The Inadvisability of MAGA-Initiated International Trade Warfare Tariffs

Inadvisability of MAGA-Initiated International Trade Warfare Tariffs

Ultimately, Tariffs on Products of Exporter-Suppliers Sold to Importer-Retailers Are a Pass-on Sales Tax on and Raise the Prices on Those Products Sold by Importer-Retailers and Purchased by Domestic Consumers

Some of the top and obvious marketplace ramifications of the economic mechanics of the imposition of tariffs on imports from China and other [major] export-import competitor nations:

PRC China and the other major nation-state export-import competitors targeted, and their business products punished, with US tariffs on their exports to, imports by US re-sellers into, the US will balance and cancel out the effect of the US tariffs with corresponding, or correspondingly higher, rates-of-charge counter, retaliatory tariffs of their own on US exports to their nations, compared to zero or lower tariff rates-of-charge on imports from respectively zero-tariff and lower-tariff imposing nations. Prices of imports, including components, parts and raw materials, in addition to semifinished and finished products, for all affected lines of products, will increase, and probably comparatively rapidly or abruptly sharply spike for and between the tariff dueling nations. Particularly the smaller producer, and/or lesser international and optionally domestic, market-share and import-beneficiary retailer and consumer, export nation would most lose, though both might lose lopsidedly overall, international consumer market share, reduced domestic consumer purchases, along with net-effect purchasing power with regard to their household and business enterprise incomes, and reduced retailer sales and profitability and consequential, in the aggregate, reduced import-export business sector earnings as well as earnings, or returns, to their investors, as in the import-export sector of the US economy. If importer-retailers absorb the tariffs in whole or large part, they will reduce their profit margins and profitability or do worse to themselves. This economic scenario in the USA would result in widespread business failures and staid acutely diminished sales, revenue and profit declines in the import-export sector of the economy, including for major street, mall and online retailers, and in the respective full unemployment for some and substantial reductions in employment for others of their workforces of import businesses. Housing, automobile, grocer, banking, lending and credit, church tithing, charitable donations and political contributions, among other sectors of the US economy, would be economically hurt by income losses by the import-tariffs' related and driven downturn (in financially weakened going concerns, insolvencies and mass unemployment and reduced employment of business significantly tied to and dependent on imports, especially normally price-cheap imports) in the US economy.

However, when imports constitute the dumping of products at or below the cost of their production, whose effect is or credibly potentially is to harm systemically the viability of an industry or producer-market segment of the receiver nation, then reasonably such imports should be banned if they are not essential to or required for the production needs of domestic producers and the supply of the same kinds of products by domestic suppliers is insufficient. If they are so needed, then tariffs should be levied on them to make their retail prices match the average, above-average or top price of the concerned products found across major or all world markets. Otherwise, when imports, by exporters, with bona-fide prices episodically or in an overall continuum flood the domestic market, import quotas can be set on them and punitive tariffs can be levied on them, per type of product and supplier, with offender suppliers subject to being suspended for a term from exporting directly or indirectly through proxies, on a case-by-case basis rather than doing the same against the export products in large measure or wholly of a foreign nation or its producers in order to protect the solvency, viability and marketplace competitiveness of domestic producers, while averting inter-nation mutually economically damaging trade wars. By law, anti-monopoly or -quasi-monopoly and anti-collusion regulated domestic and international competition between and among similar businesses constrains runaway price rises and inflation to the benefit of consumers and, ideally, bolsters a maximum of market-share participants and stakeholders within and across the different industries and types of business as well as supports the extensive spread or distribution of wealth, and its non-concentration in a relatively few, among the citizenry.

