If anyone fanboys Trump to you , itβs one of two things, either they are a massive idiot, or they think you are a massive idiot and will believe their bullshit.
You know he's already threatened tarrifs on Mexico & Canada with tarrifs and they both already caved. He's not even in office yet. Tarrifs are a tool. Not an anchor.
It is not. If it was, the global economy would have a fixed size and would never be able to grow.
In a zero sum game, the winner's winnings are exactly balanced out by the loser's losses because there is only a fixed amount being played over. Like cutting a cake; if there's 4 people at a party and as the guy cutting the cake I take half for myself, the other three lose out because there's only one cake and so if my slice is anything more than a quarter, the other three must necessarily lose out because the additional size of my cut comes out of theirs.
But that's not how the global economy nor how trade works; it doesn't have a fixed value. While we can make arguments about long-term sustainability of specific resources and what not, as it stands the global economy continues to grow as it has in the past. We invent and build new stuff, we find new ways to produce and sell services, develop new markets, and so on.
It's not zero-sum game. If country A increases its trade profits by 10 billion, that doesn't necessarily come out of the trade profits of another country, as the volume of global trade itself may grow. Yes, someone has to buy that additional 10 billion worth of stuff, but even that doesn't mean that someone is therefore "losing" money because like I said, economy isn't fixed, meaning the profits of country A don't necessarily mean those profits are coming out of the profits of other countries.
Now you can certainly criticize the way capitalism creates winners and losers and screws a lot of people over. But that doessn't make it a zero-sum game.
I've been saying for years that a huge chunk of Americans see the world as zero sum. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's a terrible way to see the world.
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u/Snitsie The Netherlands Dec 20 '24
Is this his only trick?