On the subject of trade and the Trump-US versus-the-world tariff trade war, behaviorally, trade, primarily wholesale item trade, is the exchange of supplies between and among nations, a bilateral and multilateral process, in which tariffs culminate in the rise of and raise the price of supplies, and, consequently, producer-finished and consumer goods, inflationarilly bad, generally, for both producers and consumers.
Price inflation begets a higher ratio of money, or international equivalent of currency units, to a [bundled] average unit of supplies (goods, or products, and services); decreased purchasing power and increased cost of doing business; decreased production and consumption; contraction of business and spending; contraction in investment (including financing credit or collateralized loans) and employment: Recession, loss in export market share of, if not entire, foreign markets, heightened domestic competition in local markets and ongoing price and earnings volatility, pruning and trimming, downsizing, of least profitable business operations and sites, relocation or offshoring of production to low or lowest cost geographies (the latter also resorted to for US businesses, like Harley-Davidson Inc. and Tesla Inc. recently, to escape foreign retaliatory tariffs and loss of sales market share in foreign nations, by their setting up shop on foreign nation territory and selling to those foreign nations from their own territory, national or regional trade bloc), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harley-davidson-moving-some-operations-overseas-blaming-tariffs/, https://www.newsweek.com/tesla-announces-first-foreign-factory-china-trump-trade-war-escalates-1016622. In instances of foreign retaliatory tariffs against US goods, not vital to the foreign economies or that can be obtained from lower-cost, friendly free-trade nations, should foreign nations forgo or down-scale purchase of such US goods, especially in significant massed or collective action, such action could precipitate substantial declines in the price of those US goods, to the profitability harm of their producer companies, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-31/trump-s-new-tariffs-anger-u-s-manufacturers-and-business-groups, https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/04/news/economy/us-companies-respond-to-tariffs/index.html, https://www.ft.com/content/8f825846-2dfb-11e8-a34a-7e7563b0b0f4. If tariffs are as well imposed on the products of foreign manufacturers or other kinds of producer companies with production and sales chapters and facilities in the US, some of these would exit the US and some would still stay but compensatorily highly or maximally automate their production and, to the extent possible, sales and shed local employees, US employees.
(The prime beneficiaries of an international tariff trade war are domestic industries independent of or minimally in need of and invested in or engaged with foreign or international trade, being products ((including raw materials and component materials and parts)) and services, and, in the short term, securities-exchange investor short sellers, the latter also being, together with vulture capitalists, via private and public information channels, information-media reports, news, and informercial and publicity campaigns, major beneficiaries of securities or stock-market downturns and crashes and economic recessions and depressions, which can be manipulated or engineered. Tariff-free business competition, in domestic and international trade, means pressure and impetus toward greater and faster product improvements and evolution in quality, performance and price, at a minimum, to the benefit of consumers. Cartel, monopoly, quasi-monopoly, bribery, extortion, intellectual-property-theft and other unfair-and-corrupt business-practices free business competition comprehensively is democratic, a good thing and welcome. During the 2015 and 2016 campaign season for the 2016 US presidential election, opposition campaign ads were broadcast of businessman Donald Trump being audio-video interviewed as to his reaction to the 2008 US economic collapse and onset of the US great recession, in which he commented to the effect that for people like him it was bargain time for buying up real estate and/or assets [[on the cheap] lost by others in the economic destruction of the collapse and recession], https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-on-profitting-from-great-recession-thats-called-business-by-the-way/, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-hillary-clinton-economy-speech-donald-trump-20160621-story.html. Since becoming US president, President Trump has delivered a long series of verbal attacks on US companies of his dislike, in some cases, especially initially, in the early period of these attacks, having depressed the sales and stock values of such companies, quite possibly knowingly on his part meant to set up the short-seller status and opportunity depressed value of such companies and their stock, something that could be exploited by lurking stock-trader short sellers and gains takers in the background hip to the effects of the president's news-media and tweet attacks on those companies, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/61-businesses-trump-has-attacked-on-twitter-181623705.html. Indirectly, by his own public admission to the news media, as a businessman, President Trump is a vulture capitalist and financial shark and by his verbal assaults on targeted US companies he has been short-value and stock short-sale positioning companies disfavored by him, an abuse and unscrupulous use of his position and influence as US president. Vulture capitalists financially capitalize on, feed from and grow financially fat from the financial misfortune, loss, ruin and destruction of others in acquiring their "lost" assets and financial worth. He apparently likewise attempts to short status the political aspirations, careers and personal lives of persons he dislikes, as evidenced in the reports, not up to date, of the following news links: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/26/upshot/president-trumps-newest-focus-discrediting-the-news-media-obamacare.html.
