Trump's trade war to test our love for "cheap stuff"

Sen. Orrin Hatch airs hyperbole

Don't know if the term "conflict resolution" still has its boosters. Might have been buzzwords of the type that often pass through the ether, like "outcome based education." Isn't education always about outcomes? Surely we can assume that someone as crude and clumsy as Donald Trump has no sensitivity to "conflict resolution." He's a bull in the China shop. And we happen to have elected him president. He got elected for reasons that seem clear to me, the chief one being he has that gift for sheer oratory that characterizes demagogues. George Wallace displayed an effective, populist-infused brand of rhetoric.
Trump taps into our primal urge for conflict. He's doing it now with tariffs - incredible. The Republican free trade party is beside itself. Even Orrin Hatch, who made a comment a while back about Trump possibly being "the greatest president in U.S. history," is not endorsing protective tariffs. Hatch tried backing off his initial eye-opening comment by saying he was just talking about Trump's potential. We all knew the Utah senator was kowtowing to Trump's base. Hatch now says he's against Trump's tariffs on China and allies like Canada and Mexico. So he actually backs legislation to curb Trump's trade authority.
Trade is a complex matter. Are we Americans willing to live with globalization as long as it allows us to buy "cheap stuff?" So much stuff is made in China. Stuff gets assembled by people there who are paid scraps. Let's not deny what cheap stuff affords us: it affords us satisfaction that belies our real lot in life. This is probably nothing to shake a stick at. The common people can project an air of being reasonably well off. This is despite their own wages being stagnant. "Shopping" becomes a satisfying elixir of sorts.
 
The change in buying clothes
Personally, I considered it a miracle when I discovered how cheaply one could buy clothes, using the Wal-Mart model with no pesky clerks walking up to you and saying "can I help you?" As a kid I had fear of buying clothes, partly because of social anxiety for dealing with those clerks. Who wanted a clerk staring at you as you considered what kind of underwear to buy? The clerks "hovered" like this because, well, they were paid to be there and had nothing better to do at the moment. The store owners should have been more attentive to customers' needs and instructed employees to back off, to give customers their space.
A few years ago I heard the following advice to clothing store operators on TV: "Clerks should be available but not intrusive."
Prices seemed high for clothing when I was a kid. I was scared of buying something and then getting home and realizing it just wasn't perfect. As years passed and I discovered the cheaper model, I became less afraid of buying clothing that didn't quite work out. I stopped using the fitting rooms. I'd buy clothing with sizes and styles that seemed proper and if I got home and discovered it wasn't quite up to snuff, I'd simply be willing to eat the cost, to maybe donate the item or just set it aside. It wasn't in my nature to return items to the store. If I batted close to a thousand, that was good enough.
I ended up with enough clothes to last the rest of my life. Because of my frustration and anxieties with trying to buy clothes when younger, I ended up "binge-shopping" clothes to a degree, once I discovered the cheaper, less stressful model.
Oh, and it also helped greatly when loose-fitting clothes became more accepted. First I saw "relaxed fit" pants in stores and later there was "loose fit." If you really wanted the older-fitting style, with a crotch so tight it might threaten your potential to procreate, it was called "classic fit."
Remember the vast clothing stores at the Alexandria shopping mall in its prime? Herberger's and Penney's? Man, they're gone with the wind now. Here in Morris we had the typical men's and women's clothing shops on main street. We had Palmer's and Wayne's for the men. Today you go into Town and Country where the store clerks either don't annoy you or they'll just make a quick, token check on you and then walk away. "Finding everything OK?" they might say. Yes, available but not intrusive.
Wal-Mart is clogged with Chinese goods. We shop in bulk at Costco. Low prices have an obviously soothing effect, compensating for the sense of alarm we maybe ought to feel about our economy. A big threat looms over this model now, and it's the Trump tariffs. Yes, you might argue that the unfettered globalization model is deceptive or presents an illusion. An illusion of prosperity? Well, I guess there is no perfect system.
 
Many hold Trump's hand
Trump has a stable base of support no matter what he does, no matter how much his personal standards of behavior and rhetoric seem to make him rather a scumbag. It is not normal human behavior to simply lie so much. Most of us have a trigger in our senses blocking this, and we would take no satisfaction if we were to benefit from lies or deceit. We have elected someone who is not like us.
We should be scared of the way Trump's approval/disapproval numbers are so static in spite of things like the Helsinki summit. Or, the looming tariff-induced disaster, part of which is the proposed obscene government subsidy to farmers, who frankly would like to stay in the free market system.
Maybe there should be a poll asking the question: Would you favor Donald Trump becoming dictator of the U.S.? Perhaps we could pose this question: Would you favor Vladimir Putin becoming dictator of the U.S.? Based on recent perceptions of Americans' thought patterns, I frankly don't see either of these questions being absurd anymore.
I think perhaps Leon Panetta was right when he said America is in decline as a nation, "that we have lost the ability to govern ourselves."
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com