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From The Sydney Morning Herald
Trump says trade wars are 'easy to win', but he's losing all the ones he started
If, as Donald Trump has said, trade wars are good and easy to win, why is the US losing the wars it initiated and losing so bigly?
The destructive and pointless absurdity of the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies showed up, quite predictably (to those outside the Trump administration) in a blow-out in the US trade deficit in 2018.
The deficit in goods of $US891.3 billion ($1.27 trillion) was the largest in US history. If the $US270 billion surplus in services (the element of trade that Trump usually ignores) were included it was, at $US621 billion, still the worst in a decade.
The "Tariff Man", who has described tariffs as "the greatest negotiating tool in the history of our country" and has said that "trade wars are good, and easy to win", created a benchmark for the success, or failure, of his trade policies. At this point, he’s failing.
To rub that point in, despite the tariffs on $US250 billion of China’s exports to the US, the deficit on the trade in goods with China was a record $US419 billion.
Despite the "victory" in the coercive negotiations with Canada and Mexico that led to the re-writing of what used to be the North American Free Trade agreement, there was a $US19.8 billion deficit with Canada and a $US81.5 billion deficit with Mexico – the biggest deficits in a decade.
COMMENT:-
The author of this article, Stephen Bartholomeusz, "is one of Australia’s most respected business journalists. He was most recently co-founder and associate editor of the Business Spectator website and an associate editor and senior columnist at The Australian".
He is neither a "Registered Republican" nor a "Registered Democrat" and doesn't have a dog in the fight with respect to the 2020 American Presidential Election Race (only 613 days left to go) so, obviously his opinions should be totally disregarded and any so-called "facts" in the article are totally false.
Right?
Trump says trade wars are 'easy to win', but he's losing all the ones he started
If, as Donald Trump has said, trade wars are good and easy to win, why is the US losing the wars it initiated and losing so bigly?
The destructive and pointless absurdity of the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies showed up, quite predictably (to those outside the Trump administration) in a blow-out in the US trade deficit in 2018.
The deficit in goods of $US891.3 billion ($1.27 trillion) was the largest in US history. If the $US270 billion surplus in services (the element of trade that Trump usually ignores) were included it was, at $US621 billion, still the worst in a decade.
The "Tariff Man", who has described tariffs as "the greatest negotiating tool in the history of our country" and has said that "trade wars are good, and easy to win", created a benchmark for the success, or failure, of his trade policies. At this point, he’s failing.
To rub that point in, despite the tariffs on $US250 billion of China’s exports to the US, the deficit on the trade in goods with China was a record $US419 billion.
Despite the "victory" in the coercive negotiations with Canada and Mexico that led to the re-writing of what used to be the North American Free Trade agreement, there was a $US19.8 billion deficit with Canada and a $US81.5 billion deficit with Mexico – the biggest deficits in a decade.
COMMENT:-
The author of this article, Stephen Bartholomeusz, "is one of Australia’s most respected business journalists. He was most recently co-founder and associate editor of the Business Spectator website and an associate editor and senior columnist at The Australian".
He is neither a "Registered Republican" nor a "Registered Democrat" and doesn't have a dog in the fight with respect to the 2020 American Presidential Election Race (only 613 days left to go) so, obviously his opinions should be totally disregarded and any so-called "facts" in the article are totally false.
Right?