Short selling primer: Short selling of stock consists of a stock trader with a stock trading (buying and selling) account with a stock brokerage borrowing a chosen quantity of stock on a particular corporation from the brokerage, for a fee and collateralized by adequate funds on deposit in the borrower's account with the brokerage, or pledged assets, to cover the value of the borrowed stock, where the stock borrower sells the stock for its current market, or trading, value with the intention of using the money in part to purchase the same quantity of the particular corporation's stock at a substantially lower price, in the borrower's expectation and anticipation that the particular corporation's value and stock value will markedly decline by a particular date; if the latter occurs within the stock-decline expectation time frame, the short seller purchases the replacement quantity of the particular corporation's stock at a substantially lower price than its price when it was borrowed, resupplies the brokerage with that quantity of stock on the particular corporation and keeps the cash-value difference between the borrowing and replacement values of the stock, which can be highly lucrative when ten-of-thousands, hundreds-of-thousands or millions of dollars in stock value are borrowed and the replacement value of a corporation's stock declines dramatically or extremely. Repetitive short-sale positioning of a corporation's worth and stock value can make it a stock fright and flight disinvestment company and render it worthless or virtually worthless and stock-exchange delisted and/or out of business. Short sellers -- short-term, fast in-and-out, fast turnover stock profiteers -- borrow stock on the front end of their gambling game because there is no strategic point to buying up-front the stock they eye for a price decline, in that were they to buy that stock up-front, especially in mass action, the price of the stock would increase in value to their profiteering strategic disadvantage and harm, and were it to decline in price they would incur loss in stock-investment equity and they would have to hope for and wait for a sufficient price rise in the stock to secure a capital gain or trading profit on the stock.)
Short selling primer: Short selling of stock consists of a stock trader with a stock trading (buying and selling) account with a stock brokerage borrowing a chosen quantity of stock on a particular corporation from the brokerage, for a fee and collateralized by adequate funds on deposit in the borrower's account with the brokerage, or pledged assets, to cover the value of the borrowed stock, where the stock borrower sells the stock for its current market, or trading, value with the intention of using the money in part to purchase the same quantity of the particular corporation's stock at a substantially lower price, in the borrower's expectation and anticipation that the particular corporation's value and stock value will markedly decline by a particular date; if the latter occurs within the stock-decline expectation time frame, the short seller purchases the replacement quantity of the particular corporation's stock at a substantially lower price than its price when it was borrowed, resupplies the brokerage with that quantity of stock on the particular corporation and keeps the cash-value difference between the borrowing and replacement values of the stock, which can be highly lucrative when ten-of-thousands, hundreds-of-thousands or millions of dollars in stock value are borrowed and the replacement value of a corporation's stock declines dramatically or extremely. Repetitive short-sale positioning of a corporation's worth and stock value can make it a stock fright and flight disinvestment company and render it worthless or virtually worthless and stock-exchange delisted and/or out of business. Short sellers -- short-term, fast in-and-out, fast turnover stock profiteers -- borrow stock on the front end of their gambling game because there is no strategic point to buying up-front the stock they eye for a price decline, in that were they to buy that stock up-front, especially in mass action, the price of the stock would increase in value to their profiteering strategic disadvantage and harm, and were it to decline in price they would incur loss in stock-investment equity and they would have to hope for and wait for a sufficient price rise in the stock to secure a capital gain or trading profit on the stock.)
Higher ratio of money to average unit of supplies here means a higher ratio of money, than before the tariffs and tariff war, required to purchase a/an [bundled] average unit of supplies.
Announcements by US manufacturing companies Harley-Davidson Inc. and Tesla Inc., since June of this year 2018, among similarly intentioned, less news-media visible US product maker, supplier and provider (such as arts, sports, performance arts and fashion live entertainment) companies with foreign sales markets, including distress expressed in the news media by US crop and seafood exporters, are unforeseen and unintended consequences, among others percolating, of blindsided, nationalistic, America-first economic policies in an interconnected, interacting, interdependent global macro-economy of sovereign nations and heretofore, in decades-long recent times, open-trade and free-trade economic power blocs spanning the globe. These policies go against the universal principle of business survival and competition to protect one's market share and profitability where one's markets are worldwide by domestic companies and foreign companies, now to the impending net economic short-term and possibly long-term self sabotage and harm, wreaked by the Trump Presidency, of a great many US companies with foreign markets, business partners and relations. US companies and those of most nations of the world, for the most part, mutually export to, import from, buy stock shares, bank and invest in, own property in and have operations based in one anothers' nations.
