US Erection 12 *AND* 16 *AND* 20 *AND* 22 *AND* 24

[Per]

60 billion dollar trade deficit between the 2 countries. I would say trump has some leeway there...

So, you mean, the bigger wealthier country buys more from the smaller poorer country than vice versa?

Well, shucks darn! Who would have thought such a thing.

[Mickey107]

60 billion dollar trade deficit between the 2 countries. I would say trump has some leeway there...

So, you mean, the bigger wealthier country buys more from the smaller poorer country than vice versa?

Well, shucks darn! Who would have thought such a thing.

Sounds like China and the rest of the poor world!

[Per]

60 billion dollar trade deficit between the 2 countries. I would say trump has some leeway there...

So, you mean, the bigger wealthier country buys more from the smaller poorer country than vice versa?

Well, shucks darn! Who would have thought such a thing.

Sounds like China and the rest of the poor world!

Yeah, well, even if the US only has 300 million people, compared to the 500 million of the EU or 1.4 billion of China, in the world of economics, America is still number one.

The GDP of the USA is a little more than USD 18 trillion.
The GDP of China is a little more than USD 11 trillion.
The GDP of the European Union is somewhere between USD 16 and 18 trillion, depending on exchange rates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... _(nominal)

So, yeah, when we are talking trade, the USA is still the bigger wealthier country, even when compared with China. And you know a funny thing? People with a lot of money tend to have more money to spend than people with less money. It's not rocket science.

But here's the beauty of it; when rich nations trade with poor nations, the poor nations get richer, which means they gradually start buying more stuff from the rich countries as well. It's a win win situation.

For the past five years car sales have been higher in China than in the USA.
And guess who benefits from that.... http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-car-exp ... 1423174695

In 2014, U.S. exports to China were over ten times higher (307,425) than they were in 2009 when the United States exported 25,065 vehicles to China This has been a rapid ascent for manufacturers in the United States given that exports to China were less than 1,000 units as recently as 2003. While many international automakers established plants in China to help meet the demands of this large and growing market (the largest in the world), it is clear from these trends that there remains an interest in U.S.-made vehicles in China.

http://www.trade.gov/td/otm/assets/auto ... er2015.pdf

Because China has been able to build up a well functioning export industry, more and more Chinese are reaching a level of wealth where they can afford buying a car, and many of them prefer to buy an imported car, to show their neighbours how successful they are. A trade war with China would be disastrous for the American auto industry.

[Mickey107]

GDP is misleading. It does not differentiate between raw product and finished product.
Also; A car could be sold to a country but 80% of that car's components were actually made somewhere else.

We will never agree on this, I know.

Let's put it this way: If ever a time comes when the percentage of finished product, from one country, reaches so high a level that the rest of the world is dependent on that country to an irreversible point.

You know what time that is?

It's when you have to say: Here's the keys to the planet. We are your slaves.

[Strangelove]

Most Trump voters are fucking retards.

Yup, dey be fucking Dem retards reeeeeal good!

Right up de ole poopchute...



Listen to Dem retards squeal!!

[Island Nucklehead]

[Strangelove]

Here's a guy who gets it...

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/ ... think.html

The media is all abuzz, again, about the fact that President Trump spent some time during his televised interview with ABC anchor David Muir pointing out the large size of the crowd in photos of his inauguration. Journalists, who still don’t seem able to understand that Trump is almost always several steps ahead of them, once again are heralding the president’s seeming preoccupation with the issue.

Is the president actually so thin-skinned that he needs the world to acknowledge that a huge number of people turned out to honor him as he was sworn in? Um, no.

So what’s really going on in his mind? Here’s my opinion: Everything Donald Trump does is strategically calculated to achieve a goal. His communication is designed not to simply convey his gut feelings, but to make people focus on one thing — call it a decoy — so he can do six other things while they’re distracted.

In this case, Trump has masterfully used the media’s pathetic naiveté and desire to battle him to make them focus on a throwaway battle — his seeming obsession with crowd size (which I can almost guarantee he could not care less about) — while he determinedly does what he... does... care about: signing orders that resurrect pipeline projects, retooling our broken immigration laws, laying the groundwork for a better health care system and preparing to build the wall.

