More trains might not be enough for Melbourne's western suburbs.

Rapid population growth in Melton

Population growth in the Ballarat corridor has been strong since the turn of the century, driven by the City of Melton. Since 2001, the City has averaged an additional 6,025 people each year, or an additional 29,106 between 2011 and 2016. And even as its (percentage) rate of growth declines, this is still expected to exceed 10,000 per year beyond 2025-26, or an additional 52,444 people between 2026 and 2031.

The City of Melton overtook the City of Ballarat’s population in 2008, and by 2031, it is expected to exceed a quarter of a million – over twice that of Ballarat.

Annual Population Growth, Municipalities of Moorabool, Melton and Ballarat, 2001-31
Source: ABS, 2018; Department of Planning, 2018

This means a lot more commuters

This kind of growth is to be expected in an area that enjoys a sub-40 minute train commute to the CBD, and the most affordable housing in Greater Melbourne. But it will also inevitably put pressure on local infrastructure, including the Ballarat train line.

Combining the municipalities of Melton, Moorabool and Ballarat, their population growth just in the five years from 2011-16 has resulted in almost 12,000 extra commuters along the Ballarat corridor – almost 10,000 from Melton alone, and mostly going to the Brimbank, Melbourne and Wyndham municipalities. Melbourne is unsurprising – it’s the CBD. But Brimbank and Wyndham also provide many health care, retail, transport and manufacturing jobs to explain these commuters.

Additional Commuters from Ballarat, Moorabool and Melton along the Ballarat corridor, 2011-16
Source: ABS, 2018

How many of these additional commuters use the train?

Well, of these 11,949 additional commuters, 2,213 take the train each day, 80% from Melton and almost 80% of whom go all the way to the Melbourne municipality. This dominance of the Melbourne municipality no doubt reflects the need for private transport to avoid too many connections/transfers for those working in municipalities like Brimbank and Wyndham.

Additional Train Commuters from Ballarat, Moorabool and Melton along the Ballarat corridor, 2011-16
Source: ABS, 2018

This means that:

·         19% of additional commuters in this corridor over the last 5 years use the train;

·         Bringing the percentage for the entire corridor’s commuter population to 13%;

·         Up from 11% in 2011.

So while the average rate of train commuting in this corridor is only a little above that of Metropolitan Melbourne residents more generally (12%), new residents to this corridor are much more inclined to use the train (19%).

This adds further to the existing pressure on the train network

And this is still lower than for new arrivals to Metropolitan Melbourne (26%), yet has already put enormous pressure on the Ballarat train line. Delays, cancellations, faults and staff shortages are common. Duplication of the line from Deer Park to Melton is currently underway (with eventual quadruplication on the cards). Additional services and ongoing investments have been promised by the Victorian Government. Ballarat may even get a train link to Tullamarine Airport if the route from Sunshine gets underway. And there are calls from local Councils for the State to electrify the line to Melton also, to allow metro trains (not just V-line trains) to travel.

But there is limited potential capacity for the public transport network as a whole, and only so much higher-density transit-oriented developments that network can handle. Given the population growth in the City of Melton alone is expected to jump from almost 30,000 every five years to over 50,000, along with the increasing popularity of train commuting across Metropolitan Melbourne, a major obstacle isn’t just increasing capacity on the Ballarat line. Capacity needs to rapidly improve around the City Loop. Otherwise all these additional outer metropolitan services will create a bottleneck, worsening existing strains on existing CBD stations.

The Metro Tunnel, and five planned additional inner city stations will certainly help. Will it be enough?

There is an alternative/supplementary solution though

Only 22% of Melton’s locally-resident workforce also works in Melton (employment self-containment). And the number of jobs in Melton would technically only be enough for 41% of those locally-resident workers (employment self-sufficiency), even if they wanted to work locally. Specifically, there are almost 20,000 more locally-resident workers in transport, manufacturing, health care, construction and retail trade alone than there are local jobs in those sectors.

Industry of Employment, Place of Usual Residence and Place of Work, City of Melton, 2016
Source: ABS, 2017

This reflects potential opportunities to recapture expenditure locally. A significant amount of the lost expenditure is no doubt linked to people spending most of their day working outside Melton. Basic retail offerings already exist locally, but even this could hold opportunities, given the level of out-commuting. And a strategy to develop greater employment opportunities in Melton (commercial and industrial, not just population-driven) could really retain more of Melton’s local residents, recapturing escape expenditure and easing pressure on local and metropolitan infrastructure – including the train line.

