Calling it "Politically Motivated"

[Markk]

This is what your link reads:

“Broadband: The Biden-Harris Investing in America agenda includes historic funding for high-speed internet access, spurring hundreds of millions of dollars in investments in broadband manufacturing as numerous companies onshore and expand domestic manufacturing capacity. As a result of these policies, close to 90% of the funding spent on equipment for the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program will be spent on equipment manufactured in the United States. Implementation of the BEAD Program is creating thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs across the country — from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Hickory, North Carolina and Gilbert, Arizona. Workers in these communities are now producing broadband equipment, like fiber optic cable and key electronics, necessary to bring affordable, reliable high-speed internet to everyone in America.”

To which you responded:

“This was authorized in 2021, and to date, not one connection has been made. And it is tax payer money. It is a mess from everything I have read and is being revamped.”

Here’s where you and I are diverging. The snip above addresses high-speed internet and broadband implementation as a component of the Biden Admin’s push for US manufacturing. It then specifically mentions BEAD, inasmuch as the equipment to implement it is being pushed to be manufactured stateside.

You deflected to hookups under BEAD. BEAD indeed has not made progress with hookups yet. But BEAD is only one of several concurrent Biden Admin programs (link below), and others have brought broadband to tens of thousands of users. Your comment only applies to BEAD hookups, and doesn’t disprove the specific mention regarding equipment manufacturing, or the completed hookups under other programs, either. Hence my reply.

Find more details on these programs here:

https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2024 ... a-reliable

Lol....You ducked the ones that talked about Biden instituting tariffs as a plan to create more manufacturing jobs to protect them from China unfair trade practices.

Wait ... what? Biden instituted tariffs, and WE’RE NOT A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER YET ... and it has been HOW MANY years?

Thank you for supporting my point about tariffs.

It took a while, but I figured you’d get there. . : D

Lol are you really going to die on those hills?

Stop...your link was about BEAD, your later proof text was about BIP.

So you're saying Biden's plan was a plan like Trump's, doomed to fail? And when I asked you to tell me what the Biden/Harris plan to get back manufacturing and the middle class, you just gave me the plan knowing it was like Trump's in regard to tariffs and it was just going to add a huge 25% or more tax on the middle class?

You said things like this "I believe that the nation needs manufacturing. So did the Biden Administration, and they did the work to turn the situation around and set it on track for serious gains:"

However, Biden was doing Tariffs also, up to 100%....and all those jobs you said he created were from his tariffs?

Cakes, you know you got caught with your pants down and just did not do your homework. You're just making it worse. The cover up here is worse that the crime. You should have said, "Oops, I got sloppy" and corrected your position.

[canpakes]

To which you responded:

“This was authorized in 2021, and to date, not one connection has been made. And it is tax payer money. It is a mess from everything I have read and is being revamped.”

Here’s where you and I are diverging. The snip above addresses high-speed internet and broadband implementation as a component of the Biden Admin’s push for US manufacturing. It then specifically mentions BEAD, inasmuch as the equipment to implement it is being pushed to be manufactured stateside.

You deflected to hookups under BEAD. BEAD indeed has not made progress with hookups yet. But BEAD is only one of several concurrent Biden Admin programs (link below), and others have brought broadband to tens of thousands of users. Your comment only applies to BEAD hookups, and doesn’t disprove the specific mention regarding equipment manufacturing, or the completed hookups under other programs, either. Hence my reply.

Find more details on these programs here:

https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2024 ... a-reliable

Wait ... what? Biden instituted tariffs, and WE’RE NOT A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER YET ... and it has been HOW MANY years?

Thank you for supporting my point about tariffs.

It took a while, but I figured you’d get there. . : D

Lol are you really going to die on those hills?

Stop...your link was about BEAD, your later proof text was about BIP.

So you're saying Biden's plan was a plan like Trump's, doomed to fail? And when I asked you to tell me what the Biden/Harris plan to get back manufacturing and the middle class, you just gave me the plan knowing it was like Trump's in regard to tariffs and it was just going to add a huge 25% or more tax on the middle class?

