2020 Presidential Election

[Orema]

Trump’s Tariffs Are a New Tax on Americans

By The New York Times Editorial Board.

May 10, 2019

President Trump is undermining the credibility of his trade policies by falsely claiming that China is paying the bill.


The more President Trump escalates his trade war with China, the more American shoppers will notice higher prices in their favorite grocery stores, hardware shops and big-box retailers. Photo Credit: Callaghan O'Hare/Bloomberg

President Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese imports, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, are taxes that will be paid by Americans. That is a simple fact, and it remains true no matter how many times Mr. Trump insists the money will come from China.

Mr. Trump’s latest escalation of his trade fight with China is a 25 percent tariff, or import tax, on products that compose about one third of China’s exports to the United States, including Chinese bicycles, circuit boards and wooden doors. The tariff rate on those goods was previously 10 percent. Mr. Trump also has threatened to impose the 25 percent rate on virtually all products imported from China — more than $500 billion in goods last year.

Mr. Trump could make an honest case for this tax increase. He could argue that Americans must endure higher prices because China will suffer too — while China does not bear the direct cost of the tariffs, it is likely to suffer a loss of sales — and the United States needs that leverage as it presses China to change its economic policies.

Instead, Mr. Trump continues to repeat the false claim that the money will come from China, even though he has been told repeatedly that this claim has no basis in fact. He is willfully peddling a falsehood for political gain.

The mechanics of tariffs are not complicated: The government sends a tax bill to the company that brings goods into the country. Most of those tax bills go to American companies, often import firms that specialize in dealing with the customs process.

It doesn’t really matter who gets the bill, however. The important question is where the money to pay it comes from. And in broad terms, there are only two options: It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

Consider the case of washing machines. In January 2018, Mr. Trump imposed a tariff on washing machines, initially at a rate of 20 percent. The tariff caused a 12 percent increase in the price of washing machines, according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago. It also resulted in a similar increase in the price of dryers. Americans responded by buying more domestic washing machines, creating about 1,800 new jobs. But the cost of the tariffs was borne entirely by American consumers. The study estimated that each of those new jobs came at a cost of more than $815,000.

The Trump administration has tried to focus the China tariffs on the industrial supply chain: products used in making other goods, rather than products sold directly to consumers. That means much of the cost initially is absorbed by faceless corporations.

But the bottom line remains either lower profits or higher prices.

Some of the money could, in theory, be squeezed from Chinese manufacturers. But a pair of recent studies by prominent academics, including the chief economist at the World Bank, have concluded that the full cost of the Trump tariffs is being paid here in the United States, although China has suffered a loss of access to the American market.

One of the studies concluded that the cost of the tariffs has fallen disproportionately on the parts of the country that have supported Mr. Trump most strongly, in part because China and other nations subjected to tariffs have targeted their retaliatory tariffs at agricultural products and other goods produced in those parts of the country.

The cost of a tax is not just the money extracted from the private sector but also the disruption of economic activity. Here, too, the tariffs are proving painful. The second study estimated that tariffs were extracting $3 billion a month from American companies and consumers — and causing an additional $1.4 billion a month in lost economic activity.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs also have prompted China to retaliate, and that is causing particular pain for Midwestern farmers who have lost a major market for their crops.

Mr. Trump tweeted on Friday that the federal government would collect $100 billion in tariff revenue and that he would use some of the money to purchase American agricultural products, which would then be shipped to “poor & starving countries.” The rest of the money, he said, could be used for “Infrastructure, Health care or anything else.”

It’s a good idea to raise taxes to pay for foreign aid, infrastructure and health care.

But a tariff is a consumption tax, much like a sales tax, and such taxes tend to be regressive, meaning they cost lower-income families a larger share of their income than they cost upper-income families. There are better ways to raise the money. For example, the ill-considered tax cuts for the wealthy that Mr. Trump pushed through Congress in 2017 could be reversed.

Moreover, there is growing reason to doubt that tariffs are serving Mr. Trump’s stated purpose of persuading China to change its trade policies. There is widespread agreement, both in the United States and among America’s allies, that China is engaged in unfair practices, such as state-subsidized manufacturing, theft of intellectual property and both formal and informal constraints on foreign businesses. Those are real problems, and enforceable commitments to enact reforms could deliver significant economic and environmental benefits. Mr. Trump’s tariffs could yet prove a painful success story.

