US Slaps Canada/Mexico With Metal Tariffs

[2014olympicgold]

If anyone is looking to buy a house in Hamilton tho...in 6 months the market could be insanely good.

[Pit Bulls]

Canada put a lot of thought into what industries would be slapped with tariffs and targeted industries that are significant in Republican states - a good example is chocolate (Hersey's) in Penn. This in turn puts pressure on Republican senators and congressmen who in turn put pressure on Trump to rethink his tariff approach.

Add Canada's tariffs to China, Mexico and the EU, Trump is really isolating the US and I don't see how their economy can withstand a prolonged trade war

This is just another one of Trump's negotiating tactics and the trade war he has started will be short lived.

[2014olympicgold]

Sooooo just thinking of how much debt the USA is actually in. Can’t the countries just call in the USA’s debt now?

USA’s debt is like $20 Trillion.
$300billion to Caribbean Banks
$200million to oil-exporting states.
Foreign investments own about 33% of the USA’s debt

$1.09Trillion to Japan
$1.058T to China
$288Billion to Ireland
$265Billion to Cayman Island
$259Billion to Brazil
$60billion to Canada

The numbers I’ve found were all back from like 2011 though (hard to find newer numbers, or even consistent really), but the idea is the same. Just call in the debt now. Throw the country into a depression and wait. Or threaten that at least.

[Ingolo]

You're way overthinking this. It's purely a short-term negotiating tactic to exert pressure on NAFTA.

Just a terrible idea then, I guess. Why sacrifice a position if strength by being unpredictable? From what I understand pretty much every one of his advisors said this was a terrible idea.

I just really don't see this squeezing Canadian companies and consumers as much as it does to their US counterparts. At the end of the day, does this advance the Americans' position at the negotiating table, or does it just result in US lobby groups making a lot of calls to senators?

[Ingolo]

Sooooo just thinking of how much debt the USA is actually in. Can?t the countries just call in the USA?s debt now?

USA?s debt is like $20 Trillion.
$300billion to Caribbean Banks
$200million to oil-exporting states.
Foreign investments own about 33% of the USA?s debt

$1.09Trillion to Japan
$1.058T to China
$288Billion to Ireland
$265Billion to Cayman Island
$259Billion to Brazil
$60billion to Canada

The numbers I?ve found were all back from like 2011 though (hard to find newer numbers, or even consistent really), but the idea is the same. Just call in the debt now. Throw the country into a depression and wait. Or threaten that at least.

China did this to them a few years ago, more or less, and they effectively defaulted. Only real consequence though is that the US pays the highest interest rates of any of the G7 nations., Which in turn caused them to need to increase the debt ceiling so they could borrow from Brazil to repay China. It's all just truly lovely economics. It's honestly like watching someone take out a home equity loan to pay their credit card bill.

[Pengwin7]

This is actually an interesting topic for me... but like healthcare, people will be more focused on talking "xxxxx" than on talking about the actual topic: steel.
If the conversation could stick purely to steel, I'd love to engage about how critically underappreciated steel is towards the future infrastructure of any country.
This is my field of expertise - almost as much as numbers or fantasy hockey.
If the US fails to keep their steel industry (specifically their steel mills) humming... then infrastructure - which is classified by all parties as needing an upgrade - will eventually go to shit.
I mean... just look at what hurricane damage does to an area built with wood/mortar vs. an area built with steel. Its a big difference.
And the storms are a'comin... ("wind" being perhaps my 3rd or 4th field of expertise)

[Godin]

Just a terrible idea then, I guess. Why sacrifice a position if strength by being unpredictable? From what I understand pretty much every one of his advisors said this was a terrible idea.

I just really don't see this squeezing Canadian companies and consumers as much as it does to their US counterparts. At the end of the day, does this advance the Americans' position at the negotiating table, or does it just result in US lobby groups making a lot of calls to senators?

This dumb ass thinks he is actually smarter than everyone else in the universe and doesn't seem to listen to the experts. Now he is going to North Korea to blow things up there. No pun intended.

[2014olympicgold]

This is actually an interesting topic for me... but like healthcare, people will be more focused on talking "xxxxx" than on talking about the actual topic: steel.
If the conversation could stick purely to steel, I'd love to engage about how critically underappreciated steel is towards the future infrastructure of any country.
This is my field of expertise - almost as much as numbers or fantasy hockey.
If the US fails to keep their steel industry (specifically their steel mills) humming... then infrastructure - which is classified by all parties as needing an upgrade - will eventually go to shit.
I mean... just look at what hurricane damage does to an area built with wood/mortar vs. an area built with steel. Its a big difference.
And the storms are a'comin... ("wind" being perhaps my 3rd or 4th field of expertise)

My favourite was explaining to someone something like Peanut Butter would be raised.
Peanut butter is shipped to the grocery store, grocery store unloads it with a fork lift made of metal. if it breaks now the replacement parts are more expensive. Going the other way the Transport truck is metal, made in lets say Ontario, the metal in the truck costs more. The metal in the plant for the conveyor systems costs more, the metal in the building that makes the conveyor system costs more. Welding wire would cost more for that company, and that comes in from a shipping company and the whole thing just goes on and on.

