By Robert Romano

Remember Smoot-Hawley.

That was the rallying cry of #NeverTrump all throughout 2016, that if elected, President Donald Trump would levy tariffs and the world would fall into recession, or maybe even another Great Depression. Because the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were the cause of the Great Depression, or so the thinking goes.

I’d say it was the strong dollar that made a bad recession worse in the 1930s, but that’s another argument. The question is what impact Trump’s tariffs had on the real economy versus the expectations of the punditry in 2016.

A Moody’s Analytics prediction by Mark Zandi in 2016, prepared for the Washington Post, predicted that as many as 4 million jobs would be lost and the U.S. economy would either flatline or go into recession if President Trump levied tariffs against China and Mexico.

Zandi called tariffs a disaster, saying, “This is a pretty ugly scenario, one that I think any rational person would want to avoid.”

It turns out that, quite rationally, Americans voted in their economic self-interests in favor of the Trump trade agenda in 2016, and Trump won the election.

Now, hindsight is always 20-20.

Moody’s mapped out a trade war with both Mexico and Canada, but Trump never levied additional tariffs against Mexico, although he briefly threatened to do so. However, he did levy them against China on $350 billion of goods.

But the outcomes were not as expected.

Instead of losing 4 million jobs, in the establishment survey published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy produced 6.6 million jobs since Jan. 2017 when President Trump was sworn in.

Moody’s said we would only have 139 million jobs in 2019. Instead we had 152 million. They were only off by 13 million.

Unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.5 percent.

As for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it has stayed very much in the positive, with mid-2 percent growth levels similar to Moody’s baseline it used in 2016, with no recession in sight.

So, by every measure, the economy is great. And in 2020, seeing is believing.

And rather than provoking too much trade retaliation, Trump’s tariffs and tariff threats respectively have resulted in new trade agreements with China as well as with Canada and Mexico.

The pressure worked.

It turns out getting tough on trade ended up promoting freer trade, and the immediate negative impacts of tariffs projected by the experts were just wrong. China did retaliate, but it had no measurable impacts on U.S. jobs markets or growth prospects, and so Beijing was brought to the table.

And with the modest tariffs now in place, the U.S. trade in goods deficit with China fell 12.8 percent in the first nine months of 2019, or $38.5 billion, compared to 2018, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Meaning, Trump was right all along. It is China and other trade partners that have more to lose by failing to make a deal with the U.S.

Developing economies want to export, meaning we have something they want in the way of markets. Being a net importer, the U.S. has always had more leverage in trade relations.  We were just not using it to our advantage in the trade negotiations. Until Trump came along.

Now agreements are being reoriented to serve U.S. interests with a measurable net benefit to the U.S. economy. And the American people, as they get prepared to vote in 2020, can see it in their finances. They were warned that the economy would be a catastrophe if the Trump trade agenda were implemented. It would be the worst recession since the Great Depression. Millions of jobs would be lost.

Instead, Trump won, his trade agenda was implemented and the opposite has happened as the economy keeps booming. Who will voters believe in 2020, the critics or their own lying eyes?

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

Cartoon: Hole In One

By A.F. Branco

 

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from Breitbart, John Nolte points out just how wrong a Department of Defense briefing on climate change destroying Western civilization was:

Department of Defense Predicted Climate Change Would Destroy Us by 2020

By John Nolte

Back in 2004, the Department of Defense released a report assuring the world Climate Change would destroy all of us by the year 2020.

Well, welcome to the year 2020! And welcome to yet another fake doomsday prediction number 42 from our renowned climate experts!

Yep, our so-called “climate experts” are now 0-42 with their doomsday predictions, and this latest one is a doozy.

As summarized by the Guardian in 2004, here’s what the so-called “experts” assured us would happen by now: [emphasis added throughout]

“A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

“The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

“And that’s not the worst of it. Get a load of this:

“‘Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,‘ concludes the Pentagon analysis. ‘Once again, warfare would define human life.’

…

“Climate change ‘should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern’, say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

“An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is ‘plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately’, they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions…”

This is from the actual report:

The Weather Report: 2010-2020

• Drought persists for the entire decade in critical agricultural regions and in the areas around major population centers in Europe and eastern North America.
• Average annual temperatures drop by up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over Asia and North America and up to 6 degrees Fahrenheit in Europe.
• Temperatures increase by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in key areas throughout Australia, South America, and southern Africa.
• Winter storms and winds intensify, amplifying the impact of the changes. Western Europe and the North Pacific face enhanced westerly winds.

None of this happened.

None of it.

In fact, over the last ten years, global temperatures have remained remarkably stable.

Take a look at the full report for yourself. It’s literally filled with fake alarmism and fake hysteria, and it’s also filled with one completely wrong climate doomsday prediction after another.

Nothing in this report has come true. Not a single prediction was accurate. Not one!

But even after this, even after no less than the Department of Defense get it so horribly wrong, even after a 0-42 record of failed doomsday predictions, we’re still ridiculed by the fake media as “deniers” if we don’t take these partisan idiots seriously.

Permalink here.

 

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