Trump: “You can throw free trade out the window.”

[A-Lert]

Life isn't fair cupcake.

You're damned right it isn't and there is no reason other than we've got chickensh*t negotiators that we get the shaft in trade agreements. You can accept being on the short end, I'm sick of it. Go Trump!

[flowers]

Of course.  You Trumpkins excuse ANYTHING Trump says.  Now you're OK with him trashing American businesses by name and calling for boycotts. 

That's disgraceful.

Of course you Cruzkins excuse anything otherwise. NO LONGER A AMERICAN BUSINESS IF NOT IN AMERICA.....yes boycotts. Why give anyone not willing to be here any of my money?????????????????????   

[A-Lert]

Of course.  You Trumpkins excuse ANYTHING Trump says.  Now you're OK with him trashing American businesses by name and calling for boycotts. 

That's disgraceful.

He's a stockholder, he has every right to criticize .

[sinkspur]

You're damned right it isn't and there is no reason other than we've got chickensh*t negotiators that we get the shaft in trade agreements. You can accept being on the short end, I'm sick of it. Go Trump!

You don't know the first thing about trade, which is what Trump is counting on.  He doesn't either, really, except takes full advantage of trade agreements by making his cheap suits and ties in Mexico and China.

[kevindavis007]

You're damned right it isn't and there is no reason other than we've got chickensh*t negotiators that we get the shaft in trade agreements. You can accept being on the short end, I'm sick of it. Go Trump!

Sorry I don't want to pay extra for anything period cause a company is to stupid to modernize.

[sinkspur]

Of course you Cruzkins excuse anything otherwise. NO LONGER A AMERICAN BUSINESS IF NOT IN AMERICA.....yes boycotts. Why give anyone not willing to be here any of my money?????????????????????   

When's Trump gonna boycott his own suits and ties, which are made in Mexico and China.

He's an effing hypocrite.  And he's counting on you being dumb on trade.

[flowers]

You're damned right it isn't and there is no reason other than we've got chickensh*t negotiators that we get the shaft in trade agreements. You can accept being on the short end, I'm sick of it. Go Trump!

I am sick of it too...


GO TRUMP TOSS FREE TRADE OUT THE WINDOW

[kevindavis007]

He's a stockholder, he has every right to criticize .

Sorry if you read the CONSTITUTION, there is nothing in there that GIVES THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES to tell business in how to conduct it's business.

[mountaineer]

When's Trump gonna boycott his own suits and ties, which are made in Mexico and China.

He's an effing hypocrite.  And he's counting on you being dumb on trade.

Not to mention his daughter's Chinese-made shoes.   

[kevindavis007]

I am sick of it too...


GO TRUMP TOSS FREE TRADE OUT THE WINDOW

 No Tariff is going to pass without congressional approval DEAL WITH IT..

[Formerly Once-Ler]

When's Trump gonna boycott his own suits and ties, which are made in Mexico and China.

Great point!

I'm SICK OF IT!!!!

[INVAR]

Of course you Cruzkins excuse anything otherwise. NO LONGER A AMERICAN BUSINESS IF NOT IN AMERICA.....yes boycotts. Why give anyone not willing to be here any of my money?????????????????????   

That's YOUR CHOICE to boycott and not shop at an establishment or buy products from any company you do not like or agree with.

Using GOVERNMENT to impose taxes and create defacto boycotts on American consumers so as to punish American-owned businesses who make their products overseas - IS FASCISM - Mussolini-styled Central Planning Statism.

Amazing how many *America-First* Trump Believers are so eager for Fascism to be imposed in the name of the country.

NONE of them discuss or talk about the overbearing massive regulations, wage hikes, punitive taxations and other assorted mind bending headaches that businesses have to jump through that make manufacturing ANYTHING in the US of A unable to compete at all in the marketplace with a populace that wants everything for nothing!

If you want to boycott a company or product - fine, great!

You empower the government to do it for you - don't call yourself an American.  Call yourself a Fascist/Statist.

[Gov Bean Counter]

Trump is a movement?

Well, that means I have a Trump every morning...

[A-Lert]

Sorry if you read the CONSTITUTION, there is nothing in there that GIVES THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES to tell business in how to conduct it's business.

The Constitution doesn't say the POTUS can't criticize how business is conducted.

[A-Lert]

Trump is a movement?