You said things like this "I believe that the nation needs manufacturing. So did the Biden Administration, and they did the work to turn the situation around and set it on track for serious gains:"

However, Biden was doing Tariffs also, up to 100%....and all those jobs you said he created were from his tariffs?

Cakes, you know you got caught with your pants down and just did not do your homework. You're just making it worse. The cover up here is worse that the crime. You should have said, "Oops, I got sloppy" and corrected your position.

I don’t see a position to correct. I don’t believe that tariffs will cause a magical manufacturing renaissance, as you claim will happen. If you want to point to Biden having initiated tariffs or having continued those from the previous Trump Administration, that pretty much proves the point, given how you’ve complained that the economy was ‘a disaster’ under Biden. If tariffs are so effective, how was that the case? And what would make them work now, if not before?

I don’t believe that indiscriminately imposing 25% tariffs will somehow recreate a vibrant middle class. But it will suck many billions of dollars from the pockets of working Americans, and be used to finance a tax cut for far wealthier folks.

Feel free to pull examples from history on what will make it different for Trump. Pointing out that they didn’t work under Biden works against your claim.

ETA: I see where we are talking past each other:

1. I post an excerpt about the Biden Admin’s broadband program. It mentions equipment for BEAD.
2. You post that no hookups have been made, but you didn’t refer to BEAD specifically, just ‘the program’
3. I add information about BID, being part of the broadband program, and a link to other parts of that broadband program for examples of ‘hookups’
4. You specifically drill down on BEAD again.

If you want to take that as a ‘win’, go for it. I’ll maintain that the broadband program has many thousands of hookups and BEAD - as one of the specific initiatives within it - does not. But that first passage referred to equipment for BEAD, not hookups.

We can keep talking about that, but I don’t see that it’s helping your position on tariffs.

[Markk]

Lol are you really going to die on those hills?

Stop...your link was about BEAD, your later proof text was about BIP.

So you're saying Biden's plan was a plan like Trump's, doomed to fail? And when I asked you to tell me what the Biden/Harris plan to get back manufacturing and the middle class, you just gave me the plan knowing it was like Trump's in regard to tariffs and it was just going to add a huge 25% or more tax on the middle class?

You said things like this "I believe that the nation needs manufacturing. So did the Biden Administration, and they did the work to turn the situation around and set it on track for serious gains:"

However, Biden was doing Tariffs also, up to 100%....and all those jobs you said he created were from his tariffs?

Cakes, you know you got caught with your pants down and just did not do your homework. You're just making it worse. The cover up here is worse that the crime. You should have said, "Oops, I got sloppy" and corrected your position.

I don’t see a position to correct. I don’t believe that tariffs will cause a magical manufacturing renaissance, as you claim will happen. If you want to point to Biden having initiated tariffs or having continued those from the previous Trump Administration, that pretty much proves the point, given how you’ve complained that the economy was ‘a disaster’ under Biden. If tariffs are so effective, how was that the case? And what would make them work now, if not before?

I don’t believe that indiscriminately imposing 25% tariffs will somehow recreate a vibrant middle class. But it will suck many billions of dollars from the pockets of working Americans, and be used to finance a tax cut for far wealthier folks.

Feel free to pull examples from history on what will make it different for Trump. Pointing out that they didn’t work under Biden works against your claim.

Again doubling down is just weak Cakes. It's not like we are experts in this crap, but at least we should be able to admit when we screw it up. I suppose this last post is the best you can do in that regard.

I know you don't believe that imposing 25% tariffs will bring back the middle class. Or now Bidens proposed up to 100% tariffs.

Now that your position is that the Biden and by default Harris plan was not going to work. And that the fact sheet you presented as a plan was deeply skewed. What is the Democratic plan moving forward. Your last attempt to give me a plan unveiled that it contained heavy tariffs, and broken promises....what is the current plan?

[canpakes]

Again doubling down is just weak Cakes.

Lol, you and I are posting at the same time. Take a look at the edit I just added.

