Are we in a Trade War?

Are we in a Trade War? Absolutely! We have been in an intense trade war with other nations since the1960s. We have just woke up with Donald Trump to fight.

What is the Difference between International Commerce and a Trade War?

Cities, states, and countries have commerce between themselves. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. What one place produces, they sell to another place. This is just commerce. A trade war is when different strategies and governmental mandates change the normal market to make things “unnatural.” An unnatural situation is like when China uses prisoners and slaves (Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic group, the Communist Chinese government worships religiously Communism, which is in place of any religion) to work, paying them a bowl of rice per day as their only pay. This makes what they can produce very cheap. When the Communist government charges a comparable price (always undercutting the market norm), then they make a lot of profit. This would be considered an unfair market practice.

But even within the United States, there are unfair commerce plays going on. A large supermarket chain like Walmart will establish a new store in a place where there are already businesses established, and they will use capital from the many other Walmarts to drive the competition out of business and then raise their prices. This is common in business, and although it may not be liked, to an extent, that is how the free market system works.

What Foreign Countries have done

But what foreign countries have done is to insert their products into the American marketplace, and they consistently undercut American manufacturing. To understand this, the American marketplace belongs to America. There is a bad mindset of buying whatever is the cheapest, even if it doesn’t last very long. That is a consumer decision, but deceptive advertising has to be controlled by the government. The government plays umpire in these things, and they establish what is fair and what is unfair. In the case of using prisoners and slave labors, the government can make a unilateral block from these products from entering their marketplace.

I grew up in the 1960s, and in my younger days, I remember a lot of small businesses producing clothes and such. People lived by working in these small businesses. When America opened its doors to foreign commerce (by governmental powers and laws), small business and manufacturing “dried up” in America. These small businesses were small, but in number, they represented a large portion of American workers than the bigger companies (number of employees). This has been harmful for America. The frenzy of cheap products is like a drug that causes the consumer to go crazy with them, and later, insists upon them.

A Laborer is Worthy of his Reward

1 Timothy 5:18 For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.

The Bible says that the worker is desiring of a just salary, based on his labor, the quality of what he produces. That is a biblical principle. So in a way, cheap Chinese knock-offs should be cheap, because their quality is poor. But at the same time, normal people devalue the price of products. If you can buy an American made sweater for $70, which is of good quality, and the Chinese knock off (looks the same at first, but is poorly made with inferior materials) for $20, then what happens? People who think in this form, of always only the cheapest products no matter how poorly they are made, then those who produce quality products get squeezed and eventually go bankrupt, having to work at a gas station or something.

The fact that foreign countries do this all the time with everybody that they can get by with, this is no surprise. The surprise is when our American politicians see this as something good, and beneficial (which it is beneficial to these politicians because they are getting kickbacks from these foreign governments, but it is highly harmful to the American people). If you consider our history with labor unions, the unions were formed to fight for the rights of the workers (1 Timothy 5:18), which in itself is a good thing, even though it has been used in bad ways. But the principal issue is that a good worker deserves (according to God) a fair wage.

Paying an Unworthy Wage

Foreign countries as well as mega corporations use cheap labor. They do this by various means, but the force behind their actions is profit. In the Bible scheme of things, the businessman does make money, but before God, he is responsible for his workers, and he has a divine obligation to pay them fairly. A just wage for a just labor.

Why is there so much support for open borders? Because instead of making manufacturing plants in other countries, they can make them in the United States and use illegal aliens to work for cheap. Why do they not like making products out of the US and importing them in? Because that is when the US government notices the movement of goods, and the government can act upon that. Trump is very acutely aware of this, and his tariffs work on this basis. Everything coming and going, importing and exporting, can be manipulated to make foreign countries pay attention to his priorities. After all, America is our country, right? We can put pressure on other countries through this.

We have been losing the Trade War for years

But other countries have been selling wildly in the American marketplace for years, taking advantage of unfair trade practices, and we have been losing all this time. Our politicians take under the table payments for voting to open our markets to foreigners. When do these politicians work for the people who placed them in public office? Apparently, if you are a Democrat, never. If you are a MAGA Trump supporter, your day is coming soon.

