Trump Killing NAFTA Could Mean Big Unintended Consequences for the U.S.

Donald Trump intends to renegotiate NAFTA. In a speech given today he laid out a seven-point plan to change U.S. ‘failed trade policies’, including withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and renegotiating NAFTA.

Following is an article that appeared on Bloomberg.com on October 1, 2015. This article points out the benefits of NAFTA.

by Eric Martin

Ending the deal would hurt American manufacturers. For consumers, backing out might mean price increases on everything from cars to fruits and vegetables.

Donald Trump has pledged to renegotiate or terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying that it’s been a disaster for the U.S.

And the billionaire front-runner for the Republican nomination isn’t the first presidential candidate to bash the deal: Since its inception (Ross Perot warned of a “giant sucking sound” pulling jobs to Mexico), Nafta has been a popular punching bag for politicians. Despite the idea’s popularity, pulling out of Nafta could have all sorts of unintended consequences for U.S. businesses and the economy.

1. America’s biggest export market would be jeopardized

U.S. goods exports to Canada and Mexico have quadrupled since Nafta took effect in 1994, rising to about $550 billion last year. That’s more than sales to China, Japan, the U.K., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, India, Russia and Hong Kong combined.

While critics have decried Nafta and other free-trade agreements for opening U.S. markets to foreign products, the deal actually lowered tariffs in Canada and Mexico even more than in the U.S. The American government applied an average tariff of just 4.3 percent to imports from Mexico and 5.1 percent to those from Canada before Nafta, while Canada had a 9.7 percent tax on imports from the U.S. and Mexico’s tax was 12.4 percent, according to a study last year led by Gary Hufbauer, an analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

A return to the tariffs pre-Nafta would mean “our exporters have more to lose in the immediate shock” than Canada and Mexico, Hufbauer said in an interview.

2. Jobs already gone wouldn’t return

As with any trade agreement, jobs were both created and destroyed after Nafta took effect as the workforce in each nation was realigned based on comparative advantage. In their search for lower costs for production chains, U.S. companies have moved jobs abroad—some to countries that have free trade with the U.S. and others to nations that don’t.

“If we didn’t have Nafta, would things like clothing and automobiles that are produced in Mexico be produced in the United States? No,” said David Gantz, who teaches trade law at the University of Arizona. “They’d be produced in China or somewhere that the labor costs are a lot lower. One needs to look at what the alternatives would be.”

3. The American economy overall would lose

Thanks to Nafta, U.S. consumers have enjoyed the benefits of cheaper imports from goods manufactured in Mexico. Scrapping the trade agreement might force Americans to stomach higher costs, from flat-screen TVs to Nissans to guacamole: Mexico is the world’s top producer of avocados.

Hufbauer estimates that Nafta trade growth makes the U.S. $127 billion richer each year, not only because of the boost to American exporters but also because of these benefits to U.S. consumers. That’s about $400 per person.

“It’s not always visible to people because much of the benefit is at the checkout counter,” Hufbauer said.

4. American drivers could pay more for gasoline

Canada and Mexico accounted for about half of U.S. oil imports in 2014, more than all the nations in OPEC combined and 84 percent of the oil the U.S. bought from outside the cartel.

While a supply glut has driven oil prices to near a six-year low, there’s no guarantee things will stay that way. Ending Nafta could make the U.S. more reliant on imports from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other OPEC members when global demand rebounds down the road.

Nafta gives the U.S. preferential access to oil, limiting the scenarios in which Canada can restrict energy exports to the U.S. If the U.S. didn’t import oil from its Nafta partners, it could do so at higher cost from other countries, some of which aren’t as friendly to the U.S. as Mexico or Canada.

The Power of the of Barnum and Bailey

The naivety of the public is astounding. Look at how many “smart” people believed Bernie Madoff.

Have you ever been offered a free vacation at some highly popular place like Las Vegas or Cancun? There is a group of us that accept those offers even though we know that nothing is free. Those people accepting those free trips will find themselves in rooms with other people being pressured to buy something. Usually it’s a time share unit or other expensive luxury. The technique is used because it is very successful.

The people of the U.K. were told that money saved as the result of exiting the European Union would be $325 Million Pounds a month that would be directed to national health care. The individual who made that claim now denies that result would happen.

