NYT New NAFTA is signed
The Hill DEMs resist new NAFTA
The partisanship never ends... Just pass the thing... Thoughts?
The Hill DEMs resist new NAFTA
The partisanship never ends... Just pass the thing... Thoughts?
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This game bores me when Trump plays it, and it doesn't get much more interesting when Democrats play it. Sure NAFTA II can be improved. All complicated trade deals can be improved. There are things easier in life than second guessing deals, but I can't think any of them right now. As a Democrat, I am often advised that in order to succeed, I should be more like Republicans. But if that made sense, why be involved politics at all? Surely Republicans are much better at being Republicans than I could ever hope to be.
==Hiram
This piece in VOX seems to like NAFTA 2.
Generally, I am not very deal oriented, particularly when such deals are expected to govern long term and complicated relationships. Where international deals are concerned, in the best of times, they are very difficult to enforce, and enforcement is probably impossible when the parties take the view that international courts and tribunals are violations of national sovereignty.
These days, globalism boggles my mind anyway. We are told there is such a thing as a trade deficit. It's even assigned a number. But what does this mean really? Let's consider a company like Medtronic. It used to be an American company. I guess that means that it's dealings fell on the American side of a ledger somewhere. But then, it decided to move it's P.O. Box to Dublin, and become an Irish company. That means they move to the other side of the ledger, as a foreign company. But has anything of economic substance changed with the move? Even the postage costs from the move to Ireland wouldn't be affected much because I am sure most dealings are through email.
If numbers change in ways that aren't significant, why do we pay attention to them? Why should they drive policy choices?
--Hiram
So how would you like to govern "long term and complicated relationships"? Just wing it day by day?
You are starting to sound like a free market libertarian capitalist. :-)
Not much has changed of any substance with the Medtronic "move to Ireland". Well except their tax rate.
Hopefully those "not significant" corporate tax rate reductions that occurred last year reduce the number of companies that feel pressured to relocate.
Now as for what the trade deficit means has pretty much nothing to do with where a company's corporate head quarters is. It simply indicates how money is flowing around the world and where jobs are being created, where jobs are being lost, who has more money to invest, etc.
If you don't mind there being fewer jobs for certain citizens in the USA or lower wages for those citizens... Then maybe those numbers can be ignored.
So how would you like to govern "long term and complicated relationships"? Just wing it day by day?
People do it every day. It's what most of life consists of. When people in any relationship start looking at the fine print of the agreement, the relationship itself is most likely doomed.
Now as for what the trade deficit means has pretty much nothing to do with where a company's corporate head quarters is. It simply indicates how money is flowing around the world and where jobs are being created, where jobs are being lost, who has more money to invest, etc.
Presumably it means Medtronic's assets are in Ireland. Where much of it is owned by American shareholders.
I have a trade deficit with Amazon. I buy stuff from them, yet they employ literally no one I know. Does this relationship need to be changed? Should I stop buying stuff from them until they hire my cousin? Would the economy improve if they added an additional tax which they call a "tariff"?
--Hiram
Since the Democrats are the party of laws, regulations and work contracts, your comments leave me puzzled.
Medtronics still pays plenty of taxes, just fewer on their assets and profits from outside the USA.
And the more stuff you bought from Amazon before they built their fulfillment center here meant fewer jobs in the metro for your cousin. And fewer tax dollars for MN. You chose to hire people from a different state instead of your neighbors, friends, etc.
Since the Democrats are the party of laws, regulations and work contracts, your comments leave me puzzled.
Of course contracts are a small subset of those things. I don't know a lot of people who have what one thinks of as a work contract. Most people I know of are employees at will. They never inked a pact. And in the typical work place, rules don't play much of role, and employees rarely sue their employees. But bear in mind that's in the context of a domestic legal system where there are courts that do meaningful and enforceable things. In the international sphere, things are different. We can make an agreement with countries that they will treat their workers fairly but there are no guarantees that they will. The fact is, many companies benefit when they don't, and they look the other way when workers aren't treated well. And now the situation is different in that we have taken the position that international agreements aren't enforceable, because any attempt to enforce them is a violation of sovereignty. So what is the point of such agreements?
--Hiram
And the more stuff you bought from Amazon before they built their fulfillment center here meant fewer jobs in the metro for your cousin.
Trade deficits upon trade deficits. We are supposed to have a positive national trade deficit, and no we are supposed to have a positive metro trade deficit. This Christmas am I really going to decide where and how to shop based on relevant trade deficits? In the last election, I saw commercials from Wisconsin politics on Minnesota media, saying how they would insist the government buy Wisconsin. Except for media buys, I guess.
In olden times, we had village economies. But things have changed since the 14th century. Some would say that they have even improved.
--Hiram
If you don't think trade laws are enforceable, I think you need to spend some time at my desk...
If you do not want to support the employees in your local neighborhood stores, please feel free to shop elsewhere like a true republican capitalist. That is what many liberal support your local worker folk do.
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