Trump is hurting china, and possibly helping the environment

One of the bleaker headlines on the drudge report this morning is that the trump trade deal isn't going as planned. Our quarterly exports are down 7 billion, and our imports are up 17.8 billion. In another words we moved backwards 24 billion.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-vowed-to-shrink-the-trade-gap-it-keeps-growing/ar-AAJTqg9

Our food exports was of course harmed by the trade war, and there are reports that 40% of a farmers income is from federal aid. I am not sure what the numbers are in previous years, but when the government says there is no inflation they may simply be padding the numbers. So whatever food we do export, ironically, is on average 40% subsidized by the taxpayers. So when we are paying billions of dollars for cheap food that goes overseas, let us also not forget many people [and bureaucrats] are struggling with affordable housing-but I digress.

The article goes on to say how terrible steel is doing, and all these manufacturing jobs are going away. While some companies perhaps lost china as a client, what happened is big steel itself predicted a major economic upturn and they invested to produce extra capacity for demand that didn't exist. As I said, I went back to college. It is so I can work in the steel industry doing welding, cutting, grinding, etc, and it is paid for by the company because they really really really need employees. Maybe the aggregate in the rust belt is bad, but not everywhere in the USA. Another thing to note is that since the L.A. Times is blaming trump, one has to wonder if steel prices would have remained stable if the democrats [or mccain] funded that wall. But even though US steel prices have plummeted, it doesn't sound like the rest of the world is buying.

Continuing on in the article

The United States trade deficit in goods with China shrank in the first nine months of the year to $263.2 billion, down from $301.7 billion in the previous year.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-vowed-to-shrink-the-trade-gap-it-keeps-growing/ar-AAJTqg9

That is a staggering 38 billion dollar reduction with china. Trump's protectionism is making gains. What happened is that the business went to other parts of the world. One of them is Mexico.

But the United States has shifted to importing more goods from other locations instead, as American companies turn to buying more goods from Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan and elsewhere.
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?Surprisingly? Canada didn't make the list-they haven't seemed to benefit either from our trade war with china. It does seems we still rely heavily on Asian countries for our imports and moreso, but mexico is quite special case. They are next door to us. They don't have to ship their goods across an entire oceans. The more their economy improves, that in turn benefits the usa with less immigration and immigration related expenses. Maybe we won't need a border wall.

After this year is over, perhaps farmers will stop growing as many crops and raising as many animals and finding a better land use. So that could translate into less fertilizers in our waters, less pesticides, less Monsanto, and after the initial culling less animals being butchered annually on our soil. With more goods coming in from Mexico that could translate into less fossil fuels being used to transport goods into the United States.

What Trump is doing isn't quite a policy failure as the media would have us believe, it is harming one of the worst human rights violators after the USA, it should reduce carbon emissions (if you believe that global warming stuff), it could help the environment, and it could curtail Mexican immigration.

Before closing there is something else going on in the economy. The M1 multiplier is increasing, and our quantitative easing is occurring at a faster rate that any time in the near future. We have more money in circulation at an increased velocity under the Trump years, and our citizens are spending/borrowing it at one of the highest rates since the housing crash of 2008 [M1 multiplier can be much higher than the 2008 crash].

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MULT

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MBCURRCIRW

The faster the rate of money that is injected into circulation, the more inflationary it is. The increased m1 multiplier may end up multiplying the effect of such quantitative easing policies. As noted above, the federal government can pad basic measurements of inflation to hide the actual increases we might otherwise see in the sample of goods selected/tested in the economy. Thus it also, at the taxpayer expense, averages down the actual inflation of things like rent also considered in the basket of good. I am no housing market expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if rent isn't also being padded or artificially lowered through affordable housing initiatives. And the feds get to keep social security payments lower as an added bonus.

Inflation is here, we just keep juicing the economy to say things are greater than they actually are. Quantitative easing policies are used to combat deflation, but our government says there is no inflation while at the same time padding inflation. I am no economist, but I wonder which will set in first: hyperinflation, or debt solvency. Our debt may be in a near crisis, but our government, if they stopped wasteful spending (hahaha), may be playing Russian roulette with inflation with a goal of keeping our nation's debt more manageable. But that's not really a trump trade war thing, that is an over 10 year Keynesian styled economic game that far too frequently leads to economic recessions. We'll see where that goes, hopefully I will be out of the USA when hyperinflation sets in.