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Originally Posted by finnbow
So, COVID impacted the China trade agreement and continues to do so.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by finnbow
And simultaneously, you cast doubt on whether COVID has been responsible for the current state of Biden's economy.
Which is it? It only negatively impacts the effects of Trump's economic policies while not impacting those of Biden's? More disingenuous claptrap from our reflexive defender of all things Trump.
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It's only disingenuous if you're only capable of only looking at one thing at a time, or are incapable of navigating around your own preconceptions.
I've posted about this before.
1) Shutting down 1/2 of the economy for months - without a doubt - creates inflationary pressures because fewer goods and services were produced during that time. Demand lessened for some of those goods and services as well, but not enough to overcome the lack of supply. Many health experts -
example here - now believe that the lockdowns were not effective. Were lockdowns a scientific response ("follow the science") or a political response? I think some of both. Quarantining is a "go-to" method for controlling the spread of disease, but the evidence was mounting pretty early on that lockdowns were not very effective in controlling the spread of COVID-19. Yet, few elected officials were willing to abandon them. Those that did were pillared in the media. What started out as a "follow the science" response morphed into politics as usual. Thus, lockdown impacts on supply - particularly in places where they were extended due to political considerations - were ultimately political decisions and not a "result of COVID".
2) Supply chain bottleneck also produced inflationary pressures, but...
3) Once the effects of the pandemic lessened, though, demand rebounded in a BIG way. According to the
NY Times/NY Fed, it is THE biggest driver of inflation.
Supply shocks — which include shortages of workers, raw materials and shipping containers needed to produce and move goods globally — accounted for the remaining 40 percent of inflation in the model, with 58 of 66 industrial sectors that the research identified experiencing supply constraints.
The researchers concluded that, without supply bottlenecks, inflation in the United States would have been 6 percent at the end of 2021, instead of 9 percent. The research finds that demand shocks played a larger role in explaining inflation in the United States, whereas supply chain bottlenecks have done more to fuel inflation in Europe.
3) Included in
and underlying the inflationary numbers is the cost of energy. Gotta say it: the Biden administration set about immediately put downward pressure on supply in January 2021, including pulling the plug on the Keystone pipeline, halting any new oil and gas leases on public lands, begining a thorough review of existing permits for fossil fuel development(a.k.a. bury them under additional red tape), restricting additional public lands accessible for exploration, etc.). Oil prices have been all over the place in the last 50 years (with price volatility correlating with the first Arab Oil Embargo in '67).
Historic inflation for energy has been around 4.6%. Starting in 2017 there was a lowering of the energy price inflation trend, but that was immediately and significantly reversed starting in 2021.
4) Shortage of workers. Both Trump and Biden share this one. Paying individuals not to work during the pandemic decreases the supply of workers, increased the cost of production, and curbed supply. All of these impacted the overall inflation picture.
So, yes, if you want to inflate the cost of everything, reduce energy supply and make the cost of producing goods and services higher. Then impose lockdowns during a pandemic, and then extend them due to political expediency when evidence of their ineffectiveness would suggest another course of action. And, in the process of locking folks down and shutting down a huge chunk of the economy, pay people to not work and keep paying them even when unemployment numbers are relatively high (as late as Sept 2021, and the Biden admin suggested that states could use Federal COVID relief funds to extend enhanced unemployment benefits beyond that).
Some COVID-19 is involved, sure. But the outsized impact of questionable political decisions plays a
much larger role.