Pofarmer - 4/9/2025 23:07

"only tariff the $275 billion difference."

Frankly, that makes no sense.

Should we Tariff Lesotho because we buy a couple hundred million dollars of diamonds from them but they buy nothing from us?

What part doesn't make sense?    It gives the country we have a trade imbalance with an incentive to buy American made products. 

I assume Lesotho imports something that could come from the USA.   As for tariffing them, IDK.      I'm assuming a better deal could be made for countries that pose no threat to the USA, provide the USA with something we don't have and flat out don't import much, from anywhere.   But they're clearly being used as a media talking point. Most of the people crying over the poor people in Lesotho likely never knew it was a country prior to last week.



"to level the playing field vs countries with little or no environmental regulations and little regard for human life."

This is part of what the WTO was supposed to do. I think if countries don't meet acceptable environmental and safety regulations, just don't buy from them. Problem fixed.

WTO has been a huge failure from the get go.   If they did what they were supposed to do, we wouldn't have near the problem we currently have.  Mainly because China wouldn't have been allowed in, period.

"The US govt did NOT do its job in the interest of the working class citizens of the United States of America."

You realize that this kicked off with Reagan and his Union busting, right? Then accelerated when China was accepted into the WTO under GHW Bush?

You have some interesting revisionist history going on there.    Clinton pushed congress to approve China's admission into the WTO and they did so under Clinton's presidency.  GWB (and the entire GOP) had plenty of his own shortcomings but blaming China's admission to the WTO on him is just plain wrong.

Edited by Kooiker 4/9/2025 23:41