MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Trump to unveil NAFTA proposals that throw the deal into peril
By artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 12:58am |By Jonathan Swan @ Axios.com, 4 hrs. ago
The Trump administration will present controversial proposals for NAFTA negotiations that are expected to attract vehement opposition from Congress, large sections of the U.S. business community and leaders in Canada and Mexico, according to sources with knowledge of the arrangements.
Why this matters: Trade experts on and off Capitol Hill are worried that the Trump demands — which many on the Hill regard as unreasonable and inflexible — will torpedo the NAFTA negotiations and will ultimately give Trump the justification he's been searching for to withdraw.[....]
URL:
https://www.axios.com/trump-to-unveil-nafta-proposals-that-throw-the-deal-into-peril-2495336254.html
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Comments
One can never know for sure with his behavioral tendencies but as others are worrying about his stability getting worse, I see some signifiers of someone who is flying high on a manic episode where he feels he has finally found his true groove in the job. As if he plans to irritate both parties as much as he can, wants to look independent from both of them as much as he can. And he will just do crazy shit to that end.
The crazy shit will of course echo his favorite campaign memes whenever possible (ala the new "brand Trump", not just a deal-making real estate guy but now a world class ball breaker.) But the crazy shit won't necessarily have the goal of actually affecting policy according to the campaign memes, it's all going to be kafaybe. All kafaybe all the time: I don't need to understand what "the swamp" is doing or trying to do, it doesn't matter what they are doing, all that matters is that I look like I don't agree with what they are doing.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 1:43am
The latest White House leaks showcase Trump's art of the tantrum
Most people suffer the consequences of their actions. So far, Trump has not.
So she's coming to a similar conclusion as me.
I don't know enough about child rearing to know the best ways of handling "the terrible two's." I do know I sure don't like it when in the grocery store mommy decides on the tactic of just ignoring the tantrum.
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 1:55am
More a hostage lockdown with a psychotic whose meds are wearing off.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 1:59am
Let him I don't care. All I care about is that he doesn't start a war. Other than that I hope he does everything he promised. Deport the illegal immigrants, start with the farm and dairy workers. People will discover real fast exactly what role illegal immigrants play in our economy. Pull out of NAFTA, place tariffs on foreign goods. People will discover what role trade deals play in our economy too.
The economy will crash so hard that after no one will demagogue on immigration or trade deals. This is a perfect moment to put this nonsense to rest. It's a perfect time to teach the people to be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 2:09am
Why do you believe the trade deals have been good for poor, working, and middle - class Americans?
by HSG on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 8:06am
NAFTA and other trade deals have not gutted American manufacturing — period
which I found as the first link here from Eduoardo Porter in an Aug. 24 piece for the New York Times, which explains what needs to be tuned; there's more links in this excerpt:
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 8:26am
OMG, I've been trying to get these points across since forever. Well done, Brad, thanks AA.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 9:37am
These two paragraphs of Brad's are especially well done, I think:
Such succinctness comes from years of interacting with people for whom other explanations don't sink in. So while sometimes it's depressing to have to argue the same things over and over, hopefully what comes out of it is becoming a better explainer. (Should note that Vox.com was actually formed with 'splaining journalism in mind, and that both Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias seem to have a natural talent for 'splaining stuff.)
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 10:36am
I think that it's also that *demand is elsewhere*. China is consuming more, India is consuming more. The US wouldn't even have increased population growth if it weren't for incoming Mexicans/Hispanics especially. Europe has an aging population.
So does it make sense to put in more plants in hollowed out Youngstown or remote Des Moines to satisfy new buyers in Jakarta and Hanoi and Chennai and Harbin? And if a factory will need 5000 trained workers, can they count on a town of 13,000, or will they build it close enough to a city of 3 million? I had a friend outsourcing to India - he wasn't doing it for the wages - he was most concerned about being able to sustain demand, enough workers plus the other suppliers he needed in one place, not to cut costs.
Shipping - it's easier to get goods from Guangzhou or Shenzhen to LA than from Fort Wayne, Indiana - you just need to plop a container on a boat with thousands of others, whereas a truck? that's one guy driving to LA and back, 4-5 calendar days, maybe 10 man-days pay. That's what scale means.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 12:20pm
Re: I think that it's also that *demand is elsewhere*
Like DeLong said, we don't need two dining tables.
