Donald Trump

[KorbenDallas]

♫  Tell me, tell me, lies ♫ 

♫  Oh no no, you can't disguise ♫ ...

[KorbenDallas]

President Enrique Pena Nieto, "Mexico will not pay for the wall."

[Jules Troy]

Oh but they will once it is built...

I'm thinking that the easy border acts like a overload relief valve for their people.  People are tired of their corrupt government making life miserable.  Instead of having things boil over to where they revolt, they leave.  The ones that stay behind are the ones that suffer.  The Mexican government instead of fixing their problems know that when the shtf the people will leave instead of rioting.

When the wall gets built....pop!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Jules Troy said:

I'm thinking that the easy border acts like a overload relief valve for their people.  People are tired of their corrupt government making life miserable.  Instead of having things boil over to where they revolt, they leave.  The ones that stay behind are the ones that suffer.  The Mexican government instead of fixing their problems know that when the shtf the people will leave instead of rioting.

Jules,

As President Trump said on June 16, 2016 (warts and all), when he announced his run:

Quote

When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.

Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people.

It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably— probably— from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.

It's hard to remember the feeling of what that was like back then, isn't it?

 

As a side note, Trump critics often disparage his use of the language when they read it in print. What they don't see is the way he bounces his words off the audience and molds his speech to the reactions he gets. He is not in front of people to construct grammatically correct sentences. He is there to mess with their emotions so he can convince them of his ideas. As his ideas are generally simple (plain old common sense, in fact), broken English works. He often does this in public interviews, too. He does it with an eye to the interviewer and the audience.

I have heard that he is far better grammar-wise in meetings.

With this in mind, how in hell do critics keep a straight outraged face and play gotcha by saying Trump meant ALL Mexicans are rapists when they don't have a word to say about "They’re not sending you"? Trump said that TWO TIMES right before the rapist comment and it makes no sense at all if you go by strict words. I mean, is Trump saying Mexico is not sending "you," the audience he is speaking to? Come on, folks.  

I have seen critics over and over say he is gobbledygook for most speeches, but they have no doubt he is deadly accurate with the cognitive precision of a NASA moonshot scientist on the derogatory part they want to claim he meant. They leave the issue hanging of how a person can be both an idiot and an expert of the English language at the same time.

At least, by ignoring what Trump actually did in his speeches (the persuasion part), they simply walked off the playing field in competing for public opinion. They did it over and over, too. In their arrogance, they thought gotcha was all they needed, and they merely had to pat the public on the head before screwing it over again and again.

Anyway, back to your remark. We can add the rapists (and other bad guys) to the poor folks trying to escape the hell of Mexico for the paradise of the US, to coin a nice way of saying it.  

btw - Trump critics have never explained how, to them, the Mexican government can be the overlord of hell, a monster that sends its vulnerable people scrambling for cover and escape, and a poor little victim of US bullying at the same time.

 

Oh... I forgot... Mexico will pay for the wall.

 

Michael

[merjet]

Obviously there is more than one meaning to "pay for the wall." When the President of Mexico says Mexico will not pay for it, he means the Mexican government paying cash to build it. (This meaning is also the impression Trump conveys when he speaks to the public or tweets.) The President of Mexico does not intend other possible, less literal meanings, such as reduced USA government foreign aid to Mexico, the social consequences in Mexico of fewer people emigrating (Jules' meaning, I'm guessing), or the USA putting tariffs or "border taxes" on imports from Mexico. We can bet on who will pay for the wall in the first sense in the near future -- the USA federal government and consequently US taxpayers.   

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Heh.

Trump: Mexico should cancel meeting if it won't pay for wall

The deal negotiations begin for how Mexico will pay for the wall.

Michael

[merjet]

Mexico's President did cancel the meeting.

House Speaker Ryan says Congress will pay billions for Trump's wall along Mexico border

Excerpt: "Ryan says a border wall will cost $12 billion to $15 billion."

Note: Congress, i.e. US taxpayers, not Mexico.

Per Wikipedia USA foreign aid to Mexico in 2013 was $420 million. So If the cost is $12 billion -- Ryan's low amount -- it would take 12000/420 = 28.6 years of zero foreign aid to Mexico for Mexico to "pay for the wall"!  $15 billion implies 35+ years.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Man, this is going fast.

Here's the next step already in negotiating the deal with Mexico for them to pay for the wall. (From NYT):

Trump Backs Import Tax to Pay for Border Wall

Watch the Mexican government bluster and fumble and posture and cuss, but eventually come to the table, when the business elites over there scream bloody murder about a 20% import tax to US across the board.

This is called "leverage" in deal-making.

Michael

[merjet]

33 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Watch the Mexican government bluster and fumble and posture and cuss, but eventually come to the table, when the business elites over there scream bloody murder about a 20% import tax to US across the board.

This is called "leverage" in deal-making. 

