Why trump is Routing the Free Traders

First off, i didnt even know Pat Buchannon was still alive 🙂

Second, i think this ‘free trade / globalization’ issue or cluster of issues is one of the most important topics of our times here on Earth.

I would have loved to see Trump and Sanders have a conversation about it. I’d like to know where they agree and disagree on it.

I like the fact Trump is against the Nafta/WTO stuff. Its why he’s such a wild-card. I cant stand a lot of his ideas…but this Nafta thing is HUGE. It’s what makes me think about the surreal notion that i might prefer Trump to Hillary (which isn’t saying much, but still)

Thing is, i dont agree with his “patriotism” mentality. I dont wanna care more about one human being than another. An american life is not more valuable than a chinese life or a mexican life, or a north korean life or an Iranian life. …Cant we have policies that are good for all-lives ? Yes? No?

w
v
“You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ”
(1919) GB Shaw

Zooey wrote:

Yes, Trump is tempting on trade.

And he has zero chance of building a wall or deporting 11 million humans.

But I cannot have him appointing justices. He has already said he would appoint justices who would restrict liberties. He has said he will appoint justices who are anti-abortion. And he could appoint up to 3 more justices, and roll in right wing authoritarianism for a generation. Trump is no libertarian. He’s an authoritarian.

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You swinging back to voting for Hillary, Z ?

The Supreme Court and Federal Judge appointments ‘are’ the
one reason I feel the pull to vote for the lesser-of-two-very-Evils…but
…then I start thinkin about Hillary and…I’m just done with the NeoLib-NeoCons.

Just cant do it. I dont even know if I’m being ‘rational’ but
for the rest of my life I’m voting Green Party (or once in a blue-moon, for a Bernie type who happens to be in one of the corporate-parties.)

w
v

Zooey wrote:

No. I’m voting for Jill Stein (again).

Both Clinton and Trump, ultimately, are this guy:

Hillary might be Nero but Trump strikes me more the Caligula type.

Well, it will be interesting to observe the ‘reactions’ to the new President.
What will be the reaction/results of four years of Trump, or Hillary?
Will they galvanize a new opposition force?
And which one will ‘get the most done’ whatever that may be…?

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I’m no longer voting for the lesser of two evils. I see the logic behind it but ultimately it results in no progress being made towards the type of country I want. I know a lot of Green Party supporters who are registered as independents or democrats – including me. But no longer. If you want a third party to eventually become relevant then you have to register for it and vote for it.

nittany ram wrote:

I’m no longer voting for the lesser of two evils. I see the logic behind it but ultimately it results in no progress being made towards the type of country I want.

Just tossing in my pennies to the informal poll.

Everyone has to decide for themselves and I don’t figure I will persuade anyone.

But my thinking is, it’s NOW and the prospect of Trump, who really is worse, in there nominating SC and federal judges (among other things) is positively dystopian. I’ve seen worse and worse is worse (Maine had a 3 candidate governors race and a Trump-style guy won with 37% of the vote. People I know said enh, what harm can he do…and, he then showed them what harm he can do).

I will register third party after the election.

Not the kind of thing I want to fight about because no one will convince anyone and no one has to justify their choice.

That’s my motto. Worse IS worse.

….

Either one will cause the country to wake up the morning after with contempt of the new president in full glow. Both of these candidates are widely reviled. So the onslaught of negativity and derision will start before the inauguration. The next four years are going to be ugly.

Either one is likely to be a one-term president (if the opposition party can put up a decent candidate…I mean, let’s not forget, as awful as Trump is considered to be even within the Republican party, voters thought Carson, Fiorina, Cruz, Rubio, and Bush were WORSE!).

As far as what Trump will do, nobody knows. I don’t even think Trump really knows. You know, I actually have read quite a bit about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (because a couple of family members have it), and one odd thing about narcissists is that they believe whatever they are saying at the time they say it, even if it completely contradicts something they said (and believed) at an earlier time. And they can change up again completely in the future. They also have a stronger than average tendency to rationalize whatever they want at the moment. They are much more governed by their emotional needs than by intellectual principles. They bend principles at will to match their current emotional condition.

