All Episodes
Previous Next
March 10, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:03:17
4024 President Trump's Trade War: Tariffs, Taxes and Propaganda
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Alright, in today's exercise in critical thinking, which is actually kind of redundant, there's no such thing as uncritical thinking, we're going to look at an article about a fairly dry economic subject, and I really, really want to help you understand just how you're being programmed and manipulated.
I'll put the link to the article below.
This is about tariffs, and it starts like this.
President Trump said on Thursday that he would impose stiff tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, making good on a key campaign promise and rattling stock markets as the prospect of a global trade fight appeared imminent.
Ooh, that's a lot packed in to that right up front.
So here we go. First of all, key question you could ask yourself is, hey, why don't you tell me what those tariffs are?
Stiff tariffs, what is it?
5,000%? A billion percent is it?
You need to include a headless monkey with every piece of steel and aluminum.
Why don't you give me a number?
No, we're not going to give you a number.
We're just going to call them stiff.
In other words, we're going to give you a pejorative rather than giving you the actual number.
This should be your first warning that something underhanded is going on.
That seems kind of important. Rattling stock markets as the prospect of a global trade fight appeared imminent.
Ooh, he's walking you to the precipice.
It's chaos, it's madness, it's fire and fury, right?
Well, what does that mean?
Rattling stock markets.
Well, there could be lots of good reasons why stock markets are rattled, which we'll get into in a sec.
But here's something really important.
They tell you not the facts about what's happening, but they give you a pejorative word associated with stiff words.
And then they immediately tell you of the potential downsides of what he's doing.
Well, guess what?
There are always upsides and downsides to just about everything you do.
There are visible costs and invisible costs.
There are visible gains and invisible gains.
And juggling these two is quite complex.
So here's what the media does.
When they don't like something...
They will tell you what's happening, they won't tell you the facts, and they'll immediately tell you the downside, the negatives.
But they don't say, well, immigration numbers are going up, but statistically that's going to result in massive increases in your tax.
Tax is because immigrants cost a huge amount of money.
They don't say that. Immigration is up, so diversity is good, right?
So when they tell you something, they won't give you specifics, and then they'll immediately tell you the negatives that are associated with it, and that's designed to have you react negatively to whatever's going on.
You are being programmed.
You're not being given the facts. And allowed to decide for yourselves.
You're just being programmed.
And there's this compulsive addiction.
Hop, skip, and a jump off the unholy skipping stones of negative adjectives.
Often that is really designed to just create in you a negative reaction.
And good job, government schools, for making all this possible by raising children under the iron-fisted, well, fingernail-painted fascism of feels.
So here's another thing that happens as well.
If someone starts a fight with you, someone throws a punch at you, and then you fight back, if the mainstream media likes you, then you are valiantly defending yourself against bullying.
If they don't like you, then this anonymous, abstract fight broke out.
A fight broke out!
Will... Be referenced, right?
And this is really, really important.
If they like you, they'll really figure out who threw the first punch, and sometimes they'll make up who threw the first punch, Zimmerman.
Or if it turns out that the people that they like, like Antifa, Antifact, if the people they like threw the first punch and then say conservatives are defending themselves against the violence of political terrorism, then it will say, violence erupts at a conservative, right?
Or violence erupts at a conservative speech, right?
Just mystery. Violence erupts.
So this is another way in which you're programmed.
So America is being pillaged as far as trade deals go.
We'll get into that in a few minutes.
Now that Donald Trump is fighting back, a global trade fight appeared imminent.
Ooh. See, there's no violence if you capitulate, right?
No violence at all if you capitulate.
But if you fight back, ooh, he's starting a fight.
Now, why aren't they giving you the percent of the tariff?
Why aren't they giving you the percent of the tariff?
It's quite interesting. Let me tell you what number it's less than.
It's less than 500%.
Now, why are they not telling you what the number is, the percent of the tariff?
Well, basically because back in the day under one Barack Obama, The U.S. imposed a 500% duty hike on Chinese steel.
500%! See, so they can't give you the number, because what Donald Trump is talking about is way, way less than 500%, and they don't want anyone pointing out the obvious ridiculousness of the fact that they did not scream blue-bloody murder when Barack Obama's administration, or under Barack administration...
The U.S. imposed a 500% hike on steel because reasons.
So the article goes on to say, in a hastily arranged meeting...
See, this is the new narrative with Donald Trump.
You know, he's not literally Hitler anymore.
That's become a little bit tough to maintain, especially after the Jerusalem thing.
Worst Hitler ever.
So what do they do now?
Well, what they want to say now about Donald Trump is that he's chaotic.
I mean, they've even moved past a little bit that he sees with rage about, like it's all projection, right?
Left projects all the time. So now it's just kind of random, kind of chaotic, kind of scattered.
He's just kind of incompetent.
It's just, I don't know, what time is it?
Let's do spin the wheel and magic eight ball.
What do we do now? This is where they are now, that it's all chaos.
And again, this is just projection.
What's happening is their narrative is in chaos and they're acting randomly, which is really quite fascinating.
I mean, they're even having trouble downplaying and downgrading and attacking Donald Trump for actually getting a meeting with the leader of North Korea to talk about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
That is a huge coup.
Sorry, that's not really the white paper putting it.
That is Nobel Peace Prize territory and not the affirmative action Nobel Peace Prize that was handed out to Barack Obama for showing up, but an actual step forward.
And of course, the mainstream media will never, ever circle back and say, well, we said he was destabilizing the region and provoking nuclear war, and it was terrible, terrible, terrible, him taking a strong stance with North Korea.
They'll never circle back and say that.
They'll just snip and snipe at him for all of this kind of stuff that's going on now.
But he's got the meeting, and we'll see what happens.
And... Here's the funny thing about that.
So you probably remember...
