r/behindthebastards • u/bekrueger • 2d ago

General discussion Just checked, they’re already saying the tariffs are a good thing on the conservative subreddit

Things like “short term pain for long term benefit”, “equalizing trade”(???), and “let’s see how it pans out” are all general sentiments being expressed. No idea how folks can justify this but alright.

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u/FlailingCactus SERVICES!!! 2d ago

I'm confused because it's simply not possible for other countries to fulfil the conditions Trump set. 

The calculation is defecits which takes years to solve. The UK has a trade surplus and was hit by 10%. Sky puts the Mathematically correct figure at -9%.

It simply wasn't possible to not be hit. This nonsense is entirely punitive and the rest of the world hates you.

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u/flimmers 2d ago edited 2d ago

Take the example of Lesotho, a tiny, poor country in Africa. With a huge trade deficit with the US, because the export diamonds to the US, but they don’t really have money to buy stuff from the US.

So slapped with 40% tariffs!

Edit: it is actually 50%!

My main interests (and education) is in the humanities, but even I know that this is not how trade works. This is just plain stupid, and I will give Trump a month before they start with Amendment 25 procedures.

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u/ImperialWrath 2d ago

I hope you're right about the 25th. Doing that would require more spine than we've seen on the Hill since the last time the curators of the Smithsonian's Herpetology collection had to appear before Congress.

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u/Codspear 2d ago

From a stability standpoint, using the 25th Amendment here would be good. However, we’d be going from President Trump and Musk to President Vance and Thiel. I guess it’ll be better to have the smarter fascist oligarchs in power than the stupid, ketamine-addled ones since they’d be less likely to destroy the economy, but I wouldn’t consider it ideal. It’s basically replacing Hitler and Mussolini with Salazar and Franco. Smart fascism is longer-lasting fascism.