Guest Contribution: “Let’s Go Back to Good Old Tariff-Cutting”

Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared in Project Syndicate.

The “bicycle theory” used to be a metaphor for international trade policy.  Just as standing still on a bicycle is not an option — one has to keep moving forward or else the bike will fall over – so it was said that international trade negotiators must continue to engage in successive rounds of liberalization, or else the open global trading system would be pulled down by protectionist interests.  I don’t know if the theory was ever right.  (And, to be honest, I don’t entirely understand why forward movement keeps a bicycle from falling over.)  But if we had stood still on trade policy over the last three years we would be a lot better off than where we are now.

Trade is faltering — global trade volumes shrank an alarming 1.1 per cent over the 12 months —  but the cause is a chaos of inept riders on colliding bicycles, rather than the inertia of special interests.

Let’s look ahead to a day when grown-ups are again in charge.  What sort of trade policy should they pursue?  It is not a futile question to ask, even though many Democratic politicians share Trump’s view that we need to “get tough” with its trading partners. The US Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 and the foreign retaliation that swiftly followed were the height of protectionist folly.  But eventually they came to be widely perceived precisely as folly.  The Roosevelt Administration passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934.  After World War II it became the basis for several generations of multilateral trade liberalization, which in turn contributed to a long period of widespread peace and prosperity.  Throughout, Smoot-Hawley was remembered as the cautionary tale to be avoided.

Deep versus shallow integration

We could do worse than return to the post-war formula of negotiating reciprocal elimination of tariffs. The suggestion sounds old-fashioned.  After all, another familiar truism has held that we have largely completed the job of so-called “shallow integration,” that is eliminating such straightforward trade barriers as tariffs and quotas, and that further progress now requires “deep integration.”  Deep integration would entail mutually agreed rules for regulating the business environment.  This involves a lot of potentially worthy measures, to be sure.  But it now appears too ambitious.

An ultimate example of deep integration was 1980s decision by the members of the European Common Market to go beyond the integration of a free trade area, in pursuit of full European Union and even a common currency.  That was evidently a bridge too far, at least for the Brexit-plagued UK.

A promising example of negotiations toward deep integration more recently was the TransPacific Partnership of 2015.  It included steps of interest to business, such as some regarding intellectual property rights and investor-state dispute settlement, as well as steps of interest to others, such as serious enforcement of labor rights and environmental protections.  But Donald Trump withdrew from it; and the Congressional Democrats had been unsupportive anyway.

Technology transfer and market access in China’s auto sector

A salient current example of attempted deep integration are US demands that Chinese firms refrain from conditioning their willingness to enter joint ventures with American firms — those who wish to set up operations in China — on the sharing of the foreigners’ proprietary technology.  Many US economists support these demands.  (Few economists, by contrast, support such other Trump objectives in its China negotiations as agreements to manage bilateral trade quantitatively or to stop non-existentcurrency manipulation.”)

Many economists, while conceding that Trump’s goal regarding technology transfer in China is valid, would argue that he has gone about it all wrong.  The sensible strategy would have been for the US to make common cause with other major countries to put pressure on China, preferably via multilateral institutions such as the WTO.  After all, German auto-makers have as much at stake in China as American firms.  Instead, he has imposed tariffs on most trading partners and undermined multilateral institutions.  Further, he has given China little reason to enter into a meaningful agreement, by showing that he does not abide by agreements.

Could a successor president, who went about it in a better way, get the job done?  Probably not.  For one thing, regulating technology transfer would be very tricky in the best of worlds.  It is a subtle process. Typically there is not an explicit quid pro quo [to use a newly popular phrase] initiated by the Chinese firm.  Still less is there one initiated by the Chinese government.  Often the offer of technology-sharing has been initiated by the foreign corporation, to make it attractive to a local firm as a partner in a joint venture.  How could a government regulate such a subtle process?

The answer may be for the Chinese government to remove altogether the requirement that foreign firms have a local partner if they want to do business in China.  Recent steps in this direction have been taken in the financial sector and the auto sector.

