Trade War: An Oxymoron
One of the tenets of free market capitalism is free trade. The free flow of goods and services across national boundaries is critical to economic growth and stable prices. Yet, Donald Trump started a trade war seeking to remedy trade imbalances (created by punitive U.S. government policies). His goal was to punish China, then our largest trading partner, with a complex and ever-changing tariff regime.
Quick question: if you ran a company and 70% of your supplies came from one source upon which you depended for providing ever higher quality and lower priced products, would you publicly lambaste them and otherwise seek to hurt them if you were unsatisfied with their performance? OR - would you quietly seek a meeting and attempt to renegotiate out of the public eye so as to maintain the relationship but with new terms?
Anyone with a “lick of sense” would pursue the latter strategy - the opposite of President Trump who has started a vicious global trade war - for what purpose? To punish China, the bad actor! Well, he failed. Prices are rising for U.S. citizens which will jeopardize the Republicans in the midterms and China is just fine thank you.
China’s trade statistics show that their foreign trade is booming.
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