Donald Trump gave a nickname to the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, which was Little Rocket Man.
Now, the media thought that this was appalling, and they were shocked, and they were appalled, and it was horrifying, and it was a breach of protocol, a diplomatic disaster, and an international incident, and situation rooms were floating all over the place.
And it turns out that the leader of North Korea actually found this funny and made a joke about it when he was visiting South Korea.
So, to put that in perspective...
It is easier to offend the liberal media than it is a murderous dictator who enslaves his people.
A murderous dictator who enslaves his people has a better sense of humor than the mainstream media, is able to roll with things, is able to water off a duck's back, is able to shrug and laugh stuff off.
He is less triggered than the mainstream media.
In other words, the mainstream media is more reactive and emotional and aggressive and insane than a mass-murdering dictator who basically runs a giant prison camp north of South Korea.
Anyway, just something to keep in perspective.
So, the article goes on, in a hastily arranged meeting, ooh, see, everything's hasty, it's all off the wall, in a hastily arranged meeting with industry executives that stunned many inside the West Wing, Mr.
Trump said he would formally sign the trade measures next week and promised they would be in effect, quote, for a long period of time, end quote.
Okay, so let's go back about that, right?
So they have to give this narrative that Trump is just random pinball man.
And the fact that in the very first paragraph they say this was a long-standing campaign promise and now he's doing it, that's not chaos.
Come on. I mean, Trump has been talking about this trade stuff literally for decades and he devoted massive portions of his speeches to To pursuing just this very topic and telling you exactly what he was going to do.
So the fact that he's been talking about it for decades, that he campaigned on this very platform, and now he's doing it, it only comes as a surprise to people who want it to come as a surprise for reasons of creating the chaos agent narrative.
Not cool, fun, low-key chaos, but random, who knows what's going to happen next chaos.
So the same reporter, well...
The same typist said in the same article, this was the fulfillment of a long-standing campaign promise, and also that it was sudden, and what did it, what did it say?
Stunned many inside the West Wing.
I mean, what do you say?
They're stunned that Trump is doing exactly what he said he was going to do for decades and campaigned on.
They're stunned. What are they stunned at?
Are they stunned at the fact that a politician is actually keeping his promises?
Isn't that kind of bad for them and good for Trump then?
Anyway, I just think that's ridiculously funny.
It's stunning. It's chaotic.
It's random. He said he's going to do it for decades.
I mean, literally, if you put this in a movie, like this would be the character whose girlfriend says, you know, if you keep sleeping around, I'm going to leave you.
And she says this for like 10 years.
And then she says, look...
Five more, and I'm going to leave you.
And then she leaves him, and he's like, this came out of nowhere.
It's like, oh my god.
This would be bad, obvious, two-on-the-nose comedy.
And yet, this is what passes for...
What is that old saying about somebody who didn't like somebody else's fiction?
That's not writing, that's typing!
It's like, this isn't reporting. This is like stalky ex-blogging.
That's all it is. Through the bushes, Trump appears to be random.
And okay, it promises they would be in effect for a long period of time.
Because nothing spells decisive negotiations like saying, oh yeah, it's just going to be a week and then we'll go back to normal.
Hey, you want to come sit down at the table and negotiate?
Things are going to go right back to normal after a week.
Of course he's going to say they're going to be in effect for a long period of time.
That's how you get people to come sit down at the table, right?
Everybody's commenting on this.
All they're doing, like, not just Twitter and comment sections, but even in the mainstream media, when you talk about things like this, all you're revealing is that you've never been involved in any negotiations for anything important.
That's all. Have you done any negotiations for anything important?
Now, obviously, I haven't done trade negotiations, but I did a lot of negotiations as an entrepreneur.
And, of course, you start and you meet in the middle.
And you have to have something to bring to the table.
And now, sometimes you bring a carrot to the table, which is, I will do something good.
Like, if you're interviewing someone, then you can offer them a job, which they won't reassume because they're being interviewed.
And sometimes you bring a stick to the table, which is, if you don't do a better job, I'm going to fire you.
I'm going to release you to something for which you are better suited.
Be free. Be free.
And, um, yeah.
Now, what can, what stick, well, what carrot can he bring to these negotiations?
Well, he can't, because the aggression has already occurred to a large degree from other countries, which we'll get into, so he has to bring a stick, and the stick is tariffs.
And then what you do is they come to the table because you're going to impose tariffs or because you have imposed tariffs, they come to the table and then you negotiate something better.
This is not complicated. And you're either so consumed with hatred that you just think that, you know, Trump cures cancer.
Trump puts oncologists out of work!
Trump doesn't care about the children of cancer researchers.
Or you're just simply ridiculously incompetent and are writing about things you don't have a clue about.
Anyway. Ah!
Goes on to say, the action which came against the wishes of Mr.
Trump's pro-trade advisors would impose tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum.
Ooh! You see?
You see how this goes.
You see how this goes.
See, 25% is 10 times less than 500%.
10% is 50 times less.
Than 500%. So they could say, they could possibly say, of course, that Trump is imposing tariffs far lower than those imposed under Obama's administration, but they don't.
Now, they don't mention anything about Obama's administration, obviously, because, anyway.
So, here's the interesting thing.
Remember I said, if they give you details, and it's not always that they do, they will give those details, no context, and they will immediately talk about the negatives, so that you have a negative view of Of these facts, right?
Imposed tariffs, 25% on steel, 10% on aluminum.
And then the article goes on to say, effectively placing a tax on every foreign shipment of those metals into the United States.
Oh! Wow, did you hear that?
The sound of the universe unraveling.
As those on the left are now very pro-free trade and against taxation.
Oh! You see, if he raises tariffs, he's going to impose taxes on every ineffective taxation.
Tariffs are effective taxation, and that's bad.
