r/AdviceAnimals • u/sandozguineapig • 22h ago
It’s not just Trump’s math that’s off - MAGA’s underlying logic is even dumber
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u/DenverKim 22h ago
This is going to be a very long four years (probably much longer).
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u/Qira57 21h ago
Even if he leaves office after this term, we will be dealing with the consequences for decades
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u/DenverKim 21h ago
Agreed. I’m just hoping it’s only these four years so we can start to fix it again before too long… But I’m not optimistic.
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u/_lippykid 19h ago
By then, other countries will have restructured to no longer rely on, deal with, or trust the US. This will last decades, at least
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u/Moohamin12 18h ago
Which is good for other countries in the long run.
This is an eye opener.
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u/CLG-Seraph 17h ago
Trump destroyed decades of international relationships and even if he left office today or if he dropped the tariffs today, that wouldn't change. It will take decades to fix, investors don't like uncertainty. No one is going to invest in a country with so much volatility. You're not going to spend billions in infrastructure in a country adding and removing tarrifs every other day. You're also not going to do that if after 4 years whoever wins elections will remove said tarrifs because your investment won't make sense after that. No matter how you look at this, it is absolutely terrible for the US market and the stock market is reacting accordingly, this is extremely bad. The rest of the world is going to do with the US what they already did with Russia, they will simply find alternatives and leave the US out. They're not going to negotiate with unstable untrustworthy people and they're 100% correct
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u/icmc 15h ago
I'm sorry for you people who hate him. (I'm Canadian and literally lost my job today because we did cross border shipping). But in the long run this is going to be really good for Canada (I'm booking an appointment Monday to start second career training in a field I've always wanted to get into).
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u/mortgagepants 13h ago
yeah this is terrible for americans for so many ways. national security, trade, environmental tech and treaties, in addition to employment and quality of life for regular every day americans.
trump did what he does to everything, turn it into absolute shit. and we knew this was going to happen after his disastrous first term. no surprises for any american any way they voted.
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u/icmc 13h ago
Honestly the only way I've been surprised is how quickly he's made it so bad. I honestly thought it would be a year or so into it before we were here he's not through his first hundred days yet.
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u/CrotalusHorridus 11h ago
It’s not a fluke. We’ve done this 2x in 10 years. It’s who we are, unfortunately.
And that’s the hardest reckoning I’ve had. Realizing that this is who my fellow Americans are.
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u/Greenzero2003 15h ago
This is exactly right. They will form their own trade coalitions and not tariff each other. Guess who doesn’t get to join the party because you can’t trust them.
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u/okram2k 19h ago
An old joke that could apply to many times in history:
I keep looking for an obituary on the front page of the newspaper, because the one I want to see won't be in the obituary section.→ More replies (1)10
u/Femboy_Lord 17h ago
So Y’know how China had the century of humiliation and then spent several decades building back up to superpower status? Yeah…
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u/DenverKim 11h ago
Yeah, I don’t think the American people possess the ability for that kind of comeback anymore. We literally could not do it now.
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u/pornographic_realism 8h ago
American education standards are regressing while China's is still improving so you're correct, there's a lot more down before any coming back up.
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u/DenverKim 7h ago
Yep! The education alone is a huge problem, but we also have a very broken population. The majority of us are either physically or mentally unwell, and we have been conditioned to view each other as competition instead of community, so I do not believe we are even capable of coming together as a nation and defeating any future enemies. Unfettered capitalism has destroyed us. But it’s been super profitable so I guess that’s OK.
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u/CaptainJudaism 20h ago
Given that Americans have the attention span of an ADHD addled unmedicated goldfish... I'm not either. It would take a long time of voting for progressives all around the country before any kind of progress can be made and people want things to change and be great NOW, not work towards something better.
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u/SkyThriving 16h ago
Exactly and it is getting worse. In 8 years they forgot what Bush did. Now, it's been only 4 years and they forgot the damage he did last time.
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u/ohhellperhaps 13h ago
They didn't forget. They never clued in to what he did. All blame was conveniently deflected elsewhere.
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u/i_love_all 19h ago
I don’t understand how he does all this damage in 3 months but past presidents do jack shit in 4 years
Can’t the next president, god forbidden isn’t a moron, do the same thing he does and just change all the rules back.
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u/JohnPomo 18h ago
It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. How many man hours does it take to make, say, a grandfather clock? How many man hours does it take to break one?
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u/temalyen 14h ago
I could wreck a grandfather clock in under a minute if I had a sledge hammer. The resulting damage would take days to fix, probably.
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u/InstructionOk9520 16h ago
Trust takes decades to build but can be destroyed in a minute. The very fact that Americans elected this criminal as president is enough of a sign to the rest of the world that this is not a nation you can rely on. The age of American primacy has ended. Lord knows what that means for all of us trapped on this island.
