# I'm interested in your views on the subject..



## The Old Ram-Australia (Mar 4, 2018)

FORTRESS AMERICA:
There was a time when the U.S imported “nothing” it was quite capable of generating all of the things it needed .So could the President’s latest tariffs on steel and aluminum just be a” test to see what happens”, because if you think about it “what has the global economy done for anyone except for the multinationals and the top 1 %”?

As manufactures found out too late, if you manufacture in China your IP is lost and cheap competitors start up down the road from your factory.

The U.S tax cuts were designed to bring home businesses and production from anywhere overseas because the advantages had been diminished and their reputation at home was enhanced.

Australia needs to “tread carefully” in reacting in a way which could cause even greater retaliation from the US, what about a 25% tariff on beef and lamb imports? They really don’t need our sheep and mutton if they were to revitalize their own sheep industry which once upon a time was much larger than it is today and much of its decline can be trace back to the “greed” which caused the “wool price crash” in Australia.Just saying.


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## Latestarter (Mar 5, 2018)

There was a time in our country when the federal govt was funded by trade tariffs. There was no federal taxation of the general populace, and the people of our country were indeed free. The federal govt has grown out of control, and taken control of things they have no right or jurisdiction TO control. The ONLY job the federal govt is allowed is spelled out in the constitution. All other legislative business belongs rightfully to the states. The fed is now nothing more than a large corporation. Which is why we are now ruled by admiralty & corporate law vice tort law. Our forefathers have turned over in their graves repeatedly. We have lots of problems and issues over here.


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## mystang89 (Mar 5, 2018)

I don't know where I stand as far as popular opinion is concerned nor do i know percentages of this or that but my thoughts are this. 

I grew up being taught do do what you can for yourself, not to constantly rely on others. It's what I teach my children. If you can make it, then do it. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment and keeps your moral up for the many times it will take a knock throughout life. When you make your own stuff or so your own work, you learn knew things. You don't stagnate. You take pride in your work. You want it to be the best. It's how I see America in the far past. 1920ish. (I'm only 34 but if you don't know the past you can't learn from it).

I believe that society starts at the fundamental level of the family and that everything goes from there. Therefore, if I teach my children to make things for themselves and they grow up leasing the next generation to do the same, then also the country would make more products and bring in less from the outside. That would keep many jobs here in the states. I'm sure I could go on but I think my view is seen. That said, I'm just a low man on the totem pole and that's where I like to stay.


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## Baymule (Mar 5, 2018)

In the late 1970's and early 1980's I worked at Lufkin Industries building oil field pumping units. Those pumping units were sold all over the world. We operated on 3 shifts, making good money for that time. I owned my own car, boat and trailer and home. As time passed (after I had left) work slowed down, people were laid off, work slowed down some more to a bare trickle, and finally General Electric bought the entire company just to get their hands on a certain patent and promptly shut the company down. The welding shop I worked in, which covered several acres, is gone. Former employees got together and bought the machine shop and are now running it in an attempt to provide jobs for them selves. 

In Tyler, Tyler Pipe, in the same time period referenced above, used to employ hundreds of people and ran wide open. Tyler Pipe exported pipe and steel. Today it is still open, with a small sales force selling imported pipe and steel. The rest of the factory is shuttered and closed down.

In the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's I worked in furniture stores. American companies fell like dominos. Chinese companies bought American furniture, shipped it to China, and made what was known in the trade as "knock offs" which were replicas at less than half the price. Many American companies moved production to China. Big, heavy, solid pine bedroom sets made in America sold for $4000 to $6000 versus made in China for $2000......people vote with their pocketbook. One after another long time, high quality furniture manufacturers closed up. Gone. 