[Gadianton]

If you want to point to Biden having initiated tariffs or having continued those from the previous Trump Administration, that pretty much proves the point, given how you’ve complained that the economy was ‘a disaster’ under Biden. If tariffs are so effective, how was that the case? And what would make them work now, if not before?

Great points as always. First of all, unfortunately, it's all speculation to say whether any of these plans are succeeding or failing because it will take years to reindustrialize. The same person who thought M2 was an identity measure for I appears to think we can measure reindustrialization progress in real time (at least for Biden while saying "give Trump a chance" indefinitely). If we were to do that, then Trump has already failed as the trade deficit has already increased since his announcements, for obvious reasons.

Where Biden was smart in continuing Trump's tariffs on China was in understanding that reindustrialization takes a long time and if presidents go back and forth undoing each others programs then it's pointless to do them at all. And so he continued with a more structured approach. The focus on autos is particularly odd since China has already won. Perhaps if Elon had focused on autos and not autos, robots, rockets and then becoming a world clown then he could have done better as he was our only real horse in the race. Now we're going to force Americans to buy American cars by tariffs, while tariffs on intermediates will further crush the car companies making prices even higher, significantly shrinking the market, and hoping that American car makers can make enough profits to implement scaling technologies -- we're sure as hell not going to subsidize them! (except tesla but Tesla is already losing abroad) -- then if these beaten down underdogs can even survive as American auto producers, they are supposed to become big time exporters to compete with China who is already dominating?

As an off-the-cuff suggestion, instead focusing on an industry you've already lost, focus on something emerging like nuclear power.

I'd recommend caution when sharing real world information with right-wingers who don't know anything. Think about it as our own version of a trade deficit. The last time a right-winger on this forum tried to present their position on something with facts, it was Ceeboo posting on the myth of global warming and he got annihilated, revealed to know nothing even remotely qualifying to have a conversation about the topic. It will be the same story if the conservatives on this thread actually research their teams position and try to make a case for it with facts, rather than just taking pot shots at random targets introduced along the way of knowledge sharing from our point of view.

[canpakes]

Now that your position is that the Biden and by default Harris plan was not going to work.

I’ve only stated that tariffs don’t magically create a vibrant or empowered middle class. Your position that they will seems to be difficult for you to resolve or explain, because you either have to pretend that I said something that I did not (your quote immediately above as example) or you are left conceding that tariffs during the previous Administration ‘did not work’.

Between those moments, you’ve also spent time admonishing the previous Administration for their specifically-targeted investments, labeling them ‘taxpayer giveaways’, while simultaneously trying to convince me that charging everyone an extra 25% for many of their goods and purchases while routing no part of that tax to no place other than a fund to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks is awesome yet isn’t itself possibly the worst and most blatant example of a ‘giveaway’.

I’ve asked a few times if you have a modern-day example of tariffs working as you claim they will. It might be better off pursuing that angle than repeatedly contradicting yourself, and it would be much more instructive, don’t you think?

[Markk]

Now that your position is that the Biden and by default Harris plan was not going to work.

I’ve only stated that tariffs don’t magically create a vibrant or empowered middle class. Your position that they will seems to be difficult for you to resolve or explain, because you either have to pretend that I said something that I did not (your quote immediately above as example) or you are left conceding that tariffs during the previous Administration ‘did not work’.

Between those moments, you’ve also spent time admonishing the previous Administration for their specifically-targeted investments, labeling them ‘taxpayer giveaways’, while simultaneously trying to convince me that charging everyone an extra 25% for many of their goods and purchases while routing no part of that tax to no place other than a fund to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks is awesome yet isn’t itself possibly the worst and most blatant example of a ‘giveaway’.

I’ve asked a few times if you have a modern-day example of tariffs working as you claim they will. It might be better off pursuing that angle than repeatedly contradicting yourself, and it would be much more instructive, don’t you think?

