess) and no government interference in the market via tariffs, subsidies, etc. -- until you bring up corn and the other ag products on which the local economy largely depends. Then suddenly everybody sounds like a Bolshevik.
What it comes down to is that once your society reaches a certain level of economic security (i.e. nobody's starving or living at subsistence level), defining 'a high quality of life' is open to lots of not entirely compatible interpretations. This is one lesson that living overseas as an expat for many years has taught me.
We stole the IP for automated textile manufacturing from England, and after its first century in the US, we have been offshoring it for the last century. The solution to the dilemma in Norma Rae wasn't a union but offshoring. Getting rid of the bottom 1/3-1/2 of jobs that left was a blessing. Meanwhile, we coulda promoted exports of high wage stuff like passenger aircraft and other capital intensive high wage stuff. But that was too nuanced for a binary legislature. So we defaulted to a 'free trade' position.
Absolutely correct, but oddly tariffs are not a good example. I made this very mistake in an argument with a democrat friend a few weeks ago. Raised in the era of Ronnie Reagan I assumed Republicans were always free trade fetishists but it turns out that tariffs were always a big thing with republicans. You'd think late 20th century labor democrats would be into tariffs but I guess the reputation of tariffs was damaged by one tariff act during the great depression. Anyway that was the only example of tariffs I was ever taught about and I was taught about it repeatedly.
Didn't Ben Stein blame it for worse ning the depression in 'Ferris Beuler's Day off?'
Doesn't this just mean that Republicans in the early 20th century, following their general isolationist bent, were for tariffs, but then that impulse shifted to the Democrats later on, i.e. when the desire to put up trade barriers was characteristic of union-dominated Democrats in the 1970s, and now it's back with Republicans again?
Or am I completely misremembering the sonorous news updates of my youth?
I wouldn't be surprised if your democrat friend is reporting media talking points that emphasize the Republican predilection for tariffs in the past, and elide the intervening years.
A commenter on Unz/iSteve posted an old paper refuting the impact of S-H. It was not much higher than the existing expiring tariff, and the majority of imports by $ were exempt.
looks like post WWII tariffs were out of favor. The US was kicking ass until the late 1970s and even then labor went with quotas on japanese cars rather than tariffs. So yes in the 1980s a protectionist was more likely to be a democrat but tariffs were not their choice. This could be due to their association with the GD.
Goes to show how we all fall for the trick of filling in facts about the past to fit our stories. It's just like people assume Reagan started all the deregulation when it was begun on Carter.
The War of the Rebellion started because Lincoln's election meant the Morill Tarrif Act would be kept, thus eventually (it was feared) destroying the South.
The Rep/Dem divide on tariffs began before the parties did. The North wanted protection for its nascent industries, the agrarian South wanted cheaper goods. States in both regions threatened nullification or secession well before The War.
Some Dems in the 80s-90s talked about "Fair Trade"--negotiating environmental and labor constraints on foreign countries essentially to protect US union jobs, but Clinton went for the money. The UAW prevented the Big Three from outsourcing too much vehicle production to Mexico or the Far East, one of the many reasons Two went bust in 2009, as they couldn't make competitive small cars profitably in the unionized US/Canada.
I have this vague impression that American auto unions were worse at suppressing productivity improvements than German or Swedish auto unions for technical reasons, but I've never dug deep enough into the subject to feel insightful.
Don't you mean "better at suppressing improvements?" Germanic blood will tell.
American auto manufacturing quality dropped so low in the 70s, it looked like a Commie or Japanese plot to ruin the industry, but it was just hungover, careless, and spiteful workers and cost-cutting engineering.
Wasn't a big part of it the introduction of the catalytic converter and then the oil embargo? Detroit was all geared up to make huge displacement engines and suddenly you need to lower pollution and get good gas mileage. Also, as always, I blame the baby boom.
Many things happened at once, beginning in the late 60s. Expensive re-engineering for safety, pollution, plastic parts, inflation/cost-cutting, and labor troubles began before the '73 gas crisis, the first sudden shock. The catalytic converter in '75 was a godsend, because they could keep selling profitable large cars and engines a few more years as they downsized them for '78 CAFE. Emissions controls had made larger '73-4 cars drive horribly with frequent repairs, and the regs got stricter every year.
Detroit got stuck catering mostly to pre-Boomers. Yuppies bought imported to look down on them. "You can't sell a young man an old man's car."