Tear down tariffs

Simpler yet would have been for China to remove its longstanding tariffs against imports, so that American and German firms could have exported autos directly to the Chinese market, an alternative to having to set up production facilities in China.  Not only would this outcome have been simpler.  It would also have directly benefited American and German workers, rather than facilitating the migration of production facilities to China.

So let’s go back to good old tariff negotiations.  The US should remove all the tariffs that it has imposed over the last few years on washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum, automobiles and myriad other products.  In return, China should of course remove the retaliatory measures it has taken, for example against US exports of soybeans, pork, and other farm products.

But don’t stop there.  Turning the clock back to January 2017 would be a big improvement, but we should keep going.

The conventional wisdom of several years ago that “shallow integration” was virtually complete was always an overstatement. We should move to free trade in motor vehicles and as many other sectors as possible. American politicians complain about longstanding European tariffs on US autos, but seem unaware that the US has longstanding 25% tariffs on European light trucks.

One sector that should be particularly high priority for zero-for-zero liberalization is environmental equipment such as solar panels, turbines, and other inputs into renewable energy.  It is ironic that in many countries there are profuse barriers to trade in an industry that has external benefits to all citizens.  The European Union has been a leading offender here, but so have been China and the US — even before Trump.

Among the Trump damage that will need to be undone is the abuse of the national security exception [under Article XXI of the GATT].  The system had previously allowed each country to interpret this exception as it saw fit.  Most applied it judiciously, knowing that abuse would invite retaliatory abuse.  But under Trump, any sector of the economy, from autos to peanut butter, apparently qualifies as essential to national security.  New international negotiations could attempt to reinforce language to indicate what specifically qualifies as essential to national security.

Ideally negotiations would also aim to reduce abuse of such trade remedies as anti-dumping duties, which are usually simple protectionism flimsily masquerading as defense against the fantasized predatory pricing by foreigners.  The WTO on November 1 ruled against the US anti-dumping duties on Chinese products like solar panels, for the first time authorizing China to retaliate with countermeasures ($3.6 billion in levies) against exports of US goods.  Clearly both sides would be better off if the US cancelled the barriers against these Chinese exports and thereby removed the Chinese need to retaliate.

Even President Trump might see the light and negotiate a big deal that reverses the tariff war, with a declaration of victory.  A ray of hope is the possibility of a US-Japan trade deal that would eliminate the threat of US tariffs or quotas on Japanese autos in exchange for Japanese cuts in tariffs on US agricultural exports.  Trump allowed the November 13 deadline for his bogus 25% national security tariffs against auto imports from the EU and Japan [under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962] to pass without action.  We still don’t know if he deliberately decided not to go ahead or was just not paying attention.

What about trade and inequality?

None of this addresses the point that trade creates losers as well as winners — a point that, supposedly, we all had forgotten about until we needed an explanation of how Trump achieved his majority in the Electoral College in 2016.

Hopefully we have now learnt that tariffs also create losers as well as winners (a lot more losers than winners, in the case of Trump’s trade war).  “Get tough” trade policies are not a solution to the problem of within-country inequality.

But trade is only one of a long list of factors that contribute to inequality.  Number one on the list is probably technological progress that raises the demand for skilled workers faster than education and training raise the supply of skilled workers.

Regardless of the apportionment of responsibility among the causes of inequality, the list of practical remedies is pretty much the same.  In the US it includes expansion of health insurance, pre-school for all kids, infrastructure investment, competition policy, a restoration of post-2008 financial regulations, and more progressive taxation.

Some say that until we enact such policies, we should try to reverse globalization in some way.  To me this is a non sequitur.  Rather, enact as many of these domestic share-the-gains policies as we can.  At the same time, reverse the trade war.  But perhaps in the future we free-traders should be satisfied with an agenda of eliminating tariffs and quotas.  Deep integration, it turns out, is very hard.

 


This post written by Jeffrey Frankel.

