Port operators hate this. Unwanted containers clog up the portside sorting and storage systems. Eventually the containers are either sent back or auctioned off by CBP, like this stuff.[1]
Some shippers outside the US have stopped shipping to the US until this settles. This includes all the major laptop makers - Lenovo, Acer, Dell, etc.[2] Nobody wants to be caught with a container in transit, a big customs bill due on receipt, and storage charges. That will recover once the rates are stable for a few weeks. Probably.
Customs and Border Protection is trying to keep up. Sometimes you have to pay more because Trump raised tariffs. Sometimes you can get a credit back because Trump dropped tariffs. Those are all exception transactions, with extra paperwork and delays.
Where's the Flexport guy from YC? He should be able to explain all this.
Consumer version: expect to see some empty shelves, rejected orders, and higher prices for the next few weeks.
[1] https://bid.cwsmarketing.com/auctions/catalog/id/167
[2] https://www.techspot.com/news/107504-trump-tariffs-force-maj...
[0]: https://bid.cwsmarketing.com/lot-details/index/catalog/167/l..., https://bid.cwsmarketing.com/lot-details/index/catalog/167/l..., https://bid.cwsmarketing.com/lot-details/index/catalog/167/l...
[1]: https://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=1...
I love that I can buy a pallet of miscellaneous medical supplies, and also that someone who specifically wanted them but now can't pay for them has to go without.
No need to be handwavy. It can be part of a strategy. A painful and ultimately less effective way than another, sure. There will be a lot of factors at play beyond these controls. This administration lacks the ability to focus for very long in any competent sense. I'm not sure there is a strategy that will work, at this time.
Bad ideas:
* Tax cuts for the rich will make it happen.[1]
* More tax cuts.[2]
* High tariffs with no plan.[3]
Semi-reasonable ideas:
* Clairmont study.[4]
* McKinsey study (2017).[5] Hasn't held up well.
Manufacturing is low-margin and requires stable markets. How to promote that? There are a lot of dull and boring businesses someone has to do.
Maybe tax policy should be set up to favor dividends over growth. That favors steadily profitable companies over growth companies.
[1] https://waysandmeans.house.gov/2025/01/24/the-golden-age-of-...
[2] https://nam.org/timmons-nam-members-meet-with-bessent-congre...
[3] https://x.com/cspan/status/1909639514861322433
[4] https://dc.claremont.org/restoring-american-manufacturing-a-...
[5] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/americas/making-i...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-13/trump-say...
More typical policy would give 90 days notice so businesses could plan ahead. This policy was implemented far too fast with far too high of numbers and now it’s also changing rapidly. It doesn’t make sense.
> I'm not American but it seems madness to apply them at any other time
I’m American and I fully agree it’s madness. This administration clearly doesn’t understand or even care how businesses work. They just thought this was going to be a chest-thumping bargaining chip that caused other countries to come begging at the negotiation table.
It’s not working and now they’re panicking. They don’t want to look weak by backing down so we’re suffering.
But when tariffs change faster than it takes to get the shipment from source to destination, the bond won't be for the right amount. You then enter the wonderful world of "insufficient bonds". Here's "Understanding Insufficient Customs Bonds in Nine Easy Steps", which outlines the process and tries to sell you on a service that deals with the problem.[1]
Coming May 2: the end of "de miniumus" customs exemptions for small packages under $800 value. Goodbye, Shein, Ali Express, and dropshippers. Unless, of course, the rules are changed again.
[1] https://www.afcinternationalllc.com/customs-brokerage-news/u...
Raising prices on everything is not going to help the majority of Americans. Taxing the rich might have but half the rationale for these tariffs is tax cuts for the rich.
There is no plan or logic to this.
The factories have to be designed and built. This includes all of the manufacturing processes, equipment, tooling, automation, etc. All of which are done by reasonably paid, middle class engineers and trades.
Then you have all the 2nd order businesses that get stimulated. Energy must be provided. Mines, mills, refineries, etc. to make the raw materials. The packaging for the end products. Logistics for supplies and end products.
All of the value above used to be in the US but has been captured overseas for decades now.
Development of manufacturing takes time. If that were truly the logic behind the tariffs, wouldn't it make more sense to slowly ramp up tariffs on particular categories of goods with a long notice period to allow time for industries to develop?
Also why all the talk about "punishing" other countries for "taking advantage" if the real goal is to bring manufacturing home?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-pr...
Make that the next few years at this rate.
> Customs and Border Protection is trying to keep up.
There are still people there? DOGE hasn't hit them up?
You might think, as the authors of this exemption did, “well then we will exempt computer parts.” Then people will simply import the parts. But if you manufacture those parts in the US, you are suddenly at a massive disadvantage. Your computer parts factory likely runs using a large amount of imported raw materials, imported machines, and imported tooling, and there are no tariff exemptions for those broad categories… so you’re screwed. Oftentimes there is no reasonable domestic substitute. You will go out of business in favor of someone importing the parts, which now happens tariff-free under an exemption. That’s why, generally speaking, tariff exemptions are deadly to domestic manufacturing.
Autarky doesn't work. Juche doesn't work. Comparative advantage works, both theoretically and in practice if we study economic history.
And surely in order to leverage comparative advantage, an economy would need to know how good they would be at producing every possible good.
There are good reasons to trade, but comparative advantage doesn’t feel like the correct theoretical underpinning to me.
The invisible hand of the market will let you know what aspect of your output is most valuable for others.
The benefit of this invisible hand is that the "economy" as a whole does not need to know how good they are at producing everything. People just need to know if what they are producing now is more valuable than the next best alternative. Everything else will be sorted out with market forces.
In university lectures we were given the famous argument about olive oil from Greece and that it would never make sense to do our own olive oil because we both lack the natural resources (unique soil + sunshine) which allow olive trees to grow easily and we'd also have much better yields growing other things on the fields.
So to me, both opportunity cost and comparative advantage are really basic building blocks of economic understanding and I'm a bit dumbfounded that someone wouldn't understand these concepts.
We don't have pure free market economies. Neither in China nor in the USA nor anywhere else. The see big monopolistic companies dominating most markets. We see an closer interlink between state and private corporations.
Even just with the currency manipulation that China engages in, things get screwed a lot. Or the special status the US has with the dollar. Real world is more complicated.
But even if we assume free markets, you misunderstood what the previous poster said. The problem with Ricardo's comparative advantages is that is assumes fixed advantages. It is like optimizing for a local optimum. You might be super inefficient in producing X because you have never done it but if you actually invested in learning how to produce X you might discover that you are really good at it and the comparative advantages would go in your favor.
I do still believe that trading with each others can lead to more net wealth in most cases and obviously full autarky is not realistic these days but like anything in economics, it shouldn't be taken as a dogma.
In my opinion it's intrinsically valuable to have a diverse regional economy. Culture and economy are fundamentally inseparable, imagine a society where everyone is doing the same thing because of "comparative advantage" making them 10% more efficient than the other country... What poverty!
Frankly, no, sweatshops are not important to the cultural fabric of a country.
The US has problems with housing affordability, with medical costs, and with service sector costs emerging from Baumol's cost disease, which are all things that will get worse with tariffs, ranging from higher construction costs, to higher pharmaceutical prices, to less service employees making the cost disease worse.
It's also untrue that comparative advantage only benefits capital. Consumers are hurt by higher prices and less job opportunities driving down demand on the labor market. This worldview of a zero sum contest between capital and labor is a populist fiction.
We have problems with housing affordability because asset values inflate inverse to the devaluation of the dollar. The dollar is deflating because a service economy is not as sustainable as a manufacturing economy. This is particularly pronounced when we all see the labor value of intelligent workers decreasing at a precipitous rate due to AI.
You're right; humans will be as uninvolved as possible in the next domestic sweat shop lines. Astute observation!
If we are going to wade into the deep waters of international trade, then you can’t look only at america or American workers without getting blind sided constantly.
At the depth you are talking - globalization has created more nations than anything else.
The undermining of democracy came with increased deregulation and increased lobbying and wealth concentration.
> Frankly, no, sweatshops are not important to the cultural fabric of a country.
And that's not a strawman?
An entire generation has grown up without assembly lines so it is easy to mystify it. People in Vietnam don't enjoy making Nikes but it is better than what came before: subsistence farming. But the Vietnamese factory worker trying to send their kids to university too.
Like the stereotypical kid who grew up rich not understanding the value of hard work maybe the inevitable result of easy and safe living is a blind spot so big we're doomed to fall back down as a society and start over again and again.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp
Lots of people remember the 80s and 90s being better times with quality manufacturing employment without romanticizing the past. To this day multiples of the “information” sector are employed in US manufacturing.
I’m actually not even sure what specific labor law changes you could blame that on. Clinton was running the show in the 90s, and I don’t recall any big union busting under Bush, whatever else might be said of him.
I mean, they can, if you put up trade barriers or introduce capital controls. It's not a coincidence that after capital controls were removed, basically any manufacturing that could, fled America. And I (and my family) in Ireland were massive, massive beneficiaries of this!
Like, you can definitely make the argument that globalisation has benefited the world overall, while being bad for a bunch of people in the developed countries. And it's not a bad argument.
But unfortunately for all of the people who think globalisation is great, the votes of all the people who disagree count just as much as yours, and it looks like they're willing to vote for anyone who even hints at promising to fix this.
> Clinton was running the show in the 90s,
He introduced NAFTA, which made it profitable for much US manufacturing to move to Canada/Mexico. Bush let China into the WTO (or was that Clinton too?).
so yeah even with a 'non-existent' manufacturing sector it has been able to provide more jobs than so called technology industry.
My understanding is that due to human nature wars mostly start due to religious or extremist views of individuals leading a nation. Such a risk of your trade partner invading you because they don't like your skin color can be hardly formalized in an economic theory (maybe there exists one already, idk).
So role of industrial policy would be to ensure that a certain balance is kept with regards to creating dependencies to other nations, which could be abused in case of war.
Famous negative examples of failed industrial policy for Germany would be the dependence on gas mostly from russia and the dependence on oil mostly from middle east.
Another example would be the agricultural subsidies to ensure all citizens can be fed even when other nations would not export any food. A current example in Germany would be the production of "German steel" using fossil energy instead of production of CO2-neutral swedish steel. As Germany is part of EU, this is a conflicting view: We can't on one side ask for more trade and integration of supply chains between democratic EU countries, but on the other side assume that Sweden will deny steel exports to us when we'd need it.
Producing steel in Germany with fossil energy instead of doing it in Sweden with hydroelectric power is both more expensive and has more negative externalities (CO2 emissions due to use of fossil fuels). Therefore such industrial policy reduces welfare that would otherwise be available for German people.
Comparative advantage is an emergent property of trade that occurs naturally, it is the default state of being and can only be undermined by government policy.
You benefit from comparative advantage when you buy bread from the bakery instead of spending 2 hours a day baking your own bread.
Imagine how much poorer you'd be if the government put a large tax on you buying bread to force you to bake it yourself, in the name of self-sufficiency.
That's what's happening with these blanket tariffs, instead of targeting only critical defense manufacturing, Trump also wants t-shirt sweatshops to magically come back to the US despite only 4% unemployment. It's rank foolishness.
It's mostly not that complicated. Ecuador is better at bananas, the US is better at software so they trade. And similar stuff.
My favorite example is from an economics class quite a few years ago now. Michael Jordon is super efficient at making money playing basketball (told you it was a while ago). But he's also pretty good at mowing his lawn, since he's tall and athletic. But since he's way better at playing basketball, it makes sense for him to focus on basketball and paying some kid to mow his lawn, even though the kid is way less efficient at mowing lawns.
The US is way more advanced than Ecuador, and could presumably develop some hyper efficient banana greenhouse using genetic engineering and AI or whatever. But Ecuador is still pretty good at growing bananas and the US is much better at developing software, so buying bananas from Ecuador and putting the AI greenhouse resources into developing software instead makes way more sense.
Maybe I'm not getting what you're saying, but I don't think so. The point of comparative advantage is that even if country A is better at making guns and butter than B, A is better off only making guns or butter and trading to B for the other.
A key assumption being: "Factors of production are fully employed in both the countries. ... The theory assumes full employment. However, every economy has an existence of underemployment."
Another key assumption is "The labor cost determines the price of the two commodities. ... The theory only considers labor costs and neglects all non-labor costs involved in the production of the commodities."
One assumption not listed there is an implicit assumption as in much of economics of infinite demand for anything and no law of diminishing-to-negative returns when considering the environmental and psychological costs of consumption.
So, if you have unemployment in the producer country like China (meaning, there is no reason for them to limit their production) along with a significant capital investment in production infrastructure (like in the Shenzhen region for electronics), and you have limited demand in the consumer country like the USA (meaning, only so much can be sold there at any specific time), then the country which can produce stuff more cheaply will just flood the market of the other country for all goods in question -- even if the consumer country could in theory produce one of the goods at higher costs (or lower quality). Of course, there may eventually be macroeconomic issues like balance of trade issues and countries unable to pay for more goods (which the USA has avoided to date because the US dollar is the refactor global currency backed by the USA's global policing role for decades as a defacto empire). But even if labor in the consumer country like the USA is free, given realistically a lot of cost related to equipment and energy (and increasingly AI and robotics) and more nebulous things like supply chain integration and a can-do attitude, the consumer country may not be able to compete on price and quality of finished products from the more materially productive economy.
Tangential, but "Humans Need Not Apply" makes a good argument when they suggest that horses are essentially obsolete in modern industry (in the same way people may be soon). It's not that you sometimes use horses to any great degree in modern manufacturing (whereas before they pulled carts and turned machines) -- it is that for almost any industrial task horses are more trouble than they are worth now in terms of cost and reliability compared to electric motors or diesel engines and so on.
An economic theory like "Comparative Advantage" that entirely emphasizes labor costs is increasingly obsolete if human labor is less and less a major factor of production. The theory assumes a country will always have people doing something productive, but that is like saying we should bring horses back into factories when robots are generally more reliable. If people are not skillful with access to tools and capital and don't have a can-do attitude, then they will just suffer economically (unless protected somehow) No doubt there are special cases where horses are still useful in production or transport like how mules were used recently to get supplies into hurricane damaged North Carolina, but they are rare as long as the modern industrial system and its surrounding infrastructure functions well. Similarly, there may still be human roles in production, but they will continue to diminish. In 2010, I put together some options for dealing with this situation, available here: https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
Not really. Efficient manufacturing requires access to a lot of different inputs from all over, from the machines that make things to the raw materials.
Putting tariffs on everything only incentivizes companies to move to a location where they can freely buy what they need and manufacture it for the world.
The US is not the only consumer of most manufactured goods. Making them in a country with cheap labor and no extra import tariffs makes more sense than in a country where everything is under tariffs
If you want to protect strategic production, you apply selective tariffs to support that local production while ensuring it can ramp up and import what it needs until it becomes self-sufficient.
Most countries, the US included, have used selective tariffs for this purpose. Applying a blanket tax on every type of import just increases inflation, as you can't possibly manufacture everything locally. For many products—especially cheap ones that were outsourced to China—there's no way to produce them cheaply enough for your internal market to absorb all production.
And you can't export them either, because their higher production cost makes them uncompetitive compared to cheaper alternatives from low-cost countries.
The secondary effects of import taxes are wide-ranging: they help when applied selectively and carefully; they don’t when applied capriciously and without thought.
