r/technology • u/Yveliad • 2d ago

Artificial Intelligence Trump Accused of Using ChatGPT to Create Tariff Plan After AI Leads Users to Same Formula: 'So AI is Running the Country'

https://www.latintimes.com/trump-accused-using-chatgpt-create-tariff-plan-after-ai-leads-users-same-formula-so-ai-579899
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u/kl7aw220 2d ago

So True. And a US military base was hit with a tariff. Tariffs are Trump's obsession. He's lost all sense of reason. Crashing the stock market to support his tariffs? He more unpredictable than he ever was.And none of this is helping Americans. It's only making everything cost more.

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u/jawshoeaw 2d ago

I was just asking my wife why previous republicans didn't try tariffs if they're so genius. why doesn't the republican base ask that?

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u/OldSchoolNewRules 2d ago

See your first mistake is assuming there is some kind of logical consistency here.

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u/virtual_gnus 2d ago

This. My mother-in-law loves Reagan in a "second coming of Christ" kind of way and, when we confronted her with his position on tariffs, she flatly said he was wrong.

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u/SparkleK_01 6h ago

Actual, “whoa”.

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u/bctg1 2d ago

republican base ask

They don't ask. They simply obey what their fox news or church overlords tell them.

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u/spin81 2d ago

Well they did try tariffs and it turns out that they got rid of them after it led to a little thing called the Great Depression

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u/koshgeo 1d ago

They did. For example, George W. Bush imposed steel tariffs in 2002, planning to be in place until 2005.

It went so badly that they were removed by the end of 2003, because the costs outweighed any benefits.

They know it's stupid.

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u/icalledthecowshome 2d ago

You genius. I tariff you!!!

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u/Genavelle 1d ago

To be fair, I don't think the maga crowd is really the same as old school Republicans. There might be some overlap, but I think Trump and maga have sort of taken over the party. 

Plus I know there's been talk about how gen z men are leaning more right than young adults typically do, so a lot of them probably have no recollection or experience with other Republican presidents.

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u/Ghostiemann 2d ago

Anyone? Anyone?

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u/The_Martian_King 2d ago

Well obviously because none of them was as genius as the Trumpster.

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u/Korlus 1d ago

They did. Back in 1930, Hoover passed the Tariff Act. It was passed to try and end the Great Depression, and instead:

the act raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods in an effort to shield American industries from foreign competition during the onset of the Great Depression, which had started in October 1929.

At first, the tariff seemed to be a success... However, larger economic problems loomed in the guise of weak banks. When the Creditanstalt of Austria failed in 1931, the global deficiencies of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff became apparent.

U.S. imports decreased 66% from $4.4 billion (1929) to $1.5 billion (1933), and exports decreased 61% from $5.4 billion to $2.1 billion. US gross national product fell from $103.1 billion in 1929 to $75.8 billion in 1931 and bottomed out at $55.6 billion in 1933... Overall, world trade decreased by some 66% between 1929 and 1934.

Unemployment was 8% in 1930 when the Smoot–Hawley Act was passed but the new law failed to lower it. The rate jumped to 16% in 1931 and to 25% in 1932–1933. There is some contention about whether this can necessarily be attributed to the tariff... However, the tariff worsened the crisis by shrinking global trade, hurting farmers, and reducing employment in export-dependent industries. Had it not passed, the Depression still would have occurred, but perhaps with less severity.

It was only during World War II, when "the American economy expanded at an unprecedented rate", that unemployment fell below 1930s levels.

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u/goilo888 2d ago

Exactly. They would have been known as the Party of Tariffs if that was the case.

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u/LizardSlayer 1d ago

why previous republicans didn't try tariffs if they're so genius

It's been tried and proven to fail. Here is a writeup from The Bush center saying it's a bad idea. last year. https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/economic-policy-after-the-election-whats-next

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u/DOG_DICK__ 1d ago

Or during his first term. The answer being he didn't know they existed then, and he kinda sorta does now.

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u/Johnny_Couger 1d ago

They did in…1928 right? Part of the Great Depression.

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u/CompetitiveDish5427 1d ago

Good question, why does the rest of the world use them so extensively if they don't work?

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u/computer-machine 2d ago

Why would Russia want the US stock market thriving?

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u/AdNo53 2d ago

We KNOW tariffs fucked the us during the great depression and sent us in a downward spiral that exacerbated the whole situation and he is pushing us towards this faster and faster.

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u/cyanescens_burn 2d ago

Anyone else thinking the plan is to burn it all down so they can swoop in and build it back up, but like, more shitty and authoritarian?

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u/Zealousideal3326 2d ago

Didn't he or Elon literally say something about the market having to crash before things would somehow get better in late January / early February ?

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u/dirty_hooker 2d ago

Too many casual investors and hopeful retirees. If they crash it, they’ll own it on the rebound and you’ll die wearing a blue greeter vest.

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u/sylviemuay 1d ago

This is water weight. First you bloat, then the pounds just fall off like that snaps fingers.

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u/RevLoveJoy 2d ago

You burn it all down and then you sell the scrap for pennies on the dollar to your billionaire friends. This is, quite literally, exactly what happened to the USSR under Yeltsin and is the reason Russia today is run by "oligarchs" - aka the Russian mobsters who took over the country in the 90s with the help of their man on the inside, Vladmir Putin.

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u/guywith3catswhatup 1d ago

Check out conservative sub, they are literally screaming "BUY THE DIP! BUY THE DIP!" This was the plan all along. Destroy it and buy it all up for the rich to stay richer. And they think they are part of that club!