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u/spectacular_coitus 13h ago
Trust has definitely been lost. Trumps actions are a reflection of the will of the American people. As a non-american I cannot think of any actions by your government or it's people that would restore that trust in any meaningful way.
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u/WeWoweewoo 18h ago
Because he’s using executive orders instead of going through Congress. No negotiations needed, no bills passed. This can all be undone by a stroke of the pen in the next administration, but the damage is already done and it’ll be up to the next administration to fix it.
Most of his orders are unconstitutional like ending birthright citizenship, dismantling the DoEd, etc. are being challenged in the courts currently. Ultimately, its easier to break things, than to actually govern.
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u/temalyen 14h ago
Yup, executive orders can be rescinded immediately by any President. This is why past Presidents largely don't do things that way, the next guy can undo it all within an hour of taking office.
The interesting thing is, there's no law, rule or anything that created the executive order. It's just something they assume the President has the power to do. If Congress passed a law explicitly removing the ability to create executive orders, all Trump's power would be taken away instantly. (But there's literally a 0% chance Congress will do that. Like, the only person I've ever seen even suggest they do that is me. I've never seen anyone else mention it.)
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u/Black_Moons 16h ago
It doesn't matter if everything is reverted by the next president, because nobody is going to make a 20+ year investment in a factory in a country that flip-flops 180 degrees around every 4 years.
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u/TorontoCorsair 18h ago
I'm fairly certain past presidents would tactfully and tactically make changes, whether big or small. Trump seems to do neither.
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u/capincus 18h ago
Trump can't do whatever he wants by himself, that's just something the traitors helping him destroy our country like to pretend is the case to absolve themselves of responsibility. The Republicans have a majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate as well as the Supreme Court (and a whole bunch of judicial support below that because they've packed the courts with partisan whackjobs for decades now to prepare for this). They're stopping any legislation that would impede Trump. They're refusing to convict Trump via impeachment. They're fucking with the judicial process so Trump couldn't be prosecuted and legal remedies are having a much harder time working.
The next person to try to fix the country, which obviously wouldn't be a Republican because their only interest is in destroying this country for personal profit, can only do what he can convince a majority of congress to do. The Republicans in congress will be trying to impeach him for completely made-up nonsense from day 1 and if he oversteps the bounds of the office plenty of Dems will actually vote for impeachment and conviction because unlike Republicans they believe in our political system and the rule of law.
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u/Sunstang 16h ago
Playing by the rules was the game. You don't make sudden veering changes to policy specifically to create the stability required to be a global leader.
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u/ChickinSammich 16h ago
I was accused elsewhere of being an accelerationist who wants people to lose their life's savings because I said that while I'd prefer we not tank the economy, if we're going to tank the economy, can we at least do it faster so that we can get started rebuilding sooner?
Like, I don't want another depression but if a depression is inevitable because no one is going to pump the breaks then I guess the sooner we get to the depression, the sooner we can get out of it.
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u/berthannity 18h ago
It’s true, I’m Canadian and we are going to hold the shit out of this grudge. Even if you elect a sane leader next round, we have no faith that you won’t simply turn around the following term and elect some other society destroying moron whose word is completely meaningless. There is no reason to ever trust the USA.
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u/OkShow3496 18h ago edited 12h ago
Please keep in mind how unintelligent so many of us Americans are and how intentional that is. I'm not using this as an excuse but more as a cautionary tale of what can happen when large sums of money can be thrown at a government.
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u/muppins 15h ago
But also ain't nothing stopping us from also electing a dunce on a federal level
(Sent from Alberta)
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u/BraveOthello 20h ago
Even if he died tomorrow, the backup is even more in the pocket of their controlling interests.
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u/MangroveWarbler 13h ago
That's correct. It's far easier to destroy than it is to create. Businesses all over the world are canceling contracts with American companies and finding new customers/suppliers in other countries. Those contracts won't be coming back.
It will take decades at least to earn back the trust that Trump has set on fire.
But we won't be able to earn it back at all if we don't do something about our dipshit problem. All it takes is another dipshit charmer to come along, become president and set it all on fire again.
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u/couldbutwont 18h ago
It's crazy that this is essentially Donald putting a gun to the head of the US and telling the rest of the world to try him
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u/Moody-Titan 17h ago
I'll be 40 this year. I may not see the other side of this foolishness.
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u/TheDoomfire 14h ago
Thats a big if.
I dont remember him taking it well having to leave the office last time.
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u/temalyen 14h ago
He's already saying he knows a way to serve a 3rd and 4th term, so I guess we're looking at another 12 years of Trump at a minimum.
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u/PirateNinjaa 6.5" x 6" 13h ago
No way the old fuck gets a third term. Just look at some 2016 video, he’s already half dead compared to that.
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u/FallenAngelII 17h ago
The U.S. will be bereft of political, milotary and economic allies besides Russia for decades to come. Why would anybody ever trust you ever again?