The mere fact that high taxes were slapped on phone imports so "phones could be made in the US," only to backtrack mere days later, demonstrates that this is either the work of an insanely bright economist nobody understands, the scheme of a grifter aiming to benefit personally, or the capriciousness of a borderline dementia patient who cannot act rationally.
And, I don't want to be partisan about this stuff, but, that's basically what "Bidenonics" was trying to do, in a small way: Subsidize a few industries like semiconductors and batteries and solar panels, that were deemed strategically important.
Whether the US was ever going to be as serious as South Korea or Japan about this remained to be seen. Frequently the subsidies seem to be handed out and then nothing happens (e.g., "Gigafactory" in Buffalo, NY).
My company manufactures equipment in North America, with the most expensive input coming domestically from Ohio. Guess what though? Retaliatory tariffs from the global community means that the most rational course of action is now to move that manufacturing *out of the US* so that we can sell to the global market without penalty.
Sorry Ohio, but Mexico is currently *not* engaged in a trade war with Canada and half the EU so the rational decision for a company who wants to sell in those markets is to divest from the US.
That is generally not possible. All EU countries share a common trade policy. Another country can either be in a trade war with the entire EU or with none of the EU.
According to the Wikipedia [0], The EU member states delegate authority to the European Commission to negotiate their external trade relations.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Commercial_Policy_(EU)
Many things cross US/Canada/Mexico border in the process being manufactured. And tariffs will stack up.
Many advanced products (tech/chip, etc) are not entirely made in any single place. Some stuff is imported, and some is exported again, and tariffing the world, will also make the world tariff you.
I think this is all around bad. Best case scenario the US has elected a president who decided to burn all political capital, alliances and credibility in search of a slightly better deal.
Doing this sort maximum pressure economic extortion style policies, *might* getter you a slightly better deal. But at what cost?
Can EU countries buy US military equipment, when it turns out that the US will withhold support for equipment we've bought and paid for, in order to pressure a democracy, fighting for its existence, into surrender.
Trump may get a win in the headlines, because everyone thinks he'll go away if he get a win.
Why would anyone buy US military equipment that's either "10%" handicapped on purpose, or remotely disabled whenever the US changes its feelings about the users of said military equipment?
One that comes to mind is "a diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip" — like all good quotes, attributed to a wide variety of famous people.
Competent governments send arse kissers to those who need pampering, and send blunt to those who need to see bluntness. But (in a competent government) these things are uncorrelated with the actual negotiation position — "speak softly and carry a big stick" etc.
Trump being bellicose to everyone at the same time is a sign of his own incompetence.
All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local 24/7 news feed for more than eight years, so there’s no point in acting surprised about it. You’ve had plenty of time to lodge any bribe worth the president's time and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. Oh, for heaven’s sake, Americans, President Trump did a crypto scam on his supporters before being sworn in, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout.
I've no sympathy at all.
It absolutely blow my mind that that was just "Friday", and not the biggest scandal in Western political history.
"It's just Trump being Trump, move on, move on, nothing to see here, no consequences for anyone..."
I wonder how many of his supporters bought at $70 ...
It's not even that it is pure evil and predatory, it's the aesthetics of it... It tainted civilization, at the very least America! It's so, so pathetic and cringe. Unbearably distasteful and undignified. Too much cringe.
The only thing topping this, was the president of the United States selling cars in front of the white house, a few weeks later. I can't.
Man, imagine an alien patrol passing that Tesla (a billionaire's fucking car in space as a beacon of Earth life's legacy, honestly makes wanna puke) and then learning about the state of things here. I feel embarrassed to the core living in this period of time. I'd rather shit my pants on live TV.
I crave the cleansing heat and certainty of thermonuclear warheads. Shoot these fucker with a bullet of frozen sewage and then sterilize this place for we all sinned collectively. Send some tardigrades to Mars and hope for something better, but turn off the lights on Earth.
Tainted.
I regret to inform you that america is not and has never been a unique snowflake. An important player in the world, sure, but one that has long been obsessed with the notion that it is special in some way, and it's just not true.
Every country is at risk of going batshit crazy, and it's always been disturbing how americans seem the truly believe they are immune, because when that belief gets challenged…
There is another quality to what's happening in America right now. I can only explain the things Trump did as sadistic demonstrations of power. I bet he actually gets hard knowing half the country will literally eat his shit, that he actually can do anything he wants. It's a theme, it's the grab 'em by the pussy mentality. I mean, let's go back: After winning the election, he showed his gratitude by humiliating (this is important) and exploiting his most loyal followers for everyone to see - and they took it, they danced, they remained at his side, they doubled down.
But whatever enabled his cult, this cancer is growing everywhere. You can't get through to significant portions of the population. Same in Germany. They've become immune to arguments, every opposition is anticipated by their conspiracies. They vote against their economic and social interests, they have detached from common ground. It's not protest, it's all got a fucked up life of its own. Brain worms, social contagion.
I think, if we want to survive this, short-lived social media has to go, and we have to take care of the boomer issue.
Can't speak for the US, but in Germany immigration is not the problem they make it out to be, but one that is propped up as a scapegoat. You presume the people's demand here are based in reasonable distress, when really it's not. Or rather it's not attributed correctly. Stats don't support it, proposed solutions are not able to resolve it. In particular the AfD has no actual answers for anything. Their "politics" is arbitrary outrage and evidently they get sponsored by Russia, favored by platform owners and spin doctors like Musk. German intelligence agencies are investigating Russia's involvement in recent attacks in Germany. The AfD's role is destabilization and it's working.
The topic is not driven by actual exposure. This is clearly evident when you look at voting patterns. In places where you are the most likely to have contact with immigrants right-wing populists are the least successful and vice versa. Compare recent car attacks by islamist and neonazi motivated perpetrators. There is a massive distortion in media coverage.
I absolutely do not accept throwing anyone under the bus just to make the mob happy. Not immigrants, not women, not trans people. Sorry, but it's fucking degenerated and vile to suggest this as acceptable sacrifice. Every human deserves basic rights, due process and life in dignity. Look what they are cheering for in the US at the moment. Disinformation fueled hatred is not something to make compromises with as a civilized person.
The actual, but occult distress all people feel comes from economic erosion and ideological decay. Don't get me wrong, immigration isn't all bueno, but it's blown out of proportion. Rent, financial security, food, prosperity and self-efficacy. No politician is addressing that. We are by far not out of options to address the real issues of the country.
Why are you not advocating for addressing those?
I agree with you that the anti-immigration movement doesn't make much sense to me, and I'm pretty confident that restricting immigration won't have the benefits its proponents claim. But the people who support it are genuine, as far as I can tell, and aren't going to just evaporate if rent decreases 10%. You can restrict immigration in a humane and respectful way, or you can follow the US and wait for xenophobic politicians to restrict immigration in an inhumane and disrespectful way; I don't think there's a third option.
But this won't change anything, if their demand is not reasonable, or founded in truth to begin with. As I said, the AfD is most popular where there are no migrants at all. Lots of them feel their narrative validated when they see a brown person existing, see "Turkish" people living here for generations. The goalpost will always shift. You will never satisfy them, if their demands aren't anchored in reality. Again, this isn't fueled by exposure, but guided media outrage. There is a lot of conspiracy narratives mixed in as well. Talk to them, poke deeper than the concern trolling surface. You will encounter actual loony talk quite soon.
Apart from that, the biggest problems with these ideas are factors outside of Germany's control. E.g. if the origin country won't accept those immigrants back, you can't just air drop them there. Constitution, European law, human rights, Schengen... it's not really possible/worth it to do anything significant. It's all ever going to be for show.
The CDU ran their election campaign on "anti-immigration" and continues to perform this rhetoric. So far the AfD poll numbers have been climbing, so ... your premise is evidently just wrong. This has been debated to death and I think for the general case, political science agrees that people will choose the original, when moderate parties pander to populist ones.
I am not familiar with the Danish situation. It's a very small country, with little land borders. Germany is large, bordering nine countries. It has a very high population density, large global economic influence, and a very unique history in regard to unification as German Reich, industrialization, revolution, fascist and communist dictatorships, war and division, and contemporary reunification. There is a very, very distinct geographical correlation with AfD voters and the former DDR territory.
Most people here are very fine with Germany's lack of nationalism and flag identity. We never really had a unified cultural or religious identity, since what's considered "Germany" has been quite radically changing in the last 300 years. (I think Rammstein's "Deutschland" does quite a good job expressing this feeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc)
You are also suspiciously discounting the impact these populist narratives and policies have on the lives of those matching the appearance of the scapegoat targets. Overall the neonazis' demands are not "just" a "sane" immigration policy, but open calls in particular for deportation, even deportation of German citizens. And they are also calling for de facto suppression of women's rights and LGBT lives all together. Oh, and what about the newly found Russia fandom and climate change denial? What's your take here?
Should we give in there as well? And if not, what's the difference?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...
A factory that produces a specific model of phone is only going to be able to run for a few years before it needs to retool for a newer model. That means a huge investment goes into such a factory on a continual basis. If one factory can serve the entire world demand for that model, why build two?
If you're going to build just one factory, are you going to build it in a market that's walled off behind trade barriers, both for outputs and inputs? Only if that market is significantly bigger than the rest of the world combined. If the rest of the world is bigger, than you build outside the trade barriers and people inside of them will just have to pay more.
Tariff's might bring low-end, high-volume manufacturing back to the U.S.. Chip fabs, phone factories, or anything so high-end/low-volume that it must be amortized over a global market is not going to return to the U.S. because of tariff's. An administration that changes their minds every few hours only makes matters worse. Whether Trump has recognized this and is conceding defeat or he's bowing to pressure from companies like Apple is immaterial. That kind of factory is not coming to the U.S. anytime soon.
Need an impedance controlled 16 layer board for your fancy new military radar? No problem.
Need a basic 2 layer PCB for mass manufacture? No one in the US will make it at the price you need to be competitive.
When the only market you ever had was high touch high cost low volume production then that is your default business model.
The biggest issue is that Trump is pushing tariffs without first ramping up local manufacturing, the type of manufacturing you are looking for isn't _currently_ being catered for in the US. It may in the future depending on how things pan out, the bet Trump is making is that it can happen, time will tell whether he is true.
I don't think it will generate jobs for local US manufacturing since the only way to compete with low cost of labour markets is to automate more than the low cost of labour country.
Business is reasonably good at filling whatever niche is willing to pay. So far the evidence is that Trump is willing to over commit and then backtrack. Having a negative outlook doesn't help anyone, think positive about your country and shift with the times.
You know I tried to think positively about the United States; but darned if they don't keep doing negative things. Like appointing grossly incompetent people to head Federal departments. Like unlawfully and arbitrarily abducting people from the streets. Like extorting universities - ideally centres of free thought - over non-complying ideological positions. Like appearing to wreck the economy; but in ways that might just advantage himself and others in his circle. And the list goes on...
Some of us aren't "shifting with the times" because of an ethical line we won't cross. I grew up in the United States in the 1960's and had the constant drumbeat of "We're the world's melting pot," "We're the most benevolent spreader of democracy," "We're practically the only free country on the planet," "We are a country of laws." beat into us in public school. So it's a little jarring to see the wholesale abandonment of these values at the hands of someone who can barely string together a cogent sentence of more than, say, 4-5 non-repeating words and for whom "negotiating" means "win/lose", instead of "how can we meet our needs _and_ your needs, while creating more value in the process?"
Personally, I tried having a positive outlook; but saw this coming and left the U.S. just ahead of Trump 1.0.
This rant aside, it's incredibly wishful thinking to assume that one can undo in weeks or months, the complex web of international trade that has developed over decades because of the much-vaunted invisible hand of the market.
Like insisting the United States is 'rigged, crooked and evil'?
Trump insists the United States is 'rigged, crooked and evil':
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-in...
>“The Witch Hunt continues, and after 6 years and millions of pages of documents, they’ve got nothing. If I had what Hunter and Joe had, it would be the Electric Chair. Our Country is Rigged, Crooked, and Evil — We must bring it back, and FAST. Next stop, Communism!”
So do you have any shred of evidence he's backtracking on all the racism and misogyny and homophobia and transphobia and cruelty and corruption he overcommitted on?
Every time I've looked at local manufacturing, whether machine shops or anything else, the prices are higher than Ali but not unreasonable.
And lets face it, even if Trump instigated those tariffs via executive order at day 0 and didn't touch them till the expected end of his office that would not be enough incentive to relocate production. (1) because he could change the tariffs literally at any point (and he did just that) and (2) because any president after could just reverse the executive order immidately.
The erratic way Trump installed, modfied and communicated the tariffs run counter to the communicated purpose. E.g. why of all things excempt computers and electronic devices now from the tariffs? Why put a 10% tariff on goods from dirt-poor countries whose goods you already buy at an rate bordering on exploitation to your own benefit.
The way I see it, either he has no idea what the hell he is doing, or he is doing it for another purpose, e.g. insider trading. And I see myself exceedingly tired of journalists trying to read the tea leaves on a madman.
Here are a bunch of links from 2018/2019:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/apple-dodges-iphone-tariff-a...
https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/investing/t052-s001-14-s...
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/07/trump-tariff-threat-...
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trumps-tariff-str...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-delay-tariff-increases...
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/19/hundreds-of-chines...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/china-threatens-retalia...
https://www.cfr.org/blog/trumps-tariffs-are-killing-american...
Order of magnitude difference. Hence the panic.
Because it’s not? The tariffs which are currently in effect or soon to go into effect are so far out of line with anything in modern history that there is no comparison.
The reason everyone is panicking is because people expected more of the same as 8 years ago but instead we got something massively worse, without a hint of cohesive strategy, and that has gone into effect rapidly and on the whims of one person who can’t even appear to get on the same page as his advisors.
Everyone knows there’s some element of bluffing going on, but that’s also the problem; This administration knows their bluffs would be transparent this time so they decided to go extra big to make a point. This becomes a problem for all of the people and companies whose business was suddenly upended by out of control tariffs with little time to prepare (compared to the smaller tariffs everyone was preparing for)
They’re banking on the damage either not being directly noticed by their voter base, or being able to convince their voter base that the damage is actually a good thing. I’m already seeing people applaud these actions as if they were narrowly targeted at cheap Chinese goods on Amazon or fast fashion, without realizing how much of the inputs to our economy go through one of the countries with tariffs ranging from 25-145%.
Some people are determined to adopt contrarian positions and act like they’re above it all, but the people who have to deal with the consequences of this stuff (myself included) are taking a lot of damage from these supposedly no big deal negotiations. It’s not being handled well. Even if they were to disappear tomorrow, a lot of damage has been done and they’re hoping people like you will find a way to rationalize it away as not a big deal
It is a losing strategy.
Are we really still at the stage where we seriously think this is how people vote? Its not. You just need to energize enough people in your sufficiently big enough bubble to believe in a cause and make sure that the other side thinks "both sides are bad".
It's all quite cohesive once one stops the futile search for an underlying strategy that enriches america, and instead looks for evidence of a strategy that enriches Trump.
"These insects infected with cordyceps show no hint of a cohesive strategy for staying alive..."
Only ignorant close minded gullible people who refused to listen to all the experts and intelligent people paying attention, who have all now been totally vindicated, after warning about it at the top of their lungs, and who are now fully entitled to say "I TOLD YOU SO".
