“a one percentage point increase in imports from China caused a 1.9 percent decline in U.S. consumer prices, saving a representative American household roughly $1,500 a year”
…
“prices are not just about prices. When consumers have more purchasing power, they use it to buy goods and services in other, more high-productive sectors. Higher tariffs would lead to lost jobs, and inputs would become more expensive for American producers.
Some research suggests that competition from international trade can lead to better wages in new roles for U.S. workers. A 2017 paper by the economist Ildikó Magyari estimates that the American companies most exposed to Chinese imports expanded employment 2 percent more per year than other companies did. Some of these were manufacturing jobs—with higher wages, because they are in the stages of production where workers add more value—and some were complementary service jobs, in such areas as engineering, design, research and development, and marketing.
Apple offers a fascinating example. Trump has often complained that China is the biggest beneficiary of the iPhone, just because the devices are often assembled there. But when researchers Kenneth L. Kraemer, Greg Linden, and Jason Dedrick disassembled an iPhone 7 in 2018, they found that almost all of its value was captured by Western producers of parts, including hundreds of thousands of American researchers, designers, programmers, salespeople, marketers, retailers, and warehouse workers. China just got 1.3 percent of the price paid for an iPhone, and that offshoring made it possible to move U.S. labor to the more value-added parts of the supply chain.”
…
“more than a million American jobs depend directly on exports to Chinese consumers. About 0.5 percent of the U.S. work force would lose their jobs if the U.S. lost access to its third-largest goods exporting market.”
…
“more opportunities would be lost in the future, since protectionism reduces competition and innovation. If the United States shuts its doors to the best manufacturers of, say, electric cars, that may save some jobs in the short term, but it will turn the U.S. into a fenced-off auto show for more expensive and less efficient vehicles. American consumers will have to pay much more, and foreign consumers will be much less interested.”
…
“A United States bent on decoupling from China risks pushing many more innovators and entrepreneurs to the Far East. On paper there are good reasons to stop the export of sensitive technologies to geopolitical rivals, but what good does it do to fence in a geopolitical rival if cutting-edge producers feel the need to join that rival behind the fence?
One German producer of lasers and chip toolmakers, Trumpf, has faced increased obstacles and costly delays after the U.S. government pushed Germany to restrict its exports to China. In response, Trumpf moved some of its 3D-laser-cutting production to China.”
…
“This comes from a company in one of America’s closest allies, a country dependent on America’s security guarantees. Imagine how countries diplomatically closer to China will react if forced to choose between Beijing and Washington.”
…
“When economies slow, governments have a harder time keeping the populace satisfied. That often leads them to crack down on dissent. China is now doing the bare minimum to fit into the global order, and it has an awful human rights and civil liberties record at home. There is a great risk that a declining, more isolated, and less interdependent China could be much worse on both fronts.”
…
“If a rising power can see a future in which it prospers and is allowed to take its place in the established world order—or become so dominant that it can easily replace that order—it makes sense to hide its strengths and bide its time, as Deng Xiaoping encouraged the Chinese to do. But delay is defeat if further rapid growth seems impossible: if it suffers demographic decline, or if geopolitical rivals decide to starve it of resources or markets. Then the country must either accept that it will never realize its grand ambitions, or lash out.”
…
“Xi knows an invasion of Taiwan would result in an economic war with the West that would cause China tremendous pain. But what if China had already been deprived of those lucrative markets and had already lost access to investments and technologies it needs?”
“In his inauguration address on Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump said his “proudest legacy” would be “that of a peacemaker.”
Moments later, Trump threatened to seize a portion of the sovereign territory of another country—specifically, the Panama Canal, a crucial link for global trade.”
“The new Trump administration is “designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations” as part of a crackdown on drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border, President Donald Trump said during his inauguration speech on Monday.
Trump also promised “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gang criminal networks” through the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to round up foreigners who are citizens of a country that Congress has declared war on or that is engaged in an “invasion or predatory incursion.””
…
“”Because the cartels are so closely intertwined with legitimate businesses (in mafioso-like protection rackets), many people are forced to pay them off or be killed. Under US law, that could count as material support to terrorism,” writes attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
Ironically, immigration hawks worry that a terrorist designation might make it easier for Mexicans to come to the United States as refugees, since they can claim they are fleeing terrorism.”
…
“Even though terrorism designations are not legally a declaration of war, they might make it politically easier to send U.S. troops to Mexico—which Trump’s advisers have said he wants to do—without asking Congress.”
“Donald Trump will soon become the second president to serve non-consecutive terms. Naturally, this invites comparison between Trump and the first president to serve non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland. In one crucial respect that juxtaposition is both instructive and cruelly ironic.”
…
“When tariffs are too high, Cleveland argued, it means that corrupt politicians and businessmen are able to exploit consumers, often imposing severe hardships through price increases. Just as bad, it means that the government is failing to treat all citizens as equal before the law, instead picking winners and losers in the aforementioned “communism of pelf.”