35 thoughts on “Guest Contribution: “Let’s Go Back to Good Old Tariff-Cutting”

  1. pgl

    That Salon article on the bicycle theory is interesting. As to Jeff’s “I don’t entirely understand why forward movement keeps a bicycle from falling over”. You can crash on a bike moving forward if one is not careful but moving forward is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for staying on top of the bike. Just watch The Tour de France next July and see how few of the elite cyclists are not peddling forward at a fast pace.

    1. Willie

      Bicycle wheels are gyroscopes. They do not impart stability without rotating. Finally! Something I might actually know.

  2. pgl

    “But under Trump, any sector of the economy, from autos to peanut butter, apparently qualifies as essential to national security.”

    Funny! Look I do not need a car. But damn it – I really, really need my peanut butter!

  3. Barkley Rosser

    I strongly agree with this post. Thanks, Jeffrey.

    Two very minor notes. One is that indeed it is possible to keep a bicycle standing up without moving forward, but it requires some extra assistance, such as sticking it into a bicycle stand.

    The other involves that old bugaboo “currency manipulation.” It is true that there has been much less of it in recent years than many think. But apparently there was a fair amount of it in the past. Also, it cannot be called manipulation really, but it is certainly the case that when Trump policies, notably the deficit-increasing fiscal policy, went into place that tended to push the value of the USD up, the Chinese sat back and did little-to-nothing to halt that rise, or, if one prefers, the resulting depreciatin of the yuan/rmb.

    Oh, and I shall simply reinforce in agreement your obvious frustration with Dem politicians who are slow to figure out what a damaging loser protectionist polices are. Bernie really is not helping himself by going around bragging about how he is “tougher than Trump” on trade, and others are playing in the same pool, if not quite as clearly and vociferously unfotunately, with the main ones clearly for following the advice in this post being ones with essentially zero chance of getting the nomination.

    1. pgl

      If the Trump toadies want to talk about currency manipulation, why not go after the Aussies? Over the past 2 years, the Australian dollar has devalued considerably. Why? Check out the decline in their interest rates:

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IR3TBB01AUQ156N

      Now my view of this currency manipulation jazz is that it is all BS. But what do the Aussies have on Trump that keeps him from yelling at them?

  4. Moses Herzog

    Always remember to oil your bike chains and the joints people. That oiling includes ball-bearings. That way you can own a single high quality bike for 20 years instead of 10 crappy bikes in 20 years you got at Wal-Mart. Also get you a sheep’s wool bike seat cover for the winter time, lower your chances of prostate cancer. All the things I just mentioned will bring you much more concrete results in life than fantasy daydreams that donald trump will cut tariffs. He might delay them, but I don’t think he cuts them.

    If you have extra money to spend you want a carbon fiber body, if not get aluminum. Only get steel if you have no other choice.

  5. pgl

    More on alleged currency manipulation. First link goes back to 2015:

    https://www.smh.com.au/business/australia-manipulating-currency-to-save-iron-ore-miners-says-cliffs-american-chief-executive-lourenco-goncalves-20150204-13640n.html

    ‘An American iron ore miner says Australia is “manipulating” its currency in a bid to save its iron ore exporters, who are so desperate for cash they are “putting even the kangaroos for sale”. In comments made on the same day the Reserve Bank of Australia cut interest rates to a historic low, Cliffs Natural Resources chief executive Lourenco Goncalves said Australia was mistaken in the belief that low iron ore prices would force Chinese producers out of business, and that it would be the Australian and Brazilian miners who would be left “bleeding”. Cliffs operates iron ore and coal mines in North America but also has the fifth biggest iron ore export business in Australia, which it will either sell or shut within five years when its current mine life expires. Mr Goncalves said the situation had started to “smell bad” in Australia.’

    Some colorful language from this fellow but I guess he was not aware that short-term Australian rates were near 2.5% back then. Not exactly low.
    More recently, the Australian prime minister goes onto CNBC to mansplain the situation to our Idiot in Chief!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nzb8cOn6EY

    “Trump is wrong about China being a currency manipulator”

    1. Moses Herzog

      I just wanna know when Brooklyn is going to become civilized and start allowing rental scooters. And based on your love of the subway system, I’m expecting you to be the first to sign up.

