Regarding Trump's trade policy, Mr. Mackler states:
Where Mr. Mackler fails is in identifying what has changed. He quotes Marxist economist Michael Roberts.
By blaming Trump's tantrums on the 2007-8 financial crisis, Mr. Mackler misses the big picture. He doesn't see what is really going on.
Mr. Mackler asserts that, circuses notwithstanding, Trump's policies represent America's ruling class. This is not true. Every business organization--from the Chamber of Commerce to the National Association of Manufacturers, to the car manufacturers, to big and little Ag, and so on down the line--has come out strongly against Trump's tariffs. Whenever he announces them the stock market goes down.
The people who do like the tariffs are the unions. AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka has stated his support. So at least part of Trump's motivation is political--he wants to keep his word to his blue collar constituents. Promises made--promises kept.
The unavoidable fact is that tariffs will hurt the economy. Everybody knows this, barring Mr. Trumka, Pat Buchanan and a few Trotskyists. I think even Trump knows this--otherwise why would he have Larry Kudlow on the White House staff?
The implication of all this is that "Trump's trade bluster" has nothing to do with the economy at all. Instead, it is about geopolitics--an effort to weaken China, who is today America's greatest military competitor. Mr. Mackler alludes to this.
So the question is not how tariffs help the economy (they don't) but about how to minimize the blowback they will inevitably cause. And here one can separate the conversation into three topics: China; Fracking; and NAFTA.
China: Mr. Mackler's opinion very much resembles that put forward by Lynn Henderson. I responded to that gentleman here, so no need to repeat it.
Fracking: A milestone was reached in 2010--in that year for the first time in ages the United States exported more oil and gas than it imported. We became energy self-sufficient. Today we import ZERO oil from the Persian Gulf.
This has huge consequences: First, the Straits of Hormuz are no longer a core national security interest of the US. Iran's threat to close them is no longer compelling--we only care about their nukes. That is the essential difference between Europe and the US on the Iran nuclear treaty. Europe is very worried about the Straits of Hormuz, while we are not. Our strategy toward Iran is accordingly much less compromising than the Europeans would like.
Likewise, as Mr. Mackler points out, the US is no longer a reliable defense partner for Europe. If Iran were to close the Straits of Hormuz, it is Europe that will have to send in the cavalry, not the US. That means Germany is going to need a blue water navy--and fast. They're working on it already.
Second, we used to pay for our Persian Gulf oil in dollars, that were then known as petrodollars. But the petrodollars got deposited in dollar accounts in Switzerland, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, and elsewhere offshore, whence they acquired the (misleading) name eurodollars.
Those offshore banks lent out those eurodollars to finance international trade. The abundance and liquidity of eurodollars is what made the dollar the reserve currency, and what enabled the WTO. Since the US ultimately controlled the flow of dollars (euro- or otherwise) around the world (the SWIFT system), the US became the enforcer of WTO rules.
The absence of new petrodollars, along with rising interest rates in the US, means that the supply of eurodollars is drying up--there is now a severe shortage. The liquidity needed for international trade is sharply reduced. This has two big implications.
Further Reading:
Obviously, he is an embarrassment to the majority of the ruling-class elite. Virtually every major corporate newspaper and media outlet in the country daily pillories his too overtly right-wing tweets and pronouncements, but the essence of his direction, as opposed to the form, is not too dissimilar from mainstream ruling-class views.This is unusual for SA--normally they write Trump off as a bone-headed klutz. Now they give him credit for substantial policy, however poorly advertised. I agree with them--the world has changed, and Trump's efforts are redirecting American policy in response to that change. It is not simply random outbursts from a senile old man.
Where Mr. Mackler fails is in identifying what has changed. He quotes Marxist economist Michael Roberts.
"... The Great Recession of 2007-8 and the ensuing Long Depression since 2009 has changed the economic picture.
In a stagnating world capitalist economy, where productivity growth is low, world trade growth has subsided and the profitability of capital has not recovered, cooperation has been replaced by increasingly vicious competition—the thieves have fallen out.”All of the premises are arguable. Certainly, at least in the US, corporate profits are currently at record highs, so that claim seems undeniably false. The statement about poor productivity growth can be disputed. The slowdown in growth is probably due more to demographic factors--low birth rates and an aging population--than any failure of "capitalism."
By blaming Trump's tantrums on the 2007-8 financial crisis, Mr. Mackler misses the big picture. He doesn't see what is really going on.
Mr. Mackler asserts that, circuses notwithstanding, Trump's policies represent America's ruling class. This is not true. Every business organization--from the Chamber of Commerce to the National Association of Manufacturers, to the car manufacturers, to big and little Ag, and so on down the line--has come out strongly against Trump's tariffs. Whenever he announces them the stock market goes down.