In 1995, my husband and I opened a furniture store. To stay in business, we had to buy imports. At that time, most imports were what is known as case goods, or wood furniture such as dining sets, bedroom sets, or end tables/coffee tables. Shipping upholstered furniture wasn't done because of damage or crushing during shipping. Now even the upholstered furniture is imported.  Many times when I called in an order, I would be told that item was 6 weeks out-on the water. During Chinese New Year, I could forget getting anything for 6-8 weeks as the country shut down to celebrate and it took time to get shipping going again. We did try to carry American made goods and almost all of our upholstered furniture was made in America. We bought a solid oak dining table with big heavy solid oak chairs. It's import counterpart was half the price. The American made set sure did help to sell LOTS of the import sets. We finally sold that American made dining set for cost when we closed down. The sad part is, after American companies closed or moved to China, prices went back up to where they were before. Someone is raking in a lot of money on imported furniture and it ain't us.

So that is my experiences with free trade. It might cost less, but at what price? When America made much of our own products, if the price was higher, I really didn't notice because I had a good job and could afford what I wanted. 

Beef and lamb imports? We live in cattle country. There are ranches and farms all around us, there are cattle across the road from us. We raise lamb ourselves and direct market to our customers. Granted, we are not even a tiny blip on the radar, but we price our lamb lower in price than what the grocery store charges and people are happy to buy from us. 

The liberal media here despises our President and they despise everything he does. The media is preaching doom and gloom on tariffs. From my own experiences, people don't give a crap where a product comes from, they only care what it costs them. The fact that their neighbor lost his/her job matters not. Where do we go from here? Your guess is as good as mine.


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## mystang89 (Mar 5, 2018)

Baymule said:


> Beef and lamb imports? We live in cattle country. There are ranches and farms all around us, there are cattle across the road from us. We raise lamb ourselves and direct market to our customers. Granted, we are not even a tiny blip on the radar, but we price our lamb lower in price than what the grocery store charges and people are happy to buy from us.



America is definitely known for its cattle because of the amount we have but we have to think about where it will be in the future. In just the year I've been living in the "country" I've seen many houses already built. Places that were cattle land when I was growing up are now nothing but house and apartments. When this happens you can't reverse it. It's not like you can just tear down the house and plant grass again. The amount of land that used to be for cattle is shrinking. Will we be forced to import more and more foods from other countries in order to accommodate the growing food market here in the U.S?


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## Baymule (Mar 5, 2018)

mystang89 said:


> America is definitely known for its cattle because of the amount we have but we have to think about where it will be in the future. In just the year I've been living in the "country" I've seen many houses already built. Places that were cattle land when I was growing up are now nothing but house and apartments. When this happens you can't reverse it. It's not like you can just tear down the house and plant grass again. The amount of land that used to be for cattle is shrinking. Will we be forced to import more and more foods from other countries in order to accommodate the growing food market here in the U.S?


 No, we have enough land here to feed not only our country, but export food as well. But I know what you mean, I used to live in Baytown, east of Houston. The prairie lands were all rice fields around Baytown. Now there are houses and subdivisions where food was once grown. The land goes up in value to the point that the farmer is better off financially to sell out, rather than keep farming.


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## greybeard (Mar 8, 2018)

Baymule said:


> In the late 1970's and early 1980's I worked at Lufkin Industries building oil field pumping units. Those pumping units were sold all over the world. We operated on 3 shifts, making good money for that time. I owned my own car, boat and trailer and home. As time passed (after I had left) work slowed down, people were laid off, work slowed down some more to a bare trickle, and finally General Electric bought the entire company just to get their hands on a certain patent and promptly shut the company down. The welding shop I worked in, which covered several acres, is gone. Former employees got together and bought the machine shop and are now running it in an attempt to provide jobs for them selves.
> 
> In Tyler, Tyler Pipe, in the same time period referenced above, used to employ hundreds of people and ran wide open. Tyler Pipe exported pipe and steel. Today it is still open, with a small sales force selling imported pipe and steel. The rest of the factory is shuttered and closed down.


