Rick Helfenbein on tariffs and economic realities (spring 2019)

I don’t pretend to know economics, except that consumption has consequences, living by the principle of squeezing maximum profits out of everyone and everything, is what I’d call self-cannibalism and it may taste good for a while, still just like a ballon, keep filling it with hot air and it will blow up. Oh and its not just the big boys, it has trickled down quite well in our Hollywood driven society.

 

Now, that I’m thinking about it, you know, I’m not much into translating physics into everyday life, but the Law of Stars does offers us a down to Earth rock solid lesson we really should have absorbed, maybe not for our own sake, but certainly for our children’s sake.

With everyone on the same page, it could have truly been an amazing few decades, with all people could have accomplished. Had we only had a communal goal. But as usual, the ones with power only wanted more, and for what, so they could have grander parties to while away the time. So today we spend billions at the movies every weekend, and simply can’t deal with thinking about the biosphere we depend on for our life-support system. Sooo fuk mind boggling, …

But, okay, The Sun’s Lesson. It’s really quite simple, the more mass a star starts out with the hotter and brighter it will burn, but the hotter and brighter a star burns, the faster it will consume itself and die. Out there in the heavens our simple medium, steady as she goes sun, will far outlive the heavy weights.

The economic moral, the hotter the economy, the sooner our life sustaining biosphere gets destroyed.

Hell we can’t even figure out recycling - it seems to remain a foreign concept few business/political leaders are capable wrapping their heads around - even though, it’s fundamental to biology, my waste becomes someone else’s sustenance and building block. All pockets have holes in them, so we constantly share a little, and receive a little. Me First, is a party, that’s doomed to fizzle out and die fast, but do the party-goers care? I think not, clean up won’t be their problem.

So there’s my two bits worth on economics. The real reason I’m posting this is because I thought it would be interesting to document the following in a thread and perhaps look back after a while. See how this business’s assessment plays out.

Comments and predictions regarding the long term outcome of trump’s tariff war with China:

 

President & CEO 'beyond freaked' over China tariff hikes

CNN
Published on May 13, 2019
President and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association Rick Helfenbein told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin that he and others in the industry are “scared and panicked” over the escalating trade war between the US and China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCHI7rsICP4

<blockquote>MAGIC 2019: Group warns public on real costs of tariffs

By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 6, 2019  -   (Rick Helfenbein, president and CEO of the American Apparel &amp; Footwear Association)

<a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/conventions/magic-2019-group-warns-public-on-real-costs-of-tariffs-1591778/">https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/conventions/magic-2019-group-warns-public-on-real-costs-of-tariffs-1591778/</a>

‘A bad idea’

“Tariffs are just a bad idea, and they’re a bad idea for reasons that aren’t necessarily apparent,” he said.

Historically, he said, tariff’s have not helped industries as designed because other countries retaliated in kind. He said the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, approved in 1930 and designed to help farmers devastated by the Dust Bowl by increasing tariffs on 900 products by 40 to 48 percent, likely lengthened the duration of the Great Depression.

“And whether the tariffs happen or not at this point for our industry, the damage will not go away,” he said. “You’ll live with that damage for 10 or 20 years.”

. . .

No comment

Rick Helfenbein, president and CEO of the American Apparel &amp; Footwear Association, said he knows why representatives of the hundreds of brands on the trade-show floor at MAGIC don’t want to comment on tariffs — they’ve seen the repercussions of speaking out against Donald Trump.  . . .  “So for individual companies to stick their neck out and have their head chopped off, it’s not a pleasant experience,” Helfenbein said.</blockquote>
Anyone have thoughts to share?  How's all this look from down under?  What would your predictions be for the economy moving forward?   Global, Pacific Rim, who's economy is it anyways?
translating physics into everyday life
Like man, you know, I mean man, it's cool, like, really man, can you dig it Schrödinger's cat - yeah... there's the secret. That's how you can tap into and harnessing the infinite universal energy of the 90% of your brain that's not being used right now, send your signal to the other side of the universe, yeah man, now you're opening up yourself to the limitless possibilities, can you hear me brothers and sisters . . .

:wink:

That stuff. ;-p

I suspect that you know just about as much about economics as Trump does. He is a scammer re: what a great deal maker and businessman he is. Fools still believe the scam. But I do not. I also am skeptical about where his trade “actions” (I say “actions” because I am not sure what he does is coherent enuf to be referred to as “policy”) are going. So far, what he has called “America 1st” seems to be more like “America alone”. He has now exhibited enuf of his simplistic, tho formerly unpredictable, pattern of “negotiation” that our trade opponents (even ones formerly more known as trade partners) can develop strategies and tactics to undermine. I suspect that China will bite the bullet and outlast Trump’s tariff-mania, until he cannot politically maintain it. Then I suspect that Trump will get a deal done that is no better than what could have been done already, but will announce a grand victory anyway. (Not near as good a deal as, if we had stayed in TPP and could have done jointly, with allies v. China.)

Donald J Trump is the same guy, that earlier this year, shut the govt down for over a month, in order to force funding for his kooky wall. No funding came out of that, only lost money for our nation, and pain for govt employees. It was an idiotic ploy. He was a big time Loser. Why should we believe in his idea that tariffs are the greatest thing since sliced bread? Meanwhile family farms are facing possible extinction, despite the billions of socialist dollars that Trump is slowly giving them.

China thinks long term. I think we will suffer a further degradation of our standing in the hierarchy of the world economic system, courtesy of Donald J Trump.