But the cost of Mr. Trump’s approach has just gone up: Americans will be paying higher prices on a wide range of goods. And Mr. Trump — who famously declared in March 2018 that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” — has yet to show he can strike a deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/o...gtype=Homepage

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by Orema

Trump’s Tariffs Are a New Tax on Americans

By The New York Times Editorial Board.

May 10, 2019

President Trump is undermining the credibility of his trade policies by falsely claiming that China is paying the bill.


The more President Trump escalates his trade war with China, the more American shoppers will notice higher prices in their favorite grocery stores, hardware shops and big-box retailers. Photo Credit: Callaghan O'Hare/Bloomberg

President Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese imports, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, are taxes that will be paid by Americans. That is a simple fact, and it remains true no matter how many times Mr. Trump insists the money will come from China.

Mr. Trump’s latest escalation of his trade fight with China is a 25 percent tariff, or import tax, on products that compose about one third of China’s exports to the United States, including Chinese bicycles, circuit boards and wooden doors. The tariff rate on those goods was previously 10 percent. Mr. Trump also has threatened to impose the 25 percent rate on virtually all products imported from China — more than $500 billion in goods last year.

Mr. Trump could make an honest case for this tax increase. He could argue that Americans must endure higher prices because China will suffer too — while China does not bear the direct cost of the tariffs, it is likely to suffer a loss of sales — and the United States needs that leverage as it presses China to change its economic policies.

Instead, Mr. Trump continues to repeat the false claim that the money will come from China, even though he has been told repeatedly that this claim has no basis in fact. He is willfully peddling a falsehood for political gain.

The mechanics of tariffs are not complicated: The government sends a tax bill to the company that brings goods into the country. Most of those tax bills go to American companies, often import firms that specialize in dealing with the customs process.

It doesn’t really matter who gets the bill, however. The important question is where the money to pay it comes from. And in broad terms, there are only two options: It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

Consider the case of washing machines. In January 2018, Mr. Trump imposed a tariff on washing machines, initially at a rate of 20 percent. The tariff caused a 12 percent increase in the price of washing machines, according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago. It also resulted in a similar increase in the price of dryers. Americans responded by buying more domestic washing machines, creating about 1,800 new jobs. But the cost of the tariffs was borne entirely by American consumers. The study estimated that each of those new jobs came at a cost of more than $815,000.

The Trump administration has tried to focus the China tariffs on the industrial supply chain: products used in making other goods, rather than products sold directly to consumers. That means much of the cost initially is absorbed by faceless corporations.

But the bottom line remains either lower profits or higher prices.

Some of the money could, in theory, be squeezed from Chinese manufacturers. But a pair of recent studies by prominent academics, including the chief economist at the World Bank, have concluded that the full cost of the Trump tariffs is being paid here in the United States, although China has suffered a loss of access to the American market.

One of the studies concluded that the cost of the tariffs has fallen disproportionately on the parts of the country that have supported Mr. Trump most strongly, in part because China and other nations subjected to tariffs have targeted their retaliatory tariffs at agricultural products and other goods produced in those parts of the country.

The cost of a tax is not just the money extracted from the private sector but also the disruption of economic activity. Here, too, the tariffs are proving painful. The second study estimated that tariffs were extracting $3 billion a month from American companies and consumers — and causing an additional $1.4 billion a month in lost economic activity.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs also have prompted China to retaliate, and that is causing particular pain for Midwestern farmers who have lost a major market for their crops.

Mr. Trump tweeted on Friday that the federal government would collect $100 billion in tariff revenue and that he would use some of the money to purchase American agricultural products, which would then be shipped to “poor & starving countries.” The rest of the money, he said, could be used for “Infrastructure, Health care or anything else.”

It’s a good idea to raise taxes to pay for foreign aid, infrastructure and health care.

But a tariff is a consumption tax, much like a sales tax, and such taxes tend to be regressive, meaning they cost lower-income families a larger share of their income than they cost upper-income families. There are better ways to raise the money. For example, the ill-considered tax cuts for the wealthy that Mr. Trump pushed through Congress in 2017 could be reversed.

