In September of 2015 we shared one of the overarching reasons why CTH would support Donald Trump for President. – SEE HERE –  This week, the sentiment behind that reasoning showed up in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum; we could not be more proud.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (Wednesday), Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (Thursday) and U.S. President Donald Trump (Friday), collectively outlined how our new U.S. trade and economic policy would engage with the world.

Many media voices (narrative engineers) will, and have, continue to obfuscate, spin, and make predictive declarations about U.S. economic policies based on their ideological views of what President Trump could do, should do, or will do.  They will try to convince the  American electorate of POTUS Trump’s forward plans.  Most of what they declare is false.

In case you missed it, and if you want to know what the accurate compass heading is, skip the media and allow yourselves to rely on the direct message as delivered. You’ll avoid a great deal of heartburn.

The MAGA economic policy explanation begins with trade, Wilbur Ross:

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The MAGA economic policy explanation is enhanced by finance, Steven Mnuchin:

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The America-First economic policy is wrapped up by President Trump (transcript here):

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[…] America is roaring back, and now is the time to invest in the future of America. We have dramatically cut taxes to make America competitive. We are eliminating burdensome regulations at a record pace. We are reforming the bureaucracy to make it lean, responsive, and accountable. And we are ensuring our laws are enforced fairly.

We have the best colleges and universities in the world, and we have the best workers in the world. Energy is abundant and affordable. There has never been a better time to come to America.

[…]  In rebuilding America, we are also fully committed to developing our workforce. We are lifting people from dependence to independence, because we know the single best anti-poverty program is a very simple and very beautiful paycheck.

To be successful, it is not enough to invest in our economy. We must invest in our people. When people are forgotten, the world becomes fractured. Only by hearing and responding to the voices of the forgotten can we create a bright future that is truly shared by all.

The nation’s greatness is more than the sum of its production. A nation’s greatness is the sum of its citizens: the values, pride, love, devotion, and character of the people who call that nation home.

[…] Each of you has the power to change hearts, transform lives, and shape your countries’ destinies. With this power comes an obligation, however — a duty of loyalty to the people, workers, and customers who have made you who you are.

So together, let us resolve to use our power, our resources, and our voices, not just for ourselves, but for our people — to lift their burdens, to raise their hopes, and to empower their dreams; to protect their families, their communities, their histories, and their futures.

That’s what we’re doing in America, and the results are totally unmistakable. It’s why new businesses and investment are flooding in. It’s why our unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in so many decades. It’s why America’s future has never been brighter.

Today, I am inviting all of you to become part of this incredible future we are building together.

Thank you to our hosts, thank you to the leaders and innovators in the audience. But most importantly, thank you to all of the hardworking men and women who do their duty each and every day, making this a better world for everyone.

Together, let us send our love and our gratitude to make them, because they really make our countries run. They make our countries great.

Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you very much. (link)

As shared in September of 2015:  Why do I support Donald Trump…

… because he says: “Make America Great Again”! And when Trump says that I hear:

Someone who gives a damn about America, without apology; which is more valuable to me than a perfected highly-rehearsed skill set of 30 second sound bites and white paper policy instructions.

From my perspective any average hard-working American could eat every one of these pinky ring candidates’ lunches, all of them; and if they want to go down the intellectual superiority path… well, that stuff is useless.

• Florida Power and Light won the prestigious International Edward Demming award for excellence in multi-platform engineering and efficiency superiority. They didn’t blow every PhD intellectual out of the water with slide rules, CAD programs and engineering acumen. They did it with hard hats and dirty fingernails.

Because they lost the award, the Japanese spent 6 months studying FPL and later published a 1,000 page dissertation essentially saying FPL “wasn’t really good, they were just lucky”….. FPL field leadership laughed, took out markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: “WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY”….

• When every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein, they said it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart their oil pumping industry. The Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 10 months.

We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.

• When the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground, they said no-one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved everyone of them….

That’s our America.

• When a half-breed Islamic whack job, armed with an AK-47 and a goal to meet his seven virgins, began opening fire on a train in France, the Americans on board didn’t run to the nearest safe room and hide themselves amid baguettes and brie. They said “let’s go”, and beat the stuffing out of that little nut with a death wish.

Legion d’Honneur or not, that’s us. That’s just how we roll.