 

That's easy for you to say when you are not an American businessman whose imports the 20% tax would be imposed on. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

23 minutes ago, merjet said:

That's easy for you to say when you are not an American businessman whose imports the 20% tax would be imposed on. 

Hell, Merlin,

If I were such an American distributor and had a market for such Mexican products, I might consider changing my supplier to American companies.

Especially if I could get better quality at a cheaper price.

Or don't you trust the market to have competition show up? Do you prefer crony cartels and monopolies with near-slave labor because they are more stable?

  

Also, do you think the Mexican crony corporate elites don't know what I just said?

Heh...

Watch what happens when they start showing what they are really made of... And watch what the Mexican politicians are made of...

 

Michael

[Jules Troy]

The Mexican government I think is shitting their pants.  They will be dragged kicking and screaming to the table but they are going to be caught between a rock and a hard place.  Come to the table and lose a bunch of power or watch the wall get built and have their own people revolt and lose everything..like their heads.

[jts]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Man, this is going fast.

Here's the next step already in negotiating the deal with Mexico for them to pay for the wall. (From NYT):

Trump Backs Import Tax to Pay for Border Wall

Watch the Mexican government bluster and fumble and posture and cuss, but eventually come to the table, when the business elites over there scream bloody murder about a 20% import tax to US across the board.

This is called "leverage" in deal-making.

Michael

Import tax. That is known as a tariff. Did anyone in OL read Bastiat?

 

[merjet]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Or don't you trust the market to have competition show up?

Do you prefer crony cartels and monopolies with near-slave labor because they are more stable?

Don't you want to let a businessman decide by his own independent judgment who his suppliers are?

No, and don't try to insinuate that I do. And why should you or I so readily assume the American businessman's supplier is a crony capitalist-monopolist who treats his employees like slaves?

[william.scherk]

Exports from Mexico to the USA range from agricultural products to machinery, vehicles, medical instruments and more.

I doubt that anything will come out of the across-the-board 20 percent tax slash tariff notion. It is the wrong way to extract extra value, in my free market eyes -- because the difference in price is paid by the receiver of the goods to the government, instead of by the seller. In that sense I think of it as punitive of the wrong party. It only indirectly affects the intended party, by depressing its exports due perhaps to 'consumer shock' and other ripple effects of a trade war with Mexico.

For the receiver of goods now taxed at the border under trade war, all he can do is add value and markup and try to sell at profit if he cannot substitute, be his sell-on product a car or avocado or industrial plant machinery.  

It is the end consumer that will pay an extra 'fee' to the US treasury from this vantage. Of course  buyers of goods from Mexico can as industrial consumers search around for available second-best price of the desired goods and pass on those hard costs to the ultimate individual and business and institutional consumers. Avocados, medical instruments. petroleum products. Some prices are just going to go up under tariff 'protection.'

Of course there would be dislocations in supply lines and an appreciable negative effect in Mexico itself if a tariff wall depressed industrial activity there, but this is an inefficient means to an end, via second-order effects of the pain to the US consumer. Maybe this is how Mexico will pay, in economic pain, while US industry and consumers pay the bill and have tax distress of their own.

In any case, NAFTA partners will need to know just what Trump wants from them, and may have to wait till the executive order or memorandum or bill introduced.  So I think the 20% may be a trial balloon or buffet option, not firm policy.  

Trump doesn't perhaps like the finicky bits of the congressional idea of 'border adjustments' as tax policy, and finds the '20% tax' a better penalty for all concerned, simple and succinct.  "You now pay more for this enormous spread of products, because Mexico fucked us over. As you curb your un-American appetites, and buy pricier goods, your consumer pain will echo on in job losses in Mexico."

It is too bad that Trump and Pena Nieto mutually agreed a personal meeting would be pointless, because it makes me think the ultimate aim is punitive. A unilateral imposition of punitive tariffs is not good  news for either economy, from my point of view.

Canada is kind of lurking quietly in the trees, hoping the president doesn't learn of the negative trade imbalance with his ally to the north. 

Edited January 27, 2017 by william.scherk
Grrrammar, precision.

[Jules Troy]

Yup what he has in store for Canada has had me wondering too...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, merjet said:

Don't you want to let a businessman decide by his own independent judgment who his suppliers are?

Merlin,

I do.

In fact, that's the reason I worked so hard to elect Trump.

   

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

56 minutes ago, Jules Troy said:

Yup what he has in store for Canada has had me wondering too...

Jules, 

I wouldn't worry too much unless you are a crony elite.

What Trump has in store for Canada and Mexico is a humongous amount of prosperity for lots of people, not just the elites. That includes Canada and Mexico. The cronies and ideology-oriented people will hate it, but they will have to go along kicking and screaming. Then the money will come for everyone.