International trade for the most part is wholesale trade that supplies domestic or resident-domestic producers and retailers, whose workforces, for the latter, are societally structurally, permanently and compulsorily (by virtue of being located on native territory governed by layers of local, state, or provincial, and national law representing largely democratic native citizenry and voter interests) constituted of the native domestic population, aside from a relatively few foreign executives and financial, managerial and training staff of domestically resident foreign companies, all of which themselves already function as a domestic institutional protective infrastructure and tariff system, in an employment regard, against foreign populace penetration and competition on the pre-retail and retail business strata of US society, the communitarian monopoly of the domestic population and commons. Not only do domestically resident companies of foreign origin employ a US workforce, but they also contract with, patronize and are general customers of US vendors and local businesses for meeting their local, ordinary day-to-day needs, they and their foreign personnel purchase and/or lease, as applicable, business facilities and residences, etc., often partner with US companies and have sizable US investment stakeholders, including retirement-funds plans, and they pay local, state and federal taxes in support US physical infrastructure, public services and safety and institutions.
President Trump and his economic philosophers and engineers are politically and economically myopic and tunnel visioned, but he is also a savvy egocentric self marketer, self promoter. His superficial political highlight with North Korea via theft of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's engagement approach with N. Korea's head-of-state Kim Jong Un -- that he criticized and called a waste of time, then fired Tillerson and appropriated the policy directly for himself -- was staged political high drama to burnish his leadership and diplomacy image and boost public confidence in himself as a credible and competent head of state himself, and up-spike his ratings and standing in the political polls, which worked for him with the Republican Party.
President Trump, a serial bankruptcy business CEO and narcissistic, pompous, crank, mendacious, chronically self-contradictory (apparently he can't remember his lies because he tells so, so many, many and so can't be consistent in telling them), hypocritical, obnoxious, insolent, bigoted, demagogic and rhetorically caustic and pugilistic showman of shady and poor business judgment, now commandeering the US economy, in his tariffs trade war with the other economies of the world, is piloting and hurtling the US economy, largely, to familiar disaster. Cum grano salis, grande, take into mind and critically fact check his claims and accusations, as he and they tend bigly to be, on objective investigation of them, "unbelievable," literally, and quixotic, as well as political and PR gimmickry and poop news. He is a true-life Don Quixote, in his own perverse way, this mixed in with his peculiar self and imitation of Archie Bunker.
Until now, since his inauguration as US president, President Trump has been attributing and claiming the credit for the healthy and robust US economy to himself, whereas he inherited that trending economy operating on autopilot from the Obama Presidency's TARP, the congressional Dodd-Frank Act, noblesse-oblige indexed tax, free-and-friendly international-trade and Federal Reserve Bank monetary quantitative-easing policies.
The recent major growth spurt in the US economy of 4.1% for the second quarter of 2018, the months April through June, announced by President Trump on Friday, 07-27-2018, probably had as its source the spending and investment effects of the huge Trump tax cuts legislated by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in late December of 2017. Typically these tax cuts, primarily favoring the wealth class but also modestly extended to the middle and under classes, have an economic-stimulus effect on the economy, as in the preceding Kennedy, Reagan and G.W. Bush presidencies, but effects that did not last and that resulted in record federal government budget deficits in the Reagan and G.W. Bush presidencies because the main financial fuel of the economy came from middle and under classes' wages, salaries, disposable income and spending that were outpaced by increases in the cost of living for these classes. That indicated pattern of federal budget deficits is already operative in connection with the Trump tax cuts favoring the wealthy, which for corporations are permanent but which expire for individuals in 2025, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-analysis-tax-cut-deficit-20180409-story.html, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/congress-and-the-1-trillion-deficit-time-to-be-straight-with-the-american-people.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/us/politics/federal-deficit-tax-cuts-spending-trump.html, https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/20/pf/taxes/tax-cuts-temporary/index.html.
Whereas federal economic statisticians base price inflation on a federal Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket of goods, which excludes increases or changes in the cost of housing, food and fuel (residential and nonresidential-facilities utilities and transportation fuel and fuel use), in reality costs of the latter three, survival essential spending in civilized society, which have their own subset food and fuel and shelter price indexes, most affect the middle and under classes' disposable income and ability to spend as well as their experience of price inflation and household solvency. Republican economics theorists, whose theory is trickle-down economic, in the main steadily argue that the growth spurts from these tax cuts favoring the high wealth class result from investment and consumer spending of the small class of the wealthy, when instead it is the vast consumer spending of the middle and under classes that instigates and drives investment in industrial-production and retail expansion and that generally supports and sustains the national economy, https://www.fool.com/slideshow/these-12-companies-have-laid-workers-2018/, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2018/04/27/retailers-closing-most-stores-2018-so-far/557275002/.
So far for the major corporations, the indication is that they are using the tax cut money most for buying back their stock from the public, outside investors, which raises the value of their corporate stock whereby principals of the corporation, the high echelon, can at peak value of the corporate stock sell their own shares off at maximal appreciation and return on investment, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/business/tax-cuts-share-buybacks-corporate.html.
