The costs and benefits of producing or importing.

I'm Supposn said:

Ahlevah and James972, you'd reduce the embarrassment due to flaunting your ignorance if you first read what it is you presume to criticize.

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a liberal tariff tax is a tariff no matter how you disguise it. Sorry!!

I'm Supposn said:

Ahlevah and James972, you'd reduce the embarrassment due to flaunting your ignorance if you first read what it is you presume to criticize. Respectfully, Supposn

Click to expand...

James972 said:

a liberal tariff tax is a tariff no matter how you disguise it. Sorry!!

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James972, information is a remedy for ignorance. Deliberately denying an opportunity to become informed is stupid. I sympathize but can suggest no remedy for your conditon.
I'm not sorry. Your ignorance is of no embarrassment to me.

I'm Supposn said:

James972, information is a remedy for ignorance. Deliberately denying an opportunity to become informed is stupid. I sympathize but can suggest no remedy for your conditon.
I'm not sorry. Your ignorance is of no embarrassment to me.

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So why don't you explain it to me, and I don't mean by talking about "market acceptable bananas." I don't really care about bananas. I care more about value-added goods, like the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of airliners Boeing plans on selling to the Chinese. I assume Boeing would receive export credits for delivering unfinished aircraft to China, with Boeing then completing fabrication of the jets there. How would the aircraft be valued from the time they left the U.S. incomplete until the final fabrication in Chinese factories? Who would do the valuing?

I'm Supposn said:

Ahlevah and James972, you'd reduce the embarrassment due to flaunting your ignorance if you first read what it is you presume to criticize.

Click to expand...

Sir, I'm not an accountant, lawyer, economist, or mathematician, but I'm sure some of the same people who dreamed up the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich have already plotted for the destruction of this proposal should it ever come into practice. How do I know this? Because they get paid a lot of money to do that sort of thing. They tend to be intelligent, too, much smarter, in fact, than the average congressional staffer or bureaucrat who's trying to figure out how to better engineer an economy or pick taxpayers' pockets.

Ahlevah said:

So why don't you explain it to me, and I don't mean by talking about "market acceptable bananas." I don't really care about bananas. I care more about value-added goods, like the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of airliners Boeing plans on selling to the Chinese. I assume Boeing would receive export credits for delivering unfinished aircraft to China, with Boeing then completing fabrication of the jets there. How would the aircraft be valued from the time they left the U.S. incomplete until the final fabrication in Chinese factories? Who would do the valuing?

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suppose if Congress passed this Import Certificate act, they'd designate the U.S. Customsand Border Protection Agency with that task. I would suppose there'd be annually updated guidelines published.

Only the value of the goods that will pass through USA's borders aresubject to this act.
Exporters must request their goods to be assessed and agree to pay the assessment fees that defray federal direct expenditures due to this trade policy. No request, no certificates issued. Certificates are transferable.

No goods enter the USA without surrendering certificates of sufficient face value to cover their assessed values.
Surrendered certificates are canceled.

Respectfully,Supposn

I'm Supposn said:

Ahlevah, I​

suppose if Congress passed this Import Certificate act, they'd designate the U.S. Customsand Border Protection Agency with that task. I would suppose there'd be annually updated guidelines published.

Only the value of the goods that will pass through USA's borders aresubject to this act.
Exporters must request their goods to be assessed and agree to pay the assessment fees that defray federal direct expenditures due to this trade policy. No request, no certificates issued. Certificates are transferable.

No goods enter the USA without surrendering certificates of sufficient face value to cover their assessed values.
Surrendered certificates are canceled.

Respectfully,Supposn

Click to expand...