You see, the moment government policy is risen, or is proposed, the left immediately starts worrying about the tax implications.
Right? Wrong!
They never, actually never worry about the tax implications.
But now you see they're very, very concerned about free trade, and they're very, very concerned about Yeah, of course, when Head Start was a $100 billion program that completely failed to raise the IQs of visible minorities and underprivileged kids in the American school system, just massive waste of time and resources.
They said, well, Head Start is proposed, but it's going to raise a lot of taxes and the science behind it is non-existent.
No, they don't. It's got to bring equality, right?
So, this just, you know, being...
You're being programmed to have a negative response to this.
Just come up with the vague sort of sense that the tariffs are bad and the stock market is goosed and it's chaotic and it's an effective tax increase.
Do you remember? Was it Nancy Pelosi?
A thousand bucks? That's nothing!
A thousand bucks being given to you by your employer because of the Trump tax cuts?
That's nothing! Well, these tariffs aren't going to raise things $1,000 per employee, but apparently now that's really bad.
See, if you're given $1,000, that's nothing.
But if there's a tariff that's going to raise the price of things a couple of bucks, well, that's just a complete disaster.
I mean, it's so terrible.
Like, it literally is deranged.
I mean, I'm not...
It's not hyperbole for you.
It literally is deranged.
It's like a drug addict trying to get the drugs.
Just lie, lie, lie. This is what the addicts do, right?
All they do is lie. So we got to talk a little bit about dumping.
And just so you understand, I'm not usually a big one for pejorative terms, but this one is fairly accurate.
So what is dumping?
So dumping is when manufacturers in some other country sell products in your market at prices far lower than they would charge in their home country or do charge in their home country, right?
So if, let's just take a silly example, so if they sell an iPhone for $800 in South Korea, and then they put it in your country at $200, well, that's not valid.
Costs of transportation and other language help files and so on, and documentation and imports, customs duties maybe, or just compliance with American standards, which may be different for certain electromagnetic fields and so on.
How can they sell something far cheaper in your country than they do in their own country, not even counting the costs of transportation, particularly for something as ridiculously heavy as steel.
And I guess it's like that old joke that was around.
Not the joke, a little IQ test riddle.
What's heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?
I understand. Aluminum is lighter, but of course, a ton of aluminum is the same as a ton of steel.
I just assume there's more aluminum in that time.
It's bigger. It's bigger. And so something like an iPod or an iPad, you can ship, you know, a billion of them per ship or something like that.
But steel is very expensive. So how on earth do you get steel, say, from South Korea to America at prices far lower in America than it would ever be in South Korea?
Like, that makes no sense at all.
So dumping. When foreign manufacturers...
Can sell something in your country far lower than for what they charge at home or at prices even below the cost of production.
Now that's quite interesting.
Prices below the cost of production.
Naturally, naturally, naturally, naturally, if you are producing goods below the cost of production, You're going to go out of business, right?
I mean, again, this is an old entrepreneurial joke that I had drilled into my head back in the day when I was helping to co-found a company, which was, you know, one manufacturer, the head of manufacturing turning to the chief financial officer and saying, while it's true, while it's true that we are losing a dollar for every widget we manufacture, we're going to make up for it in volume, right?
The more you produce, the more you lose.
Success is failure. So you can't go below the cost of production for any sustained period of time.
Now, of course, if you're a steel company in America, if you set prices below the cost of production, you're going to go bankrupt.
So how do foreign manufacturers get away with it?
Well, because part of their production costs is paid for by government subsidies.
So, this is going back a couple of years, 2011.
Half of the world's 46 top steel companies were state-owned.
They were owned by governments.
Not just subsidized by governments, owned by governments.
So, they're not in the same quasi-free market system that American companies are.
Half of the world's top 46 steel companies owned by the state.
And it's one thing if you give government subsidies to a local manufacturer and you sell stuff in your own country.
It's not great. It's not free market stuff.
It's a violation of the non-aggression principle.
But if you do it in your home market, it's up to your taxpayers and your voters to deal with it.
It's not an international trade concern.
But international trade rules prohibit the sale of subsidized goods to other countries.
You understand, right? If the government pays for half of the production of your steel, then you can sell steel At a lower price, because you have the involuntary, non-profiting, quote, shareholders of forced and enslaved taxpayer money propping up your company.
So if it costs 500 bucks to make an iPhone, you sell it for 800 bucks.
Not that that 300 bucks is profit, but because there's other transportation costs and all that.
But just to make the iPhone... 300 bucks, you sell it for 800 bucks.
Okay. What if the government pays you, your company, 250 bucks for every iPhone you make?
Well, now your cost of production is not 500 bucks.
Well, it still is 500 bucks, but your net cost of production after government subsidies is 250 bucks, which means that you can sell it for 550 bucks and still make a $300 profit.
Again, I'm ironing out a lot of stuff, but you understand, right?
We understand this in sports.
You can't get massive amounts of steroids.
You can't boost your blood.
You can't use all of these performance-enhancing biochemicals.
And you can't use a jetpack or a water ski when you are running and or swimming.
And so... No parachutes in the long jump.
That's just the way it has to go.
So performance enhancing drugs are cheating.
We all understand that, right?
And subsidies are cheating internationally.
So it's not legal.
And there's this World Trade Organization, blah, blah, blah, that's supposed to be able to handle all of this kind of stuff.
But you have to make a complaint first, which means you have to understand economics, which means you have to actually care about American workers and not want to destroy capitalism so you can replace it with your own horrible dictatorship.
So, that's kind of important.
Now, people say, well, but you see, China can produce steel for so much less because their labor is cheaper.
Not really. So in China, labor is actually less than 10% of the cost of steel.
And therefore, it really doesn't have a huge amount to do with how much the steel finally costs.
