Trump Signs Executive Order withdrawing US from TPP

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-executiveorders-idUSKBN1572AF

Hm... well, this should get interesting quick...

 

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Meh. I'm sure corporatist republican and democrats are hurting over this, but the masses want isolationism, so give the people what they want.

 

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Aye... my bigger concern is that we just left a MASSIVE, gaping power-void in the Pacific arena that China will be all-too happy to fill... and then use to further pressure the US.

 

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Yeah in the long run this isolationism will likely come to hurt us "bigly".

Also is it just me or is trump going on tend to break the record for most executive orders? Obama made only 277 or 32.5 per year, less executive orders then any other president in recent history. Trump has made 4 in just 3 days, that over one per day! That is higher than even FDR record of 290.8 per year.

 

Which is ironic, given Trump and the Republicans were bitching about how many executive orders Obama made... *shrug* Partisan Politicks at its finest I guess...

 

But breaking party lines, we have folks like Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown on Trump's side on this, while Folks like John McCain are not. I'm sure there will be plenty of other issues where that will be the other way around in Trump's presidency.

 

Yes because from a populist perspective international trade has taken the people's jobs. There is some truth to this, but if new trade deals were made to promote American production it would result in very few new jobs because robots would do most of the work instead of nearly slave laborers in some godforsaken shit-hole country.

Corpitist democrats and republicans don't give a fuck because international trade means more money for their funders, which means more money for them.

 

Aye - simply put, automation is killing the "American Factory Worker" off... and once it puts the final nails in the coffin, Universal Basic Income will be the only option... well, that or let millions go into deeper, crushing poverty...

 

I prefer Basic Income Guarantee, because UBI is not catchy, BIG is.

None the less very good odds that instead they will simply let people laps into deeper crushing poverty, followed by revolts, and either the poor kill the rich off or the rich kill the poor off.

 

Or retrain people to do something besides environmentally dirty and dangerous factory work.

 

News for you, they use plenty of robots over there too.

 

Not as many.

 

I prefer Universal Basic Employment - guaranteed jobs, appropriate for the person, at a minimum wage.

 

One perspective for the sake of discussion:
From a global perspective, for too long the world has been dependent on the USA for leadership, policing international law and trade negotiations. Even though this hearkens badly for the USA in the short to medium term, the world will be better for it. USA power in world affairs is directly related to it's desire to engage in constructive and positive ways. Isolationism will obviously render USA super power status and it's influence on global affairs greatly reduced.
Already much effort is being made to walk away from the USA's involvement in trade dealing leading to the possibility of an unspoken blacklisting in so many world leaders thought processes.
The point is that whilst Trumps isolationist strategy may cost the USA based corporations therefore their shareholders enormously leading to further national infrastructure decay, chronic unemployment ( noncompetitive work force), intense poverty, hardship and hyper inflation, the world generally will be the ultimate beneficiary.

As most of the wealth gained by the USA has been via the efforts of the International USA surrogate work force, the USA main claim to fame will be greatly disrupted.
Once the USA has to rely on its own citizens to provide USA corporations with their profits the reality of USA Capitalism becomes self evident.

ie. the consequent wholesale to retail price of the IPhone will make the mobile phone noncompetitive in the global market place...

So by all means MR Trump be as isolationist as you want...

 

Such as...? I would wager, in 30 years time, automation will have taken over everything from the factory assembly jobs it already is to taxis, buses, and even long-haul trucking...

 

Interestingly, I've seen an argument that the corporations (there aren't that many large ones, about 7), simply won't allow Trump to impoverish them with his isolationist, protectionist policies. International trade deals help corporations the most, they will be the biggest detractors. On the other hand, can the rest of the world get along without America? China seems to think so.

What exactly corporations can do, apart from lobbying, seems to be the next big question.

 

Corporate lobbying by the Sugar industry utterly broke our nations "Good Food" guidelines by advocating for HFCS / Sugar over Fat... resulting in an obesity epidemic the likes of which no other nation on Earth has seen.

Long story short - they pinned the blame on Fat in foods (surely you've noticed the "Low Fat / Healthy Carbs" mantra that floats around?) - the problem is, when you rip the fat out of everything, you have to replace it with something... namely sugar.

Sweet, no fat foods! Eat all you want!

WRONG

Your body takes all that sugar in, your insulin levels spike up, and you start storing all the energy in that sugary crap (and there is a lot of it!) as Fat...

Then, because high carb foods burn quickly, you are hungry again within a short while.

Conversely, if you had eaten the high-fat food, you would be satiated for a long while.

Look at the damage done by that industry to our entire nations health... yeah, it can get ugly quick.

 

Even robotic factories don't run themselves. Robots need to be constructed and programmed. Products need to be designed. Assembly lines constructed...

 

Aye, they do. And a factory that used to employ several hundred to a few thousand workers to run the production line can then cut down to only a few dozen employees overseeing and performing routine maintenance on the robotic assembly line.

Still isn't going to bring "hundreds of thousands of jobs" back to America.

 

TPP on automobiles:
Automotive impact

As part of the deal, the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Japan agreed to rules governing auto trade that dictate how much of a vehicle must be made within the TPP region to qualify for duty-free status.

The North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico mandates that vehicles have local content of 62.5 percent. The way that rule is implemented means that just over half of a vehicle -- and its parts -- needs to be manufactured locally. It has been credited with driving a boom in auto-related investment in Mexico.

The set of rules approved by negotiators in Atlanta would lower the local content requirement to 45 percent, or about 55 percent under a separate calculation used by Japan's auto industry and regulators, people with knowledge of discussions have told Reuters.

With the Pacific accord covering four times as many countries as Nafta, some countries wanted that amount to be at least 60 percent, said people familiar with the matter, while Japan argued for 40 percent.

“It will have a negative impact on the U.S. auto industry and probably also on the Canadian and Mexican industries as well,” said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, in Washington.

The deal includes provisions to eliminate U.S. import tariffs of 2.5 percent on cars and 25 percent on trucks over 20 years or more. But since it isn’t tariffs that keep American cars and light trucks from being sold in markets like Japan, there won’t be reciprocal trade going West across the Pacific, Prestowitz said.

“Imports to the U.S. will undoubtedly rise and exports from the U.S. will remain essentially stopped up,” he said.

from:
http://www.autonews.com/article/201...-u.s.-tariffs-on-light-vehicles-sets-new-duty