Economic concerns

Bullsh!t!

You're either lying or you're not very educated.

The president has little to no control over the price of tea in Chinatown or Poughkeepsie or Des Moines, etc.... The Federal Reserve* is an independent institution (free from presidential influence beyond nominations to fill empty seats and direct partisan politics) which has the greatest impact on monetary policies of the US (indirectly creating inflation or deflation in food markets).

He still can create pricing problems for the domestic population by starting trade feuds/battles with other countries and initiating poorly thought out tariffs on imported goods.

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Let me suggest that you learn up on the Consumer Price Index or any high school level of basic economics before spouting out under or uneducated nonsense.

The marketplace decides the price for items, the government decides the rules for the marketplace. For your example, the government can put in policies that restrict the export of apples. Since there are now far fewer customers for apples and the same supply, the price for apples crash. This is the market response to the change in the rule. This is what is happening to soy beans right now because of the trade war with China. Now you can get apples on the cheap so you are seeing a gain in your buying power, but apple farmers are going out of business, not buying equipment, defaulting on loans, etc. All the people who sell to farmers are getting hurt to as their business is drying up. In this example, prices of apples going down might feel like something good to you but is actually bad for the farm economy.

Trade policy creates winners and losers, the trick is to create more of the former than the later. If the price of apples has been stable, it just means no one has upset the apple cart yet.

If he can affect domestic prices how likely do you think those will happen regarding wars? How concerned are you?

I don’t know a whole lot about economics or politics but how concerned are you with prices being affected?

Considering I don’t know politics much how long have we had trade war and soybean problems as a result?

So on that note home based products like salmon are less likely to be affected than let’s say Japanese rice?

No, home based products(again, soybeans) can be dramatically influenced by trade policy since we live in an international market where we both import and export goods and often import raw materials for our own manufacturing processes. Here is the chart of soybean prices over the last two years.



The current administration has been toying with tariffs on cars and car parts. Should those go into effect, the impact has been estimated as between $1,400 and $7,000 on the price of each car. Tariffs on steel mean more profit for US steel companies, but less profit for people who buy steel. There have been some high profile stories about this including the US's largest nail manufacturer who was being driven out of business by steel tariffs. Steel is a good example of the market reacting to government regulations. The tariffs are on foreign steel, but because foreign steel is more expensive, US manufacturers will raise their prices even though their costs haven't gone up, resulting in more profits.

So I kind of had to glance but will read later since I have to clock in right now but to make sure I understand right: you’re not concerned on trump and the higher ups affecting food prices? You’re not even too concerned on foreign food like Japanese rice are you?

I'm concerned about the entire economy. The US is a food exporter, so tariffs will send food costs down, but it will significantly impact US farmers and close foreign markets to US goods which will be a long term negative impact on our economy. Tariffs are generally bad for our economy and will hurt people lower on the income scale the most, but if you are just worried about food prices you should be good in the near future.

So by near future (please bear with me since this is a rather new area) you mean like the next 2 years?

Sure. As farmers are driven out of business, the supply will drop down towards the reduced demand and prices will even out again, just with a lot fewer jobs.

A deflationary economy would be the ideal. In an economy where prices gradually go down, there is an incentive to save money because your savings grow in value through time instead of evaporating as is the case with inflation. Yes, deflation means you make less and less money over time, but because prices are going down you don't need to make as much money.

Boycotts against US agricultural exports are not an automatic byproduct of tariffs. They are the result of national governments and foreign markets choosing to boycott US industries to retaliate for the tariffs.

It is ironic, because really what the tariffs do is promote trade in smaller/lighter products, which would be much better for the environment and climate. E.g. if the trend in scooter- and bicycle- sharing would expand and automobile ownership shrink, the tariffs on scooters and bikes would be much lower than cars because of the lower weight.

It is clear that the world wants to sell cars and car parts in the US and they are retaliating against US farmers and their own consumers by rejecting food imports from the US. If they took their own Paris accord seriously, they would jump at the chance to reduce volumes of goods traded, especially cars and car parts, and embrace lighter, more efficient products instead.

Well on that note how scared are you of food prices being affected for the worse?

There's no way to predict it. There is a huge glut in soybeans right now, for example, so theoretically any increase in food prices could be counteracted by bringing more soy into markets in various ways.

But, on the other hand, if soy and other food commodities are allowed to spoil, there will be shortages, which will drive food prices up due to scarcity.

However, because various player recognize the possibility of prices going up in the future, they invest in being prepared to sell at those high prices, and that keeps the prices in check.

So if you're trying to speculate on price-changes, I don't think it's really possible. If anything, you should look at what kind of information is being circulated for the sake of manipulating markets and attempt to stay one step ahead of that, but of course everyone else is doing the same, so you can never really know whether you are ahead of the game or behind it, I think.