Saturday, June 09, 2018

Trade Wars Was A Fun Game

There are exceptions and it's sometimes complicated but basically:

Trump: Unfair you have high tariffs!
Canada: umwhat?
Yurp: a bit, but not really bro
Trump: Get rid of all tariffs or I will raise ours!
Canada,Yurp: sure, dude, backatya. Gonna raise tariffs on every industry located where your supporters are located.
Trump: We are going to have free trade now!

I mean as I said it's complicated with some industry carveouts and blahblahblah, but basically NAFTA largely lives up to its name. The real issue is that Trump thinks if there is a trade deficit then it means other countries are getting stuff for free instead of just giving us a bunch of money instead of goods and that since our goods are the yugest, there must be something unfair going on. No it doesn't make any sense, even if you have a dim view of some of these agreements.