Expert Comment: What might President Trump’s second term mean for the world?
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-02-05-expert-comment-what-mig...
What to expect from Trump’s second term: more erratic, darker, and more dangerous:
https://thebulletin.org/2024/11/what-to-expect-from-trumps-s...
Accelerated transgressions in the second Trump presidency:
https://brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-transgressions-in-th...
Trump’s second term could bring chaos around the world. Will it work?
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/09/world/analysis-trump-seco...
Donald Trump’s Revenge: The former President will return to the White House older, less inhibited, and far more dangerous than ever before:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/donald-trump-wins-a-...
Why the worst president ever will be even worse in a second term: I suppose some observers might think Donald Trump’s first term represented rock bottom. My advice for those thinking along those lines: Just wait:
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/worst-pr...
What the world thinks of Trump’s return to the US presidency:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/what-t...
How bad could a second Trump presidency get? The damage to America’s economy, institutions and the world would be huge:
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/10/31/how-bad-could-...
What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again? Experts Helped Us Game It Out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/10/country-a...
Trump presidency could damage economy if he weakens democracy, experts say: Trump has threatened to prosecute political rivals, including Kamala Harris:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-presidency-damage-econ...
What could Trump's second term bring? Deportations, tariffs, Jan. 6 pardons and more:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/second-trump-presidency-implica...
I’m an Economist: Here Are My Predictions for Inflation If Trump Wins:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/m-economist-predictions-infla...
Trump’s economic plans would worsen inflation, experts say: They fear that Trump's proposals would “reignite’’ inflation, which has plummeted since peaking at 9.1% in 2022 and is nearly back to the Fed’s 2% target:
https://whyy.org/articles/trump-economic-plan-worsen-inflati...
Look I don't want to be too harsh on Americans nobody took the Nazis seriously when they had already written a book about how they saw the world... But none of this is shocking.
There is an ideology behind what Trump is doing and he never hid it from the world.
> nobody took the Nazis seriously when they had already written a book about how they saw the world.
This is completely false. A cursory internet search will find many examples. Churchill was a vocal opponent of the Nazis in the 1930s.
> But none of this is shocking.
Right. Nobody who was paying attention is shocked. This includes many Americans.
He was chaotic, he was doing ego polishing reality show from day 1. The only difference was a 'barrier of sanity' that people around him formed, dampening his bipolar outbursts into more reasonable actions (or lack of thereof, often without his knowledge). He eventually fired all of them, forgot that part?
Now he has just pure yes men around him, licking his ass and patiently waiting for him to die or get killed (vance has a look and behavior of patient calculating sociopath for example, he may be much worse if given chance)
> what the heck you wtite about. You suffer some memory loss?
> licking his ass and patiently waiting for him to die or
I can see why political threads on HN are flagged away so aggressively. It’s hard to want to even try to have a conversation when this is the level of discourse getting upvoted.
These tariffs look designed to rapidly eject the US from the global economic order and hand over the reins to China. Though saying they were "designed" at all seems extravagantly generous.
Which is to say, if this ridiculous tariffs goes on for long enough, its going to be there forever. So you guys are, ehem, fucked.
No they weren't. They were changed to 10%. Prior to all of this the average was 2.5%. So that's not a removal at all, but a rather large average increase even if you exclude the omglol China rate.
Sadly that’s not even true. We still have excessively high tariffs on many shipments from Mexico and Canada. 25% for non-USMCA goods.
China, Canada, and Mexico are our 3 largest trading partners. The tariffs levied on them have an outsized effect on net tariff rates.
I assume there is some kind of divide and conquer going on.
For the first two years of his first term, in 2017-18, his instincts were largely kept in check by his economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former chief operating officer at Goldman Sachs, who dampened Trump’s determination to use tariffs to end trade deficits.“
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/12/did-trump-tari...
Reminds me of this excellent Norm Macdonald sketch [1] on Germany of which I've learned only recently.
*I've read through a few of these and it seems like perhaps Trump still thinks it's 2018/19, but China's position has only gotten stronger.
It seems the attempt to jack up tariffs so high this time was a bluff to "show" how strong we can be, but he miscalculated on how shaky the stock/bond markets actually currently are and the financial players know we're not in a position to go it alone.
And China knows this and they know they can wait us out. I believe it will be considered a misstep, at best and a catastrophe at worst.
> Apple already pays tariffs on products including the Apple Watch and AirPods, but hasn't raised its prices in the United States.
so, they fear tariffs because their price is already at the highest their products would sell? that's an interesting point most people don't understand. the tariffs were only 15% then, but still interesting to see how it played out.
"Oh yeah, that's not a shoe: it's the protective case for an ESP32 WiFi router".
Much like those Wrapper upstarts, then?
>The "Chicken Tax" is a 25% tariff on light trucks imported to the United States, established in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This tariff was a retaliatory measure against European countries, including France and West Germany, which had imposed tariffs on U.S. chicken exports.
This whole business gets rather silly. Viva free trade.
https://www.carscoops.com/2024/03/ford-pays-u-s-365-million-...
The exemption categories include components and assembled products, https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USDHSCBP-3db9e5...
8471 ADP (Automatic Data Processing) Machines: PCs, servers, terminals.
8473.30 Parts for ADPs: keyboards, peripherals, printers.
8486 Machines for producing semiconductors & ICs: wafer fab, lithography.
8517.13 Mobile phones and smartphones.
8517.62 Radios, router, modems.
8523.51 Radio/TV broadcasting equipment.
8524 2-way radios.
8528.52 Computer monitors and projectors (no TVs).
8541.10 Diodes, transistors and similar electronic components
8541.21 LEDs
8541.29 Photodiodes and non-LED diodes
8541.30 Transistors
8541.49.10 Other semiconductors that emit light
8541.49.70 Optoelectronics: light sensors, solar cells
8541.49.80 Photoresistors
8541.49.95 Other semiconductor devices
8541.51.00 LEDs for displays
8541.59.00 Other specialized semiconductor devices
8541.90.00 Semiconductor parts: interconnects, packaging, assembly
8542 Electronic ICs
Does US buy them from China too?
All of the little chips in everything else are fabricated on much simpler processes that require much less complex machinery.
China 0% reciprocal + 20% (fentanyl) + 2018-2024 rates
non-China 0% reciprocal8471: Computers.
8473.30: Computer parts.
8486: Semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
8517.13.00: Smartphones.
8517.62.00: Network equipment.
8523.51.00: Solid state media.
8524 and 8528.52.00: Computer displays.
8541.* (with some subheadings excluded): Semiconductor components EXCEPT LEDs, photovoltaic components, piezoelectric crystals).
8542: Integrated circuits.
The 8541.* category exclusions are interesting. Does the US self-produce all required quantities of LEDs and piezoelectric crystals and doesn't need to import those? Is the exception on photovoltaic components to discourage American companies from producing solar panels?
[1] https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=[INSERT HEADING CODE HERE. EXAMPLE: 8471]
But turns out there is no way to enforce this. If we get a president that doesn't care about any of this and is happy to ignore everyone else, there isn't actually any way to enforce the separation of duties of the three branches.
Congress should be stepping in if the president is overstepping his legal authority, or if they wish to reduce his legal authority. The Republican party has control of Congress and our political system has devolved into a game of blind faith in your team, neither party is willing to go against their president in a meaningful way.
We need principled leaders who care to run an effective government based on our constitution. We have few, if any, of those people in charge.
So, what's going on is that Donny himself has all the money. Not personally, but his various election funds have more than than the rest of the Republicans combined. Obama has a similar set-up back in 2012, but not nearly as disproportionate as Donny has.
Republicans can't go against Donny without risking a primary opponent funded by Donny that will oust them.
The Democrats do not have this funding problem to the same degree.
What this means is that the Republican party is only going to go against Donny (impeachment) when they figure that the average Republican Primary voter in deeply red districts will have a 50/50 chance of voting (actual polling, not vibes) the way Donny tells them too. And that reassessment is not going to happen until at least late summer 2026.
Congress has a duty to uphold the constitution, not to play political money games. The fact that they aren't willing to is a large part of why we're in this mess.
What we need are leaders that actually have principles they're willing to fight for, and ultimately that still rolls further down hill to the voters who have collectively created these incentives.
When Ron Paul was still in office lobbyists learned to not even bother talking to him. Agree or disagree with him, the man had strong views of how governments should work, was clear about those views to his electorate, and stood by them consistently. We need more of that.
> Congress has a duty to uphold the constitution, not to play political money games
Those political money games will filter out opposition in congress as long as Trump is able to have yes men elected into congress
Short of that, we need voters electing based on ideals and principles and we need those elected to actually follow the ideals and principles that got them elected.
For all politicians, their incentive is to get (re)elected. That's pretty much part of the definition. The ones that follow that incentive are going to be (re)elected, those that don't aren't going to get into office.
But, if you really do believe in democracy, then you have to actually trust the voters here. If you're thinking that they are just rubes and are easily lead around, then well, you don't really believe in democracy, I think [0]. Whatever you think about Donny and his methods and ideas, we've had 10 years of the guy in politics. The voters (in the system we have) were as well informed as you could possibly expect them to be. They wanted him and everything about him, the results were very clear.
Ancient Greece is a good model here with it's many cities and systems. Democracies will often choose the wolf to escape the vultures. It's just part of how humans work. We can all wish that we live in a different place and a different time with different people, but we don't. We're here and now. And our fellow voters in the system we have, they want all of this.
Look, I'm with you, I think that the voters were very dumb here. But they have to find out one way or another and get their comeuppance. There is no feasible other way. We're going to get Donny in all his glory, good and hard.
[0] yes yes, we don't have a democracy, we have a constitutional republic and blah blah blah. We've all heard it a hundred times.
I believe in democracy because I think the public should be able to collectively pick their fate and then own the outcome. I don't want an elite class doing what they think is best for the rest of us, and I don't want to own the result of their decisions if I had no say in the decisions.
I live in a very red state. Though I didn't vote for Trump I am surrounded by a strong majority of people that did. I've viewed it the way you're describing from the beginning - we made this bed, now we get to see what the result is and decide what to do next.
Democracy cannot survive a political party that spends 50 years electing worse and worse criminals, and sacrificing everything to the alter of "More power for our party"
Voters did not punish republicans for Nixon. Voters did not punish republicans for Iran-Contra. Voters did not punish republicans for several market and economic failures. Voters did not punish republicans for multiple outright illegal wars waged on false pretenses that cost us tens of trillions of dollars, spent explicitly from debt.
So this is what you get. The bar will keep getting lower until republican voters finally decide they won't support literally any criminal with an R next to them.
So we are fucked basically.
I was surprised to learn that there doesn't seem to be a way for people to recall congresspeople or senators.
There needs to be a patch for the constitution of the USA to fix the vulnerabilities/bugs exposed by trump and his supporters.
I've found it interesting that so many are seriously concerned with what Trump is doing but not why the executive branch has the authority to do it in the first place.
Maybe police and federal enforcement agencies should be solely under Congress? At least then senior people can actually get fired for obeying unlawful orders from the executive.
The legislative branch already has a lot of power. I'd be very concerned giving them the direct control, or even shared control, over enforcement. They should be controlling enforcement through legislation.
That leaves the executive, and personally I don't see a problem with enforcement living there. That is a very good reason to otherwise limit the authority of the executive branch though, and why executive orders as used today shouldn't be legal (they effectively are a legislative branch with the enforcement agencies).
What if the executive just decides not to enforce the decisions of the legislative and judicial branches?
The system is surprisingly simple, it just requires leaders willing to actually uphold it.
Those both risk creating a constitutional crisis, not avoiding one.
At this point the Executive is already ignoring the law.
They’re not. That’s the problem.
You could swap it out for a parliamentary structure with the same characters and you’d get the same result. There’s a weird personality cult thing going on and everyone is waiting to see who will break ranks first, lest they get crushed by the retaliatory wrath of Trump calling his followers to oppose a person and Elon Musk dumping a mega war chest on them.
There are signs that people are starting to break ranks, but it looks like they want to see him have to face the consequences of his decisions before they jump in to save him.
This current policy is so bad that they’d be doing him a political favor by jumping in to disallow it. The problem for them is that he would be guaranteed to turn around and blame it on Congress. “My tariff plan was going to work, but Congress interfered!”
Wrangham's thesis is this behaviour is built on language. In order to kill the biggest and most powerful with little risk, the group had to coordinate and perhaps more importantly a level of trust had to be build up, because if one broke ranks and spilled the beans before the deed was done, the leader could pick off the insurrectionists one by one. The most startling example of this is the men who killed Caesar (some 60 to 70 of them) all sank a knife into his body. Only humans had the tool needed to build up the level of in-group trust: language.
The relevance to overthrowing is Trump needs a concerted whispering campaign that takes months to to create the bonds between the "small men". We've had less than 100 days to enjoy the fruits of Trump's blessings. They've only just become aware of what he is doing to their electoral prospects. Hell, I suspect Trumps big donors like Musk have only woken up to the fact in the last couple of days that they've funded a huge threat to their personal fortunes and the businesses that create and sustain those fortunes. But they are aware now, and as you say the white anting has begun. May it continue post haste.
I think the trick has to be to just get better people into those positions. Which means better people need to have some incentive to get into politics. It's a tough one for sure.
The executive power of our PM relative to the body politik is much higher. We don’t have a tradition of backbench rebellion, and the PMO often wields more power than the cabinet.
Many parliamentary systems wherein a PM is elected by the cabinet routinely demonstrate that they will use their power to remove a leader in whom they've lost confidence.
Remember Liz Truss, all 49 days of her? A PM who fucks up on a Truss/Trump scale generally finds themselves very rapidly seeking alternative employment. Truss was forced to appoint a borderline sane chancellor about two weeks after causing the bond yield to go crazy, and was gone within another couple of weeks.
The PM has slight larger responsibility the a regular MP.
I'm not a big fan of JTs policies over the years but they were done via parliamentary support.
PMs in Canada wield a ton of power and AFAIK are rarely removed. I'm not sure what exactly you consider to be misinformation here. It's extremely rare for members of parliament to vote against their party.
Another example I can think of is Israel where the prime minister yields a ton of power.
I might be wrong but I think the use of the Emergencies Act was not approved in Parliament? How about the weapons embargo on Israel?
It requires the house and Senate to vote amongst other requirements.
PMs are re-elected every 4 years and need to continue to win their riding just like every other MP.
The fact that MPs don't regularly vote against their party seems like pretty standard politics across the world.
The government can also call votes of no faith to remove the current PM which has indeed happened to the last 2.
I don't think you need malice to spread misinformation you just have not done sufficient research in this topic before making your comments.
Edit: I'm not familiar with the structure of Israel's government so I cant comment on how much power their PM has individually.
"Once cabinet declares an emergency, it takes effect right away — but the government still needs to go to Parliament within seven days to get approval. If either the Commons or the Senate votes against the motion, the emergency declaration is revoked."
Seems like this was later approved by parliament... Do you have a link showing it was approved by senate?
Right now we have an unelected PM. Not sure how the re-election after 4 years is relevant. A US president also has to be re-elected.
I said I might be wrong on the emergency act. and indeed I was wrong (-ish). But you're correct that I need to do better research. I was going from memory and indeed the initial application was before the approval but you are still technically correct.
Were the reciprocal tariffs on the US also approved by parliament?
