Trump’s weird infomercial/press conference last night seems like a cry for help. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Look, I’ve tried being rude and offensive to everyone I can think of and you’re still voting for me. Maybe if I just blatantly shill my cheap crap during my campaign in a scene worthy of a really bad SNL skit you’ll finally wake up. Stop me before I win again!”
Yeah, I swear that after the “sieg heil” bit and him going infomercial, the theory about him just trolling the electorate still has legs.
ShivaX
6564
It would be pretty hilarious if once he got the nomination he revealed it was all a prank to prove how stupid people are. It would be the greatest troll in history.
Timex
6565
It’s absolutely crazy. He’s literally a snake-oil salesman at this point, hocking his garbage trump brand products during campaign speeches.
“TRUMP WATER. IT’S GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE.”
Oghier
6566
Does anyone else suspect that, regardless of who gets sworn in next January, America is likely to back away from free trade somewhat? Populism and protectionism are more than just noise on the fringes this year. They’re part of the core message for both Sanders and Trump, and there appear to be a lot of working class whites who blame trade deals for their plight.
Ohio’s economy has a ton of of Tier-1 and Tier-2 automotive suppliers. Rage at NAFTA may be every bit as important there as it was in Michigan. The whole rust belt is similar.
Assuming that no establishment republican emerges to win the nomination and the election, it seems to me that 2017 and forward may be a turning point in our trade policies.
Yes, I think that’s a strong possibility, and I think it’s a mistake in the grand scheme of things even if it is politically beneficial.
ShivaX
6568
Doubt it. You can count on the populace to not pay attention after a couple months. Look at TPP and how it was fast-tracked. Most people couldn’t tell you a thing about it. They’ll just fast track them secretly and people will forget about them in a month or two if they even realized they were a thing to begin with.
That’s a valid point - they could just repackage it as the “Protect American Jobs Deal” with the exact same content and not many people would blink an eye.
Hey, let’s take a time machine back to 6/16 when Trump officially announced his candidacy:
Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another “Home Alone” movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination.
Ho ho ho.
I do anticipate some backing off from free trade, but only a limited amount is possible without damaging the financial tier of the economy, the one that Wall Street cares about. Because commodity industrial productivity is based on worker exploitation in developing countries, and we still have some semblance of worker protection laws in this country. So anything that smells like a tariff or an import quota will lower productivity and increase product costs, damaging consumer sectors.
But even so I’m not fond of free trade, from an American perspective anyway. It more and more turns us into a country of bankers and managers on one hand, and clerks and servants on the other.
From a global perspective free trade is probably overall a good thing because all those developing countries need capital and investment to develop, and that happens through industry and trade. Of course it also tends to result in terrible exploitative conditions for workers in those countries along with pollution, oppression, and death. But that’s a contingent consequence, and may not be absolutely necessary for development if a country is smart about how they do it.
Enidigm
6572
My problem with free trade is the solution is assumed to be wealth transfers of such a scale as have never before been seen in history. And I’m honestly not sure if that’s not really just wishful thinking instead of legitimate policy. When it needs $20-30k per person to really have an effect it encounters all sorts of problems that advocates don’t want to face, weird incentives like encouraging population growth, as well as rent seeking by fixed expense commodity and property owners, even if it all works on paper.
Sally Struthers always told me that 65¢ per day would save a child’s life. That’s a lot less than $20-30k per year. /snark
Trump held a news conference/informercial last night where he waved off the criticisms of his failed business ventures by handing out steaks and tossing magazines to the crowd. This NPR article has fun ripping apart his (fairly pathetic) attempts to convince everyone that he has never failed as a businessman.
For instance, he waved towards a table piled high with thick, juicy steaks and spake thusly:
Great stuff - literally red meat to the crowd. The issue of course was that these were NOT Trump-branded steaks. Somewhat ironically, they bore the brand-name “Bush Brothers,” which is something you couldn’t make up.