Cakes, you stated that your supported free trade. You stated that our large deficit is good and with in reason. When I asked you for the Biden/Harris plan, you gave me a list of links that you obvious did not read or research that turned out to be nothing but gaslighting and an acknowledgement that Bidens plan was to put some very large tariffs because China was involved in unfair trade practices. Some of these tariffs were 100%.

As far as the 25% that Trump is putting on autos and other items. I stated two different things I think and hope to happen, the first being in time it will help bring back Industry and Jobs and reduce the trade deficient, and he will use it as leverage to hopefully balance the deficit, with our trade partners. I also made it clear that if it does not work we can go back to free trade.

So you are on the record that Bidens plan would not work because of his tariff plan....what is the Democrat caucus plan? Do they have one?

[canpakes]

I’ve only stated that tariffs don’t magically create a vibrant or empowered middle class. Your position that they will seems to be difficult for you to resolve or explain, because you either have to pretend that I said something that I did not (your quote immediately above as example) or you are left conceding that tariffs during the previous Administration ‘did not work’.

Between those moments, you’ve also spent time admonishing the previous Administration for their specifically-targeted investments, labeling them ‘taxpayer giveaways’, while simultaneously trying to convince me that charging everyone an extra 25% for many of their goods and purchases while routing no part of that tax to no place other than a fund to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks is awesome yet isn’t itself possibly the worst and most blatant example of a ‘giveaway’.

I’ve asked a few times if you have a modern-day example of tariffs working as you claim they will. It might be better off pursuing that angle than repeatedly contradicting yourself, and it would be much more instructive, don’t you think?

Cakes, you stated that your supported free trade.

Managed free trade seems to be the best option. ‘Fair’ and ‘Balanced’ trade are subjective terms that I’d challenge you to define with some sort of specificity.

You stated that our large deficit is good

Nope. Didn’t say that. Try again.

and with in reason.

Correct; the ratio is pretty balanced at 60-40. Nothing very unusual as historical examples go.

When I asked you for the Biden/Harris plan, you gave me a list of links that you obvious did not read or research

Your reasoning for concluding this is because you conflated ‘equipment’ with ‘hookups’, or because some Biden Admin tariffs existed but didn’t turn the US into the #1 worldwide manufacturer, which blows a hole in your assertion that tariffs are a magical manufacturing elixir, at least if someone Republican suggests them?

that turned out to be nothing but gaslighting

But you cannot point out the gaslighting part?

and an acknowledgement that Bidens plan was to put some very large tariffs because China was involved in unfair trade practices. Some of these tariffs were 100%.

In part, yes, which proves that tariffs won’t get you to your manufacturing promised land. Again, thanks for pointing that out.

As far as the 25% that Trump is putting on autos and other items. I stated two different things I think and hope to happen, the first being in time it will help bring back Industry and Jobs and reduce the trade deficient, and he will use it as leverage to hopefully balance the deficit, with our trade partners.

Got any idea on how you paying 25% more for half of what you buy, to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks, is going to force any company to build a factory for you, so that they can make less profit?

I also made it clear that if it does not work we can go back to free trade.

Wait, so free trade is back on the table for you? But only after fleecing Americans to pay for a tax cut for Trump’s friends and family?

So you are on the record that Bidens plan would not work because of his tariff plan...

Not my words. Plenty of independent analysis agrees that manufacturing was undergoing a measurable comeback under the previous Administration.

what is the Democrat caucus plan? Do they have one?

This is you being obtuse again and pretending that all of the programs and initiatives outlined in previous links don’t actually exist.

Does Trump let any of them continue, or just dump all of them in favor of taxing Americans an additional 25% on their purchases to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks? Looks like he’s going for Option 2.

Now, do you have a modern-day example of tariffs working as you claim they will? Or do you want to dodge again?

[Markk]

Cakes, you stated that your supported free trade.

Managed free trade seems to be the best option. ‘Fair’ and ‘Balanced’ trade are subjective terms that I’d challenge you to define with some sort of specificity.

You stated that our large deficit is good

Nope. Didn’t say that. Try again.

and with in reason.