Baymule,
We need to explain 'why' this happened. It wasn't caused by imported steel. 
I was in  the upstream oil sector (drilling & exploration) before during and after this same time period. What happens upstream affects everything downstream.  Let us look at that time period.....



 

We imported a LOT of crude oil in those days, but beginning around 1977, '78, and '79 thru 1982 and '83, the US & Canadian drilling end of things was blowing and going, and we were finding lots of oil, to try to match what the US was using, and to make sure we were never again at the mercy of an OPEC embargo.  Crude went to the unheard of (at that time) price of $38 per barrel right after the embargo, and rose again when the Iranian revolution took place, but as other countries increased their own production, oil began to drop.  OPEC was in disarray, with it's members divided on what to do, and Saudi finally had enough and went to full production in '85/86 to punish non-opec producer nations and some of it's own members  which created a glut of oil on the open market. Almost overnight, oil dropped to below $10/bbl and the whole industry,  downstream and upstream went bust. The chalk boom of Central and East Texas shut down and companies like Lufkin Industries and Tyler pipe found themselves without customers, had big inventories they couldn't move and never really recovered. The company I worked for was leveraged to the price of oil as we had agreed during the boom to take a % of the well as payment instead of payment on a day rate or footage rate and the bank pulled the note in '85 and we went bankrupt. That company had been in business since 1948.


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## greybeard (Mar 8, 2018)

I'm not a really big fan of tariffs and trade wars, but there needs to be a relatively even playing field, which right now, there is not, but that is much of our own making too.


The Old Ram-Australia said:


> what about a 25% tariff on beef and lamb imports? They really don’t need our sheep and mutton if they were to revitalize their own sheep industry which once upon a time was much larger than it is today and much of its decline can be trace back to the “greed” which caused the “wool price crash” in Australia.Just saying.



I don't think tariffs will affect mutton/lamb imports at all. 
Sheep and mutton production and consumption in the US is not what one from overseas might think. For most of America, mutton and lamb are a niche consumption category and regardless of what one might glean from websites like BYH, much of wool use has long ago been replaced by synthetic materials just as much of the leather coat jacket, shoe and boot market has been replaced by synthetics.
Goat meat is the same way, and neither mutton, lamb or goat meat is expected to ever replace beef, pork or lamb on everyday America's dinner table, and certainly won't replace poultry.
USDA's tracking of goat/sheep production shows their combined #s to be very low...again, what is seen here at BYH is simply an outlier and not indicative or representative of the bigger and more realistic picture in the USA.

For instance, in 2014, there were in the USA:
89,000,000 head of cattle. (beef and dairy)
66,000,000 head of swine.
 For poultry (chickens) the numbers are staggering.
85,444,100,000 broilers raised..yes, that's 85.4 BILLION.
360,000,000 avg number of layers on any given day of 2014.
236,000,000 million turkeys raised.
5,300,000 head of sheep and lambs (including wool production)
2,700,000 head of goats (milk and meat combined)

(I rounded some numbers up to even numbers)

As you can see, goat and sheep production in the US is not very much, simply because the US consumer doesn't eat much lamb, mutton and goat meat.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/nahms/downloads/Demographics2014.pdf





BTW, what is the thinking in Australia regarding the wanton destruction of HMAS Perth by unauthorized salvage (theft) operations?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-13/outrage-as-warship-grave-stripped-by-salvagers/5156320

And according to a more recent US Navy report on USN heavy cruiser USS Houston that lies nearby, HMAS Perth may even be completely gone.


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## Baymule (Mar 8, 2018)

Lamb chops at the grocery store are $38 a pound.  the cheapest cut along with hamburger is $12 a pound.  Gee, I wonder why lamb is not eaten more in the US.....$$$$ We sell ours, slaughtered vacuum sealed, USDA inspected for $10 a pound for the whole lamb.