Regardless of which agency issues the certificates, whether it's in Homeland Security or Commerce, that's an easy one to set the line on. Any bureaucrat the federal government wants to put up against the army of lawyers,; accountants; algorithmic-creating, quantitative mathematical geniuses; economists; consultants; etc. in private industry is going to be at a decided disadvantage, since so much money is at stake. For example, the number of parts that go into building a modern airliner is in the hundreds of thousands. Labor hours are in the tens of thousands. That leaves a lot of wriggle-room in placing a value on an unfinished aircraft from the time it leaves Boeing's plant in Washington until final fabrication at a plant in China. I'm sure Boeing can find someone who'll sign off on most of the value placed on the aircraft in the United States while more of the actual labor and assembly is conducted in China, since it's cheaper to assemble aircraft there. I mean, as an extreme example, imagine buying all of the part here--avionics from Rockwell Collins, APUs from Honeywell, engines from Pratt & Whitney, etc., packing them up, getting a big, fat export certificate, and then shipping all of the parts to China for final assembly. Most of the value of the plane, if assembly is done in China, would be here, because the parts were procured here, while the profit would accrue to Boeing and its Chinese state-owned partner, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac). Meanwhile, Boeing would have the certificate to sell, correct?

And how would this work with intellectual property, which is where modern economies are or are headed? If Apple designs an iPhone here, it costs, say, $300 to produce in China, but it can be sold in the United States for $1,100, which bureaucrat at Customs is going to determine the export value of the design that went into that phone? Who or what is he going to rely on for the information necessary to do that? I'm supposin' it would be Apple and its employees, and if you ask the folks in Cupertino they would probably give a figure closer to $1,100 than $300 and they would have the lawyers and accountants to back up that claim in federal court, if necessary.

So what, if anything, am I missing here?

Ahlevah said:

So what, if anything, am I missing here?

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You're missing that silly liberals believe libcommie govt is magical. Hayek called this the Fatal Conceit. A liberal believes in govt the way a child believes
in Santa Claus. Its honestly just that bad.

Supposin has 10001 other ways for govt to interfere with the economy too. It's death by 1000 cuts because in a free country they won't come out and admit to being communists.

James972 said:

You're missing that silly liberals believe libcommie govt is magical. Hayek called this the Fatal Conceit. A liberal believes in govt the way a child believes
in Santa Claus. Its honestly just that bad.

Supposin has 10001 other ways for govt to interfere with the economy too. It's death by 1000 cuts because in a free country they won't come out and admit to being communists.

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I'm skeptical of government, too, but I also think Adam Smith's invisible hand is doing a great job of building a one-way technology boulevard to Beijing. As an aside, some of my skepticism comes from personal experience. Before going to work for the State Department, my sister worked for the Commerce Department within the bureau that issues licenses for export of high technology. She's well educated, with a masters degree in international relations from one of the country's top schools of diplomacy. She also speaks four languages. So her intelligence or knowledge wasn't the problem. Many good people apparently worked there. The problem was there weren't enough of them. This agency was understaffed and overwhelmed with requests for licenses, and, of course, if a chief executive from a well-connected company called in a favor from his congressman, they were required to jump. China and corporations that wanted to sell there comprised a large part of the problem. Obviously, they still are. So when I hear a presumed dolt like Trump say something to the effect that we're giving away the crown jewels to the Chinese, I tend to agree with him.

Ahlevah said:

... So what, if anything, am I missing here?

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I think you're missing a lot.
I couldn't understand why an entity would wish to purchase a Boeing aircraft and have it shipped to them as major components. The only scenario I conceived is China wanted to install top secret military devices too expensive to retrofit. But China has high technology and production capabilities, in such case they would do it all themselves. (Putting that question aside, I don't understand what's your question?

Why couldn't the U.S. Federal agency estimate USA cost or price value for the major sub-assemblies of a Boeing aircraft packed and delivered to a USA port of departure? (Although that price would exceed the price of the aircraft delivered in the USA and then flown to China).