The practical and ethical economics rules and conventions applicable to and operative in the trade relationships between and among advanced technocratic and industrially developed nations do not apply as much with second and apply minimally with third tiered techno-industrially developed, or moderately and weakly developed, nations, as they put the natural resources and largely tenuous employment and subsistence financial means of the populations of the two latter economic and trade tiered nations at high susceptibility to peril and grave economic depredation by first and second tiered such nations. In trade relations of any and all import and export trading nations, of all tiers, in quarterly, semi-annually and annual net revenue and profit results, or proportionally for these based on the sizes of the economies of competitor nations, there will be a hierarchy of best to least achieved performer nations, in which first tiered nations overwhelmingly will tend to be the best materially and in knowledge and skills equipped and productive nations in making and supplying products and in being durably the best performers and most resilient, with fluxes in performance ranking among them in performance reporting cycles, to recovering from slumped or poor performance and remaining competitive within first tiered competitor nations, whereas third tiered nations would not be significantly capable of buying up resources and companies as well as buying off the top and important but lesser governance officials of first or second tiered nations, unlike vice versa for first and less so for second tiered nations of third tiered nations, whose nations, respectively, would be able or better able to also largely economically colonize and devastatingly prey upon or parasitize, even by outright violence, national-forever-debt-slave foreign loans, pretender-righteousness color coups and figurehead, political puppet leaderships, on third tier nations. This latter situation is the case, especially against some Central and South American nations and the nations of black Africa, what is left of Africa as black Africa, inching toward going the way of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, etc., though by colonizers and re-settlers who are alien people to Africa from a variety of outside-of-Africa ancestral lands. Rankings in inter-nation and international trade achiever-performance positions among first-tier trade nations will inevitably shuffle and change over the financial performance reporting cycles and across the years -- in democratic trade relationships between these, there can be no monopoly nation or permanent or lasting solo same dominant nation.

We must be proactively mindful of both Murphy's law and the Peter principle, or woe betide us like with the Covid-19 pandemic and its havoc on the US economy and economies of the other major nations of the world of humanity: Economic policy of the first Donald Trump administration - Wikipedia , Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years — ProPublica , Trump’s Trade Wars with China and Europe Have Made Bad Agriculture Policies Worse (foreignpolicy.com) , Trump Tariffs & Biden Tariffs: Economic Impact of the Trade War (taxfoundation.org) , Did Trump’s tariffs benefit American workers and national security? (brookings.edu) , How Trump’s Tariffs Really Affected the U.S. Job Market | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . 

     The adverse economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic muddled the distinction between them and the mounting and concurrent adverse effects on the US economy of the first Trump Presidency's wide-ranging tariffs on imports. Strongly indicated within the writings of the aforementioned citations is that former POTUS Trump was more interested in and focused on the circa $79,000,000,000.00 that his tariffs generated than the short-term circa well more than $400,000,000,000.00 in business and job income losses in the US economy, apart from their longer-term losses, that resulted from his concurrent Covid-19 initially mismanaged pandemic and policy of large tariffs on imports, especially those exported from China, and loss of the export of US agricultural products by the agricultural sector of the US economy to China.

Considering that past behavior, unless redemptively or corruptively modified in the interim for better or worse, is the best predictor of future behavior, here is a click-on news commentary of warning on the US economy by a reputable and credible financial market expert of what may credibly come to pass for the US economy under the new, second Trump Presidency, of whom the first Trump Presidency left the dream economy it inherited from the Democratic Party Obama Presidency totally wrecked, for which the MAGA portion and a significant politically mixed other portion of the voting electorate forgetfully, ignorantly and facetiously blamed its/his successor Democratic Party Biden Presidency for it, whereas the Biden Presidency restored in full the US economy and, along with the Federal Reserve Bank, its inflation rate down to virtually the default minimal inflationary interest rate of 2%, and, moreover, made the US economy the currently leading economy in the world — though it did not restore prices to those of the pre-inflationary period preceding the soaring price inflationary period, which historically has never happened, brought about by the first Trump Presidency and whereof then President Trump, before he took office as US president in his first term, had a history of various of his businesses having been in bankruptcy 6 times and himself of having been successfully sued for legally liable financial misconduct against others, Anthony Scaramucci Predicts a Market Crash Under Trump — Here’s How To Prepare If He’s Right (yahoo.com) .

Tariffs do not take place in a one-way action environment and relationship with other nations and the nations of the world, as in one of negative output and impact on others by oneself without a return, or response, and impact action, or counteraction, on oneself from and by negatively affected others by oneself, the initiator-instigator of the negativity or negative exchange and transaction relationship. We must remember that indeed tariffs ultimately are a sales tax, passed by the exporter-suppliers onto the retailers and consumers of the imports, which hikes the costs and prices of the imported, if all not all, by side effect, products and services for sale.

