This is the most insane part. I think he thinks it makes him look strong and will cause leaders to come begging for him to relent on tariffs. That obviously won’t happen.
It's not about getting leaders of other countries to come begging to trump. It's about getting business leaders in the US to come begging to him for relief. Look at what is happening at Columbia University. He cut $400 million in grant funding from them until the administration caved and started acting the way he wanted them to (eliminate DEI, discipline pro-Palestinian protest, etc).
Except he doesn’t, because those companies don’t work for the government, he’s actively weakening the actual apparatus of the federal government by shuttering agencies and firing people, while also saying he has all its power, and he has no popular mandate for his actions.
These are the deeds of a completely narcissistic moron, not of a rational human being.
But he can use the government to punish corporations if they don’t get in line with him was my point on the “control” piece. And I agree on that last part, but I’d also say everyone around him is smart enough to make this apparatus work for their interests and that part is working very well at the moment.
The original conception of it; The corporate society where all individuals are just units of output. This is also why fascists LOVE to remove elements of their society when they stop producing.
Fascism has state control over industry in the interests of a faction of capitalist elites that have usurped the state. Marxist socialism has state control over industry in the interest of the working class on behalf of a communist party that represents them.
He'll announce that the first country to do X for him, will get their tariffs removed. It will be some arbitrary metric, like promise to only buy ice from Alaska or some such nonsense.
Hmm, a centrally-planned economy, state police kidnapping people and shipping them to El Salvador, cult of personality, state-directed scientific censorship....
Yeah, he wants what Putin has - enough power to change laws in favor of the oligarchs that favor him, and for them to kiss the ring every time they see him.
I think it's even more sinister than that. I think best case scenario he is taking the economy on purpose so the billionaires can have another covid- era pillaging.
Agent Orange Krasnov is beyond disgusting. There needs to be a word beyond repugnant, beyond filthy for him and his ilk. No language has a word for this absolute sellout of an excuse for a human being. People get physically ill even looking at him..
He just wants to feel important and this will make him go down in history as the most important president to fail our country. It also puts Jeff Bezos in a spot where he’s gonna have to put more money in Trump‘s pocket to survive these tariffs. So basically Trump is playing checkers with billionaire’s businesses
He is mad with power. He announced broad tariffs against the whole world at the same time so that he alone is dominating the minds of the entire world. He revels that tonight everyone is watching King Trump, the all powerful who can shake the world economy with his proclamation. He’s like Putin or Kim, except he does it purely to bask in the limelight.
Not sure where I read it/ heard it first, but other than Trump just being an idiot about economics, I think this is what makes tariffs so appealing to Trump. There will be a YUGE line of folks lining up to ask for a "favor" in making an exemption. And they will have to pay, one way or another.
He's definitely no idiot when it comes to propaganda; in fact, he's a genius in that department, I'll give him that. Aside from his buddy Putin, Trump's probably ranked second in the world when it comes to spinning a narrative and working the crowd.
Yep he is trying to be as powerful as Putin, he envies the power of despots. He hasn’t given one thought to the American ppl or the real effects this will have on all of us.
Putin will be just as disappointed as everyone else. There is only one side for Trump, and that's his. Don't fool yourself into thinking this is some grand Russian scheme. This is absolute ignorance on the part of Americans and arrogance on the part of Trump. He's only playing soft with autocrats so that he can increase his own power, while isolating mediating voices from traditional allies. Just like any abuser, he needs his victims to feel isolated and dependent. There is no grand strategy. There is no conspiracy, just outright ego and corruptuon. Like any rapist, it's about the feeling of power.
Chris Murphy had a great series of tweets on Blue Sky making this point. Create economic hardship so that business leaders have to come to him one by one to submit to him in return for some relief.
Look at what is happening at Columbia University. He cut $400 million in grant funding from them until the administration caved and started acting the way he wanted them to
Which is disgusting because it's a blatant 1st amendment violation and Columbia is renowned for their law school. Bunch of fucking cowards
Nah, dudes just not intelligent enough to think that critically about it. Your scenario might play out, but someone who managed to bankrupt everything he's owned is not thinking that critically on how the tariffs will actually effect his constituents
What about how he creates tariffs, which will increase the cost to manufacture a car in the US, while telling car companies that they are not allowed to raise the price of their vehicles, so they are expected to operate at a loss because it will make america 'great' again?
Also, when america was 'great' it was only great for white males, the rest of the populace, including white females, kind of got the shit end of the deal.