To use his example, I'm just old enough to remember what it was like when only American made dining tables were available. They were very expensive, it was a major purchase and lots of families couldn't afford one until like, the children were grown. The had "dinettes" in the kitchen, cost less but still expensive, which they still had to buy on "installment plan" because they didn't have credit cards, there were no such things.
As a matter of fact, in the good old days when there were more manufacturing jobs, i.e., 1950's, 1960's, lots fewer families had dining rooms much less dining tables. There weren't things like McMansions to fill with lots of stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I have loved every minute of the cheap imported goods of my adulthood, I love all the choices, because I am someone with aesthetic leanings. I was overjoyed as a 20-something when places like IKEA started to sell in this country so that we had a choice of inexpensive fashionable dishes over a few expensive ugly patterns. I am very grateful to have lived as an adult during a period of growth and competiion in production when the choices of inexpensive fashionable clothing grew rapidly as opposed to expensive few ugly choices of my youth, In my youth when only the wealthy could dress nicely. and the rest of us had to make do and spend tons of time prowling sales because we couldn't afford American-made clothing. And crying when you got a stain on something because you couldn't afford to replace it.
Times have now changed again. That's going to be over. Luck of the draw what history of the human "race" era you get born in. We got a problem with the environment where we can just keep making more and more stuff that isn't recycled for more and more people. We can't have the continuous growth everywhere and consumption of products that aren't recycled. Just like DeLong tries to point out with his really big picture where everybody used to be farmers, then the Industrial Revolution happened, and then....etc.
It's very clear the long era of relentless growth with focus on constantly growing G.N.P., the consumer economy, is coming to a close and things are going to be different very soon. Those people who used to be farmers but had to stop eventually figured something out. So will everyone now as the manufacturing thing downsizes. Maybe more people everywhere will start using birth control more often, that would be nice, more pie for everyone left.
The pie thing will be worked out by politics or it won't. I am sure it won't be worked out well by politicians bribing short-lived factories to their area with all kinds of tax benefits, the supposed gain in jobs being decimated shortly thereafter by automation.
Drives me nuts the whole MAGA theme, driven by a mythical vision of a 1950's that never was as they think it was, even in the 1950's.
Change is the only constant, go with the flow. Well paid manufacturing jobs are over soon everywhere. You want to work with your hands, learn a craft and have a vision. For those who can do neither mind work nor quality physical work nor caring work of other people, definitely we have to start talking about what was once derisively called welfare and now is called guaranteed minimum income.
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 1:07pm
The problem with letting Trump have his way is that people will suffer. Those immigrants who are aiding the economy will be the ones to suffer. The rest of us will “simply” pay more for dairy products. Giving in to Trump means that we don’t fight back against children losing health care or women losing the economic security that comes with birth control pills. We can never just let Trump have his way. Disabled people came out to fight against Obamacare repeal. People are fighting voter suppression all the way to the Supreme Court. Giving in to Trump means allowing people to suffer now for a proposed enlightenment down the road.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 8:15am
The thesis that it doesn't harm American workers to be forced to compete with laborers whose wages are 93% less is so counterintuitive that defending it requires a compelling intellectual argument supported by well-researched data that remains consistent across time and space. J. Bradford DeLong's Vox article obviously doesn't come close to meeting this burden. Indeed, he adduces little evidence. The fact that high-wage Germany too has shed a high percentage of manufacturing jobs actually undermines his claim.
One way to grasp the inherent absurdity of DeLong's argument is to consider how Amazon has destroyed competing retailers - including giants like Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Tower Records. Although Amazon's prices are perhaps 25% (not 93%) lower than those other competitors did or do charge, they're all gone or close to gone now.
It is fair to contend that there are other factors, besides the availability of cheap overseas labor to corporations, behind the drop in American manufacturing jobs over the past two decades. But don't roboticization, increasing production efficiency, and growing income and wealth inequality counsel strongly in favor of protecting America's manufacturing base from cheaper foreign producers. If a pie is growing slowly or shrinking, the last thing most people would do is to cut out a big hunk and send it abroad.