Immigration of eastern Europeans and Muslims would be dramatically reduced if the U.K. was no longer part of the EU. That ascertain is now denied too.

Here in the United States G.O.P. candidate Donald Trump has promised to build wall along the Mexican border from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. He has promised to bring millions of jobs that have left this country back. He said he would stop all Muslims entering the United States “until we find out what the hell is going on.”

Now, even before Donald Trump is the official candidate of the Republican Party he has changed some of his ideas. Muslims will only be banned from some countries he has yet to identify. He has not been repeating his intention to deport all illegal aliens.

Stay tuned for more of his changed ideas. Just remember the outrageous things he said before Paul Manafort became his campaign manager will be forgotten or reversed as he conducts his national campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Should we believe what he says now as he reads a teleprompter or the unscripted words he used in his fight to be the Republican Party nominee?

There is a growing list of highly respected Republicans who are saying they won’t support Donald Trump. Some have said they are supporting Hillary Clinton.

Actually Hillary Clinton has been part of the establishment since her husband became governor of Arkansas. The accusation that she has Wall Street ties has not been denied. She really is part of the “inside the beltway” crowd. She does represent the status quo and says so when she says she wants to continue the ideas of Barack Obama.

The two-party system so dominates the political spectrum that the Libertarian and Green Parties won’t be on the stage for the presidential debates. The rule is those minority parties must have 15% of recent polling data.

Donald Trump is the outsider with so many negatives that Americans favor Hillary Clinton in all of the national polls to date.

As it stand now we are likely to vote for Hillary Clinton as we hold our collective noses.

How Do I Move to Canada – Eh?

This move to Canada idea is starting to look like a real possibility with two of the most disliked candidates for president that I can remember. How did that happen?

Many Americans are threatening to move to Canada after the next election.

An article in the Los Angeles Times titled “Escaping to Canada?” brought to my attention something I have been saying for months to my family. “If Donald Trump is elected president we are moving to Canada. And it might be easy since I was born there.” After all, I have been saying “Eh” all of my life and few people have even noticed.

The Times article certainly did not make the move sound easy. As an expatriate of the United States but keeping your citizenship will require considerable paper work in the form of reports to the IRS. The rest of what was written in the article really isn’t a consequential issue. They have washrooms instead of restrooms. “Aboot” is not something to get excited about.

Just Google the title of this piece “How Do I Move to Canada?” and eleven links will appear. The first is a posting by Air Canada. They really only tell you the air fare and suggest you give it a try by spending a week or two there.

I have not been there in the winter and that is the real test. The temperature reached 10º below zero this past February in Toronto. That was in Fahrenheit.

The warmest part of the country is Vancouver and surrounding towns. The issue there is lots of rainy days.

Then there is the sales tax. A 13% value-added tax charged on most goods and services sold in Ontario province and 12% in British Columbia.

Vancouver skyline from Stanley Park. It looks just like another American city.

So how badly do you, will you, hate the next president of the United States?

Abbot and Costello updated

Some Guns Need to be Banned

When will the Federal government stop massacres? Why should the public be victim to crimes that can be reduced? When only about 15% of the population owns firearms why must the rest of us hope and pray that no one in our family is a victim when they go to a shopping mall or other public location?

We have an amendment to the constitution that provides for everyone to own a gun for their own protection and for use in a militia. That right does not say that crazy, mad, and the mentally imbalanced have a right to fire arms.

Semi-automatic weapons and assault weapons used in war appear to be the guns used to for massacres in most instances. So why aren’t these weapons banned? The AR-15 assault rifle was among the weapons banned by the federal government up until 2004, when the ban expired. It has not been renewed. The gun lobby and the NRA have done an outstanding job of preventing sensible regulations. It is obvious that our congress is subject to the will of those businesses and gun hobbyist groups that want to stop all regulation.

Both automatic and semi-automatic weapons should be banned.

The following list is not a complete listing. The lives lost and the lives permanently maimed should be sufficient motivation for new enforcements.