I think you mean no confidence? Yes. This is generally something that happens in a minority government.
Anyways, I still think PMs in Canada effectively have a lot of power. But I stand corrected on the extent of their power. It is pretty rare they are removed by their party/coalition but the government has occasionally fallen due to votes of no confidence - yes. There is a complete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_defeat...
That can only happen if you ban all imports of anything those small business manufacturers would made, and be content with the prices going up so those Americans can really be paid who make those products.
If that is not possible, then it is either slavery, poorly paid illegal immigrants or back to some other low-wage country like we’ve done for the past decades.
Counterpoint: About 1/3 of Australia's GDP is small business. We have very few tariffs. We have a high minimum wage (about USD$16/hr) and it's enforced, so slavery yada, yada isn't a factor.
What you said sounds like it might be true, but in reality it ain't so.
Consumers could always make this decision for themselves and pick domestic over foreign. It seems extremely unlikely, but I also see bringing back manufacturing without massive economic shock as extremely unlikely. If I want a pipe dream, it be for manufacturing to come back because consumers actually care that it comes back.
In a free market, consumers _do_ decide for themselves. It is simply so, that price is the primary factor for many consumers. Especially in a society where living paycheck to paycheck is normal - but really in any society.
It would greatly ease the burden of employing others in small businesses and it would greatly increase the safety net of would-be entrepreneurs.
It would also improve works-rights-as-capitalism because you could more easily quit abusive employers and make employers more merit-based as well.
Addendum: The $450 I spend every month on health insurance is a meaningful part of my monthly spend as I'm trying to start my business.
Thank you for bringing this up
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7-e_yhEzIw "These Ugly Big Box Stores are Literally Bankrupting Cities" - Not Just Bikes
Megacorps are destructive to market forces in general.
Small businesses died because we fed all the IGAs to Walmart, through Reagan's absolutely braindead "what if we just don't prevent monopolies?" policy.
It turns out, destroying the economy of local communities so that Walmart shareholders can be even wealthier while average Americans only get a few cents cheaper on some products.... at least until the monopoly has consolidated control and can just keep raising prices for the rest of history while selectively dropping prices anywhere someone tries to compete only serves the goddamned shareholders, not Americans.
Most rural places had small grocers. Now people who live in those places have to drive an hour to Walmart, and the local economy no longer has anyone working at the local grocer. The building that used to house the local grocer now has a fourth generation of whatever sketch dollar store company bought it this year, which employs exactly one human being from the local community, and the products are terribly priced, meaning not only did we lose the money staying local with whatever kind of more expensive IGA we replaced, we didn't even get better prices for it!
Monopolies are a huge percentage of the problem. America's rural communities are dying partially because all the local businesses have been replaced by national behemoths so literally every single day to day purchase you make ships more money out of the local economy. Nobody can have a job in a rural community because every dollar that finds its way to that community gets shipped out to Walmart HQ instead of flowing around and paying tradespeople and buying local products and services.
Labor and industries are specialized just like agriculture is. Fighting to redomesticate labor is a bit like fighting to produce bananas at scale in the USA: It’s just not practical and will cause harm to the broader economy.
https://wccftech.com/trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-have-reported...
Or, the primary source seems to be:
https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USDHSCBP-3db9e5...
But you'd have to look up those codes to know they're for PCs, smartphones
The title is sensationalism when it should be phone and computer associated parts are exempted from tariffs or something like that.
Makes a lot of sense if you don't think about it.
He announces big tough tariffs on China, his base claps, hoots and hollers. He quietly walks it back via internal memo to CBP on a Friday night.
His base gets to see him be tough on China, without actually suffering any consequences of goods shortages or price increases.
One thing is throwing and seeing what sticks, but at the seat of the presidency, it seems like such an antipattern for leadership. And yet, the support is unwavering. It's exhausting.
A lot of my friends are rethinking sending their children to US for college education while Trump is in power and are considering European schools. That's probably a few million dollars over next 2-3 years potentially lost from the US economy from just people i personally know. And no one is coming from China.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good
Especially when it comes to certain areas of the economy:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now
> China has rapidly established itself as the world’s dominant shipbuilding power, marginalizing the United States and its allies in a strategically important industry. In addition to building massive numbers of commercial ships, many Chinese shipyards also produce warships for the country’s rapidly growing navy. As part of its “military-civil fusion” strategy, China is tapping into the dual-use resources of its commercial shipbuilding empire to support its ongoing naval modernization
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/ship-wars-confronting-chinas-d...
But none of the current "reasons"—which may simply be rationalizations / retcons by underlings for one man's fickle will—really make much sense:
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/all-the-arguments-for-tariffs-...
And tarriffing imports doesn't make a difference in the case of something like shipbuilding where the real problem is the government hasn't got a consistent order-book to keep factories staffed, operating and training - nor a plan to allow that capacity to leverage into being self supporting.
Like a much better plan has always been defence exports: increase your customer base to spread risk and reduce per unit prices. The F-35 and it's adoption was a great idea in this regard...right up till the US started threatening NATO allies and cutting off avionics support to partner nations (Ukraine) in the middle of a war.
You don't get a defence manufacturing industry without actually paying for a defence manufacturing industry. The whole "bring manufacturing back" idea is almost wholly disconnected from it: a ton of factories extruding plastic childrens roys aren't suddenly going to start making anti-shipping missiles - in fact this is related to a secondary problem which is that it's not remotely clear that a peer/near-peer conflict would look anything like the long wars that WW2 represented due tot he delivery timelines on advanced weapons systems. You basically go to war with the military you have.
This is too limited in thinking. It's not just about "defence critical components", but the know-how and having the production workflow knowledge. It's all well and good to have rules on what goes into frigate, but if you don't have the shipyards to build things then it's a bit of a moot point:
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/ship-wars-confronting-chinas-d...
> You don't get a defence manufacturing industry without actually paying for a defence manufacturing industry.
It's not just about industry but about capacity as well: if you have (in this example) only (say) 4 shipyards you're going to have a tough time beating someone who has 40.
This is the problem with these assumptions: they're all rooted in the industrial warfare the US won in WW2 but are not contextually accurate to today. WW2 wasn't fought with satellite targeting and precision cruise missiles which could be fired from half the planet away. Ukraine is currently hitting targets on the other side of Russia - "behind the lines" doesn't really exist for strategic assets anymore.
The war in Ukraine shows what a current-day war looks like: You rapidly expend stockpiled traditional weapons, and then rapidly ramp up low-cost drone manufacturing.
Currently, the #1 drone manufacturer in the world is probably Ukraine, with Russia and China somewhere in the #2 and #3 spots. The United States is somewhere on the bottom of that list.
Subsidising civilian drone manufacturing alone would catch up the United States dual-use manufacturing capability for any potential future war for the next half-a-decade or so. After that...? Something-something-AI-murder-bots.
No amount of 3D printed FPVs is going to bring down a modern warship - they're unlikely to even get near it (conversely the sea drone threat is enormous - but those aren't civilian assets in anyway, but can be as cheap as "brick on a speed boat throttle").
Absolutely. Ukraine was able to push Russian surface fleet into Russian ports using sea drones. If Taiwan builds a fleet thereof, the Chinese blockade fleet will face Armageddon.
I saw an interview with a former naval radar guy, who claimed that the natural state of the sea produces so many small false blips that a smartly built sea drone of certain size is basically impossible to distinguish from those.
Because for the first year of the war was the "burn down existing cold war era stocks" phase. More importantly, neither side realised the impact that drones would have.
Now that every military has seen years of video clips on Telegram of tank after tank being blown up by $500 drones, the next war is going start with swarms of drones on day 1, not day 400.
The Ukrainians absolutely realized that, and I saw a lot of reports about Ukrainian drone operators in 2022 already. It was just after the Nagorno-Karabakh war, where Turkish-made drones were a significant factor in Azeri victory.
There was something else at play. The supply chain had to be built up, plus the Russians were/are quite strong at radioelectronic warfare. Overcoming Russian jamming was a serious uphill battle.
The analysis is reasonable, but let's just replace "defending your freedoms" with "reaping the benefits of being the biggest bully in town". This is what China's competition means, not the risk of being attacked and losing your freedoms, but that of losing the power you got used to and profited from.
People were worrying about this as early as the 1970s when Japan started importing cars, and in the 1990s when Chinese markets started to open up under the condition that the Western companies partner with Chinese ones and effectuate technology transfers to them. These folks foresaw the future, but politicians and corporate managers didn’t care; they were focused on expansion at all costs.
Now that the future is today, all they can say is “I told you so,” which isn’t much comfort to anyone.
The debt/deficit is on politicians (and the public who votes them in). See also issues with US Social Security (Canada was on a similar path, but the government(s) sorted things out in the 1990s).
At least for the US, it has not de-industrialized, as exports have never been higher. It makes a smaller portion of total GDP, but that's because of growth of other sectors; and a smaller portion of the workforce, but that's because of automation:
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/do-not-blame-trade-decline-man...
The largest problem nowadays is probably housing costs, and that has nothing to do with trade, but is about things like NIMBY and zoning.
If you want more than "a particular section of society" and more folks to benefit look into redistribution, which plenty of conventional economists will happily agree with.
Name me a country where this is not the case. The only thing we've failed to do is educate enough of our people to prosper as a deindustrialized nation. That and failed to protect our democracy.
What education did we give them to prosper as an industrialized nation? It seems to me that the population was able to discover that and benefit from it entirely on their own. Why do they need "education" to "prosper" in current conditions?
Aren't we currently living in the most educated time already? That is we have more people going to and graduating from college than ever before. What is currently missing? Do we need to force everyone to go to college? What about those who don't graduate? They just won't ever be able to prosper?
> That and failed to protect our democracy.
I think a little more than half the country would disagree with this assessment.
That's an odd question, given that Prussian schooling was invented to turn children into productive factory workers.
There's nothing odd about the question. What's odd is that you assert that conditions 200 years ago are relevant to it.
You don't even have a point about the deficit. While there are plenty of economic schools that will give you high deficits, the US didn't get his by following any of those either.
Do you think all the tech CEO’s attended his inauguration for nothing?
I never imagined I would see such public corruption in any western country. I am saying this as someone who supported some the current administrations agenda
It burns me up that massive companies like Apple and Nvidia get a free pass while everyone else is subject to the most brain dead economic policy anyone alive today has ever lived through.
My dad is a retired EE who dealt with the 90s offshoring wave and described the process of spinning up offshore production with a new supplier/factor/product as a 1-2 year process.
Now imagine every producer with China exposure trying to do this at the same time dealing with the same limited ex-China options? Nothing was happening in the 90 day pause, let alone before the 2026 midterms or before the end of his reign in 2028.
Complete chaos for American companies who are left with no good options other than try to wait it out, and pass on excess cost to consumers in interim.
Once we eat through inventories and stuff that left the ports & currently on the water, prices will go up.
The country went insane when inflation crossed 5%, are we really going to do it again.. when the reason for it will be so singularly obvious?
And their target market will eat it up and ask for seconds.
This is actually one of the few reasons I'm hopeful for the next election (assuming we still get one) - last time, regardless of the root cause, the country blamed those in power right then.
The dirty secret that nobody talks about is that the vast majority of our rich people are literally in filter bubbles of their own making and are disconnected entirely from reality. Like really bad ones too, not anything interesting, just generic Fox News based ones.
Whatever the banana republics were they were turned into that by the US's doing, so it's funny that now the term comes back home.
Thanks, man, I am now in the rabbit hole of reading up.
In that same context, did you read the article about how diplomats were "convincing" the Mexican government to not use open source over Microsoft?
It sure sounds like the same strategy.
> only the richest companies getting exemptions
…when the reality is that certain classes of goods were exempted. You reiterated the clickbaity headline.
Products like the Librem phone have exceptions. Is Purism one of the richest companies?
8471 8473.30 8486 8517.13.00 8517.62.00 8523.51.00 8524 8528.52.00 8541.10.00 8541.21.00 8541.29.00 8541.30.00 8541.49.10 8541.49.70 8541.49.80 8541.49.95 8541.51.00 8541.59.00 8541.90.00 8542
| Code | Description |
|--------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 8471 | Automatic data processing machines (e.g., computers, servers, laptops) |
| 8473.30 | Parts/accessories for machines of 8471 (e.g., computer parts) |
| 8486 | Machines for manufacturing semiconductors or ICs |
| 8517.13.00 | Smartphones |
| 8517.62.00 | Data transmission machines (e.g., routers, modems) |
| 8523.51.00 | Solid-state storage (e.g., USB drives, flash memory) |
| 8524 | Recorded media (e.g., tapes, disks — mostly obsolete) |
| 8528.52.00 | LCD/LED monitors for computers |
| 8541.10.00 | Diodes (not including LEDs) |
| 8541.21.00 | Transistors (<1 W dissipation) |
| 8541.29.00 | Other transistors |
| 8541.30.00 | Thyristors, diacs, triacs |
| 8541.49.10 | Gallium arsenide LEDs |
| 8541.49.70 | Other LEDs (not GaAs) |
| 8541.49.80 | Other photosensitive semiconductors |
| 8541.49.95 | Other semiconductors not elsewhere specified |
| 8541.51.00 | Unassembled photovoltaic cells |
| 8541.59.00 | Other photovoltaic cells/modules |
| 8541.90.00 | Parts for items in 8541 |
| 8542 | Electronic integrated circuits (e.g., microprocessors, memory chips) |
As other commenter says, it’s interesting that there are also exceptions within the exceptions.
Apple has already "committed" to investing in US manufacturing. Also, many companies have committed to AI investments on US soil which would be heavily NVIDIA dependent. Could be a justification for the exemption.
I listened because I thought it would be funny, but the shitty behaviour and unapologetic corruption is just so naked that it actually left me feeling pretty upset for all of the obvious reasons.
I'd say that I don't understand how anyone can be charmed by this con artist, but the truth is that I have simply lost a ton of faith in the "average" person.
> I'd say that I don't understand how anyone can be charmed by this con artist, but the truth is that I have simply lost a ton of faith in the "average" person.
There is still a halo of "Democrats are bad at the economy" dating from the 1970s and rooted in the New Deal.
Enjoy your bridges.
Because nobody likes admitting the why: The democrats are hated because of the Civil Rights Act, and how the feds enforced it in the south.
It is not a coincidence that states that tried to ignore the Civil Rights Act have been strong Republican voters ever since.
Democrat hatred is based in tyranny. The "tyranny" of being forced to treat black people as equals.
It’s not clear whether Jamieson Greer is actually steering this, or if any of it was thoroughly thought through.
https://www.instagram.com/share/_jW_V1hwM
This is Senator Chris Murphy explaining it’s not economic policy, it’s an attempt to blackmail corporations into submission by making a deal with him in return for sanctions relief.
Keep an eye out for what Apple and nvidia might have agreed to give.
The last time tariffs were this high, it led to rampant corruption as companies would pay off customs officers. This was one of the reasons for switching to an income tax. For the current administration this possibility counts as a major opportunity to generate personal wealth.
But this isn't the only reason for the policy. For someone who is at heart a coward, bullying and brandishing raw power over others is its own reward. That reason enough for the policy, and damn the consequences for the nation.
Just about anything useful and high quality has been tariffed out of existence in India. It is done in the name of protecting our industry while they catch up with rest of the world.