The Main Real Reason for Why Donald Trump Was Elected US President and VP Kamala Harris Was Not in the 11-05-2024 US Presidential Election

 

The Main Real Reason for Why Donald Trump Was Elected US President and VP Kamala Harris Was Not in the 11-05-2024 US Presidential Election

The main reason for Donald Trump’s election as US president in the US presidential election of Tuesday, 11-05-2024 is the rampant lie that Trump and the MAGA mass media propagated that businesses and the households of the USA were economically better off under the Trump Presidency than the following Biden Presidency, whereas in fact that of Trump's mismanaged Covid-19 pandemic crisis resulted in the collapse of the US economy overall, including mass business losses in income and profitability and in failure closures, worker unemployment, residential dislocations, extreme shortages in groceries supply and in sparce and empty groceries shelves, etc., in grocery stores and soaring inflationary, intractable high prices on virtually all products and services beginning for virtually the whole year of 2020 of the Trump Presidency.

As newly elected and inaugurated US president in January of 2017, Trump inherited the dream economy of and from the outgoing Obama Presidency, in which now US President Joe Biden was vice president. When Donald Trump takes office as newly elected US president again in January of 2025, Donald Trump will again inherit the best performing economy of the nations of the world, restored by the Biden Presidency from the economic shambles left by the previous Trump Presidency, though voters largely, in the majority, wrongly and ignorantly blame the Biden Presidency for the soaring inflationary high prices and increased such rates initiated in the previous Trump Presidency, rates of inflation the Biden Presidency along with the Federal Reserve Bank have driven down to the normal 2% per annum rate, though not the increased prices, which historically never return to the lower prices of a past, pre-inflationary period, and employment, and business as well as the stock market performance, plus, have risen stably to record levels and prices have steadied under the Biden Presidency.

Trump and the MAGA GOP will claim ownership and credit for the good economies Trump inherits as US president and blame, as may an amnesiac majority of voters, his successors for the wrecked economies he and his presidential team leave to his successor [clean-up] presidents of the USA. Based on my reading, listening and viewing of the mass media news reports on the US presidential election before and since election day of 11-05-2024, pre-election [public opinion or political] polls consistently found that the majority of eligible voters consistently rated Donald Trump and his presidency a better manager of the economy than Joe Biden and the Biden presidency and in the 2024 US presidential election exit polls of voters, a majority of the voters surveyed [delusionally] said explicitly or to the effect that they voted for Trump because prices were too high and unaffordable under the Biden Administration and that they were [economically] better off under Trump (and the GOP) than Biden (and the Democrats) as president.

When US presidential candidate Trump threw out his vote-getting (for attracting to him millions of more voters) political dog-bone, vote-bait, promises, successively in the few months before the presidential election, of no taxes on tip income, Social Security pensions and overtime pay, I knew they made him formidable, across most voter demographics, regardless of any bad he said or did at any time. Probably, in view of the stated foregoing informational context, a majority of folks, across the demographic categories -- with Trump peeling off record percentages of Latino and Black males, less concerned about female reproductive rights or even protecting democracy, as a priority issue, than their personal economic considerations, and Native Americans, as well as probably Social Security pension retirees and those, men as well as women, near retirement (also having little vested concern in the reproductive rights of young females) in increased support — voted for Trump because they thought he offered them a better, juicier deal personally-economically than VP Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Indicatively, personal election-contingent economic considerations were the top priorities deciding the votes of these cross-over, independent and swing voters who voted for Donald Trump.

Apologetically, the relevant news references are not inserted as online hyperlinks or annotated in a list as a matter of selfish convenience to myself, as I have virtually had enough of this matter and for a while want relieved from it. This is a reflective quickie writing. 

Political Sleight of Hand and Remember, Remember, Remember Reality, Please, Before It's Too Late — a pre-voting, final-hours updated vitally-important read for voters in today's US presidential election of Tuesday, 11-05-2024

Political Sleight of Hand and Remember, Remember, Remember Reality, Please, Before It's Too Late 

— a pre-voting, final-hours updated vitally-important read for voters in today's US presidential election of Tuesday, 11-05-2024

Why would an individual pollster and political analyst among many accuse the many others of pressing a finger down on their consensus polling data on the candidates in the US presidential election competition to the favor of Kamala Harris by one point within the margin of error or to show a virtual tie between the candidates and himself contrarily claim a landslide win for Trump? He would do so to get mass attention-grabbing reads of his written election news commentary in major part to temper down the harsh and negative rhetorical attacks, the bad news and bad publicity, against Trump and to have his Trump-favorable commentary and nudging of cautious silence toward Trump viralized. It makes sense that he would be doing this with the ultimate goal in mind of getting the adoption of his controversial, contrarian commentary as belief by much of the public that is followed by its/their sudden mass spread of this maverick conclusion as an expectation that could and might, as a matter of caution and self-concern by others en masse, hush bad publicity and vote-losing rhetorical attacks and endorsements against Trump by socially high-profile figures and organizations of influence otherwise critical of Trump, to a desired significantly beneficial political effect for him in a close election, according to a consensus of the major election polls, in the last few presidential campaign days leading up to the US presidential election of 11/05/2024.