He denied that Trump Magazine was gone:
True… or true-ish. There is a magazine called Jewel of Palm Beach, but Trump doesn’t sell it – he buys it. He doesn’t own the magazine or the publisher. It’s an annual glossy that seems to be just the standard magazine that you’ll find in each room at his Mar-a-Lago hotel.
Trump Shuttle was a yuge thing that was awesome for him.
Yeah… actually he defaulted on the loan that he used to buy the airline and sold it to USAir. Very likely at a massive loss.
He had a big table full of Trump Wine, the massively-successful follow-on to the failed Trump Vodka. That’s good, eh?
Fine, fine. Trumps a teetotaler anyway. But he drinks Trump Water, right?
Not… exactly a lie. He buys the water from another company and slaps the “TRUMP” label on it for use in his clubs and hotels where he sells it. So he does - kind of - supply the water for all his places. And it’s probably good.
OK.
Oghier
6575
I am no expert, but I see Free Trade as follows, when viewed solely in terms of American interests:
CONS: We lose manufacturing jobs
PROS: We gain some manufacturing jobs (for exported goods), and international trade and lowering poverty in the third world make the world more stable
I don’t know how it all balances out. But if I were afraid of losing my job down at the plant, or if I already have lost my job there, I would become a highly motivated one-issue voter. If a candidate also wants to load brown people on cattle cars, I can maybe not think about that much, if I believe it’ll get me my job back.
Enidigm
6576
Free Trade is not absolutely a long term net positive, and in fact might have been a net negative over the long view of human history, but this assumes a paternalistic and pessimistic view of history where the potential of hundreds of millions are sacrificed just because it’s what has to be.
The big failure of free trade is the idea of spreading democracy. The record on this is still very mixed. Most third world countries have the problem of free trade, corruption, and concentration of ownership of land and wealth accumulating most gains to a small oligarchy; balanced by the more modest but still impressive gains by their people. But we’re also approaching a point of diminishing returns where monetary policies that make first world trade more competitive reduce the potential gains of the third world to further industrialization.
I think you missed cheap goods on the pro column. That’s not an insubstantial benefit to free trade. If we built a trade wall around the US, you’d see prices jump significantly on most things. It’s reasonable to argue that our society is too consumption-focused, but it is a factor.
Personally, I think fighting free trade (i.e., economic isolationism) is ass-backwards. We should be moving to a society where we leverage our advantages—hi-tech and know-how. Trying to hang on desperately to manufacturing jobs, no matter what the cost, is a losing proposition. There’s obviously still room for some manufacturing: e.g., goods where quality matters and where we can argue for better production control or skill (e.g., handmade furniture), but you can’t sustain a first-world standard of living by doing third-world work.
If the job is one in which the only differentiating factor for the American worker is that he costs more, that’s not going to work.
Timex
6580
He had a big table full of Trump Wine, the massively-successful follow-on to the failed Trump Vodka. That’s good, eh?
Quote Originally Posted by Trump
[QUOTE]I own it 100 percent, no mortgage, no debt.
Quote Originally Posted by The Winery’s Website
Trump Winery is a registered trade name of Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing LLC, which is not owned, managed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their affiliates.
[/QUOTE]
Wait, so there is a thing called Trump wine, but it’s totally unaffiliated with Donald Trump? But he’s saying he owns it and it’s his?
Isn’t that illegal or something?
His son Eric runs it through a separate llc.
http://www.c-ville.com/How_Patricia_Kluges_vineyard_reached_beyond_its_means/#.VuB_qn0rK7Q
Patricia Kluge achieved Great Ladyhood via a well-worn path: Take your clothes off and then divorce well. In 1981, the 32-year-old Brit and former professional naked-person married 66-year-old German immigrant and self-made man, John Werner Kluge, who in 1989 became the richest man in America, worth $5.2 billion. One year later, the marriage was over.
