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Scott Smyth's avatar

Looks like Option 1!

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Noah Millman's avatar

This is the danger of writing in times of rapid change: anything timely is quickly obsolete

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Sam's avatar

I wouldn't call "I think the likelihood is that we’ll have damaged our reputation as a trading partner and steward of the world financial system for very little or no gain,” obsolete yet.

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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

So I’m confused about something. China dumping treasuries is supposed to be a bad thing, but if we run a giant trade deficit then China is just going to accumulate more and more treasuries to dump at some future date. What is the off ramp supposed to be?

The EU already called China and told them they “better not dump a bunch of cheap goods into the EU” since they are no longer going to trade with America. This is a strange response if trade deficits are great.

In reality the EU has been steadily increasing tariffs on Chinese goods as its trade deficit with them has grown. Its trade surplus with the us has been a way to partially offset this growing deficit with China. If the EU stops trade with America and turbocharged it with China an explosion of its trade deficit and hallowing out of its industries is an inevitability. Which is why they’ve been walking down the same path as Trump at a slower pace.

They could cut a deal where both of them cut China off and China decides to re-orient towards more domestic consumption.

Oh and also the EU is going to stand up to Putin by…buying the goods of the country supplying Putin.

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David Eichler's avatar

Except that, in a hospital you are dealing with medical experts. Furthermore, even in the best run hospitals, with the best people, there is always some risk of catching a disease. Trump is not only not an expert, he is a moron, and the people he surrounds himself now are mostly either incompetent, or are opportunists who don’t care about the “patients.”

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cactusdust's avatar

Correction "he is a fucking moron" -Rex Tillerson

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