AP July 1, "trump tariffs make promise to rebuild infrastructure harder".

Asinine. Just look what GM said yesterday, it will create job loss, and make cars more expensive. Our Markets are being closed because of price hikes, putting businesses out of business. America is now hated all over the world, except for Russia of course, where our real leader resides.

We need a system of tariffs where they're calculated on the basis of environmental damage, workers' pay and conditions, and the general wealth difference between the two countries involved so that the equalisation of wealth (which should be the long-term goal) can take place at a carefully managed rate that doesn't suddenly pull the rug out from under the feet of workers in the wealthier country. Each product and the source and destination countries needs to be treated in its own right when working out the size of tariff that should be applied to it. Clearly that's too big a task to handle today, but once we have AGI (intelligent machines), it will all be done automatically for us and without bias).

Tariffs, like all taxes, need to be dealt with.

Tariffs can be used to encourage the sales of US products but they can cause other countries to retaliate with their own tariffs, and I think that removing or severely cutting export tariffs to open up better transactions for US businesses would be a good experiment.

US markets will simply have to learn to compete by innovating how they procure products and services.

• I have long thought that the US's trade deficit situation is very bad.
• I wish I could find data on the net deficit in both goods and services. Instead, I can see hard data only on the deficit in goods:
  [census.gov]
• I am good with addressing deficit questions with China as though action is urgently needed. I am not good with just sitting on this any more.
• With that being said the approach of the present administration doesn't seem very coherent. Instead they seem to be sending mixed signals to so many.