The Realities Of Trump's Trade War | VICE on HBO

[Applause] [Music] this week on Vice the winners and the losers in Trump's trade war we opened our country to their goods but they put up massive barriers and that's not free trade that's stupid trade do you think that in policies kind of why you have a job to that I know it is wish I could meet him would you say thank you lucky man tells me personally he's a free trader I believe him I don't know it's to scare me yes he scares me oh he scares me all the time [Music] President Trump campaign done promised to help American workers by renegotiating global trade deals we lose a fortune on trade the United States loses with everybody I don't mind trade was well we're losing fifty eight billion dollars a year you want to know the truth we're losing so much he said the US was being cheated and promised that with his bargaining skills he could negotiate better deals then in march he followed through on this rhetoric by slapping tariffs on imported steel and now we're finally taking action to correct this long overdue problem it was the first step what could develop into a global trade war trump sending shockwaves through Washington and around the world le repas senator al aluminous to give commercial not a clue Ohia the Gulf is achievable to commence mobile hey Michael Monaghan traveled the country to see how Trump's moves are affecting people on both sides of the tariffs [Music] [Applause] [Music] one issue since Donald Trump entered the political arena that he's been consistent on and that's the issue of trade this aluminum plant shut its doors in 2016 and 800 people lost their jobs but now two years later they're hiring again and they're citing Donald Trump's trade policy as the reason why how many of you guys worked here and lost your jobs in 2016 everyone and all of you were rehired yes so I assume all of you support the president's policy with regard to aluminum military yeah that phrase means something to you no sir ratings a lot and we can support ourselves without dependent on other metrics it wasn't working out too well in 2016 for us and he got elected and now it's working out for so these are my biological families took me guys out there it's my family - what was that feeling like and you walked out of here for that last time lost it when you're walking out you're faking this ain't happenin you know I know why the president can say to bring industry back and bring jobs back and bring factories back yeah did you believe him I was putting all my eggs in his basket and I was saying come on boy get her done man he done exactly what he said he was gonna do you you think that his policies are kind of why you have a job today I know what is you know it is yeah I wouldn't have his job of if it didn't happen wish I could meet him I'd give him the go hug you know what would you say tell him keep on keep on doing what you doing boy you're doing a fine job President Roh Thank You Bubba man we lock he goes oh oh yeah oh yeah he wears a head around and says Michael America great again I mean he's really old enough to you had an only easy wearing it around his dinner [Music] for both steel and aluminum workers the tariffs are undoubtedly working by raising the price of imports the tariffs have made these industries more competitive but while Trump's policy might save these jobs critics contend they'll kill jobs and other sectors I hope the president doesn't really do this because if he does it's gonna it's just gonna be a huge tax on American citizens and start a trade war that would hit the wallets of American consumers the cost of your flat-screen TVs are going up the cost of your medical devices are going up the administration fired back at its critics the downstream effects of steel and aluminum tariffs are insignificant coca-cola has three cents worth of aluminum in it so if that goes up ten percent that's three tenths of the Sentry gonna back down on the tariff no we're not backing down tariff proponents accused China whose industries are propped up by the state and have significantly lower labor costs of dumping cheap steel and aluminum on the US market causing prices to fall enforcing American companies out of business one company that raised this issue with century aluminum which strenuously lobbied the Trump administration to tariffs its foreign competitors since the tariffs went into effect centuries ramped up production instead of plans to hire 300 new employees Century CEO Mike Blessed claims that Chinese dumping nearly destroyed the domestic aluminum industry the excess production that was going on in the world a lot of the driven from China tipped over the market right then you had millions and millions and millions of tons that was sitting in warehouses all around the world because it had no place else to go and market participants looked at that and said that's a recipe for disaster and the aluminum price crashed by 40 percent on that basis at one point both ourselves and our peers had it announced that they were we were closing the entire industry the industry was gonna go 100% of those smelters had been announced for closure 85 percent of the demand in this country for primary aluminum is now imports do we want to go to a hundred percent is that in the interest this is just leveling the playing field all it is it's actually the ricochet effects of this that are so troubling soybeans produced around here right yep we export almost most of our soybeans to China instead tariffs gonna come in on that look we can't comment on the broader aspects of this people you do acknowledge that broader aspects do exist they exist all we can say is that this problem was acute and finally we have an administration willing to stand up and do something about it so your job is to save jobs in your industry absolutely it's above our pay grade to worry about whether there will be impacts in some of these other industries or not as expected China responded by initially slapping tariffs on fifty billion dollars worth of American products on the top of that list soybeans we spoke with Iowa soybean farmer Dave Walton as he prepared for another