      1. pgl

        Hoboken has rental scooters which creates a problem with all of its bars. Scooting while intoxicated has become its #1 crime!

        1. Moses Herzog

          It’s going to be the same as CBD and marijuana stores (at least outside of Manhattan). Once those other boroughs’ municipal govs outside Manhattan figure out they can take a slice of that pie they’re going to spread. My guess is it’s similar to the hotel industry and Airbnb. The only thing stopping it is Taxis and Lyft etc lobbying the government to keep the Lime and Ojo out of their market. And just like all the supposed “concern” over Vaping recently they will suddenly generate worry over pedestrian safety. They will use the media outlets they give advertising dollars to, to start the wave of fear for cheaper transport. The same as the Financial Times telling readers that derivatives were not a form of financial insurance and “therefor shouldn’t be regulated the same as insurance is”. You can start the clock on those little machines entering Brooklyn soon.

    2. Anonymous

      I agree with you. We tend to explain foreign CB decisions with conspiracy theories, whereas those are driven by domestic factors. In the developed world, CBs are independent and carry a clear mandate, either price stability or price stability and economic stability. The ECB does not lowers its rate with an intention to hurt US trade. It doe it simply because it is undershooting its own inflation target. Domestic factors drive its policy. Same holds for most CBs. Naturally, they also verify how the change in the policy rate will affect the exchange rate and via it its policy target. However, they do not engage in currency manipulation to hurt its neighbours. In the global financial crisis, FED reduced its policy rate a year before the ECB acted. It was guided by domestic factors. Not an intent to hurt EU trade. There is no conspiracy here. Clear and verifiable rules guide CB policy. To use it for other purposes would likely lead into a disaster.

  6. Moses Herzog

    Off-topic
    I went to a cheap dollar theater in my teens to watch “Goodfellas”, and it was one of the better movie experiences I had in my life, as watching violence on screen was still a fresh thing to me. Then I watched “Casino” when I drove semi, and was waiting at an isolated truckstop outside of San Diego to deliver a load, which I also thoroughly enjoyed because I’ve always been interested in sports gambling and sports probabilities so the character of Ace Rothstein very much captured my imagination. Recently I found out there’s an old school theater in my city that’s showing “The Irishman” for the next 2-3 weeks in an old section of town, and was kind of excited because I didn’t think it would ever show in my city because the nonsense with Netflix. I had picked up the book the movie is based on, got to roughly page 20 and then wondered why more hadn’t been said about this story as ever since I was a child this has been an incessant story people always talked about (Geraldo Rivera nonsense etc). I kept thinking “If this story is true, why hasn’t this gotten more media play??” I found the answer:
    https://slate.com/culture/2019/08/the-irishman-scorsese-netflix-movie-true-story-lies.html

    De Niro is in essence playing a blowhard drunk, who never did anything serious in the mob (such as a contract killing) in his life. I’m not going to see De Niro play a drunk who made up children’s fairytales. If others want to watch that, that’s fine, but they should be aware as far as the authenticity of the story–they are being DUPED. You can still enjoy the film, just be aware it’s a complete work of fiction.

  7. Moses Herzog

    I’m going through old NYTs laying around the house, so I apologize for my lateness in noticing this.

    I always loved their TV and magazine ads. As a museum curator in New York once said “Hitler shakes the trees, and America gets all the good apples.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/gert-boyle-dead.html

    Gert Boyle (originally Gertrude Lamfrom) was a shiny premium apple. She made America a better place, and we were exceedingly lucky to have her.