Will Trump’s Tariffs Cause us Problems?

In the short term, yes, maybe. That is because there will be an adjustment period, in which there will be a reduction of foreign cheap (and of poor quality) products, and American made products of a better quality (we hope) will appear. In the long term, when manufacturing returns in force to the United States, then workers will again be able to have purchasing power.

Why don’t foreign countries focus on selling nationally instead of internationally?

The reason is that they can’t. It doesn’t work like that. For example, in China, they have 1.5 billion people, so they have a market that is approximately 3 to 4 times larger than the United States. But even as poorly as things have gone for the US over the past 40 years, the American consumer still is outpacing people from about every other place in the world. Complain all you want about the evils of America, but the world outside of America all want to get into our country.

Mexico’s President Deporting Americans

That is the truth of the matter. Mexico’s president wanted to go “tit-for-tat” against Trump, and threatened to deport all the illegal American citizens from Mexico. Crickets. Why? Because Americans are richer than Mexicans are in general, and they have no desire to come work illegally in Mexico. Americans in Mexico do not make money in Mexico to send back to the US.

They transfer money from the US to spend in Mexico. Even those working jobs in Mexico still have funds invested in the US, and they bring that money into Mexico. As a net change, Mexicans in the US working (legally or illegally) send about 59 billion back to Mexico in 2024 (Mexico City News). On a world scale, migrants are sending about $900 billion from the US back to their countries in 2022 (Weform.gov), or by other accounts, 142 billion in 2020 (economist.com).

1 Trillion Dollars of US Capital is Leaking from the United States every Year

So to understand this, about a trillion dollars of capital is leaking from the United States to other countries EVERY YEAR. Now do you understand why the United States is suffering? At the same time, Mexico is receiving that to go into wherever, the common people. That is a free boost to their economy. The president of Mexico cannot handle this situation in a despot kind of manner. She had to buckle under, because Trump could have cut off all remittances, i.e. 100% tax on every dollar going to Mexico.

That would have stopped the remittances in their tracks, and they would have found a way around that, but it would be very clunky. In Muslim, Arab, and anti-American countries, the US government has cut off banking between US banks and their country’s banks, and they use barter kind of methods, where a person in Iran knows some family member in the US, and they make a trade, you give my cousin $50,000 in America, and I will give your cousin in Iran the equivalent. This lends itself to fraud, and it only works where violence and death is assured if you don’t hold up your end of the deal, i.e. high stakes corruption.

Being Realistic

But the bottom line is that people in Mexico generally have less income, so the Mexican marketplace is not going to be very profitable. The US marketplace is. So they want to get into the US marketplace, and really, only a minimum of US products into the Mexican market. When the trade imbalance gets too great, the country that is owed money starts to place pressure on the other country, and what results is an inflation of their money in the world marketplace.

With Trump, there is now an Adult in the Room. (Actually a Businessman)

Trump apparently knows all this, and he is well versed in how these things work. He is an international businessman, by the way. His book, The Art of the Deal, is exactly an explanation of this. How to get people to the table and to make a deal. Why do we reject a president like this? That is business savvy, even on an international level? It is because the people who are against Trump and MAGA are making themselves rich by betraying their nation. These are public servants who have sworn before God with a hand on the Bible to uphold the Constitution. They have sworn their loyal to the country. Why these Democrats seem to always use their position and power to enrich themselves and sell America cheap?

Not all Democrats are Bad

I do not condemn all Democrats for this. Because in this election cycle, it has been refreshing and encouraging to see some Democrats that are persistent in their loyalty to America. Kennedy, and other Democrats have come to grips with their fight against their own party, and have left. They are now on MAGA Republican side of things. Hopefully, many, many Democrat voters will “wake up” (a good kind of woke to the corruption in their party) and will vote Republican. Remember, Republicans have Rhino Republicans that are the same thing as a Democrat, just painted a different color. True Republicans hate these Rhinos, and in a tight spot, they side with the Democrats against Republicans. And when they retire, they are like George Bush that become the best of friends with the Democrat leaders.

Are we in a Trade War?