For journalists who still don’t get it, here it is, again, in direct terms: When Trump says something like “If I were you I would take your camera and look at the size of the crowd,” he is actually saying, “Let’s debate crowd size, again, because otherwise you might ask me questions about my real and historically powerful plans and ideas, which I don’t trust you to report on fairly, anyhow.”

A journalist who might even come close to Trump’s level of strategic communication should then say, “Ah, the old watch this hand while I work magic with my other one? No, we shall not linger an instant on that silly issue my colleagues in the media are focused on. Let’s sit down and talk about the pipelines, again. I don’t want to walk around and snort another line of that drug you know the media is addicted to.”

The drug, by the way, is called taking the easy path of the pithy, sensational, stupid story. And lots of journalists who get paid lots of money seem to be hopelessly hooked on it.

The rest of us, over the next 90 days or eight years, will watch Trump masterfully ignite one squabble after another that the members of the press fall all over themselves to engage in, while he remakes the world.

- Dr. Keith Ablow

Lol, stupid "journalists"...

[ukcanuck]

Here's a guy who gets it...

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/ ... think.html

The media is all abuzz, again, about the fact that President Trump spent some time during his televised interview with ABC anchor David Muir pointing out the large size of the crowd in photos of his inauguration. Journalists, who still don’t seem able to understand that Trump is almost always several steps ahead of them, once again are heralding the president’s seeming preoccupation with the issue.

Is the president actually so thin-skinned that he needs the world to acknowledge that a huge number of people turned out to honor him as he was sworn in? Um, no.

So what’s really going on in his mind? Here’s my opinion: Everything Donald Trump does is strategically calculated to achieve a goal. His communication is designed not to simply convey his gut feelings, but to make people focus on one thing — call it a decoy — so he can do six other things while they’re distracted.

In this case, Trump has masterfully used the media’s pathetic naiveté and desire to battle him to make them focus on a throwaway battle — his seeming obsession with crowd size (which I can almost guarantee he could not care less about) — while he determinedly does what he... does... care about: signing orders that resurrect pipeline projects, retooling our broken immigration laws, laying the groundwork for a better health care system and preparing to build the wall.

For journalists who still don’t get it, here it is, again, in direct terms: When Trump says something like “If I were you I would take your camera and look at the size of the crowd,” he is actually saying, “Let’s debate crowd size, again, because otherwise you might ask me questions about my real and historically powerful plans and ideas, which I don’t trust you to report on fairly, anyhow.”

A journalist who might even come close to Trump’s level of strategic communication should then say, “Ah, the old watch this hand while I work magic with my other one? No, we shall not linger an instant on that silly issue my colleagues in the media are focused on. Let’s sit down and talk about the pipelines, again. I don’t want to walk around and snort another line of that drug you know the media is addicted to.”

The drug, by the way, is called taking the easy path of the pithy, sensational, stupid story. And lots of journalists who get paid lots of money seem to be hopelessly hooked on it.

The rest of us, over the next 90 days or eight years, will watch Trump masterfully ignite one squabble after another that the members of the press fall all over themselves to engage in, while he remakes the world.

- Dr. Keith Ablow

Lol, stupid "journalists"...

I'm sure there are stupid voters who are still gloriously having a go at the inauguration attendance debate but most of the rest of the world have not missed all of the presidential orders and moves trump has made. He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. You would have to be blind deef and titanically stupid to miss it.

[Per]

So much for “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

[Topper]

All those celebrities who vowed they would leave America if Trump got in... dirtay liars!

They wintered in North Dakota

[Topper]

So much for “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

A gift from France.

Nothing wrong with slowing down the immigration process to ensure proper checks are being conducted. I had a chuckle when someone suggest that it was unconstitutional discrimination. Discrimination against who? People who are not in the US. How do they have constitutional rights?

Merkel is jealous.

[Per]

So much for “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

A gift from France.

Nothing wrong with slowing down the immigration process to ensure proper checks are being conducted. I had a chuckle when someone suggest that it was unconstitutional discrimination. Discrimination against who? People who are not in the US. How do they have constitutional rights?

Merkel is jealous.