Economist Dean Baker rebuts DeLong's thesis at somewhat greater length here.
by HSG on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 1:51pm
Hal, you don't understand basic economics, and if you're going to harp on stuff it would help to read a book. I've written a 100 page paper on the subject, and about page 3 there was generous discussion of wages vs productivity, and how they compare around the world, back in 2004 or so, the height of the offshoring scare. It doesn't help to have 93% lower wages if it takes 15 employees to produce the same thing, and that includes factors like skill, levels of communication, roadways/transportation costs, availability of needed suppliers, recovery from down time, etc, etc. And those wages largely rose as workers gained training and experience - wage x productivity is largely a constant. Any imbalance is rapidly removed as the cheap resource is bought up, even Chinese labor - it wasn't quite as endless as it seemed.
Again Baker shows a chart that makes it clear the loss of manufacturing had much more to do with China's entry into the WTO in 2002 rather than NAFTA in 1994, but Baker continues to blame Clinton, even as Clinton maintained a strong dollar while keeping exports high, I.e. good profit for American workers. The manufacturing employment held until sometime 2001, when I'd guess companies started cutting in expectation of moving production. Baker blames this on "NAFTA and deals like it", but China joining the WTO was nothing like NAFTA. For years I've known NAFTA was largely a wash, mostly simplifying trade between the 3 countries and lowering transaction costs, a bit favoring Mexico but not that much, and largely irrelevant compared to China. It helped American farmers at the expense of Mexican farmers, but the left can bitch about opposing ideas conveniently - if it favors Americans it's wrong, if it favors Mexicans it's wrong. Nowhere does Baker address Chinese poverty either, presumably wishing China was still a poor angry over-populated nuclear superpower bursting at the seams and encouraging war among neighbors.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 2:56pm
Well we'll just have to disagree about who knows more (or less) about economics.
by HSG on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 3:42pm
No we don't, unless you're hiding it. To launch into paragraphs on wage differentials w/o noting productivity or other key factors, to arbitrarlily give precedent to an event 7 years before rather than 1 after, etc, just shows weak economic raeasoning. You can cite a single law modified under Clinton as causing the crash 9 years later, but you can't say which kinds of financial institutions were impacted by these changes, and how those contributed to the crash. I'm not claiming anything like IQ or other Trumpian nonsense - you're just not offering a deep economic argument to justify your claims.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 4:09pm
If you're suggesting that I attribute the entirety of manufacturing job losses in America since 1992 to NAFTA, you're mistaken. NAFTA, MFN for China/China joining WTO, CAFTA, other recent trade deals, tax cuts for the rich, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, have all worked together with other factors to harm the American working-class.
The trade deals, including Chinese trade in the 21st century, have almost certainly cost the most jobs as the absolute number of manufacturing jobs did not fall below mid-1960s levels until the end of the 1990s when the full effects of NAFTA began to be felt. They began to plunge in 2001 when cheap Chinese labor became fully available to manufacturers for the American market.
Regarding the repeal of Glass-Steagall, I can say that I believe that was responsible for the 2008 crash because the law was implemented in the wake of 1929 specifically to prevent financial crises like Black
FridayTuesday and its aftermath and for 70 years, we didn't have any BlackFridaysTuesdays followed by a massive cascading worldwide financial crisis. Then Bill Clinton signed off on its repeal and 9 years later the global financial system cratered necessitating an enormous tax-payer funded bailout.Simple commonsense from Nobel Laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz: "When repeal of Glass-Steagall brought investment and commercial banks together, the investment-bank culture came out on top. There was a demand for the kind of high returns that could be obtained only through high leverage and big risktaking."
I concede that I don't rely upon deep intellectual analysis to defend my conclusions. That's because I don't need to. Complex exegeses are needed by those who argue that workers are better off when they compete with quasi-slave labor and that freeing up depositors' savings to be invested in very highly leveraged and unregulated derivatives didn't cause a crash that resulted when those derivatives were finally recognized as greatly overvalued.
by HSG on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 7:50pm
You throw a bunch of unrelated shit together and call it an argument. China MFN was early 1994. So why did it take til 2001 to hurt us? Could Bush's weak currency policy in 2001 have had an effect, making it necessary to sell more units abroad to bring same profits? Could Bush's refusal to to push job stimulus in 2001 recession lead to permanent plant shutdowns? I know, you don't need to justify this - you can just say Clinton Clinton Clinton 3x and click your heels and that explains it all. Analysis? Pshaw, you don't do any. Just random correlations that are supposed to justify themselves. I brought up the initial manufacturing downturn in the 70's. Isn't it amazing it stayed level all through the 90's? Oh no, we have to credit Clinton with Bush's idiocy, both Bushes' in fact.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 5:07pm
PP to Hal: It pisses me off that you refuse to accept the simple and obvious facts and agree with the arguments that I lay out in an extremely easy to understand fashion.