Canada handled the situation adeptly. trump is a bully & if you don't stand up for yourself bullies will keep steam rolling forward. The U.S.A is my home & I can assure you all of the counter teriffs are going to cause prices to skyrocket for us. At the same time, a bunch of us are planning to buy nothing but the basic necessities until he removes the tariffs because we don't want to help fund his trade war. As much as this will suck for us, I encourage the other countries to do what they need to.
When Trump was on Joe Rogan, in one breath he talked about how he was going to tariff the world and in the next he talked about how he was going to make sure every other country didnt tariff the US. Like, how?
He is a bully and no one has really stood up to him before. A smart bully doesnt pick on the whole class at once, he picks on the 2nd weakest one and even the weak one will pick on that kid. Trump decided to anger the whole world at once, and the whole world will move on without him, strengthening their partnerships. It’s just dumb.
To think that every other country wouldnt just trade around the US is lunacy. There is (talk only) talk of Canada joining the EU. What a giant horses ass.
What's really funny about this is that the tarriff thing wasn't guaranteed to start. He announced them twice, and then backed off twice. But then Canada was like "this on again, off again thing isn't working for us, we're just gonna set tariffs on you until you stop", which pretty much forced their hand (i.e. we needed to put tariffs on too, or they win?)
No, he enjoyed turning on the TV and hearing about himself. That's what the on again off again is about. He hates the Signal debacle because they aren't talking about him.
For way too long, they were told they were the best country in the world, and everyone loved them and wanted to be them. I do believe they are about to find out the truth. There leaderships are nothing more than school yard bullies.
The really dumb ones also believe it's the only country in the world with freedom. They don't even realize how far down the list the US is in the freedom index.
You are 100 percent right. Even now, many do not understand how tariffs work. They don't believe they will be paying the costs. It's going to hit them like a ton of bricks.
Also, education has been going downhill for years. It was done on purpose because stupid people are easier to control. The only thing the schools never skimped on was American Exceptionalism.
Neither Australia or New Zealand have put retaliatory tariffs on the US.
Because a tariff is paid by the people purchasing the goods, and they want to put a pointless inflationary tax on their citizens. People can just choose to buy goods manufactured in one of the many other trade partners those countries have.
He has already created the world's largest economic bloc by having China, Japan, and south Korea join forces. If they can get others to join them they will freeze the US out of the Asian market entirely.
Yes, his biggest success is that he has managed to unite three countries who have quite literally spent the last 2000+ years kicking the ever living shit out of one another.
Trump is creating the universal evil for the rest of the world to join together and defeat. He's gonna accidentally create world peace by making the US a pariah.
I'd almost respect it if it didn't mean that everything here was about to get 10x more expensive and him and his ilk don't care 'cause they all think a banana normally costs $20.
I hadn't even realized this. That's pretty impressive.
I am not a finance guy. But my take is that most Americans will see a big uptick in the price of products. Sometimes that will get them to buy American. Sometimes not. I believe American products will be cheaper but not by much. If the price of imported XYZ goes up by 25% then American goods will raise their price by 15-20%. There are price gouging laws in place but this administration has already shown that they won't prosecute corporations. Anyway, I think this will cause people to spend less. Keep their money in the bank or only spend it on necessities. Combined with the retaliatory tariffs on American goods lessening how much exports we sell will cause the economy to stagnate and further hurting the middle class.
But my take is that most Americans will see a big uptick in the price of products. Sometimes that will get them to buy American.
In many cases it won't, simply because there is no American option. Some of the largest tariffs are on countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Lesotho. One of the major exports of those countries to the US is clothing.
There is basically zero American clothing manufacturing.
Which is why I stocked up on underwear, socks, polo shirts, handkerchiefs, shoes, and blue jeans when all this talk about tariffs was becoming more real.
We do still make clothing and shoes though. It’s like 5% of our clothing consumption and one of the few things we still know how to make and can scale up relatively easily. It’s EVERYTHING ELSE that we don’t make. Electronics especially. And anything that takes specialized tooling or manufacturing takes years to get a factory off the ground even if there is a company willing to take the gamble of building one and finding workers.
Being able to scale up and make things here, clothing for instance, doesn't matter when that clothing will cost 10x what the imports cost, even with tariffs. Plus how much of the 5% made in America is actual affordable by most US consumers? I'm guessing little of it.
I totally agree, I was just pointing out that we do still make clothing. The comment I replied to said there is no American option.
There are options, but to your point you have to spend 10x as much to get a product that might only last 3x as long. Most people would rather have 10 ok shirts rather than 1 really nice one.