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## Mini Horses (Mar 8, 2018)

Around here lamb chops are about $12 ppd.....as is a nice tenderloin steak.   I am about 30 miles from the home of Smithfield foods.  There  are always truck loads of hogs passing by.   Needless to say, prices are good.  And Perdue is all over the place in VA, NC & Eastern Shore.  It helps with cost to have less transportation expenses to distribute from the processing plants.

I can drive a few hours out see whole towns of decaying furniture and shoe factories.  The tobacco companies are still working hard though. 

Right now this East coast is mounting a campaign to get out from under the current White House idea to "open all coastal waters" to oil drilling.   REALLY??  We have the largest Naval Base in the World, some of the largest shipbuilding, one of only two degauzing facilities, one of only two submarine building, large jet air base and you want to allow drilling rigs???  Why not wind & solar?  

I'm not too concerned about tariffs.  Other things, more so.


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## Latestarter (Mar 8, 2018)

Problem is... there are too many problems... More than any one person can concern themselves with (govt planning IMHO). The result is you're concerned with one thing that 80% of the population doesn't care about. And that goes for just about every problem. The result is, there aren't enough people that care on any one problem to get serious dealing with it. And more new issues/problems get added every month. Between the "news" idiots, the lobbyists, the professional, lifelong politicians, and the far left/right extremists, everything is gridlocked. Our govt is wearing us down steadily, bit by bit, so that we get so tired/overwhelmed, we just give up and no longer fight.


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## greybeard (Mar 8, 2018)

Nothing wrong with wind and solar and both are currently heavily subsidized by DOE. The only thing that's stopping any state from getting into either is NIMBY.
I've seen wind farms up close. If you like a constant '_whuuff, whuuff, whuuff, whuuff_"  sound 24/7, you need to apply to have one (or more) put on your property...just make sure you have wind rights reserved before signing the paperwork.

The turbine blades in a gentle breeze look like they are turning lazily thru the air, and the generator's shaft is turning pretty slow..80-100rpm, but the blade tips are moving thru air at a very high velocity.

Around 180 MPH at the blade tips or in metric, 80 meters per second.

It may look slow, but the next time you are near one of the big commercial units, watch one blade as it makes it's circle. When it gets to 9 or 3 o'clock position, (Parallel to the ground) blink your eyes quickly and take notice how far that tip moved while your eyes were momentarily closed. A human eye blink takes on average, 1/3 of a second. In that blink, a blade tip has traveled about 27 meters.
If just one out of the 3 wind turbine blades had a light on it's tip, it would look like a solid blurred circle at night.
Rotor circumference X shaft rpm/60=tip mph

That, is where the noise comes from, and in a big wind farm, it translates into a constant dull "Hummmmmmmm".

I took this picture near Nolan Texas, as one part of a 180 deg panoramic view.  It looks the same no matter which direction you look, for as far as you can see.




We buried my aunt that same day in a little community cemetery surrounded by the wind turbines. You could barely hear the minister's words at the graveside service.
Decibel levels are relatively low, probably maxing out around 60, maybe 70db but it never stops.

Go for it..they'll pay you for the inconvenience I'm sure.
Texas has a lot of wind turbines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas


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## greybeard (Mar 10, 2018)

The Old Ram-Australia said:


> Australia needs to “tread carefully” in reacting in a way which could cause even greater retaliation from the US,


You won't have to worry about it. Nothing to retaliate about now. Australia has been granted an exemption on the new tariffs.


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## The Old Ram-Australia (Mar 10, 2018)

G'day greybeard,exemption yes,but in exchange for what? This is yet to be detailed.T.O.R.


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## greybeard (Mar 10, 2018)

Hopefully in exchange to decrease the import of beef to North America...or to get them to stop circumventing the sale of cattle genetics to China.


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## MiniSilkys (Mar 10, 2018)

I think President Trump is doing a great job considering. The media never tells any thing positive about him.


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## The Old Ram-Australia (Mar 11, 2018)

G'day unfortunately GB the govt is not in the cattle business and all the agricultural business is driven by private industry.

