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Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

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Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#61
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambodians are, and they were just hit by a 49% tariff, one of the highest applied to anybody.

Yes, that is stupid. Why not apply that to the big economies that the GP comment said was 90% of the deficit. Exempt small low income countries - save a lot of people a lot of paid at little cost. On the other hand this is a bargaining tactic. I do not think these tariffs will last. > Instead, recall that President Trump views tariffs as generating negotiating leverage for making deals. It is easier to imagine that a…

More than half of factories in Cambodia are Chinese owned. The idea is to put pressure on China.

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#62

What buffet said is exactly what USA did to United Kingdom with brexit. Which companies "enabled it". Which companies got fined for brexit? Facebook AND Cambridge Analytica did and did. Look what for example Cargill UK "assets" were before brexit and what they are now. Yes sounds like conspiracy theory, but point is most other comments here do not seem to understand that economic war is constant, permanent, global. a…

only relevant part of buffets document is that "why foreigners cant ditch US dollars part"

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#63
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's from 2003. Would you argue that the period between 2003 and 2025 have strengthened or weakened the case for free trade?

Strengthened. In the US this has happened: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96 Meanwhile across the entire world this has happened: https://ourworldindata.org/history-of-poverty-data-appendix You can argue the growth of globalization & lowering of trade barriers were unrelated to this up-and-to-the-right, but it’s hard to argue they’re making things worse unless…

That first graph says the median income in 1974 was the equivalent of $5335 in today's dollars. I don't think it's adjusting for cost of living, because people lived a lot better in 1974 than you could live today on $5k per year.

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#64
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockades are an act of war. How expensive does a tariff have to be before it is a de facto blockade? I think that comparison is much more apt than it first appears.

No amount of tariff turns into de facto blockade. blockade, embargo, sanction, tariff. Each are different and have different meaning.

While you are lecturing me on words meanings, I would advise you to look up the meaning of "de facto."

If you were America's founding fathers and King George 3, the leader of their government, decided to put a 10000% tariff on goods meant for the colonies, do you think they would have felt blockaded?

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#65
post #20

Buffett has been aggressive selling stock in the last year ($134 billion total in 2024) and Berkshire is right now sitting on $334 billion cash vs $272 billion in equities. Kinda funny because he's the first one who will tell you "don't time the market", but he definitely timed it to perfection. "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful".

Buffett's position is the vast majority of people shouldn't time the market if they aren't full time investors. But that skilled full time investors can beat the market.

See the Superinvestors of Graham Doddville: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Superinvestors_of_Graham...

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#66
I see many comments here saying “but stock market went up” while ignoring the bare bone problem Buffett is presenting: Disproportionate foreign ownership of US assets harms American sovereignty.

The issue may be that sovereignty is hard to measure, but I think we have been complaining about the long-tail effects for a while:

- wealth inequality (as businesses become optimized on foreign labor, execs are paid more and workers less)

- job security (volatility for investor class means sudden job cuts or offshoring)

- asset inflation in real estate (no one can afford a freakin house)

- WAR (we have an obligation to defend our debt owners in the Middle East)

Every time the public trust gets violated, we lose a small piece of our future.

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#67
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Biden administration spent a lot of time and money trying to bring back manufacturing to US shores, including loads of funding in the IRA for industries like renewable energy and batteries and the CHIPS act for semiconductors. They also used tariffs to protect a number of US industries, but they did it intelligently and in a targeted manner. Being “in favor of some trade restrictions and reindustrialization” does…

I agreed with that, though not entirely with how it was done, but they didn't take credit for it. Very few people even knew it was happening. Objectively I don't think Biden was a bad president, and no I didn't vote for Trump. They also never took a principled stand on it. Biden and Harris never said "the trade policy of Reagan and Clinton was a mistake and we are reversing it." If Harris had said that, she would hav…

> The Democratic Party has an enormous communication problem. They don't know how to connect.

I am not from the US, but I perceive the same problem in my country of residence (and in other countries I know people from).

The main issue I see is that politics became a sort of entertainment. So a more serious politician (the adults in the room, so to say), communicate in a fairly dry, and even careful tone. And that happens because politics is supposed to be a dry and boring subject.

Budgets, policies, et cetera and so forth, all those are dministrative administrative, not something to be decided with emotions.

But that doesn't lend itself well to communication. So what people pay attention to is the far right buffon yelling about white replacement or such bullshit.

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#68
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's from 2003. Would you argue that the period between 2003 and 2025 have strengthened or weakened the case for free trade?

Strengthened. In the US this has happened: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96 Meanwhile across the entire world this has happened: https://ourworldindata.org/history-of-poverty-data-appendix You can argue the growth of globalization & lowering of trade barriers were unrelated to this up-and-to-the-right, but it’s hard to argue they’re making things worse unless…

I feel like those graphs and similar arguments are always trotted out, and they are an important piece, but there is more to the world than disposable income, and only using those stats completely ignores some very real negatives. You hint at it with "unless you really scope down to particular losers in a world of mostly winners", but I think you're vastly underestimating that:

1. Wealth inequality. Wealth inequality has exploded over the past few decades, and even if the median has gone up, the effects of widening wealth inequality can be very bad for society. First, as Charlie Munger once said, "The world is not driven by greed, but envy." Even if you're doing a little bit better, if everyone else is doing a ton better, this leads to you feeling like you're doing a lot worse. The rise of authoritarian politics in the West I think can be directly attributed by large swaths of society feeling left behind and like they are "getting screwed".

2. Related to the above, but finite resources, most especially land, are always vacuumed up by the wealthiest in society, regardless of any other level of incomes. So when there is a lot of wealth inequality, it can become prohibitively expensive to own land in any remotely desirable area, and this has huge negative societal effects (happy to go into this point more if you disagree).

3. The flip side of "optimized global supply chains" is incredibly brittle supply chains in the face of black swan events. Covid was a taste of this, though I think the global supply chain actually help up remarkably well for how enormous an impact Covid had. I think a better example would be something like chip production in Taiwan, which if it disappeared tomorrow would be absolutely devastating for the world economy.

4. Some countries that are now leaders in the world economy, like South Korea, had an extremely protectionist stance for decades in order to allow crucial industries to develop and not be undercut by cheap imports. I certainly don't think it's the only reason, but one reason Africa struggles so much is because they are flooded with cheap goods (or free goods in the guise of "charity") that prevent native industries from developing.

Re: Buffett: America's Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out from Under Us [pdf] (2003)

#69
The big prediction that was wrong is that the US dollar would lose value. The opposite happened - despite all the deficit trading, the dollar has gone up in relations to all other countries.

It's a self-correcting problem - if the dollar starts losing value, that strengthens or our ability to export. And if countries want to manipulate their currency to maintain their ability to export, then they are helping pay to maintain the balance.

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