And of course, you have to transport it and insure your transportation ships.
And it's big and complicated.
And of course, you have to have a lot of people to help you transport all of that stuff.
So it's not labor, fundamentally.
And it's not just direct subsidies either.
Energy subsidies are key as well.
So a lot of these governments will subsidize the energy.
And of course, as you know, it takes a huge amount of energy to produce steel and aluminum.
I keep wanting to say aluminum like I was still a kid.
But if you subsidize the energy which is used to produce the steel, you can say, well, we don't subsidize the steel.
Yeah, but you subsidize the energy.
If you pay half the energy cost, you're hugely subsidizing the steel.
Now, There are rules around...
Let's go a very brief tour into NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, right?
North America is Canada, US and Mexico are kind of free-trading stuff.
Now, why free trade requires thousands and thousands of pages of regulations and documentation is...
Well, it's not free trade.
Pro tip, not free trade. But...
What happens is, if China wants to send steel to America, it has a lot of problems.
But, here's the thing.
Now, if China sends raw steel to Canada, and then Canada sells it to America, then Canada, by law, has to say, this isn't Canadian steel, this is Chinese steel, and therefore it's subject to duties and restrictions and so on, because China's not part of NAFTA. But,
if China sends raw steel to Canada, and then Canadians turn it into stuff, products, steel rails, anvils, I don't know what you mixed with iron, I think, but, you know, I'm not an expert at this stuff, but if they add the magic manufacturing meat to it, then suddenly it is a Canadian product, right?
Now that's a problem. Because the Americans can't get hold of the cheap products.
Chinese steel, but the Canadians can, which means that the Canadian manufacturers of steel-based products can sell for less than the American manufacturers of steel products.
So Canadians import huge amounts, and this is like Mexico as well.
The raw steel comes from China, right?
They then make products from the Chinese steel, and then they can sell them into America.
And this is one of the reasons why the question of exceptions for imports is floating around at the moment.
So Canada is like the steel launderer, the steel whisperer.
They're kind of like a brokerage for the Chinese manufactured material.
And NAFTA is kind of the backdoor by which Chinese steel gets into the U.S. market by being reshaped in Mexico or in Canada and then being sent to America.
So, you can't really compete.
You can't really compete. There's one Chinese businessman who's imported over a million metric tons of aluminum ingots into Mexico.
That's a lot. That's over 6% of the entire supply in the entire world.
And he stores them there with the goal of avoiding tariffs from the United States.
So, this cheesy sleazy backdoor entry into the US market is very important.
Now, Canada and Mexico, they love this stuff.
Because it means that the Chinese governments and other governments will facilitate or invest a lot of money into plants in Canada and Mexico.
And Canadian and Mexican investors can also, in their own countries, or in each other's countries, although it generally tends to go north to south, can also create all these manufacturing plants with this magic cheap steel subsidized by Chinese virtual slave labor.
And then they can manufacture stuff and dump it into the U.S. at prices that the U.S. manufacturers can't hope to compete with.
And this is why Trump has been talking about this stuff.
And this is why Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA. And why did the U.S. send all of its operations to Mexico?
And everyone would say, oh, well, it's because of labor costs, labor costs, labor costs.
Well, as I pointed out, labor costs are a very small component of this kind of stuff.
And, of course, there is overpriced labor in the United States.
But what happened was American corporations, particularly the auto sector, could make more money by building their plants in Mexico or in Canada Using parts or raw materials imported from China or Asia as a whole.
So that is what Trump has been talking about.
And here's a tweet that was quoted from Rick Henwood.
He says, And this is the non-work that these typists in the mainstream media don't do.
That's a double negative. But you know what I mean.
They don't do the work, right?
It's not that hard. Not that hard to figure out.
Go to the list of steel producers.
I'll put this link below. Go to the list of steel producers in the world.
Now, in the top 39 companies, steel producers in the world, not one is in Canada or Mexico.
Not one.
So where are they getting all their steel from?
It's not that hard. Now, there is steel production in Canada, but there are indications that Canada imports more steel than it produces.
So, to go on with the article, the president told more than a dozen executives that he wanted the tariffs to apply to all countries.
One executive in attendance said...
Mr. Trump argued that if one country was exempt, all other countries would line up to ask for similar treatment, and that metals could end up being shipped to the United States through exempted countries.
Now, that is already happening, although that is illegal.
But that's not the major issue.
The major issue is the conversion of the raw materials, the cheap subsidized by slave labor raw materials, into finished goods which are then sold into the US, discounted because of the cheapness of the raw materials, which US manufacturers don't have access to.
Again, it's not that hard to complain.
This is not brain surgery stuff, but they have an agenda and they don't want to give you facts.
So, article goes on to say, Mr.
Trump's authority to impose such sweeping tariffs stems from a Commerce Department investigation that concluded last month that imported metal threatened national security by degrading The American industrial base.
The administration has said it wants to combat cheap metals flooding into the United States, particularly from China, but a broad set of tariffs would fall most heavily on allies, especially Canada, which supplies steel and aluminum to American companies.
Well, that is an important consideration.
Steel is like the upside-down, tip-of-the-pyramid base metal for national defense, and therefore, if you become entirely dependent upon imports, then if there are military conflicts or military problems, And China shuts off its supply of steel to you.
Let's just sort of take a mainstream view of it.
Well then, you're kind of, while you're up, craps creak without a steel paddle.
You can't really function or run your military.
Similar with oil, of course, but America has much greater oil reserves and I guess can go and Trade a burger for half of Venezuela's oil reserves these days.
So, the quote goes on.
This is from Trump, from the article.
People have no idea how badly our country has been treated by other countries, Mr.
Trump said on Thursday. They've destroyed the steel industry.
They've destroyed...
The aluminum industry and other industries, frankly.
