The Donald-thread

[laklak]

Vote Johnson because he's not Trump, not Hillary, not Stein, AND he smokes dope!

[Forty Two]

Er...Trump is a republican. Besides building a wall, he will do republican things. Like Hillary will do democrat things.

Aside from the insults, there is nothing new or novel here.

The reality remains to be seen. However, his economic and trade policies are a dramatic departure from the GOP of the last 35 years. People see the decline of American manufacturing and industry, and it's a big problem. Trump may do nothing, but of the two, he's the one saying he will fix it. Same with immigration. On both of those issues, Hillary says there is no problem, and that if you think there is a problem you're either stupid or a racist. Deplorable.

All these things Trump is going to "fix" are in the private sector. Other than lower corporate tax, actually not a bad idea (if you raise personal tax on rich to keep revenue), there is nothing Trump can do. Refugees: yes, he can block all muslims.

Well, he can, of course, renegotiate trade deals, revamp the TPP before it takes effect, etc. He can address our allies not paying their share of NATO, etc. He can address taxes, and also tariffs on imports, and all sorts of things.

Are you saying that Obama couldn't fix anything in the private sector, other than lowering corporate tax?

Immigration needs attention, and "blocking all Muslims" is not the only option. There is nothing inherently wrong with looking at a country and giving it heightened scrutiny relative to visas. Every civilized country does it. It's normal. The thing is, with normal immigration process and procedure, when the US does it, it's racist and xenophobic. When France does it, it's fine.

[Brian Peacock]

Er...Trump is a republican. Besides building a wall, he will do republican things. Like Hillary will do democrat things.

Aside from the insults, there is nothing new or novel here.

The reality remains to be seen. However, his economic and trade policies are a dramatic departure from the GOP of the last 35 years. People see the decline of American manufacturing and industry, and it's a big problem. Trump may do nothing, but of the two, he's the one saying he will fix it. Same with immigration. On both of those issues, Hillary says there is no problem, and that if you think there is a problem you're either stupid or a racist. Deplorable.

This seems a fair assessment. While he's saying he's in favour of deregulation and cutting business taxes etc (traditional GOP fare) his declarations on international trade imply exclusions from domestic markets, import tariff hikes and similar protectionist measures, which will be self defeating in the end (if US access to foreign markets and resources are reciprocally restricted) as well as being essentially anti-free-trade in their outlook. In this he's certainly out-of-step with tradition GOP thinking.

[Scot Dutchy]

Just when did Trump have thought out logical policies?

[Forty Two]

Er...Trump is a republican. Besides building a wall, he will do republican things. Like Hillary will do democrat things.

Aside from the insults, there is nothing new or novel here.

The reality remains to be seen. However, his economic and trade policies are a dramatic departure from the GOP of the last 35 years. People see the decline of American manufacturing and industry, and it's a big problem. Trump may do nothing, but of the two, he's the one saying he will fix it. Same with immigration. On both of those issues, Hillary says there is no problem, and that if you think there is a problem you're either stupid or a racist. Deplorable.

This seems a fair assessment. While he's saying he's in favour of deregulation and cutting business taxes etc (traditional GOP fare) his declarations on international trade imply exclusions from domestic markets, import tariff hikes and similar protectionist measures, which will be self defeating in the end (if US access to foreign markets and resources are reciprocally restricted) as well as being essentially anti-free-trade in their outlook. In this he's certainly out-of-step with tradition GOP thinking.

Sure, and perhaps traditional GOP thinking is not the way to go. At this point in time, other countries still need US imports and US companies doing business there. However, the trend is downward. The trend is for the US to need other countries more than they need the US. So, negotiating power doesn't get better. Trump hasn't dealt in absolutes. Through his unfortunate rhetoric, if one listens to is speeches in detail, one will see that he is not making wild declarations and absolute promises. He's not going to guaranty that we get everything we want from China and Mexico, but he is going to try to make a significant change and improve the balance of the relationship (from the US perspective).

He doesn't talk like a politician. When you listen to him, you need to listen from the perspective of a business owner - one of those Alpha male guys who tense everybody up at work and make them nervous whenever they walk in the building. Not sure if you know what I'm talking about.

[laklak]

The trade deficit has been negative since the early 70s, we've been importing more than exporting for a long time now. On top of that, there are already all sorts of trade barriers against U.S. products, so what's he going to hurt? We don't have a manufacturing sector worth mentioning at the moment anyway.

[Brian Peacock]

For my part, 'listening to his speeches in detail' simply makes things more rather than less opaque.

For example, he wants to revoke the North American Free Trade Accord, but as lak points out, the US imports considerably more than it exports, so if carried out this wouldn't salve the US economy in any real way. Similarly he wants to withdraw from negotiation of the Trans Pacific Partnership on his 'first day in office', but I can't see this achieving much - other pacific rim nations will carry on negotiating market accesses and the US will be left out in the cold. His chant of 'Americanism not Globalism' is a good soundbite, but will Americans be happy to go without their cheap Asian imports, say electronic goods and clothing for example, and wait an unspecified time to see if a suitable domestic industry will gear up to fill the gap?