  8. 2slugbaits

    The US should remove all the tariffs that it has imposed over the last few years on washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum, automobiles and myriad other products. In return, China should…

    My problem with this post is the “In return” part of the statement. The wording suggests that Trump should only remove tariffs conditioned on China acting in a reciprocal manner. I don’t think that’s what Prof. Frankel intended to say, but I’m afraid some readers might read it that way. A lot of voters in Trump country believe the best outcome is to have trade barriers against imports without any trade barriers against US exports. That’s rarely the case. In general, countries are better off without any trade barriers irrespective of what their trading partners do. Free trade should not be conditioned on what our trading partners do. That’s a hard thing for voters in Trump country to understand because it sounds like those lily-livered economists are advocating a wimpy trade policy that allows other countries to take advantage of some perceived American weakness. I suspect that’s Trump’s appeal to a lot of voters who never took economics. They see trade policy as a matter of gaining leverage over trading partners, so they are naturally attracted to someone who claims to understand the art of the deal (even though he didn’t really write the book). If you learned your economics by studying the power politics of the school playground, then you probably see Trump as playing 11 dimension Chinese checkers.

    1. ilsm

      “Free trade should not be conditioned on what our trading partners do. ”

      How can “free trade” not be “conditional”, unless there is a definition of “free trade” that “Trump country” needs to “buy”?

      1. noneconomist

        How can FREE trade ever be conditional? If free is conditional, it isn’t free. Reminds me of right wingers who claim to be libertarians. With plenty of exceptions, of course, including free trade.

    2. pgl

      Not to hype my Wine Tariffs post but Chinese consumers love American wines. They also made a smart decision years ago to import soybeans. So I’d leave it to their own government whether to lower the tariffs on these things once we have intelligent free trade policy in the US (yes once Trump ends up in prison and not the White House). It’s good for their own economy as long as they do not have to deal with the current insanity from U.S. trade policy.

  9. Moses Herzog

    I found this chart recently and thought it was very interesting, of many good ones I have seen recently. I would provide a link to this chart, only they don’t make it “easy” to link back to. It is from a dude who works at Nordea Bank that is active on Twitter. However our sharper readers like Menzie and 2slugs might know how to find this on FRED or something. Look at the “Change in Private Small Payroll Employment % YoY” numbers from roughly 2005–2019. Now you can just look back to 2016 if you like, and you will get “the gist” of what is getting my attention, but going back to 2005 will give you better context. Look at that graph and tell me that doesn’t imply recession. Am I cherry picking graphs which support my contention of recession before end of July?? You be the judge.

  10. dilbert dogbert

    Dean Baker always rants when the media uses “free trade”. Ain’t no such thing. Managed trade might be a better couple of words.

    1. Moses Herzog

      I’m not trying to be funny or facetious when I say I have a lot of mixed feelings on this issue. I think the ideal is to have free trade, but you can also get walked on. And which segment of society actually gets “the spoils” of free trade and which part of society gets the most hurtful part of “creative destruction”?? That’s a rhetorical question on my part as I feel the answer is obvious. This is the part that at least it feels like economists have failed us on. I’m not joining the crowd that wants to bash economists, but at least as far as public perceptions of economists are concerned maybe practitioners of economics could have made a little bit more valiant effort to say they gave a crap when the little guy got fried alive. But they don’t give too many “Distinguished Chairs” endowed by Corp XYZ for speaking out for the little guy. Seemingly, on ideas such as “economies of scale” that at least on the surface seem to rationalize the screwing over of the little guy get majority of attention. “Economies of scale” is used often to rationalize monopolies and oligopolies, but what happens to prices in these systems?? Do you feel smart watches are getting cheaper now?? I believe Google is rumored to be about to buy Fitbit, and I wasn’t even thinking of that when the example popped into my head.

      Now we can find examples where economists have been rewarded for taking the cause of the little guy—Esther Duflo, Paul Krugman, Thomas Piketty, Jean Tirole—but mostly it’s guys who argue for status quo abuse of the lower income groups that get expedited career trajectory. And how their imaginations are used to produce policy prescriptions reflects that favoritism in the economics field.

