'Trade wars are good, and easy to win,' Trump tweets

[robkelk]

...  The fact that this plan is basically the same thing as NAFTA, but with minor changes, is of no consequence.
...

I'm not sure I'd call "get rid of the only mechanism that allows for illegal tariffs to be refunded after they're found to be illegal" and "force a review of the agreement every five years" minor.

[hazard]

Trump's probably expecting to have the leverage to get away with exploiting these conditions.

He may be disappointed. Or not, Mexico is IIRC considerably more vulnerable to the US than the US is to Mexico.

[robkelk]

Trump's probably expecting to have the leverage to get away with exploiting these conditions.

You're probably right there.

Toronto Star: Bombshell leak to Toronto Star upends NAFTA talks: In secret ‘so insulting’ remarks, Trump says he isn’t compromising at all with Canada

In remarks Trump wanted to be “off the record,” Trump told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday, according to a source, that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

“Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal ... I can’t kill these people,” he said of the Canadian government.

In another remark he did not want published, Trump said, according to the source, that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.

“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said, according to the source. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario.

Trump made the remarks in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg. He deemed them off the record, and Bloomberg accepted his request not to reveal them.

But the Star is not bound by any promises Bloomberg made to Trump. And the remarks immediately became a factor in the negotiations: Trudeau’s officials, who saw them as evidence for their previous suspicions that Trump’s team had not been bargaining in good faith, raised them at the beginning of a meeting with their U.S. counterparts on Friday morning, a U.S. source confirmed.

More at the link.

So... Apparently, the "art of the deal" involves (a) refusing to deal, and (b) being a boor.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, come on, you expected anything else with Trump's zero-sum philosophy? In a good trade deal, everyone walks away with something they want. In Trump's world, that means he loses. The only way he can be a winner is if only America gets anything out of the deal.

[Labster]

Stock up on maple syrup, my fellow Americans. I just bought some a couple days ago.

[robkelk]

Now, now - there's plenty of time before NAFTA goes away even if Trump were to announce tomorrow that he was tearing it up. Congress hasn't voted on anything, and Article 1, Section 8 of your Constitution gives Congress the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations".

[hazard]

Through the decades and centuries Congress has been leaving more and more authority and power in the hands of the President. IIRC while the right to declare war is still a Congress' only power, the right to make arbitrary military commitments (that is, wage war) has been handed off in full to the President.

[robkelk]

CBC News: Trump warns Congress to keep out of NAFTA talks with Canada

I assume the Balseraph-in-Chief also wants the Pentagon to stay out of the military.

[robkelk]

CBC Opinion / editorial by Neil Macdonald: Trump lies. That makes negotiating NAFTA impossible

Normally, trade negotiations are a poker game in which nothing is real until it's signed. Under Trump's leadership, any eventual deal might be no more real than the education all those poor suckers paid for at Trump University.

[Labster]

I think the end game here will be: Mexico strings Trump along about maybe possibly potentially paying for The Wall to get a sweet deal, while Canada balks on the whole deal because Trump only wants Canada to give concessions.  The Special Counsel and the Mainstream Media continue to tighten the noose around Trump, which will cause him to act out.  He'll do something crazy like announce that he's canceling NAFTA, which of course he can't actually do, but it will be enough to make the markets drop.  But hey, it will prove he is definitely strong!

[robkelk]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending NAFTA's dispute resolution mechanism as necessary in a world where the president of the United States "doesn't always follow the rules."

And we'd been doing such a good job of not negotiating by statements to the press... <sigh>

[robkelk]

Negotiations 'slow,' 'frank' and 'tense,' sources tell CBC

Let's be honest: if the USA has a deadline to meet, then the USA needs to make some concessions here.

[hazard]

The USA won't make concessions while Trump is the one who needs to sign the document.

[robkelk]

Then you're going to miss the deadline that Turmp set. Which is worse?

[classicdrogn]

But when the deadline gets missed, he can make more political hay of how those stubborn Canadians are clogging up the works, in his quest to offend absolutely every other nation on earth. Because Canadians are well known for being pig headed and obnoxious -- oh, but wait, no...

[Rajvik]

Part of me wants to be snide about this, but since I have been asked to tone down the rhetoric I will simply ask the question. How difficult is the concept of Zero percent tarries on all goods both ways.

I understand that your government wants to protect your dairy farmers, there are industries here in the states that Canada does cheaper than we do that we want to protect as well,

[Matrix Dragon]

How difficult is the concept of Zero percent tarries on all goods both ways.

