{"id":388440,"date":"2018-12-09T13:20:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T12:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/mr-tariff-lewrockwell\/"},"modified":"2018-12-09T13:20:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T12:20:10","slug":"mr-tariff-lewrockwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/mr-tariff-lewrockwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Tariff &#8211; LewRockwell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200px\" src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?episode_id=16403866&amp;theme=light&amp;playlist=false&amp;playlist-continuous=false&amp;chapters-image=true&amp;autoplay=false&amp;live-autoplay=false&amp;episode_image_position=right&amp;hide-likes=false&amp;hide-comments=false&amp;hide-sharing=false&amp;hide-logo=false\" width=\"100%\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Donald Trump just jumped the shark calling himself, \u201cMr. Tariff.\u201d\u00a0 He believes a trade deficit is akin to stealing the wealth of a nation.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Under normal conditions a trade deficit is simply a reflection of the difference in comparative advantage of one country\u2019s workers over anothers.\u00a0 And the value of the currency is supposed to rise and fall to offset that state of affairs over time.<\/p>\n<p>Donald Trump has, in the words of David Stockman, \u201cA 17th century view on global trade.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is one born of a complete misunderstanding of how and why trade imbalances occur, why they will re-balance if allowed and why, ultimately, they are irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p>But, Trump can\u2019t or won\u2019t see it that way.\u00a0 He refuses to accept that we are the creators of our persistent trade deficit with China.\u00a0 That the trade deficit stems from running budget deficits and applying Keynesian counter-cyclical monetary policy or, worse, QE to protect domestic asset prices.<span class=\"amazon-element-wrapper-custom align-right\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-med-image\"><span class=\"amazon-image-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/What-Has-Government-Done-Money\/dp\/1610166450?SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;tag=lrc18-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=1610166450\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/61vDzn9%2Bq3L.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"amazon-image amazon-image-medium\"\/><\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-title\"><span class=\"appip-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/What-Has-Government-Done-Money\/dp\/1610166450?SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;tag=lrc18-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=1610166450\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">What Has Government Do&#8230;<\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-author\">Murray N. Rothbard<\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-lowest-used\"><span class=\"appip-lowest-used\"><span class=\"appip-label label-lowest-used\">Best Price: <\/span>$19.95<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-formatted-price\"><span class=\"appip-formatted-price\"><span class=\"appip-label label-formatted-price\">Buy New <\/span>$6.50<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-disclaimer-new\"><span style=\"display:block;color:#888;font-size: .80em; padding: 0 0 3px 0;\">(as of 10:55 EST &#8211; <span style=\"cursor:pointer;\" title=\"Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date\/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.\">Details<\/span>)<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-button\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/aws\/cart\/add.html?AssociateTag=lrc18-20&amp;SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;ASIN.1=1610166450&amp;Quantity.1=1\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/wp-content\/mu-plugins\/amazon-ad-link-lr\/img\/buy-from-tan.gif\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It also stems from our being the world\u2019s reserve currency which places an insane demand on the Fed to keep the flow of dollars rising to liquefy global trade.<\/p>\n<p>He complains that international tariffs regimes are unfair.\u00a0 But, as Stockman has consistently pointed out tariff levels globally are nearly non-existent running at around 3% on average.\u00a0 This is the period of freest trade we\u2019ve seen in the era of the modern nation state, but Trump looks at these niggling things, these small things and can\u2019t see the forest for them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mr. Inflexible<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It speaks of ideological possession on the subject.\u00a0 It speaks to inflexibility of mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGermany taxes our cars too high, slap a tariff on them.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/12\/thomas-luongo\/mr-tariff-ups-the-ante-on-china\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump just jumped the shark calling himself, \u201cMr. Tariff.\u201d\u00a0 He believes a trade deficit is akin to stealing the wealth of a nation.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t. Under normal conditions a trade deficit is simply a reflection of the difference in comparative advantage of one country\u2019s workers over anothers.\u00a0 And the value of the currency is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-388440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}