OTOH, I read about a decade ago that GM then had about a tenth the number of blue collar workers it had in the early 1980s, producing a similar number of more complicated vehicles. It was the huge number of retirees that killed the company. Plus the Aughts' gas price jump crushing big vehicles sales.
I don't recall the exact figures, but some large fraction of each new vehicle purchase was just headed to pension payments for former workers.
This itself was the result of short-termism of auto execs. Rather than seeking a sustainable settlement with their unions, they preferred to hand unions concessions that would come due in the hazy future (pension payments) in exchange for meeting near-term earnings forecasts.
Well, that hazy future eventually arrived where new cars were just underwriting old pensions, but no one wanted to recall how that happened because most of them had literally retired on its largesse.
I was under the impression that the Big Two that went belly up (GM and Chrysler), had, in the intervening 20 years leading up to 2009, becoming giant financial companies as well as auto makers (Ford as well). Subsequent bad balance sheets in the financing segment put GM and Chrysler in severe financial distress, but Ford's balance sheet was healthy enough to avoid it. That is not to say your points aren't true as well, just that I believe it was their finances that tipped the balance into bankruptcy and bailout.
Side note, that is when I made one of my best investment decisions. In 2009 Ford's bonds (debt) were valued significantly below par; since they didn't take a bailout, I figured the execs had a good handle on the business and I bought some of their 50 year bonds with a good part of my investment account. They started trading well above par within 18 months, and I've doubled my investment, plus earned ~10% (the bonds' fixed rate is 9.98%) a year on them too. As Warren Buffet famously said, there are opportunities when there is blood in the street.
Ford survived because they borrowed as much as they could before the credit crunch of 08. Glad your bonds did well--my stock sure hasn't since then (previous spinoffs somewhat made up for it). Wiki says GM sold half of their financing arm GMAC (started 1919) in 2006 to Cerberus Capital, which foolishly bought much of Chrysler in 2007, so it hurt both of the dying Two.
One of the Rothschilds supposedly said something similar--buy when there's blood in the street, even when some of it is your own.
It also helped that their brand name is "Ford" which most Americans associate (rightly or wrongly) with American ingenuity, progress, and American entrepreneurial success. They also have among the top selling consumer pick-up trucks (well loved by a big segment of us) for a long time. I still remember riding around the farm with my Granddad in his 1973 F-150, which he called Ol' Blue, since it was painted Sky Blue, lol.
"...the harm which free trade inflicts upon one factor of production is necessarily less than the gain to the other."
Greater efficiency helps everyone a little, but will likely cost a few a lot. When you multiply it by all the products the W. Pacific Rim began dominating, the Few became far too many.
" ... it is always possible to bribe the suffering factor by subsidy or other redistributive devices so as to leave all factors better off as a result of trade."
It wasn't just that the Few became far too many, it was also that the free trade elite entirely neglected to "bribe the suffering factor" (blue collar workers), offering them only opioids and imported third world neighbors.
Anything Trump does now will be reversed on Jan. 21, 2029. Any economic planning or investment strategy that doesn't take that into account is foolish.
Indeed. A big reason to go so aggressively after DEI is to change the risk calculus for companies; sure the Dems can bring it back, but it you have to worry about Republican *and* Democratic lawsuits after a change of administration limits your ability to get too woke in hiring. If there's a good way to make HR superfluous, it would definitely be a worthwhile goal. I'm not that clever though.
The problem with the tariffs and talking about trying to invade Canada and Greenland is it burns goodwill with important allies you can't get back, because even if the next guy changes his mind you're still vulnerable to a repeat. Treasuries are no longer seen as 'ultra safe', which is going to mean higher interest rates over the long run as the world shifts away from the US having the world's reserve currency.
Most journalists writing on the tariffs don't understand them. My take is that the basic purpose is, as noted in the article here, to get jobs back to the USA. No way to know if jobs in highly automated factories would strengthen the union movement, since some of the companies that would move production here are un-unionized. No way to know if the effect on wages would be as Trump has been hoping since the 1980's.
As it is, China cannot afford a nuclear war against the USA, because if the PRC wins, it will ruin the USA market and our government will be unable to pay off its bonds; if it loses, our government will refuse to pay off China's bonds and any surviving Chinese industrial equipment is likely to get looted as war reparations.
But I was hoping the tariffs would be in effect this morning. For one thing, whoever is the President of the USA has to be decisive, confident, and organized.
