President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Few things make me shake my head the way the "China is ripping us off" nonsense does. And the talk about the trade imbalance, etc. and how it is because they are somehow doing us wrong. It's pure ignorance.

A trade imbalance, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. But let's say you don't want a trade deficit. ... the way isn't to make "deals," (this is so dumb) or institute tariffs or do other things to start a trade war.

You'd have to change American's behaviors, and get them to SAVE instead of consume. But that is a message no one wants to hear -- it's easier to say, "Economically, I have found it tougher over the last few decades, so let's find a scapegoat."

Americans want iphones and big screen TVs and stuff, in general -- stuff they can't really afford. To the extent they aren't financing them on credit, China provides those things cheaper than we are willing to. That is why there is a trade imbalance.

If you want to insist that a trade imbalance is a bad thing, then Americans need to start forgoing their $1,000 iphones and start saving. It's that simple. Saving (not faux government "stimulus") is what creates investment. And that real kind of investment (not debt and monetization of that debt) is what grows an economy in a non-phony way -- it provides the resources to build factories and plants and to provide equipment, etc.

Also, when we convinced the rest of the world to sign onto the dollar as a reserve currency (in lieu of sound money), in the 1970s, we received a lot of benefits -- giving us a pass on a lot of reckless behavior. The tradeoff has always been that it insures trade deficits. The rest of the world needs to own dollars in that world order. So we export those dollars to them in exchange for cheap goods. That is coming to an end for organic reasons. But it's just a reality that all the nonsensical bluster and scapegoating in the world can't obscure.