planting season China by Jesus Libyans grown in Iowa so it's one of the largest exports from the u.s. to China and it's one of the biggest green imports into China so from their perspective is a natural place to start so they're retaliating by going after your business correct you know you walk up to the biggest guy and the bar punch him in the nose step back and see how he reacts and they're gonna punch you back they're gonna say all right we're gonna put put tariffs on this Beijing imported almost thirteen billion dollars worth of soybeans from American farmers in 2017 with China promising at 25 percent retaliatory tariffs Walton will have to search for new markets for one of his staple products what's a good wage for somebody right on the farm like this on an average year you're probably doing 50 60 that's about what we expect to make this year if as tariffs go through the code could go to zero the Trump administration announced tariffs on another two hundred billion dollars worth of Chinese products baba you got into G of Gua see another City Island by G shop predictably China vowed to retaliate don't you believe sushi club actually so that's okay bees ants has you saw you'll be all too sure but it wasn't just China that Trump targeted to the surprise of even his own supporters in Congress the White House announced potential tariffs on America's closest allies the European Union is brutal to the United States they don't take and they understand that they know it they when I'm telling them they're smiling at me you know it's like the the gig is up in response even America's docile northern neighbor threatened to tear up hundreds of American goods it is not something we relish doing but it is something that we absolutely will do with his Canadians polite were reasonable but we also will not be pushed around because of the retaliatory tariffs being threatened by both China and America's allies the list of potentially affected American industries kept growing the estimates vary but all projections come to the same dark conclusion tariffs could significantly increase the price of both domestic and foreign goods and lead to significant job loss economist Laura Tyson was the chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and along with over 1,100 other economists from both the right and left she signed a public letter decrying Trump's trade policy so you signed a letter along with over a thousand on the yes I think 1516 Nobel laureates we essentially quoted the letter from about a thousand economist in 1930 against smoot-hawley their warnings were exactly these warnings you will cause higher prices you will encourage retaliation you will slow down global trade and that will be a negative for growth and a negative for employment you'll create some possible winners the protected but a whole bunch of losers we're talking to China we had a three hundred and seventy-five billion dollar trade deficit that's not good when he benchers whether trade is unfair or not he frequently just looks at the size of the imports and says oh well we import a lot more from them than we export to them that must be unfair trade deficit that's a trade deficit it's unfair and that balanced trade is what you should have no trade is at the end of the day mutually beneficial we need them they need us the jobs that he says we lost through trade and that we can bring back through protection our jobs we actually lost through automation so we have a manufacturing sector that today is producing twice as much as 1984 but we're the third reduction of the workforce we don't need that people anymore to produce that output because we have much more sophisticated ways of doing it through technology China exploiting us or that's unfair trade or that's all an import from China it just is not the case the Trump is wagering that thousands of economists are wrong and that America can tariff its way to a healthy manufacturing sector and he singled out one emblematical American product that he thinks should be made in the USA we're gonna have Apple start to make their iPhones and their computers and everything else they make in this country not in China but is it even possible for one country to produce a cell phone I think people have this feeling that there is a factory there's a building and all the other like raw material flows into one side of the building and that iPhone comes out the other side and it just doesn't work that way we visited Kyle Wiens whose company I fix it teaches customers how to hack their electronics to see what it would take to bring iPhone production to the US all right so this iPhone screen the LCD was made by sharp in Japan the infamous battery I'm reasonably confident that this was made in China if there was one thing that we wanted to bring home I think would be a relatively easy thing to start making batteries in the US so a bit of advice for Donald Trump he likes Tesla he loves coal to be that cool the headphone speaker same story this is the back panel of the phone this is made in China the pile is stuff in China thus proving Donald Trump's point that they're eating our lunch the rear facing camera made by Sony in Japan a dialogue semiconductor part designed in Germany this is a baseband amplifier then this is made by DDK getting crowded in Taiwan the antenna is the power of the iPhone our company out of Massachusetts called Skype works but they do manufacture parts of Mexico the a10 processor it's based on IP to Apple license from the uk-based company Apple's design team is actually in Israel it is manufactured in Taiwan but there is RAM inside it that was made in Korea it's really really hard to make my friend absolutely but even if all iPhone component manufacturing was brought to the United States the over 50 elements needed to make those components are sourced from around the globe thinking that tariffs are in the magical tool that is bringing the entire supply chain the entire ecosystem of the United States is a task that's larger than even Apple could accomplish the expansion of global trade has helped move a billion people out of extreme poverty since 1990 there's a near