Just some other options include:

·         Higher density development closer to places of employment, both in outer and inner areas;

·         Greater housing development in middle-ring suburbs (significant apartment supply in Melbourne inner suburbs is about to come online) to improve affordability and reduce the appeal of outer suburbs; and

·         Facilitation of working from home and flexible work arrangements to ease pressure on peak period commutes, e.g. improved broadband and more Wi-Fi hotspots in outer areas.

Capacity constraints are an ongoing battle for major cities. But this is a unique situation for Melbourne where business as usual simply won’t cut it for much longer.

So additional train services are definitely needed. But they can only do so much.

Fun Fact.

Fun fact: every single Republican President since Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) saw a recession in his first term; 4 have presided over 2; and Eisenhower presided over 3!

After all I've done for you!

“I pulled out of a trade agreement that you liked; I slapped a tariff on your key production inputs; the rest of the world retaliated directly against you; and I've threatened to tax you into oblivion if you leave … why don't you like doing business with me?”

Trump threatens Harley-Davidson again, says the company 'should stay 100% in America' after 'I've done so much for you' 

Bob Bryan 

President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson on Wednesday, laying into the company on Twitter.

"Harley-Davidson should stay 100% in America, with the people that got you your success," Trump tweeted. "I've done so much for you, and then this. Other companies are coming back where they belong! We won't forget, and neither will your customers or your now very HAPPY competitors!"

On Monday, Harley announced that it would shift some of its production outside of the US due to Trump's trade fight with the European Union. Trump's decision to impose a 25% tariff in steel imports to the US had already hurt Harley's business. But the announcement of EU tariffs on US-made motorcycles as a response to the steel tariff appears to have been the last straw.

The company had previously announced an investment in a Thailand-based production facility, saying it was because of Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Harley operates facilities in Brazil, India, and Australia in addition to the Thai plant.

While Trump's policies continually hit the motorcycle company, Harley previously enjoyed a fairly tight relationship with the president. Executives from the company visited the White House in February 2017 and Trump continually brought up Harley as an example of a strong American business.

That close bond was broken following Harley's announcement, prompting Trump to go on a days-long campaign against the iconic company.

"A Harley-Davidson should never be built in another country-never!" Trump tweeted Tuesday. "Their employees and customers are already very angry at them. If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end - they surrendered, they quit! The Aura will be gone and they will be taxed like never before!"

"Why don't you leave the EU?"

This is not normal. This is not okay.

In conversation with Macron, Trump said “Why don’t you leave the EU?” and that if France exited the union, Trump would offer it a bilateral trade deal with better terms than the EU as a whole gets from the United States. 

Yet another attempt to dismantle Western alliances. But he’s totally not in Putin’s pocket, right?

This is not normal. This is not okay.

Trump is trying to destabilize the European Union 

by Josh Rogin

As President Trump heads to Europe next month for the NATO summit and then a historic meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his personal attacks on the European Union and other pillars of the Western order are overshadowing his own administration’s attempts to reassure allies that the United States still believes in the transatlantic project it has led since the 1940s.

During a private meeting at the White House in late April, Trump was discussing trade with French President Emmanuel Macron. At one point, he asked Macron, “Why don’t you leave the E.U.?” and said that if France exited the union, Trump would offer it a bilateral trade deal with better terms than the E.U. as a whole gets from the United States, according to two European officials. The White House did not dispute the officials’ account, but declined to comment.

Let’s set aside for a moment the point that Trump’s proposal reveals a basic lack of understanding of Macron’s views and those of the people who elected him. This is an instance of the president of the United States offering an incentive to dismantle an organization of America’s allies, against stated U.S. government policy.

Trump has been publicly trashing the E.U. and NATO since his campaign, but the pace and viciousness of his attacks have increased. Just this week, at a rally in North Dakota, Trump said: “The European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank.” He then complained about a $150 billion trade deficit with the E.U., inflating the figure.