The recent major growth spurt in the US economy of 4.1% for the second quarter of 2018, the months April through June, announced by President Trump on Friday, 07-27-2018, probably had as its source the spending and investment effects of the huge Trump tax cuts legislated by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in late December of 2017. Typically these tax cuts, primarily favoring the wealth class but also modestly extended to the middle and under classes, have an economic-stimulus effect on the economy, as in the preceding Kennedy, Reagan and G.W. Bush presidencies, but effects that did not last and that resulted in record federal government budget deficits in the Reagan and G.W. Bush presidencies because the main financial fuel of the economy came from middle and under classes' wages, salaries, disposable income and spending that were outpaced by increases in the cost of living for these classes. That indicated pattern of federal budget deficits is already operative in connection with the Trump tax cuts favoring the wealthy, which for corporations are permanent but which expire for individuals in 2025, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-analysis-tax-cut-deficit-20180409-story.html, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/congress-and-the-1-trillion-deficit-time-to-be-straight-with-the-american-people.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/us/politics/federal-deficit-tax-cuts-spending-trump.html, https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/20/pf/taxes/tax-cuts-temporary/index.html.
Whereas federal economic statisticians base price inflation on a federal Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket of goods, which excludes increases or changes in the cost of housing, food and fuel (residential and nonresidential-facilities utilities and transportation fuel and fuel use), in reality costs of the latter three, survival essential spending in civilized society, which have their own subset food and fuel and shelter price indexes, most affect the middle and under classes' disposable income and ability to spend as well as their experience of price inflation and household solvency. Republican economics theorists, whose theory is trickle-down economic, in the main steadily argue that the growth spurts from these tax cuts favoring the high wealth class result from investment and consumer spending of the small class of the wealthy, when instead it is the vast consumer spending of the middle and under classes that instigates and drives investment in industrial-production and retail expansion and that generally supports and sustains the national economy, https://www.fool.com/slideshow/these-12-companies-have-laid-workers-2018/, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2018/04/27/retailers-closing-most-stores-2018-so-far/557275002/.
So far for the major corporations, the indication is that they are using the tax cut money most for buying back their stock from the public, outside investors, which raises the value of their corporate stock whereby principals of the corporation, the high echelon, can at peak value of the corporate stock sell their own shares off at maximal appreciation and return on investment, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/business/tax-cuts-share-buybacks-corporate.html.
Bankruptcy President Trump and his administration have virtually reversed these, the Obama-Presidency era, national economic solvency and prosperity policies. They should heed the complaints of the already economically clobbered US farm industry, and other so affected and complaining corporations, harshly injured by foreign retaliatory tariffs in Trump's initiated tariff trade war against the major economies and economic blocs of the world, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/02/trump-trade-war-impact-farming-agriculture-industry, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/12/tariffs-senators-say-trade-policies-hurting-farmers-businesses/776771002/, https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/08/03/trump-farmers-complaints-tariffs-bailout-china-trade-war-soybeans-agriculture-usda/878410002/, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/25/trump-trade-war-with-china-puts-300000-soybean-farmers-14-billion-export-industry-in-limbo.html. View a news clip and read a news article on another, plus, non-farm, early corporate casualty of the Trump tariff trade war ca, https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trump-apos-china-tariffs-claim-223207045.html. They should end the tariff trade war, immediately, before we incur a worse disaster sooner than will befall our national economy with the reversal of the other Obama-Presidency-related economic policies.
A proper definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Properly defined, it is the pattern of psychopathic behavioral derangement disorders President Donald J. Trump exemplifies and that is imitated, emulated, or endorsed and justified as socially legitimate, good or acceptable, by his admirers and supporters.
Sample of internet links documenting President Trump's Machiavellian financial, foreign-investment, duplicity (He has tweet-disparaged a pair of other famous but individually astronomically wealthier-than-him Republican, market-libertarian billionaires, who have criticized in tariff trade war, as being overrated and globalists):
https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/28/politics/trump-foreisgn-businesses/index.htmlSample of internet links documenting President Trump's Machiavellian financial, foreign-investment, duplicity (He has tweet-disparaged a pair of other famous but individually astronomically wealthier-than-him Republican, market-libertarian billionaires, who have criticized in tariff trade war, as being overrated and globalists):
https://www.investopedia.com/updates/donald-trump-companies/
https://qz.com/461688/a-list-of-everything-donald-trump-runs-that-has-his-name-on-it/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Trump_Organization (See reporting under headings "International")
Sample of documented accounting of blatant and egregious lies publicly told by President Trump:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/president-trump-lie-list
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/donald-trump-3000/index.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/calling-out-a-presidential-lie/514568/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/08/22/president-trumps-list-of-false-and-misleading-claims-tops-1000/?utm_term=.c8e702694ccf
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/donald-trump-3000/index.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/calling-out-a-presidential-lie/514568/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/08/22/president-trumps-list-of-false-and-misleading-claims-tops-1000/?utm_term=.c8e702694ccf