Hal to PP: It pisses me off that you refuse to accept the simple and obvious facts and agree with the arguments that I lay out in an extremely easy to understand fashion.
by HSG on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 7:35pm
You bring up some good points but any attempt to hold Bill Clinton responsible for anything he did is a third-rail for some people and sparks will fly. The hollowing out of our industrial base began after the US transitioned from a producer nation into a consumer nation. The first industry to fail was US Steel well before NAFTA or the draw of cheap labor continued the deindustrializing process. NAFTA opened the door to offshoring production from the US but China was and is the biggest gainer from this opening.
The containers that bring trainloads of cheap, and not so cheap, Chinese consumer goods return mostly empty except for scrap metals and paper, there is no consumer market in China for US goods. If they want something we have they either buy the company that makes it or invite them to set up a factory in China.
It's not logical to want to return the low wage cheap consumer goods production to the US but the higher wage jobs producing value added products should be encouraged to repatriate. Trump's call for MAGA seems to have been heard by the desision makers at Ford Motor Company who resisted the draw of cheap Mexican labor and are expanding production here.
by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 4:58pm
Funny, the way you put this, I largely agre. I don't see criticism of Clinton as a 3rd rail - I see irrational criticism as annoying. I'd point out our manufacturing has grown despite job losses - we've kept the big more scalable industry and offshored the manpower intensive stuff to countries where they have lots of manpower. I think the Automation effect's been overrated til now, but it's now accelerating.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 5:15pm
Nafta Backers Start to Fear Trump Really May Scrap It
Headline story by Ana Swanson @ NYTimes.com, 16 minutes ago
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 3:36pm
Trump’s ‘Poison Pill’ Nafta Proposals Threaten to Derail Talks
By Josh Wingrove, Eric Martin, and Andrew Mayeda @ Bloomberg.comby artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 8:15pm
"The collapse of the 1994 trade deal would send shock waves throughout the global economy, inflicting damage far beyond Mexico, Canada and the United States."
Or it won't.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-impact-recession-... (7/14/16)
"UK unemployment fell by 75,000 in the three months [May-July 2017], bringing the jobless rate down to 4.3% from 4.4% in the previous quarter."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41252976?utm_content=buffer2e8ba&utm_me... (9/13/17)
by HSG on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 10:04pm
So instead of lost jobs, British wages have gone stagnant while inflation is skyrocketing - another similarly dire outcome leaving people with less money, yet you seem to be cheering? WTF?
And the fact is that Brexit hasn't happened, and increasingly looks likely won't, but the incompetence surrounding the negotiations has crippled the current government and cost it much of its majority, boosting Corbyn and Labour's fortunes. So yeah, a hard Brexit would have likely caused those job losses, but 15 months on they're just in chaos. Yay, Hal! Score!
And Ttump's NAFTA promises may not happen just like that wall won't be built, but he's already losing us jobs, and if he survives 15 months God forbid we'll be in worse straits however the exact prediction goes.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 11:11pm
On the inflation thingie, I just saw this over @ Bloomberg about the Sept. Fed Reserve minutes:
Fed Looks for Answers on Missing Inflation in a Tight Labor Market
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/11/2017 - 11:44pm
The point is the parade of Brexit horribles predicted by the elites hasn't even come close to pass. Obviously the country is in a much better position to deal with stagnant wages now that it can protect UK workers. Problem is Tories are still in charge.
by HSG on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 4:36am
They haven't come close to pass because Brexit hasn't come close to pass - it's stalled, stagnant, hung up, floundering, gasping for air, on the ropes... "Protect UK workers" - well that's marvelous after the fucktards are just realizing that many of these "UK workers" are actually Polish workers or German workers or Pakistani workers or other workers, and that they actually work so they can't just kick them out or.... (drumroll please)... there will be nobody who knows how to do their fucking jobs or who's available.
