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For a thorough economic analysis, I recommend Patrick Boyle. The gist is that tariffs are redistributive: They take income from the household sector and transfer it to protected businesses — both within the US. Whether Canada will be thrown into a recession depends on how badly Canadian goods are demanded by US consumers.
The basic economic incentive for international trade is the same why we have different professions for people: by dividing labor, countries can specialize and be more efficient in producing particular good or service, making it cheaper for everyone. Yes, you can grow bananas in Canada, but it's just way cheaper to do it in warm climate. The flip side is that Canada will never gain the expertise needed to grow bananas, and will not have any bananas if the other countries close down shop. This is fine without bananas, but if you replace "banana" with "weapon", then some people start worrying about "natural security".
This is not directly related to your questions — but I'm genuinely curious. How would you describe the harm that the left has done to you and your loved ones, and how would you say the mainstream media misrepresents Trump?
The reason why I'm asking is that I'm firmly anti-Trump — I have no hate for him, but I do believe that he will make the lives of almost everyone worse, including his own supporters, except for the direct beneficiaries of his authoritarian rule.
And I'm bringing this up with you because I'm curious why his own supporters would support him, even though he will harm them. Obviously, that doesn't make sense to me. 😅
Before I expand on that, I'd like to expound that my core value systems is humanism — essential, every human being is worth caring for. That includes you, every Trump supporter, all leftists, and people of all colors. However, it appears to me that Trump supporters do not necessarily see it the same way, and then it becomes a question of how much care I can afford for a human that is fine with harming me.
Now my quick rundown of Trump: The key tactic of populist figures is to deceive about the actual benefit of their policies. Will Trumps' tarrifs improve the lives of most American consumers? Judging by argument above, the answer is "no". Does Trump care? The answer is — "no". Why would he care? Why would he not lie to everyone? His good character? But he doesn't seem to have a good character? And will people be able to tell the difference? The answer is "no" — that's why the deception works. Most people do not understand well enough what effect tariffs have — and they will harm themselves if they belief they work while the reality is that they don't. It's the discrepancy between belief and reality that is the source of harm. And the populist strategy is to play exactly that: Tell people what they want to believe, reinforce it, throw new beliefs at the wall and see what sticks, without any regard for reality. Everyone who is in on that deception will win, everyone who is not will lose out.
As Henry George put it in his 1879 book "Progress and Poverty":
“A theory that, falling in with the habits of thought of the poorer classes, thus justifies the greed of the rich and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with the theory advanced by Malthus.”
I can’t answer for the user you’re replying to, but can for me. The answer is immigration. Until mass immigration ends, immigration is the only issue that matters. Every normal policy can be quickly reversed, but in human history, mass immigration is usually (albeit not always) forever, especially under liberal democracy.
A huge global recession caused by Trump’s tariffs policies would be awful, but the alternative was acquiescing to the most harmful policy of the last 70 years of Western civilization. If my voice is heard (and of course it isn’t really), it must be for that.
Thanks!
🤔 But — could you describe how immigration harms you personally?
I'm asking because the general argument against immigration is an indirect economic argument. The argument typically goes like this: The land can support a certain size of population. If more people come in, the land will not be able to produce enough food for everyone.
The trouble is just: This argument is precisely the Malthusean theory that my quote of Henry George refers to. And it is unfortunately not an accurate model of reality — it's not true. And hasn't been since 1879. 😅 After the invention of fertilizers, land size is not a big issue anymore — the economy now runs on goods and services that people produce for each other. Sure, immigrants lead to more consumption of goods and services — but in order to be able to buy these, they also need to work to produce them. In other words, "land" has been replaced by "labor" — and while an immigrant can, by definition, not bring the resource "land" with them, they can and do bring the resource "labor" with them anywhere they go.
This is clearly an accurate model of reality in theory - a finite amount of land cannot support an infinite amount of people. Malthus was wrong in his concrete predictions about agriculture because he did not take into account technological increases. But as a model of reality, it's correct that the land can only support a certain amount of people through agriculture - it's just that we are tremendously efficient now.
I won't speak for 2rafa as to how immigration harms him/her, but I find it interesting that the general argument against immigration you mention isn't one that I commonly hear. In fact (going to how wrong Malthus in fact was) I don't think I have ever heard anyone argue seriously that the United States can't accept more immigrants because we will run out of food. Housing, maybe, but not food.
But in the most basic sense of the word, a job is a piece of work that needs to be done — and the immigrants bring that in as well, because they also need lettuce and tooth brushes and haircuts. The underlying issue is not that there's isn't enough work that people can do for each other — if anything, it's that creating a job is typically done by an employer, who needs to be reasonably competent and has their own interests.
I would relish the extinction of human labor, because then I don't have to work anymore and could relish my free time will still being provided with all the services that I need. The issue is not that work goes extinct, the issue is that I, as a lowly peasant do not profit from the work saved — but that's a problem of distribution of wealth. And that's what I also find mind-boggling about voting for Trump — he is so rich that he doesn't have to work anymore, yet promises the restricting immigration will solve my, the peasant's problem, rather than redistributing his very own capital? I don't know, but that looks like deception to me.
Sorry to pile on here, as I'm already engaging with you in a different thread; wouldn't your theories only make sense in a hypothetical world where we had an extremely high labour force engagement? Like, if we only have around 65% of the population of working aged individuals engaging in the labour market, doesn't that imply that adding a marginal person does not generate a marginal job (but rather, 65% of one)?
I don't think so? I don't quite understand which theory specifically you mean, my immediately preceding post contains two. On the first one: The marginal person generates demand for labor and adds supply of labor. The 65% figure would be about the supply of labor. If you want to draw conclusions about the demand for labor — which can be entirely different from that figure — you need additional data. For example, you could try to argue that it's a closed system, where labor supply and demand are equal; but with exports, imports, and profit margins, this is not a closed system.
The second theory is about the utilization of the supply of labor. Labor works for some company, which takes a cut of the produced value and pays out the rest as wage. The company could choose to pay higher wages — but they don't.
Perhaps the following calculations illustrates what I mean: A marginal person of working age offers 1 person of labor, but the labor that they demand in order to stay fed and bedded may only be, say, 0.5 persons due to automation. If this single person were a closed loop, there is no good reason for this person to work more than 0.5 persons worth of labor — that will be enough to feed themselves.
If human labor goes extinct, this means that this person would only demand ~0 people worth of labor — nobody has to lift a finger to keep this person well-fed, it's all taken care of by AI growing corn and mowing the lawn.
The trouble is that this person is not a closed loop — they don't have access to that AI growing corn, they have to pay an exorbitant fee. That's the issue about "work saved" that I mean, and the thing that Henry George pointed out in "Progress and Poverty".
The math doesn't pan out exactly in this way, because automation changes what constitutes human labor, so you can get the work of 90 people from year 856 for the price of 1 crane driver and 1 crane in the year 2025. Work saved means that each person can do more, but that in turn may lead to demanding more.
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What is Trump's personal net worth as a proportion of the total resources available to and under the control of the US government?
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