• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Tariffs on Mexico and China?

Would you approve of putting 35% tariffs on Mexico and China


  • Total voters
    32
Wrong...Canada dumps cheap lumber on the American market. Lumber mills are closing in the US because they are being under cut by the price of Canadian lumber with the blessing of the Canadian government..

As I said, I am not averse to the use of tariffs to counter/adjust for government subsidy; that's perfectly fair. In fact, the lumber trade dispute is exactly why I specifically mentioned government subsidy as an exception to the relative absence of cheating in Canadian industry. The bottom line is that Canadian manufacturing as a rule doesn't enjoy the same unfair advantages that China's or Mexico's does.
 
You would greatly increase the price of almost everything.

...and that means that the poor, everybody, would get higher wages...
 
Yes. It will discourage factories from outsourcing, Plus it is pro-American to not line the pockets of foreign governments.Its also pro-American to keep jobs in the America instead of outsourcing them to countries who use that money to build up their military.

Mexico's military could use some building up to fight the drug cartels. I mentioned this in another post: If a job only produces $3/hour of output, how would you locate that job in the US?
 
Would you approve of a 35% tariff being placed on goods sold from Mexico and China?
Where did you come-up with 35%?

I would've likely agreed if the specifics was left open-ended, or a lower amount.
 
Where did you come-up with 35%?

I would've likely agreed if the specifics was left open-ended, or a lower amount.

Trump's specifically mentioned 35% on Mexico. He's gone between 25-45% on China so I went with the average.
 
A tariff is no weapon to correct 35 years of ignorant economic policy that caused the loss of jobs overseas, along with US tax policies that encouraged US Industries to manufacture in foreign countries. Greedy Corporate share great blame, Greedy Unions share great blame, Greedy Warmongers share great blame, Greedy politicos share great blame, and the sum of the parts is the Great debacle that we find ourselves in today, and we want to blame Foreign Countries. The USA, by sheer volume of money in circulation worldwide controlled smaller economies to their detriment and steered the profits to the USA. The bubble created by the manipulations allowed the US to pay extremely high wages until the USA was unceremoniously shifted to a nearly level playing field. Now we must compete against lower wage competition and the only way to do that is with lower wages. The NWO is attempting to gain world-wide economic control, because if you can control all currencies, your own US Dollar will not collapse under the weight of debt caused by all imports, no exports. The service economy has brought us those wonderful hedge funds, derivative funds, buyout funds, ad infinitum, and the predictable result is that the rich get richer. So now we gonna cure that with tariffs??????
 
Would you approve of a 35% tariff being placed on goods sold from Mexico and China?

Do you have a problem with the amount or just the idea of a tariff. Most of the world has a VAT tax. That is essentially a tariff on goods produced in the U.S.

How would you recommend that we get to fair trade rather than the one sided "free trade" that currently exists?
 
Mexico's military could use some building up to fight the drug cartels.
As long as Mexico is currupt and so is it's military then building it up will only make it a greater threat to us.It is not our job to give Mexico money so it can solve it's problems,so screw Mexico.


I mentioned this in another post: If a job only produces $3/hour of output, how would you locate that job in the US?
The only reason a job's output is 3 dollars an hour is because that is what the employer chooses to pay or claim it is worth, Because it was not worth 3 dollars of output when that job was in the US.The only reason for outsourcing is to exploit cheaper labor and to exploit what the lack of employee and environmental laws. When tariffs were in place on many of these countries it was cheaper for companies to make things here in the US.But once traitors in office removed those tariffs it made it cheaper to make goods in other countries and ship them to the US.
 
Would you approve of a 35% tariff being placed on goods sold from Mexico and China?

When it comes to tariffs, one reaps what one sows.
 
Hillary wants to import tainted Chinese food into our country .

Of course you would accuse a political candidate of championing the import of tainted food.

Prove that she said exactly that.
 
We may have to do this, as much as I do not like this .. How do the Germans or the Swiss handle this ?
 
Tariffs are among the most stupid and counterproductive forms of taxation. If somebody sincerely believes that erecting trade barriers is a way of strengthening local producers, why not create tariffs on trade between Massachusetts and Mississippi, or between New York City and Los Angeles?