This was the situation that existed in America during and after the Civil War, when politicians imposed weighty tariffs under the pretext of supporting the nation’s burgeoning business community. While American consumers initially accepted the additional taxation as a wartime necessity, the high rates persisted even after the nascent military-industrial complex had been wound down.
The problem was both simple and intractable: There were thousands of manufacturing, industrial, agricultural, and other business interests that profited from high tariffs. Each special interest group disregarded the national welfare to protect themselves, and as a result, the government accumulated massive surpluses—$113 million in 1886–1887 alone.
Despite this growing crisis, initially, Cleveland did not prioritize tariff reform. For the first two-and-a-half years after taking office in 1885, Cleveland concentrated on rooting out government corruption, which had reached such a nadir that in 1873 Mark Twain dubbed the post-Civil War era as a “Gilded Age.” To the extent that Cleveland’s anti-corruption agenda involved vetoing legislation he deemed financially wasteful, he indirectly picked off some of the rotten fruits that grew from the protectionist tree. However, it was not until 1887 that he shifted his attention to a need for sweeping tariff reform. When he did, he transformed the presidency and America in the process.”
…
“Cleveland’s tariff reform proposals passed the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives but failed in the Republican-controlled Senate. Even worse, despite winning the popular vote, Cleveland lost the 1888 election to Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison amid Electoral College disputes in the key states of New York and Indiana. (Unlike Trump, Cleveland accepted his defeat with grace and peacefully ended his term in 1889.) The Republicans took office and passed a high tariff law (framed by future president William McKinley, then an Ohio congressman). The McKinley tariffs raised the average duty on imports by almost 50 percent, and as Dartmouth University economist Douglas Irwin demonstrated in 1998, these tariffs did little to stimulate the economy even as they imposed considerable suffering on low-income Americans.
This is why, just like Trump, Cleveland was able to comfortably get elected to a non-consecutive term by promising to lower prices. The key difference is that, unlike Trump, Cleveland proposed an intelligent solution to the problem—lowering tariffs, not raising them.
Unfortunately for both Cleveland and the Americans of his time, he would not live to see his vision for tariff reform realized. America plunged into an economic depression shortly after he took office in 1893, compelling Cleveland to confront a number of unrelated crises before he could get to tariff reform. By the time a tariff bill did reach his desk in 1894, special interest groups in both parties had diluted it almost to meaninglessness.”
…
“Tariff reform along the lines Cleveland advocated would not become the law of the land until the Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913, which was promoted with far more political effectiveness by Woodrow Wilson, the first Democratic president to serve after Cleveland’s administration. By then, Cleveland had been dead for five years.”
“only about 4 percent of plastic wastes are currently mismanaged in the United States. That figure rises to an average of 6 percent for developed countries.
Poorer countries are doing much worse: The figures for mismanaged wastes in China, India, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa are 27, 46, 42, and 64 percent, respectively. These same regions are responsible for the bulk of the plastic wastes flowing down their rivers into the oceans”
…
“There are two strategies for tackling such environmental open access tragedies: privatization or regulation. In the rich countries like the United States, most wastes, including plastics, are picked up and disposed by public or commercial garbage haulers in the $91 billion waste management industry. Most Americans take responsibility for their wastes by paying local taxes or fees to bury them in landfills, burn them, or recycle them. As a result, relatively little plastic from the U.S. ends up in the oceans. Bans on plastic bags and water bottles in this country are largely instances of symbolic moral preening.”
“Trump’s position on tariffs begins with his longstanding misconceptions about international trade, which he erroneously views as a zero-sum game with rules that are rigged against the United States. “We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune [of] over $100 billion a year,” he told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. “We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion.”
Trump was referring to U.S. trade deficits with those countries, which are about half as big as he claimed. Those gaps between exports and imports are not subsidies; they reflect goods that Americans voluntarily purchase, which means they get something of value in exchange for their money.
As Trump sees it, however, trade deficits are inherently bad, and he aims to eliminate them by imposing tariffs. Although that is feasible only if tariffs raise the cost of imports, making them less competitive with domestically produced alternatives, Trump contradicts that logic by insisting that tariffs do not raise prices.
“Americans are not paying for the Tariffs” on Chinese goods, Trump averred in 2019. “They are being paid for compliments of China.”
Trump, the self-described “Tariff Man,” clearly does not understand how tariffs work. They are taxes collected from importers, not from the exporting country.
In theory, exporters could respond by cutting prices, or importers could swallow the additional cost. But study after study has found that the cost of tariffs is paid mainly by American buyers of intermediate goods and finished products.”
“the U.K. became the first new member to join the tongue-twisting Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since it was formed in 2018.
It’s also the first country that doesn’t at least have a coast fronting the region.”