Well, that means I have a Trump every morning...

Let me guess, your mom doesn't know your on the computer again.

[A-Lert]

You don't know the first thing about trade, which is what Trump is counting on.  He doesn't either, really, except takes full advantage of trade agreements by making his cheap suits and ties in Mexico and China.

NeverTrumps incessant whining does nothing to prove they know anything about trade or trade agreements.  NeverTrumps drip with envy.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Sorry if you read the CONSTITUTION, there is nothing in there that GIVES THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES to tell business in how to conduct it's business.

Lost in the flood of Ronald Reagan retrospectives and testimonials is a crucial fact with special relevance for all Americans today: To a great extent, Ronald Reagan was a trade realist.

The conventional wisdom about Reagan as free enterprise, free market champion is largely true. But on trade policy, Reagan acted decisively in five instances to save major American industries from predatory foreign competition. Moreover, as I detailed in a 1994 article in Foreign Affairs, in each case, the temporary import relief succeeded spectacularly, resulting in improved performance by these industries and avoiding the captive market prices that conventional economics teaches will always flow from restricting foreign competition.

Reagan's best-known protective policy was a tariff placed in 1983 on imported motorcycles at the request of American icon Harley-Davidson. The tariffs were to last five years, but the company's comeback proceeded so quickly that it relinquished the final months of import relief. Moreover, the tariffs encouraged Japanese rivals like Honda and Kawasaki to build or expand factories in the United States and create still more jobs for American workers.

Yet in many ways, the Harley tariffs were the least important examples of Reagan's trade realism. Far more significant and beneficial for the U.S. economy were Reagan trade policies that helped revitalize the auto, machine tool, semiconductor, and steel industries.

Reagan's tactics were flexible. In autos, machine tools, and steel, his administration subjected foreign producers to so-called voluntary export restraints. In semiconductors, Reagan officials negotiated an agreement to secure a specific share of the Japanese market for U.S. companies, and then imposed tariffs on Japanese electronics imports when Tokyo briefly refused to keep a promise to halt semiconductor dumping.

Reagan's results, however, uniformly clashed with conventional economic theory, which holds that protected industries always become fat and lazy price gougers. All four of the industries protected saw their productivity rise vigorously. All four improved quality so dramatically that they won back market share at home and abroad. All four boosted capital and R & D spending. All four held the line and then some on prices. And all four excelled largely because the import relief enabled them to attract the investment needed to retool. After all, why would capital markets steer money towards industries that seemed doomed to succumb to foreign mercantilism?

In addition, like the Harley-Davidson tariffs, the steel and auto trade restrictions drew Japanese, German, and Korean investment into the United States. Not only were jobs created; in the case of steel, cutting-edge technology was transferred to joint ventures with American partners set up in the United States.

Reagan was a trade realist in another vital sense -- understanding the need for carefully regulating trade with current and prospective adversaries. Indeed, soon after his inauguration, Reagan became convinced that the Soviet Union had run into a series of potentially crippling economic problems, and he implemented a policy of strategic denial that undoubtedly played a role in hastening communism's demise.

Reagan also recognized that, although preserving a system of multilateral controls is essential, U.S. leadership is also essential to keep those controls strong. Accepting the lowest common denominator -- especially from shortsighted allied governments out to make a quick buck -- just wasn't an acceptable option to him.

Reagan's trade policies were far from perfect. For example, he never systematically confronted Japanese, Korean, or European protectionism, apparently convinced that U.S. allies would in some way defect from the free world if he pressed them too hard on economics. He permitted the U.S. dollar to remain far too strong for far too long, and consequently did much needless damage to the U.S. industrial base by the time he approved a major devaluation in late 1985.

Nonetheless, when major American industries were on the ropes, a combination of national security fears, electoral concerns, and outrage at inequitable, illegal competition prompted Reagan to act, and American manufacturing was unquestionably the stronger for it. Tragically, this is a crucial aspect of his legacy that all three of Reagan's White House successors have rejected, frittering away American manufacturing and jobs in one ill-advised free trade agreement after another.

http://americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=1134 

Ronald Regan was a populist who worked to protect America, her interests and her workers.  Do you have a problem with what Reagan did?

[INVAR]

The Constitution doesn't say the POTUS can't criticize how business is conducted.