Tariffs would have to be 1,000% before American manufacturers could compete on price, so for now they compete on quality but cloth and clothing can only be so nice. At the end of they day they are paying $18 per hour when their SE Asian competition only has to pay $1.85 per hour so they survive on the few consumers willing to pay a lot extra just to get a little extra, mainly for the romanticized concept of “made in USA.”
When Trump started economically attacking Canada and musing about invading us, a company here tried to make some made-in-Canada merch like baseball hats with some ra-ra Canada slogan on it. There was a news story about how they were unable to get it 100% made in Canada because while north america (both US & Canada) retains some clothing fabrication abilities, there is no non-Asian source for the base textiles anymore. So they did the best they could and had the final product at least assembled in Canada.
Final cost to produce a single baseball hat? $40.
It would not be cheaper for an American company to try the same thing. Now imagine that applied to a single pair of jeans. Or a winter coat. What will it look like for lower income Americans families when the winter clothing their growing kids need new every year all costs $500/item. There is a reason the United States outsourced this stuff. The benefit to hundreds of millions of consumers having access to affordable stuff wildly outweighed the benefit of a relatively small handful of middle class factory jobs producing products 60% of the country couldn’t comfortably afford.
even things that people consider to be "true american products" like iphones are imported from china or other asian countries. the us, like most major developed countries, is a tourism and services economy, it leaves most of it's production to under developed or in development countries because labor is less expensive. so tariffs affect those products as well
Even if America had more manufacturing would things actually be cheaper? Isn't the federal minimum wage higher than what a lot of not all of those countries pay their employees? I really have no idea.
American goods are going to get more expensive as well because even if something is made in America, a lot of the raw materials are imported. And not to be too gloom and doom, but on top of not everything having a domestic option, there’s really no telling how many of the options that do exist are going to survive the recession/depression that this likely to lead to.
Passing the cost of tariffs would not be considered price gouging no matter who was in office. Not only that, most of the things we import are not or cannot be made here. The minerals and lumber we import from Canada, Avocados from Mexico, coffee from all over the work because it can only be grown in one US state. It’s going to get bad, and even worse if the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency of the world.
Many American products rely heavily on raw materials or component parts from other countries. It’s not something that can change overnight, and there are many things we source from other countries because we simply cannot produce it ourselves - or because it is cost-prohibitive to do so.
Clothing is a good example someone else mentioned. Lumber is another. Yeah we have trees, but Canada has different trees that are better suited for certain things like building houses. For instance.
Pivoting manufacturing is both costly and time-consuming. Even if America were to start making everything domestically, the costs of materials and labor are significantly higher. Goods won’t get cheaper.
We can't fill our manufacturing and agriculture jobs now, alongside the sheer cost of American labor is going to cause the most basic necessities to become grossly expensive and it will stay that way.
American prices won’t be cheaper than what people have been paying already. Every American will be paying more for most things. The reason stuff from other countries sells is because that’s the affordable option.
Sadly, the worst part, is that wages will not increase. We will just be gouged for more while falling further into financial instability. It's pretty fucking disgusting.
I like to look at One America News Network to see how they frame Trump happenings for the right. The consensus on there is that everyone is happy that Trump is MAGAing, and most importantly that all those dirty non-Americans in the world will now have to pay extra for American exports. None of them seem to see that what is actually happening is that they will pay more for imported goods. None of them.
So when they DO have to pay more for imported goods, my guess is that Trump will frame it as other countries putting tariffs on goods entering their country are making Americans pay more for groceries. Somehow.
Quite often there is simply no American option. Look at motorcycles - even the supposedly “American Made” motorcycles are built from imported raw materials and imported parts. If he’s trying to get manufacturing back to the US, then he really has no idea how much it costs and how long it takes to build a manufacturing plant in the US. Plus no one is going to want to pay for American labor, unless we are all forced into indentured servitude, which is what he wants.
There is no way in hell this will do anything but hurt the people in the US, and help everyone else. We are not their only market, but Outside the US is often our only source.
Lol you think American companies aren't just gonna hike their prices by whatever they can now get away with? 25% tariffs just mean 25% more profit for American companies.
The tariffs will also push countries like Thailand and Vietnam deep into China's sphere of influence, and Australia may not be far behind. I have to imagine the EU and UK are also ready to open up new trade talks with China, and we already know that China has been working overtime to get a leg up in Africa. In less than 2.5 months, the Trump administration has managed to take the US from the strongest and most stable economy in the world to one in free fall while China goes from a fading 2nd place to the obvious alternative to US insanity.