Moreover, there is growing reason to doubt that tariffs are serving Mr. Trump’s stated purpose of persuading China to change its trade policies. There is widespread agreement, both in the United States and among America’s allies, that China is engaged in unfair practices, such as state-subsidized manufacturing, theft of intellectual property and both formal and informal constraints on foreign businesses. Those are real problems, and enforceable commitments to enact reforms could deliver significant economic and environmental benefits. Mr. Trump’s tariffs could yet prove a painful success story.

But the cost of Mr. Trump’s approach has just gone up: Americans will be paying higher prices on a wide range of goods. And Mr. Trump — who famously declared in March 2018 that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” — has yet to show he can strike a deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/o...gtype=Homepage

I have been saying this! While it is true that companies may look for alternatives to china (one of our manufacturers at my company has already said this) the bill is not going coming out of China’s pocket. The distributors and the customers are the ones paying more.

It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

To me this whole issue is just poking the bear.

[Martina]

According to CNN, Beto is not polling well. Tied for sixth with 2%. Maybe he wasn't "Born to Run."

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

I have been saying this! While it is true that companies may look for alternatives to china (one of our manufacturers at my company has already said this) the bill is not going coming out of China’s pocket. The distributors and the customers are the ones paying more.

It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

To me this whole issue is just poking the bear.

It is not just consumers being hurt by the tariffs:

Is This the End of Recycling?

After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.

But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.

For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.

Most are choosing the latter.

This is disturbing for two reasons: one is that recycling has stopped happening in a lot of places.

The other reason is that we have to ship our recyclables overseas because preparing the recyclables is so labor intensive that it cannot be done in countries where labor has any rights.

Even without the tariffs, our recycling contributes to labor exploitation, possibly even child labor.

[kittygrrl]

we should banish plastic from food products..the invasion of plastic into our air, water, and soil will eventually kill us all..the candidates who are sincere about climate change must include all the substances that are slowly poisoning us and our world.

[C0LLETTE]

North American "recycling" is a blight on many economies and has wiped out manufacturing in several "poor" countries.
Why should any of these countries ( particularly African ) try to sustain a manufacturing industry when cargo containers full of used Gap tee shirts and old Nike runners cram their ports daily. Tee shirt for 5 cents, shoes for 2 cents....why bother trying to make it?

We , here, don't want to pay to dispose of it. We, here, want to feel good about being charitable. And ultimately we are chocking off "emerging economies" that find no where to grow cause we dump our "goodwill" garbage on them.

Happy Mother's Day, BTW.

[Orema]

If Biden (or Bernie) get the nomination, then Bernie (or Biden) will probably be on the ticket as the VP.

A lot can happen between now and voting day but I see this as a real possibility. This certainly isn’t a ticket I’d like to see, but I’d go for it if it meant dumping Trump’s ass out of office.

And Biden and Bernie know it.

[C0LLETTE]

Originally Posted by Orema

If Biden (or Bernie) get the nomination, then Bernie (or Biden) will probably be on the ticket as the VP.

A lot can happen between now and voting day but I see this as a real possibility. This certainly isn’t a ticket I’d like to see, but I’d go for it if it meant dumping Trump’s ass out of office.

And Biden and Bernie know it.

Sounds perfect. They can do "paper, scissors, stone" for who should start and who would live long enough to succeed the other.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by kittygrrl

we should banish plastic from food products..the invasion of plastic into our air, water, and soil will eventually kill us all..the candidates who are sincere about climate change must include all the substances that are slowly poisoning us and our world.

I remember being like ten years old and starting to see the shift from glass to plastic food packaging-- starting with soda and then moving on to mustard and ketchup, then milk.

They advertised the packaging as "shatterproof and disposable," and even as a kid i was confused: since when was plastic disposable? And i have to wonder, now, how it was that all of the adults went "yes, good" and never hesitated at all to drop those giant two-liters into the garbage?

I mean, my grandparents lived on a farm, and had no utility service-- which means they were on well and septic for water and sewage, and disposed of all trash by burning it in a barrel.

That burn pile was always visible to us, and every time you walked past it you could see the stuff that did not fall to ash. When plastic packaging hit the shelves, that burn barrel was what i thought of.

