Trump says Canada charges us a 270% tariff on agriculture, and that's why he instituted the aluminum and steel tariffs—he's tired of other countries taking advantage of unfair trade deals previous administrations have established. I put some effort into finding a list of the tariffs that other countries have against us, and the tariffs we have against other countries, and I can't find any illuminating data. I've found some sources that give the average tariff percentage of all imports by country, but that's averaged over all their trade partners, so not especially useful. I realize that trade restrictions are more than just tariffs—you can have quotas and subsidies, which have a big impact. But I'd like some raw data to know if Trump is accurate when he says that other countries are taking advantage of us.

Frankly I'm quite surprised that reading Reuters, CNBC, FoxNews, none of them mention the facts on trade. They all just seem to intimate that Trump is out of line, but no one is refuting his contention that we're getting taken advantage of.

Can anyone present some data for either side? This isn't politics, so please keep your editorial takes to yourself.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but China is cheating and thieving off the US on a massive scale, and has been for a very long time. When they petitioned to join the WTO, they made promises, which they have broken. When they went to negotiating table at the threat of WTO action under Bush/Obama, they made promises, which they broke, and didn't change their behavior at all.

It's a travesty and it's cost the US trillions of dollars, and is the main reason why US wages are stagnant and the US economy has been sluggish compared to historical norms for over a decade.

China does three things:

1. Puts large tariffs on any goods they deem their national interest would be better served by restricting foreign manufacturers. They do this across a very broad range of industries.

2. Use widespread lawfare, threats, IP laws against corporations for which they want to extract concessions/technology transfer, in a way where approvals deliberately get held up for months or years in court or in local planning. They also quietly do underhanded pressure on company executives including blackmail.

3. Uses those tariffs and lawfare to force corporations to form "joint partnerships" with Chinese companies if they want access to the Chinese market. These joint partnerships involve:

a) Complete transfer of all intellectual property, collectively worth trillions in hard-won knowhow
b) 51% ownership given to the Chinese government in perpetuity of this joint partnership
c) Building/moving of factories in/to China
d) Training of local Chinese workforce and managers and technicians

This is pretty the exact opposite of free trade. China have free access to our market with close to no restrictions The Chinese market is closed to anyone without handing over the entirety of their wealth and knowhow and moving their factories to China and hand over half of all future production to the Chinese government in perpetuity.

It's the greatest theft of wealth in history, what's more to an extremely creepy communist dictatorship with expansionary aims. This isn't a partisan issue. That the media frames Trump as being against free trade is pure fake news, and a shocking indictment on the fourth estate. The current system is highly anti free trade, in a way that helps China at the expense of the US. Forcing a change to this system is pro free trade. Allowing it continue, like Obama did, is anti free trade.

Lest anyone is enough of a dickhead to think this is a partisan issue, and bring politics into it, I'll leave the last word to senate minority leader Chuck Schumer:

Schumer praises Trump's trade crackdown:
This is an issue where the facts are clear, there is really no dispute, and yet the fake news media have this 180 degrees wrong. It should make you never listen to anything the media ever says on anything again.

A good read is the US Trade Representative's Report. It's comprehensive and goes into detail on the extreme level of anti free trade practices. If you want to understand the issue in detail, you should read it. Basic summary:

This is one of the greatest travesties in US history that this has been allowed to go on, particularly when reigning in China and forcing them to play by the rules would have been easy to do for a president with a spine and a brain and caused almost no problems to the US even five years ago when China was more dependent and had no choice but to cave.

Interestingly for trading, there's this bit of recent news. Basically, the Koch brothers, for whatever reason, want Trump to impose no tariffs on China, which means the status quo continues to the detriment and eventual bankruptcy of the US

https://qz.com/1297547/trumps-trade-...urb-his-power/

A bill was brought to remove Trump's ability to levy tariffs...it was killed by the senate leader, but there is backing for it. I think that's part of the reason (along with a strong economy) for the recent small rally in SPY. This news was heartening to those afraid of a trade war.

As for the rest of the world, my uninformed sense is that the US is somewhat freer in terms of practical barriers to entry, but that tariffs and subsidies aren't that unequal. Certainly nothing is like China.

But consider this. The US is the world-leading economy, manufacturer, researcher, with huge knowhow and advantages and original research which has driven enduring advantages, from Intel to 3M to Coke to Apple to financial products. The US leads almost everything in efficiency and knowhow, from chemicals to global consumer product brands to pharmaceuticals to chips to planes to agriculture. Low wage workers are available, lower than Europe for example. High technological efficiency is world leading. It crushes global software, a multi trillion dollar industry. Local product prices are low relative to wages. How does such a country have a vast trade deficit if the playing field is equal? Consumer culture alone can't explain it.