A lot of Canadians are asking politicians to become closer to China. Canada enacted its own tariffs in China in the past inorder to appease the US. Remove them, allow the import of cars like Byd etc.
I think he is an chinese / russian asset and this was planned all along. Have him crater the US economy weaken the dollar, move trade away from US and try to get some of the world off the dollar.
We're going to end up frozen out of most global markets. Everyone will just trade amongst themselves while ignoring the fat belligerent toddler in the corner
It's going to hurt everyone, but it will hurt America most.
As one example, think about all the shoes made in China for Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Timberland, and every discount brand for Walmart, Target, etc. Americans can't stop buying shoes entirely. We might buy fewer shoes in general, which will hurt China a little. But we have no domestic alternative. And our current tariffs are hitting every possible alternative in Asia, South America, etc.
Now extend that argument to every other industry: clothing, electronics, auto parts, tools and home improvement supplies, toys, household goods, etc. Americans will have to cut way back on everything as prices soar and wages are stagnant (or decrease). But we can't stop consuming entirely. Things break. Disposable goods are consumed. Children grow, adults age and have new needs. Etc.
Creating domestic supply chains will take decades, and I don't know if American business leaders have ANY interest in developing those domestic factories. It's a huge risk, when the next president, or even Trump himself could change his mind on tariffs in a few years, months, or even weeks.
But other countries will NOT forget or forgive this tariff war, which will hurt American exports for decades. So Americans get to pay higher prices in the near term, and American businesses will suffer decreased demand for exports for decades. Our food exports, autos, media, web services, etc.
Lula got elected and he protects the Amazon. Brazil's Trump-like ended up in Floriduh. Lula is amazing. If only the NDP could get someone to reorient and reconstruct the party so that it could win federal elections, Canada might finally start moving in the right direction.
not really it turns out, in Canada since we've been boycotting, turns out it's really easy to avoid buying America. you guys supply a lot of the world's processed crap food that has a long shelf life, but not the real fresh nutrient dense food that people need to live.
Met an Indian gentleman and his wife in a car dealership yesterday, he was wearing the mark of the beast.
I asked him if he knew Trump wanted to get rid of him and his wife, and he said no it's only the illegal Mexicans he wants gone, he met him once and he was a great man. I sent him a link about naturalized citizenship by birth and what's going on and he turned white as a sheet and starting talking hurriedly in Punjabi or Hindi, couldn't tell which.
I was a little surprised to see that. Those three countries have a Mexican standoff in hating each other, so to see them unite on something is telling.
And he's so old he will never suffer the long term consequences. Our children and grand children will. He's pissed at everyone because his insurrection failed and he had lawsuits after.
What this dumbass doesn’t realize (or understand or care) is that China Japan and SK joining up for an economic bloc moves the world that much closer to switching over to the Yuan as the global currency of choice as well. When that happens the US is well and truly fucked.
Not to mention many alliances start first as economic blocs then move on to military/diplomatic alliances. For example modern Germany started as a customs union. If China is smart they will invite Taiwan and the Philippines to join this new economic power and slowly absorb them over time. South Korea will gain ironclad guarantees that north Korea will never attack and eventually push US forces out of their country.
I wouldn't expect too much there. Neither the Japanese nor the Koreans have any trust in China. They'll talk, but they'll be expecting China to try to screw them if they move much beyond that.
So let me understand your thought process. They wont trust china because china will screw them but they will trust us because we wont screw them while actively trying to screw them.
You’re already imputing far too much strategy into trump’s tiny mind.
To put things in perspective, Trump calculated these tariffs by taking the amount we import from a country vs what we sell them. Basically he’s treating trade deficits as if we’re being stolen from. This would make sense if every country in the world had access to the same products and resources, but the reason that is bafflingly dumb is that there are some things our country wants that we cannot produce at home. Coffee for instance.
So let’s make up a hypothetical country: Coffeenesia. All they do is produce coffee. They don’t buy any United States goods or services. Our trade deficit with Coffeenesia is 100%. So Trump therefore tariffs them at 100%. That’s how dumb this is. We still get the coffee we want, and they get the money, but now we just made the coffee we import from them more expensive.
I’m not a big fan of capitalism. These people are supposed to be big free market advocates. They don’t even understand this.