The Import Certificate policy is only applicable to tangible products and it doesn't “work” on intellectual property. Regardless of what value exporters attribute to their cargo's book titles or the gown labels, congress would probably draft the law as to not determine the value of a book title or fashion label. The law would probably be drafted to assess it at the lesser price which would be the cost of producing such a (physical quality) book or gown in the USA. In general, imports and exports are assessed in the same manners.

Regarding your example of an apple iPhone, all assessments are based upon values in the USA, expressed in U.S. dollars. Foreign production costs are inconsequential to this policy.

I suppose your next questions are retail or wholesale prices; packaged for the consumers or for producers for which the items are integral to their products, or distributors that repack the items? The U.S. Congress has lawyers advising them as to how to draft legislation.
Almost all of our proposed federal laws and regulations have gone through those sausage grinding processes.

Respectfully, Supposn

Ahlevah said:

I'm skeptical of government, too, but I also think Adam Smith's invisible hand is doing a great job of building a one-way technology boulevard to Beijing. ...

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Ahlevah, I have read and appreciate “Wealth of Nations”.

Import certificates are transferable and can be changed as are differing denominations of nation's currency. They can be traded in global competitive markets. Their face values are based upon the adjusted assessed values of USA's exported goods.
If certificate prices go high, it becomes feasible to export USA goods at lesser price compensated by the higher valued certificates that are acquired due to the export transaction.
Simply by exporting USA goods, additional certificates can be issued; it is not possible to corner the certificate market.
If there's an effective USA demand for any foreign item, the market could not deny that demand.
Import Certificate policy is global, treating all foreign nations, all industries, all goods in an equitable manner and it's very sensitive to markets' behaviors.

Respectfully, Supposn

I'm Supposn said:

I couldn't understand why an entity would wish to purchase a Boeing aircraft and have it shipped to them as major components.

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For the same reason Airbus ships parts from Europe to Mobile, Alabama for assembly here: It's cheaper. In China's case, Boeing is teaching the Chinese how to assemble airliners. For Boeing, having the assembly done in China guarantees access to the Chinese market. And Chinese workers are paid less--a lot less-- for this high-technology work. In other words, Boeing can make more money on each airliner it sells. Never mind if the technology it's transferring, such as the fabrication of assemblies made from composite materials, is dual-use technology that was funded by the U.S. taxpayer.

I'm Supposn said:

Putting that question aside, I don't understand what's your question?

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I laid out a couple of practical examples of how I believe this proposal is flawed. If you think I'm wrong, where am I wrong?

I'm Supposn said:

Why couldn't the U.S. Federal agency estimate USA cost or price value for the major sub-assemblies of a Boeing aircraft packed and delivered to a USA port of departure? (Although that price would exceed the price of the aircraft delivered in the USA and then flown to China).

Click to expand...

How would the bureaucrats estimate the cost of a unique item such as the power panel for a 787 Dreamliner?

I'm Supposn said:

The Import Certificate policy is only applicable to tangible products and it doesn't “work” on intellectual property.

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Services make up about one-third of U.S. exports. And yet under this proposal companies that don't export goods don't receive credit for that. Or companies that export services while importing goods are penalized, even if their services exports, which contribute to the nation's GDP, exceed their imports. For me, that's a problem. I imagine it would be for services providers as well.

You'll have to forgive I'm Supposn, he has been pimping a "Import Certificate Policy" for so long that it helped run off people from this area of the forums.

Now there is variation on what an "Import Certificate" really is, but the concept is to use market forces to drive a reduction in negative trade balances. The issue is no matter how you cut this all we are doing is creating a broad based non-specific tariff on imports using a market based mechanism to decide where importers ultimately place those certificates.

It is also a wealth transfer system as a means to balance import and exports, where the sale of a given Import Certificate would benefit the exporters and become a cost to the importer who bought the Import Certificate.

Think cap and trade for pollution rights, with no specific targets for trade rights.

