You should talk to someone that disagrees. Trump is a moral and personal dumpster fire. Doesn’t change the facts about the consequences of “free trade”.
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He’s referring to China… that should have been obvious since that’s the topic of the thread.
Yeah well can’t really unring the bell on that one can we? Not like some of us were warning others about that while the ink was still wet on NAFTA or anything. Oh wait.
There were two countries involved in that statement.China and the USA: “You rather support business that skirt our environmental laws and regulation, avoid paying decent wages”. The only way that the statement doesn’t compare China and the USA is if you subscribe to the view that the USA does not pay decent wages. Hence, my reference to minimum wages in the USA compared with Australia.
It was an asinine statement to begin with and not really worth arguing. “Minimum wage” is subjective anyway. The Federal minimum wage hasn’t kept up with cost of living since it’s inception.
The minimum wage is not subjective; it is an imperative and a legal requirement to pay same.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE slap a 30% tariff on Central or South American cocoa or some other commodity from some other place unrelated to China. Let’s see how American consumers appreciate the resulting price surge. Or the product unavailability when we say **** you and sell it to another country.
And we don’t import ANYTHING into the United States from China. All our operations in China are purely internal, other than transporting energy products to China for their consumption. For example, a subsidiary of the company runs animal feed mills. The product of the mills is consumed wholly within China.
In any event, tariffs can be evaded with trivial effort and ships at sea can be diverted en-route.
We haven’t been skirting any laws or regulations.
You would really think Republicans would have learned from Smoot-Hawley that protectionism ALWAYS ends badly for them. After Smoot-Hawley, they lost 5 straight Presidential Elections and controlled Congress for only 2 years out of a 20 year period.
This is going to end VERY badly for Trump. We are already beyond the point of no return for entering a recession. Even if Trump backed off now, he has already done too much damage to prevent a recession.
Trump’s ONLY chance of reelection is in a climate of at least minimal growth. Frankly, what he is doing is the same as slitting his own throat as far as his reelection chances go.
Bottom line. We will stay in the United States, China, Vietnam and the 80+ countries around the world were we do business and we will continue to do business as we please.
BTW, if a Democratic President or contender was doing or suggesting protectionism, I would come down on them with equal vigor. This is not conservative vs liberal by a long shot.
This is free market capitalism vs protectionism. I will side with the free market and capitalism. That transcends ANY partisan political consideration.
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Of course it’s subjective. It varies from state to state in the U.S. $15/hr in Seattle is not the same as $15/hr in New York, Chattanooga, or Chicago. Kind of why a Federal minimum wage law is ridiculous on its face. Unfortunately it’s still very much needed because we still have a few backwards states with no minimum wage laws at all. The majority of them that do though are well above the Federal minimum.
For the record Australia’s minimum hourly rate is $18.93.
For the record I don’t really care. I don’t live in Australia and have no idea what your cost of living is there. I’m not talking about the minimum wage in Australia. I’m talking about the minimum wage here in the United States, where I live. I know what it costs to live here and minimum wage here isn’t enough to make ends meet even with multiple jobs.
For the record I don’t care whether you care about my opinion or not.
Of course, Trump is lying again. The Dow was 18,589 on Nov. 9, 2016, not 16,000 or 17,000.
Apparently you can’t read. I neither said nor implied anything about your opinion.
I have said what I have said and meant what I said.
Same here. So why are you still responding?
It would be impolite of me not to answer. The answer is because I can.
Whatever blows your skirt up, I guess.
All so they could get slave labor and without concern about Americans wages and employment, the globalist trillionaires might well take a financial hit! Great news!! MAGA!!
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The sellout of American workers to China’s advantage began under Clinton and has continued since. China is absolutely playing the long game hoping Trump will go down in 2020. Given Biden’s cozy Chinese relationship and Google’s love affair with the Communist Chinese government, guess who will be supported in the next election??
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Each state has a different minimum, heck some cities have minimums. 7.25 is federal minimum.
Allan