Anyway here is some history
The Guardian: Opinion-- Plastic bottles are a recycling disaster. Coca-Cola should have known better

[...]In the past several decades, Coca-Cola has fought hard to prevent communities around the world implementing deposit systems that would require drinks firms to add a charge to the price of their products, to be refunded when customers returned the packaging to the distributor or retailer.

Deposit systems began to spread in the US in the 1970s, as throwaway steel and aluminium cans replaced the returnable glass bottles that once dominated the beer and soft drink industries.
This switch to throwaways, which started with brewers in the 1930s and matured in the soft drinks industry in the 1960s, was in part driven by a consumer culture that craved convenience. It was also driven by economics, as big beverage companies sought to achieve economies of scale by consolidating their bottling networks, and realised they could save money if they didn’t have to truck returnable bottles back to factories.

But those companies did not like deposit systems because they believed government-imposed price hikes could hit sales. Coke, Pepsi and others organised to counter deposit laws. Their campaign was successful, largely because of a promise they brought to debates: kerbside recycling. In federal and state government hearings, Coca-Cola and others argued that municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies, would eliminate the need for deposits. By the mid-80s, this argument had won the day.

How did this system stack up against the alternatives, considering the full ecological impact of reclaiming returnable glass bottles, including washing them? In 1969 Coca-Cola attempted to answer that question by asking the Midwest Research Institute to conduct a life-cycle analysis of packaging. The firm looked at various types of throwaway containers, and compared them with returnable glass bottles on almost every measure: energy expenditure, waste generation, water pollution, air emissions and more

This study, which the investigators reproduced for the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1974, concluded that no throwaway “container will be improved to match or surpass that of [the 10-trip returnable glass bottle] in the near future”.

Coca-Cola nevertheless placed its future in the plastic bottle. Paul Austin, then company president, explained this was because Coca-Cola believed recycling systems would allow the company to reclaim much of the plastic it used.

The beauty of history is that we can look back and see if Austin’s bet paid off. Using the US as a case study, the message is clear: failure to offer financial incentives has resulted in a wasteful recycling system. Over 25 years since kerbside recycling began, 70% of plastic containers are never reclaimed. Just 30% end up being recycled.

Basically, we trashed our oceans to preserve one company's profit margins.

So, who failed? Was it the company who shifted half its responsibility to "municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies"?

Capitalist rhetoric says we have to blame the consumer. Governments would have better-funded and more successful recycling programs if consumers demanded them, or even used them, but they didn't and they don't.

That is a tactic for maintaining the status quo. Anytime the rhetoric can shift the blame to a million end-users of a product instead of tracing a problem back to its root and holding the original decision-makers responsible, change becomes less possible.

I mean, the lag time for my family between all products shifting to plastic and the arrival of our first curbside bin was at least a decade. Shouldn't someone have required Coke to shift their packaging gradually, market area by market area, as recycling became available in each area? We should not have had plastic on our supermarket shelves until we had bins on our curbs.

[kittygrrl]

Not sure who will end up being the Democratic nominee but if it's Biden I hope he can persuade Harris to take the Vice Presidency or if not her then Klobuchar ....i hate to say this...............................but it's our turn

[cathexis]

Let's not let our guard down. We still have to Get dt out of the White House. Not referring to the election, necessarily. Who's to say that he will give up the power without a fight. Would not be surprised if he pulls an advance Executive Order, carefully worded, to give the President additional power or he even ignores the election.

He might require force to get ejected. The US has never encountered a President who behaves this way, stomping all over the Constitution. We need to remain vigilant.

Remember, Hitler was initially elected to office.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

Basically, we trashed our oceans to preserve one company's profit margins.

So, who failed? Was it the company who shifted half its responsibility to "municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies"?

Capitalist rhetoric says we have to blame the consumer. Governments would have better-funded and more successful recycling programs if consumers demanded them, or even used them, but they didn't and they don't.

That is a tactic for maintaining the status quo. Anytime the rhetoric can shift the blame to a million end-users of a product instead of tracing a problem back to its root and holding the original decision-makers responsible, change becomes less possible.

I mean, the lag time for my family between all products shifting to plastic and the arrival of our first curbside bin was at least a decade. Shouldn't someone have required Coke to shift their packaging gradually, market area by market area, as recycling became available in each area? We should not have had plastic on our supermarket shelves until we had bins on our curbs.

