Trump Eyes a commercial fight in Japan



[ad_1]

People inclined to believe that the president is crazy should pause before accepting such diagnoses from reporters without a medical degree citing non-anonymous doctors from the federal bureaucracy. But investors who are hoping for a quick end to Trump's trade debates may have reasons to be nervous.

Your humble correspondent Appeared on the Fox News Channel this morning and gave credit for the outstanding economic results of its tax and regulatory reforms. This sparked a gracious phone call from Mr. Trump in which the president seemed very stable but unfortunately still very focused on eliminating trade deficits with US trading partners.

These deficits are often linked to a prosperous economy like the one we currently have. We buy products that we need or want from other countries, and if it's more than what they choose to buy from us, they use the difference to invest in America. Thank God, thanks to the policies of Mr. Trump and many of his predecessors, the world still likes to invest in the United States.

But the president sees a problem and even if he finishes the negotiations with our friends in North America and Europe, the commercial uncertainty will not necessarily end. It seems that the terms of American trade with Japan still bother him. Mr. Trump described his good relations with Japanese leaders, but then added, "Of course, that will end as soon as I tell them how much they have to pay."

This columnist noted that Mr. Trump's tax and regulatory reforms have largely solved the competitiveness problem with the US economy and that he was resolving trade disputes with our friends and was simply focusing on the fight against property theft. Chinese intellectual, he might ask for a solution.

Perhaps the President will be encouraged not to seek new rates while he continues to see how the economy is doing well without them. Today, the latest employment report published by the National Federation of Independent Industry shows that the small business sector is so prosperous that the main problem is finding workers to fill all available jobs:

Small business projects to create new jobs and job openings reached their highest level in 45 years in August … A survey of 38% of homeowners revealed that they could not occupy the current period … the difficulty of finding skilled workers as their most important business problem, up two points from last month.

This suggests that America could use more immigrants and hopes that this can be the subject of another phone call.

***

The stories of the day will come back tomorrow.

***

Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

Subscribe to Best of the Web email with one click.

To suggest articles, please send an email to [email protected].

(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web.)

***

Freeman is the co-author of Borrowed Time, now available from HarperBusiness.

[ad_2]
Source link