Trump threatens to expand and more then double tariffs against China - Polidicks

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fi-trump-china-tariffs-trade-talks-20190505-story.html President Trump turned up the pressure on China on Sunday, threatening to hike tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. Trump’s comments, delivered on Twitter, came as a Chinese delegation was scheduled to resume talks in Washington on Wednesday aimed at resolving a trade war that has shaken financial markets and cast gloom over the world economy. Trump had turned up the heat Friday by saying he would raise import taxes on $200 billion in Chinese products to 25% from 10%. He’d twice pushed back deadlines — in January and March — to raise the tariffs in a bid to buy more time for a negotiated settlement. But on Sunday, Trump, who has called himself a “tariff man,” said he’s losing patience. “The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!” Trump tweeted. In his tweets, Trump also threatened to slap tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese imports, covering everything China ships annually to the United States.

Why is he doing this? Is he planning to bring sweatshop labour to the US and want to get China out of the picture?

I mean he's already got camps full of people in confinement who're legally prohibited from ordinary employment. The US prison system already acts as a source of slave/sweatshop labor, so there's (ugh) precedent for people whispering in his ear to go on. But I don't think there's a plan like this, the trade war is because Trump only understands that the US has a large trade deficit with China -- and that phrase is what he understands, not the ramifications of what it means. He thinks tariffs will reverse the trade deficit and encourage domestic manufacturing for his blue-collar cult base. Unfortunately for him that's not even slightly how it works.

I'm still waiting for wallstreet to realize that Trump's tariffs are a permanent feature of republican economics instead of a negotiating tool. Trump is trying to build a solid wall around the US economy while forcing everyone else to take down their trade barriers, but that's not going to work.

That's....not exactly a 'no'.

"Then" is for time. "Than" is for comparisons. I never want to hear anything about wanting a businessman in politics after this term ever again.

Except these weren't pillars of republican economics until Trump got elected. Republicans haven't historically supported tarrifs, and to this day some in congress are still pleading with Trump to stop this shit. The reason Trump is going down this route is because he and his fringe lunatic economic advisor believe trade is a zero sum game. They are going to end up crashing the economy so effectively that, as opposed to previous Republican regimes, even the rich and corporations are going to suffer severely.

I'm curious, is there any realistic way to fix the trade deficit with China?

China has the unique ability of being able to use high technology while also not having an advanced enough population to not rule out mass cheap labor. Once China works out of that rut of a technological gap, their manual labor will likely increase in cost and cut their effectiveness for cheap manufactures. The trick is getting a government who will support that advancement.

We still haven't had a businessman as Preident yet. We've only had a con-artist.

Well they were also politicians above businessmen. As awful as it sounds we actually do need politicians in politics. We just don't need back-asswards regressive types who currently control the Senate. People who actually want to advance the country, and not just keep it stagnant in a horrible fever dream with rose colored glasses.

there's a few, manufacturing processes are changing quite rapidly and automation will remove a significant portion of China's labor advantage, having good government policy to support manufacturing and closing loopholes that allow companies to offshore supplies is another way, and their changing demographics are already driving them to change as well. Vietnam is becoming the new china in the race to the bottom for cheap labor, followed by that belt of countries in south east asia between vietnam and india.

There's just a comma missing. The title is actually a subversive reference to Trump's diet and its effect on his waistline. "Trump threatens to expand and more, then double tariffs against China."

I was going to expand on the title by saying something about Trump ballooning and more, and then deciding to increase tariffs but I thought it would be lost.

Nothing more depressing then watching some coked out special needs oompa loompa ruining the future for us young folks.

Never in a century would I have thought that the Bretton woods system just be abandoned because some animate dorito decided "fukkit lol".

Try "Watching the rest of the government do nothing about it."

Maybe America needs to compete with the Chinese slavery industry...........

We are already competing. Although I'm sure there are plenty of people in the US that see "untapped potential" in the prison industry so we might see new heights of depravity yet.

was just a joke at going back to the good ol days not actually my stance

I keep saying this to the point of sounding like a broken record: its literally cheaper to automate than it is to feed and house a person in the U.S.A prison or not.

I don't understand where this prison labor meme cones from, almost none of the prisons in this country do any sort of manufacturing anymore

If only that were true. Products Made By Prisoners Responsible for 60% of its sales, the Department of Defense is actually Unicor's biggest customer. It's not too surprising when you consider inmates make a great deal of the goods that keep our armed forces safer on the battlefield. The government proudly states that they do everything from manufacture body armor to combat uniforms, and even retrofit big rigs and Humvees. Wired also reports that as recently as five years ago, prisoners played a big role in manufacturing Patriot missiles. Slave labour never ended, it just became socially acceptable to consider convicts subhuman and not pay attention to what happened inside prison except the occasional joke about prison rape.

wow that's fucking horrible. I thought prison labor was a state level thing.