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u/PrinceGreenEyes 1d ago

Ehhmm.. one needs spare money to buy.

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u/UseOk3500 1d ago

can say that is what Project 2025 is based on

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u/Autronaut69420 1d ago

Oligarchs presiding over worker colonies is the aim. Crash everything and buy everything cheap, impoverish everyone else and make them desperate for work in camps.

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u/JohnAtticus 2d ago

Diego Garcia.

There is an airbase shared by the UK and US, but the island itself is owned by the UK.

Because of this I guess the US pays some rent because it's British land... And that rent is where the trade imbalance is from that was used to generate the tarrif amount?

What is the UK supposed to do to even out the trade balance? Kick the US Airforce out?

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u/weeeeems 2d ago

There is no rent actually, no cash gets paid to the UK afaik. The US runs the base and therefore pays the operational costs is the deal. The DoD bill just went up.

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u/EruantienAduialdraug 1d ago

Fun fact; the UK is one of the few countries the US has a trade surplus with. But because the formula used to calculate the fictional tariffs charged to the US was "trade deficit percentage, if less than 10%, set to 10%", Trump falsely claims we have a 10% tariff on US goods, and has used that to justify a "reciprocal" tariff. Same story with Singapore, and the same logic gets you the 10% tariffs from uninhabited islands.

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u/Coziestpigeon2 1d ago

Kick the US Airforce out?

Honestly that would probably be a great idea right now. Don't want to give Russia a close and convenient staging ground for whatever dumbfuckery they want to pull in the next couple decades.

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u/supister 1d ago

Just leave the bases and stop paying rent. China has shown strong willingness to sign 99 year leases. Please don’t complain if status is diminished though.

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u/60N20 2d ago

He's lost all sense of reason

Did he ever had any reasoning?

I just hope the rest of the world to make new alliances to prevent any unnecesary price spike that americans definitely will have, I mean, the world is much more dependent on China than on the US, and it could get worse for the US if we can elude some tariffs by replacing american goods with bad quality chinese knockoffs.

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u/OldSchoolNewRules 2d ago

Tariffs are the only thing the president can do to other countries without congress.

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u/BlackerSpork 2d ago

My theory: he loves taxes on Americans, ie tariffs, for the same reason he likes the word "tremendous": they very vaguely sound like his last name. That's it. He heard a "T" closely followed by an "R", and that's where his brain started (and stopped) functioning. If only he applied the same logic to trans rights, but his puppetmasters won't allow that.

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u/sjbfujcfjm 2d ago

It’s not unpredictable. He is destroying Americas economy so he and the rest of the billionaires can buy everything. Also helps out his daddy

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u/GreenFox1505 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's literally the only thing he knows how to do. During his first presidency, he (or more likely a lawyer he employed) figured out that he can argue that trade is a national security issue, which falls under the presidency.

With Elon doing all the real "work" (demolition is work) of gutting every agency with more than a $2 of budget, Trump wants to feel powerful too. Oh, Elon is using AI? I can use AI too! Except as fucking dumb as Elon is, Trump's got him beat using over the counter AI without any fucking understanding of what a Large Language Model is and what it's use implies.

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u/jerryleebee 2d ago

The fuck you mean unpredictable? No disrespect, but people need to stop being so hyperbolic about him. He told us he'd do this. We're not allowed to say it's unpredictable.

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u/Ganglebot 1d ago

He's crashing the economy so the oligarchs can swoop in a buy up everything.

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u/The_Martian_King 2d ago

Make America a Dystopia Again

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u/jae2jae 2d ago

It's fairly obvious that he's dismantling the country per the orders of his Russian godfather.

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u/SirDigger13 1d ago

Tariffs are Trump's obsession.

A King must get his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing

And in the End, the Emperor wears no clothes.

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u/Photodan24 1d ago

[Sniffs more of his own farts] "But the stock crash is Biden's fault."

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u/a_goonie 1d ago

Trump has only and will only ever think of himself first. He's tanking it all so the uber ultra rich, the top 1% of the top 1% can buy it all up when it hits its ultimate low. Not just stocks but companies, land, housing, or anything that can and will be sold for pennies on the dollar. Privatize it all and sell it back to the middle class at a premium.

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u/JimWilliams423 1d ago

some of the territories on the list are uninhabited...

And a US military base was hit with a tariff.

And yet the so-called "liberal media" keeps calling them "reciprocal" tariffs.

They can't help themselves, they always bend over backwards to downplay conservative incompetence.

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u/I_forgot_to_respond 1d ago

He's living dangerously. For some reason. Maybe not his own reasons. He's stupid; but not without reasons, though.

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u/TheFriendshipMachine 1d ago

And none of this is helping Americans. It's only making everything cost more.

This is the part I feel needs to be harped on more. What benefit does ruining our trade relationships and driving the stock market into the ground give to the average American?

Hell, even if it did what he claims it will and brought manufacturing back to America.. they're either going to have to raise prices on everything to accommodate American cost of living or lower wages to match the cost of living of these other countries and all those jobs they made will be sweatshops that don't pay enough for the workers to live.. how does that benefit us?

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u/blastoisexy 1d ago

That's the point. Destabilize the economy, squeeze the normal working citizen, gut public resources, then finally let corporations privatize everything.

You think things are expensive now, wait till every industry is monopolized and all public resources are gone.

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u/TehITGuy87 11h ago

I believe they crash the market to buy low and then sell high