Exactly backwards has happened. The cars we get here are so bad they are sometimes called tin cans on wheels. Without competitors from across the world Indian auto makers have absolutely no motivation to build world class cars. And it shows on the road.
I expect lower tariffs in India to cause harm while also forcing economic activity.
Yes they do own Jaguar and Range Rovers but it’s not meant for the Indian market. They do sell them here but not many takers.
The effects are so bad that nearly everyone who remembers the disaster must have died off for anyone to think it is a good idea.
At this point, it is obvious that there is no geo-political or geo-strategic plan of any type. The administration is just winging it, and Sen Murphy's explanation is the only one available.
It was also noted that the person occupying the president's chair said "they must be forced to negotiate". When someone is forced to negotiate, that is not a negotiation, that is extortion. Welcome to another nation run like a mob office.
"Why these exemptions?"
"Who knows? None of it makes sense."
But, of course, it does.
It's also consistent with other, publicly-wielded cudgels, like the law-firm extortions under threat of executive orders.
"The ABA rejects efforts to undermine the courts and the legal profession" - https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
Rule 8.4: Misconduct: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...
Weirdly the same explanation works if you're being less uncharitable, i.e. Apple agreed to invest $500B in the US but everybody knows new factories aren't going to be built overnight, so they get a reprieve from the tariffs for now provided they continue to go through with the investment. Which in turn makes them immune from future tariffs once they're actually making iPhones in the US, while allowing the tariffs to be reinstituted against anyone who didn't do likewise.
Building a factory takes years, and a big chunk of that happens long before you actually start work on site.
You gotta find a site, work with local govt to negotiate servicing, environmental report (there's a couple years, and potentially a couple go-arounds right there.)
So there can be lots of activity, lots of progress reports, lots of optimism, for a decade or more before any real money has to be spent.
Ultimately Apple et al can "agree" to anything, the president can have his "big win" and things can carry on just as before.
The $500b was announced more than a month ago
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...
It's easy to forget that for a day or two they said it was because of fentanyl.
Annoyingly, "assume the worst about people, especially those on the opposite side of the political spectrum" seems to be the norm these days.
Everyone on both sides automatically thinks the worst about everyone on the other side these days, usually just to score some internet points.
It's a terrible way to go through life. We should show a little grace sometimes.
And was caught on mic saying he likes to grope women.
I would not say anyone is ‘automatically’ questioning Trump’s character or intelligence.
There is plenty of evidence he has neither.
“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute ... is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?"
"Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that”
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/26/birx-calls-trump-disinfecta...
Edit: found the actual video. Enjoy!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5t...
The guy is a full on moron who thinks he is a full on genius.
Never suggested it or said it's a good idea. Just said it's interesting, worth checking out, and has to be done by medical doctors.
Completely manipulating and twisting what Trump said to further your agenda - again proving the user above right. Is what Trump said stupid? Yeah. Did he suggest to inject bleach? No
He also talks about putting UV lights inside the body, which is still a bit dumb, but not as dumb as injecting or ingesting disinfectant or bleach.
If you want to say he is only says it could be ‘interesting’ to inject or consume disinfectant then sure, why not - that’s still insane and dumb in equal measure.
He even tries to walk back his comments later saying he was being ‘sarcastic’ which he very clearly was not.
> Just a good time to remember that the same guy who thinks tariffs are a good idea is the guy who stood at a podium during Covid next to the world’s leading expert and suggested injecting bleach into Covid patients was a good idea.
First sentence, right here. It's complete dishonest framing to make what Trump said seem as bad as possible. Which just goes back to the parent user's comment:
> Everyone on both sides automatically thinks the worst about everyone on the other side these days, usually just to score some internet points.
Not really. The major point the user brought up: "I would not say anyone is ‘automatically’ questioning Trump’s character or intelligence. There is plenty of evidence he has neither." That's like reading comprehension 101.
>First sentence, right here. It's complete dishonest framing to make what Trump said seem as bad as possible. Which just goes back to the parent user's comment:
Not really.
>> Everyone on both sides automatically thinks the worst about everyone on the other side these days, usually just to score some internet points.
Exactly what you did to the other poster. The other poster was clearly saying there is great reason to not assume the best about Trump. Your response? Ignore that and bicker about a minor detail.
> Not really.
Yes really.
> Exactly what you did to the other poster. The other poster was clearly saying there is great reason to not assume the best about Trump. Your response? Ignore that and bicker about a minor detail.
No. The poster used that bleach argument as the reason here - which is a completely dishonest argument. It's not a minor detail.
Is this how the discussion should go, in your dream world?
- Trump is bad!
- Trump is good!
- Trump is bad!
Since, according to you, actually discussing the exact cases/reasoning brought up is quibbling over minor details, nitpicking.
It was but one example of a list much longer than the post you responded to, which anyone who was fair would recognize.
>Yes really.
No, not really.
>No. The poster used that bleach argument as the reason here - which is a completely dishonest argument. It's not a minor detail.
The bleach argument was one example and you're being nitpicky about it anyway.
>Is this how the discussion should go, in your dream world?
Strawman.
>Since, according to you, actually discussing the exact cases/reasoning brought up is quibbling over minor details, nitpicking.
You're not engaging the substance of his argument while decrying that exact failure in everyone else. You say people should focus on main points and not quibble about small details and it's exactly what you are doing.
When did you engage with the main point that Trump has poor character and is unintelligent? You didn't. You're bickering about whether or not he literally said inject bleach. Okay, throw out the bleach part. The point still stands but you don't want to discuss it because you just want to quibble about the bleach. It's a complete waste of time for anyone interested in engaging in a conversation. Maybe he was wrong, maybe he misremembered, maybe in this one instance he isn't being fair. You don't engage in any of that and you assumed the worst. It's exactly what you're complaining about and I'm not going to sit here repeating myself because you like to argue.
"Anyone who is fair would see it exactly how I see it!"
> No, not really.
Yes, really.
Wonderful way to have a conversation, isn't it. Everything else in your response is nitpicking and hanging up over minor details!
> The bleach argument was one example and you're being nitpicky about it anyway.
The other example was groping. So I refuted half the points the user made, pretty major to me. It's not being nitpicky, it's major difference. If I said Kamala wanted to establish soviet like price controls, people would rightfully correct that and that wouldn't be nitpicky or hanging up over minor details.
> Strawman.
No, you are just nitpicking.
> When did you engage with the main point that Trump has poor character and is unintelligent?
I did, by engaging in the DIRECT argument that the user provided for him being unintelligent. User said "Trump did X. He is unintelligent". I'm supposed to say "ohh no but he is intelligent" completely ignoring the reasoning for his conclusion? In an actual conversation, you engage the reasons provided - otherwise it just turns into unproductive "no/yes/no/yes" conversation.
That's not what I was saying. I was saying anyone would reflect there is a long list of questionable behavior. Whether or not you think that is disqualifying is your opinion. Scam university, scam banks, scam businesses. These are facts of Donald Trump's past, not opinions.
>Wonderful way to have a conversation, isn't it. Everything else in your response is nitpicking and hanging up over minor details!
It's not everyone else. It's you. And it's because that's what you did to the other poster and I was rightful in calling it out. You could just stop instead of digging in.
>The other example was groping. So I refuted half the points the user made, pretty major to me. It's not being nitpicky, it's major difference. If I said Kamala wanted to establish soviet like price controls, people would rightfully correct that and that wouldn't be nitpicky or hanging up over minor details.
You didn't say that the other example was groping. You only talked about "injecting bleach" and even then not reasonably engaging in it, just pulling the kind of "technically right but clearly not getting the point" kind of argument that I accused you of. If you want to engage with the other poster fairly, you can. You didn't. It's not the end of the world but no need to keep belaboring the point by bringing up things you never expressed which would have totally changed the situation.
>No, you are just nitpicking.
How is that nitpicking? I never said conversations should go like that, so there is no reason to ask me why I would prefer it go that way. Do you not know what a strawman argument is?
>I did, by engaging in the DIRECT argument that the user provided for him being unintelligent. User said "Trump did X. He is unintelligent". I'm supposed to say "ohh no but he is intelligent" completely ignoring the reasoning for his conclusion? In an actual conversation, you engage the reasons provided - otherwise it just turns into unproductive "no/yes/no/yes" conversation.
That wasn't the entire argument. Are we now going back to grade-school reading comprehension? I quoted his point. You ignored that in your response to me where you continue to pull this obnoxious shtick. ENOUGH!
> I'm supposed to say "ohh no but he is intelligent" completely ignoring the reasoning for his conclusion?
You did completely ignore the reason for his conclusion. He said there are many reasons why Trump has questionable character, you zero'd in on a minor detail of one of those arguments and did not address anything else, let alone Trump's actual character and why it would or would not be good based on evidence. Then you accused him of doing it on purpose! You're really rude and a really bad poster that is doing exactly what you complained about and now your ego is too big to walk away. Sad!
If I address any of those points, would I be nitpicking and picking on minor details?
> You didn't say that the other example was groping. You only talked about "injecting bleach"
The user brought up groping and injecting bleach. I refuted the bleach argument, leaving the groping argument alone. It's also not technically right, it's completely incorrect and absolutely disingenous framing.
> You did completely ignore the reason for his conclusion. He said there are many reasons why Trump has questionable character, you zero'd in on a minor detail of one of those arguments and did not address anything else
I addressed ONE of the TWO reasons the user provided. What other reason am I supposed to have addressed? Should I start making some up?
Rest of your post isn't worth addressing it's just the same junk.
Similarly, democrats need to acknowledge that they are responsible for Trump getting elected. Immigration was one of the biggest issues for voters and it went rampant under the democrats.
> A central guiding force behind the austerity measures implemented in 2025 was "Project 2025," a comprehensive policy blueprint developed by conservative think tanks. This project advocated for a fundamental restructuring of the federal government, calling for a reduction in bureaucracy, significant tax cuts, and decreased spending across various sectors, including major social programs like Medicare and Medicaid
> The Social Security Administration (SSA) experienced significant changes and faced substantial workforce reductions under the Trump administration's austerity drive in 2025. Driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration announced plans to cut approximately 7,000 employees from the SSA, representing about 12% of its total workforce. This reduction followed a decade of underfunding for the agency's administrative budget, which had already shrunk the workforce considerably. Alongside these staff cuts, the SSA initiated the closure of regional offices and the termination of leases for numerous field offices across the country. These physical closures raised serious concerns about diminished access to in-person services for beneficiaries, particularly those residing in rural areas or lacking reliable transportation.
> Further limiting accessibility, the SSA eliminated phone services for most applications and for changes to direct deposit information. This policy shift mandated that individuals needing these services either visit an SSA field office in person or utilize the agency's online tools. This change disproportionately affected seniors, individuals with disabilities, and those without consistent internet access or digital literacy. Adding to the concerns surrounding the program, reports emerged of the administration classifying living immigrants as deceased, leading to the cancellation of their Social Security numbers
> Adding to the uncertainty, the House budget resolution for FY2025 called for significant spending cuts from the Energy and Commerce Committee, the very committee with jurisdiction over Medicare. Analysts raised concerns that the magnitude of these proposed cuts, totaling $880 billion , would be virtually impossible to achieve without impacting major healthcare programs like Medicare.
> Simultaneously, the Trump administration proposed several changes to the ACA. These included shortening the annual open enrollment period by a month, ending coverage eligibility for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and limiting the coverage of gender-transition care by defining "sex-trait modification" as not an essential health benefit. Furthermore, enhanced ACA subsidies, which had significantly lowered premium costs for millions of Americans, were set to expire in late 2025. The administration also significantly cut funding for community-based organizations that assisted individuals with enrolling in ACA coverage, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
> The Trump administration's austerity measures in 2025 also significantly impacted unemployment benefits and workforce development programs. Republican funding bills, shaped by Project 2025, proposed the elimination or substantial reduction of funding for key workforce development initiatives, including Youth Job Training Grants, Adult Job Training Grants, the Senior Community Service Employment Program, and the Women's Bureau. These cuts directly diminished the resources available for individuals seeking employment training and job placement assistance.
> The austerity measures implemented by the Trump administration in its second term in 2025 represented a significant and multifaceted retrenchment of the federal social safety net. Driven by the policy framework of Project 2025 and operationalized through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), these measures encompassed substantial workforce reductions across federal agencies, significant proposed budget cuts to key social programs, and policy changes aimed at tightening eligibility and restricting access to benefits. While the administration often framed these actions as necessary for fiscal responsibility and government efficiency, the analysis of available information reveals a consistent pattern of cuts and changes that disproportionately impacted vulnerable populations. Seniors, individuals with disabilities, low-income families, children, and immigrants faced increased barriers to accessing essential services and benefits across Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, SNAP, and housing assistance programs. The reduction in workforce development initiatives further threatened opportunities for economic advancement. The cumulative effect of these measures painted a picture of a significantly weakened social safety net, potentially leading to increased poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, and lack of access to healthcare for millions of Americans.
Mostly Gemini delivered a good overview of the changes, but it doesn't include stuff like people's pension plans being dependent on economy being in "number go up" state, which is not the case now.
Please tell me, what social nets could one rely on before Trump that they cannot now?
> but it doesn't include stuff like people's pension plans being dependent on economy being in "number go up" state, which is not the case now.
Sounds like a ponzi scheme.
I recall the Foxconn Wisconsin situation, and I have no doubt Apple et al are well aware of it. String out a pretense of building factories in the US for the next three and a half years? Easy peasy. President Trump will soon get bored of this game anyway and move on to the next one; he already looks like he's bored of it and it didn't bring him universal acclaim and admiration.
The $500b investment is going towards a bunch of things, including a factory to build servers for their AI services.
It’s a sop to Trump just like when Cook did the dog and pony show and bragged about making the 10 Mac Pros that they ship in a year in the US.
How well known is Murphy? I’d never heard of him until I saw this video but he seems very impressive and much more electable than Biden or harris.
We have hundreds of Members of Parliament here in the UK, but probably only 10 that most people could name.
I wondered how big his public profile is.
- done a non-negligible Presidential campaign
- been born from a famous family
- the press either love them or love to hate them
- have a leadership position and/or are conspicuously ancient
Relentless self-promotors are a superset of 3, the ones who succeed
Unfortunately being sensible, cooperative, or good with policy isn’t on the list
It can occasionally work for state Governors
He's the senator from the state I live in, so I know him and think he's excellent.
> much more electable than Biden or harris.
He represents a northeast blue state. It's difficult for those types of Democrats to carry non-coastal states in a presidential election, no matter how good they may be.
I suspect Bill Clinton tacked rightward to carry some southern states in 1992 and 1996, which led to his election.
Christ, Al Gore (2000 election) couldn't even carry his home state of Tennessee, so you can see how difficult it is to elect a Democrat to the presidency.
John Kerry (Dem from a northeast blue state) got smoked by George Bush in 2004.
I'm still trying to understand how Obama won twice, but I think it boils down to the fact that he invigorated the African-American vote in some key southern states.
tldr: Chris Murphy is great--unfortunately, he's the kind of Democratic presidential candidate who'd probably lose outside of the coastal states.
* edit: I would have been 'happy' with either outcome in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. McCain and Romney are/were decent and serious people. In fact, Romney was roundly mocked by the Dems in 2012 for saying that Russia was the US's greatest external threat. In retrospect ...