This is somewhat laughable. The US is a tax haven and demands other countries follow rules that it then refuses to implement, namely the OECD's common reporting standards.

Basically, all that stuff you wrote about China being a terrible place is equally true for the US financial system with regard to how it treats the rest of the world. Which is probably the only reason the economy is still afloat.

A clerical/data sharing issue is the same as what China is doing? Put down the reefer, son.

As for how the US financial system treats the rest of the world - what the **** are you talking about? How does the US financial system stifle or steal wealth from other countries? Other countries voluntarily buy large amounts of US treasuries as investment and USD for transacting in. The US provides an open investment system for its bonds and stocks, such that all can participate in US wealth.

All countries put on some tariffs and do some protectionism, but anyone who's exported knows that the US is the freest country in the world to export your products to. Europe is substantially harder due to a mountain of pointless regulations and bureaucracy that have the effect of privileging local entrenched producers, China is near impossible to get into for many products without giving away much of your wealth and knowhow.

This false equivalency between the US and other countries is fashionable ("oh look at me, aren't I so broad minded!"), but is simply unjustifiable nonsense from someone without out a mind of their own. On trade openness, the US is nothing at all like China. It's one of the most open countries in the world, while China is one of most closed and anti free trade.

Well, the EU is upset about it to the point that it is going to put the US on a blacklist.

https://international-adviser.com/eu...ven-blacklist/

And people in the military are coming around to the idea that the US financial system poses a significant threat to national security.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...l-tool/148161/

And the US is the world's second-most secretive banking jurisdiction.

https://www.taxjustice.net/2018/01/30/2018fsi/

So I guess that's what I am talking about. But keep deluding yourself that the US financial services industry is all about rainbows and unicorns.

And what mechanism exists to ensure that foreign residents who are participating in the US financial system are paying the appropriate taxes in their home jurisdictions? The US passed FATCA, what is the equivalent law that the US has passed to ensure it is not being used as a tax haven?

Well, Trump proposed a reciprocal 'no tariffs, no barriers and no subsidies' in kind of a put up or shut up deal.



That would go a long way in curing our budget deficits if they were to agree and the US ends farm subsidies as a result.

That was a very good press conference. I hope Trump succeeds on getting other countries to follow suit.

He is also right in the press conference that other countries have more to lose from a trade war because they have multi-billion dollar surpluses. A trade war will disproportionately hurt them more than us. Therefore it's far greater in their best interests to negotiate.

Every single fake news channel in the US, most talking heads except a few notable exceptions, claim that Trump is protectionist and anti free trade. That he is hurting global free trade by trying to appeal to 50s protectionism, rather than what he's actually doing - trying to take down the massive barriers of other countries which are bleeding US wealth.

How completely ****ed in the head is the journalist class? It's mind boggling. If they're getting something that's plainly factual 180 degrees wrong, what else do they get wrong?

It's quite mind boggling.

Insisting wages are stagnant because of china when bosses/executive pay keeps skyrocketing anyway is just mindboggling to me.

This is a better video where you can hear the questions



Pretty much every answer in term of Trump's intentions is in this press conference.

Someone please create a why american are not fat and wasteful spender thread I honestly want get toothsayer answers

the canada stuff is nonesense. Does Canada put up barriers on ag products? Some, and the government also keeps prices higher for its own people. Does the US government subsidize its own farmers thus driving their prices artiifcially low? Yes. So net net both countries effectviely subsidize their farming base and unless you get rid of all subsidies in ag you arent going to get an even playing field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricu...#United_States

While not exactly on point, the Chinese E Packet Problem is one which hits close to home and is screwing over many small US businesses.

The game is rigged in a way which makes it completely impossible to compete w/ the Chinese in the US even if I gave away some products for free. It's taking an ever increasing toll and I've had to discontinue selling almost all lower priced products due to the fact it's cheaper to ship from China to the US than it is to ship from the midwest to the next town over.

how or why is that "mindboggling" to you? It's actually a very simple concept. Is the failure of marxism also "mindboggling"?

This is a stereotype that isn't really meaningful and is petty, stupid, and pointless. It's not even particularly accurate, because you can't really stereotype a country with ~325 million people that hits every notch on the spectrum regarding...basically everything. That said, we are "fat" and "wasteful" because that is naturally what happens when you are wealthy and can afford to be lazy. Sing while you are winning, your life could end tomorrow.

