Well, he looks and sounds "presidential." It doesn't really matter that his foreign policy ideas perfectly align with GWB and others, the same ideas that turned Iraq into what it is now, wasted trillions of taxpayers' money and led to the creation of ISIS.
Not that it's a good idea but a 45% tariff would make cheap Chinese goods cost about the same as theoretically better made American goods. The problem is the board rooms of America would find a way to pocket the 45% and we'd still have crapola across the board, just 45% more expensive.
I d0n't think it would be 45% more expensive because pricing is set by the market. A 45% tariff on iPhones produced in China, for instance, would not make the iPhone cost $650 + 45%. Their sales would go down dramatically at that price and Apple's profits would go down. If Apple thought they would make the most profit at $650 + 45% right now without any tariff being applied to their phones, they would do so. They want to sell the most units at the highest price they can to make as much $$$ as they can. Sure, with the 45% tariff the iPhone price would go up, but I don't believe it would go up anywhere close to 45%. Apple's profit margins, on the other hand, would certainly go down.
That wasn't the best part. Then in the next breath, he touted his plan. Where, exports are not taxed, but imports ARE taxed... Ummm, Ted, if Trumps tariff gets passed on to the consumer...(and ..what's another word for a tax on imports) how does yours not? SMDH
Apple is a bad example. Think Walmart. Think Target. Think Kohl's. Think Best Buy in general. A 45% tariff on foreign goods coming into the country would create a lot of space for people to make cheap American goods. Most of that space would wind up going into the pockets of the 1%, not the very cheap labor they hired to manufacture the goods in the US. People would be smuggling Chinese laborers into the country to work for peanuts in garment factories. Corporations would be setting up shell companies inside shell companies to make cheap Asian goods, produced in Asia, look like they originated in the good ol' USA. We've already got the problem of American companies with 90% foreign labor bases. You think those guys would hire more Americans or just make their labor base look more American? We'd have a huge enforcement bill to go along with the tariff and the GOP would be screaming about big government at the same time the unions screamed about the rules being rigged in favor of the 1% and against the American worker. Then you'd get the problem that the easiest way to make a big shipping company bulletproof is to take a bunch of super freight carriers and load them down with debt in their own shell corporations. Then if anything goes wrong the plaintiffs are suing a corporation with no assets but the freight carriers and an enormous amount of corresponding debt, more than covering any potential losses and making it impossible to collect any judgement against the corporation. You can't fix a rigged game by giving the house 45% extra vigorish to play around with. That just makes the house 45% more money. The players are in the same situation they were in before, except now they're paying anywhere up to 45% more to buy in for the same set of cards they were getting dealt in the first place. If you want to fix international trade so that it benefits the US more the thing to do is actually uphold US labor standards against goods coming into the country. Bar goods from countries that do not meet the same standards that US companies are held to for manufacturing in America. Don't make those goods more expensive. Make it a felony to import them into the US for trade of any sort. Tax corporations against the differential between foreign taxes and US taxes. No tax breaks for companies that use child labor and labor that works without safety nets and labor that works for peanuts because the country they are manufacturing in takes bribes under the table at a much lower exchange rate than the taxes the companies would normally pay. Ok, so now we have the elephant in the room. Create a robot tax that taxes goods not made by human hands at a rate that guarantees that machines don't do 99% of the work in 5 years. You can't engineer a civil society but you can engineer one that doesn't collapse under the weight of technological and political advances that make people worthless. Right now we're making people worthless at an ever-increasing pace. That's why the GOP has a Trump problem. The GOP is only a few years ahead of the Dems in this regard. People matter.
Our brand is crisis... Stop the Presses!!! Blinky Carson will endorse The Don.. Oh happy day! (what was the payoff... Surgeon General?)
I am staying home today and have Fox News on. It's Trump, Trump and more Trump. They just can't get enough of him
Rubio just also said that himself. He also said that a vote for Cruz or Kasich in FL is essentially a vote for Trump So pathetic...
where have you been? Of course it's a plan, they aren't hiding it. The strategy is to not let Trump get to 1237 by taking whatever delegates they can with any other candidate. Look at the Romney speech. "if i was a voter in Fl, I'd vote for Rubio" "if i was a voter in Ohio, I'd vote for Kasich" They've all but come out and explicitly stated there strategy.
This is what Bush wanted to meet them about...He wants to split up as many delegates as possible and want the losers to stay in no matter what. He probably promised them money from his super pac funds to keep this a tough race and leave the actual chance of a brokered convention if Trump doesnt meet the goal to win the ticket. I expect Rubio to lose florida and ohio AND STILL STAY IN THE RACE.
I hope they realize that they are going to alienate a lot of people if they do succeed. There will be no White House for them for many years to come and that may transcend to the local level as well... total disaster.
They won't come out and say it, well actually some GOP oriented commentators have said it, that they already assume they will lose the presidential election, and are more concerned a Trump nomination will have a worse effect than a brokered convention. I understand the harm you are referring to. But they face a choice that amounts to a lesser of two evils. The rules after all do not require the winner of a plurality but not majority of votes and delegates must be the nominee. The rules certainly contemplate a role for the convention if no one attains that majority. It's not like they are violating the Constitution, as they are in saying they won't consider the president's nominee for the S Ct. Not at all being a GOP supporter, I do not sympathize with any of the parties involved here. But it's not as if there is no logic to what they are trying to do.
