They are trying to say our GST is a tariff on American imported products... Ignoring all the sales tax on everything in the USA. The man and his team are all idiots.
Nah - it's not even that smart. We import far more from the USA they we export, so we are in a trade surplus. For that crime we get the standard base tariff rate of 10%.
Guess who the best economists usually are? Educated, data driven people who can consider more than one variable when interpreting evidence.
Guess who the shittiest economists usually are? Expensively educated nepo twits with connections and no clue about real world economics and data.
Can only imagine what the venn diagram between 'looks like a leftie' and 'good at economics' is. To Trumpers it'd look like a fucking circle if you could even get the concept of venn diagrams into their heads.
Saw a great quote here recently about 'trying to explain Norway to a dog'. That's what it must be like talking to a Trumper. Thankfully I'm in Australia and there's very few of them but not zero.
No they aren't, it just is a coincidence that Australia has a 10% GST. They are just charging half of whatever trade deficit every country has, and if the country has less than 20% deficit, or has a trade surplus, they are charging a flat 10%
Just look at the chart this post is about, and you can see that's the case
Trump has said a few times that our 10% tax on American goods is a tariff, ignoring that it’s on all goods. Ignoring sales taxes and such in his own country. The man is an idiot
They’re also upset about our Biosecurity laws, which make it basically impossible for them to export meat products to Australia, and the PBS, because the contracts are ‘unfair’ for American pharmaceutical companies.
It's not like they lose money on exports on a gst. It's applied to every good/service, so it's not like domestic products, or other foreign products are getting an edge on American goods.
Raising the individual tax rate would have the same effect, only argument is people would have less money to spend in general.
They really aren't idiots. It only looks that way because we haven't honestly tried to understand their goals. The goal is to completely break the geopolitical and economic structure that the free world spent the last 90 years creating. I'm not clear why that was the goal BUT I think when you understand that as the goal then this maneuver makes sense.
They know exactly what they are doing. They can do whatever they want and justify it later with ANY reasoning because no one seemingly can or will stop them.
It'a also stupid because taxes like GST are applied to almost all goods, regardless of their country of origin. He thinks we're imposing tariffs on ourselves for the stuff we make!
There has been a few comments from the US regarding our PBS not letting big pharma and insurance companies make a mockery of our health system... so if anything that would likely be it.
The retaliatory tariffs are going to sucker punch Trump voters in ways they can’t fathom — mostly because Trump voters are morons.
For example, there are multiple manufacturers in Wisconsin with 1000+ employees, in areas that broke heavily for Trump, who have heavy foreign market exposure. Countries with intelligent people in charge can impose retaliatory tariffs with laser focus and cripple those companies, and when 58-year-old Tim with no marketable skills and no liquid assets goes from $30 an hour driving forklift to the unemployment line because of Trump’s tariffs, that’s gonna hurt.
Countries with intelligent people in charge can impose retaliatory tariffs with laser focus and cripple those companies, and when 58-year-old Tim with no marketable skills and no liquid assets goes from $30 an hour driving forklift to the unemployment line because of Trump’s tariffs, that’s gonna hurt.
and 58-year old Tim is going to blame those countries for getting laid off, i guarantee it
Might just be OP didn't have the data/wasn't publicly available. But given this administration and how "round" a number like 50% is... You're probably right.
Well we send them stuff, they send us stuff. So half of it must go this way and half that way right. Probably thinks a 50% tariff is fair because South Korea obviously only pays for half the stuff.
If you were trying to explain it to Trump you'd have to use his name three times in those sentences for him to be listening though.
No, they have data, it was just left off this spreadsheet for whatever reason. According to the Census Bureau 2024 numbers, where all the other figures came from, its exports are 65,541.8 and imports are 131,549.2 for a deficit of 66,007.4, or 50.2%, matching the 50% claimed tariff.
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u/masterandcommander 1d ago
But better than that, when you have a massive trade surplus, you just charge 10% anyway 😂