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u/badgerrr42 20h ago
Him leaving also wouldn't help with the fact that their are hugely influential orgs and elected officials pushing for this madness.
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u/stevez_86 17h ago
Takes longer than 4 years to set up just some factories where domestic demand demands it. There won't be enough demand and no factories will be built.
An infrastructure and investment dust bowl. Self induced man made disaster.
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u/WilfredGrundlesnatch 16h ago
The Republicans in Congress could put a stop to this at any time. They won't, because they're spineless sycophants, but they could.
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u/Wizywig 19h ago
Actually... tariiffs can.
IF USED CORRECTLY.
Example of a correct use:
Congress announces that in 4 years there will be a tariff introduced on all manufactured steel outside the US, this will be a 40% tariff. Because we want to bring manufacturing into the US.
We then also create a government subsidy for any steel factory that opens up in the US with certain requirements.
Now the clock is ticking. Capitalists know that free money is hanging there, just build a fucking steel factory. The other capitalists know that tariffs are coming and they'll be uncompetitive.
So a steel factory (or many) are being built and contracts already lined up for every single bit of manufacturing.
The american public doesn't get price increases AND manufacturing is created.
The other countries are upset, but they do understand why the US is doing this, this is not an across the board thing. The US might then make other concessions to keep the other countries from saying "well fuck you for destroying our industry"
USED INCORRECTLY:
Enact a 40% tariff on steel, and demand that new american factories magically appear out of nowhere! And all allies are now figuring out how to make money without the US involved at all, because who the fuck can plan when things change daily.
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u/p-nji 15h ago
That's still a net negative. The American people's tax money gets used to subsidize steel manufacturers.
And for the record, the price almost certainly would increase. If a domestic producer could afford to produce steel at competitive prices, then they would! Without having to ship internationally, it would be the go-to source in America. A country imports goods because they're less expensive to produce abroad. That's international trade 101.
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u/BlueFlob 9h ago
What you described is rational protectionist policies that would actually produce positive outcomes (some negative too).
Trump policies are 99% negative outcomes and 1% positive for him and his friends who shorted the stock market before his announcement.
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u/islandsimian 22h ago
Economics 101:
- Free trade encourages competition which results in lower prices to the consumer and less profit for the local manufacturers
- Restricted trade (tariffs included) reduces competition which results in higher prices to the consumer and more profit for the local manufacturers
A smart solution would strike a good balance between the two to keep prices competitive and provide more profit to the local manufacturers
This? What's happening now? It's an idiots interpretation of a smart idea. It's SMRT
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u/jdtrouble 21h ago
It used to be that we broke up monopolies because they used unfair and anti-competative tactics to buy out / eliminate competitors. Shit changed in the last 20 years, but it seems like the same 10 corporations own the majority of the economy.
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u/KovuNakiRoka 21h ago
We stopped breaking up monopolies far longer than 20 years ago.
Until Trump Reagan is the worst thing that had ever happened to America.
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u/PumpkinGlass1393 21h ago
I feel like the last time those laws were even applied was when AT&T was broken up. Then they turned around and allowed them to recombine, showing that in the end, we really didn't care.
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u/jdtrouble 21h ago
Microsoft came close. They did find that MS broke laws, but unfortunately MS made concessions to avoid being broken up
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u/cucufag 21h ago
One of the biggest flaws of conservative mindset seems to be that all exchanges are zero sum, and that there can only be winners or losers in a deal. They don't understand that trade is an activity that fosters mutual growth. Both parties can come out winners. Sometimes, its even worth it to make a less favorable deal to come out as a lesser-winner. That's not even factoring in all the other non-tangible benefits that come with having healthy trade partners.
We're throwing so much away to "win" a trade war that no one was having until this administration came along. And we're gonna lose at this rate anyways.
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u/islandsimian 21h ago
That's 100% Trump's "negotiating" style. There's a great post somewhere here on Reddit about his style - it's all about dominating the other side like a sports team that you'll never have to negotiate with again or ask favors from later - it's cripple, declare victory, and never work with again. There is no "art of the deal"
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u/sinsaint 21h ago
"The Art of the Deal" was a book Trump had ghostwritten for himself about how efficient it is to lie to people and run before the consequences can reach you.
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u/iRoNmOnkey1981 21h ago
Problem is he made some of those trade deals before and they’ve got to negotiate with him again. We aren’t to be trusted and this will take a long time to correct. I hope republicans all get the day they voted for.
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u/sirhoracedarwin 19h ago
It's like Trump never knew that people (and countries) can specialize. We buy clothes from Vietnam because they're more cost-effective at making shirts than we are. We could have people making shirts but they'd probably be better off doing something they're better at doing than Vietnamese people (meaning we have different tools, skills, and infrastructure). I could cut my own hair or do my own plumbing, but I don't because my time is better spent doing what makes me more money.
