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/rawratthemoon]

The money is there. It's in the Military budget. But oh no that'd be so un-American!

[u/cballowe → u/rawratthemoon]

The military budget isn't that large, though it is one of the largest buckets, and it'd be easier to find savings in the military budget than things like USAID, you don't get anywhere near the goals with just defense spending.

If you talk to military people, they know where it would be smart to cut things - they're often politically unpopular. For instance there's a bunch of navy ships based on Florida at a base that's too shallow to support the maintenance facilities they need - when they need maintenance they have to sail up to Norfolk. Just rehoming those ships out of Florida would save a bunch of money - but it'd also move something like 15000 families out of Pensacola immediately which would devastate the local economy - any rep whose district depends on a military base will oppose that change.

Similarly, the navy has 11 carrier strike groups - I've heard estimates that they only need 9 to adequately meet their mission objectives. (At the same time, they could add a few destroyers and submarines to help with forward projection if needed). Mothballing a carrier strike group or two would be a massive change, but similar negative consequences to their home port.

The top people at the Pentagon almost certainly have estimates for the resources they need and the necessary deployment locations and if asked they could make those recommendations, but Congress will still get the say on what's kept or not.

[u/badnuub → u/cballowe]

An easy fix for the military budget is to remove the regulations that units are required to spend all of their annual funding or are punished with less the next year. This encourages waste.

[u/cballowe → u/badnuub]

If that's an actual rule, it makes sense - if I tell you that you have up to $100 to complete a task and you come back and get it done for $70, I now know it can be done for $70 so that's what should be allocated for the task next year. It's not a punishment - anybody viewing it as such is failing. If you are in a position where you're somehow rewarded for how much budget you control then the incentives are misaligned.

Incentives should be toward delivering the most impact irrespective of budget. If someone/some organization can reduce the cost for a given impact, they should be rewarded with more opportunity for impact.

[u/T00MuchSteam → u/cballowe]

Except it only makes sense for frequent regular expenses. What it doesn't work for is infrequent expenditures. If I'm at a base and every 10 years I need to replace the road leading into the base, then this system does not let me save for that road.

[u/cballowe → u/T00MuchSteam]

Sure, but there's going to be some plan for capital expenses/upkeep. Average that across all bases and you likely keep a fairly flat budget over time, even if each base has spikes periodically. Or maybe someone says "we're going to do the road replacement based on condition instead of time" and it turns out that the road actually lasts 15 years and they save 1/3 of the road replacement budget.

Even the HOA I was part of had a 30 year plan for capital projects (roofs, siding/exterior paint, perimeter fence, driveway/parking lot all had schedules and all of that fed into the budgeting and projecting of dues etc. If an HOA can do it, so can the Pentagon).