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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   31991 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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there is no easy way for say, Australia to force their businesses to start buying more American made products.

If I was sufficiently motivated to encourage buying from America, I would reduce tariffs on imports to 0 and maybe do whatever it is to my currency that makes it cheap to buy US goods.

I would also look at whoever we get a bunch of non-American stuff from and increase tariffs on them.

I would reduce tariffs on imports to 0

whoever we get a bunch of non-American stuff from and increase tariffs on them

You may be qualified to work in this admin (or the very least, a plum job at American Compass)

Spicey, samp. Spicey.

The way you would make your currency strong is by raising interest rates for your country, which would induce a recession. This is a really bad approach.

Other way round: your exports are more competitive if priced in a weaker currency. A weaker currency, i.e. a dollar buying less stuff, is definitionally inflation however if the only way you can get there via expansions in the money supply. Tariffs in the first order effect strengthen the dollar (lower imports, less demand for foreign currencies from the US), but the economic havoc will balance that in the second order by lowering interest rates lowering USD yields relative to other currencies and, well, risking inflation.

But we are talking about a non-US country trying to manipulate its currency so that it is cheaper for them to buy more US stuff.

Bingo. Which will tend to replace "free trade" with a more tightly bound "trade network." Interesting.

They could also stop subsidizing some of their industries in which americans would otherwise be able to undercut them, stop supply management systems, etc...

There's plenty of ways short of forcing companies to buy american that governments can enact that would affect the trade balance. It's not like the world economy was truly a free market the way libertarians dream about; every government (including the US, though to what extent is what's basically the real question under contention) keeps making moves to give their country's companies an edge, through tarrifs, subsidies, taxation regime, currency manipulation, espionnage, enforcement (or non enforcement) of foreign copyright/patents, dumping, etc... The current american administration simply thinks that access to their market is worth dropping some of these moves for other countries.

It's not like they're playing a new game no one else has been playing. They simply made a big move in the same game everyone has been playing.

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