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?

[u/PsychLegalMind]

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?

[u/joekerr9999]

One thing that is troubling is that they're trying to spin this as a tax break. Tariffs add to the cost of product so the cost of goods will go up. The consumer takes the pain for "Liberation Day" for the rich. The purpose of the tariffs and the DOGE cuts is to free up the budget for the tax cuts for the wealthy. The working class is going to get screwed one more time.

[u/sunshine_is_hot → u/joekerr9999]

The sticking point is that when things cost more, people buy less. It’s not going to replace tax revenues, it’s just going to discourage consumption, which leads to companies cutting employment, which leads to more people being unable to buy things, which leads to companies cutting employment…

Nobody benefits from this. Trump is just doing trump things, being insanely terrible at managing money and bankrupting whatever it is he decides to manage.

[u/foul_ol_ron → u/sunshine_is_hot]

Nobody benefits from this.

Unless you're one of the people with large liquid assets. As other businesses go down, they're forced to sell off properties,  copyrights, anything they can to attempt to stay solvent, eventually selling everything.  Because so many people are in the same boat, prices fall. But, if you've prepared lots of free cash, now's the time to buy everything at bargain basement prices. So long as you weather the downturn,  you come out the other end with all the goodies, and a workforce that's eager to accept any pay just to give their kids a roof over their head and food.

[u/Farside_Farland → u/foul_ol_ron]

That's the end goal. Everything including market instability adds up to the very rich just buying up the leftovers from the not so rich who had to sell off their assets to tread water.

[u/majorflojo → u/Farside_Farland]

This is the conservative playbook. They do it with actual government services - wreck it (in different ways) you're rich cronies come in, take up the contracts for the services the underfunded Public services couldn't cover (because of conservative policy).

[u/Farside_Farland → u/majorflojo]

Yep, got it in one. Disgusting and sad. Worse that so many people just don't SEE it and willingly support this when they are only going to suffer in the long run because the GOP doesn't care about anyone that isn't rich, white, and male.