  11. Moses Herzog

    As a man who spends exorbitant amounts of time online, I think this article is disgusting and the deviant sicko who authored it should be hauled off to an ICE cage or CBP cage where he can share one broken toilet with 50 toddlers. The nerve of some people. Really…..
    https://www.wired.com/story/learn-from-these-bugs-dont-let-social-media-zombify-you/

    Excuse me, I need a couple hours in my safe space now and after the emotionally jarring experience of reading this Wired article I’m debating a pronoun change for myself.

  12. Julian Silk

    Dear Folks,

    I shudder to disagree with Professor Frankel, but this just strikes me as Utopian, and it doesn’t address Chinese efforts to undercut the U.S. steel industry. Anti-dumping duties were imposed on steel from both Mexico and China as part of the U.S. stance against dumping, as in

    https://www.ft.com/content/aaba01ae-a1f9-11e9-974c-ad1c6ab5efd1

    Moreover, anti-dumping duties were put on Chinese stainless steel during the Obama administration, as in

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-steel/u-s-slaps-heavy-duties-on-chinese-steel-shipped-from-vietnam-idUSKCN1IM28C

    It’s not just the U.S., but even India is doing this as well against the Chinese. See

    https://agmetalminer.com/category/anti-dumping/

    There are plenty of tariffs against the Chinese and the Japanese that lack substantive explanation, and yes, it would be wonderful if tariffs and non-tariff barriers could be removed on all sides. This is by no means an endorsement of tariffs as a negotiating tactic. But what would really make the Chinese, the Japanese, or even the Mexicans willing to suffer the unemployment they would have to endure if this “freer trade” world came about?

    Julian

    1. Moses Herzog

      I don’t think Professor Frankel is arguing the Chinese shouldn’t be suppressed from abusing other international players who follow the rules. I think he’s arguing you do it multilaterally. The fact that the Chinese are playing unfairly with India, Vietnam, Australia, Canada, etc. should reinforce the multilateral argument all the more. Breaking into fractions like donald trump is doing makes the problem worse. Going after France now while he coddles Putin?? This is like throwing all of your child’s sharpest edged toys on the floor near your wife’s side of the bed because you tripped on a Lego block laying in the foyer of your house. It’s so poorly conceptualized.

      1. Moses Herzog

        I should say “the Chinese government” not “the Chinese”. This is one of my biggest pet peeves of how people describe this, it grates on me more than most would imagine, and yet here I am expressing it, typing it the wrong way, as I have seemingly learned to do it this dumb-A$$ way by osmosis. Makes me think of the Bugs Bunny quip.

  13. Moses Herzog

    Off-topic
    Some people out there are going to give me a hard time, about posting this link. Saying it has nothing to do with an Economics blog. I will give you there’s a strong argument there. However, let me say in defense of myself, that one of the core precepts of this Economics blog, even long before donald trump made it a trendy topic was objective facts and empirical evidence. Those are things I think both Professor Chinn and Professor Hamilton would agree with me on, even if both of the hosts disagree with 98% of the things I have posted here, I think both of the blog’s hosts would agree with me on that. That objective facts and empirical evidence are the core intentions of this blog. In that spirit I give you the following as it relates to the film “I Heard You Paint Houses”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62rSjn0j04s

    What do you call it, when you have a world famous actor talking about a “fake news” U.S. President, whose views of the movie-going public are so low he’ll cynically go for a money grab based on very obvious lies?? Or on top of it, a fictional book listed on the NYT’s “non-fiction” book list. Where does it put both that world famous actor and the NYT in the genuineness and truthfulness dept??? As I often do, I invite readers to use their own brain, and answer that question for themselves.

  14. Moses Herzog

    NYT story on Randal K Quarles, Federal Reserve Employee slash big bank crony. The type of guy that might applaud Barkley Rosser at one of his lectures on the evils of minimum capital requirements on banks.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/business/economy/bank-regulations-fed.html#click=https://t.co/rS94ZxiFuc

    Remember folks, when you repeat 2019 banker schlock, keep saying the words “liquidity problem” over and over, but never mention capital assets or equity ratios being too low, as that really upsets the bankers, and if you’re a college prof who wants an endowed chair or maybe some job at the Fed, you’re not going to get that seat at the cool kids table discussing capital assets or equity ratios being too low. That’s not how it works, see.