Well we know Nvidia did give a million dollars already:
"A $1M-per-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago is how you get AI chips to China" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43652504
At this point it's something like 100D chess, because 99 levels of "Why?" have been explained by "because they're morons" but the defenders keep believing there's an extra dimension...
It's all blunt-force checkers that any simpleton with power can easily understand.
For all the accusations of fascism, nobody seems to remember that a key feature of fascism is a corporate-cabal shadow government that legitimizes its activities/policies by puppeteering the "real" government to both execute and justify them.
"In 2020, Gaetz was accused of child sex trafficking and statutory rape. After an investigation, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to charge him. In December 2024, the House Ethics Committee released a report which found evidence that Gaetz paid for sex—including with a 17-year-old—and abused illegal drugs during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives."
I'll have to look closer at Trump's public appearances.
He knows exactly what he is doing[0], and the rest is designed to distract voters from noticing
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43661680
[0] https://www.dataandpolitics.net/70-million-in-60-seconds-how...
At best, he's using these tariffs as a temporary means to exert pressure and watching how others respond to them, almost like acting like the crazy man with a gun to make people a little more willing to negotiate terms more favorable for the gunman. At least as a matter of intent, anyway. The actual effect is another matter.
That's a very European point of view (though not uniquely European, it's also shared across many other cultures, e.g. in East Asia). The US has done pretty well with private rights of action. In fact, because our culture is so conservative and anti-authoritarian, centralized bureaucracies are rather quickly defanged or grossly underfunded. The most recent example is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more quietly the FTC. Democrats would have done much better to roll back judicial expansion of the Federal Arbitration Act and devolve "regulation" back to states and private class actions, rather than to create the CFPB and elsewhere double-down on anemic, extremely inconsistent, and often highly partisan agency regulators.
Where private rights of action tend to fail is when they concern inchoate or non-individualized harms, like you often see in environmental protection law. Then what you get is complete paralysis, such as with real estate development; largely because its the process, not the end-state determination of rights, that private actors weaponize. But when they're firmly anchored to property rights, personal injury or loss (including fraud), etc, they seem to do as well as centralized regulation. And in the US, they arguably do better, because of our political dynamics.
No, that's a very Smithian Economics point of view, an economic philosophy which underpinned most of American capitalism's history.
Conservatives are dismantling environmental protection, but it has nothing tondo with freedom or being anto authoritarian. They just dont care about consequences as long as their donors can earn more money in the short term.
Yet also, US seems to be crumbling and rhe source of instability. They may succeed in exporting their dysfunction to Europe, but it did not happened yet.
I mean… Europe isn’t particularly well-known for being particularly business friendly. There’s a lot of good there for sure but there’s also a lot of barriers. And I say this as a Canadian who is also disappointed by the overall business environment at home.
Tariffs are only usable as extortion if the companies have outsourced the manufacturing that gutted our middle-class.
Externalizing variables comes with risk. This risk should be factored into planning in the future. Just because a politician in the 90s promised cheap labor through globalization, a president 30 years later can flip the script
"Tariffs apply to imports, so produce locally instead".
The argument unfortunately has 2 flaws;
A) local production is expensive (which is why manufacturers fled decades ago.) If it is reintroduced here those goods remain expensive.
B) most things are not made in one place. Steel comes from here, electronics from there, energy from somewhere else, and so on. Even farmers use imported fertilizer, machinery and so on. Since the Tariffs are on "everything" (not just finished goods) they drive up the cost of local manufacturing even more.
A long-term strategy to increase local production makes sense. But it has to be done in a targeted way so as not to harm everything else. Typically it starts with finished goods, then slowly working down the food chain to improve the supply of parts making up those goods.
Exemptions on finished goods (like electronics) kills any gain. He might have, for example, exempted electronic parts. Which would then incentivize assembly to be local. Once you have local assembly you could look at say packaging, and so on.
The approach taken though doesn't lead to the outcomes being touted. Tariffs at country level are dumb. Excempting finished goods is dumb. Tariffs on things that can't be made locally (like coffee) is dumb.
That's before we talk about stability and certainty. For Tariffs to work you need both, and neither are in play here.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/small-business-owners-voted...
They are getting exactly what they voted for. I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for anyone who is being hurt by Trump who voted for him.
It's like saying "if it's white, fluffy and has four legs, never assume it is anything but a sheep". If the wolf knows you're applying that logic, what happens next?
By the way I don’t think this is 4D chess. More like basic classical international relations. It just looks more like the 1800s than the 2020s, which makes people confused. It doesn’t take any particular cleverness to enact basic negotiating strategies. It just takes a lack of caring about collateral damage.
No need to go that far. 1970s would suffice.
I would expect him to post "Tim Apple came to kiss my ass great guy I will allow him to make great computers in America!"
What worries me more is a promise of cooperation helping Trump identify people to put into concentration camps.
Requesting curbs on rampant disinformation is not even close to the same thing as crashing the economy to extort our closest allies and major business and industry players.
Yikes
Who are you to decide what is or isn't disinformation?
Who is anyone?
I prefer to do my own critical thinking.
It is also well documented that Meta's rampant censorship extends far beyond "disinformation".
https://web.archive.org/web/20250411170102/https://www.drops...
You can ask this question about any belief or position on a topic. We each decide for ourselves the answer and society decides this through its elected leaders and the judiciary. All societies regulate speech.
Of course there are edge cases, but blatant and hard-debunked falsehoods such as "The earth is flat", "Contrails are chemical spraying", Russia did not attack Ukraine", "Vaccines cause autism", "Auschwitz and Dachau were not concentration camps where people were killed" are all disinformation, and they are disseminated for the very specific purpose of undermining trust and the capability of western societies to survive, for the purpose of implementing authoritarianism.
If you evidently expect a society to unilaterally disarm and do nothing, you are part of the problem.
And are only large corporations expected to play? I import shopping bags from Chinese manufacturers from my store, like millions of other small businesses do. What exactly are we supposed to offer Trump?
You'll eventually be buying them, for more than you pay now but less than the imported price, from a large US company that bribed whoever Dear Leader is at the time, for exemptions.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
I don't see him completing his term. He's going to be impeached.
Americans often point to outside forces instead of holding the government accountable.
Years of messaging have trained people to support tariffs, spending cuts, and even anti-immigrant policies—despite the need for labor.
The real issue isn't spending, it's taxation. And we've let China ignore WTO rules for too long. Trump should've targeted tariffs at China alone—but he is the president, not me.
China's WTO compliance record is often criticized for several reasons, including violations of market orientation principles, state-led industrial planning, excessive subsidies, and non-transparency regarding subsidies. Furthermore, China's policies on forced technology transfers, intellectual property protection, and governmental procurement have also faced scrutiny. Here's a more detailed look at the specific WTO rules China has been criticized for ignoring:
Market Orientation and State-Led Industrial Policies: China's approach to economic development, characterized by state-led industrial planning, is seen as inconsistent with the WTO's principles of market orientation and non-discrimination.
Subsidies and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs): China's extensive use of subsidies for domestic industries, including SOEs, and its failure to make timely and transparent notifications of these subsidies, are major points of contention.
Forced Technology Transfers and Joint Venture Requirements: China has been criticized for requiring foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms as a condition for market access, which violates WTO principles of fair trade and market competition.
Intellectual Property Protection: China's record on protecting foreign intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, has been a long-standing issue, with concerns about theft and lack of enforcement.
Discriminatory Trade Practices: China's policies on governmental procurement, discriminatory standards for technology, and restrictions on market access in services sectors have been criticized for hindering fair competition and market access for foreign companies.
Failure to Reciprocally Open Government Procurement: China has been criticized for not fully reciprocating the government procurement concessions it pledged as part of its WTO accession agreement. Retaliatory Use of Trade Remedies:
China's use of trade remedies, such as anti-dumping and safeguard measures, has sometimes been seen as retaliatory and inconsistent with WTO princip
(They were also supposed to let Visa and Mastercard in)
Also Capital Controls are a big one. You can't get your money out and I have read several times people are forced to spend more money in China to get part of their money out.
More Google AI
China maintains strict capital controls, limiting the flow of money in and out of the country. These controls affect both individuals and companies, with restrictions on repatriating profits and capital. While there are annual limits for individuals, businesses also face specific procedures and conditions before they can repatriate profits, according to INS Global Consulting. Elaboration: For Individuals:
Annual Limits:
Chinese residents have an annual limit of $50,000 USD equivalent for transferring money out of the country, says Wise.
For Companies (FIEs - Foreign Invested Enterprises):
Capital Account Regulations:
China's "closed" capital account means companies must comply with strict rules when moving money in or out, according to CNN.
In Summary: China's capital controls are a complex system that limits both individual and corporate capital movements. While there are some recent efforts to relax controls, they remain a significant factor for businesses and individuals operating in China, requiring careful planning and compliance with regulations before any money can be moved out of the country.
https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/chinas-use-unoff...
Crazy knife edge.
Per Churchill, “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.” .
lol
Even the San Francisco city council is bullying American tech companies and tech executives.
The power of US tech companies is vastly overstated.
What does "enough" look like?
The examples you provided are more fundamental and I won't trivialize them, but making you lose your "keys to your own digital space" is a very real power they have over you.
How?
Nobody in onshoring manufacturing with this level of instability in the finances of this country at this time. Trump changes his mind too often to build billions of dollars worth of factories.
It's OK to have trade imbalance for some time. It can't last forever.
The US domestic economy is vastly larger than its foreign trade (which is only 20% of America's GDP), so you can in fact run a persistent trade deficit and a budget surplus at the same time, which the US actually did for a while during the 90s and early 2000s. We need to teach more economics honestly.
This isn’t some analogy.
This is precisely what just happened!
The bond market imploded and less stupid people forced Trump to backpedal.
He’s a child playing with many-trillion-dollar matters. I wouldn’t trust Trump to split a dinner cheque.
I spend far more on restaurants, household services, and vehicle maintenance than those companies pay me. I have a massive trade imbalance with those companies.
But that has nothing to do with whether my household budget is balanced.
Do people really think that making goods more expensive for consumers will somehow produce the funds to support even greater tax cuts for billionaires?
And if, for example, a sales tax was increased this would motivate you to buy less services, make food at home and learn how to fix your car.
Are you moving the argument from conflating budget and trade deficits to saying the United States’ multi-century economic focus on consumer spending is a mistake, and we need to shift to a savings-focused economy like China used to be? I also think that’s wrong, but it has nothing at all to do with the federal government’s budget deficit.
Or are you under the mistaken impression that trade income is the only income the country has?
This is all very confused and nonsensical.
1) He is completely restructuring global trade and decoupling us from China which is tough but necessary medicine because our biggest geopolitical adversary cannot be our largest trading partner
2) You can't believe half of what he says, he's all bluster, he's addicted to deals and will sign some fake deals to score a domestic win and we will resume status quo
Like yeah - sounds smart, but which is it?
1 is wrong because if he wanted to decouple us from China he'd lower tarrifs on other countries especially close allies
I don't think he'll be let off the hook, though. He's tasked to ruin us well below 'status quo', even for people diligently not paying attention.
The trust in the US (dollar) hegemony has now been eroded, and will probably continue until a purge of the regime of idiots (not just the oust of one idiot...).
No president is going to ride out a self-imposed multi-year global trade reconfiguration triggering inflation, shortages and unemployment.
Nor is putting the genie back in the bottle possible now and so even if you return to status quo trade policy, you've now spooked the world re: reliability of US as partners, US dollar, US debt, etc.
Worst of both worlds really. Incredible self owns over and over.
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...
(Of course, he's got plenty of negatives on the record too. But I think in the game of "Great Man History", he's already left a big legacy.)
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
Import Chinese battery inside Chinese laptop: 20% tariff
Import Chinese battery inside Vietnamese laptop: 0% tariff
Truly this will bring back American manufacturing!
You can be sure some crony owns the company that screws the display and puts stickers on the laptop with minimum wage workers.
I wonder what these companies had to offer?
The evidence is "incoherent" because the hypothesis is wrong. A policy for America isn't there.
In contrast, everything becomes exceptionally coherent if you instead ask what the policy is for Trump's personal goals: punishing disagreement, amassing wealth, rewarding apparatchiks, and always being in a room full of flattery.
To be smart is to have systemic understanding, and Trump & the Republicans are incapable of that.
It's exactly what happened in his first term, when he got rid of the nation's pandemic preparedness because why would anyone ever need that, right?
I actually doubt it does. Everyting is just too chaotic to be a strategy.
(This is not to say that there aren't some Project 2025 plans in the background that parts of the administration are aiming to push through.)
Not sure why there is a presumption that one exists or that its coherent. With even the slightest critical eye its easy enough to discern that this isn't about economic policy or trade and that the proposed "policy" doesn't make any sense. The guy in charge of this stuff is either seeing what he can get away with, fucking with people, or building a narrative...
that is to say what you are watching isn't "real".
Why would you assume that?
I don't know why people keep expecting Trump to be different than what he has consistently shown us for all these years. There's no subtle plan. There's no long-term plan. He's cranking the levers immediately available to him for the drama, as he has always done.
People around him may have ideas and plans. They can sometimes get him to agree to one of these, but it never lasts long.
Like he's just not that deep. He's an incredibly shallow, inexperienced, dim, incurious old man who has never worked a job in his life, never built anything, never did anything. He arrived on top and his greatest achievement in life was managing to not lose it, in a country where it is specifically very hard to do that.
And hearing his supporters talk about how strong he is is just objectively hilarious. Man looks like 4 steepish flights of stairs would kill him stone dead.
There are some failures in there but also some wins, like buying air rights for. Heap and making effective use of them.
(It appears to be a promotional piece for a "CNBC Titans" episode featuring Trump.)
I try to assume good intent, which includes not writing off the odd things people post as bot-generated, but in this case, attributing this to a bot is quite a positive spin.
My point is, he didn't just sit on daddy's money, he actually pulled off a couple of savvy moves. There are plenty of other things to criticize him for.
45th and 47th president of the USA as a disaster seems to be setting the bar unbelievably high for failure.
The Tiffany's transaction definitely happened, and no landowner in Manhattan has left money on the table like that since. As scummy and self-promoting as he is, he changed the real estate market in NY and made some investments that paid off in the 70s and 80s.
I think that puts to rest this idea that he just rested on daddy's money and then lost money on his Atlantic City casinos, or whatever.
(Standard disclaimer that he has always sucked, and maybe he never made a good business move after the 80s.)
That's a massive misread. You are confusing the direction of influence between secondary public stock markets and federal executive orders.
The tariffs are supposed to strengthen self sufficiency, and discourage imports of stuff the US can do on their own.
Chip manufacturing, (which by the way is often only the manufacturing and not the design or IP of the chips), is an exception for whatever reason, may be labour costs, but it may also be that chips are a mineral heavy and diverse product, so it's one of the few products where autarky isn't feasible or very rewarding.
And there would be situations without exemptions where the US may have been incentivized to import the raw materials and rebuild megachip factories, of which there are only like a dozen in the world, creating a huge output inefficiency due to political reasons on two fronts.
Exceptions are reasonable.
If there were an actual strategy, exceptions would have been clear from the start.
Something tells me Trump's top economic advisers aren't based in the US, just as Yeltsin's strings weren't being pulled from Moscow.
Him and his cronies know when that flood is coming and can profit from it.
It's only confusing if there is any expectation that he is working for the good of anyone else.
