Friends, President Trump says that stiff tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico are due to begin on Saturday. That could have devastating effects on the economies of Canada and Mexico, as well as create major disruptions in North American trade. Why is Trump doing it? He says it's because Canada and Mexico are failing to control the flow of illegal migrants and fetanyl across our common borders, and it's because they maintain trade surpluses with the U.S. Neither of these justifications is completely off-base, but the problem is that they are very different from one other, and Trump has set down no clear metrics for how Canada and Mexico (or any other country) can avoid tariffs. How much progress has to be made at the border before Trump will rescind his tariffs? How much must Canada and Mexico's trade surpluses be reduced before Trump's ire abates? Are these tariffs, fundamentally, retaliatory, or are they part of a protectionist philosophy that aims to revive American manufacturing, agriculture, and energy production? If I, as a supporter of Trump, don't know the answers to these questions, then one assumes that our trade partners don't know them either. This is a problem. I hope Trump will provide some clarity on these issues sooner rather than later. My educated guess is that Trump intends to use tariffs mainly as a negotiating tactic in order to squeeze concessions out of our allies. I'm not opposed to that, but it is a dangerous game to play, because the ground rules are nebulous and the shocks to long-established trading relationships and to prices for consumers could be severe.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg0m79gm10o
In other news, efforts to cajole Big Tech into abandoning the Left and embracing the right are bearing yet more succulent fruit. Facebook has settled with DJT and is paying $25 million to atone for its suspension of Trump's accounts in the wake of the January 6th "insurrection". Good! Amazon is also upping its ad spending on X, signaling a possible end to the corporate conspiracy to strangle X commercially in order to punish it for permitting free speech and, thus, conservatism to flourish. Very good! What a delight it is to see these incredibly influential and forward-looking platforms become pro-America and pro-freedom, for a change. Long may it last!
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteWe need to start making things here in The United States of America again. Why is my chewing gum made in Mexico? Seriously, my f...ing chewing gum is made in Mexico, why? Tropical fruit imported from Mexico, YES! Bravo! But why chewing gum that used to be made in the U.S., and still has the same name?
In any event, in the long run, sanctions and tariffs don't work as your article implies. What's the solution? How the hell do I know! How about annexing Mexico and Central America? Is United Fruit Company still working? Ha!
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteQuit binge watching old Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis movies, and munching that shitty popcorn imported from Tibet, made by Tibetan monks of all people.
All bad joking aside, every five years I reread a book I picked up in a bookstore in Florida in 2004 titled "Liberators, Latin America's Struggle for Independence" by Robert Harvey. It's over 500 pages with index, but well worth the reading. I would think that leading an Army across the Andes to fight the Spanish would be just as exciting as Washington crossing the Delaware, don't you think?
With that said, the book reminds me of how important everything from Mexico to the tip of South America is in securing this hemisphere for North America and South America. In the end, we are all Americans, are we not? And yet, hardly ever does a U.S. president go to South America to talk with leaders there about anything. We keep running all over the place thinking that the solutions to our problems are somewhere else, but not with our neighbors.
On that note, we now have a Secretary of State who can start to mend that, and start concentrating on our foreign relations with Spanish-Speaking countries. Just look at our country, with signs etc. in Spanish and English. Beats other languages by many miles, don't you think? In any event, we have a great opportunity to start integrating our continents, sans illegal immigrants, and especially criminal ones.
And just think, even if you don't like him, The Pope is from Argentina, which, the last time I looked at the map, was located in South America.
Anyone for a new currency called The Amero?
Dr. Waddy from Jack : Endless dittos to your description of yet another redeeming consequence of the restoration of a far more puissant DJT and the accelerating healing of the America he champions.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeletePresident Gustavo Petro of Columbia is asking Columbians illegally in the U.S. to return home. Yes, Trump did threaten him and bully him a bit, and President Petro could have decided to be hostile, and he chose not to be.
Here is an excellent and important opportunity for President Trump to begin establishing a relationship with South America. He needs to get down to Bogota with Secretary Rubio NOW and start mending fences greatly in need of repair, and essential for future progress. I hope President Trump take this opportunity to do just that, and keep doing in. Look ahead, Look South!
I meant, big on line tech's return to common American sense after its obsequious assent to incipient totalitarianism. Jack
ReplyDeleteRAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteLast sentence to read, in part: "and keep doing it".