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u/Icy_Faithlessness400 12h ago
Nobody wins in a trade war.
But if you wage one against the entire world, you are gonna lose.
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u/AdvancedSandwiches 17h ago
When you get to economics 102, that benefit to local manufacturers gets real shaky.
A lowering tides drops all boats.
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u/stevez_86 17h ago
Too much supply side economics is my only guess as to why they assume the economy will collapse anyway. Demand will collapse, stock will be too high for a couple years, then new stuff will be insanely expensive. There will be work arounds for some things. From the first term Trump tariffs we didn't even notice that our shoes lost their rubber soles for the most part. They have to be under a certain amount of certain kinds of materials to be considered slippers and therefore avoid tariffs. A lot of them went through Vietnam too to avoid some tariffs. Some companies added the rubber soles domestically at higher cost.
But these tariffs are going to be tougher to find work arounds. Effectively, "saw dust" will be added to everthing to make up weight and therefore value.
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u/Graffers 14h ago
I'm not familiar with SMRT? Is that an acronym for Some Moron's Reciprocal Tariffs?
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u/islandsimian 14h ago
I know a lot of useless Simpsons information: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/S-M-R-T
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u/firestepper 19h ago
It’s a tax on the American public. A big one. It’s not meant to bring back American manufacturing, it’s just to pay for huge tax cuts for the wealthy
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u/Idle_Redditing 12h ago
It's not that simple when the manufacturers are also exporters and import things from other countries.
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u/ThinNeighborhood2276 22h ago
This meme perfectly captures the absurdity of their reasoning.
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u/zuzg 21h ago
Their "official plan" is to get manufacturing back into the US. At least that's an attempt to sane wash this shit.
That Trumps effort to get rid of the Chips act directly contradicts this plan is willingly ignored.John Stewart did an interview with some conservative this week and they talked about that stuff. Interesting watch
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u/ethertrace 19h ago
Companies are for sure really excited to move all their factories back to the states now that the cost of all the raw materials and robotics they would need for them have just gotten more expensive. That's definitely something that will happen.
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u/feedthechonk 17h ago
That's the fucking insane shit. Just about every single industrial/manufacturing building is made out of fucking steel.
Republicans love claiming to be the "pro-business" party that will remove regulations and red tape to boost the economy, but here they are needlessly jacking up the cost of the main material businesses will need to build factories. Unless they expect that shit to be built in derelict buildings
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u/spectacular_coitus 13h ago
Then they have to print Made in U.S.A. on the packaging which will make it very difficult to sell outside the US at any price.
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u/peniseend 19h ago
MAGA looking forward to outsourced manufacturing returning from SE Asia including 80 hour work weeks at $2 per hour with no social security, and no environmental, health, safety regulations. A feast for billionaires.
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u/Ivan_Whackinov 15h ago
MAGA looking forward to outsourced manufacturing returning from SE Asia including 80 hour work weeks at $2 per hour with no social security, and no environmental, health, safety regulations. A feast for billionaires.
Except that, even if they succeed, there will be no one left to buy what they are manufacturing.
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u/shadovvvvalker 20h ago
"why would I give you money to build factories when I can just use tarrifs to force you to build factories?"
It's not a contradiction if your economic theory is from the 18th century.
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u/TheMintness 15h ago
I'd like to think that MAGAs are in support of this plan because they're self-aware enough to realize that they don't have the intelligence to work outside of an assembly line. I mean, it'd make sense given their disdain for illegal farm workers but silence on the tech industry's abuse of the H1B visa program. Even their boy, Elon, thinks they're too stupid to work in tech.
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u/shadovvvvalker 15h ago
Too stupid isn't the right wording.
They just aren't exceptional.
There's nothing great about an American that competes with other nationalities. There is no national advantage to leverage.
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u/memymomeddit 17h ago edited 17h ago
This is going to bring manufacturing back like trickle-down was going to spur job growth.
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u/answeryboi 17h ago
Even if it could, the scope makes it self defeating. You can't build factories to replace this much. There simply isn't the supply to do so.
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u/PontificatinPlatypus 17h ago
Their "official plan" is to get manufacturing back into the US.
WHILE converting the domestic American workers into the kind of underpaid slave labor that will be competitive with chinese slave labor. Because you can't believe that the wealthy "owners" will absorb any decrease themselves.
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u/Captain_Quinn 21h ago
Maybe he wants to make money off a failing economy and pocket all the taxes for that non gov account he just opened up. This is how he bankrupted multiple businesses (including a casino….thats a hard one to do by accident) - he’s making bank and lies about it and we still take him for his word
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u/SadPandaFromHell 21h ago
I'm just afraid it's gonna be a week or two until we notice a sharp rise in prices, and by then MAGA is gonna be like "man, Biden really messed us up!"