Our issue is unchanged no matter how you look at this, the whole system (like cap and trade) creates economic distortion even if market driven on who ends up using Import Certificates. The principle mechanism here is the same, limitation of participation in global market trade. In this case limitation of imports by crediting exports, which politically speaking leans towards market isolationism for those goods and services that end up without Import Certificates to use.

The reason to be against this idea ends up being how other nations react to the idea of any nation using these Import Certificates. The benefit goes to those nations using them, the penalty goes to those nations who enjoy a trade surplus with the nation using them. We expect those nations to not respond to the idea, but we know they will.

In terms of corporations extending beyond any one nation's borders, they would be the ones with a means to temporarily absorb the distortion meaning these feel good ideas end up harming localized small businesses. The idea itself decides winners and losers. But small businesses are never going to have the means to absorb the distortion, never have the means to participate in the import of goods and services produced elsewhere.

In the end the consumer is expected to pick up the tab for the economic distortion that larger corporations will pass to the market... again.

I'm Supposn said:

for any given amount of national expenditures within the GDP expenditure formula, (the conventional formula used throughout the world), annual trade surpluses increase, and trade deficits decrease their nation's GDP.

Click to expand...

What GDP assessments do not track is the side-affects of imports. That is the jobs they create and sustain for merchandising the product.

For instance, the fact that significantly costly parts (at much less costs than were they made in the US) are imported by car manufacturers from Mexico that allow the car to be marketed at a price that attracts American consumers.

Were that not the case, then total production (and thus GDP) would be lesser.

It's unwise to take the Trade numbers literally ...

Ahlevah said:

... How would the bureaucrats estimate the cost of a unique item such as the power panel for a 787 Dreamliner? ...

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Ahlevah, I'm old and during my working years I've witnessed no great differences of qualities attributable to government, or military, or non-profit, or commercial bureaucrats.
(Many, if not the majority of personnel management methods we currently practice were what was practiced by the Roman legion, which was among the world's early bureaucracies). As you pointed out, government also have some highly intelligent, competent, and rational people. They could handle your example of Boeing's unique product.
If a corporation files contradictory income tax and custom forms, there are legal consequences. There are similarities of applicable accounting logic among other transactions, other enterprises, other industries, and there are smart analysts that will make those connections.

Tasks are of some expense, require some effort, and some intelligence.
Do you believe that estimating the values of cargoes passing through our borders is beyond USA's capabilities? Other nations can, but we cannot do it?
The proposed Import Certificate policy's net economic benefit to our nation is its justification.

Respectfully, Supposn

Lafayette said:

What GDP assessments do not track is the side-affects of imports. That is the jobs they create and sustain for merchandising the product.

For instance, the fact that significantly costly parts (at much less costs than were they made in the US) are imported by car manufacturers from Mexico that allow the car to be marketed at a price that attracts American consumers.

Were that not the case, then total production (and thus GDP) would be lesser.

It's unwise to take the Trade numbers literally ...

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Lafayette, you're correct and I'm pleased that you bring up that point. GDP cannot identify domestic production that's not reflected within the price of a product, as being attributable to foreign trade.

Annual trade surpluses do ALWAYS increased their nation's GDP and trade deficits do ALWAYS reduced their nation's GDP.

The ACTUAL contribution to the nation's production of goods and services due to a positive net balance of international trade, or the detriment due to a negative balance, are of GREATER EXTENT than those balances themselves. (Refer to post #43 of this thread).

You're incorrect regarding the merchandising of imported products.

The entire economic differences between a USA and an imported products occur prior to the USA product reaching its producer's shipping dock, or the imported products are under USA jurisdiction, in USA locations, and handled by USA labor. The USA merchandising goods and service expenditures to sell imported or domestic produced cars all contribute to USA's GDP. That contribution is not due to importation, it's due to selling a car in the USA. Does the gas station or the repairman contribute more or less to our economy depending upon where the car was manufactured? But the foreign goods and services to produce and deliver a car to the USA contribute nothing to USA's GDP.

