President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

The most backward part of what stems from their idiotic rhetoric (I am talking about Peter Navarro who should know better, Wilbur Ross, Stephen Miller, etc.) is that people somehow are nodding their heads along with this notion that the way to evaluate trade is by how much it enhances the sales and profits of U.S. companies. ... which is exactly backward. We benefit when trade enhances the goods available, and the well-being of U.S. consumers. Trying to protect U.S. companies, at the expense of U.S. consumers, not only makes those consumers worse off. ... in the long-run it doesn't even benefit those U.S. companies.

 

One other thing (kind of unrelated) from that column: This line that the writer put in parentheses. ... (Most observers say China hasn’t deliberately pushed down its currency for several years.)

This is like the understatement of the year.

EVERYONE manipulates their currency, starting with the U.S., which has been the biggest "currency manipulator" on the globe. We have been destroying the dollar in dribs and drabs in order to try to inflate away an increasing debt load that has gotten out of control.

This notion that China is a currency manipulator ignores two things: 1) The fact that we have done WAY more (by a large extent) to try to permanently devalue our currency over the last decade than they have, and 2) It's not even in their interest in the current environment to devalue, because there has been a war on the yuan by speculators who see the staggering amount of debt China has accumulated to stoke phony growth and are betting on a wave of defaults and a giant forced deleveraging having to happen.

As a result, China has been propping up its currency over the last 2 years or so to hold off a take down of the yuan (I think is an inevitability -- they are essentially rolling a boulder up hill). Every time the specs gain the upper hand, the PBOC has been in the offshore currency market dumping foreign reserves to try to fight them off. That has had the effect (in small part, because there are multiple relationships in play) of devaluing the U.S. dollar FOR US, which the U.S. has ridden for faux growth over that time period. Yet, here we are with the people in charge of our country accusing them of the exact OPPOSITE of what is really happening, and most people don't seem to get it.