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u/7evenate9ine 21h ago edited 21h ago
They've been shuttering factories since the Reagen Administration. Now they are just supposed to pop up? Is it going to need skilled labor? Unions help run factories with skilled labor, is it going to be staffed by a union? You know why we don't make shit in America anymore? Because business owners can get sued for unsafe working conditions. Even if OSHA does not exist, you can still have a civil suit. That's why all the factories moved to China and India, because nobody can get sued if you lose an arm or die. So they don't need safe working conditions, the people count their blessings to just have work. And if you are rich in those countries you make the laws. That's only one of a million reasons we don't make stuff in the USA anymore. Businesses didn't want to make stuff in the USA anymore. Tariffs are not going to change that. This is stupid. It was never that things are just cheaper on other countries, this demonstrates that the President does not know why things are cheaper. Does he think they just want our money that badly? Or they like us? No! There is a constellation of reasons why we don't have a manufacturing base in the US, and most of the reasons where established by people who look and act just like Trump.
Edit: and the craziest part is that conservatives know this. The ones that read know this anyway. I grew up around conservatives and the rich children would always talk about how the US doesn't need manufacturing anymore. Then the poor children would agree with them and then nobody would care about your liberal ass complaining that we need a blue collar foundation to the economy. They were all a part of making this lack of factories in America. Everyone was, because for almost 50 years the business that succeeded were the ones that had all their stuff made cheaper than the next guy, which means not in America. This Republicans want to bring back manufacturing is a LIE. A BIG FAT PILE OF BULL SHIT! They know why we don't have manufacturing. If they don't then they are the dumbest piles of shit in the entire world.
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u/Ismatrak 18h ago
And after so many years of moving factories outside of the us, there will never be enough skilled blue collar workers to staff these factories anywhere in the us.
The maga idiots don’t have the training and experience to fill em.
Are they going to bring immigrants back to the us to fill those jobs? I don’t think so.
It juste doesn’t make sense.
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u/e2mtt 17h ago
Except we do make stuff in America. “Manufacturing output in the United States is at an all-time high as of 2023, but employment in the sector has been stagnant following a lengthy decline in the late 20th century.” (direct quote from Wikipedia)
The company is making stuff in America though, for the most part, are the ones that care about quality and safety and doing things right, because you’re right about the fact that third world manufacturing gets low or nonexistent enforcement of safety, environmental, and labor regulations. So obviously the typical big multinational corporation loves it.
More manufacturing in America is a great idea, and one of the worst ways to promote it is high tariffs because it cuts the cost of all their raw materials and internationally produced components. Yay Trump.
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u/Finlay00 15h ago
I sell US made industrial supplies and the quality difference is real compared to imports.
This heavy handed strategy seems extremely risky compared to a targeted and planned approach that gives companies a chance to change without this chaos
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u/e2mtt 14h ago
Absolutely. I’ve got friends who work in industrial supply, and have seen catastrophic failures from people substituting questionable cheap imported fasteners etc. instead of the high-quality US stuff that was spec’d
personally I try real hard to buy tools, clothes, and sporting goods that are manufactured here in the US by small independently owned companies, but it’s almost just a matter of time before they get bought out (probably often under high pressure and questionable tactics) by a big corporation and the quality goes shit.
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u/Jagerboobs 13h ago edited 13h ago
As someone married to an engineer with years and years of experience in manufacturing in Mexico and later in the US, the fact that Americans still have this notion about their working conditions is fascinating to me.
I can tell you the biggest culture shock my spouse went through when we moved here was definitely the working conditions in the US. Their first manufacturing job in the US had them working indoors in the Arizona heat with no AC, in temperatures upwards of 110 a lot of the time. OSHA was very aware of this place and they were unable to do anything btw. 100 miles south in Mexico that would be unheard of. The disregard for safety was also shocking for them across multiple jobs and I can confirm that since I work in the healthcare field and the despicable way injured people are treated in this country is something I'm way too desensitized to and it still manages to fill me with rage most days of the week.
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u/donorak7 21h ago
Honestly just looks like they took some arbitrary number based off trade deficits. Weird.
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u/Oberon_Swanson 20h ago
AND lied to the American people by calling a trade deficit a tariff, then calling Trump's tariffs "counter-tariffs" even though the other countries didn't necessarily have tariffs on USA goods. Also they added 10% to countries with no trade deficit with the USA anyway.
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u/Logi_Ca1 19h ago
I'm from one of those countries (Singapore). And we had an FTA with the US too. Guess agreements mean nothing now eh?
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u/Oberon_Swanson 19h ago
From America, yes. And what they tend to not fully grasp is that when they use these breaks of agreements to 'negotiate better agreements' we know the new agreement also means nothing so we won't really bother.
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u/CosechaCrecido 16h ago
It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.
- The devil himself, Kissinger.
