The Economy is Crashing -- Trump and the Repubs in Congress Own it

Also, it is high time someone sues the Trump administration over the tariffs. Congress, not the President, has the authority to establish tariffs. Trump is badly abusing national security laws to get around the Constitution, despite the fact that we already produce more than enough steel domestically to cover our national security needs.

 

Trumpeters trying to dodge basic economics and small government principles by shifting the focus to SJWs. Lol.

 

Newsflash...going to where it was in 2008 is decidedly DOWN

https://www.google.com/search?q=dow...0l3j35i39j0.2801j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

Laughable at best. First the chief impact of of QE was to decouple Wall Street from economic reality. It is beginning to become reconnected, that might well result in a drop off in stock prices as interest rates return to normal levels. The primary cause of the current drop in stock price has far more to do with the talk of the fed raising interest rates over the next few quarters than it does tariffs. Further this reconnection will have almost no impact on the rest of the economy.

Further China's increasing the cost of food for it's people is far less affordable for the Chinese people than our nearly microscopic increase steel and aluminum prices. Plese note China passed a tariff on food they did not ban it. They are not self sufficient in food production.

 

So you make the claim "the economy is crashing" with zero proof to back it up....lolz! Carry on....

 

It's supposed to go up. In terms of real dollars only one president since the depression had it go down over their term and that was Bush Jr. Yes, it was up considerably because of the tax deferrals that people wanted to cash in on but it has lost 2000 in the last two months and that can clearly be laid at the feet of the twitter master starting a trade war. The investors are seeing all that tax deferral bump whithering away. Do you really think we should wait until a depression or recession sets in before we comment?

 

You must not be from America. Been on an interstate lately? Loaded with semi’s. Always a good sign. BTW, I like keeping more of my own money and an extra $260 a month goes a long way.

 

You have some serious math problems. The DJIA was a couple hundred points off 20,000 when Trump took office. What's the DJIA today?

 

Yes

 

The Chinese retaliatory tariffs will almost certainly have a big negative impact on the US farm industry. China can buy its food elsewhere.

Trump is right about China taking advantage of the USA when it comes to trade. What is causing the damage is his ham-handed way of addressing the problem. If he had held closed-door talks with the Chinese and privately mentioned import duties instead of publicly threatening the country with losing face, the result would probably have been better.

Trump's threats to scrap NAFTA are also not helping. Mexico is another important export market for USA agricultural products. Mexico can also get by without importing food from the USA.

 

You apparently don't follow the economic news.

 

The stock market is temporarily crashing due to trade war fears but the economy is doing great.

"Strategists have varying views of how low the market can go before stabilizing and turning higher, but they all see earnings as the next catalyst — and it should be a good one. They also do not believe we are entering a bear market yet.

According to Thomson Reuters, earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to be up about 18.5 percent in the first quarter, after a near 15 percent gain in the fourth quarter.

"I just think the market's had a bit of a run of bad luck and after a long period of very strong returns and very dormant volatility, it seems the first step is to sell these days. It's too bad, because I think underlying this market, the fundamentals remain very strong," said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors.

"I think what's likely to happen is now we've broken through the 200-day moving average for the S&P, a level it's defended three other times, you could continue to see this volatility persist," Arone said. "My expectation is that when earnings season kicks off in the next several weeks that could provide some support for the market since I expect earnings to be strong."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/02/sto...-signals-potential-for-bigger-correction.html

 

QUOTE="tomander7020, post: 1068899078, member: 71135"]For eight years, the Obama administration, the Federal Reserve Bank, and Congress worked to bring the economy back from the deep Bush recession. Little by little, the economy recovered, and when Trump took over in early 2017, the economy had growth momentum. All that Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress had to do was to not screw it up and allow the economy to continue on its upward trajectory. Were they smart enough to do that? They were not.

