{"id":35607,"date":"2018-06-29T06:01:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T11:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35607"},"modified":"2018-06-29T06:01:20","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T11:01:20","slug":"trumps-trade-tantrum-on-tipping-points-and-authoritarian-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35607","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Trade Tantrum: On Tipping Points and Authoritarian Peril"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump\u2019s Trade Tantrum: On Tipping Points and Authoritarian Peril<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo by Graham C99 | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Tangerine Tosser\u2019s triple trade tiff \u2013 with China, the European Union, and the United States\u2019 NAFTA partners (Canada and Mexico) \u2013 has the potential to spark an American and global economic meltdown.\u00a0 Classic signs of a coming collapse have been evident for some time: wage stagnation for the many alongside skyrocketing wealth for the ever more absurdly opulent few (three of whom now possess<\/a>between them the same net worth as the poorest half of the U.S. populace); colossal accumulated corporate, government, student loan, and credit card debt; rampant surplus and \u201cfictitious\u201d capital devoted to speculative rather than productive investment; capitalist profits far beyond real economic growth; wildly unsustainable stock market values (artificially buoyed by debt and corporate buybacks); the deregulation of financial markets and institutions.<\/p>\n

As the astute Goldman Sachs veteran and financial commentator Nomi Prins noted last January<\/a>, \u201cThere will be a tipping point \u2013 when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply won\u2019t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.\u00a0\u00a0Leverage is a patient enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next financial \u201ccorrection\u201d could cut deeper than the last one, \u201cthe Great Recession.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s because, as Prins argues in her latest book Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, <\/em><\/a>\u201cthere is no Plan B\u201d this time. Interest rates can\u2019t fall any further.<\/p>\n

Collusion<\/em>was written before Trump started making good on his protectionist promises, which could tighten the noose.\u00a0 The more immediate economic blowbacks are clear: the withering of foreign markets for U.S. agricultural exports (thanks to retaliatory foreign tariffs); rising prices (thanks to U.S. tariffs) for capital goods and intermediate inputs that U.S. producers purchase from foreign countries (China especially); the loss of U.S. jobs as corporations that make goods in the U.S. seek to circumvent retaliatory tariffs abroad by shifting production to foreign countries (Harley Davidson recently announced that it has decided to do precisely that).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump\u2019s Trade Tantrum: On Tipping Points and Authoritarian Peril Photo by Graham C99 | CC BY 2.0 The Tangerine Tosser\u2019s triple trade tiff \u2013 with China, the European Union, and the United States\u2019 NAFTA partners (Canada and Mexico) \u2013 has the potential to spark an American and global economic meltdown.\u00a0 Classic signs of a coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[43,5493,7844,284,3004,575,15269,9937,9740,805,827],"class_list":["post-35607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-authoritarianism","tag-counterpunch","tag-donald-trump","tag-european-union","tag-nafta","tag-nomi-prins","tag-paul-street","tag-tariffs","tag-tipping-points","tag-trade","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35608,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35607\/revisions\/35608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}