Cohn out, tariffs in, trade war good
by digby
Gary Cohn has resigned. I'd guess Peter Novarro will succeed him. And Peter Navarro is yet another eccentric fifth rater. This could be a wild ride.
Trump said today that the EU are a bunch of cheaters and we're going to kick their asses all the way back to to eastern front. (Well, he didn't say that in those words. But practically.) He is really looking forward to this.
Donald Trump says his tariffs on steel and aluminumn will bring back jobs to the United States. A consulting outfit called The Trade Partnership says he’s right—but only at the cost of losing jobs in lots of other areas:
TTP estimates that the tariffs will, on net, cost about 146,000 jobs, two-thirds of which are production and low-skill jobs. This estimate doesn’t take into account any possible retaliation from our trading partners.
The TTP analysis is based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database. This is a model coordinated by Purdue University that’s widely used, not least by Joseph Francois, the economics professor who serves as managing director of TTP. The GTAP model, says the TTP paper, “is the same model used by the Commerce Department to arrive at the tariff rates it argues will yield increases in U.S. steel production sufficient to bring the industry to 80 percent capacity utilization.”
Trump doesn't understand the concept of "trade". I doubt he understood it on the playground and he doesn't understand it now.
He believes in "take."
I don't know how this will end up. But he reasserted at this press conference today that he thinks trade wars are good and that we will "win" because we have a trade deficit so it's guaranteed. I guess we're definitely going to find out if he's right.
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