Respectfully, Supposn

I'm Supposn said:

But the foreign goods and services to produce and deliver a car to the USA contribute nothing to USA's GDP.

Click to expand...

wrong of course, foreign goods are cheaper leaving Americans more money to spend elsewhere to boost GDP and their standard of living.

I'm Supposn said:

The proposed Import Certificate policy's net economic benefit to our nation is its justification.

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obviously an import tax or tariff makes us poorer because we buy less and get poorer. 1+1=2

OrphanSlug, USA's chronic annual trade deficits indicate that we have purchased more goods and service products than we have produced. You're contending that it's wrong for us to remedy that because it “creates economic distortion”; (i.e. changes the markets).
So we must not do anything that would change the markets? We must not try to produce more, or to export more, or to create more jobs, or to what?

Exporters of USA goods can increase can effectively reduce their own costs by acquiring Import Certificates. If you, as I believe in the concept of competitive competition, we consider that to be an effective indirect price subsidy of USA's exported goods rather than a “transfer of wealth” to exporters. Do you believe exporters can retain their customers and not reduce their prices to reflect reduced costs?

We expect foreign exporting nations to immediately reduce their purchases of USA goods. But that global condition is no less detrimental and unsustainable to those exporting nations, than it is to the USA.
Reduced USA exports, issuance of certificates, goods imported into the USA, increases certificate prices and the price subsidy of USA exports.
Beyond the short term, I expect both USA's imports and exports to steadily increase; but regardless of our annual global trades' volumes and balances' proportions, USA will enjoy greater GDPs and numbers of jobs than otherwise.

Respectfully, Supposn

Ahlevah said:

... Services make up about one-third of U.S. exports. And yet under this proposal companies that don't export goods don't receive credit for that. Or companies that export services while importing goods are penalized, even if their services exports, which contribute to the nation's GDP, exceed their imports. For me, that's a problem. I imagine it would be for services providers as well.

Click to expand...

Ahlevah, any service product that may be provided off site may possibly be provided beyond the nations borders. Many companies now provide telephone and internet customer servers from low-wage nations. I could conceive a medical service working under the legal protection of a USA licensed doctor, providing Ray evaluations from a low-wage nation. I've read of future surgeries possibly being remotely performed.

USA may in the future hemorrhage service tasks more quickly than we have, and continue to bleed out our goods production tasks.

Import Certificate policy would significantly reduce, if not entirely eliminate USA's trade deficit of goods and it will increase our GDP and numbers of jobs more than otherwise; it's deliberately not applicable to scarce or precious minerals.

I believe that Import Certificate policy should not be applicable to memorabilia, or antiques, or artifacts.
I believe the policy would not work well if applied to intangibles or the values attributed to an item due to intellectual attributes. I also believe mis-applying the concept would do more harm and less good. It shouldn't be applied to service products.

Import Certificate policy is not a panacea to solve all economic problems, or remedy colds, or hangovers; it will do what is promised.

Respectfully, Supposn

I'm Supposn said:

OrphanSlug, USA's chronic annual trade deficits indicate that we have purchased more goods and service products than we have produced. You're contending that it's wrong for us to remedy that because it “creates economic distortion”; (i.e. changes the markets).
So we must not do anything that would change the markets? We must not try to produce more, or to export more, or to create more jobs, or to what?

Exporters of USA goods can increase can effectively reduce their own costs by acquiring Import Certificates. If you, as I believe in the concept of competitive competition, we consider that to be an effective indirect price subsidy of USA's exported goods rather than a “transfer of wealth” to exporters. Do you believe exporters can retain their customers and not reduce their prices to reflect reduced costs?

We expect foreign exporting nations to immediately reduce their purchases of USA goods. But that global condition is no less detrimental and unsustainable to those exporting nations, than it is to the USA.
Reduced USA exports, issuance of certificates, goods imported into the USA, increases certificate prices and the price subsidy of USA exports.
Beyond the short term, I expect both USA's imports and exports to steadily increase; but regardless of our annual global trades' volumes and balances' proportions, USA will enjoy greater GDPs and numbers of jobs than otherwise.