Lady Liberty can stroll along the Champs-Elysées with a swagger befitting Mae West because without her arrival they’d be speaking German in the Louvre. Yet for the better part of the past decade a group of intellectual something-or-others have been teaching an insufferable storyline that it’s better to be sitting around a campfire eating sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other.

Enough.

When I hear Donald Trump say “Let’s Make America Great Again”, I also hear the familiar echo “cowboy up” people.

It’s high time we stop being embarrassed about our exceptional nature, and start being proud of it again. Because when it matters most, when it really counts, when it’s really needed, there’s a whole bunch of people all around this world of ours that are mighty happy when swagger walks in to solve their problems.

Yeah, “let’s make America great again”. Swagger on !

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Round six of NAFTA renegotiation talks continue today as Canada and Mexico claim cautious optimism that a round seven will take place.  This round of talks is scheduled to continue through Monday and end with a much anticipated a joint press conference between Ildefonso Guajardo (Mex), Chrystia Freeland (Can) and U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer.   There were seven rounds initially scheduled.

Canada and Mexico are trying to close less important, and less controversial, trade chapters in an effort to give the illusion of progress and frame a political narrative that lends itself toward continuing to talk; ie. round seven.

However, if there’s no significant progress on the larger issues it’s doubtful Lighthizer will find value in endless words that amount to nothing.

Canada and Mexico have been lobbying U.S. politicians hard to retain their parasitic trade positions.  Additionally, a significant number of Washington DC politicians are willing to take massive bribes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists and support the export of American economic jobs and wealth.   This is another key UniParty indulgence issue.

Big Corporate Agriculture (Big AG), the consortium of massive multinational agriculture companies who hold stakes in the entire continent, are pushing hard to keep their “controlled market” dominance in place, and is attempting to stoke fears using false claims about farms and negative trade impacts to farmers.  Pure nonsense.

The three major sticking points remain (there are more, but these are the best known):

1) Rules of Origin; 2) Conflict Resolution; and 3) Sunset Provisions for renegotiation.

• Rules of Origin – Team U.S.A. wants car North American auto manufacturers to use at least 60% parts from within North America.
• Team CanaMex wants to use fully assembled auto parts from China and Asia to assemble cars in Mexico and Canada and sell them as American made automobiles.

• Conflict Resolution.  Team U.S.A. wants an independent panel to deal with trade disputes, comprised of officials in relationship to the size of each economy.
• Team CanaMex (the parasites) want to be able to override any U.S. objections to their manufacturing outcomes.  They demand equality in voting. The U.S. is the host.

• Sunset:  Team U.S.A. wants the NAFTA agreement revisited, reviewed and renegotiated if needed, every five years. Some manufacturing sectors entirely change.  [Example e-Commerce didn’t even exist when NAFTA was created, 25 years ago.]
• Team CanaMex says no way.  Whatever final trade deal is decided, is put upon the U.S. to deal with forever regardless of any changes in any sector.

It’s all smoke and mirrors at this point.  Hopefully, Lighthizer will show up on Monday and simply say ‘enough, we’re done’.

End NAFTA and do bi-lateral trade deals where the size and scale of the U.S. market -our leverage- determines a more favorable outcome for the U.S. against both Canada and Mexico.  Enough with these silly games.

(Via Reuters) […] During the sixth round, Canada raised what it called creative ways of meeting U.S. demands for higher North American content in autos, a sunset clause that would allow one party to quit the treaty after five years, and major changes to existing conflict resolution mechanisms.

“I think we have demonstrated we have engaged on most of the big issues,” Verheul said in his remarks to Reuters. “We’ve made progress on some of the smaller ones, so I think (it was) not a bad week.”

The Mexican official said that Canada’s proposals on rules of origin for autos, the sunset clause and conflict resolution mechanism were “positive, in as much as they are an attempt to move things forward.”

Speaking separately, a second Canadian government source said Ottawa was cautiously optimistic about the round, given that the U.S. side had not summarily rejected the proposals for compromise.  (read more)

The U.S. Fourth Quarter GDP growth was reported two days ago at 2.6% and that stunned everyone who were expecting a much higher number. All U.S. economic indicators including U.S. Holiday consumer spending, which accounts for around two-thirds of total GDP, were off the charts in the fourth quarter growing +5.5% over the prior holiday.

