People Aren’t
Rational, and That’s Why We Need Free Trade
US Tariffs start to backfire
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-tariffs-are-already-backfiring/2018/06/14/896b6c5a-700d-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html
Related:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/sunday/trump-china-tariffs-trade-farmers.html
America is less open to trade than presumed
Critique of US
Trade Policy
Anne Krueger on recent US trade policies
Harvard’s Jeffrey Frankel notes:
“The least logical of the recurring Trump obsessions
is the demand that China reduce the U.S. bilateral trade deficit. The Chinese
government has no policy levers that could reduce the bilateral balance by the
mooted $100 billion or $200 billion. If China wanted to give Trump a
superficial “win,” it could reduce the bilateral trade deficit some by buying
more American natural gas or by routing smartphone exports through a third
country like South Korea.
But the economics would be illusory. There would be
virtually no effect on the overall U.S. trade deficit: We would otherwise sell
the natural gas to some other country, and in reality those smartphones already
get about 95 percent of their value added from South Korea, the United States
and other countries anyway. Focusing on the bilateral balance is a waste of
time. Regardless what happens with China, the overall U.S. trade deficit will
rise this year as a result of the Republican tax cuts, enacted at a time when
the economy is already producing at the limit of its capacity.”
WSJ Editorial: Trump’s Steel Destruction
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman: Oh,
What a Stupid Trade War
Cato Institute’s DANIEL J. IKENSON: Steel
Yourself as Trump Cuts Off Trade to Spite His Face