We need some aggressive adjustments in international trade, but we need much more for Congress to start trying to pay off the COVID-19 unfunded spending before incurring any additional debt. The public needs to concentrate on that, and the voters need to behave like adults about the debt.
Long ago, I became interested in Vietnam. I checked a trade-oriented web site based in Vietnam last Sunday; the web site people were already plotting how to make the Vietnamese economy prosper despite any USA tariff adjustments. Losing the advantages Vietnam has here would probably hurt, but if the Chinese market crashes (biggest trading partner), the Vietnamese economy might crash. And the Chinese economy seems in trouble.
That's a cogent argument about why China cannot afford nuclear war with the US. I would only add that the obvious disadvantages of their nation and population being reduced to slag, glass, and a handful violent Mad Max style mutants looting what remains of their civilization, should also figure in their reasoning.
Like most things a broad yes or no really isn’t possible and it’s really a discussion of who, where, and why they are being applied or not. In the present, COVID showed some real vulnerabilities of off shoring and it makes sense to make some serious changes in the face of a multi polar world order. We have put off a lot of things in the economic realm for far too long.
I think he wanted a ~10% tariff on everyone but China, with protections against pass-throughs. When they retaliated with their own big tariff (and sale of USTs), it gave him an excuse to keep theirs higher. The big ruckus tells industry he means it, and maybe Congress will codify something that doesn't seem outrageous now.
MFN status for China began under GHWB, but they bought Clinton using the Chinese Riady family of Indonesia. Got loads of tech and the WTO from that crook. AmSpec was all over it.
"giving up some of the Presidents’ power to Congress"
Did he? Hasn't it been the other way around since FDR? They forced the Prez to renew emergency measures annually around Nixon's exit.
I recommend The China Fantasy, by James Mann and The Hundred Year Plan by Michael Pillsbury.
My thoughts are that I have no idea what is going on with tariffs, but I am just so happy that President Trump is our president that this sort of thing doesn't bother me at all. I like the idea of reciprocal tariffs as a rule, but they also don't make sense to me.
Very happy for you.
"Instead, I concentrate on subjects where being right is bad for your career, so I don’t have as much competition (although, I’m happy to say, it is building)."
As long as you can avoid claiming to be a better poet than Shakespeare I think you'll be OK.
That didn't work out for Aleister Crowley either. But, you know, do what you will.
Seriously, that sounds quite sensible.
Not being an economist myself but just trying to learn enough to keep my 401k above 25x expenses, I figure I could see the advantage of *some* tariffs for strategic industries (if you can't build cars in peace you can't build tanks in war), but 100 percent levies on foreign countries seem over the top.
From whatever value anonymous dudes on the Internet have, the problems here are (1) the cult of personality on the right, (2) the increasing subordination of expertise to politics on the left (and right), and (3) mass polarization that means you have to agree with everything your side says.
But none of these are novel insights.
Seems like "Democracy" is pretty bad at coming up with good long term strategies -- which means time frames of decades and centuries, not 2 or 4 or 6 year elections cycles--- including economic ones. Over the last century or so, the winners in US elections have generally adopted a "buy votes with debt" strategy. Which is ultimately unsustainable and which has brought the US to its current debt-ridden situation.
Were Plato and Aristotle right about democracy?
Deep State, Baby!
That touches a small set of my pet peeves & amusing things. His parents named him Aristocle; his nickname as a (pro) wrestler was "Broad-Shouldered" -- Platon. No need to translate Platon into Latin as Plato. The correct translation of Politika is "Governance", and he advocated absolute monarchy, not republican government. :)
from Wikipedia--
Modern scholarship tends to reject the "Aristocles" story.[14][15][13][16] Plato always called himself Platon. Platon was a fairly common name (31 instances are known from Athens alone),[17] including people named before Plato was born. Robin Waterfield states that Plato was not a nickname, but a perfectly normal name, and "the common practice of naming a son after his grandfather was reserved for the eldest son", not Plato.[13] According to Debra Nails, Plato's grandfather was the Aristocles who was archon in 605/4.[18]
I do like the idea that he had a wrestling coach.
"Plato's grandfather was the Aristocles who was archon in 605/4."
The date or the relationship can't be right. Plato b. ~428 Sloppy Wiki.
Not to disagree nor agree with your post, but every Wikipedia article with more than 3 paragraphs that I read while researching English place names has at least one error.
I believe everything I read on Wikipedia and chatGPT. Credulity is my comfort food.