His response to these kinds of concerns is to call them fearmongering, and to cite international trade agreements as a kind of stitch-up by some vague cabal called 'the globalisation elite', but that doesn't really address anything does it? It just says that there's some dodgy dealers and that this rich guy Trump is trustworthy while those other, unnamed rich guys are not. He goes further to imply that those other rich guys are not only self-serving and untrustworthy, but malicious and sinister with it. So who's peddling The Fear there eh?

He says that the US signing up to trade agreements simply allows other countries to subsides their own goods and industries and 'cheat in every way imaginable', but this not only misrepresents what reciprocal trade agreements are all about, it ignores the fact that the US subsidises its own big export sectors, like metal processing and oil, while imposing stiff tariffs on competing imports - so his keening cries seem rather partial and partisan, or at best perhaps just ill-informed.

He appears not so much to have a trade policy but a series of moral complaints about how the US is getting the short end of the stick and isn't being given its due respect - but even the manufacture of his own branded products are made within an international economic context, outsourced to economic areas with traditionally low wages and overheads. If he wants the US to compete with these areas he'll need to drive down wages as well as deregulate. While he says he's keen to strike individual deals with individual nations, and considering the nature of the international economy in which most Westernised economies are embedded that implies striking deals with nations on the economic fringes, how much are trade deals with the likes of Angola and Bhutan going to achieve in offsetting the loses and hardship of of slapping 'double-digit-across-the-board tariffs' on the US's existing major trading partners - as he says he will do as soon as he hits the oval office? To me this kind of stuff sounds like the fourth rule of advertising rhetoric; try and make your customers worry about a problem they didn't know they had and then tell them how your product solves this problem, only here the product being pushed is brand Trump, and threatens to replace one set of economic problems for a slightly different set, or at worse cause more problems than it can ever hope to salve.

But at its heart, what Trump says on trade belies his fundamental misconception about economics, that is; that economics is fundamentally about money, when in facts it's always about people and the societies they populate.

[pErvinalia]

The trade deficit has been negative since the early 70s, we've been importing more than exporting for a long time now. On top of that, there are already all sorts of trade barriers against U.S. products, so what's he going to hurt? We don't have a manufacturing sector worth mentioning at the moment anyway.

I'd be surprised if you didn't have some valuable advanced manufacturing. Most of the west has moved this way, including here in Australia. Tesla in the US is probably a good example there. We all no longer manufacture the cheap simple shit, that's China's job. We now manufacture stuff that China doesn't yet have the expertise and research environment to do. It's certainly less in gross output, but still important nonetheless. Having new retaliatory tariffs slapped on that would certainly hurt those industries.

[pErvinalia]

For my part, 'listening to his speeches in detail' simply makes things more rather than less opaque.

For example, he wants to revoke the North American Free Trade Accord, but as lak points out, the US imports considerably more than it exports, so if carried out this wouldn't salve the US economy in any real way.

It would in the sense that it would make setting up new manufacturing in the US more competitive.

Similarly he wants to withdraw from negotiation of the Trans Pacific Partnership on his 'first day in office', but I can't see this achieving much - other pacific rim nations will carry on negotiating market accesses and the US will be left out in the cold.

The TPP won't go ahead without the US. The reason everyone else wants it is to access the US market. Without that it's worthless.

[JimC]

When I see "Melbourne, Florida" I have a bad attack of cognitive dissonance...

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, the concept of Melbourne being in Florida does my head in. Couldn't image two different types of places.

[Brian Peacock]

For my part, 'listening to his speeches in detail' simply makes things more rather than less opaque.

For example, he wants to revoke the North American Free Trade Accord, but as lak points out, the US imports considerably more than it exports, so if carried out this wouldn't salve the US economy in any real way.

It would in the sense that it would make setting up new manufacturing in the US more competitive.

Perhaps. But force-fudging a market like that only 'works' when consumer access is directed and/or similarly restricted - ad in a command economy, and we all know how that goes eh? If Trump were to direct and/or restrict how US business interacts with the international economy he will effectively be directing and/or restricting how US consumers consume.

Similarly he wants to withdraw from negotiation of the Trans Pacific Partnership on his 'first day in office', but I can't see this achieving much - other pacific rim nations will carry on negotiating market accesses and the US will be left out in the cold.

The TPP won't go ahead without the US. The reason everyone else wants it is to access the US market. Without that it's worthless.

Perhaps. But will it benefit the US economy to encourage Pacific rim nations to look westwards towards China, India and Russia etc, while effectively limiting reciprocal access to those markets?

[DRSB]

I suspect sniffing substances, but of course I have no proof.

This is the psychological concept known as the “Dunning-Kruger” effect — put very simply, when stupid people don’t know that they are stupid — in action.

Writing at Pacific Standard, psychologist David Dunning explains it as:

n many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize — scratch that, cannot recognize — just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers — and we are all poor performers at some things — fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack. What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/p ... ains-trump

[Brian Peacock]

I think the sniffing was just Trump going, "Is that the smell of pants on fire?"

[Brian Peacock]

Seems Drump stayed up late Thursday drunk posting on Twitter.

Trump tries to distract from Alicia Machado sex tape accusations