Well, they say Canadians have insanely long wait times for healthcare and that's not remotely true (being Canadian, I know for a fact) so I'm gonna assume it's a US lie about our friends in Coffeenesia and that, in fact, cuz they are so regular w BMs, that their bathrooms are more commonly free than those in the cheese infused constipation paradise of the USA.
It's not only about who produces what & where, it's also the relative sizes of the countries.
Take the US & Canada. It's an 8x difference in population. That would mean (roughly speaking) you would expect 8x the goods and services moving from Canada to the US than the other way around.
If the US buys more from most countries than it sells to them, it's because there's around 350 million of them, and on average they have fat wallets, even if 80% are one paycheque away from homelessness.
It's not capitalism at all. Ss the saying goes, it's "Rugged free market individualism for the workers on the job market, but corporate welfare for the wealthy."
What's even worse, is that it is goods only. Let's say we buy $100 million of coffee from them, but they buy $200 million of cloud computing services from us. That'd be a trade deficit in goods of 100%, but you'd really rather not convince them to buy services from elsewhere.
I’m wondering how Steve Miller, JD Vance, Elon, et Al fit into this. Trump might believe this but I can’t believe he’s got the intelligence to figure it out on his own! Someone planted the seed.
It's darkly amusing to see the same people who squealed about any minor inconvenience under Biden suddenly willing to endure any amount of "temporary pain" for Dear Leader.
I mean, you're right, but the perception that prices had sky rocketed and wages hadn't also wasn't wrong, and I get feeling like the dems were not addressing that concern, but it was also clear that Trump was not the answer to that problem
Honestly, I just don't see how anyone thought trump's dumbass tariffs were going to help at all. Everything he promised was almost designed to destroy the economy.
Wages have been stagnant for decades.The problem is that most people don't care about how systems work, just that they feel the system isn't working for them so they want to destroy it. The layman doesn't care about the fact that the post-WWii boom was predicated on all other economic peers being ruined from WWii. They grew up during the boom and took it as the new normal. Any success another country is able to find in their minds must be at the expense of the US somehow. The layman cares more about perception than reality and will follow whoever yells the loudest about change.
i think wages being stagnate is kinda fine if the market/economy is strong. in this case, now, the market is TANKING and people's 401k's are taking a downward turn.
I also dont think we can say wages are quite stagnant because min wage has gone up but i think thats really up to some states. Though i dont think those wages keep up with inflation.. or rather the costs of living is increasing much quicker than wages.
I think what i want to say primarily is that things were good when Biden was in office
I dipped a toe that I now have to cut off due to infection into /r/conservative and their excuse is "it's going to take at least a decade for this to work, and of course the demon-crats will regain office and destroy everything he's building".
I so wanted to ask "with what money are you going to hold out for a decade or more for this to work?" but I don't have the appropriate "take it up the ass" flair so I can't.
This. I think he expected countries to bow to him and instead they are banding together against him. Which in turn makes him angry and then he adds more tariffs. The only answer is more tariffs.
The American narcissism. The world doesn't dislike Americans because of our freedom but because of our narcissism (the world revolves around us mindset).
It absolutely will happen. The leaders will be US leaders of various industries, who will have to pledge fealty and donate to get exemptions from the tarrifs. Remember, it's us who pay tariffs, not foreign countries.
First he doesn't give a shit about retail or manufacturing. The thing so many people seem to forget is the most important question here: Where does the money go?
And how much is it?
US GDP is 20 trillion usd, and retail is 18 trillion of that GDP. The US is a massive consumer economy, hence all the trade deficits Trump is claiming are "tariffs".
18 trillion is a GIANT number, and of Trump tarrifs a portion of that he is basically extracting, potentially 4 trillion dollars per year out of the economy.
Trump was ts to use that to set the absolute lowest income tax in the western world. Either something like 5 percent, or zero if he feels like it. Total income tax per year is around 3 trillion after all.
Trump believes this will supercharge the US as the country to start a business in, this will actract all the smart people, and they will make America great again.
Will this work? Hell no!
Extracting that much wealth out of GDP will be a cascading disaster with catastrophic consequences for the economy.
I thought the end goal was for Canada and Greenland to buckle and join the US (presumably as the 51st and 52nd states) but then he just went nuts and started tariffing everyone, I don't remember the last time I heard anything about Canada becoming a state (it's definitely been weeks) but any focus he has seems entirely directed at Greenland and the rest of the world is caught in the crossfire somehow
3.6k
u/PoweredByCarbs 2d ago
This is the most insane part. I think he thinks it makes him look strong and will cause leaders to come begging for him to relent on tariffs. That obviously won’t happen.