This is a good take: how can you carry out long term plans when leadership changes every four years? Maybe it was easier in the American past when the parties weren’t so hostile to each other, but that hasn’t been the case for some time. When I think about this, I’m often reminded of Herman Goering’s contention at the Nuremberg Trials that democracy had failed in Germany for similar reasons and that a dictatorship was the only way to get anything done. Not advocating nazism him, just the sentiment that this is a drawback of democracy.
Goering wasn't put on trial because democracy failed. He was just angling for excuses. What led him to swallow the cyanide pill was his letter to Heydrich on July 31, 1941.
Dictatorship can me quicker and more decisive. That's why the Romans had it for emergencies. I don't see many examples of successful dictatorships and the Soviets and Maoists were famous for their five year plans and ten year plans and great leaps forward. Sure it's tougher for a democracy but with common culture and goals we can have functional plans.
And c'mon, democracy had failed the Germans? They had only tried for decade and then the great depression hit. You can't blame that on German democracy!
Everyone should be aware of the facist critique (re parliaments, free speech, and party competition), even though not necessarily persuaded that dictatorships work. Germany came out of the Great Depression shortly after the Nazis took over, but fascism did not pull any other government out of depression, and I have no idea what the Nazis did that was helpful for their economy. (They didn't start large-scale rearmament until 1938). Ref Hitler's Social Revolution by David Schoenbaum.
That's not a democracy thing. Communist regimes were really bad at long term planning despite running centrally planned economies. People in power want to do whatever strikes their fancy and they want to do it now.
I would submit that all governments run by people suck at long term management planning regardless of being authoritarian or more democratic. It’s all about the incentives and the prohibitions against driving your country into the ground. The Pelosi Era supported by the new monetary policy seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
It limits the ability of the dictator to do really stupid things.
Though as you've seen it is not a cure-all.
The Trump Administration is going to add $2 trillion to the national debt in FY 25 and another $2 trillionn to the national debt in F?Y26. There is no way to cut enough spending to balance the budget. The only way is to increase taxes and have a higher rate of tax collections. For 45 years, the Republicans have claimed that the U.S. can grow its way out of deficit spending and have been wrong every time.
Not being snotty, but what is this based on?
From the Congressional Budget Office"
"CBO now projects that deficit spending for FY25 will reach a staggering $1.9 trillion, the third-highest figure in American history. The FY 2025 deficit amounts to 6.2 percent of GDP (the 50-year average is 3.8"
"The expected federal budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) is projected to be around $2.5 trillion, or about 6% of GDP. This is higher than the $1.9 trillion deficit projected for the current fiscal year, 2025. While the deficit is expected to remain relatively flat as a percentage of GDP over the next decade, the annual deficit will increase to $2.5 trillion. "
In reality, the second Trump Administration is going to add $8 trillion to the national debt. The Republicans believe that they can have a big spending government while never paying taxes.
SS spending should level off when the much smaller 1965 and after birth cohorts begin collecting it and more early Boomers kick the bucket. Expect more death-with-dignity propaganda soon to save Medicare.
The problem is that life expectancy keeps going up which means not only more social security spending but more medicare spending.
I'm 64. Hands off my Medicare!!
Seriously, I'd rather give up the SS. I can't believe Trump promised to stop taxing it, when it will soon have to go the other way--more means-tested.
Thank you.
Without disputing CBO, having been president for roughly 100 days how is the 2026 budget Trump's fault?
Because the FY26 budget will be solely the responsibility of the Republicans in the House, and Senate, and the White House.
The laying off of the enforcement division of the IRS and the Justice Department means that there will be less taxes received. extending the Trump tax cuts from 2017 will cost more. His Golden Dome will cost more. And what happens if the U.S. starts shooting at Iran?
And on stop of anything else, the world is beginning to realize that Trump may try to default on the federal debt as a political stunt.
> Seems like "Democracy" is pretty bad at coming up with good long term strategies <
Maybe. But the United States industrialized and developed the largest and most technologically advanced economy in the world under a regime of high tariffs during the 19th century, when we were a heck of a lot *more* democratic, the government a heck of a lot *more* responsive to the people's will than it is now with bureaucracy and kritarchy--"experts"--in charge.
So it would seem that having republican government--the nation's responsible men, trying to run things "for ourselves and our posterity" can work pretty well.
But that when you allow anti-nationalist trader and rent-seekers to gain power and influence then ... shockingly! ... you get policies which favor trading and rent-seeking and are not in the long term interest of you and your posterity--the nation.