So that's the quote. Also wanted to mention too, like if you're involved in an, this is just a pro tip, if you don't want to be a complete jerkwad, if the president calls you to a meeting about sensitive trade negotiations and you run immediately to the press, you're kind of a douchebag.
Sorry about that. You just are.
Shut up. Okay, you want it to fail for a variety of reasons, but why go talk to the press?
That's just terrible. So, just so you understand this, Chinese government.
They support the country's steel industry.
They got cash grants, equity infusions, government-mandated mergers and acquisitions.
They get preferential loans.
They get directed credit. They get subsidies for land use.
They get subsidies for utilities, particularly energy.
They get price controls on their raw materials.
They get preferential tax policies, state-mandated benefits.
They get beneficial currency policies.
And let's just say the Chinese government Version of the Environmental Protection Agency is not exactly ringing these horrifying, spewing satanic mill plants with the tanks of environmental regulations.
So that's quite a lot.
That is not a free market.
And the question, of course, is what do you do when you're faced with this kind of subsidy?
The Chinese government has maintained a majority share in the top producing Chinese steel producers.
And this is one of the reasons why you get these cities in the middle of nowhere going up in China.
So American steel producers, they're not competing with free market enterprises, but with governments that can print money, borrow money, raise money, and do whatever they want.
That's not fair. Do you want to get into the ring with a guy who's been jacked up on steroids for the past 40 years?
If you're not in pro wrestling, that's 20 years.
No, 10. So he's still in the prime of his youth.
It's not fair. It's not fair.
I mean, it's almost as unfair as governments, say, in Canada, handing out massive subsidies to dino media, to the legacy media, Well, actually, that is kind of fair because it's just going to make them softer and less believable as they suck at the government teat of subsidy and therefore can no longer legitimately criticize the government that feeds them.
Anyway. So Friday, the article goes on Friday morning, Mr.
Trump tweeted that a trade war would be a positive development in the context of the United States' current position with its trading partners.
See, they're very, very concerned, you see, about a trade war.
A trade war. So anti-war, the mainstream media, I mean, the mainstream media never dealt with its fundamental compliance, collusion, and encouragement of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, its continuing avoidance of printing the casualties of that war.
They don't do a lot to criticize American imperialism around the world anymore.
So they don't mind hot wars.
They don't mind blow-up children wars.
They don't mind 100,000 bombs being dropped on the Middle East under the Obama administration.
But a potential trade war?
That's terrible! Rouse up the troops!
We've got to fight the trade war!
Hot war that destroys people, blows up people, kills people, destroys entire regions, unleashes a migrant wave into Europe, threatening to swamp and destroy it.
Well, that's fine. Oh, we'll print.
Pictures of a kid on a beach in Turkey to arouse the ovarian sympathies of reactive people in the West.
That kind of war?
Great! Trade war?
Whoa, is that going to help US workers?
Disaster! And they quote a tweet in the article, Donald Trump tweet.
When a country, USA, is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good and easy to win.
Example, when we are down 100 billion dollars with a certain country and they get cute, don't trade anymore.
We win big. It's easy.
The article goes on. Shares of American automakers,
all large consumers of steel and aluminum, declined, as did shares of Boeing, a large exporter that could be hurt if other nations retaliate against United States tariffs.
Okay, so just so you understand what this means, there's so much money that's being forcibly herded into the stock market that Danwell doesn't want to be there.
Your money, if you're in America and other countries around the West, your money is basically...
In the stock market in the same way that people on the Titanic were in lifeboats.
It's either that or die.
Like either the government takes it or you invest it in the stock market, right?
Through 401k plans, RSP plans, as they're called in Canada, and so on.
So because I call it the supercharged stock market, because there's so much money being forced and herded into the stock market, people start looking for short-term profits.
If these tariffs go up or if something more preferential is negotiated, then what will happen is the American manufacturing sector will reinvigorate.
But that's going to take time.
So what that means is if you're a manufacturing company, and this has already happened, 500 new workers hired by a steel manufacturer just on the anticipation of all of this.
So if you're a steel manufacturing company or you're a big company that has steel manufacturing potential, you're going to start to resurrect that potential.
But that's going to take time. And that's going to divert money that you've got saved up Into investing in upgraded machinery and all the capital investment, the business-to-business stuff that really drives the economy, but very few people actually see.
What that means is that there's less money to pay in dividends.
It also means that there's less money available for these companies to do what they've been doing ever since the financial crisis, well, until Trump came along, which was to basically buy back their own shares, which props up the price of their shares.
And so given that instead of money sitting in the bank or being used to buy back their own shares or being paid out to bribe, in a sense, shareholders to stick around with dividends, it's actually going to be invested in creating jobs and producing things.
Oh no! The financial classes are being hit by actual productivity that benefits American workers.
Don't you remember when the left used to care about American workers and wanted them to do better?
Well, good times.
Long ago. Long ago, but good time.
So yeah, it makes sense.
The financial parasites are dumping shares because the money is going to be going to American workers instead of the aforementioned financial parasites.
So, this next bit is just amazing.
It's just amazing.
The article continues.
Hmm... It also elicited a swift and severe response from Republican lawmakers who said the action would ultimately hurt American companies, workers, consumers, and the economy.
Oh, sorry.
Such shills!
God! Heaven for a fact we shine a light in this squirmy, squid-ejecting tentacle nest of predation.
All right. So, months of heavy pushback from American companies who use metals in their products.
Huh! Funnily enough, companies that use metals in their products don't like it when the price of those metals might go up.
In other words, when American companies are no longer using products that can be massively subsidized by Chinese slave labor, well, they're not that happy about it.
And here's the funny thing.
This is how it's framed, right?
Let's just say you're some ABC manufacturer.
You use a lot of steel or aluminum or whatever.