And part of the problem, if it weren't obvious, is these workers don't want to live up in Leeds and Sheffield and what-not that you've never heard of - they want to be in metro London or least Birmingham or Manchester, so these midlands places are still going to be hollowed out, because we still don't know how to get people to distribute themselves somewhat proportionally.
And lessee, what kind of losers is the UK having to deal with?
Oh, mostly from outside the EU - so the UK is already able to control their influx, not that they don't have special rules limiting guest workers from the EU as well. Net migration to UK was 133,000 - wow, feel the terror. 30% came to study - i.e. pay inflated prices for UK schools to get an English-based education - the horror. Over half of EU immigration is from the EU-14, i.e. not trashy East Europeans or those weird Balkan folks. Quelle horreur/wat vremd/puta madre...
But it's okay, Hal, because 1 million of these unwanted skilled overeducated channel wetbacks are planning on leaving. So the UK can go back to offshoring critical work because they can't find talent at home. Except if they complete Brexit, they'll have to pay much more and make special deals to offshore to East Europe - hooray! Incompetence shoots and scores!
Yep, Hal - you really understand economics.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 6:40am
This brief response will be my final one on this thread as these back and forths have become quite tedious. Your argument is that because the final departure of the UK from the EU hasn't yet occurred the disaster predicted by neoliberals and the financial services industry hasn't yet occurred. But the doom and gloomers didn't predicate disaster on the dotting of every I and crossing of every T in Brexit. They claimed that if "Leave" won the vote, the UK would immediately start to feel pain in a myriad of ways. Simply put, they were wrong. Your argument that Brexit isn't complete actually strengthens mine. The government will be in a better position to address stagflation when it is freed completely from EU fetters.
In answer to your sarcastic implication that I don't know economics while you are an expert, I am quite comfortable referring to my long record here at Dagblog . . . and yours.
by HSG on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 8:56am
Oh yes, let's please pull out the "neoliberals" tag yet again.
You somehow forget the "Brexit means Brexit" proclamation, which immediately after the vote started hedging its bets since the magical 300M pounds per month for the NHS turned out to be a hoax/lie.
So, headlines that might have prevented a recession (proclaiming many people including experts think it will never happen) can be found below..
I know that's weak tea for you, because you think in absolutes, rather than probabilities, another issue to deal with. (a perusal of Nate Silver's work on Beyesian Probability as applies to predictions would be useful).
As for economics, I don't pretend to be an "expert", but have done reasonable study at bachelors and masters level to give me some basic rigor. Perhaps you've studied more, I don't know, but I don't see it, which is more important in the end - proof is in the putting.
And you still prefer to punk out, rather than ever address any basic points, such as "why is a stagnant (low) wage with fuller employment so much better than less employment and foreigners leaving?" or my note re: how Brexit would simply lead to more offshoring You never think to break down tax revenues, actual knock-on productivity and employment effects, etc. etc. (note that Mexicans have direct trade with most of the rest of the world - so easy to get around NAFTA for many industries - the US is one who didn't cultivate many of these bilateral relations. Similarly the UK would be stuck trying to create a huge # of replacement relationships, vs the EU's umbrella one, years of work). I think about this stuff. You quote some article or other.
==========================================================
Jul 14, 2016 - Boris Johnson says Brexit vote does not mean leaving Europe 'in any sense' .... and Commonwealth Affairs, is one of the four most senior positions in the UK ...
Aug 29, 2016 - Britain will never leave the EU because Boris Johnson and other leading Brexiteers did not realise the full complexity of the process, a leading expert has claimed. ... Prof Brooks, who advised the Electoral Commission on the wording of the referendum question, said:“I do not think ...
Aug 23, 2016 - How Brexit has already changed Britain two months after the EU referendum .... These rights mean that UK based banks are free to sell their services across the ...
Brexit: EU referendum result 'not legally binding ... - The Independent
Jul 10, 2016 - The lawyers add that the Government should organise an independent ... who co-ordinated the creation of the letter, said: "Parliament is sovereign and the .... Re: Brexit. We are all individual members of the Bars of England and Wales, ...