I wouldn't say that it's nonsense or nonesense. The problem is there's a lot of noise in trying to deduce who is getting the worst of our trade situation with Canada. As you said, we subsidize, and they institute a price floor. They also have very aggressive tariffs, which after some searching I've found are indeed between 200%–300% on American dairy products, so I guess Trump was accurate. I think the fact that Trump offered a policy of no tariffs, no subsidies, and no quotas, redounds to his credibility in trying to assess who's gaming whom. But I'm still not sure, and I don't understand why the EU and Canada are refusing a no tariff/subsidy/quota policy if they are the proponents of free trade that they claim to be.

That was an interesting article. I was aware of China's intellectual property theft and other untoward policies, but I didn't know about this shipping situation. It surprises me that our leaders have allowed China to take such unfair advantage of us.

The e-packet thing is super ridiculous, and such an easy "win" for Trump if he'd just look at it, but it probably never gets on his radar. No one left, right, or center would argue with ending this.

My read on Canada is the situation is about equal since much of the product going back and forth is agricultural.

Reading between the lines on this article however, it appears Canada is used by China and other for trans shipping on a large scale, basically hiding the origin of goods.

This seems to happen on a very large scale, hence Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum from third countries who appear not to care that they are helping China avoid decisive WTO rulings. The article below give you an idea of the length the Chinese go to to circumvent the system's rules.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese...ert-1473356054

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...an-rivals.html

This gives you an idea of the kind of stuff that China does and on what scale. In this case, Chinese dumping - deliberate actions to drive US producers out of business so the Chinese can gain a near monopoly with their often inferior products - is routed through third countries to avoid the WTO-sanctioned actions. This was $2 billion in just one yard from just one producer.

You mean to tell me something as complicated as world policy is being discuss by a bunch of well informed internet people? Where do I go to sign up for world politics. It a good thing you didn't read the subject headline.

Dude I'm living the Balkans right now around tight bodied slavic women. We all look at Americans in horror.

Is it your claim that the trade deficit is because Americans are fat? The US net exports food, so that claim is horse ****.

Is it your claim that the trade deficit is the because the US are wasteful spenders? US spending habits haven't changed much in the past 3 decades (relative to other countries) while the deficit has gone from around even to negative 700 billion, mostly since China started stealing and duplicating US capital on a massive scale and undergoing a deliberate targeted attempt to destroy US industry.

It's easy to write glib one liners, but as usual your implications are 100% wrong.

As for agricultural products as relates to trade, tariffs and other practical barriers are definitely higher in the EU than for those exporting to the US. There are ways to limit US goods without tariffs; for example, the EU places various regulations on food which help local EU suppliers and hinder US imports. The USDA says:
The more I read about this the more it seems obvious that Trump is right here and the fake news media are as wrong about other countries as they are on China.

My own anecdotal evidence talking to exporter friends as well confirms this; the US is by far the easiest market to get into as an exporter. Europe is far harder and China is horrifying.

Right as he may be about China (or as right as Navarro is, which is where he gets his talking points on this) there hasn’t been much offered in terms of a solution. Seems they’re basically just threatening tariffs thatre worth a small fraction of what they’re asking China to give up.

Why does everyone turn into a moron when they talk about Trump? I realize the fake news media has rotted your brains, but even so.

Trump has been talking about getting ripped off on trade for decades. He talked about the changes that were happening in trade on Oprah in the 1990s as a much younger man, and how they'd affect the US. He took out ads in the NYT to discuss the WTO changes and why they'd be bad for America. He's a businessman - he understands this stuff. This has nothing to do with whatever with the opinion of any adviser - Trump has said exactly the same he does now long before he got into politics.

China already offered $70 billion in extra purchases, which Trump declined. That's not small.
To start with. The threat is severe economic pain for China. Should have been done years ago when there would have close to no pain since China needed the US badly and had no choice but to cave. Now, there will be pain for all parties. There's no really no choice though.

From a national security/pure survival perspective alone, China needs to be brought to its knees. You don't allow someone perhaps more dangerous than Nazi Germany in 1935 to steal all your technology to build up their military. If China wants to democratize and open up their markets, wonderful, then they can militarize all they like as they have little threat. That was the naive hope (naive because it misunderstands China quite badly) of the liberals.

As it is, their dictatorship has expansionist aims to "right historical wrongs", including the subjugation of Japan, and their rise means greater > 30% chance of WWIII in the next 20 years, >10% chance of total conquering of the US in the next 30. The rise of mass robotics and AI and new weapons like maneuverable hypersonic missiles make this the most dangerous time in history to give up the US's large tech advantage. Whoever is ahead on tech in 20 years conquers the world, if they want to, as nuclear weapons become obsolete thanks to advanced missile destruction technologies, and cutting edge robotic mass production decides who wins war. And there's no good reason to let China do what it's doing, at all, just utter stupidity on the part of Bush and Obama.