That’s what we will get with Trump. He will be a crapshoot every single day.

He may or may not support TPP. If he had a personal business interest in it, we could predict he would do whatever benefits him most. But his business interests aren’t really involved in “trade,” afaik. But he has stated he is opposed to it, and I imagine that is mostly due to his essentially self-centered anti-foreigner feelings, and those appear to be a constant in his life. So he will probably be opposed to that since it doesn’t benefit him directly, and he is inclined against foreigners. But, again, his “Rasputin” is going to be as important to his presidency as he is. Who is going to be his chief adviser? And how much is he going to listen to him?

The one thing you can count on with Trump is he will do whatever HE wants. In spite of his populist rhetoric, he does not give a shit about anybody else. It will be Trumpmerica. And since his interests are not the interests of the 99%, anything he does that benefits average Americans will be by accident, not principle.

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

I’m no longer voting for the lesser of two evils. I see the logic behind it but ultimately it results in no progress being made towards the type of country I want.

Just tossing in my pennies to the informal poll.

Everyone has to decide for themselves and I don’t figure I will persuade anyone.

But my thinking is, it’s NOW and the prospect of Trump, who really is worse, in there nominating SC and federal judges (among other things) is positively dystopian. I’ve seen worse and worse is worse (Maine had a 3 candidate governors race and a Trump-style guy won with 37% of the vote. People I know said enh, what harm can he do…and, he then showed them what harm he can do).

I will register third party after the election.

Not the kind of thing I want to fight about because no one will convince anyone and no one has to justify their choice.

That’s my motto. Worse IS worse.

….

I watched a 5-minute video on that guy, your governor. There is no denying that he is a colossal dickhead. Just an ignorant, selfish, boorish, POS. When do you get rid of him?

Any day.

Well unless you mean by means within the law.

(Note for our NSA monitors: that was just a joke. No one is proposing anything, just indulging dark humor.)

The Trump trade scam

Posted June 29, 2016 at 5:14 pm by Lawrence Mishel

The Trump trade scam

Yesterday, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump gave a speech on trade, extensively citing EPI’s research which shows that trade deficits as a result of NAFTA and other trade deals, as well as trade with China, have cost U.S. jobs and driven down U.S. wages. It’s true that the way we have undertaken globalization has hurt the vast majority of working people in this country—a view that EPI has been articulating for years, and that we will continue to articulate well after November. However, Trump’s speech makes it seem as if globalization is solely responsible for wage suppression, and that elite Democrats are solely responsible for globalization. Missing from his tale is the role of corporations and their allies have played in pushing this agenda, and the role the party he leads has played in implementing it. After all, NAFTA never would have passed without GOP votes, as two-thirds of the House Democrats opposed it.

Furthermore, Trump has heretofore ignored the many other intentional policies that businesses and the top 1 percent have pushed to suppress wages over the last four decades. Start with excessive unemployment due to Federal Reserve Board policies which were antagonistic to wage growth and friendly to the finance sector and bondholders. Excessive unemployment leads to less wage growth, especially for low- and middle-wage workers. Add in government austerity at the federal and state levels—which has mostly been pushed by GOP governors and legislatures—that has impeded the recovery and stunted wage growth. There’s also the decimation of collective bargaining, which is the single largest reason that middle class wages have faltered. Meanwhile, the minimum wage is now more than 25 percent below its 1968 level, even though productivity since then has more than doubled. Phasing in a $15 minimum wage would lift wages for at least a third of the workforce. The most recent example is the effort to overturn the recent raising of the overtime threshold that would help more than 12 million middle-wage salaried workers obtain overtime protections.