Respectfully, Supposn

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No, that is not what I said.

What I said is the Import Certificate creates an uncontrollable distortion as the mechanism benefits larger corporations that can absorb the costs and pass them to the consumer where small businesses would have difficulty participating. We can pretend it would be open participation but we know otherwise.

What I also said is nations impacted by this (those that import to this nation enjoying a trade surplus or not) will obviously react to any nation using Import Certificates.

The main point being Import Certificates are nothing more than a clever way of saying non-specific tariff, the purchase and use of the Import Certificate ending up on whoever was willing to sell one to someone willing to buy one. The distortion itself is uncontrollable and ultimately all of those costs (which is all a tariff is, additional cost) passed onto the consumer for the products and services impacted by the Import Certificate changing hands *AND* those that could not participate.

Trying to artificially change the dynamics of world trade like this have two plausible results all of sound economic principles. One, prices for goods and services goes up for any product and service offered on the global market. Use of the Import Certificate or not, all of them find a new equilibrium that would never be stable in the long term. Two, the risk of isolationism goes up where other nations respond with their own tariffs on what you are wanting us to export no matter how we find Import Certificates applied here.

This is all unavoidable, because the US economy does not operate in a vacuum. As Trump is discovering the hard way any tariff (no matter what you call that tariff) provokes impacted nations to respond rather poorly on what we export. You are advocating the same thing but this time having no idea who ultimately will use them, thus no idea how many products and services you change the global movement of almost overnight.

Our issue is the US has enjoyed, for way too long, the idea of importing cheap products for Walmart and Target to sell while exporting out call centers and customer support staffing. Changing that with an Import Certificate drops a bomb on the economic model of this nation. In terms of GDP it immediately impacts Exports - Imports with no real certainty on what happens with Business Investment.

OrphanSlug said:

As Trump is discovering the hard way any tariff (no matter what you call that tariff)

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good point. liberals give a simple tariff a new name, assume you are too stupid to see it when really they lack the ability to understand trade at all and so would have us grow bananas here to create jobs rather then buy from tropical climates.

Orphan Slug, in response to your post #70:
Competitive markets are by nature uncontrollable; you fault Import Certificates because it doesn't enable global markets to be “controlled”?

Please explain “larger corporations that can absorb the costs (of the certificates?) and pass them to the consumer where small businesses would have difficulty participating”? That seem a contradiction and illogical.

Can you further explain ”We can pretend it, (i.e. global trade?) would be open participation but we know otherwise”?

Yes it's acknowledged that exporting foreign nations will react negatively to Import Certificates and all direct costs of nations' issuing Import Certificates will be passed on to the issuing nation's purchasers of imported goods. It was never supposed or expected to be otherwise.

This is not an “isolationist policy”; USA is willing to purchase foreign goods to the fullest extent that the remainder of the world are willing to purchase USA goods.
USA wouldn't require or request any particular trade balancing arrangements with individual nations. The policy does not discriminate among foreign nations, or industries, or enterprises, or types of goods. On the contrary, USA subsidiaries of foreign corporations would rights equal to those of any USA corporation. They could export USA goods and acquire Import Certificates. I would suppose that no nation now treats USA corporations in a manner more liberal than this Import Certificate proposal.

Beyond immediate foreign reactions, the proposal will increase USA's annual GDPs and numbers of jobs more than otherwise.

Respectfully, Supposn

I'm Supposn said:

Orphan Slug, in response to your post #70:
Competitive markets are by nature uncontrollable; you fault Import Certificates because it doesn't enable global markets to be “controlled”?

Please explain “larger corporations that can absorb the costs (of the certificates?) and pass them to the consumer where small businesses would have difficulty participating”? That seem a contradiction and illogical.