Other reports note that Trump recently told Group of Seven leaders that “NATO is as bad as NAFTA,” suggested to the Swedish prime minister that America should leave the NATO alliance , and launched gratuitous public attacks on German Chancellor Angela Merkel at her weakest moment. It’s a deepening trend that leads to an unavoidable conclusion: Trump doesn’t believe in the continued sanctity of the European Union and NATO, as well as the United States’ commitment to both.

Trump defenders often say he is simply throwing out ideas to see what sticks. Some say his motives are primarily political and domestic — or that he is more talk than action. Many cling to the hope that the president’s top diplomatic and military officials can still execute sound policy, reassure allies, manage Trump and head off any real catastrophe.

That was plausible during Trump’s first year in office, and European allies were relatively reassured. But during his second year, so far, Trump has shrugged off previous constraints. His new national security team can only try to tamp down fears and attempt to merge Trump’s “America First” mantra with a responsible strategy.

During an interview this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the president is trying to “reset” the liberal world order, not dismantle it. Trump is being “disruptive” to force allies to agree to reforms needed to reflect U.S. interests, he argued. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell called Trump’s approach “strategic renovation” during a speech last week in Brussels . Mitchell argued that tackling disagreements such as trade head-on can strengthen the alliance for the strategic competition with Russia and China that lies ahead.

But these efforts to reassure Europe are failing. European officials no longer believe Trump’s words can be discounted. They don’t see the alliance rift as routine or temporary. They don’t believe it’s possible to repair the transatlantic bridge in the middle of a Trump-sized earthquake. European countries have no choice but to hedge and seek alternatives to U.S. leadership.

“If you look at the world today, you realize the position of the West is going to be contested for the first time in several centuries,” former British prime minister Tony Blair told me. “And if the West if is disunited, it’s going to be much less capable of withstanding that challenge.”

If Europe doesn’t feel the United States is really on its side, the risk is that individual European nations turn to other geopolitical forces, and this is bad for America, Blair added.

Of course, Trump’s opinions closely track those of Putin, including on the status of Crimea, aid to Ukraine and Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections. Overall, Trump’s attack on the E.U. and the U.S.-Europe relationship is a huge strategic windfall for Russia.

“As long as there is a unified Europe that maintains a liberal international order with basic rules of the road, it is a disaster for a dictator like Putin,” former vice president Joe Biden told me. “That’s why Putin is doing what he’s doing.”

The United States and Europe have had disputes before. It’s possible this one will get resolved eventually. Meanwhile, Trump is doing enormous and unnecessary damage. His intentional and egregious actions to undermine the E.U., NATO and the United States’ relationship with both can no longer be discounted, rationalized or seen as anything but what they are — a brazen attempt to undo the strategic infrastructure both America and Europe need more than ever.

So much winning - just not for the US.

I wrote back in December 2016 of the risks of a trade war, even for a country with the US’s market power:

“Even if it doesn’t escalate to a full trade war, belligerence like this from the US ... [could] cause other countries to search elsewhere for suppliers and customers that don’t impose such penalties on international trade.”

Now, in order to avoid dealing with a belligerent US: the TPP is going ahead without them and many of their hard-fought-for provisions that would have reigned in China’s unscrupulous behaviour; the EU is negotiating directly with Japan, Australia and NZ; South Korea with Russia; and China is pursuing stronger ties with Japan, India, even formerly fierce rival in manufacturing Mexico.

All because Trump is squandering the reputational capital the US spent decades building. 

So much winning. Just not for the US.

America’s Trading Partners Are Having Plenty of Fun Without Us

By Wendy S. Cutler

There is a new buzzword in trade circles these days: diversification.

“There has never been a better time to diversify,” a spokesman for Canada’s trade minister wrote in a tweet after the disastrous recent Group of 7 meeting.

South Korea became so frustrated as it renegotiated its six-year-old trade agreement with the United States in the spring that it became determined to turn elsewhere. South Korea’s trade minister started a “trade diversification” strategy soon after the agreement was announced.

Diversification is the polite way of saying that America’s friends and allies believe we have become an unreliable partner, and they are now looking elsewhere. From Ottawa to Brussels to Seoul, our trading partners are fed up with the Trump administration’s tariffs, and they have given up on trying to charm President Trump or persuade him that free trade is good. To reduce their economic dependence on the United States and their exposure to a potential global trade war, they are forging trade deals that leave us out of the picture altogether.

