Trump's World by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

Author:Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Humanix Books

Trump, No Chump on Trade

Recently, President Trump tweeted: “The U.S. is doing very well with China, and talking.”

The press has hammered him mercilessly for being tough on trade. Guess what? It is working.

Trump’s trade policy is focused on these key elements as it succeeds at the overarching theme of his presidency: making America great again. His attention is fully on putting America first.

Trump is a free trader by instinct, and as he has stated, he has no plans to return to the failed Smoot-Hawley plan of the 1930s. The economic reality is that tariffs usually don’t work. Countries retaliate, and all parties lose in a trade war.

Of course, in the past, the United States has always backed down and caved in. Not Trump! We are negotiating this time to get real results, not just more promises and blather.

There are supposedly 142 items on our list of demands to China.

What realistically can be done by Trump on trade vis-à-vis China and other predatory mercantilist nations?

On the supply side, surely the United States must get more competitive. This includes more research and development, constant innovation, advanced technological manufacturing, improved access to capital, renewed skills training, and benchmarking. Upping wages, which can never happen in the presence of competition from slave-wage sweatshop workers in places like China, is one of the best and most reliable sources of innovation.

A progrowth agenda and a deregulated environment are being sought earnestly by Trump and will lead to prosperity and rising standards of living and increased wages for all Americans.

On the demand side, Trump has already cooled off on all the Obama globalist trade deals. Now he has put them on ice permanently. They are history. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with eleven Asian countries was a bad deal. Trump killed it.

The one with the European Union is no better. It is dead in the water. Its socialist bonanza with MERCOSUR, a leftist trade bloc set up by Brazilian President Lula (in jail for buying off fellow socialists all over Latin America), is not the right model to install permanently in the international system.

Next, continue to confront China on its currency manipulation. This is rarely discussed but is at the heart of our trade imbalance.

The Treasury Department’s biannual report to Congress on the exchange rate practices of our trading partners confirms Trump’s analysis that foreign countries are eating our lunch and that the U.S. government is doing little or nothing about it. Under current procedures, by the time we finish pleading with them to halt their unfair practices, there will be little or no industrial economy left in this country.

Under enhanced reporting criteria set forth by Congress in the Trade Enhancement and Trade Facilitation Act of 2015, the U.S. Treasury names five countries—China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Germany—whose trade policies pose a threat to the U.S. and global economies. This is nothing more than a “name and shame” document since each of these countries meets only two of the three criteria necessary for (ineffective) action.

Thus, all Treasury does is put the countries on a new monitoring list.

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