Ray from Jack: My view: Let's beware of close engagement with S. America, perhaps analogous to the EU (though I think you may have suggested "Ameros" partly in jest). It could have the same consequences that EU membership had for the UK. Great Britain has a political culture superior to most other members of the EU and it became unbearable for Brits to have to comply with administrative law forced on it by bureaucrats from , say, Italy.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is better run than any S. American country and it would be unwise, I think, for us to tie ourselves too closely to any of them. Let's retain the latitude to get along with them in a positive and constructive manner without yielding to them any power to directly effect our control of our affairs.
That's reality I hold and not the touchy feely dreams urged by cultural relativists so presumptuously and ignorantly. I do not in saying this suggest that you are one of them.
RAY TO JACK
DeleteI'm not suggesting that we yield our power to any country. What I am suggesting is that our relationship with South America is in dire need of repair, and especially with the f...ing Chinese making inroads in our hemisphere.
We need to reach out to our close neighbors, because we share a common hemispheric history, and we can do a lot of things together to make our hemisphere better, and protect it from other countries, like China (PRC) in this case.
It's very good that Secretary Rubio's first overseas trip is to Panama.
RAY TO JACK
DeleteWhat "touchy feely dreams" are to me is 20 years spent in shit holes like Afghanistan, only to leave after wasting billions, and more importantly, the lives of many of our people in our Armed Forces, dead, and maimed, for what?
RAY TO JACK
DeleteI'm not trying to browbeat you, so I will shut up after this, but as far as South America is concerned, at least most of the people there tend to be Christians, who share far more in common with us than umpteen million Muslims who hate our guts, or many more millions of Hindus, and Communist China with its billions of atheists.
Your post, which misread mine, tends to lean toward South America as a threat to us. Yes, we have a drug problem, and a lot of it has to do with "gringo addictions" not to mention "gringo cartels" north of the border.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Wow, we'll see how the tariff impositions pan out. DJT is as good as his word and that is a big plus. I hope he is willing at some point to give Canada an"A" for sincere effort. The northern border isn't our main problem. But if the cartels really rule Mexico will they give a fig about tariffs? I wonder if maybe Mexico's nominal government might just sit back and let the US attack the cartels of necessity.
ReplyDeleteRay from Jack: I may have misunderstood your comments; that is always a possibility with me. And I don't consider your reaction to be browbeating at all; it fosters good dialectic I think.
ReplyDeleteWashington eventually Chaired the Constitutional Convention with consummate brilliance , employing his previously demonstrated characteristic skillful and sincere diplomacy. The result was one of the most durable political compacts in Western history and I don't see any parallel to it in Latin America. Instead I see endless progressions of "El Jefes", including a marxist hell hole in Venezuela. I would temper that evaluation by citing what I perceive to be Doc Waddy's perception that true democracy is advancing in Latin (South?)America
I am glad that Marco Rubio has taken his new office to Panama. My understanding is that he is of Cuban emigres. They have very good reason to be very clear minded about Latin American strongmen and Marxism. I think China cleansed of Marxism but it is still very authoritarian and may seek to extend its national security seeking firm control to the Americas. I hope Secretary Rubio makes it clear, in a manner perhaps well suited to the task, that we would no more tolerate Chinese control of the Canal and its approaches than China would the approaches to Hong Kong. My guess is that Panama consequently will get with our program.
I don't think the Afghanistan intervention had anything to do with leftist touchy feelyism. It was a warranted campaign to destroy the Taliban , which had:hosted Al Kaida and it failed because touchy feely Biden shrank from the hard necessity of maintaining a permanent US military presence there, just as we have in Western Europe. That was reality. President Lincoln held to the course despite enervating antiwar sentiment in the North and we saw the marxist evil eventually wrought by the "antiwar" movement during Vietnam. Kumbayaa Biden could not muster the backbone to be frank with the country: withdrawal meant a Taliban comeback and considering what the Taliban enabled on 9/11, (and may yet still) that should have been unthinkable.
No. I don't think that by itself South America poses a threat to us. Its only if it were to host those who intend our ill (eg. Cuba in '62) that it might closely hazard us. Its far too disunited to muster the power to task us. I think.
I think our Monroe Doctrine, often enforced, should assure S. America already of our intolerance of foreign incursion in the Western Hemisphere. Sure its for our benefit mainly but so much of US policy , firmly followed, seems to redound to the benefit of so many countries.