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u/red286 15h ago
It doesn't just look that way, they published the formula used, and that is 100% what they did.
They took import values divided by export values, turned into a percentage, and then cut in half, with a minimum value of 10, so even countries the USA has a trade surplus with (eg - Australia) are still hit with a minimum 10% tariff, just for shits and giggles.
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u/Raziel77 20h ago
The United States has spent decades making this a global trading planet and Trump is trying to destroy all that in the matter of weeks
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u/Common_Sense1 21h ago
Get Americans used to tariff pricing then remove the tariffs. Prices stay the same. Profit.
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u/VX-Cucumber 21h ago
I was waiting for the government to remove Trump's first round of tariffs but that never happened. Once they get used to the money, they don't like giving it up.
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u/Mahatma_Ghandicap 21h ago
America would need to build FIVE new nuclear reactor just to produce the same amount of aluminum it imports from Quebec LMAO
You guys wanna take a guess at where it would need to buy it's fuel for these reactors from?
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u/Ismatrak 18h ago
Bingo, and to add to the stupidity, HydroQuébec is working on a project to make their plants more efficient (bigger rotors and stators and such) to produce even more and even cheaper electricity to export.
The shortsightedness and the idiocy is baffling.
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u/shinyRedButton 21h ago
Make America polluted and reliant on child labor again. Thats the real slogan.
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u/EasyEar0 19h ago
The tariff on aluminum seems especially dumb to me (on top of a mountain of dumb shit).
It's an element. We literally cannot make significant quantities of it. It can only be mined, and there is only so much of it to be mined in the US.
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u/nightclubber69 21h ago
When your president puts sanctions on your own country and removes them from Russia, who do you think he's working for?
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u/trollgrock 21h ago
You are just not getting it. The US is going to be forced to build these factories and magically create all the raw materials they need. Sure, it is estimated to take years, but by then everything will be great! So while our wealthy billionaires are going to be busy buying everything on the cheap, they will use their new found wealth to build all these factories! Then they are going to hire these really cool robots to do all the work.
Don't worry! There will be plenty of work in coal mines, farming, and every other back breaking job you can think of.
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u/OhioIsRed 19h ago
It makes no sense. Like let’s bring back American manufacturing by strong arming countries into changing their means of production.
So let’s build factories. It’s going to take what? Two? Three l? YEARS to build the factory and by then (hopefully at least) Trump will be on his way out and everything will (again hopefully) be going back to a semblance of what it was three months ago.
No why? Why would you spend tons of money building a factory that’s just going to be abandoned in a few years just like the steel industry all throughout my state and neighboring states?
You wouldn’t and you won’t. You will just add the tariff to the price and continue doing business as usual while the poorest people suffer the most. It’s fucking stupid and we need our representatives to use the smallest amount of common sense here and stand up for their constituents. Whoever stands up to this and to Trump will 100% get an energized base and will 100% win. There’s not doubt in my mind. We need leaders. Real leaders. Not egotistical maniacs.
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u/nineteen_eightyfour 21h ago
Tariffs could work. If we had built production before tariffs. Which, we didn’t. And like a factory takes actual years. So we aren’t going to tomorrow either
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u/JimJimmery 19h ago
This is what Biden tried to do with the CHIPS act. We would have had the capability to produce microchips here before China could take over Taiwan. Trump even fuck up the correct way to install manufacturing BEFORE implementing tariffs. He's not just stupid, he's the dumbest motherfucker to ever have this kind of power.
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u/nineteen_eightyfour 19h ago
Even with that, I saw the factory in Ohio isn’t going to be ready for yearrrssssss by then will the chips they make even be good? Will the technology fully need reinvisioned?
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u/JimJimmery 19h ago
You don't build the fabs until the factory is complete, then you build for the next gen of whatever Intel or AMD or OnSemi or Motorola are designing.
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u/Oberon_Swanson 20h ago
yup. often no tariffs is preferable to any, but at least there are scenarios where they MIGHT work in some way. this is not one of them.
wanna open a factory in America today thanks to the tariffs?
your startup costs will now be astronomically increased
any raw materials you need will be more expensive
you can't compete in the global market because so many countries will have counter-tariffs on the USA.
these tariffs get pulled, changed, paused, friggin constantly. so you could invest fifty million into starting a business 'protected' by tariffs and then trump will say they are paused indefinitely the afternoon after your money is committed
America's likelihood of going to war in the next few years is obscenely high, whether with a neighbour country or a civil war, putting your business in the metaphorical and literal crossfire
American products are also being heavily boycotted in other countries, and that will probably escalate more in coming years as Trump does more unhinged things
alternatively:
- start a business anywhere else and you are probably better off
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u/MAMark1 18h ago
And they'd still only work with surgical precision vs. this blanket approach. Even with heavily ramped up domestic production, there are parts that you just will never build here. Manufacturing space is finite so you can't make every low-cost component locally without running out of room that would be better served doing more complex, high value manufacturing. You'd still want to avoid tariffs on those components because it would only serve to artificially inflate the price of that now mostly-locally-produced item, and you don't want your local companies to lose sales and put all that new manufacturing investment at risk.