All of us old farts moaning on X since Apr 2 seem to have forgotten the traditional investing rule of thumb of 100% minus your age in equities due to their volatility. Fifteen years of near zero interest rates will do that, but I'll bet most of the histrionics were partisan.
If I just stick to American history, the results of the tariff era had better results for the average American than the shift to income taxes and outsourcing has for Americans. I just hope the corresponding tax cuts go into effect or the near term squeeze waiting for factories will be more painful.
Personally I've always been ok with the idea to pay more for something like a Toyota over a domestic car due to tariffs. You can drive them into the ground so in the long run you've easily covered the difference and if it helped keep thousands of good jobs in the US it would be a win win, and add one more win if I am paying less income taxes so I can make these purchasing decisions myself. Toyota was a bit proactive by building plants in the south already, so it has already been an overall plus for Americans. I joke a bit when people chide me for not "buying American" but in many cases can respond that it was at least assembled in the US by US labor versus their Mexican assembled "domestic".
Immigration of course has a big impact here and so far I'm pretty happy with the administration's work here.
Bottom line, since no one else will, I have to side with Trump as being the only one to implement Buchananite policies on these topics. I hope Pat is still healthy enough to be able to see it.
These are all good points. I would also support an immigration pause to let everyone assimilate like the USA did at the turn of the last century.
The thing is that the 1950-1970 era wasn't just special because of tariffs, we were also the only world power left undamaged by WW2. So we had a huge edge. We're not getting that back, especially as we no longer have the goodwill from Europe we did back then.
Neoliberalism came around to deal with the stagflation of the 70s. It had its own set of problems which we're all familiar with.
> "we were also the only world power left undamaged by WW2. So we had a huge edge. We're not getting that back"
Europe seems determined to give the US that edge back by damaging itself as much as possible over the Ukraine. Of course the US helped by blowing up Central Europe's gas pipelines, which Europe is apparently fine with.
I honestly don't even count the 50s-70s as a tariff era. Revenue was largely coming from income taxes by then.
I'm afraid a pause to assimilate wouldn't work again. White Christian Europeans were one thing, the floodgates from the third world is a completly different matter.
I spent some time today watching some interesting tariff related videos on the way back machine. The best two were of course, the three-way debate in which that crazy loon, Ross Perot talked about that great sucking sound, first from the south, where jobs were going to Mexico with low wages, no health care expenses, tax breaks, no environmental concerns and lots of workers who were not unionized. Then he talked about the sucking sound from the east where China, even worse in all the above categories was sucking jobs to themselves. Maybe if he didn't sound like a Texan and was pretty like Clinton, he would have aroused the country but alas, he wasn't and didn't.
The other video was of ole Chuck Shumer, speaking in Congress about the devastation to the working class of the loss of jobs when our companies offshored their businesses. Guess he changed his mind when the checks started getting bigger from those businesses and the Chinese, not the American unions.
Trump has seen all of this, and like me, lived all this probably not paying much attention since we didn't live where the factories used to be. He's paying attention now and trying to do something which is more than I can say about our leaders for the past 40 years. I guess he could, like Shumer, give a nice, impassioned speech and do absolutely nothing but he is a more action driven guy.
Donald Trump campaigned on the tax issue since the 1980's. He says it is the reason he started getting into politics. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/trump-tariff-history-1.7469877
True but he wasn’t elected to anything. Now he’s putting his thoughts into action. I didn’t realize the destruction that had happened until I left the West Coast and traveled across the country for work. The empty factories everywhere were tragic and the toll taken showed the result of the globalization that had taken place.
The shabby sadness of so many midwestern/rust belt cities and towns is seriously underestimated.
I've lived overseas for most of my adult life, and coming back to see the decay in so many places I remember from my youth is shocking and disheartening.
I lived for a time in the Northeast. In northern Massachusetts I was in a town where Foster Grant was headquartered and the sunglasses were made. Huge brick buildings along the river standing empty ant the town barely existing. Two things, Union wages and EPA regulations on clean water. The company were tired of fighting the battles and up and moved to China. I’m not sure where the company is located but no manufacturing is done here. One story of thousands. I guess we have cheap sunglasses for the reward.
"One story of thousands. I guess we have cheap sunglasses for the reward."
ZZ Top wept.
Everybody's got an opinion on tariffs, but I'm not convinced anyone really grasps all of their implications over differing periods of time. A tariff is a multifaceted economic concept that you can point to excitedly, from multiple perspectives, as a decisive, causal difference-maker.