They're not just "slowing down the immigration process" though.
They're fucking with people's lives. Real people. Real lives.

Already read about an Iraqi guy who has worked ten years for the US military in Iraq, now he is moving to the USA, all papers in order, arrives at JFK and is told to take the next flight back to Iraq... and an Iranian girl studying at UCLA who went home to see her parents; now they won't let her back into the USA, where she lives!

Must be thousands of cases like that. You can't change the rules overnight.
At least not in a civilised country, adhering to the concept of rule of law.

If you stop issuing visas is one thing. But people who have applied for visas, have been granted visas, have all papers in order, and have already landed on American soil...? Sheesh! I consider that a breach of contract.

[Per]

Merkel is jealous.

Not really. She is concerned though.

As has been pointed out, the root cause of the European refugee crisis is the US invasion of Iraq, that destabilised the entire region. Most of the ISIS military leadership are former Iraqi officers that became unemployed after the US decided to dissolve the Iraqi armed forces. Yet the US shows no interest in trying to assist those whose lives were wrecked as a result of the mess they created.

Anyone else feeling the world is upside down when Germany stands up for human rights, while the US is ruled by a guy who is all about putting the nation first, frowning at international treaties and wanting to rid the country of a religios minority with roots in the Middle East?

[Per]

I had a chuckle when someone suggest that it was unconstitutional discrimination. Discrimination against who? People who are not in the US. How do they have constitutional rights?

To a varying degree. A number of people who were denied entry to the US after Trump signed that executive order are residents of the USA, and as such have almost the same rights as US citizens. Just heard of a woman who has lived in the US for seven years who was denied entry returning from a one week vacation abroad. Her dog is with a dog sitter, her car is in the airport parking lot. Seriously. WtF?

As I said before, restricting visas is absolutely a lawfull option, but denying people who have all their papers in order entry based on nothing more than their place of birth cannot be right. Especially when we are talking about people holding green cards or student visas and who already live in the US. That is unconstitutional.

[Strangelove]

I had a chuckle when someone suggest that it was unconstitutional discrimination. Discrimination against who? People who are not in the US. How do they have constitutional rights?

To a varying degree. A number of people who were denied entry to the US after Trump signed that executive order are residents of the USA, and as such have almost the same rights as US citizens.

Just heard of a woman who has lived in the US for seven years who was denied entry returning from a one week vacation abroad. Her dog is with a dog sitter, her car is in the airport parking lot. Seriously. WtF?

Right so... deport the dog and confiscate the car?

As I said before, restricting visas is absolutely a lawfull option, but denying people who have all their papers in order entry based on nothing more than their place of birth cannot be right. Especially when we are talking about people holding green cards or student visas and who already live in the US. That is unconstitutional.

Wrong.

http://www.vox.com/world/2016/11/10/135 ... muslim-ban

Candidate Trump was never particularly specific on the policy details of how the Muslim ban would work. But with President-elect Trump set to take office in January, and his pledge to implement the ban on day one now about to be put to the test, the question looms: Will he be able to do it, and if so, how? I put that to several experts on US immigration law. Their answer was unanimous: Trump would be able to implement his ban. In fact, he would be able to do it easily. Congress has already granted wide power to the president to alter immigration rules, so he will not need congressional approval. If the ban is designed properly, it is virtually guaranteed to survive court challenges from liberal advocacy groups determined to derail it.

In 1952, Congress passed something called the Immigration and Nationality Act. It has been amended dozens of times subsequently, and currently exists as a 600-page behemoth with lots of very specific rules.

There is one section, 212(f), that is particularly relevant to the Muslim ban. It sets out criteria for “excludable aliens” — which noncitizens the president can choose, using executive powers, to prevent from entering the United States.

Its wording is exceptionally broad: Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Translated from legalese: The president can ban whoever he wants, however long he wants, for whatever reason he wants.

^ that was from a fact-checking liberal site during the election.

Trump is abiding by the law.

Now, I believe his political opponents could try to change the law

... act of Congress requiring 2/3 majority?

(don't care enough to look it up... and can't see it happening anyway)

But you said The Donald was breaking the law... that is false/wrong/untrue.