Tariffs and Potential Inflation

[SAJ-99]

Let's stop saying others are too stupid.

 

[noharleyyet]

 

[Bonasababy]

Studies fair clearly show that ranked choice ballots actually increase candidate polarization and favors those with extreme positions.

Couple of thoughts:

What studies?

I sometimes see people rail against it without even understanding what it is.

Ballots look similar to below.

Voting continues until one candidate gets a majority. Of all votes--so if 100,000 votes were caste you wait until a winner hits 50,001 or more votes. Multiple vote counts--the lowest vote getter is eliminated in the first round--those that voted for that person get their 2nd choice counted in the 2nd round, and so on until a winner with a majority is reached.

Not hard to see that if forces candidates to appeal to more than a narrow extreme based if they want to up their chances of being elected!

And do you think the states--e.g. Alaska--that have implemented this--have extreme candidates? Certainly not what I see.

Primarily on the right side. States that are broadly considered to have mostly conservative voters--say Alaska or Maine--Murkowski and Collins are great examples of two who do NOT always vote extreme or solidly down their party line.

Term limits are an entirely different issue--not relevant to this. You can have both--easily--if thats what you want.

 

[Bonasababy]

The left brought forward 2 initiatives in Montana this election. Thankfully both went down in flames.

Montanans reject changes to voting, likely dooming two ballot initiatives • Daily Montanan

Two constitutional initiatives in Montana are trailing in early voting.

search.app

These are positions desired and pushed by MODERATE factions--NOT the left. You are making my point that people do not understand what RCV does or who it can help. No party wants it--it takes away from their consolidation of power and as both parties move to the extremes, it requires them to moderate to win elections. In many races now our choices for voting are equally extreme.

 

[VikingsGuy]

Couple of thoughts:

What studies?

I sometimes see people rail against it without even understanding what it is.

Ballots look similar to below.

Voting continues until one candidate gets a majority. Of all votes--so if 100,000 votes were caste you wait until a winner hits 50,001 or more votes. Multiple vote counts--the lowest vote getter is eliminated in the first round--those that voted for that person get their 2nd choice counted in the 2nd round, and so on until a winner with a majority is reached.

Not hard to see that if forces candidates to appeal to more than a narrow extreme based if they want to up their chances of being elected!

And do you think the states--e.g. Alaska--that have implemented this--have extreme candidates? Certainly not what I see.

Primarily on the right side. States that are broadly considered to have mostly conservative voters--say Alaska or Maine--Murkowski and Collins are great examples of two who do NOT always vote extreme or solidly down their party line.

Term limits are an entirely different issue--not relevant to this. You can have both--easily--if thats what you want.

First, I know plenty about the system so you don’t have to give me the official party pamphlet on it or cut and paste a ChatGPT script.

I won’t do all your googling for you but here is one example of my point to get you started.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3711206-the-flaw-in-ranked-choice-voting-rewarding-extremists/

Also in my metro we have had it and the result is dozens of crazies scooping up votes amongst a confused electorate and any thing resembling a middle ground has been exterminated from the elected officials in the large city that adopted it.

 

[BigHornRam]

These are positions desired and pushed by MODERATE factions--NOT the left. You are making my point that people do not understand what RCV does or who it can help. No party wants it--it takes away from their consolidation of power and as both parties move to the extremes, it requires them to moderate to win elections. In many races now our choices for voting are equally extreme.

Who funded the initiatives?

 

[antlerradar]

The other option--also little chance of it happening as the two parties both want nothing to do with it--is changing the voting system. Instant run off or ranked choice. Might actually be preferable to a third party IMO. Has the impact of dramatically softening the extremes in both sides. We might see more moderate less crazy candidates from both major parties quickly if that would happen.

No one wants to wait until Thanksgiving to find out who won the election. Probably exaggerating, but long drawn out vote counting plants the seeds of distrust in our elections.

 

[VikingsGuy]

IR/RC do not make it more likely that a mainstream popular 3rd party would win. I makes it so folks can vote for fringe candidates but then have their ballots recast for a mainstream choice. It adds confusion, gamesmanship, increases polarization and the only thing it solves is the "you're going to throw your vote away" argument so that people can virtue signal with their top vote.