Very, especially when dealing with a country with a long track record of being hilariously offended when anyone dares to suggest an equal relationship.

[Dartz]

Part of me wants to be snide about this, but since I have been asked to tone down the rhetoric I will simply ask the question. How difficult is the concept of Zero percent tarries on all goods both ways.

I understand that your government wants to protect your dairy farmers, there are industries here in the states that Canada does cheaper than we do that we want to protect as well,

The US subsidises its farmers to a massive degree, artificially lowering the prices of its products compared to native producers.  The US has, in previous, used these artificially low prices to decimate local industries - the example coming to mind is Jamaican milk producers getting stamped out of existance by powdered milk from Wisconsin.

Absolute Free Trade doesn't work - just like a free market it becomes very easy for larger markets to utterly dominate. While it bodes the best for absolute efficiency, efficiency is not always the best and most stable economic policy. Truly free markets always tend towards monopoly, which ultimately tends towards innefficiency.

Tarriffs are normally agreed between nations, to be mutually beneficial to each other. Nobody wants their exports to be tarrified, but at the same time nobody wants to spend too much on imports. Nobody wants their native industries obliterated by foreign, but at the same time, fully closed markets tend to stagnate and come apart. So compromises are struck that work to everyone's benefit. Or at least, that hurt everyone the least.

It should be obvious why these agreements can take the best parts of a decade to hash out.

The EU is an odd state. Inside the EU is a free market in that there are no tarriffs. But it's a free market governed by very specific rules. There's specific country of origin protections  - Parma Ham or Bordeaux wine of Scotch Whiskey can only come from very specific geographical areas, and must be manufactured using specific processes. That's a legal statute. Hardware must be manufactured to specific directives, and must be either marked as being compliant, or marked with the directive it complies under. I've had to specifically deal with this multiple times - explaining the cases where a CE mark on a product is not required, because it is compliant under a different directive, and this is how. The EU also subsidises locations that would otherwise be geographically untenable by their location, simply because it's better for a factory in Germany if a farmer in Donegal is able to afford its products, than the alternative, where nobody can buy anything. It works in reverse - because Ireland produces higher quality beef and milk that most parts of the world, which it's then able to sell to the EUU under a protected label.

[robkelk]

An aside: At least the people around the table during the 2018 trade talks understand the difference between the treaty and the people negotiating the treaty.

[robkelk]

Which is stronger: Trump's love of tariffs or Trump's love of spectacle with him at the focus?

No gala USMCA signing ceremony with Trump unless U.S. tariffs lifted, ambassador says

[hazard]

A difficult struggle, but I'm expecting Trump's wisdom narcissism to win out.

[robkelk]

Looks like the leaders won't be present for the signing.

Ah, well - the one time we want Trump to be a narcissist, and this is what we get.

---

To the surprise of nobody who remembers the last time this economic policy was applied (ref. the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, in which tariffs prolonged the Great Depression), Trump’s policies have had exactly the same effect on the job market that they’ve had when they were applied in the 1930s: they’ve killed more jobs than they’ve created.

The Great Depression is still in living memory, too. <sigh>

[SilverFang01]

There are signs and portents that we are on our way to another recession.

The canary in the coal mine appears to be this: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/homebuil...OZFEDLNK0A

And there is this as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/opini...Hc15lXBzD0

[robkelk]

Looks like the leaders won't be present for the signing.

Ah, well - the one time we want Trump to be a narcissist, and this is what we get.

Yeah, we caved.

Fuck.

[Black Aeronaut]

God, this is gonna suck so hard.  The 2008 Recession was bad enough.  But if outfits like GE tank?  I don't think we'll be able to bail them out.

And the hell of it?  I am pretty sure by now that this is exactly what they want: another bailout.  But it's not gonna work this time.  Not unless we completely destroy our economy.

And instead of a bailout?  They're gonna get pitchforks instead.

Many will call it justice.  And I certainly will not feel a shred of pity for them.  We know our history.  So should they.  I just don't understand why they think they can get away with this.  Do they honestly think that they can just hop on a private plane and leave this country behind once they've wrung everything they can from it?  Don't they realize that once they destroy the American economy that not even a $500 bill will be worth the paper it's printed on, and as such they will have very VERY few friends servants?

It is utterly delusional, and I have no idea what it's going to take to make the Republican Party wake up and smell the fire before it's too late to get out of the house that's burning all around them.