The Real timschochet

I should restate: for clarity’s sake, I am in favor of unilateral free trade on our part no matter what other nations do. I don’t care about fairness so long as we benefit and I believe we do (from as few tariffs as possible.) That said this question of “fair trade” doesn’t apply to Canada or Mexico. Since the adoption of NAFTA 30 years ago we have had fair trade with both of those countries for the most part, and this was increased even more with Trump’s deal (perhaps his best achievement as President.)

I don’t understand, what is wrong with free trade?

What would you have him do?

@jbycho is the human equivalent of the goat from Animal Farm: “Trump goood, liberals baaaad!” That’s all he knows or needs to know.

He’s been ready. Is Trump ready?

Don’t bother. They don’t have an answer

I see Townhall and other conservative sites are repeating @Strike’s nonsense: the headline I just saw is “Zelensky caves” lol Still maybe this will be the face saving gesture that Trump needs to reverse his disastrous blunder. It’s a common formula at this point: Trump does something incredibly stupid, whoever is most affected makes a meaningless gesture, Trump accepts the “apology” and quickly reverses himself, MAGA says “WINNING!” Maybe it will happen again here.

This argument is wrong on a multitude of levels, not the least being that the money for this has already been allocated and spent. Withholding support for Ukraine will not save us any money at this point.

Most of your points are very general and have nothing to do with Mexico or Canada. But with regard to point #3, NAFTA ended years ago. Trump put a new deal in place, remember? He called it the greatest deal ever at the time. Last night he violated it (so much for America honoring our agreements; why should we expect others to do the same?) So I still can’t figure out any reason for these tariffs.

He’s made the same offer for a year: IF Russia does the same. He didn’t apologize for Friday.

Bump. Please explain how this is bending the knee, or any different from what Zelensky has been saying since Friday (or, for that matter, even before Friday)?

I did. How is it different?

How is it different?

Is there a poster here who has expressed support for Hamas? I’m not aware of that.

This is the same exact thing he’s been saying since Friday. It hasn’t been enough for Trump yet, maybe it will be now?

With regard to Mexico and Canada I still have no idea what the “better long term position” would be.

I don’t. But on the left reasonable criticism of Israel is often confused for anti-Semitism. And anyway my comments were specific to this forum. If there are any leftist Jew haters around here I’m unaware of them.

I don’t think that’s a trait of liberals or conservatives. It is however a trait of an admirable person. I’m not happy you were wrong about this. I would have greatly preferred it if you had been right.

@RLLD you wrote that it would be “rather easy for Mexico to step up and avoid these tariffs entirely”. Do you still fell that way? What exactly should Mexico have done?

AOC is hoping this happens. Which is why I’m guessing it won’t. It’s just talk.

OK an argument could be made that we shouldn’t have trade imbalances when it comes to items important to national security. But that’s very few trade goods. The vast majority of trade involves items that have nothing to do with security but which gives our lives pleasure: avocados for instance. Why would a trade imbalance with those be bad for us?

I don’t realize this. I have no idea what concessions we’re trying to get out of Canada and Mexico who we already have good trade deals with. Supposedly these were put on to get the border under control. But I’m told the border already is under control. So what is the purpose here? I don’t know; do you? I DO know that once trade wars start they are hard to extricate from. Canada has already retaliated. Now what?

Serious question: in what way do trade imbalances hurt us? I’ve never understood this.

I imagine there are some liberals out there who take pleasure in some of the Trump supporters expressing nervousness about what’s going on. I’m not one of them. I wish things were working out better. I hope they still do. Most of the folks who voted for Donald Trump are, IMO, decent and well meaning people who wanted what’s best for this country and believed (mistakenly IMO) that he was the correct choice. I would prefer they not be punished for that mistake.

I understand, though disagree, that a justification can be made for tariffs when other countries have unfair trading practices against us. But that’s not the case with Mexico and Canada. We had trade agreements that I be line were pretty fair- first NAFTA, and then the one Trump negotiated: which to his credit was even better than NAFTA. Now we have unilaterally torn those up.