All of this tariff-talk has reminded me how an economic/political issue can be an absolutely core value of one party -- and then somehow morph, surprisingly quickly, into a foundational belief of the other party.
One thing I've rarely seen emphasized is that for most things, it's a voluntary tax. The domestic price level may rise, but you could also do without.
Quite true, but that also makes it less effective at raising revenue.
Good. You can only spend what you raise.
I also understand that is difficult now with a few baked in entitlements blowing out any budget on day 1. I'd hate to be cynical enough to say that massive remigration and a demographic collapse may be the only way these can get under control in the long run, or else deficits forever.
You can say it, I just don't think you'll get 1950 again. What you'll get is massive inflation from the tariffs and a flight from the dollar and depression from the crash in the market. Beyond that who knows. The last batch of stagflation defeated the economic left for a few decades and led to the prior neoliberal era, but now the right (or at least the GOP) is going to be responsible, so I'm guessing we'll see either some kind of woke neoliberalism or a union-based leftism when the Democrats finally get back into power.
Hasn't inflation been dropping?
Yes, one reason I didn't write at length about tariffs is because I was having trouble juggling all the conceptual balls at the same time in my brain. For example, in this short piece, I didn't touch at all on the tax revenue aspect.
Similarly, I have written some in the past about tariffs as particularly good for corporate campaign donations, as Mark Hanna would tell you. But I also like the idea of a flat tariff on everything to keep corruption down. But I also like the idea of a policy focusing on some industries (e.g., we want to be good at making drones) more than others (garments are good for the third world, and what little good reshoring shirt-making would do Americans, I'd rather the people in tropical poverty have that as the first step on the ladder into the industrial era.
The question of how much national self-sufficiency in certain manufacturing areas is needed is obviously a big one. But then that opens up huge vistas of other maybe this/maybe that factors: for example, is it better for the USA to have, say, steel mills and ship-building capacities safe at home, just in case they're needed for a war later?
And don't even get me started on agricultural products. In vauntedly-Republican Sioux County, Iowa, my ancestral homeland, everybody's all for free trade (or they were until recently, I guess) and no government interference in the market via tariffs, subsidies, etc. -- until you bring up corn and the other ag products on which the local economy largely depends. Then suddenly everybody sounds like a Bolshevik.
What it comes down to is that once your society reaches a certain level of economic security (i.e. nobody's starving or living at subsistence level), defining 'a high quality of life' is open to lots of not entirely compatible interpretations. This is one lesson that living overseas as an expat for many years has taught me.
Decolonize Robert Conquest (he literally needs it): Everyone's Communist about what he knows best.
We stole the IP for automated textile manufacturing from England, and after its first century in the US, we have been offshoring it for the last century. The solution to the dilemma in Norma Rae wasn't a union but offshoring. Getting rid of the bottom 1/3-1/2 of jobs that left was a blessing. Meanwhile, we coulda promoted exports of high wage stuff like passenger aircraft and other capital intensive high wage stuff. But that was too nuanced for a binary legislature. So we defaulted to a 'free trade' position.
Absolutely correct, but oddly tariffs are not a good example. I made this very mistake in an argument with a democrat friend a few weeks ago. Raised in the era of Ronnie Reagan I assumed Republicans were always free trade fetishists but it turns out that tariffs were always a big thing with republicans. You'd think late 20th century labor democrats would be into tariffs but I guess the reputation of tariffs was damaged by one tariff act during the great depression. Anyway that was the only example of tariffs I was ever taught about and I was taught about it repeatedly.
Didn't Ben Stein blame it for worse ning the depression in 'Ferris Beuler's Day off?'
Smoot-Hawley!!!
Doesn't this just mean that Republicans in the early 20th century, following their general isolationist bent, were for tariffs, but then that impulse shifted to the Democrats later on, i.e. when the desire to put up trade barriers was characteristic of union-dominated Democrats in the 1970s, and now it's back with Republicans again?
Or am I completely misremembering the sonorous news updates of my youth?
I wouldn't be surprised if your democrat friend is reporting media talking points that emphasize the Republican predilection for tariffs in the past, and elide the intervening years.
A commenter on Unz/iSteve posted an old paper refuting the impact of S-H. It was not much higher than the existing expiring tariff, and the majority of imports by $ were exempt.