    1. Barkley Rosser

      There you go again, Moses, completely misrepresenting my position so you can spout pointless and stupid insults. Have you no shame?

      I never said regulations on banks should be loosened nor even that that Basel III capital limits should be abolished or lowered. What I did say was that those capital requirements on large banks in the US played a major role in the repo ruckus that erupted in September as the Fed was lowering its balances. That seems to be correct. That did not lead to anything all that awful. The Fed has since been intervening in the repo markets to keep them stable, something they used to do, which I have no problem with, and they also stopped lowering their balances, which I also have no problem with. These moves seem to have prevented further outbreaks of volatility in repo markets. Problem solved, at least for now, without any change in bank capital requirements.

      OTOH, you utterly stupidly and ignorantly claimed that the repo ruckus was due at least partly to required capital limits being too low. That was completely dead wrong. If capital limits had been lower, almost certainly the repo ruckus would not have happened when it did, although a continued lowering of Fed balances would have probably eventually led to such an outcome. But indeed the repo ruckus seems almost certainly to have arisen when it did from large banks facing liquidity shortages in the face of the higher Basel III capital limits as the Fed was lowering its balances. Your basic argument was and remains completely and utterly wrong as well as stupidly incoherent, although you have not admitted this, instead preferring to make accusations against me based on lies.

      Another apology is actually due from you for this, Moses. Really. Get real.

      Oh, before you get on your high horse about it, yes, it looks like there will be no showdown over the African American vote in SC between Biden and Harris as she has now withdrawn from the race for the Dem nomination, despite still being #5 in the polls.

  15. Moses Herzog

    Somebody get Barkley Rosser a Kleenex. This is really going to kill Barkley Rosser’s “Showdown” in South Carolina prediction. What does the term “showdown” imply?? Is “showdown” a colloquial expression here?? I guess whatever Barkley wants it to imply if he ever gets called out on it.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdGofOL0nU

    The words of the great political pundit Barkley Junior, Link to Barkley’s comment here——>> https://econbrowser.com/archives/2019/07/of-sugar-highs-uncertainty-and-recession#comment-227560 :
    “Not only that, but in fact Harris is popular there, having just won solidly a race for Senate. She also served two terms as CA AG, both with solid statrewide wins, along with her earlier record ad DA in SF. They already know her record. California is not where revelations about Harris’s record, which she will have to deal with in other parts of the country, will hurt her. She has never lost an election in CA, and, indeed, that primary is March 3.

    Last poll in Iowa has her second to Warren, with Biden in third place and Bernie in fourth. Warren and Bernie clearly have an edge in NH, but Harris is likely to do well in next-up SC. You really do not know the order of the races do you, Mose? SC will be the serious Harris-Biden showdown.

    Oh, and in WaPo this morning the head to heads were Biden 53-Trump 43, Bernie 49-Trump 48, Harris 48-Trump 46, with both Warren and Buttigieg tying Trump in the low 40s. So, Harris does second best against Trump head to head after Biden and ahead of Bernie, who is gradually sinking.”

    Uh, Barkley, just so you know, Copmala Harris is not going to win in California either, and Copmala NEVER was going to win in California as every respected poll had her trailing behind non-natives of the state. Just so you don’t get confused there Barkley. Maybe you should have phoned Californian Nancy Pelosi for some consultation on this very California matter. It appears anything could have helped a Virginian grasp Copmala’s popularity among her black constituents—an opinion black constituents in California may have been “predisposed” to take based on Copmala’s enacted policies. (or was it “unenacted”??)

    I guess the prior July is not a good time to prognosticate “showdowns” on Super Tuesday, eh Barkley?? But then you “know the order of the races” don’t you Barkley?? So I don’t need to tell you how dumb that is for a PhD holder to state that back in July, do I ??