unanimity amongst economists that the benefits of trade far outweigh the drawbacks and it's an opinion held by many of those advising President Trauma art Laffer is a conservative icon the free trading free-market loving economist was one of the architects of Reagan's tax cuts and is the Godfather of trickle-down economics the trade deficit is most wonderful thing in the world its foreign capital coming in which is used to employ Americans the silliest thing I can think of is trying to get rid of the trade deficit of the US you talk to the president why do you not explain this to him I do but why is he he's out banging on about the trade deficit all the time people listen to a message they make their own decision he's the president and I'm not but he's wrong about it I don't know that to be true Trump tells me personally he's a free trader I believe him I see no reason to doubt that he's trying to get their attention bang so we really get true free trade I believe now is to scare me yes he scares it all he scares me all the time you tell him mr. president this rhetoric yes I understand what you're doing but it scares me yes of course I do what why not I am terrified of a trade war protectionism is a killer and it kills your industries that are protected and it kills your economy do I think we should be in a trade war and treat China like an enemy no I think China is America's best friend I love China without China there is no a Walmart and without Walmart there is no middle class or lower class prosperity in America they're just plain isn't but do I believe he knows what he's doing yeah he's amazing how is it that you are supporting the president right now rhetoric is rhetoric is the one thing he's been consistent on for 30 years I may be wrong in that I may be misjudging him he may want to go to war and he may think he could win a trade where I don't believe he does your hope is that Donald Trump doesn't believe what he says I want to make sure you understand that to take Donald Trump literally is I think a huge mistake do you take my view of Trump on trade seriously in the Senate I take it seriously I don't know if I groove that's fair I don't know if I agree with me either the problem is global leaders are taking him literally after the initial announcement to tariffs steel and aluminum imports the White has quickly exempted Canada Mexico and the EU but in June Trump stunned America's allies allowing those exemptions to expire and opening up multiple new fronts in the trade war I think the European Union is a foe what they do to us in trade and now you wouldn't think of the European Union but they're a foe since January Global tariff threats have expanded from 18 products worth roughly four billion dollars to a staggering ten thousand products worth almost four hundred billion dollars and the list keeps growing and when Trump threatened to add European cars to that list the EU came to the negotiating table so we're starting the negotiation right now but we know very much where it's going agreeing to a temporary ceasefire and further negotiations the Trump was under increasing political pressure at home and from members of his own party it's a bad deal all the way around back to the taxpayers horrible for farmers tariffs always hurt us in 2016 Tennessee senator bob Corker was on trump's shortlist to be vice president but corporate support his fellow Republican wasn't unconditional inappropriate just to be willy-nilly throwing tariffs around and changing your mind and that's not the way you deal with economic issues like that massive amounts of foreign direct investment has created more jobs in Tennessee than in any other state one of the largest foreign employers in the state is Volkswagen whose plant in Chattanooga created 3,000 jobs one of the senator one of my first calls was to Volkswagen and we ultimately were able to attract them here that was a fairly big achievement oh you have no idea I mean for Volkswagen to finally announce was no doubt the most emotionally impactful thing that's half I mean you seem slightly emotional emotional about it now yeah and you have a president of your own party who whose policies might impact these people's lives yeah I think there's some 157 thousand jobs potentially in Tennessee that might be effective that's a lot of jobs why we would consider penalizing people who are helping create American jobs is beyond me the current policies of the current administration how would that impact this point well some of the parts come from Japan some of the parts come from Europe some of the parts coming from from Mexico so the Bice of automobiles that are being produced here it will go up it will make them less competitive all of these things are very price-sensitive and that means they'll be less demand and what it will do is put Americans out of work what are you proposing it's very simple we're saying you've got to come to Congress after you negotiate the tariff so that we can approve it because again it's an abuse of his authorities corker introduced a bipartisan bill that would give Congress limited oversight of Trump's trade policy he claims it stalled due to White House pressure the United States senators that are elected by the people in their state don't want to cast a tough load we can't vote on the corker amendment because we'd be upsetting the president I can't believe it I think intellectually there would be fifty-one Republican senators that would agree that this is not coherent I would literally but politically the issue is that you've got a very popular president in the Republican base and challenging that currently with midterm elections coming up it's not something many of them want to do but it's something politicians from across the aisle are happy to do especially those representing areas that will be hardest hit the majority of nails that are manufactured in this country come from a company called Mid Continent nail corporation in Poplar Bluff Missouri Mid Continent nail corporation an economic engine in an economically depressed community has in the past five years doubled in size but since the tariffs went into effect they've