Trying to ignore US election forecasts. The media want a knife-edge cliff-hanger so badly that the coverage would fit better in the sports pages, and pollsters’ credibility is pretty much exhausted.
I’m also still unable to fathom how more than, say, 20% of voters could be so debased, unhappy and/or ignorant that they will back someone who – among other things – is clearly owned by Vladimir Putin and infantile tech billionaires. (One Trump-voter I know moans that ‘we don’t know who Kamala is’.)
I was trying to think of a possible bright side to a Trump victory. This isn’t one, but it’s the best I could manage, in that it would resolve longstanding global economic imbalances one way or another.
If we assume that the former President has a real chance of winning, we must assume that there is a chance that the US will impose broad tariffs on imports. His ideas on this are either simplistic or all over the place, but he has suggested a base level of a 10-20% tariff across the board, and 40% or more on Chinese exports.
As numerous grown-ups have explained, this would cause significant increases in US consumer prices and many manufacturing costs. It would also – as Trump likes to point out – lead to more manufacturing within the US, though the goods produced would be more expensive to consumers than the replaced imports. Net out the costs and benefits, and let’s say the US people would suffer a decline in economic well-being of x%. (A typical recent forecast: 680,000 jobs lost, 1% off GDP, household costs up by US$1,700 a year.)
Big net exporters (Japan, Germany, but especially China) would no doubt weaken their currencies in an attempt to maintain exports to other markets. And other countries, especially those that run trade deficits, would no doubt introduce tariffs of their own to protect their own industries. With the world’s biggest market cut off and international trade slumping, the world as a whole – minus the US – would see a hit to economic well-being of, let’s say, 2x%.
But for China, the impact would be far worse. The country today accounts for 31.6% of global manufacturing and 28% of global investment, yet only 20% of the global economy and just 13% of global consumption. More than anywhere else in the world, China would see factory closures and a sharp rise in unemployment. Its people would experience a drop in economic well-being of what – 3x%, 4x%?
Hong Kong’s suffering would be at that end of the scale as well, with sharp falls in trade, financial services, tourism, etc, along with plummeting stock and property markets.
So Trump’s crude trade policies would hurt the whole world – but the US would suffer relatively less, and China far more.
His apologists could argue that the threatened tariffs are a negotiating tactic and would be far less extensive if Beijing – somehow, frantically – found ways to curb exports to the US and boost domestic consumption. Cynics might suspect that Beijing would play Trump by lavishing him with praise, offering his family some business deals, and buying a few million tons of soybeans so he could brag about his superb negotiating skills and good relationship with his great friend Cheezie Bing.
But, with Trump also ditching Taiwan, Beijing could decide to divert its own population’s attention and make the most of the chaos by doing something desperate. Things could get interesting – and not in a good way.
While we’re at it – for military geeks only – a recently published US Naval College paper (pdf) on Operation Causeway – the US plan to invade Taiwan at the end of WW2, and Japan’s plans to resist.
If you absolutely must watch a talking head on the election, you could do worse than plain-talking political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, here. In a country where half the population don’t bother voting, she says, the race comes down to whether Trump can get more anti-immigrant men or Harris can get more pro-abortion rights women out to cast a ballot.
One upside to a Trump win will be that I won’t have to endure Harris’s nasal New York whine for the next four years. Also, Trump is like the designated-survivor President in a bad 1980s Hollywood movie, and is kind of entertaining in that way. That’s all I got, though.
I think Trump has some kind of brain-washing technique where he repeats the second half of his previous sentence. You get lulled into this rhythm and then, when it’s mixed in with his soporific voice, it doesn’t really matter what he is saying. It’s very effective although the other day he went off track talking about Arnold Palmer’s manhood. Trump isn’t as folksy as George W Bush but he’s a good ‘over the garden fence’ gossip. People watch him to be entertained. And he played Madison Square Garden.
Look on the bright side. With a Kamala win we will have expanded wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Closer to home we will have price controls, taxes on unrealized capital gains and greater Federal Government interference in the housing market, something that always works. And of course, an invigorated Green New Deal.
Sadly, we will not be able to see the Jeffery Epstein list but that is a small price to pay for essentially (Kamala’s observation not mine) a continuation of the present United States administration.
The sad side to US politics, apart from the sheer negativism and the squandering of cash and resources on elections in a country with millions living in rampant poverty, is that the choice is always between the same two parties.
There is no space for smaller parties or independents who in other jurisdictions can rock the boat and bring new dynamics and energy to the fore.
Is it “pro-abortion rights women” or simply “pro-abortion women”?
Trump is a sociopath who does not believe in democratic norms. If you would condemn authoritarian attacks on civil society when they’re carried out in the name of a communist regime, do not let them slide when proposed by an ostensible conservative. Before anyone brings up “cancel culture”, that’s not the same thing, Kamala Harris isn’t threatening to overturn the results of elections, imprison journalists, or use the army against her opponents. Trump has done all three. Several of his former staffers say he’s a fascist to the core.
Please look up Peter Thiel, the infantile tech billionaire who has bankrolled the political career of J. D. Vance. He’s a seriously weird eugenicist authoritarian, and his creepazoid understudy is the one who’ll be in charge when Trump has a heart attack in a couple of years.
IF he wins…
The “intelligentsia” that would implement all of his so-called policies would have him declared unfit to preside about six months after taking office in order to push Vance up as an even more malignant puppet but a puppet that is in lockstep 100%. Thiel and Musk would have unfettered direct line access.