Tell me, where in the Constitution does it give Trump or ANYONE in government the power to force any company to make "it's damn products" where it says it must make them???

Of course now that the precedent has been set that government can tell us all what we must buy, even when we do not want to buy it - which Trump says is "a good thing", I suppose the next step is for government to tell a company what they must make and where they must make it.

Because Trump has such respect for the Constitution and 'free trade'.

Trump promises he'll force Apple to manufacture in the US
In a speech at Liberty University, the leading Republican candidate says he'll strong-arm Tim Cook to end all foreign manufacturing of the company's "damn computers."http://www.cnet.com/news/trump-says-hell-force-apple-to-manufacture-in-the-us/

[A-Lert]

That's YOUR CHOICE to boycott and not shop at an establishment or buy products from any company you do not like or agree with.

Using GOVERNMENT to impose taxes and create defacto boycotts on American consumers so as to punish American-owned businesses who make their products overseas - IS FASCISM - Mussolini-styled Central Planning Statism.

Amazing how many *America-First* Trump Believers are so eager for Fascism to be imposed in the name of the country.

NONE of them discuss or talk about the overbearing massive regulations, wage hikes, punitive taxations and other assorted mind bending headaches that businesses have to jump through that make manufacturing ANYTHING in the US of A unable to compete at all in the marketplace with a populace that wants everything for nothing!

If you want to boycott a company or product - fine, great!

You empower the government to do it for you - don't call yourself an American.  Call yourself a Fascist/Statist.

But government does impose taxes, tariffs, regulations, borders, laws, treaties, and agreements. If none are needed then why not eliminate them ALL?

[flowers]

Let me guess, your mom doesn't know your on the computer again.

probably not.

[A-Lert]

Sorry I don't want to pay extra for anything period cause a company is to(sp) stupid to modernize.

Please!!

[sinkspur]

Ronald Regan was a populist who worked to protect America, her interests and her workers.  Do you have a problem with what Reagan did?

Reagan’s heart and head were clearly on the side of free trade. While president, he declared in 1986: “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. I recognize … the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations.”

It was the Reagan administration that launched the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1986 that lowered global tariffs and created the World Trade Organization. It was his administration that won approval of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988. That agreement soon expanded to include Mexico in what became the North American Free Trade Agreement, realizing a vision that Reagan first articulated in the 1980 campaign. It was Reagan who vetoed protectionist textile quota bills in 1985 and 1988.

During Reagan’s eight years in office, Americans eagerly expanded their engagement in the global economy. In 1980, the year before Reagan became president, Americans spent a total of $334 billion on imported goods and services and payments on foreign investment in the United States. By 1988, his last year in office, American spending in the global economy had nearly doubled, to $663 billion. If Reagan was a “protectionist,” it had no discernable effect on the ability of Americans to spend freely in the global marketplace. Fittingly, one of the major federal buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue is named the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

Like most post-war presidents, Reagan championed free trade while selectively deviating from it. Critics of trade note correctly that Reagan negotiated “voluntary” import quotas for steel and Japanese cars and imposed Section 201 tariffs on imported motorcycles to protect Harley-Davidson. All true. But those were the exceptions and not the rule. They were tactical retreats designed to defuse rising protectionists pressures in Congress.

Reagan’s words and deeds regarding immigration were equally expansive. At a ceremony at Ellis Island in 1982, he spoke movingly of immigrants who “possessed a determination that with hard work and freedom, they would live a better life and their children even more so.” As with trade, Reagan’s record on immigration was mixed. He signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which included stepped up border enforcement and sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. But that legislation also legalized 2.8 million undocumented workers. More immigrants entered the United States legally under President Reagan’s watch than under any previous U.S. president since Teddy Roosevelt.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/reagan-embraced-free-trade-immigration

[A-Lert]

Ronald Regan was a populist who worked to protect America, her interests and her workers.  Do you have a problem with what Reagan did?

Great post.....

[kevindavis007]

Ronald Regan was a populist who worked to protect America, her interests and her workers.  Do you have a problem with what Reagan did?

Yes I did.. Let me use Harley as an example. All the Tariffs did was delay the inevitable.. Maybe if Harley actually modernized and made quality products then the tariffs would not have been needed..


Sorry but Tariffs should not be used to protect companies who fail to modernize.

[kevindavis007]

Please!!

Sorry I don't want to pay $1,000 for a smart phone.