The total growth in fourth quarter consumer spending was almost four percent (3.8%), that’s the highest rate of consumer spending in well over two years.  Q4 investment in new housing increased 11.6%, business spending on equipment surged 11.4% and outlays on structures edged up 1.4%.

Before the BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) announcement, everyone predicted 4th quarter GDP growth would easily be over 3%, and most likely in the 3.5 to 4.0% range.

So what gives.  Why did the Q4 GDP only grow at 2.6% ?

It seems a little funny to be griping about 2.6% growth because, well, that’s really good, Bigly even; so hopefully those within the Commerce Department don’t take this review personally.  But, c’mon, we expected more…  Well, the answer to the question is actually in the first few paragraphs of their release, and later in the deep weeds of the data.  I’ll explain.

First, the part of the announcement to note carefully:

[…] The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revisionby the source agency (see “Source Data for the Advance Estimate” on page 3). The “second” estimate for the fourth quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on February 28, 2018.

The “source data for the advance estimate” is another set of separate analytical disclaimers (pdf here) which informs users there are economic data-sets that contain ‘less than‘ three months of information.  To see what data is missing, and what “assumptions” the BEA  recommends, you to travel to a third level of depth (LINK HERE), and then to the key source data and BEA assumptions (excel spreadsheet here).

Don’t try this at home without a pocket protector and guidebook to the fourth level of Dantes inferno. So let me try to make this easy.

You will remember from prior conversations the U.S. GDP is the combined value of all goods and services produced and sold in the U.S. *minus* the value of all imported goods and services.

The value of imported stuff is always subtracted from value of the stuff we generate because the imported stuff doesn’t provide any economic benefit to America.

U.S. GDP is what we produce, minus what we import.  That’s important to understand.

The BEA is essentially saying there were massive amounts of imports in the fourth quarter, but they are unable to determine exactly how much that was.

That makes sense because all records for American on-line sales were broken; and a lot of those purchases were probably Chinese (and Asian, or EU) sellers, selling clothes and stuff into the U.S. as you purchased Christmas presents etc.

The BEA has no way of knowing from top-line sales (financial data) how much of the small stuff (clothes, gadgets, etc.) came from outside the U.S…. to your doorstep…. Well, not yet.

Additionally, all the inventories of similar stuff, from U.S. manufacturers and retail sellers, is now wiped out (ie. “low inventory”), and as such – the value of that inventory is gone. It is now in the bank.  There is no way of knowing how much that domestic inventory was, as part of the overall record-breaking fourth quarter sales.

So the BEA essentially deduced, ie. guessed, that a massive amount of product value needed to be deducted from U.S. GDP growth.

How much did they deduct?

Try 1.96%

Without knowing exactly how much of the overall 4th quarter retail sales were from imported products and services, the BEA went with the biggest number they could estimate.   The analysis is deep in the weeds on Chart #2 Line #50 (pdf here and below).

I cut it out so you can see:

(click to enlarge)

The 4th quarter import deduction to GDP (goods -1.91%, services -.05%) is the biggest deduction EVER, and potentially, heck, likely, massively over-estimated.

Hence their disclaimer:  “The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency.”

Specifically because the BEA made the biggest deduction in their history to the GDP growth rate; and specifically because fourth quarter sales were so historic in scope; we can expect that on February 28th, 2018, when the full rolled-up data is reviewed, there will likely be the biggest revision ever to their 2.6% GDP growth.  Initial estimate too low.

If you just use import history as a guide the actual 4th quarter GDP growth will end up at least a full one percent higher.  That would put the actual result around 3.6% which is exactly the landscape everyone thought it would be.

To answer the question: Did the BEA sandbag the number?  Well, you decide.  I think the evidence is clear they have been far too conservative with the estimate.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/370130543/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-mwpnY4z9hMepB7ABZM0F

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Addendum: To slightly defend the BEA from criticism, it should be noted that foreign manufacturers (think Samsung) fully anticipated a tough year for them in the face of President Trump’s policies to level trade imbalances.  There is actual evidence many Asian companies, specifically Samsung and LE, shipped massive amounts of parts into the U.S. in advance of this year.  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross spoke to this at Davos.