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by inflatableDodo 2583 days ago
>If he didn't view EVERYTHING as a zero sum game, he and whatever coalition he could assemble would be much more credible when it comes to tariffs and threats.

Thank fuck he does, quite frankly. We all dodged a bullet there.
1 comments
threeseed 2583 days ago
This isn't a children's playground.

There could've been a targeted dispute over IP. But instead what has happened is that a range of tariffs are involved which has resulted in Trump just giving $16 billion to farmers. Some of whom are now planting crops with no intention to sell but purely to get money from the US government.

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jonhendry18 2583 days ago
In fact, borrowing $16 billion from China to give it to farmers hurt by tariffs against China.
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ebog 2582 days ago
Maybe I don't get your point but a tariff is a tax, and US consumers pay for a lot of that tax. So this is effectively a super inefficient redistribution of wealth to farmers from everyone else in the country.
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jonhendry18 2581 days ago
That's all true. But the tariffs China places on US agricultural products aren't a tax on US consumers, and don't produce revenue for the US.

So American farmers are losing export sales due to Chinese tariffs, the sting of which Trump is trying to reduce by paying the farmers. Those payments probably aren't funded by tariff revenue collected by the US. So they'll probably be paid for through borrowing. Which may mean borrowing from China.

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RhodesianHunter 2583 days ago
Most of our borrowing we do from ourselves, so technically only some fraction of that came from China.

But yeah, your point is still a good one.

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inflatableDodo 2583 days ago
Out of interest, could you share the context for why you chose your username?
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RhodesianHunter 2583 days ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Ridgeback
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inflatableDodo 2583 days ago
Ahh, was just checking my assumptions. I have members of my family who still complain about having to call Zimbabwe Zimbabwe and who have old SA flags from the '70's, despite them not being from Africa, if you catch my drift, so I was not so subtly digging. For reference, I find it about as disconcerting as if someone decided to call themselves 'ConstantinopleKnight', or similar. If my uncle called himself 'RhodesianHunter' online, he would definitely not be referencing the dog breed.
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