Download the Handbook of Methods at https://www.bls.gov/cpi/ and you'll get your basket in excruciating detail. You may be a curmudgeon who lives in the house you bought in '72, drives your 95 Chevy to the diner every day, and stopped buying new clothes 20 years ago...and believes everyone should be just like you. Since you (or this mythical food/fuel/shelter guy) aren't representative of the vast majority of people who make up our economy, the people who buy $550B worth of stuff made in China every year, your antecdotal view of your own little world is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
US declares China currency manipulator
- Thread starter Cuddles
- Start date
You asked for a basket, I gave it to you. And pointed out that you may very well not be representative of the U.S. economy. You don't have to like the truth, that doesn't make it any less true.
Really? Then why are Walmart and Amazon doing so fantastically well? 70-80% (perhaps a lot more) of their entire product turnover is cheap Chinese products. Check your own home for a minute, any products you see at home that don't have Chinese products in them? Have you seen the most recent credit card debt, mortgage debt, and household savings of the middle class in America? Are you seriously saying you do not see problems when you increase Chinese products by even 10-20% for end-consumers? The reason consumers did not suffer much so far is that tariffs have not been passed on to consumers yet. Chinese manufacturers and middlemen are swallowing those tariffs for the time being.
...because you invested in Chinese products already. You would not be able to work and earn and hence pay your American rent without Chinese umbrella, Chinese shoes, Chinese headset, Chinese computer, Chinese mobile phone. You can't just look at your current spending, you need to amortize all your products over future months as well as the replacement costs of upgrades/updates.
Yes, this final round of tariffs is going to affect everyone. They saved the consumer-intensive stuff for last.
Then it comes down to word definition. As long as the Fed makes independent policy decisions from the administration in my book they "exercise their mandate", given to them by congress. "Manipulating" is an action that does not pursue an external mandate but pursues a self-serving purpose. So, every time the Fed changes interest rates they are not manipulating anyone or anything but they make the best decision given limited information in order to fulfill their mandate. Yes, I would love if you could reference Fed minutes where rates were set primarily as a function of the balance/imbalance of trade. That is clearly not within their mandate and I would agree that this would amount to "currency manipulation".
Your wife is chinese, the discounted hookers you bang are chinese, and i actually think you are chinese