The reasoning behind protectionism is not economic. On the side of workers afraid of losing their jobs it is not reasoning at all, it is fear multiplied by ignorance. On the side of politicians who promote these ideas, it is largely the old good crony-capitalist collusion: Give some temporary selective advantage to one sector or a particular corporation, and who cares about all the consumers who will face increasing cost of living and other American businesses who will suffer from higher prices of materials and spare parts.

How about we stop trying to block our own people's ability to trade peacefully, and focus more on our own ability to make stuff other people want to pay for? (Hint: A giant wall on a border is not one of those.)

Cyrylek, regarding USA's interstate commerce and its analogy to our global trade policies:

delegates from the various American states and commonwealths attending the USA’s constitutional convention of 1787 were very much aware of some among them represented constituencies that were or would likely be at competitive commercial advantage to those represented by other delegates.

Despite their allegiances to competing governments, they managed to compromise among themselves and support a federal government. They risked their personal and political reputations which must have to some extent risked their individual finances, for what they hoped would prove to be of mutual net benefit to all in our then new nation.

[Their behavior contrasts with the congresses during President Obama’s administration when U.S. congressional representatives and senators often voted contrary to what they previously had contended was to our nation’s best interests, because they preferred to delay or hinder our nation’s progress rather than permit any improvement of our nation to be attributed to a person or a political party they believed to be unworthy of occupying the White House.
I hope this despicable precedent will not be continued under President Donald Trump’s administration].

If you believe that USA states are not now as they were then in competitive commercial competition, you’re mistaken. The justification of our constitution’s granting supreme jurisdiction of interstate and international commerce to our federal government was due to the realization that our states and regions are naturally in commercial and economic competition with each other and federal supreme jurisdiction was and remains to our entire nation’s net best interests.

My allegiance to the USA, (i.e. my nation) is not secondary to consideration for any other concept of a regional or global entities. I’m not amiable to improving USA’s foreign relations by compromising USA’s best economic interests, and particularly compromising the financial interests of USA's aggregate family’s dependent upon employment derived incomes or dependent upon enterprises that themselves are directly or indirectly highly dependent upon the financial circumstances of USA employees earning less than our median wage.

Refer to Wikipedia’s “Import Certificates” article.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
Anagram, I’m a proponent of a unilateral trade policy described within Wikipedia’s “import Certificates” article.

USA’s adoption of The Import Certificate policy would increase USA’s GDP and numbers of jobs more than otherwise while subsidizing prices of USA’s exported goods sold to foreign purchasers.
The extent of the policies entire direct costs which are passed onto USA purchasers of imported goods are substantially market rather than only government determined; the extent of price subsidies for USA exports are entirely market determined.

Google Wikipedia’s “import Certificates” article.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
I'm curious to how people would feel about a tariff system that is implemented on nations relative to regulations and wages comparable to what we have. If a country uses slave / sweat shop like labor and/or nearly unregulated toxic to the environment type manufacturing they receive an incredibly high tariff. Nations that are roughly the equivalent in environmental protection and wages are virtually free trade. This would cancel out the competitive advantage other nations have while encouraging businesses worldwide to adopt better practices towards both the environment and their workers. I will freely admit I know next to nothing about economics but this does seem like a good compromise.
 
Yes, but only of they don't meet some demands.

They produce cheaper because of a number of factors. Sure they have low wages and this is not something we can and should do much about is my opinion. But other major contributors to the ability of cheap production are a near total lack of respect for every other aspect that influences the price setting of western producers and our dealing with this is hypocritical to say the least. Let me elaborate a little bit here. We have a lot of regulations in place to protect people. Much of this involves safety. Think of working hours, retirement, safety etc.. In addition to this we have a wide set of rules that state how production need to take place in order to have the least possible impact on our environment. That we do this is great and the administration should not undermine this and turn it back because of fear that they will become less competitive, but instead they should allow imports only if products sold in our country are manufactured according our regulations. And this way you are cutting the knife on both sides at the same time. There prices will go up in order to meet our standards and as a result of this we will of course get more duties on imports. Not because the tariffs have gone up, but simply because the amount over which they have to pay a percentage has gone up. At the same time we do not need to convince them to adopt environmental regulations but they will instead be very eager to quickly force there regulations upon their own manufacturing industry in order to be able to produce for, and sell to the west. And this too is a strong point because the poor countries always do the baby thing and cry when discussing environmental regulations. Because it would not be fair to them. Because they do not have so much money. So this too is not much of an argument anymore.

