On Mon, Apr 7, 2025 at 5:06 PM Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> *>> In 1990 US average wages were about 20% larger than a worker in >> another advanced industrial world country, but they are now about 40% >> higher. ** In 1995 the average Japanese person was 54% richer than an >> average person in the US in terms of GDP per capita, but today the average >> American is 150% richer than the average Japanese. * > > > *> **How about the median? Averages can be highly skewed due to a few > billionaires.* > *True but irrelevant. Trump wasn't claiming that unfair trade practices increase the gap between the rich and the poor, he was claiming unfair (Trump is always whining about things being "unfair") trade practices have impoverished the US as a whole, and clearly that is not the case. However it is true that Trump's huge tariff increase would not only reduce the per capita GDP it would also increase the already huge gap between the rich and the poor because a tariff is in effect a tax on the poor and middle class because it is a tax on consumables and durable goods, and they spend a far larger percentage of their meager income on that than the super rich do. * *I note that yesterday Trump blinked and reduced his very very imbecilic tariffs so that now they're only very imbecilic. With two exceptions Trump put a 10% tariff on every nation in the world, which is still extremely high, during the Obama administration when the economy was growing at an extremely rapid rate the average tariff was only about 2.5%. * *One exception is Russia, Trump put a 0.0% tariff on Russia but put a 10% tariff on Ukraine. The other exception is what is perhaps our most important trade partner, China. Yesterday Trump increased the Chinese tariff from 105% to 125%, although in practice that increase makes little difference because either figure effectively brings any trade between the two nations to a complete halt; China, of course, retaliated and put an 84% tariff on US goods sent to China. Most of the goods we sent to China are agricultural products, so this would hurt farmers the most and they are some of Trump's strongest supporters. This is a classic lose lose solution.* *Apparently what convinced Trump to back down is that historically when we had a huge stock market drop like we've had over the last few days there was a corresponding increase in the safe haven of government bonds, but that didn't happen this time. There was weak demand for new US Treasury debt because foreign countries were not buying new US Treasury bonds and were selling the ones they already had. * *Inside Trump’s tariff retreat: How fears of a bond market catastrophe convinced Trump to hit the pause button* <https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/politics/trump-tariffs-retreat-bond-market/index.html> *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* ooh *A resident of the poorest American State, Mississippi, has a higher per > capita GDP than the average resident of Britain or France or Japan. * > > *Today the US economy is the envy of the world, but Donald Trump will soon > put an end to that! * > > Already has. Like many international relations, trade depends largely on > trust...and *nobody* can trust The Donald. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3-3zdsjY_uxX6oTGPv_iqygNtNCVQKDsxjRJ5PHZNQ_w%40mail.gmail.com.
