All eyes are on the lobster trade.
Yes, I have a chart on lobster trade ….
(updated version from a blog back in April; see https://t.co/QrmPX750gP) pic.twitter.com/nYOXEpqF6T
— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) June 24, 2020
Need to Maintain Appearances
agreed
— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) June 24, 2020
That Trump is worried if China is buying a few containers of lobsters so he can keep up appearances for the market, instead of solving for a crisis at home that will be soon killing thousands a day again, speaks volumes.
Maine’s Lobster Exports to China plunge 84%
Flashback May 16, 2019: Maine’s lobster exports to China plunge 84 percent due to trade war.
The tariffs, implemented in July 2018, had an immediate affect on the state’s lobster industry. Prior to the tariffs, Maine had been on track to have a record-setting year, with USD 87 million (EUR 77.8 million) worth of lobster exported through June 2018, over double the USD 42 million (EUR 37.5 million) shipped through the same period in 2017.
Soon after tariffs were implemented, however, Maine’s exports to China nearly disappeared completely, and according to the latest data from the MITC exports have plunged nearly 84 percent since the tariffs were implemented.
The latest talk on the trade front doesn’t point to any improvement in those numbers any time soon. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened and then implemented further tariff increases on 10 May. In response, China fired back with its own increased tariffs, including additional tariffs on a number of seafood products.
Despite the threat of escalation, for many lobster exporters, the damage has already been done. Whether the tariffs increase or not, most of the business had already dried up.
Reflections on the All Important Lobster Trade
With hundreds of billions of dollars of government stimulus sloshing around, Trump is now extremely worried over an $87 million lobster loss that was entirely of his own making.
Mish
The ocean was over fished, legally & illegally. It’s good to have a break, less boats, pollution, noise, & people. Due to the less movement of, their could be an increase of fish, as they relax, & their habitat isn’t under attack daily. We will see.
“Trade wars are easy to win”
…… for the other side.
“ instead of solving for a crisis at home that will be soon killing thousands a day again, speaks volumes. “
Are you ignorant to all of the regulations slashed by Operation Warp Speed or are you calling for the Army to enforce curfews in the streets to enforce lockdowns? Your one liner with nothing behind it is bitchier than Trump’s worse day on Twitter.
I’m starting to feel the Gell-Mish effect where your ignorance is bleeding through your bias but you’re smart enough never to say a bad word about China and Google.
But wait, it’s Obummer’s fault….
China is one of the biggest export destinations for lobster, which are trapped in the Atlantic Ocean by U.S. and Canadian fishermen. But Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods resulted in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. lobster. Canadian lobstermen, not subject to the punitive tariffs, took control of the market to the frustration of Maine lobster exporters.
In a Wednesday tweet, Trump said former President Barack Obama “destroyed the lobster and fishing industry in Maine” and falsely said “it’s back, bigger and better than anyone ever thought possible.” The state’s lobster haul peaked by pound in 2012 and by price in 2016.
There are two stories of importance. One story puts Trump in a bad light. The other puts Trump in a good light. Which story do you publish?
What we are witnessing firsthand is censorship by omission.
What’s the other story? Or are you censoring it too?
Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I am biased, but I think yesterday’s development in the Flynn story is more important than a few friggin’ lobsters not going to China. The Flynn story points to a major fraud in the White House, and a complicit VP who is now running for President. That would be major news if the White House was controlled by Trump….
“lobsters… instead of solving for a crisis at home that will be soon killing thousands a day again”
I did not know that something is going to be killing thousands of lobsters a day soon.
The reality is that the US cannot compete with cheap labor in Asia and elsewhere, including food production. Even if we squash China manufacturing, it moves elsewhere but never here. The US can only compete in highly skilled industries which leaves a huge part of our population in a wage death spiral. The Republican strategy is a disaster. People are delusional if they think we can force global corporations to source low skilled jobs here. We need to up our game in education and investment in next gen industries. That’s what China does as we move backwards. They are poised to crush it in the next evolution in 5g, robotics and AI and more. We invest in military tech which we cannot sell. They invest in marketable technologies. We spend huge sums supporting old people and they spend almost none. Who gets the return on investment? I know we have to support old people. We are where we are.