On June 14, Canada’s government asked Parliament to ratify a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the United States backed out of last year. On June 18, the European Union trade commissioner visited Australia and three days later, New Zealand to begin negotiations for free-trade agreements; and on June 22, South Korea announced plans to pursue negotiations for its first free-trade agreement with Russia.

These moves are a direct response to the Trump administration’s unreliability and unpredictability, and they are a clear sign that the administration’s trade policy priorities — renegotiating deals and punishing violations — are not working out as expected.

The president may want better deals to replace the old, “terrible” deals he doesn’t like, but so far, the rest of the world has been reluctant to negotiate new agreements with the United States. The long and growing list of tariffs, particularly those based on dubious national security grounds, has weakened the administration’s ability to form coalitions with other countries to tackle legitimate concerns, especially China’s unfair trade practices.

Instead, our closest trading partners are scrambling to find new markets for exports subject to tariff increases by the United States, and to secure new suppliers for the American products that their own countries are planning to hit with retaliatory tariffs.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, for example, has worked diligently to build close ties with the president. But now Japan’s top exports, autos and auto parts, are suddenly facing the threat of a 25 percent tariff. As Mr. Abe told Japanese legislators: “It’s hard for Japan to understand, and we cannot accept it.”

Japan is thus accelerating negotiations with other countries. Japan and the European Union plan to sign their free-trade agreement in July. Moreover, it was Japan who stepped up to fill the leadership void left by the American exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Japanese Diet approved a bill to ratify the revised pact this month.

The tone and policies of the Trump administration have even managed to bring two longtime rivals, China and Mexico, closer together. The two countries once competed head-to-head as low-cost manufacturers, with the United States as the most important market. After Mr. Trump began beating the drum for tariffs and a possible withdrawal from Nafta, Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, called a visit last year to China “strategic leverage,” saying it “sends the signal that we have alternatives” to the United States.

China, meanwhile, is on a mission to woo trading partners. Beijing’s campaign to be viewed as a champion of free trade and guardian of the multilateral trading system has been met with considerable skepticism. But efforts by China to promote stronger commercial ties with Japan, India and other countries are making headway. After a meeting in May with China’s premier, Li Keqiang, Mr. Abe said he wanted to “lift up the Japan-China relationship to a new stage.”

Regrettably, this leaves the United States on the margins as the rest of the world builds a new trading structure without us. Our workers, farmers and companies will be locked out of important markets. We will lose our chance to help write the rules and set standards for trade in advanced technology, such as alternative-fuel vehicles, 3-D printing and artificial intelligence. Global and regional supply chains will increasingly bypass the United States. And years of efforts by the United States to curb China’s unfair trade practices will lose critical international support.

To be sure, as the world’s largest economy, the United States will remain a major player in international commerce. Our market is a magnet for imports and our export competitiveness in manufacturing, services and agriculture is strong. The dollar remains the primary global reserve currency, with much of the world’s commerce denominated in dollars.

There is a danger, however, in overestimating our negotiating leverage. Trade patterns will shift as our partners look elsewhere. We have spent decades building trust with our allies. We are now squandering it.

Correction: June 28, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated a former position held by the author, Wendy Cutler. She was an acting deputy United States trade representative, not an acting United States trade representative.

Will the US please stop waging trade wars that they keep losing?

The trade war of the 1930s wasn’t the actual cause or main driver of the Great Depression.

But it still had immediate and long-term costs.
And just like today, the US got out-played by the rest of the world.

I recently listened to a lecture by Professor Jeff Borland of the University of Melbourne. The topic was What happened in the global trade war in the Great Depression? An historical perspective on Trump and tariffs. And two main points emerged from the discussion:

1.       The trade war of the 1930s wasn’t the actual cause or main driver of the Great Depression; and

2.       To the extent that you can actually do a trade war ‘right’, the US stuffed up that trade war too.

THE GOLD STANDARD

The Gold Standard – the international monetary system of the day – was the main cause of the Great Depression (as I’ve discussed previously). It was a truly destructive system, not only causing the Depression, but hindering any recovery and encouraging beggar-thy-neighbour trade and financial policies.

When the US started hording gold reserves during the ‘Roaring 20s’ (ironically as a hedge against future crises) rather than printing money to ‘sterilise’ these gold inflows, other countries followed suit (starting with France). Countries maintained high interest rates and refrained from printing money to keep inflation rates down and attract gold, so they didn’t run out of reserves in the face of this global rush for gold. This crippled global consumption and investment and drove global inflation rates into a deflationary spiral – now known as the Great Depression.

