Then he's being a true conservative making economics a matter of personal faith.

Is pretty well known that Republicans do poorly with the economy and are more about the religion.

This post was edited by Skinned on Mar 3 2018 09:08am

Probably meant 1/4 is a nice simple figure as opposed to 6/25.

Most knowledgeable people know not to take Trump's words literally, only the NeverTrumper cuckbois think otherwise.

Those same economists told us there were good fundamentals in 2007 and declared the Fed could prevent a drastic recession in 2008.

Opposing tariffs is drilled into your mind if you study economics, but in the real world it only works if everyone is on board with the idea. (Also, no tariffs allows the destruction of domestic industry in favor of poorly made alternatives made by third world peasants who are so exploited they want to kill themselves). Globalisation benefits the labor of foreign nations. The domestic consumers appreciate it, but they endure stagnant wages.

The United States has had sugar tariffs in place for 80+ years, protecting a tiny fraction of domestic farm jobs at the cost (according to the University of Iowa) of an extra $3.5 billion in excess sugar prices annually to American consumers. This also doesn't take into account the job losses in American confectionery production due to excess raw materials costs, nor the substitution effect of high fructose corn syrup as the predominant replacement sweetener in domestic production on the public's general health.

Tariffs distort market signals. Trade wars benefit no one but the politically connected. Thanks, but we don't need an even more expansive oligarchy in this country.

Now this, a tariff to protect American steel and aluminum producers. The price will be paid by American consumers of steel and aluminum products, and at best, we get zero sum.

This guy really wants to go all out doesn't he?

Trump cultists take Trump literally until he says something verifiably false, then they claim to take him seriously and translate his lies in a favorable manner, but then Trump says something against conservative values, and then they don't take him literally or seriously.

>2.5% tax on euro cars coming to US
>10% tax+19% vat on American cars going to EU

Yes it’s about time we do something about this

You know that European cars get 19% VAT too right? The big problem with US car manufacturers was that they didn't bother adapting to EU markets for quite a while. Pickups, large SUV's and minivans are not practical in many EU countries (especially in cities). Plus many EU countries have additional taxation for cars that are bad for the environment or have horrible mpg.

So where in the US a new Corvette Stingray might be ~55k USD, in my country you'll pay around 150k EUR. And that can't be just 10% tax. Meanwhile a Ford Fiesta is about 17k EUR, compared to 14k USD. Also note that many US manufacturers just choose to make the EU market cars in Europe or other overseas nations.

And regardless, for the US automobile industry the bigger threat atm is the Asian brands. http://www.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html All EU brands rank way lower than Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Kia and Subaru. Increasing tariffs on EU car imports won't really do much in protecting the US market.

So lets leave out the 19% vat since its applied to domestic cars as well, that still leaves 10% tax compared to the 2.5% in the US. I absolutely love it how hypocritical you guys are mocking Trump for threatening reciprocal tariffs and bringing up how all economists say this and that...but you have nothing to say about your own protectionist policies? 7.5% is a huge disadvantage for American made cars. And your second and third points are absolutely correct but that doesn't take away from the point that you guys have protectionist policy in this industry and have the audacity to be critical of even a threat of leveling the field. The original point i was making was addressing Germany and Japan, both of these countries have a huge market in the US meanwhile these same countries have higher tariffs on our cars. BMW's Mercedes, VW are all beloved brands in the US that you see quite often, saying the Japanese cars are more of a threat doesn't change the fact that the Germans are also treating us unfairly.

As i'v said before i want lower tariffs, lower barriers to trade, but reciprocal tariffs are necessary to apply pressure on countries like Japan and Germany that apparently don't care about what all of the economists agree on and are doing quite fine with their protectionism.