By exiting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (the TPP), the U.S. has forfeited the ability to change trade rules in favor of our country. Trump essentially left the best way to change the trade imbalances, in order to invoke a trade war that will hurt all parties. American citizens and industry are being hit hard by the retaliatory tariffs put in place by both China and the European Union (EU).

In trade wars, tariffs are a destructive weapon, and the destruction is only amplified by the retaliations and escalations on either side. Trump has imposed tariffs on about $200 billion worth of Chinese goods and said he is ready to increase it to $500 billion. However, U.S. goods also are being hit by the Chinese tariffs.

Soybeans are being hit with a 25 percent tariff causing Chinese buyers to increase orders from Brazil. It’s worth noting that eight out of the 10 soybean producing states voted for President Trump. Also on the list of Chinese tariffs are automobiles, which is putting pressure on U.S. auto manufacturers. Third, U.S. beef and pork exporters are being hit with tariffs by both China and Mexico. It seems that Trump does not recognize that trade and tariffs impact other countries.

The U.S. cannot win a trade war with China if it has horrible trade relations with countries in the European Union, Canada and Mexico. Countries do not want to continue trading with a nation that has imposed large tariffs on major imports. This makes life difficult for everyone involved in trade.

Trump’s economic policy comes from an underlying belief about trade. He sees trade as a zero-sum game in which the only goal is to export goods. If the U.S. imports a product, regardless of the necessity, we lose this made up battle with the other country. With the U.S. trade deficit being $568.4 billion as of 2017, we have lost this game. However, people’s reactions should not be anger that the U.S. is losing at trade, as President Trump would put it, they should be wondering why economists are not concerned.

It is important to understand that the deficit is made up of several macroeconomic factors including the value of a country’s currency, their investment rates and their relative growth rates. This is why, during the 2008 economic recession, our trade deficit decreased dramatically due to a falter of national consumption.

All that trade surpluses and deficits mean is that one country is giving money to another for goods. But President Trump is determined to end the U.S. trade deficit, most likely with a limited knowledge of economic principles.

Trump sees there are countries with a trade surplus, like Venezuela, and admires them. Why? Because, according to the World Bank, no one in Venezuela has the ability to buy anything foreign due to extraordinarily high tariffs on all imported goods. Which leads to the question of why President Trump is trying to model the prosperous U.S. economy on the collapsing economy of Venezuela.

Political economist Thomas Sowell has an excellent understanding of this concept on trade deficits in his book, Basic Economics.

“In general, international deficits and surpluses have had virtually no correlation with the performance of most nations’ economies. Germany and France have had international trade surpluses while their unemployment rates were in double digits. Japan’s postwar rise to economic prominence on the world stage included years when it ran deficits, as well as years when it ran surpluses,” Sowell said.

Unfortunately, because of Trump’s lack of knowledge about economics, Americans are hurting. The government had to issue a $12 million bailout for farmers due to their consumers not being able to afford the tariffs.

With the U.S. tariff on farm machinery from China, farmers are being hit on all sides and are not able to sustain their businesses. Major pork producers like Maschoff are worried about the agricultural industry crashing and truthfully stating that they are the casualties of the president’s trade war. Trump’s policy to bring jobs back to U.S. will lead to job loss for thousands of his citizens.

Looking back to the Bush administration in the early 2000s, we see the effects of placing high tariffs on imports. More than 200,000 jobs were lost between 2001-2003 because President Bush placed high tariffs on steel. Former Bush administration Chief of Staff, Andy Card, noted that the most worrisome part is that Bush’s tariffs were nowhere near the extent of President Trump’s.

Tariffs like these do not benefit an entire economy but instead benefit one industry while hurting many others. This is exactly what is being demonstrated and we will see the results in large-scale job loss for Americans and the strain that will put on the U.S. economy. No one wins a trade war.

Image courtesy of wccftech.

This threat has several severe consequences. The EMP has a destructive power similar in magnitude to that of an atomic bomb. The higher the detonation altitude, the more destructive it is. An EMP attack acts over a wide area up to hundreds of miles. Consequences of an EMP can include long lasting power outages in houses and health care facilities and damage to properties, including cars and stores. Sensors, monitors and other electronics that restart power after an outage would also be wiped out. The radioactive waves in an EMP can also kill up to millions of people, depending on its size. The radiation would also severely increase cancer cases.

“The biggest danger would be shorting out of the power grid, especially on the East Coast. Imagine a situation where large sections of the U.S. had no power. Imagine New York or Washington, D.C. with no power for just a week. The implications would be hard to fathom. The casualty rates would be off the charts,” said Harry Kazianis, Director of Defense Studies at the Center for the National Interest.

Despite the possible threat, little efforts have been made to address the issue. The federal government did not implement any recommendations to prevent power outages the EMP would cause. They also claimed that securing the power grid is not one of their current priorities. On the other hand Richard Schoeberl, a terrorism analyst, believes that an EMP attack is a possible threat that requires immediate action.

“Most of our East Coast grid has a lot of older equipment that could be vulnerable. We should work quickly to make the necessary upgrades to ensure North Korea can’t catch us by surprise,” Kazianis added.

“We are highly vulnerable to such an attack. Considering that if North Koreans are able to pack enough destructive power into such a nuclear device they could fry countless electrical grids and equipment. If they use a big enough device, the damage could be beyond belief,” said Schoeberl.

Photo courtesy of matti.frisk / Flickr.

“My major is international relations and I picked it under this strange pretense that ‘Oh I really like to go places’ and ‘Oh I really like to talk to people.’ The more that I go into it, the more that I realize how little I know about politics, which is 90 percent of it. Also, how small of a desire I have to learn a foreign language which is the other 10 percent of it. I’ve been second guessing it to say the least, but I guess I had good intentions when I picked it. Maybe I didn’t think about it as much as I should’ve, or I didn’t fully understand what it was when I went into it. I’m starting to think more and more that this isn’t the right thing for me to be doing. I need to find something else, it’s just a matter of what that is. This is supposed to be the point in my life where I start figuring out what I’m doing. Most people kind of have a general idea, and I don’t really know what I’m doing. So, that is kind of a struggle.”

When asked to stand back from the problem, he would give someone else in his situation the following advice:

“Go for doing something else. You have the opportunity to do something else. So why would you keep doing the thing that you don’t like if you have the ability to try something else? And if you don’t like that either, try something else. There’s really no reason not to. There’s no reason to keep doing something that you’re not enjoying.”

Finally, Lee discusses what gives him hope that he will go on to be successful in the future.

“I’ve always had this crazy idea in my head that I’m going to somehow make a ton of money. Part of me has stayed half-way confident in that. I imagine myself sometimes and I’m like, ‘Yes you’re going to have a really nice house and an expensive car and all this stuff.’ I have no idea why or how I’m getting that. Sometimes I’m just like, ‘That’s happening so don’t worry about what comes in between, because you’re going to get to that point.’ In a more realistic sense, I am here. I don’t personally believe that there would be any reason for God to put me here if I don’t have purpose. I don’t think it would make any sense. Although I don’t know what I’m going to be, I have confidence in that it’s something and that I’ll figure it out. The choir director at my church used to tell us all the time before practice that ‘God don’t make no junk.’ That goes deeper than a funny thing to say. It makes sense in multiple ways. That, like, clearly there would be no reason for Him to create something without more of a purpose than to just go through life day to day then die. There’s something greater that we are called to do.”

All photos taken by Cassidy Winsor.