Trump to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum

[hawkwing]

[BoiseBYU]

Is this why the market dropped 400+ points today?

[hawkwing]

Scott Linicomb of the Cato Institute is against it.

[BlueK]

Is this why the market dropped 400+ points today?

Yup. That's why the market is down today. Protectionism is stupid policy. Yes, you can "protect" a few blue collar jobs here and there but it doesn't matter because it makes everything more expensive and hurts far more than it can ever help. This will be the one thing that will peel away Trump's base of support, IMO, when it slows down the economy, depending on how much "protectionism" he tries to employ, which according to his rhetoric in the past is probably quite a lot. The economy is good right now. Why mess with it?

[BlueK]

Scott Linicomb of the Cato Institute is against it.

He and everyone else who ever took an economics class or has even a basic knowledge of how supply and demand works. "Protectionism" doesn't work. It made the Great Depression "great" when it only should have been a recession.

[snoscythe]

Wait....it's Friday?

[Ddawg]

Scott Lincicome
"But, hey, at least it's Friday."

Wait....it's Friday?

Yes it is - tomorrow.

[imuakahuku]

Scott Linicomb of the Cato Institute is against it.

He and everyone else who ever took an economics class or has even a basic knowledge of how supply and demand works. "Protectionism" doesn't work. It made the Great Depression "great" when it only should have been a recession.

Actually the "New Deal" made the depression "great". Unemployment was already down to 6% months after Black Tuesday but then FDR rode in and salvaged the depression with all his socialist/fascist ideas. Was it any surprise that the world leaders he most admired were Mussolini and Hitler?

Protectionism is bad but so is unpaid labor like in China and government subsidized products being dumped costing millions of Americans jobs. This is a shot across the bow of of the world to tell them to "play fair". Trump will correct this once other countries understand he knows what's going on and they take corrective actions. Also the tariffs are very focused, they are not broad based.

Here is something funny unrelated to the tariffs. NY has "blocked" and/or stopped all significant pipelines of the last few years that they now import a significant amount of liquid NG from Russia. And the other NE states are being forced or will be forced to follow suit because of NY blocking all the pipelines. What I don't understand is why they don't import from other US states but from Russia.

[BlueK]

These tariffs may be focused on two items, but the effects aren't so easy to keep from becoming broad-based when you consider that the industries that use steel and aluminum are much larger than the ones that produce them. Now they have to use more expensive steel. Also, Trump is still talking like he's nowhere near finished and is planning to push in this protectionist direction a lot further.

[snoscythe]

Actually the "New Deal" made the depression "great". Unemployment was already down to 6% months after Black Tuesday.

Not a New Deal proponent in the least, but you can't look at 6% unemployment in an agrarian economy the same way we look at it today with minimum wage and the New Deal programs backing it up.