How To Tell Who's Serious About Reducing the Federal Deficit

PrintSmith wrote: With regards to #2 from RT, do you really think that China wouldn't respond with tariffs of their own on what they do import from us or negotiate with South Korea for a KIA plant instead of with GM for one that builds Buicks? Smoot Hawley should have taught all of us what happens when you attempt to levy protectionist tariffs, shouldn't it? Regarding equal trade instead, how exactly would you propose to do that? By limiting the amount of goods that China is allowed to import into the nation? Wouldn't that have pretty much the same effect of reducing even further the amount of what China purchases from us?

Imports from China and other countries would have a duty collected at the port. The problem is that much of the crap that is imported is just that...plastic crap! We have regulated ourselves out of many industries and it's about time we reign in the EPA and other obstructionist. If we eliminate income taxes and corporate taxes...that's a start.
Smoot Hawley was in a different time and age. I am not advocating tariffs for balanced trade partners like Canada or in balanced trade industries. The imbalance of trade with China is staggering. Additionally, we are funding the Red Army.

PRintSmith wrote: I'm also a bit slow on the uptake as to how a trade imbalance with China causes an increase in the deficit incurred by the general government, unless what is being proposed here is a means of increasing revenues to the federal treasury. I don't think increased tariffs will really produce more revenue anymore than increasing income taxes upon a single segment of our population will, but I'm willing to entertain the argument if it can be made.

I am not advocating increase tariffs for revenue generation. The tariffs would create a balanced playing field...China pays it's workers just $3 USD per day with no benefits or matching taxes versus $ 56 USD per day plus required benefits and matching tax payments in the US. How in the heck can any industry compete against a competitor who can get labor at 1/10th?

Also, I would require a tariff on outsourcing of services by US companies ( i.e. call centers and etc.).

The tariffs would assist some industries to stabilize and gain a competitive edge on the Chinese. The only positive for illegals was that many US manufacturing plants would able to hire them and cut their employment costs by 30% - 50%.

PrintSmith wrote: ...but how about some of you addressing the points being made regarding being serious about the deficit and what, in your opinion, needs to be done with regards to it. Moody's has opined that the AAA rating of the United States my be put in jeopardy...

PS I agree and think we are already dug too deep, and past the point of return. I have posted ideas in other similar threads. I agree with many of the ideas from the deficit commission.

The changes required to reverse course are so drastic that they will never be implemented in time by the DC crowd. Dems won't cut entitlements and Repubs wont raise any taxes for any reason.

However change is coming, and it will be forced at some point by the bond market. (Good bye AAA credit rating and hello much higher interest rates). It may be wiser for citizens to prepare for it. Those who now depend most on gov't are going to be hurt bad IMO.

This YouTube skit reminds me of the way our Congress is dealing with the looming federal deficit. Congress is the warship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNX4xqlXJE

Doing anything meaningful would be the political equivalent of throwing yourself on a hand grenade. I doubt we have many that are willing to sacrifice their careers for the country, surely not enough to pass anything.

Residenttroll wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: With regards to #2 from RT, do you really think that China wouldn't respond with tariffs of their own on what they do import from us or negotiate with South Korea for a KIA plant instead of with GM for one that builds Buicks? Smoot Hawley should have taught all of us what happens when you attempt to levy protectionist tariffs, shouldn't it? Regarding equal trade instead, how exactly would you propose to do that? By limiting the amount of goods that China is allowed to import into the nation? Wouldn't that have pretty much the same effect of reducing even further the amount of what China purchases from us?

Imports from China and other countries would have a duty collected at the port. The problem is that much of the crap that is imported is just that...plastic crap! We have regulated ourselves out of many industries and it's about time we reign in the EPA and other obstructionist. If we eliminate income taxes and corporate taxes...that's a start.

Smoot Hawley was in a different time and age. I am not advocating tariffs for balanced trade partners like Canada or in balanced trade industries. The imbalance of trade with China is staggering. Additionally, we are funding the Red Army.

PrintSmith wrote: I'm also a bit slow on the uptake as to how a trade imbalance with China causes an increase in the deficit incurred by the general government, unless what is being proposed here is a means of increasing revenues to the federal treasury. I don't think increased tariffs will really produce more revenue anymore than increasing income taxes upon a single segment of our population will, but I'm willing to entertain the argument if it can be made.

I am not advocating increase tariffs for revenue generation. The tariffs would create a balanced playing field...China pays it's workers just $3 USD per day with no benefits or matching taxes versus $ 56 USD per day plus required benefits and matching tax payments in the US. How in the heck can any industry compete against a competitor who can get labor at 1/10th?

Also, I would require a tariff on outsourcing of services by US companies ( i.e. call centers and etc.).

The tariffs would assist some industries to stabilize and gain a competitive edge on the Chinese. The only positive for illegals was that many US manufacturing plants would able to hire them and cut their employment costs by 30% - 50%.

