(1) Alright, another tweet storm incoming. Call me inspired. Not bourbon inspired this time. No, inspired by this westernjournal.com/trump-returnin…
(2) Bilateral trade deals. Not free trade deals, but specific deals. Like China airdropping $84 billion into West Virginia shale gas. reuters.com/article/us-tru…
(3) BTW, West Virginia's GDP? $66.5 Billion. deptofnumbers.com/gdp/west-virgi…
(4) West Virginia's GDP growth so far in 2017? 3%. In August. After coal demand shot up from China buying West Virginia coal instead of North Korean coal. This is in AUGUST, ie before a $80 billion+ helicopter drop of Chinese investments. thehill.com/homenews/state…
(5) Yeah. And that's just a third of the trade and investment deals signed by @realDonaldTrump who is increasing the United States' energy exports, and getting the countries buying that energy to invest in the infrastructure. We're essentially getting paid TWICE.
(6) Art of the freaking deal. See, what Trump is doing is in terms of trade is, ideologically, a 180 degree difference from before.
(7) Before, the reigning ideology was that free trade and lowered trade barriers were ideal. The logic was sound; with minimal free trade barriers, countries would specialize in different industries or areas of production, and everyone would benefit.
(8) The labor supply of a country which go through what was called 'structural unemployment', aka a factory would shut down and a new factory wouldn't take its place, before they moved to a new industry.
(9) The problem, though. When you're signing so many trade agreements that focus on the regulatory side with lowering trade barriers and such, you're going to see a lot of bleed-off of industries in a very short span of time. In economics, a decade or two is a short span of time.
(10) Essentially? The United States lacked a salesman, someone who could go to other countries and say, "You should buy American _______ because ______."
(11) What we had was an army of bureaucrats and negotiators sitting at tables behind closed doors deciding which industry would see massive layoffs in the next few years in exchange for cheaper goods.
(12) Want to know why the Obama administration called the recovery from the Great Recession a 'jobless recovery'? investors.com/politics/edito… Because what jobs were going to come back? Obama wasn't a salesman. Hell, he had the army of bureaucrats and negotiators working on TPP!
(13) So here's what Trump did. Further evidence of the 4D chess at work.
(14) washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2… Renegotiating NAFTA. The free trade deal that kickstarted everything. The sacred cow that we were told couldn't be done. And by all estimates? Its a quagmire, basically everyone involved in negotiating US trade agreements is stuck in that.
(15) Aaaaaaand while all those bureaucrats and negotiators are stuck renegotiating NAFTA when the leader of Canada already has a history of firebombing trade deals? lowyinstitute.org/the-interprete…
(16) Trump draws in 1.3x West Virginia's GDP with a simple negotiation with the Chinese. On top of another $170 billion in deals.
(17) "B-b-but those are business deals, not trade!" says NPR and others who believe lowering trade barriers and free trade agreements are the be-all end-all of trade policy. npr.org/sections/paral…
(18) Business deals are the core essence of trade. What we've had is people who haven't spent their entire careers in business trying to do trade, and giving away the industry in the United States as a result.
(19) Now we have a businessman who knows the value of the United States and who literally wrote the book on deal making as President. And while all the petty negotiators are stuck in a quagmire, he's going to sell American products, and make the Chinese pay for the factories./end