laid off 60 people with more layoffs possible in the months since the implementation of the tariffs midcontinent has lost 70% of its business and are using everything in their power including calling on the media and calling on their Senator Claire McCaskill and they're hoping that can save them tell me about how long you guys think you have until you've got to lay off more hopefully we don't have to make any more cuts we just need relief as quick as possible because every day it's a financial burden on our parent company for years midcontinent font Chinese metal dumping with lawsuits it's now reduced to begging the government for an exclusion from the new tariffs this is a three alarm fire for jobs in our state a good family company bought this facility and there is absolutely no reason that they should be forced to lay people off or to go out of business because of tariffs that have been applied in a way they're gonna do more damage then they're gonna do good [Music] traditionally the people who take a shower after work rather than before work that has been the soul of our party we lost credibility with those folks and shame on us many of these people probably have never voted for me and maybe they never will that's not why I'm here we say to those voters in your own state that see president Trump as the answer to these problems he clearly thinks this is a quote unquote winner and if this is winning but it doesn't feel like winning to these folks an hour from here is an aluminum smelter that we visited last month who are hiring a lot of people and they love these tariffs and you represent them too if we save 300 400 500 jobs up the road and we lose five six ten thousand jobs in Missouri I'm not sure that overall that's a good thing [Music] you're at 60% capacity now right today we are yes our problem is next month our order file is so low that it will be significantly less than that what happened in two weeks I thought wouldn't happen for two months why does it happen sometimes because the customer that buys our products literally could not take the 19 percent tariff surcharge that we had to apply to the invoice on top of the price that they were already paying us for amazing us a product so we really have been in crisis management mode for the last three and a half week 80% of this Missouri County voted for Trump including every employee we spoke with what would happen if your job lilacs I have no idea you voted for me yeah you voted for them knowing this kind of trade policy might affect you right I didn't think about our raw material this is a terrible policy then for you I'm not apologetic is the terrorist I am for fair trade do I think we ought to give the man a chance I think so does it suck yeah it sucks I just read in the paper yesterday that there was a place up in cape girardeau laid off some people because we quit buying their product that's the ripple effects of this yeah what happens if this entire plant closes down where do you go four years ago midcontinent opened a second factory across the road to meet growing demand that now stands empty housing dusty machines and unsold product this is the paper tape plant that we shut down two weeks ago one little action you know made by our own government you know overnight turned our business to a point to where it's what you see today we're standing inside of a shuttered plant that two weeks ago every machine in here running and now today you know lights off and nothing going on there is a real possibility that the plant could shut down if these tariffs stay the way they are right I mean you can answer that so that salt is that a possibility of course it's a possibility we're very fortunate that the owners of this company owned a large large business that allows them to make a long-term call on this we don't see the tariffs lasting you know forever if we were a public company we might have already shut it out there's gonna be lots of other companies our size that are gonna have the same kind of problem the economy is healthy unemployment is at its lowest level since 1969 I am thrilled to announce that in the second quarter of this year the United States economy grew at the amazing rate of 4.1% [Music] but there's near consensus amongst economists that this prosperity is under grave threat and did President Trump with the stroke of a pen could potentially cripple the American economy it's easy to rip stuff up and throw bombs that takes no work at all but I know for sure and they are making it up as they go along I don't think anybody really quite believed we would be at this place right now but we're here he basically threatens we are such a big economy we're the bully we're the bully okay we're the big economy you guys need us it's easy for us to win trade wars because we're us I feel very comfortable with Donald Trump's rhetoric and with what he has done so far now can you get me to agree a year from now after he causes the Great Depression yes you can get me to be opposed to it but right now I just don't see that in him just stick with us don't believe that crap you see from these people to fake news [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 2,701,208

Rating: 4.2826314 out of 5

Keywords: trade war explained, Trump's trade war, VICE on HBO, vice on HBO 2018, magnitude 7 metals hbo, trade war, vice news 2018, VICE News Tonight, VICE News, vice news documentaries 2018, china us trade war, news, vice on HBO season 6, michael moynihan, happening now, derrick cummins, magnitude 7 metals, vice news documentaries, tim cook, apple usa, apple china factory, apple china, vice full episode, vice on HBO full episode free, us china trade, trade war huawei

Id: 9wjjQ55S4Nc

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ComradeBlackBear]

keep watching...

"One little action, made by our own government "

still trying to make it sound like the GOVERNMENT did it, and not ONE MAN

[u/bnutbutter78]

That guy wouldn’t admit he made a mistake voting for trump. He’s literally going to be unemployed by the man he voted for, but says we should “give the man a chance”?

[u/BiggestOfBosses]

Eye opening, thanks for this