And then the price of that might go up.
You know what your major concern is?
I'll tell you what it's not.
Your major concern is not that it's going to strain international relations.
Your major concern is that your profits might go down.
Because massive slave labor-backed subsidies might be withdrawn.
So yeah, the price of things is going to go up.
I understand that. That's not fun for you.
But the idea that, like, it's going to interfere with their profits.
Just say it's going to interfere with their profits.
But you see, they can't say that.
They have to create this massive hand puppet of, oh, well, see, these companies are just majorly concerned with international relations and retaliatory trade acts.
They want to make money. Come on!
Of course they want to make money.
But this idea that the heads of these manufacturing concerns just all get together and say, well, it's going to be good for the workers.
It is slave labor that we're exploiting here.
But, you know, those international relations could be strained.
It's not how business works at all, even remotely.
It's not how it should work. The heads of the business are responsible to their customers, their employers, their shareholders.
They're not responsible for international relations.
But putting it in that portrayal makes them appear objective and somehow independent from the profit motive, which is completely false.
What's interesting is that they say that these manufacturers that are kind of profiting off semi-slave labor, they're negative about it, and the Republican lawmakers are also really negative about it, which just tells you that the Republican lawmakers are bought and paid for by the big corporations.
Of course they are. Go say this, animatronic Republican puppet.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, really, really concerned about American workers.
These corporations and these lawmakers, the Republicans and others, and the New York Times, so concerned about American workers, you see.
That's why they make sure that massive amounts of hyper-subsidized third-world labor doesn't come in and undercut the wages of American workers.
Wait, no, they do exactly the opposite.
They don't give one tiny rat's behind about the American workers.
I'll tell you why they're doing all of this stuff at the end.
Now, having painted it in as negative a possible light as humanly imaginable, and having covered up the actual motivations of the people opposed to it, now we have to get back to chaos and frenzy!
The article goes on to say, See, again, same paragraph! It's a frenetic and chaotic morning.
What does that mean?
Shut up and tell me the facts you hack!
Just give me the facts.
Stop telling me what to think.
Just give me the facts.
And I will come to the conclusions myself.
But of course, if you're afraid that the facts don't support your conclusions, you just have to pepper people's faces Cheney-style with a bunch of bullcrap negative language.
It's chaotic, it's frenetic, it's random, but it's a long-promised thing.
How do you square that circle in your mind?
Well, you don't. You can't. Now, the article goes on to say, Mr.
Trump raised the specter of action.
Ooh, it's a specter.
Specter detector. It's a ghost.
It's an undead.
Mr. Trump raised the specter of action with an early morning Twitter post saying, our steel and aluminum industries and many others have been decimated by decades of unfair trade and bad policy with countries from around the world.
We must not let our country...
Now, this is interesting.
This article would have you believe two opposing things, without mentioning them, of course, right?
Number one, that the steel companies...
In America, and the aluminum companies in America, the manufacturers of the raw materials, are somehow against the tariffs that will directly benefit them.
If the tariffs go up...
In other words... See, the tariffs aren't punitive.
The tariffs are compensating for the slave labor of the Chinese taxpayers and other taxpayers around the world.
It's all a form of slavery, as I've talked about for many years.
The story of your enslavement, you may have heard of it.
But it is restoring things to...
The natural market value.
That's natural, right? It's like something that slows you down is not cheating if you're artificially sped up, right?
It's like if someone plays the movie at double speed and you say, take that double speed and play it at half speed, you're not slowing down the movie, you're returning it to its normal speed, right?
And so the tariffs are designed to...
Restore the price of the imports to the point where it actually reflects the cost of production.
In other words, they counteract the slave labor-based subsidies poured into these manufacturers around the world.
It's fair. You may not like it.
I don't like it. I'd rather it be free trade everywhere, but we live in the world that we live in, not in the world of ideals.
So they would have you believe these two things.
Number one, that these...
US companies, these manufacturing companies, don't want these tariffs.
But this makes no sense.
Of course, they're conflating the two things.
See, there's the manufacture of the raw goods, and then there's the manufacture of the finished goods.
Right, so the person who makes the steel and the person who makes the rails, for the train track, just to take a simple one, right?
Okay, you understand?
Now, the manufacturer who makes the raw material desperately wants these tariffs because they're competing with these massively subsidized international companies.
So, of course, they want the subsidies.
Ah, but, you see...
The people who are buying the steel products, the rails, rather than the raw material, they don't want the tariffs because they want that cheap, subsidized international steel to come flowing in through Canada, through Mexico, through other places, through that phase of being turned into a finished product.
But they're conflating these two things, as if somehow all U.S. manufacturers are against this tariff.
But they're on opposite sides of this.
From a profit standpoint, not a moral standpoint, a profit standpoint, they're on opposite sides of this equation.
The raw material producers want the tariffs to keep the heavily subsidized raw material out of the U.S. The people who want the finished products, they want the finished products to keep coming in, so they don't want any of these subsidies.
So they just conflated these two things, the raw materials versus the finished products.
And then there's a little chart, origin of U.S. steel imports.
Canada, 5.1%.
I think this is tons.
South Korea, 2.8 billion.
Mexico, 2.5 billion.
Brazil, 2.4 billion. And then down, China, 1.0 billion.
And this should just raise you a basic question.
It's a basic logic question.
Let's just take South Korea, right?
2.8 billion.
Number two, import of U.S. steel.
How on earth is it possible that it's cheaper than To get steel from South Korea than it is from up the road.
You know, Allentown, as the old Billy Joel song went.
How is it possibly cheaper?
Say, well, South Korea, does it have high labor costs?
Well, sure it does. Highly educated, highly motivated, high IQ population.
Of course. So how is it cheaper to manufacture steel in South Korea, ship it all the way around the world?