Can you further explain ”We can pretend it, (i.e. global trade?) would be open participation but we know otherwise”?

Yes it's acknowledged that exporting foreign nations will react negatively to Import Certificates and all direct costs of nations' issuing Import Certificates will be passed on to the issuing nation's purchasers of imported goods. It was never supposed or expected to be otherwise.

This is not an “isolationist policy”; USA is willing to purchase foreign goods to the fullest extent that the remainder of the world are willing to purchase USA goods.
USA wouldn't require or request any particular trade balancing arrangements with individual nations. The policy does not discriminate among foreign nations, or industries, or enterprises, or types of goods. On the contrary, USA subsidiaries of foreign corporations would rights equal to those of any USA corporation. They could export USA goods and acquire Import Certificates. I would suppose that no nation now treats USA corporations in a manner more liberal than this Import Certificate proposal.

Beyond immediate foreign reactions, the proposal will increase USA's annual GDPs and numbers of jobs more than otherwise.

Respectfully, Supposn

Click to expand...

No, you are avoiding the argument.

Market economics are not necessarily about control, but a mixed economic model is about a balance of planned economics and market economics. The point being Import Certificates causes an uncontrollable distortion with a lean towards organizations that can afford the purchase of the Import Certificates and then pass those costs onto the consumer. There is nothing contradictory in my statements at all.

The rest of your post ignores basic economics, and entirely ignores that all Import Certificates end up being are non-specific tariffs.

OrphanSlug said:

No, you are avoiding the argument.

Market economics are not necessarily about control, but a mixed economic model is about a balance of planned economics and market economics. The point being Import Certificates causes an uncontrollable distortion with a lean towards organizations that can afford the purchase of the Import Certificates and then pass those costs onto the consumer. There is nothing contradictory in my statements at all.

The rest of your post ignores basic economics, and entirely ignores that all Import Certificates end up being are non-specific tariffs.

Click to expand...

Orphan Slug, what are you advocating? Do you seek USA economic policy that attempts to micro-manage our nation's economy, or policy of some boundaries, or of no boundaries? If what you advocate isn't apparent, your posts are less clear amd more contradictory.
Do we agree that a “mixed” economic policy is best when it seeks to “tilt” rather than “drive” markets to our advantage?

If you're opposed to our government trying to affect the global exchange rate of the U.S. dollar, I also lean toward your direction. Alan Greenspan, an ex-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board also seems less than entirely convinced that we should try, or we can generally succeed to accomplish that task].
Many, (if not the majority) Economic Policy Institute's economists are opposed to USA's chronic annual trade deficits, but they advocate reducing it through pro-active international negotiations to reduce the U.S. dollar's exchange value, rather than anything similar to the Import Certificate policy.

I'm an advocate of policy established by explicitly drafted laws and regulations rather than by ad-hoc negotiations. I'm among the proponents of government by written law rather than by constant negotiations among men. I contend that Import Certificate policy, rather than currency manipulation is the significantly superior method to increase our annual GDP's and numbers of jobs more than otherwise.

Competitive global markets are “uncontrollable”, but nations, (including the USA) continue attempting to affect currency markets to their nation's greater advantage or lesser disadvantage. Most, (if not all) of USA's more recent Democratic and Republican presidents have accused other nations of manipulating the currency exchange rates to the detriment of our nation.

Respectfully, Supposn

OrphanSlug said:

No, you are avoiding the argument. ... The rest of your post ignores basic economics, and entirely ignores that all Import Certificates end up being are non-specific tariffs.

Click to expand...

Orphan Slug, Wikipedia's description of the improved Import Certificate policy is very explicit rather than “non-specific”.
The differences between tariffs and Wikipedia's Import Certificate policy differ in details. Due to those “details”, their consequences significantly differ.

Assuming you intend to expand upon my ignoring “basic economics”, please critique Import Certificate rather than tariff policy.

Respectfully, Supposn