The Guardian: Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals. By Martin Lukacs

Would you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the crisis.

The email in my inbox last week offered thirty suggestions to green my office space: use reusable pens, redecorate with light colours, stop using the elevator.

Back at home, done huffing stairs, I could get on with other options: change my lightbulbs, buy local veggies, purchase eco-appliances, put a solar panel on my roof.

And a study released on Thursday claimed it had figured out the single best way to fight climate change: I could swear off ever having a child.

These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe. But we could hardly be worse-served.

While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71%. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.

The freedom of these corporations to pollute – and the fixation on a feeble lifestyle response – is no accident. It is the result of an ideological war, waged over the last 40 years, against the possibility of collective action. Devastatingly successful, it is not too late to reverse it.

The political project of neoliberalism, brought to ascendence by Thatcher and Reagan, has pursued two principal objectives. The first has been to dismantle any barriers to the exercise of unaccountable private power. The second had been to erect them to the exercise of any democratic public will.

Its trademark policies of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals: these have liberated corporations to accumulate enormous profits and treat the atmosphere like a sewage dump, and hamstrung our ability, through the instrument of the state, to plan for our collective welfare.

Anything resembling a collective check on corporate power has become a target of the elite: lobbying and corporate donations, hollowing out democracies, have obstructed green policies and kept fossil fuel subsidies flowing; and the rights of associations like unions, the most effective means for workers to wield power together, have been undercut whenever possible.

At the very moment when climate change demands an unprecedented collective public response, neoliberal ideology stands in the way. Which is why, if we want to bring down emissions fast, we will need to overcome all of its free-market mantras: take railways and utilities and energy grids back into public control; regulate corporations to phase out fossil fuels; and raise taxes to pay for massive investment in climate-ready infrastructure and renewable energy — so that solar panels can go on everyone’s rooftop, not just on those who can afford it.

Neoliberalism has not merely ensured this agenda is politically unrealistic: it has also tried to make it culturally unthinkable. Its celebration of competitive self-interest and hyper-individualism, its stigmatization of compassion and solidarity, has frayed our collective bonds. It has spread, like an insidious anti-social toxin, what Margaret Thatcher preached: “there is no such thing as society.”

Studies show that people who have grown up under this era have indeed become more individualistic and consumerist. Steeped in a culture telling us to think of ourselves as consumers instead of citizens, as self-reliant instead of interdependent, is it any wonder we deal with a systemic issue by turning in droves to ineffectual, individual efforts?

[Martina]

And in the US, it's mainstream Dems who've lead the way on this. It was all meritocracy instead of workers organize.

There's an interesting critique of yoga now as a sort of a personal empowerment while ignoring not just poor people (duh), but a dying planet. Given how many of us are suffering from lifestyle related illnesses, it's hard to fault people for trying to live and be well. Also yoga can be anti-consumerist. But if you think of the resources that were poured into it by the well educated elite while so little energy was directed at climate change at a time when it would have mattered. . . .

I think what appalls people is their belief that yoga or meditation would lead to a better world. It definitely leads to a better life, but does it turn people away from politics and social activism?

Perhaps. Certainly there is something solipsistic in these and other practices. But I don't think the ideology is the explanation. It's that in the US, it is a movement formed around the interests of the professional classes. People do not betray their class interests easily. People of all races put class interest first. People born into poverty who have entered the professional class, their political behavior is almost indistinguishable from those whose parents were from the professional classes.

Neoliberalism is the ideology of the professional class within the construct of Capitalism. It does nothing to stop the inevitable self destructive arc that is the heart of Capitalism and that will eventually take most of them down too, but for the last fifty years it has made their lives more flush and given them power. The Cheney's of the world don't die with 100 million in the bank. But they got to drive the machine that is making the wealthy wealthier. Why that feels so good I can't say.

We endlessly criticize poor white people for voting against their best interests, but the professional classes have too by supporting Clinton and others, including Republicans, who tell them they have won the meritocracy sweepstakes while the biggest transfer of wealth has been from the professional classes to the extremely wealthy.

If the working class is desperate, the professionals are showing their pathetic asses. The college cheating scandal tells you all you need to know about what they will do to keep their edge.