Attention Economy


Monday, July 30, 2018

US Trade Policy - Economic Reality versus Politics

Europe’s Trade Victory in Washington
The US is at Risk of Losing a Trade War with China
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes:
“Beyond the true, but by now platitudinous, assertion that everyone will lose, what can we say about the possible outcomes of Trump’s trade war? First, macroeconomics always prevails: if the United States’ domestic investment continues to exceed its savings, it will have to import capital and have a large trade deficit. Worse, because of the tax cuts enacted at the end of last year, the US fiscal deficit is reaching new records – recently projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2020 – which means that the trade deficit almost surely will increase, whatever the outcome of the trade war. The only way that won’t happen is if Trump leads the US into a recession, with incomes declining so much that investment and imports plummet.”