and about 2% of the voting populace will realize that, they'll see the delta and the greek variables and think some high level calculation went into it.texaglurkerguy said:The reason this formula has been derided so much is because the first two terms in the denominator cancel each other out. It's amateurish application of historically bad economic policy.Quo Vadis? said:richardag said:Quo Vadis? said:Trade imbalances itself are pretty stupid. The idea that a country with a fraction of our population is supposed to buy as much stuff from as we do from them is impossible.richardag said:Indirectly they do take into account tariffs. Tariffs imposed on our exports indirectly affect trade imbalances by making our exports more expensive.Zobel said:
The formula doesn't take tariffs into account at all. As they have put in place it is just a function of trade deficit.
Edit to add; if you want to "steelman" the approach they're saying the only way you have a persistent trade imbalance is if you are cheating somehow. So a large trade deficit is defacto evidence of some kind of manipulation - therefore the trade imbalance itself is all you look at. I don't think that's necessarily true, or even right, but that is a way to see the argument.
I am not a macro economist but I can see what the formula is trying to account for trade imbalances. Will it work is the question. Seems to have caught the attention of some countries leaders as they are attempting to negotiate their tariffs.What he should be trying to do is muscle the big guys who do have tariffs against us. The goal should be to drive exports, keep the demand for the US dollar strong.
- I haven't seen anywhere that anyone is expecting small countries be required to buy as much stuff from the US as we but from them. Could you point me to a link where this was stated?
That's what the reciprocal tariffs are. They're just a trade ratio of exports to imports.