However, it has newly come to my attention in my listening to radio broadcast interviews of objectively-minded political science professors and reputable professional political analysts that other minor, known-MAGA-partisan pollsters have been making the same claim online and in the pro-MAGA broadcasts as that of the hereinabove referred to mainstream election pollster-analyst of a landslide presidential election victory for Trump, a wrong MAGA-partisan private-pollsters polls-based previous election forecast which they (the interviewees) said the same or like folks made in advance, via same communications media channels, of the 2020 US presidential election actual defeat of Trump and win of current POTUS Joe Biden on election day then of 11-03-2020. In essence, they proposed that these dubious private polls of the past may have been the strategic, fallback, motivational groundwork that set the stage in advance of that election for MAGA-movement attempts to overturn it, if it resulted in a defeat of Trump’s reelection bid, which it did, by various means, such as mass mobilization action of aggressive MAGA political activists, legislatively and administratively within GOP-dominated state legislatures and GOP-MAGAs in the houses of Congress and judicially, by state and federal courts, including the GOP-membership-dominated US Supreme Court, all tried but comprehensively failed means to overturn the election of Biden as US president and retain the Trump Presidency. They say, in overall effect, that the Trump-MAGA team have probably learned from this previous thorough failure to alternatively win the US presidency in contravention to traditional federal Constitutional- and statutory-law institutional protocols and means and this time may be using such partisanly private and dubious election polls and bogus forecasts disseminated on online social media platforms and in right-wing mass media broadcasts, such as Fox, etc., as a same fallback strategy in the event of another defeat of Donald Trump in his current 2024 presidential election bid to overturn a win of that election by current US Vice President Kamala Harris but one with a much improved, better and more effective overturn or insurrection “game.”

All the while the Trump campaign and its compatriots on the sidelines, including those in the mass communications media, illusorily misrepresent the former Trump Presidency as having been an economic success story in which business and households were better off then economically than they are now under the Biden Presidency. It is a fallacious good-old-days mirage of a Trumpian national economic success story in that in less than half way into the second two years of Trump's four-year term as US president, our nation, and the nations of almost the whole of humanity worldwide was/were stricken by the Covid-19 pandemic, which was mismanaged by Trump and his presidential administration by first delaying announcing it publicly, then downplaying its significant danger and delaying taking societal action to contend with it nationally until the casualties from it soared, which resulted in a nationwide economic shutdown, a national shortage of toilet paper, the emptying of and lasting shortage in supplies of groceries in grocery stores, comprehensive spikes in the prices of groceries, extending to soaring price inflation, often seller-gouging price push inflation, of nearly all goods and services and retention of increased prices, and in mass job losses and unemployment, all the product of the soaring-inflation, economically failed Trump Presidency, like his past 6 business bankruptcies.

The Biden Presidency has been the rescue and clean-up crew of the dream economy inherited, and trashed, by former POTUS Trump from the Obama Presidency, in which Biden was vice president, and has restored record-level high employment to our nation, competently managed its takeover in handling the national Covid-19 pandemic and phased our nation out of its crisis status, and it, together with the Federal Reserve Bank, has substantially reduced the rate of inflation it inherited from the Trump Presidency.

However, the economist Paul Krugman explained that never following periods of soaring price inflation have prices returned to what they were before the periods of soaring price inflation, which is the way economic history works. Prices returning to what they were before a period of soaring price inflation would not happen (with the somewhat exception of modestly volatile gasoline prices for automobiles in the short term) if our economy were managed by the economic titans of the past Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman, as well as by the financial titans Mansa Musa, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

It is the deplorables and garbage brains of the Trump team and cult who blame the Biden clean-up crew for the mess the gaslighting, mind-wiping Trump Presidency and political team created by dereliction, mismanagement and incompetent governance and for impossibly not returning the economy's post-inflation higher prices to pre-inflation lower prices. Don’t hold your breath hoping and waiting for the latter to happen.