We won't trigger Article 50 until after 2017 – and that means Brexit may ...
www.independent.co.uk/.../brexit-article-50-leaving-eu-wont-happen-after......
Aug 19, 2016 - It is now eight weeks since we voted to leave the EU but it may be at least eight years before the UK is fully and totally out of Europe – if we finally leave at all.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 10:20am
Wow, that last Independent link is quite something along the lines of breaking down preconceptions about what might happen with more protectionism; I highly recommend it to everyone:
Brexit: More than one million foreign workers preparing to leave UK within five years
Highly skilled workers are the most likely to consider leaving, with 47 per cent thinking about upping sticks by 2022
Make sure to read the whole thing though. It not only makes a good case that the only jobs opening up would be for the highly educated and/or highly skilled, there is some opining in the article along the lines of "but don't worry, we can automate those jobs too"! Which makes the case to me that those people have no other reason for protectionism but nationalism (i.e., Make Britiannia Great Again. What do you do once you have automated a lot more jobs so there's not enough work for even the highly educated and you are a small island nation? Why go to war, of course, expand the Empire once again.)
by artappraiser on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 10:31am
The commentary on Trump's trade tean's work on improving NAFTA seems like overdramatic hand-wringing. I dont think anyone actually wants NAFTA to fail but promises were made to voters and this president has the annoying habit of keeping promises.
The Brexit is another example of people using democracy to move national interests to the beginning of discussions not allowing them to be an afterthought. The globalist NWO forces are furious about this direct assault on their collectivist authoritarian fantasy and seem willing to bomb their own cities to somehow punish those who won't submit to their Stalinist collective. The Torries seem useless and without some type of effective populist leadership Commie Corbyn could become PM and the globalists will have won.
by Peter (not verified) on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 12:03pm
" I dont think anyone actually wants NAFTA to fail" - huh? why don't you and Hal talk this one out. This was the trade deal spawned by Satan, the mother of all nasty trade deals, the rocks upon which the Clinton ship wrecked. It's like saying no one wants Obamacare to fail at this point. Except almost all elected Republicans & quite a few Independents.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 12:45pm
yeah leave me out of it too, I didn't say nothing bout NAFTA. (Actually, the article was inspirational in that it got me thinking how we differ, being a big nation of 50 states and all, where people of different geographical areas, can still move to where the work is, as in: like if the UK was still part of the EU....but I couldn't grok the comparison that well)
by artappraiser on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 1:25pm
I should have written 'anyone who actually matters wants NAFTA to fail". You,I and Hal won't be consulted. NAFTA stirred up the breeze that turned into a sucking sound of jobs leaving the US and the Mextcan government lowering tarrifs and subsidies on corn produced mass dislocation of subsistance farmers but it created good trade opportunities elsewhere in these economies. All that Trump's team is doing now is rebalancing some of those sections of the agreement that were overgenerous and harm US business.
The Mexicans had to improve their produce sanitation standards under NAFTA which they did and they now enjoy huge exports of fruits, vegetables and flowers to the US. The US sells them corn for animal feed while they produce all their own maize for human consumption.
Many people want to end Obamacare before it completely collapses into a black hole that it now appears to have been designed to do. The republicans have sure gone soft, I expected them to kill Obamacare and not replace it but times have changed.
by Peter (not verified) on Thu, 10/12/2017 - 7:56pm
Except that sucking sound didn't happen for 7 years? You're talking shit now, as was Perot. Teump's been theeatening NAFTA's destruction for 2 years (like Obamacare) - a really shitty appriach to then supposedly the areas that hurt us. And ni, Obamacare wouldn't even be having problems if Republicans hadn't tried and succeeded to give it probkems for 7 years now. If I shove a stick un your bike spokes, doesn't mean your bike was designed to fail.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 10/13/2017 - 12:47am
(I follow Joe for when I need Brit humor, which is often.)
by artappraiser on Fri, 10/13/2017 - 1:46am
Combine harvester & penguins - that's just simply unfair - anything with those 2 rammed together will evoke a laugh, no matter what other words are inserted. And the Brits don't actually have either. (Small feudal homesteads have always been their bent). Blimey.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 10/13/2017 - 4:07am