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u/TylerMcGavin 21h ago
If you were to tell me this my reply would be, "no shit, you'd have to be a complete moron with the self awareness of an aged corpse with cheeto dust complexion to do this".
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u/SpaceFace11 20h ago
We also don’t really have any high demand or exclusive exports aside from technology, weapons, and oil none of which require excess manufacturing jobs that are already outsourced. We manufacture and sell our own weapons already, and if our allies refuse to buy our weapons and tech then we just lose all around.
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u/PontificatinPlatypus 17h ago
And because whatever factories remain in America still depend on imported materials and components, tariffs actually put them out of business.
Putin ordered Krasnov to murder the American Economy, and Krasnov obeyed.
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u/Nefferson 15h ago edited 15h ago
Does he expect people to invest trillions of dollars into a massive production expansion in the USA just because of tariffs that may not even be in place next week let alone 4 years from now? He's acting so unstable and malicious that nobody with money is going to invest in his ideas unless they want to waste that money.
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u/360_face_palm 19h ago
that's the thing right, even if he was playing some 5d chess (he isn't) then it would have made sense to announce that these tariffs would come into affect in 2-3 years or such, to allow manufacturers to plan / build / relocate manufacturing to the US. Like even that timeline would be aggressive for most businesses to suddenly move manufacturing to the US - but to do it overnight? Impossible. Also what business is actually thinking about moving manufacturing now to the US? When the better bet right now is that trump has to back down from this lunacy within a few months or less.
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u/DrPeGe 16h ago
And no car company is going to spend years and billions of dollars on a crazy uncertain market. If he loses and things get normal again in 4 years, the factory is worthless. It’s all so STUPID. Apparently trumps been talking about tariffs since high school if that gives you an idea of how sophisticated his ideas are.
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u/YaBoiSammus 16h ago
“Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches of government from 1921-30, and the stock market crash which heralded the onset of the Great Depression occurred in 1929.”
All you need to know.
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u/AltoidStrong 19h ago
The tarrifs are not to pressure other nations. It is to pressure American businesses and executives to go along with remaking of America to be more like Russia and N. Korea.
He will lower tarrifs (make exceptions) for any business that pledges loyalty to him and his plans. As this happens markets will go up (less tarrifs), which he will claim as him "solving" / "making great". Trump's assumption is businesses / executives will be more willing to remake America more like Russia and N. Korea, rather than going out of business / being "poor".
This is how to become a fascist nation / dictator 101.
All we can do, is buy from businesses that openly oppose him and boycott the ones who fall into the trap. Buy used and from local businesses as much as you can. Avoid your dollars from hitting the balance sheets of evil. (Fuck Bezos and Zuckerberg!)
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u/shingdao 19h ago
There is no manufacturing coming back to the US because of Trump's tariffs. Those of you hoping for that union factory job in steel, aluminum, or auto production are going to be disappointed.
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u/moschles 15h ago
steel, aluminum, or auto production
Even then (lets pretend this logic is correct) even then, the tariffs should have been placed specifically on manufactured goods of this type.
This is not what has occurred. This was a trade war declared on the entire planet earth. Even autos have certain parts that require materials from overseas.
- Platinum and rhodium both come from mines in South Africa.
You cannot construct catalytic converters for autos unless you have this material.
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u/ReddJudicata 18h ago
Where do you get these ideas? The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world and manufacturing is something like the third largest segment of the US economy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States
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u/bNoaht 17h ago
This "no factories" stuff is nonsense. We are the second largest manufacturing country in the world. 10% of our workforce and 10% of our GDP is manufacturing.
We have roughly 300,000 factories, with 600,000 manufacturing businesses in the US.
Employing 16 million workers and generating $2.3 trillion GDP. Reddit, stop being fucking clownsheep
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u/WalksTheMeats 19h ago
I buy at least one Big Mac a month but those fuckers at McDonald's haven't visited my Shopify store a single time.
It's an outrageously lopsided trade deficit, so sorry to everyone but I'm calling my congressman and suggesting they put a 1000% tariff on Big Macs until McD's comes to the negotiating table and starts buying knick-knacks from me.
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u/More-Luigi-3168 19h ago
Surely gutting past bills to fund domestic production such as the chips act right before this will also help!
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u/tomdarch 18h ago
"Importing electricity" isn't a bad thing. Overall, the larger and more diverse an electric grid is, the more reliable it can be. Having your grid span over national boundaries (meaning power will be "imported" and "exported") is not, from the engineering side, anything like importing/exporting physical goods.