So the tariffs you propose are protectionist tariffs aimed at allowing national companies to compete nationally with Chinese goods. All well and good if your aim is to increase the cost of living for the people of this nation and protect national industries, but those same tariffs won't help a bit when it comes to exporting the goods that the protected national industries produce, in fact, it will harm them and the national industries will be restricted to the national market, which is a finite one, which means that those industries will only have one customer, the other people living in this nation.

Factories are being built in China because that is the area of the globe that is experiencing the greatest growth in commerce. We have already gone through that same growth cycle in this nation. We have electricity all across our nation, we are no longer building to supply a large segment for the first time. The roads that we build, such as that occurring in our community at this time, are not being built where none existed before for the most part, but simply expanding that which already exists. It takes longer and is more expensive to expand Schaffer's crossing, because it has to be kept open as the expansion takes place, than it would take to build the road where no road previously existed. Even if we were paying those construction workers the same wages as their Chinese counterparts, it would be costing us more, in time and treasure, to expand our roads than it would cost them to build new ones to allow their rural communities greater access to commerce.

What will serve Caterpillar better long term to help that company prosper? Building the equipment here using labor and raw materials at our costs or partnering with a Chinese company and building the equipment closer to a larger market for their goods using Chinese labor and Chinese raw materials? We both know the answer to that question, don't we RT? Caterpillar can't build here and ship there, especially if a retaliatory import tariff is raised by the Chinese in response to one on their goods, and have their product compete in the market with a similar piece of equipment built by a Volvo plant located in China. In fact, it becomes less expensive for Caterpillar to build there and ship here because here is a smaller market than there and it is less expensive to build in the largest market and ship to the smaller one than it is to build and ship to the largest market from the smaller market.

Just as this nation experienced tremendous growth the more it transformed from an agricultural nation to an industrious one, the other nations of the world will experience the same phenomena for the same reasons. When this nation was expanding its infrastructure we built here and exported the excess. We are not building infrastructure any longer, we are expanding and replacing it. China, India, and other nations are building infrastructure as they grow from agricultural to industrial economies. We can't stop that growth, we can only participate in it; and we can only participate in it if our goods and services are within a reasonable parity to the cost of obtaining it elsewhere. Making other goods more expensive here by implementing protectionist tariffs will help protect national industries for our national market, but our national market is a small one and protecting those industries won't help them establish an export market, which is a necessary component for long term survival of the industry.

How many pairs of shoes are going to be sold here compared to the number that will be sold in a nation with 5x our population? Does it make more sense to build the factory in the place where you will sell the most shoes or the fewest for the company that makes the shoes? Tariffs don't alter logic RT. Placing a tariff on Chinese shoes will only raise the cost of shoes above what it needs to be for the people living here who need to buy shoes. It won't make it cheaper to make shoes here for all of us. It won't help the shoe factory located here manufacture more shoes because it will still cost more to make the shoes here and export them to outside markets. We might still have a shoe manufacturing segment in our economy, but it will be serving only a domestic market, therefore a small one, with little to no growth potential and always financially weaker than the same market segment in economies outside of this nation. So what do you do if you are an American shoe manufacturer? You build the factory to make the shoes where the market has the potential for high growth and you build in the capacity to export to the market that is static. Tariffs can't, and won't, alter that logic.

ckm8 wrote: Doing anything meaningful would be the political equivalent of throwing yourself on a hand grenade. I doubt we have many that are willing to sacrifice their careers for the country, surely not enough to pass anything.

Not doing anything about it is also. Ask the incumbents who lost in Nov.

neptunechimney wrote:

ckm8 wrote: Doing anything meaningful would be the political equivalent of throwing yourself on a hand grenade. I doubt we have many that are willing to sacrifice their careers for the country, surely not enough to pass anything.

Not doing anything about it is also. Ask the incumbents who lost in Nov.

It is interesting that the hard right and hard left both want to stop the tax deal.

This is from the right. Even excluding the presidential race, 2012 should be interesting.


"After all, we have come to expect Republican Senators to be spineless and incapable of standing up on principle. It is who they are. The “club.” A group of self-promoting, power-hungry fools who are more concerned with maintaining camaraderie with turncoats like Lisa Murkowski, pushing earmarks and getting re-elected than in doing what’s best for the country. Save one or two exceptions, they repeatedly violate their oath to defend the Constitution and forsake even the slightest bit of devotion to fiscal responsibility or respect for their constituents."................
"If House Republicans cannot fight for constraint and reduced spending on something as straight-forward as this, then the new members coming to town should demand new leadership, and we should be readying primary challengers for those who get it wrong."


"

http://www.redstate.com/

It's "interesting" because as with most compromises, there's something in it for EVERYBODY to hate. That's why they call it "compromise."

I have always liked the definition that a compromise is something that leaves both sides feeling they gave in too much. In this instance, the conservatives gave in too much on the continuation of unemployment welfare, coastal salmon money for land locked Nevada among other concessions and the progressives feel they gave in too much with regards to letting the rich keep too much of their own money.

The only concession that neither side made was to the amount of government spending of deficit dollars. Continued compromises along these lines will only slit our national throat a little slower with a slightly duller blade. It will take longer and hurt more, but the end result will still be the same.