[doulos]

We better hope this doesn't happen. The US may be in financial disarray, but they are still a military monster. That threat alone has bought them a lot of time, and I think it will continue to do so.

It dcoesn't work that way, don't worry. A country like China can not just say 'Hey time to pay up!'

[Rylant]

Sooooo just thinking of how much debt the USA is actually in. Can’t the countries just call in the USA’s debt now?

USA’s debt is like $20 Trillion.
$300billion to Caribbean Banks
$200million to oil-exporting states.
Foreign investments own about 33% of the USA’s debt

$1.09Trillion to Japan
$1.058T to China
$288Billion to Ireland
$265Billion to Cayman Island
$259Billion to Brazil
$60billion to Canada

The numbers I’ve found were all back from like 2011 though (hard to find newer numbers, or even consistent really), but the idea is the same. Just call in the debt now. Throw the country into a depression and wait. Or threaten that at least.

I remember Dennis Miller talking about the US Debt. He was like "Umm. Do we actually owe this money to somebody? F**k it, don't pay them. What are they gonna do? There, I just solved the national debt." Sure, a little unrealistic but it did make me laugh.

Rylant

[Ingolo]

It dcoesn't work that way, don't worry. A country like China can not just say 'Hey time to pay up!'

True, but what they can do is not extend those loans. It's not like the US is near Greece in 2010, but the more times their credit gets downgraded the larger the potion of their budget dedicated to interest payments gets. It's an escapable downward spiral, but the current White House policies really don't seem to be going in a coherent direction. Either go the Keynesian route and run a deficit to try to increase future GDP, or introduce austerity rules and cut spending. Right now it seems like they're doing a little of both, but too much of neither.

[blayze]

Sooooo just thinking of how much debt the USA is actually in. Can’t the countries just call in the USA’s debt now?

Can your bank call you and demand your million dollar mortgage be repaid tomorrow?

[doulos]

True, but what they can do is not extend those loans. It's not like the US is near Greece in 2010, but the more times their credit gets downgraded the larger the potion of their budget dedicated to interest payments gets. It's an escapable downward spiral, but the current White House policies really don't seem to be going in a coherent direction. Either go the Keynesian route and run a deficit to try to increase future GDP, or introduce austerity rules and cut spending. Right now it seems like they're doing a little of both, but too much of neither.

In a global economy that is so connected it just isn't as simple as not extending the loans. Long term the only way that China could put any real pressure on the US in terms of it's debt, would be to have the rest of the planet be their trade partners so that they are not in a position where they have to export to the US. That's not an overnight, or even a few years type situation. That's a situation that takes decades. The interesting thing in this situation for the US is that by isolating themselves globally and making things difficult with other trade partners around the world, they open up the possibility for those countries to develop more trading with China, which is exactly what China would want and would hurt the US "bigly".

This stuff is so interconnected and complicated though and I'm probably wrong in laughable ways that an economist would roll their eyes at me and think I'm an idiot, so who knows.

[blayze]

I think some kind digital gold is eventually needed, a global currency unit... something that is stable and can't be traded.

A currency by definition has to be tradeable for something of value.

[Ingolo]

In a global economy that is so connected it just isn't as simple as not extending the loans. Long term the only way that China could put any real pressure on the US in terms of it's debt, would be to have the rest of the planet be their trade partners so that they are not in a position where they have to export to the US. That's not an overnight, or even a few years type situation. That's a situation that takes decades. The interesting thing in this situation for the US is that by isolating themselves globally and making things difficult with other trade partners around the world, they open up the possibility for those countries to develop more trading with China, which is exactly what China would want and would hurt the US "bigly".

This stuff is so interconnected and complicated though and I'm probably wrong in laughable ways that an economist would roll their eyes at me and think I'm an idiot, so who knows.

I feel that you misunderstood my point here because I kind of continued it into a rambling hypothetical; but my point in saying that the loans need not be extended was in reference to be extended at their current interest rates. China can (and has within the last five years) deny loans to the US government at the interest rates they offer to other nations. That has lead to interest payments being a larger percentage of the federal budget, which leads to less money to spend on government programs, or a need to increase revenues. Instead they actually didn't do either and have started running bigger and bigger deficits, and that's where I went a little tangential about hypothetical economics scenarios. I'm also not an economics expert though, and my experience is limited to the macro and micro econ courses I took in like, second year University (which was a while ago), so my language is super clunky and knowledge of the exact situation is limited, so if I'm completely off base in my understanding I wouldn't be surprised at all.

My intended point was that "diplomacy" like randomly slapping tarriffs on important economic and defense partners doesn't do anything but hurt your own people, and it does so not only in the short term but also the long. And their domestic policies seem to be going down the same road. It's all smoke screens and deceptions to retain political clout with Trump's base, instead of actually sound economic policy.