 

[Nick87]

you're going to throw your vote away"

Ive thrown mine away before voting independent. Slept just fine knowing it too. But not everyone feels that way though.

 

[BigHornRam]

No one wants to wait until Thanksgiving to find out who won the election. Probably exaggerating, but long drawn out vote counting plants the seeds of distrust in our elections.

The advertisers and political strategists wouldn't mind a second round of revenue though.

 

[Sytes]

Threw my vote away with Trump v Clinton.
Believe i wrote in Powell and Rice. Hah! Nothing comes of the write-in other than an internal satisfaction.

Third party is only as strong as financial backers and "influencers" permit, for starters. Breaking away from the trench fringe would be interesting.

I'm curious why a philanthropist and his/her cohorts have not ventured into this arena. Collective think tank define best routes to enter a viable third party. I imagine their already influenced with their financial success due to one or the other.

Meh.

Born a Ramblin' man...
Sometimes scattering what's in the box (or the chessboard) breaks free from the bull shit. A feel good pigeon moment.

 

[Bonasababy]

The advertisers and political strategists wouldn't mind a second round of revenue though.

What are you taking about?

 

[Bonasababy]

IR/RC do not make it more likely that a mainstream popular 3rd party would win. I makes it so folks can vote for fringe candidates but then have their ballots recast for a mainstream choice. It adds confusion, gamesmanship, increases polarization and the only thing it solves is the "you're going to throw your vote away" argument so that people can virtue signal with their top vote.

I agree it may notprovide any boost to a third party. But if....as many voters lean...your belief of a need for a third party stems from a desire for someone, anyone...that's more moderate than the extremes the two parties often give us, there will be less need for a third party as the system forces candidates to broaden their appeal.

I am not sure it works as well for smaller races with fewer votes though.
..
Now...for anyone who's desires already lean far to one side or another....you'll hate it and fight it as you can get what you want with the movement to the extremes both parties have taken already.

 

[BigHornRam]

What are you taking about?

When you have a runoff, the candidates throw more money out to get elected. Happens often in Georgia.

How Georgia’s Senate Runoff Will Work (Published 2022)

The race between Senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, will be decided on Dec. 6.

search.app

 

[ignorethefringes]

Threw my vote away with Trump v Clinton.
Believe i wrote in Powell and Rice. Hah! Nothing comes of the write-in other than an internal satisfaction.

Third party is only as strong as financial backers and "influencers" permit, for starters. Breaking away from the trench fringe would be interesting.

I'm curious why a philanthropist and his/her cohorts have not ventured into this arena. Collective think tank define best routes to enter a viable third party. I imagine their already influenced with their financial success due to one or the other.

Meh.

Born a Ramblin' man...
Sometimes scattering what's in the box (or the chessboard) breaks free from the bull shit. A feel good pigeon moment.

I believe Joe Rogan's explanation: The job actually sucks and even running means that every square inch of your life and history is going to be examined, scrutinized, and politized until the last stone is overturned and the last (real or fake) skeleton is pulled from your closet. If you lose you gain almost nothing from having run other than a massive mess to clean up after the fact.

 

[Sytes]

I believe Joe Rogan's explanation: The job actually sucks and even running means that every square inch of your life and history is going to be examined, scrutinized, and politized until the last stone is overturned and the last (real or fake) skeleton is pulled from your closet. If you lose you gain almost nothing from having run other than a massive mess to clean up after the fact.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Speaking of... Wife made coasters of favorite quotes.

 

[Sytes]

On Tariffs:
Good on Biden's administration. Some of the critical thinking shared in the article quoted below - I know, I know... the unmentioned would not appreciate reading something of this nature "It's about Trump. ALL Trump." Reality is far different.

Biden’s team includes people who spent decades campaigning for free trade and have now embraced protection, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Biden himself.

How did the dramatic turnaround in perspective happen—and so quickly, too?