The people who do like the tariffs are the unions. AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka has stated his support. So at least part of Trump's motivation is political--he wants to keep his word to his blue collar constituents. Promises made--promises kept.
The unavoidable fact is that tariffs will hurt the economy. Everybody knows this, barring Mr. Trumka, Pat Buchanan and a few Trotskyists. I think even Trump knows this--otherwise why would he have Larry Kudlow on the White House staff?
The implication of all this is that "Trump's trade bluster" has nothing to do with the economy at all. Instead, it is about geopolitics--an effort to weaken China, who is today America's greatest military competitor. Mr. Mackler alludes to this.
Trump’s denunciation of China for “stealing” U.S. technology was followed by his administration’s widely publicized list of proposed tariffs on Chinese imports. The list includes 1102 categories of goods, all focused on high-tech industries like nuclear reactors, aircraft engine parts, ball bearings, bulldozers, motorcycles, and industrial and agricultural machinery. These are precisely the categories in which China has employed the advanced robotics and related super-modern production technologies—that is, intellectual property rights.Though he doesn't mention it, the military applications of those technologies are what is most in Trump's mind. The president is willing to take the economic hit now to avoid having a rival superpower in the future. They don't call it a trade "war" for nothing.
So the question is not how tariffs help the economy (they don't) but about how to minimize the blowback they will inevitably cause. And here one can separate the conversation into three topics: China; Fracking; and NAFTA.
China: Mr. Mackler's opinion very much resembles that put forward by Lynn Henderson. I responded to that gentleman here, so no need to repeat it.
Fracking: A milestone was reached in 2010--in that year for the first time in ages the United States exported more oil and gas than it imported. We became energy self-sufficient. Today we import ZERO oil from the Persian Gulf.
This has huge consequences: First, the Straits of Hormuz are no longer a core national security interest of the US. Iran's threat to close them is no longer compelling--we only care about their nukes. That is the essential difference between Europe and the US on the Iran nuclear treaty. Europe is very worried about the Straits of Hormuz, while we are not. Our strategy toward Iran is accordingly much less compromising than the Europeans would like.
Likewise, as Mr. Mackler points out, the US is no longer a reliable defense partner for Europe. If Iran were to close the Straits of Hormuz, it is Europe that will have to send in the cavalry, not the US. That means Germany is going to need a blue water navy--and fast. They're working on it already.
Second, we used to pay for our Persian Gulf oil in dollars, that were then known as petrodollars. But the petrodollars got deposited in dollar accounts in Switzerland, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, and elsewhere offshore, whence they acquired the (misleading) name eurodollars.
Those offshore banks lent out those eurodollars to finance international trade. The abundance and liquidity of eurodollars is what made the dollar the reserve currency, and what enabled the WTO. Since the US ultimately controlled the flow of dollars (euro- or otherwise) around the world (the SWIFT system), the US became the enforcer of WTO rules.
The absence of new petrodollars, along with rising interest rates in the US, means that the supply of eurodollars is drying up--there is now a severe shortage. The liquidity needed for international trade is sharply reduced. This has two big implications.
- The dollar will cease to be the reserve currency, and there is nothing that in the short term can take its place.
- The WTO will fall apart--without a reserve currency and without US enforcement, it can't survive.
All of this is a disaster for any country not called the United States.
NAFTA: The new Mexico-US trade agreement will insulate the US from the coming trade disruption. The basic idea is to move manufacturing from China to Mexico. This will be a huge boon to the Mexican economy, which is why they eagerly signed it. It's described very well by Gloria van Rees--here is the money quote.
The big question about the impact will be the economic efficiency of the impact of trade diversion into NAFTA and away from other countries. By this I mean, what will be the impact of buying more parts intra-NAFTA rather than outside NAFTA and layering on top of that the low skill parts outside of NAFTA and the high wage parts intra-NAFTA? Here is what I suspect, and feel free to disagree respectfully of course. Assume there are currently, for simplicity sake, four parts needed to make a car. Each part costs $20, $15, $10, and $5 respectively. For simplicity sake, let’s assume that currently the $20 and $15 parts are made inside NAFTA and the $10 and $5 parts are not. Under the new agreement, I think we can expect the $20 part to remain unchanged, the $15 part rise to a $16 part, the $10 part move to Mexico, and the $5 part stay outside of NAFTA. Again, this is a very simple model, but this would meet the general requirements before and after. What we see primarily is a diversion of trade to Mexico as the primary recipient with some increased work likely going to the US and Canada. However, the major question, which is very difficult to know with good foresight is the impact of trade diversion from the rest of the world to the trade agreement partners.In summary, Mr. Mackler, for all his facts, misses the elephant in the room. It's fracking. Fracking changes everything.
Further Reading:
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