The Whitehouse web site has posted Presidential Memorandum Regarding Withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Agreement.

It is the policy of my Administration to represent the American people and their financial well-being in all negotations, particularly the American worker, and to create fair and economically beneficial trade deals that serve their interests. Additionally, in order to ensure these outcomes, it is the intention of my Administration to deal directly with individual countries on a one-on-one (or bilateral) basis in negotiating future trade deals. Trade with other nations is, and always will be, of paramount importance to my Administration and to me, as President of the United States.

While listening to various pundits from left and right tell you what President Trump thinks about trade, you might want to read his own words. I am not saying you have to believe his words, but you might find it amusing that what the pundits say he means is not very close to what he has said.

The dog whistle politics that many of the pundits accuse Trump of may be figments of their defective hearing. Only time will tell if some of the crap is coming from Trump’s mouth or some of it is in between the ears of some of the listeners.

The New York Times (that purveyor of truly fake news) has the article Trump Abandons Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s Signature Trade Deal.

President Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday, pulling away from Asia and scrapping his predecessor’s most significant trade deal on his first full weekday in office, administration officials said.

In a discussion about whether or not the Republicans were going to kill TPP anyway, I gave my opinion.

The trouble with the Republicans was that they opposed all the good things Obama proposed. It was very risky to have to depend on them to oppose the bad things, too. Luckily the Republicans were so spiteful that they did save us from Obama’s grand bargain on entitlements and austerity. The TPP was just too good for business to have to depend on the Republicans’ killing it outside of an election season.

Don’t think business won’t keep trying. We have to depend on Trump to keep us safe. Can you imagine anyone saying that, least of all me?

People used to argue against my attitude of wanting to kill TPP that was meant to be Obama’s legacy trade deal. I always said that this was the worst legacy he could leave, and we would be doing him a favor by preventing this from being his legacy. So I guess you could say that Trump saved Obama’s legacy.

YouTube has the video L. Randall Wray – Modern Money Theory: Intellectual Origins and Policy Implications.

I am fascinated by this introduction to a topic that I have been learning for the last few years.

Despite my having read his book and having read many articles about MMT (Modern Money Theory), the first 15 minutes or so of this talk has clarified a number of issues for me. Until recently, I have rebelled against the MMT notion that taxes that must be paid in the currency of the country is what gives that currency its value. I always use China’s huge reserves of US dollars as an example of an entity that does not have to pay U.S. taxes anywhere near the extent of the dollars they have accumulated.

This is the first time I have heard the nuance that the payment of taxes is a sufficient reason for currency having a value, but it may not be necessary. He had already explained why a country like China would want to accumulate a huge stock of a currency beyond what it needs to pay taxes. (I suppose his explanation can be taken as an indication that George Soros’ bond investment strategy may also be a great driver of the dollar’s value.)

I don’t have time right now to listen to the 90 minutes left in this talk, but I anxiously look forward to when I will have time. This is one of my motivations for putting this on my blog. I won’t lose track of where to find the video to listen to the rest.

January 24, 2017

I have listened to the rest of the talk, and I was not disappointed. Wray answered so many of the questions about MMT that I still had. His discussions of the implications for policy were also very enlightening. Of course, you have to be able to take in what he is explaining and digest it. If you just cannot get the information to pass by the filters you have erroneously built up, then the talk will be useless to you. Come back at a later time when you are willing to listen.