Chinese economy would suffer and not only would jobless Chinese (and Chinese with zero social credits) flood South and Central America with a goal of hitting the US border, but Chinese would also swamp Western Europe in ways that Africans, Syrians, Afghans etc couldn’t touch on. Not to mention volunteering to fight for Putin’s “SMO” in serious numbers.
“Such fun” as Miranda’s mum used to say.
@Seamus – nobody is “pro-abortion” – that’s just right-wing religious propaganda – but by and large, the American people recognise that for some women it may sometimes be an unfortunate necessity. The odd thing is that the “pro-life” crowd who disagree tend to be the same folk who are all for capital punishment and against gun control. Only unborn life, it seems, merits their concern.
@US Observer – whereas with a Trump win, the country can abandon NATO, sell out Ukraine, and watch from a safe distance as Putin swallows up Moldova, Georgia, and the Baltic states then turns his attention to Poland.
There is no space for smaller parties or independents who in other jurisdictions can rock the boat and bring new dynamics and energy to the fore.
So unlike our own dear city.
I don’t think Americans are anti-immigration. After all, about 1 million people have legally immigrated each and every year for at least two decades.
People are opposed to people who cut the queue, demand housing, medical & food and who are complete unvetted.
How many non-detained noncitizen convicted criminals have illegally entered the country?
13,099 convicted of homicide
15,811 convicted of sexual assault
425,431 criminals of all sorts
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-mum-amid-outrage-data-showing-many-illegal-immigrant-criminals-free-us
And terrorists, don’t forget about the terrorists:
The most glaring statistic that alarms me the most is the 382 individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watchlist were stopped trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally between ports of entry from FY2021 to FY2024 year to date. This is compared to the 11 individuals apprehended from FY2017 – FY2020.
https://homeland.house.gov/2024/09/19/biden-harris-administration-has-intentionally-left-us-vulnerable-pfluger-higgins-deliver-opening-statements-in-hearing-on-terror-threats-from-the-border/
Imagine how fun Hong Kong would be if anyone around the world could simply move in if they can simply get to Hong Kong by whatever means. Oh joy.
“Imagine how fun Hong Kong would be if anyone around the world could simply move in if they can simply get to Hong Kong by whatever means. Oh joy.”
HK-Cynic: about 14,000 individuals have made their way to Hong Kong (simply by buying an air ticket). They came from sunny hot spots like India, Paki, Africa-all-sorts, Syria, Somalia etc. They are all being taken care of by the HK Government, courtesy of the taxpayer.
The US immigration system is an illogical pile of byzantine idiocy, but the guy who’s yelling about building a wall, Haitians eating dogs, and mass deportation camps is not seriously going to fix it. All he’s offering is to mete out random cruelty to immigrants to make the yahoos cheer. A perpetual border crisis is a vote getter, and with American businesses so dependent on cheap immigrant labour, nobody has any interest in rationalizing the system.
@Toph
We’ll see. I think he’s serious about mass deportations, beginning with criminals, and actual deportations may be an even bigger vote getter, if he wins.
As for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they love low-cost immigrant labour, but they’re not Trump supporters, so he’s unlikely to care too much about what they think.
@HK Cynic
A few points on the Fox News Outrage Data.
1) Non-detained = “people who are not in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention”, so they may well be detained, just not by ICE.
2) The number also almost doubled under Trump’s administration. 2.2m -> 3.7m, so it’s not a radical departure for what happened under Trump.
3) I suspect illegal immigration would likely have been slowed a lot by COVID lockdowns globally, so the slightly lower rate of increase is probably mostly due to dumb luck rather than Trump being tougher on immigration.
4) The fact that all this data is available would suggest that illegal immigrants aren’t getting away with it — if they were, there would be no data. You could argue the increase in numbers is down to a greater detection rate, but it most likely to points to chronic underfunding leading to backlogs. So you’d probably want to go with the bunch who are open to increased government spending to cut down on immigration (Hint: that’s probably not the guy who wants to put an illegal alien in charge of shutting down “unnecessary” federal agencies).
5) Despite the bump from 2.2m under Obama to 3.7m under Trump and 7.4m today, the number of convicted criminals has stayed about the same: 368,574 convicted criminals in 2016, 425,431 in 2024. Suggesting that there are significantly less convicted criminals currently than the overall numbers would have suggested: all things being equal, based on the 2016 data, we would expect 1,239,749 convicted criminals given the 336% increase in illegal immigrants overall. So if you’re mostly only worried about the criminals, current policy appears to be working out surprisingly well.
@Breaks the ice: Ssshhhhhh!!! You don’t want to be a cause for apoplexy to the so-called republican minded common wealthers that populate these pages and Hongkers!
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/criminal-noncitizen-statistics
Criminal entries up about 5 times vs the last two years of the Trump Administration.
Trump is crushing it. He’s learned a lot from the mistakes of 2020. He has an astounding team around him, not least Musk, Gabbard, RFK, VANCE who is a brilliant pick. A win for 2024, assuming the cheating doesn’t kill him.
@Vote Trump-Vance
In a same-day election with paper ballots and voter ID, Trump-Vance would win comfortably. The Dems need a month-long ballot harvesting season and ballot box stuffing in big cities on the day.