Place	Date	Number Killed	Number Injured	Weapon Used
Orlando Fl., nightclub	June 12, 2016	49	17	similar to an AR-15
Virginia Tech	April 16, 2007	32	53	22-caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic handgun and a 9 mm semi-automatic Glock 19 handgun.
Newtown, Conn, elementary school	Dec. 4, 2012	27	1	AR-15 assault rifle
San Bernardino, Calif., community center	Dec 4, 2015	14	21	Smith & Wesson M&P assault rifle
Binghamton, New York, outside the American Civic Association	April 3, 2009	13	4	2 hand guns
Washington Navy Yard	Sept. 3, 2013	12	3	AR-15 assault rifle
Aurora, Colo. Movie theater	July 29, 2012	12	58	AR-15 assault rifle
Charleston S.C. church	April 19, 2015	9	1	45-caliber semi-automatic Glock handgun
Stockton, Calif., elementary school playground	Jan. 17, 1989	5	30	AK-47 and a semiautomatic handgun
Ft. Hood, Texas	April 2, 2014	3	16	5.7-millimeter pistol

Stay Vigilant Against Bogus IRS Phone Calls and Emails

We were called twice today with a recorded message telling us to call a phone number to resolve our tax issues. We do not have any tax issues.

From the IRS web site:

IRS Tax Tip 2015-20, February 17, 2015

Tax scams take many different forms. Recently, the most common scams are phone calls and emails from thieves who pretend to be from the IRS. They use the IRS name, logo or a fake website to try to steal your money. They may try to steal your identity too. Here are several tips from the IRS to help you avoid being a victim of these tax scams:

The real IRS will not:

–Initiate contact with you by phone, email, text or social media to ask for your personal or financial information.

-Call you and demand immediate payment. The IRS will not call about taxes you owe without first mailing you a bill.

–Require that you pay your taxes a certain way. For example, telling you to pay with a prepaid debit card.

–Be wary if you get a phone call from someone who claims to be from the IRS and demands that you pay immediately. Here are some steps you can take to avoid and stop these scams.

If you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to think that you do:

Contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Use TIGTA’s “IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting” web page to report the incident.

You should also report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Use the “FTC Complaint Assistant” on FTC.gov. Please add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments of your report.

If you think you may owe taxes:

Ask for a call back number and an employee badge number.

Call the IRS at 800-829-1040. IRS employees can help you.

In most cases, an IRS phishing scam is an unsolicited, bogus email that claims to come from the IRS. They often use fake refunds, phony tax bills, or threats of an audit. Some emails link to sham websites that look real. The scammers’ goal is to lure victims to give up their personal and financial information. If they get what they’re after, they use it to steal a victim’s money and their identity.

If you get a ‘phishing’ email, the IRS offers this advice:

–Don’t reply to the message.

–Don’t give out your personal or financial information.

–Forward the email to phishing@irs.gov. Then delete it.

–Don’t open any attachments or click on any links. They may have malicious code that will infect your computer.

–Stay alert to scams that use the IRS as a lure. More information on how to report phishing or phone scams is available on IRS.gov.

If you found this Tax Tip helpful, please share it through your social media platforms. A great way to get tax information is to use IRS Social Media. You can also subscribe to IRS Tax Tips or any of our e-news subscriptions.

What Price Will You Pay to See?

A Science Fiction Idea is Becoming Reality

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge was the blind man character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The story line was that due to a birth defect, he was born blind. He uses technological devices that enables him to see.

If only such a device could exist in the real world.

Now such progress in the real world has actually happened. Innovator Mark Greget has invented a combination of custom software and smart glasses that is designed to restore sight to people with serious vision loss. A camera on the front of the blacked-out glasses acts as eyes. Captured images are projected on the lenses.

People with significant loss of vision from macular degeneration, glaucoma, and retinitis pigmentosa can benefit from the glasses. The product became available this past April at a cost of $6,000. Called NuEyes they have been making patients “very happy.” Veterans Affairs have been placing orders for the device.

Donald Trump’s new favorite slogan was invented for Nazi sympathizers

Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Is Donald Trump the next Hitler? I am not willing to take a chance of electing him just to find out. Donald Trump is frightening.

By Eric Rauchway, The Washington Post, June 14 at 6:26 PM

Donald Trump greeted Twitter on Flag Day with two words in all caps: “AMERICA FIRST!”