 

Notice that the critics on this thread are treating this issue as a full-blown rigid policy frozen in time for all time using only one kind of input (buy-sell math or contextless ideology principle), not a dynamic process that involves all that, but also takes into account human nature, good guys and bad guys (i.e., morality), moment in the timeline of a project (where doing something in Stage 1 is not appropriate for Stage 4 and vice-versa), etc.. In other words, all the things Trump also takes into account when he negotiates deals.

Oh yeah... And winning when there is a contest...

 

The elite cronies right now are the opponents, not Mexico or Canada. The people in those countries are generally beautiful people and Trump will be one of the first to say so.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On a moral note, the idea of using near-slave labor and calling this the free market is repugnant to me.

If people want to produce with slave labor, let them sell their products to the slaves, then see how much profit they can turn.

It's simple.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

--Brant

[tmj]

If border security is important for a country to protect its sovereignty, which I believe it is, how would/could/should that country's people not expect/accept to assume the costs? 

Should the US expect the Chinese to pay for our Navy?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, tmj said:

If border security is important for a country to protect its sovereignty, which I believe it is, how would/could/should that country's people not expect/accept to assume the costs? 

Should the US expect the Chinese to pay for our Navy?

tmj,

In a perfect world, I would agree with you.

But think recoup losses.

Mexico (meaning the Mexican elites) has used the US as a toilet and garbage dump for decades--a place where to flush its own crap away from the ones in power over there. The US taking on all this garbage from Mexico comes with a cost.

Also Mexico has benefited from enormously lopsided trade deals with the US--not the Mexican people, just the elites. (It's kinda funny because that's the way it's worked for the insider US elites, too.)

I won't even get into the drugs.

All the while, there are people coming to the US for legitimate reasons. They really do need asylum or really do have the immigrant's dream of productively taking charge of their lives and building a future. And the elites have been using these as a smokescreen for decades to cover the garbage dump.

So, in Trump's view, he sees no reason to wipe the slate clean and start over from zero just because. I agree with him.

Anyway, the only people who are going to be impacted for real when Mexico pays for the wall are Mexican crony elites and some American crony elites. Oh... yeah... and the chattering class in the press, of course.

Everybody else won't even notice what happened. In fact, I predict life will get better both here and in Mexico from that wall and reinstating a sense of fairness that will come from Mexico (Mexican elites and some American elites) paying for it. Also, there will be plenty of immigration by the good guys, and plenty of trade between Mexicans and Americans who not trying to screw others. None of that will stop. 

As an analogy, suppose you have to go to court to get your money back from a scammer. You will include a provision for the scammer to pay for your court costs. You could ask, shouldn't each person pay for his own lawyer and legal fees since he is going after his own interests?

Yeah... That's true...

But then there's that scam where you lost all that money...

Michael

[merjet]

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Anyway, the only people who are going to be impacted for real when Mexico pays for the wall are Mexican crony elites and some American crony elites.

Wrong. A writer at the Boston Herald has a better grasp of the situation (link) than MSK. Moreover, it will be Americans paying for a wall -- in the most literal sense I described here -- not the government of Mexico.  

And what if the Mexican government retaliates with its own import tax on American goods? Do the producers of those American goods matter to MSK? Apparently not.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

You don't get it yet, but you will have to get it when you see it unfold.

No sense repeating myself.

Well... you are wrong. And it won't be the first time.

I kinda like saying that more than once.

   

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Mexicans living in the US send a lot of money back to Mexico.

Mexico feeds off the idea of being a victim of the US and deserves to get back much territory, especially California and southern Arizona. That's their version of left-liberal progressivism. Now Trump is bitch slapping them with his negotiating position and they can't stand it. Let 'em squirm.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

CNBC reports today that by depreciating the peso Mexico can economically nulify a 20% tariff. This is true. However, Mexico would still "pay" for the wall.

Currency depreciation would make US goods and services less attractive to Mexicans, but the US more desirable for illegal immigration.

Economically the "wall" is stupid. Politically, pretty smart. Kicking the Mexican elite--and I'm not talking business elite per se--in the ass again and again is wonderful for everyone but them, especially ordinary Mexicans.

Living in southern AZ I've got a better idea than most of the difficulty of building the wall. It's relatively easy re CA, AZ and NM compared to Texas. It's going to be ugly if built, but it won't be. That tariff is another matter and there will be all sorts of unforeseen consequences and some of the foreseen won't happen.

We don't have to built a wall. It would only keep illegals already here here if they figure it would be too hard to get back in. This is already a big problem. It's a dangerous trip. The big thing with illegals is not getting rid of them but IDing them so they can't vote. All voters in presidential elections should have to produce credible picture IDs. I don't know if that would take a constitutional amendment or just a new law.

The metaphorical wall should be used to keep out Muslims until they can be properly vetted. That's a problem with Canada too. Canada's vetting is garbage. So is ours for now.

But it looks as if what Obamacare was to Obama the Wall will be to Trump.

--Brant

The Art of Making a Mess