“The US can only compete in highly skilled industries which leaves a huge part of our population in a wage death spiral. The Republican strategy is a disaster.”
…
The Federal Reserve 2% inflation policy (supposedly “stable”) is asinine. Let prices go where gains in productivity, aging slowing demographic, massive debt overhang naturally taken them … DOWN.
Oh, that’s right … can’t have that as it would upset the status quo apple cart of keeping the rich rich(er) and ever widening inequality.
+1.
The problem is, trump’s followers glorify ignorance and stupidity. They take offense at the idea that the are wallowing in economic despair because they won’t make the effort to better themselves. This is why they love hearing about conspiracies and evil people keeping them down. It absolves them of responsibility for their laziness, and gives them someone to hate, and thereby their empty, meaningless lives a sense of purpose.
Just like their orange jesus, they don’t take responsibility for anything.
That Kool-Aid was whipped up by Laura Tyson and lapped up by Bill Clinton and continually used as the academic justification to ship manufacturing jobs overseas. But it is sophistry, as these same countries can and have entered high tech as well. Add to that an advantage of lax to no regulations, and impossibly expensive US universities, and game over. Watch Ms. Tyson’s argument get decimated by Sir James Goldsmith in this 1994 Charlie Rose interview: link to youtube.com
We can’t “up our game” in education. The unions prevent that. Instead, our education continues our downward spiral. The US now ranks 31st of 78 countries in math education. The only way the US can compete is to import skilled scientists and engineers from overseas.
Lobsters?!?!
Surely, you jest.
Seriously, micromanaging a sign of weakness in a CEO … let alone POTUS. Hire GOOD people and let them figure out policy in accordance with your overall agenda.
So much winning.
Keep in mind that there were record lobster yields in 2013 and for a few years following that, and a glut of lobsters, but that lobster yields have dropped in recent years. Without doing a lot more research to try to understand the economics of the lobster industry, I would hesitate to try to draw any conclusions. Have lobster prices been falling? Are there unsold lobsters being used as fertilizer? How has Coronavirus impacted the lobster industry? Quite a lot, I would guess, both in the US and around the world. I doubt many people cook lobsters at home; they are a food eaten at restaurants primarily, I would guess.
this is all for 87 million in sales? the CARES act cost about 23,000 times more than all this lobster business.
It takes years to build a relationship with a customer, but not much time to destroy it.
Trump surely knows that there are other suppliers out there in the world constantly looking for a foothold in the world’s largest market and more than willing to step in and push out the discredited former supplier. Soy beans, lobsters, luxury cars, airplanes…
Or maybe he doesn’t know that.
Meanwhile, on the frontiers of “decoupling” we are still relying on China for most of our PPE.
He’s never had to learn about that. He’s spent his life turning a huge fortune into a huge pile of debt.
tRump thinks he can bully everybody into submission. Empires are always defeated from the inside.
Didn’t someone say it was easy to win trade wars? Jackass.
Well he didn’t say WHO was gonna win….
If you absolutely have to fight “trade wars,” you are genuinely better off losing them.
By “winning” them, all you really do, is prop up entrenched, inefficient users of resources.
That’s what resulted from Latin America’s “important substitution” policies of the 60s. Sure, the Caudillostans, and their state championed “businesses,” nominally “won” the tradewar against cheaper imports from Asia. But that was also all they ever “won.”
While, OTOH, the nominal “losers”, the Asians, certainly did suffer a bit from having a smaller market than they otherwise would. But that just forced them to double down on efficiency even further. Making them even leaner and more fit for competition.
Over time leading to the difference in efficiency between them and the Caudillostans’ protected trade war “winners,” growing ever larger. With entirely predictable consequences.
Nobody wins in a trade war.