The strategy is to keep everyone unsure what might come next.
It's like in boxing. When you hit your opponent and leave them confused and uncertain what you might do next, you use that to your advantage and keep on hitting. It's how you "win."
As if there are any winners here.
If the goal is to encourage investment into US manufacturing, then that's the exact opposite to the strategy he needs - investment requires stability and confidence that the N-year investment will eventually pay off. Nobody will invest due to tariffs if the tariffs might disappear tomorrow.
here's the plan, you can use it to advise your investments:
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
the media is garbage and they can't cover anything well enough to inform. but i bet clicks are up!
Edit: to be more specific it literally talks about the potential pitfalls of unilateral tariffs, suggests imposing them over time, etc. There's a lot of stuff in there the US did so but also a lot that they did not follow (and also there's just stuff that is outside the scope of this fairly short document). I think part of the reason the tariffs caught people so flat footed is even well informed people assumed this would be how they were implemented and got the rug pulled out from under them on "Liberation Day"
What they want doesn't matter anymore, these moves are about splitting the western economic and military alliances, a goal Russia has had since the 1960s.
They already took a hit - which they monetized by both ways
Both Trump and Musk seem be to essentially ideologues, visionary tough-talkers, who have actually succeed (or appeared to succeed) to various endeavors through having underling who work to shape their bluffs into coherent plans. This works well for various as long as the delicate balance of competent handlers and loud-mouthed visionaries is maintained.
The problem is the process of Trump winning, losing and then winning again all him to craft an organization and legal framework to put forth he vision uncorrected, unbalanced and lacking all guardrails.
And that's where we are.
We know for sure that Greer isn't steering this. Greer was testifying before a congressional committee when Trump announced huge changes to tariffs on China. Greer hadn't even been told.
Besides, this is a wildly expensive way to go about it. The harm to receipts from the economic uncertainty will blow a hole in the federal budget and leave states reeling (to say nothing of the "other hand" making cuts at the IRS, which will also be a net cost)
The reason for the pivot was because the 10-30 year yields didn't come down, the price on the 30 year got crushed. The 30 year almost went back to the lows.
There was literally no flight to safety. Completely the opposite.
This strategy has failed spectacularly, as bond yields are still up and treasuries are sold like crazy. US treasuries are no longer seen as safe havens. People rather invest in gold or treasuries from other countries which are not led by a corrupt government. Buying US treasuries is now seen as "lending Trump money", and since Trump runs the US economy exactly like he ran his companies, where IIRC he defaulted on debt at least six times, US treasuries are now a rather risky investment.
>This latest round of tariff rates is currently set at 125% for Chinese goods and a 10% tax on imports from other trading partners. China also had an additional 20% tax on its goods that began in March, bringing its total to 145%.
Importers of these electronics will no longer face the newest taxes, and it cuts the Chinese rate down to 20% for them. The exceptions cover $385 billion worth of 2024 imports, 12% of the total. It includes $100 billion from China, 23% of 2024 imports from there. For these electronics, the average tax rate went from 45% to 5% with this rule.
The biggest global exemption is the import category that includes PCs and servers, with $140 billion in 2024 imports, 26% of it from China. Circumstances may change again, but this benefits AI king Nvidia, server-makers like Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
HPE
+2.91% , and Super Micro, and PC makers like Dell and HP
HPQ
+2.49% . The average tax rate went from 45% to 5% here, according to Barron’s calculations.
The biggest newly exempt category for Chinese goods is smartphones, with $41 billion in 2024 U.S. imports, 81% of all smartphone imports. A 145% tax on that would be $60 billion, but even the new 20% tax is a hefty $8 billion.
I remember hearing those items are need to make assemble some components needed for some boards.
I hope Wall Street is still hammering this admin. on why these tariffs are bad.
And then I imagine they'll probably silently drop the tariffs, because those are harmful for them.
This is how a trade war looks. And we're losing. Badly.
It's not like businesses need to plan or anything so this is great
via Perplexity:
8471: Automatic data-processing machines and units thereof, including computers, laptops, disc drives, and other data processing equipment.
8473.30: Parts and accessories for automatic data-processing machines, such as components used in computers.
8486: Machines and apparatus for the manufacture of semiconductor devices or electronic integrated circuits.
8517.13.00: Mobile phones (cellular telephones) or other wireless network devices.
8517.62.00: Communication apparatus capable of connecting to a network, such as routers and modems.
8523.51.00: Solid-state storage devices (e.g., flash drives) used for recording data.
8524: Recorded media, such as DVDs, CDs, and other optical discs.
8528.52.00: Flat-panel displays capable of video playback, including monitors and televisions.
8541.10.00: Diodes, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
8541.21.00: Transistors with a dissipation rate of less than 1 watt.
8541.29.00: Other transistors not specified elsewhere.
8541.30.00: Thyristors, diacs, and triacs used in electronics.
8541.49.10 to 8541.49.95: Semiconductor devices such as integrated circuits (ICs) categorized by specific types or functions.
8541.51.00: Semiconductor devices designed for photovoltaic applications (solar cells).
8541.59.00: Other semiconductor devices not elsewhere classified.
8541.90.00: Parts of semiconductor devices or electronic integrated circuits.
8542: Electronic integrated circuits, including microprocessors and memory chips.
>NOBODY is getting “off the hook” for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst! There was no Tariff “exception” announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff “bucket.” The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it. We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations...
(truth social Apr 13, 2025, 8:36 PM. You need the day and time to see what the tariffs are that particular hour really)
Currently shipping out of China seems disrupted, more because the shipping companies are leary about getting stuck with the tariffs, the US doesn't have the infrastructure to collect them, Post Offices don't have the bandwidth, people can't take time off work etc etc - that may change, but it's not something that can change overnight
Trump's exemption for computer stuff will likely mean that my packages will eventually sail through, but I'm about to do another build, China's reciprocal tariffs will affect my cost of parts and it's a bit unfair making my non-US customers pay for this silly pointless trade war, since the silliness changes every day I think I;m just going to wait this out for a month or two
Though in November I'm sure they were telling us how good he would be on the economic front.
So the top 1% will benefit economically from the right being in power, but the rest will spend the rest of their lives mad about whatever the current social change is, regardless of who's in power.
This is remarkably naive. I wish you were right, but this sentiment isn't optimism; it's complacency.
This is 100% false and naive. History is profoundly reversible. There is no such thing as guaranteed progress.
So-called "acceptance" of homosexuality is a very recent phenomenon but in no way mainstream. Even in the liberal progressive Bay Area you can get gay bashed quite easily (including in the Castro!).
Voting rights for women? Basically just turned 100 years old in the United States and already in the process of getting rolled back via the SAVE act.
Don't assume that any of the liberal trends we've seen in the last 150 years are here to stay. America is an interesting historical exception and anomaly -- by no means how humanity has done business for the majority of its existence.
They have 100% bought into a totally controlled media ecosystem. How do you get your marketing material on Fox, or Truth Social?
Seems silly just to mess up a few toy importers.
What doesn't China export? Basically everything. So everything minus these exemptions.
Maybe not the manufacturing that they were hoping for...
Its about their corporate supporters choosing winners and losers. Its the only reason I can conjure that corporate America has otherwise been silent.
This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.
End result - US economy takes a hit, China takes a smaller hit. Trade balance widens further, most likely. The rich get richer, while many small companies struggle to survive.
Seems like he has been backing down publicly all week. Quickly too.
This has been a massive catastrophe, though I suspect you're right about the end result.
https://www.themotte.org/post/1827/culture-war-roundup-for-t...
https://fortune.com/2025/04/07/howard-lutnick-iphones-americ...
Only one perspective actually matters right now, and it's notoriously mercurial.
Administration officials often have about as much knowledge of what's to come as we do.
The US is about to find out that the rest of the world is much more adelt dealing with a corrupt government because they have more experience with it
Based on tweets I've seen, you are not the only one engaging in "capital flight". Not great for the US.
One would like to think this will be a good lesson for the administration. But I'm worried that they are not acting completely rationally.
I imagine lots of people will do the same.
Surely this will cause a recession.
MAGA!
Then about 2 hours ago all major media outlets were covering it.
And countries arguing for particular tariff policies and getting cutouts is widespread EU past time.
This is getting frighteningly close to a Russian-style economy. As in, a handful of powerful, connected "insiders" will be allowed to operate businesses, and will dominate... while everyone else gets wiped out, by acts of government. The furthest system possible from the free-market paradigm that built the American economy as it stands today.
Russia is not a prosperous nation.
Note that this is not an exemption for companies, but an exemption for goods:
> A new list of goods to be exempted from the latest round of tariffs on U.S. importers was released, and it includes smartphones, PCs, servers, and other technology goods, many of which are assembled in China.
What a gift. What a great idea. That'll surely spur innovation and domestic production and have no effect to further insulate the giants from competition.
So it’s actually an incentive to build in China.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43665766
Then you don't pay the tariff.
Electronic imports, no/low tariffs.
Import material to produce electronics, high imports.
It seems like some of these comments are missing how competition works.
Competition happens within the same type(s) of goods, not across them.
That is, the companies making the goods still affected by tariffs aren’t in competition with the companies making goods now exempt by tariffs.
Yes, its true that they will have a better chance at thriving under these exemptions, but whether they thrive or not should have little impact on the other companies.
To be clear, I’m not arguing in favor of this decision — or any of the tariffs, for that matter.
I’m just simply arguing that competition isn’t really the angle to use to argue against this particular decision.
Not true, for example smart phones replaced home computers for most people. Those are two very different goods, but since they can accomplish the same thing for the average person they end up competing.
Nor is it cheap or easy to build a company that would likely be able to appeal tariff exemptions…
They have a Trump Derangement Syndrome in a worship sense.
“They’re not stupid. I know enough of the players involved to know they’re not idiots.”
“They’re not just in it for themselves. I get that this has become non-conventional wisdom, but I am going to assume for this that the goal isn’t merely grift.”
TLDR: don’t worry, it’s 5D chess. Keep on bootlicking your way to success while your stock gets trashed by these policies and we double down on anti-science rhetoric which will hasten our decline. I guess most of these leaders will have cashed out before it all implodes.
He is, and always has, gambled with other people's savings.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
It's unsurprising that more of them would die during a massive recession and a global pandemic.
Those numbers are meaningless without a similar count of small businesses opening.
Without context for how many people are born every year, one might read that and conclude that we're about to all die out.
Effective restoration and reconstruction of Constitutional governance will necessarily be dramatic. It's still doable, but optimism is more of a survival strategy than an obvious conclusion at this stage.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/well-timed-options-...
(Besides, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's Russian oligarch friends were among these traders.)
The government is allowed to announce policy before doing it! Even if it affects stock prices!
It actually is that broad. Futures traders often rely on industry-specific periodicals, which are “public”. Same for anything in the (high monthly cost!) Bloomberg terminal. So posting on a specific social media platform, where subscribing is free? That’s 100% public.
Again I'm not a lawyer, and I don't care what law is applicable here. But surely this warrants further investigation.
The US had the smallest drop in support for an incumbent party.
Generally one of the two participants wins those.
There's a really serious systemic problem with the party that chose him in its primaries, and there is nothing to prevent it from happening again, but my point is that a 49.8% mandate given the circumstances is... Well, it's not one of overwhelming sentiment.
I don't know about you, but I certainly don't trust all the companies that make the voting machines. For instance, does Musk own stock in some of them? Do their owners vote Trump?
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/mattblaze.org/post/3lmgt4ufllc26
He did not, he got <50% of the total votes at final tally. People who parrot this are under-informed, or lying to claim a mandate his administration lacks.
The problem today is that US and European capitalists are in power and do not want to admit that the Chinese economic model of government-controlled economic direction, though not perfect, would work better and help all the world's people rather than the select few. As China becomes the dominant economy, the rest of the world has to follow to stay competitive. So these are the death knell of a dying economic and government system. The US had the chance to bring real change for the people with Bernie Sanders, but that was scuttled by the capitalist non-democratic forces, allowing for the rise of Trump. US citizens have been hoodwinked by linking socialist thought, where caring about your fellow man is undemocratic, i.e., socialism.
Is it better? For some reason average European lives better then Chinese, inequality is also not so huge
The US reconstructed Europe after WW2 using its own funds mostly and has subsidized its defense spending for the past 80 years and counting.
Europe also has enormous amounts of resource wealth expropriated from its many colonies around the world, plus significant ownership stakes in resource supply chains in those countries that persists to this day. Every single Russian oligarch, plus dictators in Asia and Africa have stashed their wealth in European banks.
You want the US government to provide more subsidies to US tech companies so they can stay competitive? Because that is what China is doing for its tech sector.
Subsidizing companies is not the problem not sharing the wealth with the workers is the problem. US not subsidizing it companies is bullshit fed to you. As Boeing, Tesla, SpaceX, Microsoft from the tel-cos to the power suppliers to banks and hedge fund all have been subsidized by American tax payers or are still being subsidized with and you get share buybacks. Americans are being bullshitted into loosing their social and healthcare subsidies in favor of giving it to corporations but the sharing back of the wealth in conveniently forgotten
Do you have in mind any examples that make your case the strongest? In particular, examples caused by subsidy to the company, and not to the population[1].
[1] like this one: https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/202501/content_6997459.htm
The problem is these companies are thieves, mostly. They just take the money and pocket most of it. Infrastructure be damned.
And when the house of cards inevitably tumbles down, they don’t pay the price. The gains are private, but the losses are public.
US companies always favor tomorrow, not next week. They look to enriching themselves NOW. But in doing so they take on a debt. They put everything on a metaphorical credit card. Eventually the competition is too hot and they have to pay their debt very quickly, and they shutter despite their subsidies and long-running success.
Better than putting that money in the military, isn't it?
You're acting like the tariffs are a big conspiracy by the "private capitalists", but the "private capitalists" are the most opposed, if you look at the reaction of the market.
Not sure why you mentioned Bernie Sanders, but he has been one of the most pro-tariffs politicians in America for many decades. That's one of the reasons the left has been caught so flatfooted by this and seems to have no response: the policies they have supported forever have been shown to be disasterous.
The desire for transactional wins and power overshadows all. Trump will unironically ally himself with a turd like Elon, or a turd like the UAW dude who glazed him on "Liberation Day". The state control of business is missing... perhaps we'll see that develop with Tesla.
It's a weird movement, because the baseline assumption is that the country is ruined. So any marginal win is celebrated, any loss is "priced in" politically.
Every dictatorship is unhappy in its own way but they all involve:
Myth of the strong man dictator
Erosion of rule of law
Undermining independent judiciary
Arbitrary detention and arbitrary enforcement of laws
Separate paramilitary groups
There are signs of all of this in the US just now.
Donations to presidential inauguration fund to get access to the president was already tradition in the US. Trump government just exploits it without shame.
If they’re following the law they’d have to declare the purchase when they come home.
And then they can ask you for your Form 4457 that you filled out and presented to CBP before you left the country. Don't know what that is? Oops. Full duties owed on that iPhone then, thanks.
Donald Trump is the poster child of American capitalism gone right, he's an aspiration for wealthy capitalists across the nation. Generally people have felt that if only we could get an American businessman like Trump in charge of the country, running things the way a true capitalist would (as opposed to how those dirty awful communists/socialists tend to run things), then the country would start going right for a change.