Correct; the ratio is pretty balanced at 60-40. Nothing very unusual as historical examples go.

When I asked you for the Biden/Harris plan, you gave me a list of links that you obvious did not read or research

Your reasoning for concluding this is because you conflated ‘equipment’ with ‘hookups’, or because some Biden Admin tariffs existed but didn’t turn the US into the #1 worldwide manufacturer, which blows a hole in your assertion that tariffs are a magical manufacturing elixir, at least if someone Republican suggests them?

that turned out to be nothing but gaslighting

But you cannot point out the gaslighting part?

and an acknowledgement that Bidens plan was to put some very large tariffs because China was involved in unfair trade practices. Some of these tariffs were 100%.

In part, yes, which proves that tariffs won’t get you to your manufacturing promised land. Again, thanks for pointing that out.

As far as the 25% that Trump is putting on autos and other items. I stated two different things I think and hope to happen, the first being in time it will help bring back Industry and Jobs and reduce the trade deficient, and he will use it as leverage to hopefully balance the deficit, with our trade partners.

Got any idea on how you paying 25% more for half of what you buy, to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks, is going to force any company to build a factory for you, so that they can make less profit?

I also made it clear that if it does not work we can go back to free trade.

Wait, so free trade is back on the table for you? But only after fleecing Americans to pay for a tax cut for Trump’s friends and family?

So you are on the record that Bidens plan would not work because of his tariff plan...

Not my words. Plenty of independent analysis agrees that manufacturing was undergoing a measurable comeback under the previous Administration.

what is the Democrat caucus plan? Do they have one?

This is you being obtuse again and pretending that all of the programs and initiatives outlined in previous links don’t actually exist.

Does Trump let any of them continue, or just dump all of them in favor of taxing Americans an additional 25% on their purchases to finance a tax cut for wealthy folks? Looks like he’s going for Option 2.

Now, do you have a modern-day example of tariffs working as you claim they will? Or do you want to dodge again?

Cakes, what is the new and current plan, you offered links (plural, not just your misunderstanding of BEAD) that failed you for the Biden/Harris plan, what is the new current Democratic plan. Is there one, and who is the author?

And just to be clear you did say that free trade was good, and that the current deficit that is approaching a trillion dollars is good....your wrote:

If I recall correctly, US trade balances out at around $6 out for every $4 in. It’s a pretty reasonable split. The ‘deficit’ side is so large because of the huge amount of trade overall, and shows that our economy is quite strong, with an expected amount of consumption due to Americans having sufficient resources to do so.

What is the current Democrat plan, if there is one it should not be that hard to link me to it.

[Gadianton]

As I continue to watch finance news by Trump-friendly conservatives who seem to have a stake in the economy outside of an identity war they profit on, if there's the barest consensus, it's Plaza Accord 2.0 (the dark, temperamental child version; my spin). In another, Plaza isn't called out but it guides the assumptions of the discussion. None of the commentators entertained a motive or plan to bring back US manufacturing. The only possibilities a group of 4 entertained was that a) countries with tariffs on the US will immediately fold because they know Trump has a point, independent of how he's making the point b) there will be a trade war that's devastating, but it will work itself out into end with slightly rebalanced trade in US favor. The plaza accord helped rebalance trade a little bit and had some big effects good and bad, but did not re-shore manufacturing to the US in a significant way.

Well, I find these perspectives to be consistent with the fact that there is no serious messaging that would suggest a plan to rebuild US manufacturing. A big poker table bluff that crushed GDP by 6% or more for not much. If these folks are right, then right-wingers will shift again. It begins with: Biden killed us with inflation and Trump will lower it on day 1! Can't you guys see, the Fentanyl crisis is the real issue and it can only be fixed with tariffs! It was never about Fentanyl totally, it's mainly about US jobs and the working man, we must endure high prices like during world war II for the greater good (Fox literally said this)! Ha Ha! Trump just played the master hand of world poker and had all the libs fooled, trade has rebalanced by 17 billion and the tariffs are over now. It was all a poker bluff!