And to add insult to injury, the Gold Standard prevented exchange rates from adjusting to support an economic recovery. It also prevented countries from lowering interest rates and flooding their financial markets with liquidity to end the downward spiral because this would risk breaking their ‘pegging’. And internationally coordinated monetary stimulus and/or system-wide wage cuts to restore balance while preserving the Gold Standard proved to be administrative fantasies. So the downward spiral continued.

Countries were very hesitant to abandon the Gold Standard. Germany in particular, was especially paranoid of a repeat of its 1920s hyperinflation[1] and didn’t want to risk a depreciating exchange rate triggering another inflationary episode. So even upon the collapse of a major Austrian bank, and the ensuing financial crisis, Germany imposed tariffs and capital controls, rather than abandoning the Gold Standard. And these capital controls froze the assets of many European countries that had invested in Germany, thereby spreading the crisis to the rest of Europe.

Britain did abandon in September 1931 (countries that abandoned earliest tended to recover fastest and had the smallest falls – even modest increases – in imports from 1929-35). And this triggered other countries to either follow suit (including Australia and other Sterling Bloc countries), impose capital controls (including Uruguay, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Colombia and Iceland), or ratchet up their trade barriers even further (including France, Canada, South Africa, Germany, and the Netherlands) to offset Britain’s new competitive advantage (devaluation) without leaving the Gold Standard.

So this, rather than the trade war, was the main cause and driver of the Great Depression – countries not adhering to the rules of the international monetary system, and then stubbornly remaining within the confines of that system while in the midst of the crisis.

THE TRADE WAR

Paul Krugman wrote that economics’ ‘dirty little secret’ is that, while a trade war is unambiguously bad, we tend to oversell it.

Firstly, the Depression itself can actually be seen to have worsened the trade war, rather than the other way around. This is because tariffs were denominated in dollar terms, rather than percentage terms, and massive price deflation associated with the Depression caused these tariffs to rise in percentage terms, thereby automatically worsening the trade war. World trade did collapse during the Great Depression by 25-30%. But again, the collapse in trade was mostly driven by falling incomes associated with the Depression itself, rather than falling incomes being driven by the collapse in trade. In the US specifically, only about 10% of their reduction in imports was from the Smoot-Hawley Act that triggered the trade war; about 20% from the automatic deflation-induced tariff increases; and the remainder from Depression-driven falls in GDP.

I’ve also written previously about how the Depression was actually a driver of the trade war, rather than the other way around. Because of the above constraints of the Gold Standard, and the administrative obstacles to internationally coordinated monetary policy or system-wide wage cuts, tariffs and capital controls were seen as the only viable option to reflate the economy via price levels and import substitution.

And in terms of declines in actual GDP too, the trade war can’t really be attributed as a major cause. And today, with the advantage of flexible exchange rates and Central Banks and governments that should now know how to handle a downturn properly, a trade war is very unlikely to trigger a major downturn.

But this isn’t to say the trade war didn’t have significant costs in the 1930s, or that it wouldn’t today. The trade war certainly didn’t help, and still had many costs of its own.

Firstly, a major trade war causes countries to start producing what they formerly imported – goods and services in which they do not possess a comparative advantage. This restructuring of global supply chains is a seriously damaging disruption (think all the jobs lost in the transition towards free trade, but with losses in efficiency). And while demand that is choked off by tariffs and barriers can be largely replaced by demand for domestic produce, the distributional and efficiency losses accumulate over time. A trade war is very hard to unwind, free trade very hard to re-establish. And for all the years that trade barriers persist, these losses from having production in less efficient locations accumulate into significant amounts of lost output, productivity and innovation, well beyond when the trade war starts to unwind. Imagine how long it’ll take to unwind a modern trade war, and the subsequent cumulative losses.

And this isn’t even to mention the political ramifications. The Smoot-Hawley Act did have big impacts on some surrounding countries – Cuba lost an estimated 10% of its national income from the associated US sugar tariff! This no doubt contributed to the subsequent revolution and overthrow of Cuba’s pro-American government in 1933. No one can say this didn’t have very long-lasting consequences.