All of the energy that takes, all of the environmental risks that takes.
How is it cheaper? I mean, it's just a basic question.
How is it cheaper? To get steel from South Korea.
Literally, this is like saying, I could order dinner to be delivered from a town just up the road.
From a pizza place to a pizza place.
I got a pizza place one kilometer up the road.
I'm going to order my pizza from there.
But no, there's a pizza place a thousand miles away.
That's where I'm going to order it from.
Understand this makes no sense whatsoever.
So this is your first question. How is it cheaper to get steel from South Korea and sell it below what American manufacturers can sell it by?
Now, of course, if there are these restrictions, right, these tariffs, then environmentalists should be very happy about it because that means that there's less energy being spent transmitting or, sorry, moving all of this steel all over the place.
It's the same thing with oil, right?
Valdez and all that. If you're an environmentalist, you want local production of oil rather than oil being shipped all over the world.
The article goes on to say, advisors have been bitterly divided over how to proceed on the tariffs, including whether to impose them broadly on all steel and aluminum imports, which would ensnare allies like the European Union and Canada, or whether to tailor them more narrowly to target specific countries.
Bitterly divided.
No, they're just divided.
Bitterly divided again.
I just want to throw as many negative pepper in the eyeball words as humanly possible.
Ensnare allies like the European Union and Canada.
Okay, pro tip, guys.
The European Union and Canada are focused on their own needs, not America's needs.
They're not allies in a trade war.
Now, you're talking military allies.
Yeah, okay, but they're not allies as far as this goes.
Article goes on to say, imposing tough sanctions would fulfill the president's promises, but could tip off trade wars around the world as other countries seek to retaliate against the United States.
Foreign governments, multinational companies, and the Pentagon have continued to push against broad tariffs, arguing that the measures could disrupt economic and security ties.
I don't know how they do it.
I don't know how they do it. Literally have no idea how they do it.
Different species to me. Foreign governments, multinational corporations and the Pentagon, they don't want broad tariffs.
Well, of course, foreign governments don't want broad tariffs because they enjoy dumping...
They're products into the United States market.
Of course, they don't want tariffs.
Of course, multinational companies.
Sure, multinational companies don't want that either.
See, for a foreign government, the profits are privatized and the costs are socialized.
That's kind of a fascistic model, right?
Well, it's the same in communism as well, just a little less obvious.
So... If you are a government running a steel company, then you can rip off money from all of the taxpayers at the point of a gun.
You can use it to subsidize your production, and then you take a whole bunch of the profits home with you.
I mean, it's a pillaging.
It's a criminal activity.
It's a shakedown, basically.
So yeah, foreign governments, multinational corporations, and the Pentagon.
Don't you remember when the left used to be opposed to what multinational companies wanted?
Don't you remember when the left used to be a little bit suspicious about the motivations of the Pentagon?
It's been a while, friends, but now we can use them against Trump.
Hey, friends, let's hug.
And see, here's the thing.
They also have to say that the U.S. is somehow initiating attacks against other countries in this trade war.
No. The other countries are dumping their products into the American markets, often through these proxy backdoors of Mexico and Canada.
So they're saying we're not going to be taken advantage of anymore.
Now this is going to provoke...
It provokes a war if you fight back.
You know, if you just give your money to the mugger, there's no violence.
But if you fight back and drive the mugger away, oh, look, you're being violent.
I mean, this is like it's so retarded.
Now listen. The recession that occurred 2007-2008.
A bunch of foreign countries basically did this.
They said, okay, we're going to subsidize our steel industries, even though this violates international trade rules.
It keeps their citizens employed.
It keeps donations coming from those corporations.
And it reduces their costs...
Of unemployment insurance and retraining and welfare and healthcare costs and all that kind of stuff.
And so there was more steel being produced than could be consumed in their home country.
But they wanted to, because remember, American housing, massive amounts of steel being used and other raw materials.
So everybody in the world is feeding the U.S. market.
And then what happens is the U.S. market collapses.
10% of U.S. housing stock goes empty.
40% of wealth in the U.S. is wiped out in a year or two.
And nobody wants to build anymore in the US. So these guys got all this excess production.
What are they going to do? Well, they want to keep everyone employed.
They want to keep all those pseudo taxes running.
You give a subsidy, you get money back in taxes.
And so they said, okay, we've got excess steel relative to the US's diminished demand.
So we're just going to dump our excess steel cut rate on the United States market.
And this destroys American jobs.
This undermines and collapses the American steel industry.
And, of course, foreign countries are doing all of this by violating international trade laws.
And this is kind of one of the things that has happened.
The article goes on. On Thursday, Canada, the European Union, and other countries said they might have no choice but to retaliate in response.
Ooh. It's so rich.
I hope I'm not going too long.
I find this stuff absolutely fascinating.
I hope you join me in the delight of going through the Saluthi and Mobius strip of this kind of insane double, triple, quadruple infinity standards.
See, here's the thing. Trump is responding to dumping, directly or indirectly, into the U.S. market.
So the other countries, violating agreements, violating international trade rules by dumping.
And maybe they found this back in through NAFTA, right?
The Mexican-Canadian manufacturing stuff that I talked about.
But the U.S. is responding to all of this.
So if another country violates trade agreements...
Then it's good to respond.
See, the European Union, this is the article, the European Union and the other countries said they might have no choice but to retaliate.
No choice but to retaliate.
So, if they can paint the U.S. as the aggressor, then the other countries, they have no choice.
They have to do it. It's the right thing to do.
It's the good thing to do. But you see, if the U.S. is responding to other people dumping, other countries dumping, well, that's bad.
You see? You've got a principle.
If you're responding to unethical or illegal trade practices, it's a good thing to do.
So that's why they have to portray the United States as being the aggressor.
This is why they don't talk about foreign subsidies.
