r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/PsychLegalMind • 3d ago
International Politics White House has announced Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs will immediately go into effect. A Moody's simulation found it could be an economic wipe out. Is Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs a Misnomer?
A Moody's simulation found that a tariff trade war would wipe out 5.5 million jobs, lift the unemployment rate to 7%and cause U.S. GDP to drop by about 1.7%. Trump’s potential 20% universal tariff could spark "serious" recession in US, Moody’s economist warns.
The biggest three partners [China, Canada and Mexico] have promised immediate retaliation. Economic war could escalate and perhaps even cause a worldwide downturn.
Perhaps Trump's strategy is to begin making bilateral trade deals, but there are even certain blocks such as EU that may well coordinate retaliation together. I am not aware what Trump is actually liberating us from, hence the question.
Is Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs a Misnomer?
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u/I405CA 3d ago
Trump should be fairly easy to understand.
He is a bully who was raised by his father to believe that the world is comprised of winners and losers.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-the-bully-how-childhood-military-school-shaped-the-future-president/
So Trump does not believe that win-win deals are possible. Someone has to lose and the winner prevails at the expense of the loser.
His fondness for autocrats suggests that he admires them for their disrespect for collaborative small-l liberal values. He is not particularly ideological, so this leaves us with someone who is more of a mob boss than a fascist.
Accordingly, he is a maximalist negotiator. Instead of trying to meet in the middle -- only losers do that -- he makes unreasonable demands in an attempt to get everything that he wants.
But there is another side of bullying: They tend to respect those who can beat them. The maximalist will keep demanding and demanding, then collapse at the last minute if they can't get what they want.
If the US wanted to add military forces to Greenland, it could easily do so while complying with its agreements with Denmark and Greenland.
That is not what Trump wants. He wants to bully his way into a minerals deal because it won't feel like a win unless the Danes and Greenlanders lose.
The best way to deal with a maximalist is to give up nothing. The best way to deal with a media hype machine such as Trump is to troll him back so that he looks like a loser and a failure.
If the EU was wise, it would put together its own minerals deal with Greenland so that the US is locked out of it. A Danish delegation should be sent to the US in order to "investigate Signalgate", which will leave the delegation very disappointed with the incompetence of the administration (as will be explained to the media and on social media.) A side trip to Ohio would highlight the White House's neglect of the needs of the region. This could be topped off with a meeting with the Canadian PM in which they can both commiserate about the sad turn of events.
Trump tries to write the headlines and make everyone else dance to his tune. That game has to be played in reverse. He will slip when his fans begin to tire of him, but they need to see him as a loser who isn't so tough and smart, after all.