Well now we have that, and in short order the country has Russian-style crony capitalism from the top. This would not happen in a country that actually cares about free markets. But we don't. Everything we consume is owned by like 10 companies. If you want to get a start in the market you have to get access to capital they control, or meet regulations they set, because they've captured the government regulators through bribes.
Trump is just taking this whole system of favoritism we've been living under and making it official. I for one am for it because honestly people pretending there is no corruption is worse than the corruption at this point.
This is the same guy who went bankrupt 3 times, including a casino?
The same guy who'd be as rich as he is today if he had invested the funds bequeathed by his father?
The one who had a TV show based on him that was incredibly manipulated to make him appear richer and wiser than he really is?
Same thing, these companies essentially run these industries and nobody else can get in.
If you want to make a competitor to Nvidia it would take you 20 years if you started RIGHT NOW. Hope you have a few hundred billion dollars lying around :P
The distinction between domains and companies fully disappears in an oligarchy.
There is really a good chance that we will develop a deep understanding of how the French Revolution happened and why they went straight to guillotines.
I am genuinely at a loss at how his supporters don't understand this.
His supporters value blind loyalty and obedience, not logic. They don’t stand for themselves, they stand against others. They’ll gladly suffer if they think the other side is getting it worse. They’re the perfect target to be exploited.
Why would someone say they blindly follow someone when that's bad?
I am not American.
> but I never saw anyone explicitly saying "yes, I/we value blind loyalty".
Not only do they show it through actions, they talk about it constantly. All you need are the keywords “Trump loyalty” and you get more examples than you know what to do with.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/06/donald-tr...
> “I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains, more than drive and more than energy,” Trump once said. […]
> According to people who know him well, Trump’s definition of loyalty is blunt. “Support Donald Trump in anything he says and does,” […] “No matter what,” […] “Or else,” […] “I think he defines it as allegiance,” […] “And it’s not allegiance to the flag or allegiance to the country—it’s allegiance to Trump.”
Tariffs are sold to them as "hitting back" against countries "exploiting America". They don't know what they are or how they work, and they definitely do not think of it as a tax, which is the definition you'd see in any AP Macroeconomics textbook.
All that matters is maintaining the illusion that "he's fighting for people like me".
There is no illusion - if Trump was a profesional working in any trade, the plebs wouldn't hire him, yet they elected him president.
It's just that the plebs think Trumps is the aristocrat most like them, and by electing him they somehow screw the arisrocrats over.
Trump doesn't have the authority to set permanent tariffs. All this is being done as a temporary measure under the Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is for wars. These backdoor tariffs are being challenged in court, and there's a good chance of the plaintiffs winning.[1]
For tariffs to stick, Congress has to do it. The Constitution gives Congress sole power over tariffs. There's a long-term track on this, going through the US Trade Representative's office, with Federal Register notices and public comments. Last week Greer was up on Capitol Hill testifying before a congressional committee. That's the normal path by which tariff changes are made. Greer is so out of the loop that he hadn't been told about the big tariff on China. That change came out while he was in front of the committee. He was publicly humiliated. Which means he can't do his job of negotiating with other countries on behalf of the US. Greer may quit.
When you dig into this, you don't find "4D chess".
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/04/10/can-tru...
Oh, oh, also, electing a felon, you get a lot of grifring, including, but not limited to the trump crypto scam, the insider trading Trump boasted about on video (about his friends making billions in the stock market).
This guy is not playing 5d chess guys, he's just a clown surrounded by yes men.
Now, a lot of people on the left use "neoliberalism" in the same way people on the right use "woke", or (Eu) football fans use the word "offside" i.e. it means "it's anything the other side do that I don't like". But neoliberalism actually has a definition used by more serious people - generally free trade and the reduction of government interference.
Maybe Trump doesn't want globalisation, maybe Trump wants stuff to be made in the USA. Maybe he wants to roll trade back to before 1968, the Hakone Maru, and the TEU container, to when he was in his 20s (a lot of people think that their formative years were the best, since that's when they were made, and I doubt Trump is an exception). I'm not saying Trump isn't a hypocrite, but is it slightly possible that some of what he says is actually what he intends to do, e.g. "making America great again" meaning in part a disruption to the globalised world order that the online left always seems to think is evil?
He's dumb, sure. He's out of his depth. He's greedy. But he also has strong opinions (some of which are consistent, some ... less so) on how the US should be run. The idea that he doesn't have some political agenda when he spends hours ranting about it and seems to be implementing bits of it is just pure fantasy land.
Second-guessing the motivations of the Trump administration is tiresome. Let's just judge it by what it does and its effects, both speak for themselves.
As I said, what he is doing is not going to get stuff made in the US. Even if we had all of the raw materials needed (we don't), the US doesn't have the talent to spin up a manufacturing hub. That is the missing piece to all of these conversations. So we don't have the materials, we don't have the skills, and we seem to be attacking education so it doesn't look training people to do these things is in the cards? How is this plan meant to work?
The only lifeline I can throw your comment is that he wants to invade Canada and Greenland to steal their raw materials which at least lines up with the idea of getting raw materials to build up manufacturing.
What is this brand of defeatist bullpucky? There is no raw material which is not contained within the borders of the US. Only some which are less expensive to extract elsewhere.
> the US doesn't have the talent to spin up a manufacturing hub.
I humbly invite you to visit https://www.imts.com/ this year in Chicago. If, after that, you believe that there's something that can't be manufactured in the US, I'll eat my hat.
Let me rephrase this. We don't have the raw materials unless we destroy national parks and pollute our waterways. We also don't have the facilities to process these materials.
> I humbly invite you to visit https://www.imts.com/ this year in Chicago. If, after that, you believe that there's something that can't be manufactured in the US, I'll eat my hat.
This link says 2026 not 2025.
I've got news for you, that ship sailed a hundred, two hundred years ago. Most of the eastern seaboard of the US was clearcut of old growth forest. What we have now on the east coast is new growth. Still, the number of acres of old growth remaining is staggering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests#Uni... And I see no problem with forestry when practiced sustainably.
If you're asking for no resource extraction, then you're asking either for negative economic growth or exploitation of someone else somewhere else. Far more responsible to regulate the industry here, where we have jurisdiction to ensure it is done sustainably, safely, and equitably. And far better for economic integrity in cases of pandemic or war.
I don't have a problem with most things when done sustainably. What in the history of the US makes you believe it will be done sustainably? Gas companies still publicly deny or downplay climate change.
Unions, labor law, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike in which the national guard and police used automatic weapons against striking workers, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster immortalized in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz7oguguIZE the winning of the work week, overtime pay, healthcare of any kind, holidays, payment in legal tender, existence of the country in the first place... so much more. I won't sugar coat it, no human endeavor is ever perfect, but I find the attitude that we can't do it, or we don't want to do it here as backwards and regressive. Worthy of rebuke. If our society depends on something, we should have no shame in doing it here. And if we can't figure out how to do it here safely, then we definitely shouldn't be doing it elsewhere.
You asked me about what inspired me. I told you. If you need environmental wins, there's:
- Erin Brockovich vs. Pacific Gas & Electric (1993 Settlement)
- Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto (2018)
- Robert Bilott vs. DuPont (PFOA Contamination Cases, 1990s–2017)
- Roundup Litigation Beyond Johnson (2019–2020s)
- Founding of the EPA
- Passage of the clean water act
Just for a start.
Feel free to snatch defeat from the jaws of success before ever trying, though. Much easier that way. And probably someone else's fault.
... That's how it's used on the left
Strange of him to renegotiate NAFTA in his first term then
if you took the average supporter of both sides neither seem smart. the clips they have of both sides is shameful. but those aren't the people implementing the policy, but they both support their tribes.
if you really are interested in understanding how they think you couldn't do worse than this:
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
The grassroots development of class consciousness and a united working class is our only way out of this.
but history learns (this is also why we cannot ever have another revolutionary hero, nor another french revolution) so no.
class consciousness and a united "working class" will not help us anymore. a lot has changed since those ideas made sense
These are the people who score in the bottom 20% and make up conspiracy theories on how they were right and it's the establishment who's wrong.
Any random person waiting at a bus stop would likely have managed things better.
It's that they manage it in a way to maximize their personal profits, with an absolute disregard of the ordinary folks.
Tariffs are one example - none of it makes sense, but companies still pay millions for a 'dinner at Mar-a-Lago' to get a favorable treatment.
What's hapening with law firms is even more disgusting.
I get the feeling that a lot of Democrats and 'real' Republicans thinks that he will get what he wants and then they just wait out 4 years. It's an almost 80 years narcissist, who doesn't care about people nor law, and who dreams about becoming a King. It only gets worse from here, not better.
So not even cynicism is supported by the evidence.
I mean they're also pillaging of course. Incompetent And malice. Both are possible
You could argue that perhaps a selective application of tariffs might help the formation of such domestic industry, but tariffs are not something to wield lightly.
- Donald Trump (actual quote)I wouldn’t argue Trump represents the establishment.
Can't wait for the Pittsburgh soy sauce brewery industry to be onshored again!
For my next computer, e.g., for a Web server, considering an AMD processor, Gigabyte mother board, Western Digital disks (rotating and/or solid state), main memory, video display, etc.
Just checked, none of that comes from China!!! The businesses are in Taiwan, South Korea, the US. Manufacturing is in Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea. The processor design, the US. The equipment for manufacturing the chips, Holland.
So, for my startup, I'm happy!
For a smart phone -- not much interested.
People that didn't care about his moral failings, the lying, how he treats women may care about him just being incompetent to the degree that the things he operates would fare better if he did nothing, especially if they have to pay the bill.
For Trump behaving erratic is a feature, as it favours people who have sworn loyalty and who Trump has deemed worthy as they at least might get a little head ups (enough for the stock market).
Sadly this turns the US not only into an absolute laughing stock, it also makes any business with it a risky one.
Tariffs can work, but they need to be paired with sound industrial policy and careful, strategic implementation. At the best of times, it takes a decade plus for the results to start showing.
Instead of that, so far we have seen
* Tariffs imposed as executive orders under a dubious exercise of the National Emergencies Act. This alone pretty much guarantees that they will be rolled back by the next president
* Zero participation from Congress and not even a pretense of attempting to build a bipartisan consensus
* Haphazard implementation with rates and countries affected whiplashing wildly from day to day
* Immediate capitulation at the first sign of trouble.
At this point we have shown the world that
* There is no real plan and probably never was a plan
* Trump has no actual stomach for a fight. Big economies like China can just wait for Trump to fold completely
* No one should be rushing to invest in the US given the shaky legal and political foundations of the tariffs
We brought our economy to the brink of a financial crisis, alienated all of our long standing allies, destroyed confidence in the US Dollar and economy, eased off tariffs on China while China has done no such thing and our exports to them are still tariffed at over 100%.
All of this for no real policy gains. It would be laughable if the consequences to us and future generations weren't so dire.
To start with, Europe has no good cards to play. Ultimately, Europe will side with the United States while it builds self-sufficiency on several fronts, especially defense. Europe also recognizes that the complete relocation of production capacity into China wasn't good in the long run; it's just that they had no ability to act on their own.
The US has repeatedly suggested publicly that it's not entirely about tariffs, and more might have been said privately. The tariffs the EU and Britain will drop are probably not what the US is after; what the US wants is to reduce global demand for Chinese manufacturing. Europe will find it easier to sell this—bringing manufacturing back and protectionism even at the cost of say, welfare and environment—to the public due to the violent shakedown over the past two weeks, as well as what happened with Ukraine and Russia. Ongoing European emergency measures to increase defense spending will be followed by incentives to rebuild strategic industry—like how China supported civilian–military partnership with policy.
Meanwhile the Indian government is already looking for ways to replace Chinese imports with US imports, where it can [1]. Japan and North Korea will follow suit; Trump is already saying that Korea needs to pay for US troops.
The US is (in my view) on solid footing here. At the very least, they get better trade deals from everyone else—Europe, India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc. A number of companies will move production back into the US, and the government can prioritize those with more military value (chip-making, batteries, cars, shipbuilding [2] , etc.). And if the US can convince others to start decoupling from China, this will weaken Chinese manufacturing capacity.
Given the pain it's going to inflict in the short term, Trump is the only person who could have started this trade war. There might have been ways to do this without such a shake-up, but I am not convinced that this was a stupid move.
This was an anti-China move right from the beginning, disguised as an outrage against everyone's tariffs.
[1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/industry/replace-c...
[2]: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3306177/u...
To clarify: none of this is China's fault. They did a fantastic job for their country, pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
Long game, the UK may transform into being a sort of vassal of the US, assuming it survives as an entity. The EU interest may align more with China. If the US is de-empathizing NATO, they need a counterweight to the Russia/US axis.
It's the end of pax americana, and the future is more uncertain.
It is really that you should just read what Peter Zeihan says and know that is exactly what is not going to happen.
Zeihan lives in a 1960 worldview - oceans are not a meaningful barrier now as space and nuclear technology proliferates.
Withdrawal from the world was stupid in 1920 and doubly so now. There’s a lot of magical thinking that humans who live in places that aren’t in North America lack the ability to think or plan.
If politicians no longer care about winning elections, then they might campaign on this.
I follow the Chinese economy pretty closely and I just can't imagine 2025 passes without a deal.
Of course, neither Trump or Xi were going to back down here before a big meeting. I don't see how this is sustainable on any real time frame though for either economy.
Some people seem to be framing this as some kind of win for China. That is crazy. Chinese stocks had been in the toilet for a while, got a slight bump and that was mostly erased last week. I am far more confident in my US bets than China bets here.
The only reason the EU was tolerating those massive tech companies which contribute close to nothing in the EU was because the US was pulling its weight in EU defense.
Now that Trump openly sided with Putin, that's gone. Trump has no card to play in the EU anymore. He could even insult EU leaders publicly if he wanted to but pushing out Zelensky like he did was the only thing he could not afford to do.
Then on the investment side, the EU will now seen as a more stable and better environment than the US which changes policies every Tuesdays. The US will be experiencing a similar effect to brexit but longer and more severe.
The status of the dollar is clearly questioned as well. Will the US remain the top economic power with those tech companies atrophied and a local recession? I'm not so sure.
Yes China is the current rival and thus was hit hardest, but they’ve already had to retract a lot of tariffs days after introduction simply because they had no idea what impact it would cause on borrowing costs.
Yes if Trump sees an opportunity to demand fealty from anyone with power or money he will take it, and enjoy it, but he genuinely thinks that is his due anyway.
You could say they have a plan in project 2025, but that’s more about destroying the US government and retaining power. If it were a functioning democracy he’d be removed after the damage he’s done.
We have already seen South Korea and Japan announce new trade deals with China. So the US is actually pushing away its allies in the region (which doesn't sound ideal when trying to start a war).
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good
Especially when it comes to certain areas of the economy:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now
> China has rapidly established itself as the world’s dominant shipbuilding power, marginalizing the United States and its allies in a strategically important industry. In addition to building massive numbers of commercial ships, many Chinese shipyards also produce warships for the country’s rapidly growing navy. As part of its “military-civil fusion” strategy, China is tapping into the dual-use resources of its commercial shipbuilding empire to support its ongoing naval modernization
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/ship-wars-confronting-chinas-d...
But none of the current "reasons"—which may simply be rationalizations / retcons by underlings for one man's fickle will—really make much sense:
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/all-the-arguments-for-tariffs-...