Political/economic tweet thread.

You've been warned.

Let's talk about Tariffs and how they are viewed from political lens by individuals.

This will kind of touch on why party identify politics suck major butt.

Trump launched a major trade war with China.

He imposed tariffs across the board on numerous products and industries.

And went with the line that China would pay for those tariffs. Which is just not true. Tariffs are almost always paid by the consumers of the nation imposing

Them, the goal is to not force the exporting country to change, but yo force the importing business to find a new supplier.

In Trump's case the argument was to use American (or the reality, any other non Chinese supplier) which is a fair argument to make given Chinese labor

And all the issues that come up there.

But again .. saying China will pay for the tariffs is like saying Mexico will pay for the wall.

It doesn't work like that, never will, and never has.

Now China wasn't going to stand by and let that happen so China retaliated with huge tariffs on American farm exports and not only tariffs but *limits* on American farm exports.

And American farmers got whacked.

So the Trump admin came in to subsidize them.

And Republicans *loved it*.

Save the farmers! Attack China! Yes!

Fair enough.

Even though subsidies for not being able to compete in a marker economy are... Shocker... Kind of socialism

Regardless, let's compare this to actions taken during the Obama admin.

In 2012 the Obama admin placed incredibly high tariffs in Chinese Solar Panels.

And did so in conjunction with large subsidies to American Solar companies.

Why?

The Chinese we're dumping solar panels and other solar tech into the US market.

What does dumping mean?

The Chinese govt was literally paying Chinese Solar companies to sell solar equipment at a loss in the US as to push US companies out of business.

So tariffs got issued up to 47% in order to bring Chinese Solar Panels and other equipment in line with what a "fair" market was.

And the Obama admin kept subsidizing solar companies in the US in order to, essentially, try to level the playing field with China and ensure that America wouldn't have to depend on China for critical future Tech.

Now to my whole point about why this political identify politics have screwed up America.

Ask yourself who was critical of the Obama admin for subsidizing solar in the US.

And then go praises subsidies for Farmers under Trump?

And vic versa.

This isn't a "boo Republicans bad" although I do contend that Trump's trade was has been a negative to American consumers.

But this is a point about political identity politics

The arguments being made are often not made in good faith and only made because of party.

"trade war"*