Yep. Even the wikipedia article on US tariffs says economists don't think it was a significant cause of the depression.
anyone? Anyone? They did not work and the US sank deeper into the depression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_United_States
looks like post WWII tariffs were out of favor. The US was kicking ass until the late 1970s and even then labor went with quotas on japanese cars rather than tariffs. So yes in the 1980s a protectionist was more likely to be a democrat but tariffs were not their choice. This could be due to their association with the GD.
Goes to show how we all fall for the trick of filling in facts about the past to fit our stories. It's just like people assume Reagan started all the deregulation when it was begun on Carter.
The War of the Rebellion started because Lincoln's election meant the Morill Tarrif Act would be kept, thus eventually (it was feared) destroying the South.
The Rep/Dem divide on tariffs began before the parties did. The North wanted protection for its nascent industries, the agrarian South wanted cheaper goods. States in both regions threatened nullification or secession well before The War.
Some Dems in the 80s-90s talked about "Fair Trade"--negotiating environmental and labor constraints on foreign countries essentially to protect US union jobs, but Clinton went for the money. The UAW prevented the Big Three from outsourcing too much vehicle production to Mexico or the Far East, one of the many reasons Two went bust in 2009, as they couldn't make competitive small cars profitably in the unionized US/Canada.
I have this vague impression that American auto unions were worse at suppressing productivity improvements than German or Swedish auto unions for technical reasons, but I've never dug deep enough into the subject to feel insightful.
Don't you mean "better at suppressing improvements?" Germanic blood will tell.
American auto manufacturing quality dropped so low in the 70s, it looked like a Commie or Japanese plot to ruin the industry, but it was just hungover, careless, and spiteful workers and cost-cutting engineering.
Wasn't a big part of it the introduction of the catalytic converter and then the oil embargo? Detroit was all geared up to make huge displacement engines and suddenly you need to lower pollution and get good gas mileage. Also, as always, I blame the baby boom.
Many things happened at once, beginning in the late 60s. Expensive re-engineering for safety, pollution, plastic parts, inflation/cost-cutting, and labor troubles began before the '73 gas crisis, the first sudden shock. The catalytic converter in '75 was a godsend, because they could keep selling profitable large cars and engines a few more years as they downsized them for '78 CAFE. Emissions controls had made larger '73-4 cars drive horribly with frequent repairs, and the regs got stricter every year.
Detroit got stuck catering mostly to pre-Boomers. Yuppies bought imported to look down on them. "You can't sell a young man an old man's car."
OTOH, I read about a decade ago that GM then had about a tenth the number of blue collar workers it had in the early 1980s, producing a similar number of more complicated vehicles. It was the huge number of retirees that killed the company. Plus the Aughts' gas price jump crushing big vehicles sales.
I don't recall the exact figures, but some large fraction of each new vehicle purchase was just headed to pension payments for former workers.
This itself was the result of short-termism of auto execs. Rather than seeking a sustainable settlement with their unions, they preferred to hand unions concessions that would come due in the hazy future (pension payments) in exchange for meeting near-term earnings forecasts.
Well, that hazy future eventually arrived where new cars were just underwriting old pensions, but no one wanted to recall how that happened because most of them had literally retired on its largesse.
I was under the impression that the Big Two that went belly up (GM and Chrysler), had, in the intervening 20 years leading up to 2009, becoming giant financial companies as well as auto makers (Ford as well). Subsequent bad balance sheets in the financing segment put GM and Chrysler in severe financial distress, but Ford's balance sheet was healthy enough to avoid it. That is not to say your points aren't true as well, just that I believe it was their finances that tipped the balance into bankruptcy and bailout.
Side note, that is when I made one of my best investment decisions. In 2009 Ford's bonds (debt) were valued significantly below par; since they didn't take a bailout, I figured the execs had a good handle on the business and I bought some of their 50 year bonds with a good part of my investment account. They started trading well above par within 18 months, and I've doubled my investment, plus earned ~10% (the bonds' fixed rate is 9.98%) a year on them too. As Warren Buffet famously said, there are opportunities when there is blood in the street.
Ford survived because they borrowed as much as they could before the credit crunch of 08. Glad your bonds did well--my stock sure hasn't since then (previous spinoffs somewhat made up for it). Wiki says GM sold half of their financing arm GMAC (started 1919) in 2006 to Cerberus Capital, which foolishly bought much of Chrysler in 2007, so it hurt both of the dying Two.
One of the Rothschilds supposedly said something similar--buy when there's blood in the street, even when some of it is your own.