There’s also the potential for trade wars to develop into actual wars. Keynes noted the ability of free trade to create customers out of potential enemies, thereby facilitating world peace. Who would wage war on a trading partner? I mean, apart from Trump. And no doubt the breakdown of international trade in the 1930s made it all the easier for countries to go to war in WWII. Extensive losses of trade had already occurred. What more could be lost from war? I mean, apart from the obvious.

If WWII was good for anything, it reinforced the need for global cooperation to facilitate recoveries and trade. Trade wars undermine this.

THE US'S STUFF-UP

But what was particularly interesting was how inept the US was in the 1930s trade war too – just like today.

The Smoot-Hawley Act wasn’t a reaction to the Great Depression. It was imposed by the Republicans beforehand in 1929 and intended to protect the agricultural sector which had suffered in the 1920s. But the only agricultural products that had import competition were sugar and wool, which had enjoyed significant tariff protection for decades. More effective agricultural protection would have been subsidies, not tariffs. Furthermore, the Act increased manufacturing tariffs more than agricultural tariffs anyway. This included coal and lumber, which were actually agricultural inputs. This means tariffs on these products actually hindered agriculture to such an extent that the ‘effective’ rate of protection on agriculture from Smoot-Hawley was actually negative.

The Act ended up imposing significant tariff increases on hundreds on imported goods. Smoot himself even used the Act as an excuse to limit the import of what he saw as ‘obscene material’. A news article at the time used the heading “Smoot smites smut”. This should serve as a dire (though still amusing) warning of how easily fondness for protectionism can spread beyond initial intentions.

It is also very similar to what is happening today – US tariffs will save around 26,280 steel and aluminium-producing jobs, while costing 432,747 jobs elsewhere, including industries that use these materials as inputs (such as the car industry).

Both times the US started a trade war. And both times, the US shot themselves in the foot with their first attempt.

What is also similar is the reaction of the rest of the world. Today, the EU, Canada and other countries are retaliating with tariffs on, among other things, Kentucky bourbon, Iowa pork, Wisconsin motorcycles, and Ohio washing machines – key exports, from states that voted for Trump in 2016. China too, is going after US industries with powerful lobby groups that are most likely to successfully pressure Trump into backing down. So while the US is shooting itself in the foot, the rest of the world is expertly attacking Trump’s own base, while leaving themselves plenty of alternative suppliers of such goods.

Similarly in the 1930s, retaliation against Smoot-Hawley came from Canada, Britain and Europe, not in the form of general tariff increases, but in US-specific attacks. Britain increased tariffs on US imports, while decreasing tariffs on imports from its colonies (a policy called Imperial Preference). This offset the losses to itself while maximising the impacts on the US. Europe, while not explicitly raising tariffs on the US exclusively (which would have breached ‘most favoured nation’ rules), did raise tariffs on specific goods which mostly came from the US – so the effect was the same.

So, whereas the US actually worsened protection of agriculture and triggered a trade war, the rest of the world was far more direct and effective in its attacks on the US – and the US still gets the blame for starting it all.

DON'T START A TRADE WAR!

I suppose it’s not surprising that the ‘winners’ in a trade war are the second movers. When the rest of the world has a single country to blame for starting it, it’s much easier for them to gang up on the single country than for the single country (even one as big as the US) to beat the rest of the world.

It’s one thing to ignore economists when we warn you against starting a trade war. It’s quite another to ignore us when we’re actually telling you how to fight it better.

---

[1] After WWI, the Treaty of Versailles imposed massive war reparations on Germany, which it consequently paid by simply printing massive amounts of its own currency, driving its inflation rate up to 72.6 trillion percent! The US dollar went from buying 0.2-0.25 Mark to 4-5 trillion Mark. There were stories of people in Germany carrying wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a loaf of bread, getting mugged for the wheelbarrow instead of the cash.

Trump is destroying the Western alliances over a problem that doesn't exist.

Trump at the G7 accused his own allies in Europe and Canada of imposing massive trade barriers against the US. These “barriers” are SALES TAXES. They apply to European and Canadian businesses too. So they impose no disadvantage on the US. That’s why the WTO allows them.

Trump is destroying the Western alliances over a problem that DOESN’T EXIST. And Russia and China WILL fill the void.

This is not normal, children!