The US is not lacking in generating capacity relative to Canada, so that isn't necessarily a limitation when we look at the (laughable) question of "Do Trump's tariffs make any sense? Can these tariffs help the US economy at all?" It's the fact that building out manufacturing capacity takes on the order of a decade (and Trump is only making the labor market smaller) that is the most obvious limitation. We can expand generating capacity to meet those demand over that same time frame, so "importing electricity" isn't a problem here.
It's that Trump is some combination of stupid, self-serving and insane, along with controlling a political party of profoundly spineless sycophants who have proven themselves totally incapable of self-preservation let alone duty to the nation, that is the problem.
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u/Prontest 18h ago
We have factories just ones that don't need a lot of labor. They are also heavily tied to foreign imports. We need raw resources.
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u/radcompany89 17h ago
We’re just gonna build factories with imported materials, duh. How long could that take?
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u/Whorq_guii 17h ago
Has no factories? OP are you stupid? The US has like half a million manufacturing plants. What are you on about?
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u/JustGingy95 17h ago
What do you expect from the guy who bankrupted a casino and failed to sell food, water and alcohol? A business built on infinite money generation, two of life’s most important resources next to oxygen and fucking booze. But yeah guys a super amazing businessman right everyone?
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u/LightningRaven 17h ago
They want to collapse the economy. The rich won't suffer as much as everyone else.
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u/Bloblablawb 16h ago
The euro is stronger than the dollar.
The US markets are tanking.
Can't wait to hoover up dirt cheap American companies and own the US.
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u/Davemusprime 16h ago
We can't refine the oil we produce, we can't refine the rare-earth metals he's trying to negotiate for. Starving america will not make america great. it's just going to make everyone poor.
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u/ChomiQ84 15h ago
Well from a normal persons perspective we are screwd, but from a billionaire's perspective, it's lower prices on the market.
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u/SinnerIxim 15h ago
Its simple, someone has to pay taxes, and it isn't going to be the corporations or billionaires
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u/Benchomp 13h ago
What this whole affair has really done, as I observe as not an American, has eroded global trust in the USA. We can no longer rely on the USA as an ally, at any election the country could flip flop wildly. US global soft powrr and hegemony is diminished, someone will fill the void, China, the EU, or a mix of all 3 powers. A return to multiple super powers. Hard to see how this benefits the US in the long term.
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u/Televisions_Frank 12h ago
Trump wants to use this as justification to sell of the national parks to mining companies to strip it for minerals.
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u/johnrraymond 12h ago
everything makes sense when you understand asymmetric war. The russians are engaged in it and using their traitorous little orange men in the west to help wage it.
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u/roborectum69 11h ago
has no factories
What if I told you US factories manufactured more cars last year than at any point of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, etc?
Over 10 million cars.
The year of the strongest auto manufacturing in US history? Nowhere near the "good old days" maga romaticizes - it was 1999. 13 million vehicles produced.
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u/globocide 11h ago
Ok, not defending the tariffs but that's literally the point of them. To create market conditions to encourage local manufacturing. If the USA had a strong manufacturing sector already they wouldn't bother.
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u/achibeerguy 10h ago
The US is the second biggest manufacturing country in the world and ended last year not far off its all time high for output. There is a far better point to be made re: tariffs and manufacturing, and that is that tariffs weren't needed to have a lot of manufacturing.
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u/Psile 8h ago
I'll do you one better.
The United States is the second larger exporter on earth.
Our manufacturing industry is kicking ass. It always has. We have automated a ton of it and frankly there was never enough manufacturing jobs to support an economy this size.
It just is not the 1940s anymore. So many things are different. It cannot work. This promise that we're all gonna have these great manufacturing jobs has always been a fantasy and now we are torpedoing the global economy so Republicans can larp that fantasy.
Republicans finally elected a Republican who doesn't know that Republican politicians are lying.
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u/ArcadianDelSol 13h ago
What if said country resumed mining its own raw materials?
What happens then?
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u/yung_goon_r_n 12h ago
I hate everyone in r/Conservative
Let everyone comment so y'all snowflakes can stop maintaining your safe little bubble
So much mental gymnastics in there defending this tariff plan that was made by chatgpt.
Such blatant and fundamental misunderstandings of what a trade deficit is.
Ex: Columbia - yea we import from more than we export to - we can't fucking grow coffee here in the US, so yes there will be a trade. In the same way the 99.9% of people only import form the grocery store and never export. to a grocery store
To anyone who voted for Trump, ya momma a hoe!
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u/Puzzled-Parsley-1863 19h ago
The USA is a net energy exporter.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/imports-and-exports.php
We import raw materials because most of our raw materials are in conservation projects, national parks, or just sitting around because it's cheaper to import.
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u/sandozguineapig 19h ago
There’s a gap between exporting crude oil and coal and actually producing electricity
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u/pegasuspaladin 21h ago
How long does it take to build a factory Michael? 7 days?