The Republicans passed two disastrous bills that added fuel to an already strong economy, a tax cut manly for the rich and a budget that calls for far more spending than our revenue-starved government can afford. The tax bill was conceived mainly by the lobbyists for the rich who had purchased Paul Ryan's and his crowd's servility with enormous campaign contributions. The Republicans obeyed the people who had paid them off and duly passed it. Trump does not have the literacy to even read the bill, and he certainly didn't author it, but he was quick to attach his name to it.

At first investors were enthralled with the huge deficit spending. The tax incentives to corporate America would immediately cause a large jump in profits. Then someone thought back a few years. Didn't the Bush Administration run a large government deficit when the economy was already firing on all cylinders? What was the consequence of further stimulating an already hot economy? The economy overheated and crashed. It took us eight long years to crawl our way back from that disaster. It was time for investors to dump their stocks while there was still time to do so. So, from January 26 to April 2 of 2018 the Standard & Poor's stock index has dropped 10.6 percent and is still declining as I write this. Investors have lost confidence in the Trump Administration.

Trump then made the situation worse by his loud threats to retaliate against our trading partners for the trade imbalance our country has with them. He is right in saying that trade needs to be fairer. The way to do that is to work skillfully behind closed doors. Trump has never possessed or even valued skill at anything except being a bully, and he put his bullying traits to work in an attempt to intimidate other countries, mainly China. He publicly and loudly proclaimed that he was slapping additional tariffs on Chinese imports.

After the public dressing down, the Chinese government reacted as it always does when it is afraid of losing face. It slapped duties on imports from the United States, largely on agricultural products such as pork and soybeans. The farmers in Middle-American Trump country were already struggling to survive. Now that Trump's loud mouth is about to cut into a large segment of the agricultural export market, bankruptcies are almost assured. Add to the mix Trump's threats to scrap NAFTA and the farmers are really in a pickle. Many of them depend on exports to Mexico to make ends meet. Trump has always turned on those who support him, and now it is rural America's turn to suffer betrayal.

Fasten your seat belts, folks. We're in for a rough downhill ride. Sock some money into the mattress while the economy is still near full employment, because the booming Obama economy has run its course, and the Trump economy with a maniac in charge is just starting its downward plunge.

Is there anything we can do to fix things. Yes, there is. Midterm elections are approaching. One-third of the Senate and 100 percent of the House will be up for reelection. Vote out the people who are bankrupting our country and vote in some fresh blood that has not yet been bought off by the robber barons.[/QUOTE]

Interesting partisan opinion. Not unexpected with mid-terms around the corner.

While it has attracted attention from the target audience, the real question is will such a shaded partisan opinion resonate with the voters who count?

The Stock market is not the economy. Correcting poor trade agreements requires actions that will always be met by outrage and response from Nations who have taken advantage of the US dismal agreements that have harmed the Nation and it's workforce.

The fundamentals of the economy are extremely strong. Core industries are being revitalized, unemployment is at all time lows across most, if not all demographics. Companies are building new manufacturing facilities in the United States, and money held by off shore subsidiaries is being repatriated.

In short, there is no evidence, other than the stock market game being played, that the US Economy is collapsing.

While such hyperbole is critical to the minority party in election years, I think such claims will be a tougher sale among voters who are far more discriminating.

 

I don't think the people in the stock-trading business will be successful in talking the market back up given the prospect of continuing bizarre tweets and destructive executive orders from the White House. As Trump would say, "We will see."

By the way, I appreciate your intelligent and well-researched reply. Informed debate seems to be a rarity in this forum. Even though we disagree, at least in this post, we do so in a civil manner.

 

I don't think they are talking up anything, they are calling it as they see it to determine the best course of action for investors.

I appreciate your acknowledgement of my efforts at polite debate and your right it's hard to find in here.

 

You're overlooking a few things. Instead blaming the dismal outlook on my "shaded partisan" Republican opinion why not consider a few facts. We may be the minority party in public opinion, but our views still matter.