Trump is absent or wrong on all these issues. He has said in the past that wages are too high. And he argues, without basis, that businesses are overregulated and overtaxed—further ingratiating himself to corporate elites and the party he now leads. Deregulation and tax cuts are have been tried and failed for the last four decades, simply enriching the rich without stimulating any growth.

Trump’s latest take on trade is a scam. He claims to be offering a path for workers, but is actually just offering mostly empty boxes on trade. What exactly is he trying to accomplish with renegotiated trade deals? And if is he so keen to help working people, why does he then steer the discussion back toward the traditional corporate agenda of tax cuts for corporations and the rich? Some pro-worker, anti-elite populist Trump is.

But why, bnw, would you think Trump has any intention of helping working people? He has absolutely no history of doing so. None. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He’s made his fortune from screwing them over, and outsources the vast majority of his own manufacturing jobs.

He calls for steep tax cuts on the rich, which means he will make a fortune from his own government policies. He will personally be enriched by his actions. He calls for a top rate of 25%, which will net him millions of extra dollars a year. Plus, no more estate tax, which will net his children tens of millions extra.

There is no evidence in the history of American economics whereby tax cuts for the rich have ever — and I mean ever — helped working people. The rich have always just kept that money and increased the gap between themselves and their workers. There is absolutely no case in our history wherein tax cuts for the rich have resulted in a decrease in the gap between rich and poor.

Seriously, why do you have such faith in him? What has he ever done to earn your trust?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

It is definitely the case that our current trade policies are toxic. But this has always been the American Way. It’s always been the American Way to screw over workers, because the American Way is the Capitalist Way, and the Capitalist Way is to screw workers, consumers and destroy the planet, and it’s set up to do this, and it’s set up to destroy jobs.

Democratic Party or GOP — they both do this. The Democrats did have a short period of time in which they at least put up some resistance to the same old same old — the Keynesian Golden Age, for lack of a better term. We had our one and only Middle Class boom from 1947-1973, with FDR’s New Deal policies at least somewhat embraced and protected during that period. But after that, the Dems abandoned the working class too. And since then, neither party has cared a lick about them. There is zero evidence to support the idea that Trump and the GOP cares about workers in the slightest, and tons of evidence showing they care only about the 1%. Roughly speaking, I think the Dems care only about the richest 10%, with an emphasis on that 1% as well.

Trump isn’t the answer. Nor is Clinton.

Another key: Our trade deals are bad primarily because they keep deregulating Capital. They offer no labor protections, or protections for the environment. This allows American corporations to ship jobs overseas, exploit workers there even more than they do here, and then sell cheap products back to Americans — still the best market in the world, though soon to be replaced by China, India and other developing nations.

Trump tries to paint the picture of evil countries stealing our jobs, and how America is letting them all get away with murder. He demagogues about people in foreign nations supposedly taking away our jobs, when it’s really American corporations doing that, with the help of government policies. You’ll never hear Trump pointing to the real causes of declining wages, rising inequality and poverty, and so on. He just wants his supporters to focus all of their attention on helpless, powerless, impoverished people in foreign lands, and members of that same class here. He does everything he can to deflect attention from the real culprits:

Plutocrats like himself.

He hasn’t lied to me. He hasn’t enriched himself via government ‘service’. He stands for much of the Buchanan 2000 agenda which has been proven to be prescient. People have had enough.

On the part in bold. He hasn’t been in public service yet, but he’s running for president now. He has said that, once in power, he will slash taxes on the rich and on their estates. As mentioned, this will mean tens of millions in extra money for him and his children. As in, Trump says he will do things that directly enrich himself — while failing to admit to this.

And throughout his entire career as a businessman, he has taken advantage of numerous government programs/laws/regulations involving outsourcing jobs, making his own debt “pay,” bouncing back from his frequent bankruptcies, when the average Joe or Jane could not.

Again, he has no history of helping working people, and every opportunity to do so. Why do you trust him to suddenly change on that issue, if he wins the White House?