It also helped that their brand name is "Ford" which most Americans associate (rightly or wrongly) with American ingenuity, progress, and American entrepreneurial success. They also have among the top selling consumer pick-up trucks (well loved by a big segment of us) for a long time. I still remember riding around the farm with my Granddad in his 1973 F-150, which he called Ol' Blue, since it was painted Sky Blue, lol.
Any financial tips today?
A brilliant strategy flawlessly executed.
Much like the late great Rowdy Roddy Piper, just when you think you have all the answers, Trump changes the question.
I look forward to Trump smashing the coconut on the world's head.
He's all out of bubblegum.
I figured it all out thirty years ago (after reading the classic teaching text, "World Trade and Payments"): https://www.jstor.org/stable/40721553
For the short version, read the closing sentence in their classic paper, "Protection and Real Wages," by Samuelson and Stolper: https://fpeckert.me/teaching/readings/StolperRESTUD41.pdf#page=17.32
"...the harm which free trade inflicts upon one factor of production is necessarily less than the gain to the other."
Greater efficiency helps everyone a little, but will likely cost a few a lot. When you multiply it by all the products the W. Pacific Rim began dominating, the Few became far too many.
There was one more sentence:
" ... it is always possible to bribe the suffering factor by subsidy or other redistributive devices so as to leave all factors better off as a result of trade."
It wasn't just that the Few became far too many, it was also that the free trade elite entirely neglected to "bribe the suffering factor" (blue collar workers), offering them only opioids and imported third world neighbors.
Now the inevitable reaction is underway.
Shoulda thought it through better, globalists!
Anything Trump does now will be reversed on Jan. 21, 2029. Any economic planning or investment strategy that doesn't take that into account is foolish.
I agree. The US government cannot have a multi-year trade policy unless both major parties agree to it. The more aggressively Trump acts, the better.
Indeed. A big reason to go so aggressively after DEI is to change the risk calculus for companies; sure the Dems can bring it back, but it you have to worry about Republican *and* Democratic lawsuits after a change of administration limits your ability to get too woke in hiring. If there's a good way to make HR superfluous, it would definitely be a worthwhile goal. I'm not that clever though.
The problem with the tariffs and talking about trying to invade Canada and Greenland is it burns goodwill with important allies you can't get back, because even if the next guy changes his mind you're still vulnerable to a repeat. Treasuries are no longer seen as 'ultra safe', which is going to mean higher interest rates over the long run as the world shifts away from the US having the world's reserve currency.
Most journalists writing on the tariffs don't understand them. My take is that the basic purpose is, as noted in the article here, to get jobs back to the USA. No way to know if jobs in highly automated factories would strengthen the union movement, since some of the companies that would move production here are un-unionized. No way to know if the effect on wages would be as Trump has been hoping since the 1980's.
As it is, China cannot afford a nuclear war against the USA, because if the PRC wins, it will ruin the USA market and our government will be unable to pay off its bonds; if it loses, our government will refuse to pay off China's bonds and any surviving Chinese industrial equipment is likely to get looted as war reparations.
But I was hoping the tariffs would be in effect this morning. For one thing, whoever is the President of the USA has to be decisive, confident, and organized.
We need some aggressive adjustments in international trade, but we need much more for Congress to start trying to pay off the COVID-19 unfunded spending before incurring any additional debt. The public needs to concentrate on that, and the voters need to behave like adults about the debt.
Long ago, I became interested in Vietnam. I checked a trade-oriented web site based in Vietnam last Sunday; the web site people were already plotting how to make the Vietnamese economy prosper despite any USA tariff adjustments. Losing the advantages Vietnam has here would probably hurt, but if the Chinese market crashes (biggest trading partner), the Vietnamese economy might crash. And the Chinese economy seems in trouble.
That's a cogent argument about why China cannot afford nuclear war with the US. I would only add that the obvious disadvantages of their nation and population being reduced to slag, glass, and a handful violent Mad Max style mutants looting what remains of their civilization, should also figure in their reasoning.
Like most things a broad yes or no really isn’t possible and it’s really a discussion of who, where, and why they are being applied or not. In the present, COVID showed some real vulnerabilities of off shoring and it makes sense to make some serious changes in the face of a multi polar world order. We have put off a lot of things in the economic realm for far too long.
Is this the weirdest presidency in the history of the United States?
Biden with his mental decline was very bizarre
And Trump 2.0 has only just begun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvuv0357O8I&t=402s
I'm looking forward to a drastic decline in the availability of near infinite variations on cheap Chinese crap whenever I look to purchase anything.