This is why they don't talk about NAFTA. This is why they don't talk about millions of ingots of aluminum sitting in Mexico.
This is why they don't talk about adding the layer of manufacturing.
This is why they don't talk about energy subsidies.
Why don't they talk about any of this stuff? Because they have to portray Trump as initiating a trade war.
He is responding to a trade war.
America is finally fighting back against immoral and possibly illegal trade practices.
But they're saying if someone...
Is doing something wrong in terms of trade, you have no choice but to retaliate.
But you see, that's only for the European Union and other countries.
If Trump does it, it's bad.
It's chaotic. It's wrong.
It's dark. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, called the measure, quote, blatant intervention to protect U.S. domestic industry.
Yeah, because no other countries are doing that at all.
Everyone else is the pure and kapistan-free market of infinite private property rights.
It's all happening over there.
European Union had been a close security ally of the United States for decades.
He goes on to say, We will not sit idly while our industry is hit with unfair measures that put thousands of European jobs at risk, Mr.
Juncker said. Now they're reporting this with sympathy.
But this is exactly what Trump is saying.
And they're responding. They go on to say, but the tariffs have divided industries, workers and policymakers.
American manufacturers of steel and aluminum pressed the White House to take action against cheap imports, which they say hurt their ability to compete.
I'm sorry. I should be more professional, but it's just you and me, right?
So, American manufacturers of steel and aluminum press the White House to take action against cheap imports.
Okay, so you've got big companies who are saying, do these tariffs.
And then they just earlier said there are all these multinational corporations, all these other corporations that don't want these tariffs.
Why is there no differentiation between these two?
Because they can't, right? Because then it makes America appear as it is.
The victim of a lot of these policies.
Take action against cheap imports which they say hurt their ability to compete.
You've got CNN hitting on Infowars because CNN has an average listener age of 60 Infowars are a lot lower.
They're trying to hit on Infowars because they can't compete.
Now you see, when the media likes you, they'll talk about facts.
When they don't like you, then they will pretend that facts are somehow your opinion.
Your opinion. Right?
So, if they don't like you, like if they like you, they'll say, well...
Then cheap imports hurt your ability to compete.
If they don't like you, they'll say cheap imports, which they say hurt their ability to compete.
See? It's just what they're saying.
It's not true.
It's not a fact.
It's just what they say.
Gotta watch these subtle tricks, man.
These people are good at badness.
We're going to say companies that use steel and aluminum in their products say tariffs would raise their costs, eating into profits or forcing them to raise prices or lay off workers.
Yeah. And, yeah, here you see the left, defending large corporations at the expense of American workers.
Now, as far as tariffs go, well, let's look at these sort of basic facts.
So back when I was a wee baren, there was massive boycotts against South Africa over apartheid.
Because you see, the lack of rights possessed by the blacks was terrible, and therefore there were sanctions, there were tariffs, there were deplatforming of investment, there were boycotts and so on, because it was terrible how the blacks were being treated.
Now, Chinese slave labor and other forms of slave labor are fueling a lot of these subsidies in these semi-dictatorial countries' steel industries.
But apparently you see tariffs designed to fare up and square up the subsidies of slave labor, both directly and indirectly through taxes.
Well, that's just really bad. Now, for those who don't know, I'm a free trade guy.
Private property rights, free movement of goods.
Fantastic. But here's the problem.
Why does it matter?
Now, there's an old argument.
A friend of mine who's now an e-com prof told me when I was younger.
It's a good argument. And it goes something like this.
So let's say Japan comes up with a cure for AIDS. America comes up with a cure for cancer.
Now, Japan says to America, we don't want your cure for cancer.
Should America then say to Japan, we don't want your cure for AIDS? You can see that argument, right?
Now, here's the problem, though.
When foreign governments subsidize the production of raw materials, and therefore of finished goods, and then dump them into the US market below what the US companies can compete with, then this throws millions of people out of work.
Millions of people out of work.
Now normally, if millions of people are thrown out of work, then what happens is the purchasing power of the country is diminished, which means that there's less money available to buy foreign goods, because people aren't making money anymore, and therefore the market declines.
And therefore people then move to other industries, and there's a whole creative destruction that goes on.
But what's happened since the 1960s in particular Is that we've got things like unemployment insurance, there's welfare, there's healthcare that is provided for people who no longer get it through their employers, there are retraining programs, there is people stuck in dead-end communities who end up turning to drugs, which then the government has to pay for the treatment, the crime, the hospitalizations, you name it, right?
So I'm much more for the free market, but what the problem is that the government is facing us now is that when these thousands of people are thrown out of work, and remember, for many, many, many years, America has lost 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month.
These are real human beings, and the government has to pay untold, ungodly amounts of money for all of this stuff.
So the government, by getting people back to work, And it was well north of 300,000 jobs that were just created recently per month in Trump's America.
It's a huge win for the government, of course, because not only do they get taxes from the people who are working, but they no longer have to pay the unemployment, the health care, the welfare, the retraining, you name it, for the people who are unemployed.
So if you're a taxpayer, you need to get people back to work.
And that's the basic reality.
So people can get mad at Trump and get mad at all this stuff, but that's the basic reality.
Now, the solution, of course, in the long run is freedom.
Free trade and to government subsidies.
And this, of course, is to some degree what these international trade rules are supposed to encourage to prevent governments from dumping their products into other markets.
The solution is freedom.
The solution is shrinking, extinguishing the role of the government in the economy.
We need a separation. Of state and economy for the same reasons we needed a separation of church and state.
It's too much power.
It's too much control. It will always be abused.
It will always escalate.
The solution in the long run is freedom.
But that's not happening tomorrow, and it's not happening next year, and it may not happen in my lifetime.
The solution is freedom.
▲
Export Selection