Before Biden took office, his advisors were already rethinking trade policy. Sullivan was a senior official in the Obama White House that made the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed trade deal with a dozen Asia-Pacific nations, the heart of its economic policy in Asia. Sullivan later served as then-Vice President Biden’s top security aide and, his colleagues say, shared Biden’s view that the TPP was important strategically to strengthen ties with Asia.
After a stint as then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s chief foreign policy advisor during the 2016 campaign, in which she renounced her support for TPP, Sullivan also broke with the free trade model. In a 2020 Foreign Policy article co-written with Jennifer Harris, a former Clinton aide who unsuccessfully lobbied for tougher anti-China provisions in the TPP, the pair argued that trade deals too often had helped mainly big business, not workers.

“Why, for example, should it be a U.S. negotiating priority to open China’s financial system for Goldman Sachs?” they wrote.

“The 2016 election had a big impact” on Sullivan, said Sarah Bianchi, a former Biden vice presidential aide who more recently served as the deputy U.S. trade representative. “There’s no question he thought our party was missing something about the Midwest and its economy.”

Translating free trade skepticism into policies, though, proved difficult and led to battles within the administration. Biden had inherited from Trump, who withdrew from the TPP in 2017, a “phase one” trade deal with China where Beijing committed to making huge purchases of U.S. goods but didn’t follow through. To keep pressure on China, Trump had slapped steep tariffs on some three-quarters of everything that China sold to the United States.


During early virtual conversations held by Yellen and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai—in-person meetings were still off-limits because of the COVID-19 pandemic—the Chinese said they were ready to make the purchases, but only if the United States scrapped nearly all the tariffs. Though Biden had derided the tariffs during his 2020 presidential campaign for harming consumers, his team wasn’t ready to drop them without a political payoff.

“It was a nonstarter,” said a former Biden official. “They were demanding more from us than we were willing to pay.”

By the end of 2022, the administration was making a very different push: fight China by blocking exports of advanced manufacturing equipment and semiconductors to Beijing while revving up U.S. manufacturing. In many ways, that was a continuation of the Trump policy of seeking to deny advanced chips to Chinese companies; blocking Huawei Technologies Co. from cornering the global market for 5G telecommunications; and wooing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a global leader in the technology industry, to build semiconductor factories in the United States.

“China has not been a responsible stakeholder in the sense of abiding by the rules of the road on trade,” said a Biden White House official.

Biden won congressional approval to spend as much as $600 billion in the coming years to subsidize companies that build factories domestically to make semiconductors, electric vehicles, electric batteries, and other green technologies.

The director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Lael Brainard, pushed for a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, fearing that the current 25% levy, wasn’t enough to block low-cost Chinese cars. The idea was to send a signal to Beijing that the U.S. was serious about its subsidy program and wouldn’t let Chinese EVs undermine the U.S. auto sector, said a senior administration official.

“If Chinese firms are subsidized heavily enough, and China is supporting its firms even when they are losing money and there’s a global crash in prices, the question is who can survive it longer,” said a senior Treasury Department official who fed data to Yellen. “The answer is China.”

Yellen, the onetime free trader, became the administration’s point person in trying to ease tensions with China on economic issues, although the push for tariffs, driven by the White House, complicated her China work. Part of her message to Beijing was a warning that if China didn’t change its policies, it was bound to lead to a reaction from Washington. After huddling with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing this past April, she told reporters, “When the markets weaken, prices fall, [and] it’s our firms that go out of business. … Chinese firms continue to receive support so that they remain in.”

Around the same time, she told the Wall Street Journal that she no longer says “thank you” for cheap imports.

This article discusses both Trump and Biden and the tariffs within. It is an economic battle with China and we are going to pay more as Americans - When China wants to flood America with cheap items they hold unlimited resources to continue flooding markets, "Free Trade" is NOT the answer. At least in my opinion.

How Washington Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Protectionism

Biden’s embrace of Trump-era tariffs is emblematic of a broader change in U.S. thinking on trade—and toward China.

foreignpolicy.com

 

[ismith]

The Kinks, not just a band........

 

[88man]

Your swamp rat friend has a lot of opinions.

I bet the swamp rat friend isn't on the right either

 

[VikingsGuy]

I bet the swamp rat friend isn't on the right either

I got swamp rat friends across the spectrum. It’s nice to avoid anyone’s bubble.