He has made this slogan a theme for his campaign, and he has begun using it to contrast himself with President Obama, whose criticism of Trump’s rhetoric on Tuesday was answered with a Trump statement promising, “When I am president, it will always be America first.”

He wasn’t quite promising “America über alles,” but it comes close. “America First” was the motto of Nazi-friendly Americans in the 1930s, and Trump has more than just a catchphrase in common with them.

Trump defines the “America” he wants to put “first” by saying who does not properly belong in it. That definition does not include certain people of foreign descent born in the United States, who are to him still foreigners and whom he labels accordingly (in the past few weeks, Trump has referred to native-born Americans as “Mexican” or “Afghan”). It does not include Muslim residents, whom he would “certainly” and “absolutely” force to register their presence with the U.S. government (asked how this proposed policy differs from Nazi laws regarding Jews, Trump replied, “You tell me“).

Trump wants his exclusionary America to cower behind walls. He would erect metaphorical barriers against immigrants (excluding Muslims from entry to the United States until they can be “properly and perfectly” screened) and trade. And of course, he would build a literal wall along the Mexican border. None of which is to say Trump’s isolated America would decline to fight wars: Trump would increase bombing of the Middle East and fight “fast and … furious for a short period of time” against the terrorist enemy.

This is what Trump’s “America First” means: a white America (committed, to be sure, to “take care of our African American people”), living behind higher walls and screens, lashing out to prove its strength and then retreating again — not a government suspiciously tolerant of foreign threats.

And this is also largely what “America First” has historically meant.

During the early 1930s, as the Nazis consolidated control over Germany, the U.S. media baron William Randolph Hearst began touting the slogan “America First” against President Franklin Roosevelt, whom he saw as dangerously likely to “allow the international bankers and the other big influences that have gambled with your prosperity to gamble with your politics.” Hearst regarded Roosevelt’s New Deal as “un-American to the core” and “more communistic than the communists” — unlike Nazism, which he believed had won a great victory for “liberty-loving people” everywhere in defeating communism.

With the beginning of World War II in Europe and the Germans’ swift conquest of the continent, Roosevelt began to commit his administration more firmly to the aid of the those fighting Nazism. He incurred the ire of various anti-intervention constituencies, ranging from committed religious or principled pacifists to American communists, who supported the Nazi-Soviet pact and therefore the notion that the United States should stay out of the European war.

[Donald Trump is America’s Silvio Berlusconi]

But the most prominent of his opponents were the founders of the America First Committee, formed in September 1940. The committee opposed fighting Nazism and proposed a well-armed America confined largely to the Western hemisphere. It soon afterward adopted the noted aviator and enthusiast of fascism, Charles Lindbergh, as their favored speaker. Lindbergh accepted a medal from Herman Goering “in the name of the Fuehrer” during a visit to Germany in 1938, and “proudly wore the decoration.” He thought democracy was finished in Europe, that the western powers could not effectively resist the Nazi war machine and that the United States had better make terms with Adolf Hitler.

Lindbergh wasn’t against wars per se; he could support fighting if it came to “a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion.” His definition of the white race apparently had little room for Jewish people, about whom he thought Hitler had a point: “We are all disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio, and motion pictures,” Lindbergh believed, though he allowed the country could benefit from “a few Jews of the right type” — just as Trump would presumably allow Muslims who could pass a perfect and proper screen.

The famed automaker and celebrity anti-Semite Henry Ford also joined America First. Like many others, they fought against the “groups” who, Lindbergh said, were pushing the country into war: “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.”

As with the Trump campaign, not all America First Committee supporters in 1940 were so egregious as their most visible spokesmen. But also as with the Trump campaign, neither did the moderate anti-Roosevelt anti-interventionists quite repudiate their fascist-friendly leaders.

The subsidiary labels may have shifted, but the general idea of “America First” remains the same: The United States should arm itself against foreign threats and stay within carefully defined borders, using the might of the state only to defend a very specific, rather white idea of “America” that excludes certain racial and religious minorities. Then, as now, the phrase offered strength through cowardice. Defeating this defeatism was essential to victory over dictatorships in the 20th century, and it is essential to preserving the institutions of democracy today.