    1. Barkley Rosser

      Ah, could not resist getting on your high horse, could you? Sure, I thought she would do better than she has. However, she is showing a lot more class than most of the loser Dem candidates. There are way too many of them, and here she is exiting while still in fifth place in the polls. As it is, she looks to be top choice or near it if any of those white males now at the top of the Dem race get the nomination, but not if it is Warren.

      BTW, you owe me another apology, not for this, but for you for your stupid and ignorant remarks on the bank liquidity problem. But we have learned not to expect any apologies from you, not even when you are caught blatantly lying while being insulting on top of it.

      1. Moses Herzog

        I’m not a high horse kind of guy. I’m more a slippers in public kinda guy, possibly with an old Bernie Kosar Jersey, #19 and says “Kosar” on the back. If you see me at someplace like WinCo picking up Chuck Eye steak that’s on discount ‘cuz it’s been sitting there too long, holler out so I at least have 10 seconds to clear the place. Also I have been known to wear sunglasses in seemingly inappropriate contexts.
        https://youtu.be/j1epEtB0lVo?t=118

        If you can tell me here in this thread what % of the Emerson polling of New Hampshire Tulsi Gabbard got vs what % of the polling Copmala Harris got, I’ll give you one specific apology related to your rural poll quotation of the not too distant past. As that is the only apology you might even slightly possibly deserve. Here let me help you.
        https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/new-hampshire-2020-sanders-jumps-to-lead-buttigieg-surges-while-warren-and-biden-falter

        This offer of apology self-destructs in a micro-explosion exactly 48 hours from my local time as I send this. Since I have already told you the answer to the question of what Copmala Hariss’s July “Focus on Rural America” 1% lead over Biden equated to in potential voters (6 people), we can can no longer offer you that question. The pop quiz administrators wish you good luck.

        1. Barkley Rosser

          Sorry, Moes, your conditional offers of apologies are stinking bs. Yes, I do think Gabbard topped Harris in at least one poll somewhere, maybe NH. So what? Gabbard is going nowhere and is a homophobic liar. She is going nowhere ans shoujld get the h out too.

          BTW, that poll you claimed did not exist and then wanted the sample size on turned out to have a decent sample size. It just happened to be at Harris’s peak. She is still better than any of the rest of them.

          1. Moses Herzog

            @ Barkley Junior
            [Happy sigh] Good times……..
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTmirx-Jqjs

            Barkley Junior, my brother from another mother. This one is a special one that goes out to you and Copmala Harris. We’ll never forget, she was that little girl on the bus. That little girl on the bus, was HER
            https://youtu.be/P54IEBAmepg?t=58

            Barkley, if this next story of personal pain and woe, experienced in “the ghettos” of Berkeley and Thousand Oaks California, is too much for you, you can be excused from having to click on this link. I’m conscious of the fact that, for you, it’s just too painful:
            https://youtu.be/Xeuc2h3343I?t=38

          2. Barkley Rosser

            Mose,

            Like Menzie, I do not link to your you tube posts. When I have done so in the past, they have generally proven to be woerhless garbage. Based on apparent titles they will tell us that Harris overdid her tale of woe in the first debate, which would indeed seem to be a major reason she did not pick up Aftican American support from Biden in the end, although for awhile it looked like she migtht.

            It is funny that you keep going on about Harris. Let me remind you and everybody that you still owe me an apology for having falsely accused me of making up a poll in Iowa that showed Harris and Warren ahead of Biden. It existed, and that was her peak. You now owe several more apologies, but that was a big one because you went on and on about it, demanding I provid a link you could have easily found with the simplest googling, which I kept mistyping the url for but eventually got it. You thought you proved something with all of that, and for some weird reason you keep bringiing either it itself up directly or matters related to it.

            Here is what that episode and those related to it show: you are a liar and also a seriously messed up creep. It is no wonder you did not get a prom date in high school and probably have had a disastrous social life ever since, guy who keeps referring to married powerful women with PhDs as “Miss.”

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