Surely nobody has the balls to implement this. And the short-sighted Trump rhetoric that we have heard over the past year or so indicates that he thinks that simply applying higher tariffs will deal with this.

Besides this, the entire issue will become pointless in the foreseeable future when technological advancement will allow automated production without human interference. This will make cheap production in cheap countries immediately a thing from the past.


Joey
 
I'm curious to how people would feel about a tariff system that is implemented on nations relative to regulations and wages comparable to what we have. If a country uses slave / sweat shop like labor and/or nearly unregulated toxic to the environment type manufacturing they receive an incredibly high tariff. Nations that are roughly the equivalent in environmental protection and wages are virtually free trade. This would cancel out the competitive advantage other nations have while encouraging businesses worldwide to adopt better practices towards both the environment and their workers. I will freely admit I know next to nothing about economics but this does seem like a good compromise.

Nap, what you’re suggesting is (if the major national powersdo not exercise their veto power) that president Donald Trump could exercise theadministration’s almost supreme determination of USA’s foreign policy toinstruct our ambassadors to lobby for U.N. agreement that would to some additionalextent compromise ALL national sovereignty powers be subordinated in favor of negotiatedU.N. protection of the earth’s environment?
[Consider that the USA is among the major nations that areeach empowered to veto any specific proposal put before the U.N. assembly].

I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

Both the quality and price of products are affected bythe time and quality of labor that was devoted to the products. (Note;differing quality of labor command differing wage rates).

The price advantages of imports from lower-wage nationsexist even among their mass-produced products; labor is required to create andmaintain the mass production tools, assembly lines and infrastructures tosupport the production of goods].

It’s difficult, (if not unfeasible) for agreements primarilydrafted to address environmental issues to also remedy USA’s products pricedisadvantages to products imported from low-wage nations. They’re two separate issues.


Respectfully, Supposn
 
... They produce cheaper because of a number of factors. Sure they have low wages and this is not something we can and should do much about is my opinion. But other major contributors to the ability of cheap production are a near total lack of respect for every other aspect that influences the price setting of western producers and our dealing with this is hypocritical to say the least. ... Besides this, the entire issue will become pointless in the foreseeable future when technological advancement will allow automated production without human interference. This will make cheap production in cheap countries immediately a thing from the past.

Joey

JoeyJoystick, I’m a proponent of a unilateral trade policy described within Wikipedia’s “import Certificates” article. It remedies USA produced goods comparative price disadvantages to products of low-wage nations.

If the USA determines to address other issues, it should seek other remedies. I’m aware of no omnipotent remedy for ALL illnesses. Global human rights, environment, health, and safety are separate issues each worthy of individual considerations and likely not addressable by just a few individual remedies.

My youngest son concurs with your opinion of “automated production without human interference”; my previous 10:12 AM post addressed to Nap is my differing view of mass-production.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
JoeyJoystick, I’m a proponent of a unilateral trade policy described within Wikipedia’s “import Certificates” article. It remedies USA produced goods comparative price disadvantages to products of low-wage nations.

If the USA determines to address other issues, it should seek other remedies. I’m aware of no omnipotent remedy for ALL illnesses. Global human rights, environment, health, and safety are separate issues each worthy of individual considerations and likely not addressable by just a few individual remedies.

My youngest son concurs with your opinion of “automated production without human interference”; my previous 10:12 AM post addressed to Nap is my differing view of mass-production.

Respectfully, Supposn

I guess it is about matter of opinion. I hear what you're saying, but I do not like the idea of unilateralism. We are all in it together, so in order to move forward we will have to do so together I think. At the end of the day time will tell us whether the decisions made will be the right ones. I am worried about this line of thinking. It may be a short-lived advantage for the US, but in the long run I think that it will not be beneficial. Actually quite the opposite. In the long run it will likely cost more than it produces. In addition to this you will alienate yourselves from the rest of the world. And that is the quickest and surest way to fall down from the pedestal on which the US of A is sitting right now. You will only stay there if you have friends. SO my advise; make friends and keep your friends. Don't alienate them and subsequently scare them away.

Joey
 
Back
Top Bottom