Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy.
One of President Trump’s major promises…probably, second only to plugging the holes in the southern border sieve…was improving upon the existing crappy trade deals around the globe.
Generally speaking, I LOVE the intellectually pleasing strategy of knocking out the easy shit first. In the context of trade deals, that was doing the negotiation hokey pokey with Mexico, Canada, and the EU right out of the gate.
Done, done, and done. Now, whether Congress will actually ratify any completed agreements is a story for another day. But given that their aversion to giving Trump a “win” on ANYTHING is as strong as Michael Moore’s aversion to a padlocked refrigerator…don’t bet on it.
Not one other President has had the political stones to jump headfirst into the wood-chipper and experience the pain of trying to negotiate a better trade deal with China.
And don’t talk to me about the World Trade Organization (WTO) as an arbiter of fairness. They are as impotent and worthless an organization as the United Nations…and one China summarily ignores.
Anyway…All we’ve heard for years is the incessant bitching from politicians and CEO’s about intellectual property theft by China. And the massive trade deficits resulting in years of ginormous losses in U.S. manufacturing and other jobs is now generally met with the defeatist shoulder shrug of surrender.
Those jobs are gone forever, Obama told us. Oh well.
And you can count on $500 billion dollar trade deficits every year, too.
Ho Hum…what’s for dinner? NOT CHICKEN AGAIN, DAMMIT!
Enter The Donald.
Think about it. This is an unbelievably difficult and complex problem. Like entitlement reform…or Joy Behar in a thong bikini…nobody wants to get near it.
I mean, look what just happened. We were close to an agreement…China backed out of some previously agreed to stuff…Trump got pissed, and jacked-up tariffs further in response.
The proverbial snag. The dance continues.
And just a quick note for those who struggle to comprehend as we meander into the sphere of counter-intuitiveness…Trump’s use of tariffs is not an anti-free trade play, but a negotiation battering ram he’s all too happy to employ to…shall we say…”nudge” others in the direction of MORE free trade.
Short term pain be damned.
Prices will increase on thousands of products. Stock Market tanks. And the heavily affected farmers, a YUGE constituency, are so livid they’ve gone on a rage-filled chicken strangling binge. Jesus, I don’t EVEN want to think about how hard those helpless cows are getting milked.
Sorry Elsie.
There’s no free lunch, folks. OTHER than compound interest, that is…said the Finance Major.
And as such, there will…quite necessarily…be a short term price to pay…for us AND President Trump, as he plays the long game with regard to righting the ship on trade with China.
Anyway…isn’t this what politicians…especially Presidents…are supposed to do? Prioritize the fixing of seemingly insurmountable problems that have plagued this country for decades over posturing for the next election?
Or at least try, for shit’s sake.
This is what having a CEO in the White House looks like. Time and energy spent solving big problems…not spending every waking hour obsessed with winning the next friggin’ election.
By the way…doing the former WILL secure the latter.
Hmmm…That was borderline profound.
Last time I looked, meaningless rhetoric and platitudes spewed by gas-bag politicians never solved one f*cking problem.
And I have decades of proof.
Anyway…instead of wetting your Fruit-of-the-Looms because the stock market’s volatile, or your little goddamn rubber ducky made in China is going to cost you an extra buck for a little while…we should all put on our big boy (and girl) pants and root for President Trump in this economic war with China.
If Cryin’ Chuck Schumer can…so can you.