I expect that at some point we will be called upon to send our navy into the South China Seas in support of the US,as there is no such thing as a "free lunch'.....This has been an interesting exercise as the variety of comments show...T.O.R.


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## The Old Ram-Australia (Mar 11, 2018)

G';day GB,unfortunately the ship was sunk in Indonesian waters and so although the ship was ours we have "no' control over it's resting place.It's a shame I know but once again its the result of money overriding everything else.I hope your ship receives a better outcome...T.O.R.


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## greybeard (Mar 11, 2018)

The Old Ram-Australia said:


> G'day unfortunately GB the govt is not in the cattle business and all the agricultural business is driven by private industry.
> 
> I expect that at some point we will be called upon to send our navy into the South China Seas in support of the US,as there is no such thing as a "free lunch'.....This has been an interesting exercise as the variety of comments show...T.O.R.


I concur, but then too, the govt isn't in the steel and alum business either.
just sayin.

If there was ever a movie in need of being made, it's that of the last weeks of the Asiatic fleet. I've read lots of in person accounts of that little fleet's last days and it is ever bit as important and awe inspiring as Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima or any other Pacific War scenario.


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## The Old Ram-Australia (Mar 11, 2018)

G'day and granted GB on the steel and alum comment,but it's an indication of the "power" of large corps and multinationals have over govts wherever they may be...T.O.R.


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## ohiogoatgirl (Aug 31, 2018)

I'm not able to read the whole thread right now but just want to throw out a couple things here. Firstly, have you seen about Fibershed yet? Secondly, there is a lot of issues relating to this but in my opinion the biggest thing is that people, everywhere not just in the USA, have to learn why they should care about where things come from and why just buying the thing they want that is the cheapest isn't the best answer. right now the biggest stumbling block is knowledge to the people in a way that catches their attention and efficiently explains why this is important. 
Pretty ironic that everything is tripped up on knowledge in the age where knowledge is the most easily and freely accessible that it's ever been.


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## greybeard (Aug 31, 2018)

ohiogoatgirl said:


> right now the biggest stumbling block is knowledge to the people in a way that catches their attention and efficiently explains why this is important.
> Pretty ironic that everything is tripped up on knowledge in the age where knowledge is the most easily and freely accessible that it's ever been.


Easy and  quickly accessible  'knowledge' is only and  exactly that, easy and quick, but it is, very much like the products you speak of, not always the best 'thing' to acquire, and very often, worse than no information at all. Most anything acquired quickly and easily is just information, and should never be mistaken for knowledge. You can get a lot of information without gaining an ounce of knowledge. 
_A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
 drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: 
there, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 
and drinking largely sobers us again.”_
Alexander Pope, _ An Essay  on Criticism, 1709 _


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## mystang89 (Sep 1, 2018)

Information is the beginning of that knowledge though for without that information or mind has no basis for said knowledge. Even though finding that information is quick and easy however, people have no WILL to look or understand it. We live in an age of instant gratification. If it takes a bit of time and effort to aquire something then it's not worth it.


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## greybeard (Dec 26, 2018)

mystang89 said:


> Even though finding that information is quick and easy however, people have no WILL to look or understand it. We live in an age of instant gratification. If it takes a bit of time and effort to aquire something then it's not worth it.


I fully agree with that statement, and one has to look no farther than some/many of the pages of this very board to see weekly examples of it in effect. Ignorance is a natural aspect of life but light can easily be shone on knowledge to dispel ignorance. If a person willfully chooses to turn off the light or shield their eyes from it, then instead of knowledge, stupidity has replaced ignorance.

Back to the original topic tho, I snapped these pics at a regional chain gro store this Christmas season:





The ribs weighed just over 2 lbs and the bottom cut weighed just over 4 lbs. 
5 ft away, USDA choice Ribeye roast was significantly cheaper


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