The agricultural industry will be hit hard if China and Mexico look elsewhere for their food imports. The tech industry seems headed for trouble.

We Republicans are not the only ones who think we are headed for trouble. Some Democrats agree, even if you are one of the liberals who does not.

 

A 5 percent correction, even a 10 percent correction, is nothing to get worked up about. It has happened under both R and D administrations, independent of their policies, and it will happen again.

As far as I'm concerned, it can go down another 40%. I'll be there with a shovel and pail to scoop up the bargains.

No one should have their whole pile in equities anyway.

 

Wouldn't matter, agenda causes grouping, eventually the combatants would have some cool double secrete catch label and meet in some dank dark recess like the houses of Government

 

Term limits would help.

 

A collapsing economy seems a bit over much. One concern is that you cannot trust the numbers coming out of Washington so it's hard to know what's happening. My guess is that the DJIA has been driven by corporate tax cuts used for stock buybacks. Some of the run up has been anticipatory.

The market doesn't have a lot to do with the economy. Quarterly employment, GNP, and public sentiment data are all over the place and political ideology has made them unreliable. Let's say the rosy outlook is correct. I would add a "for now" to that scenario. To me, on the economic front, Trump has made more wrong moves than a drunk on a high wire.

GOP tax cuts greatly favor the top 2% while doing little for the middle class. What impact that may make on consumption remains to be seen. Favoring declining industries like coal and oil while dismissing high tech is a bad sign for the future. Trump's tariffs will be detrimental to midwest agriculture as China sets tariffs on agricultural imports. Ditto NAFTA threats.

Trump's international moves are also troubling. He has put NATO on shaky ground, put our military basis in Qatar on notice, troubled the U.K., and dismissed the E.U. as unimportant. All these policy moves have consequences, some unintended. All these actions will kick in in the next 18-24 months and it probably won't be pretty.

 

Sure I do. Where is the proof of this "crashing"?

 

I think both China and Mexico have a well thought out plan on how to fight a political trade war as well as some choice high dollar items. I'm thinking about soybeans to airplanes, pork to reactors.
For us to be successful we would need tariffs across the board. Otherwise business will just buy sneakers from Vietnam. This of course assumes that our motive is to bring sneaker manufacturing back to America.

 

I'm not overlooking anything that I am aware of. I would suggest your argument requires readers to overlook many things.

China has responded to the Presidents actions by imposing increased tariffs on $3 billion in exports.

You're trying to sell people on that number representing catastrophe for agriculture. Would you like to provide some facts to support that claim? I get your objective is to claim such a thing will happen, but that requires a belief that agriculture is that the economics of agriculture is that sensitive to such possibility. There is no evidence that is true. In fact the greatest threat to the domestic agriculture industry is from imports.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-produ...s-charting-the-essentials/agricultural-trade/

Globalist Republicans, and Democrats, seem to be quite satisfied with agreements that harm US workers and industries, while allowing "favored trade partners" to exploit our negotiating weakness.

China is guilty of massive fraud and theft regarding trade, and it's time to pay the piper.

What the President has done, IMO, if force these exploiting partners to sit down at the table again, and work out agreements that are not so unilateral.

From a perspective of the future, and more even playing field will pay great dividends to the US Economy and it's workers. It will spure innovation, rather than a downward spiral to try and meet the competitive advantages and price points being exploited by these trade partners.

Again, the doomsday speak is not unexpected, and it certainly gains agreement among the target audience who are willing to accepts such claims without evidence, but your trick is going to be to attract voters who aren't in that class. This type of politically motivated opinion is probably not going to register with enough to make any difference come election time.

 

Might it be wishful thinking?

I do think the economy, in general, will continue to grow this year. I don't think that will continue next year if Trump is still in office. But, in my opinion, it's a toss up how well it will be even if he's not.

 

They won't play the game that way. They will target red states knowing that people vote their pocketbooks. So it's not $400 million out of the US agriculture industry, it $400 million out of Iowa.
Yuge difference.