And even if he takes them all back, he might reissue them every so often for a bit as well. Meaning people will end up assuming tariffs will be a thing, so there will still be problems.
US 2024 Presidential Election
- Thread starter gorfias
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Sure.
He's sold tariffs on the idea that they are the answer to the USA's woes, even some sort of free money for the USA to replace tax revenues. If he ditches them entirely, it's a bit like admitting all that was bullshit. Even zealous supporters tend to be smart enough to spot sufficiently obvious inconsistencies and ask awkward questions. The trick therefore is to keep them at some level to pretend they're working as he said.
Tariffs are honestly not a terrible idea in entirety, as part of a carefully considered industrial strategy: for instance a country very well might want to protect key industries from foreign competition with tariffs.
I don't think anyone can pretend that Trump's application of tariffs looks well-planned or carefully considered. Even in terms of steel, aluminimum and cars, there doesn't necessarily seem to be an obvious reason except image - some vague nostalgia for historic manufacturing - as opposed to a clear vision of the USA's strategy for the future.
Perhaps it's an accidental acknowledgement that he's a figurehead for a gaggle of billionaires and cultists who make many of the administration's decisions.
It's like a boy-king. He has the power, but grown-ups in the room will be telling him what ideas are good or putting papers to sign in front of him. He'll recommend the tariff to them, and they'll either approve and tell him how smart he is, or gently manipulate him off that course.
trump and tariffs behave just like alcoholic parents
can't seem to find the original guy's video on youtube yet
can't seem to find the original guy's video on youtube yet
Yes, but that is not what the US is doing.
Pretty much the whole world had average tariffs in single digits. All the exceptions are extremely weak economies and only 4 of them are outside of Africa and not small island nations. Both the EU and until very recently the US averaged below 1.5%.
Even Trumps reduced Tariffs amount to double or trippe the tariffs of every other developed nation on the globe. That will basically kill US trade. No one will want to include a US step in their supply chain anymore. The only reason people treat it as small is because hthey compare it to his original ideas.
As for "recommending the tariff". Today are EU - US trade negotiations. And somehow after getting out of bed he had the great idea to sabotage them before they even started.
tbh, he might win this one. A lot of EU country either have a right wing populist government or about to have one. This leave the entire EU in a bit of a prisoner dilemma situation, if they all hold together and negotiate as a group, they'll probably win this easily, just look how quickly he folded against China. But, the populist governement might decide to try and do a 1 on 1 deal with US, hoping that by being the first they can secure a better deal, because Trump will like the idea of breaking EU unity (and the populist themselves also kinda like it).
EU economy aren't doing that great and their citizen are extremely allergic to any kind of discomfort, the pressure will be strong to fold.
No, for tariffs and stuff the EU does only need a qualified majority. It always was a trade union first and they made sure that that part runs relatively smoothly.
Additionally, even EU right wingers don't want to be seen as weak and caving in to Trump. They need the strongman image as much as he does.
The USA is actually a relatively self-contained economy - certainly compared to (for instance) Europe. The trade to GDP level in the USA is about 25% - in European countries it's generally over 50%. The USA is therefore in ways going to be less damaged by tariffs that many might be. And ultimately it is a huge market - people will still want to sell there.
As said above, I think there's a good chance he knows he's never going to actually inflict that tariff, and this is pretending that he's tough to his MAGA followers. Yes, these on-off tariffs screw with a load of businesses in the short term, but they're little people so who cares. Trump is a bit like the god in this animation: a capricious, self-absorbed tyrant who amuses himself by playing with and bullying weaker people. Or maybe he does think tariffs scare other countries into compliance, in which case he's probably a fool.
I mean, he is a fool. He wants to slap tariffs on Apple for not build iPhones in the USA. Firstly, the USA simply doesn't have the right skillbase to manufacture enough iPhones without years of training to get the expertise ready, and it would take years to build the facilities anyway. Secondly, iPhones made abroad will probably still be cheaper with a 25% tariff than if they were made in the USA. Finally, he's complaining about the EU victimising US firms, when he's busy kicking the crap out of them himself.
The whole tariff thing is very simple: Trump thinks that his "business", USA Inc., should have more money coming in than going out. That's it. The complexity of international trade is completely lost on him, because he is an idiot.
Yes. One of the ironies of this world is that a lot of voters think that businessmen will be great at running the economy, not realising that understanding a national economy is very, very different from running a business.
But then, perhaps that's caused by our media and politics, who have an unfortunately tendency to explain the economy to the public in terms of household finances and business. Whilst doing so might sometimes serve as useful analogy to illuminate the public's understanding, at another level potentially it gives the public very iffy ideas about the economy.
Recently news came out that Doge and Trump started cut tornado warnings which is a good example of this. I'm sure that plenty of money was saved by cutting tornado warnings but that misses the point that governments aren't supposed to turn a profit on public safety. Its a core duty of the state, not something that can be cut corners on the balance the books. Same with managing infrastructure, healthcare or defense spending. All those things drain the budget but the state is still required to do them.
Some of the duties of the state are all but required to be done on a loss.
It is until dedollarization -- which the tariffs already have accelerated, and will continue to accelerate as investor and global confidence declines -- finishes. The quiet part out loud here is the US economy is dependent on global reserve currency status. The stupid and professionally wrong can whinge about trade deficits all they like -- and for the truly stupid and massively overpaid professionally wrong people, the end of Bretton Woods -- but (until now, anyways) the US's chief export is the dollar, itself.
Oh hell, you're not even 10% of the way there on that one. It'll take years to build the assembly facilities alone, and by that I mean the buildings themselves. Where do the machines that assemble iPhones come from, or the tools to build and maintain those machines? Where's the expertise to build and maintain them? The raw materials that are processed into components, and the machines and tools for those in turn?
Well, considering I was hit by a tornado last month, and that tornado that ripped Kentucky a new asshole last week was about 30 miles' south of me, I can probably shed some light on this one. Yeah, staffing was cut and several offices were unstaffed Friday night. That's problematic in and of itself, but it was known for about a week things were going to go badly Friday, and that forecast kept getting worse throughout the week. We'd been under severe thunderstorm watch for Friday night for several days leading up to it, upgraded to tornado watch either day before or day-of depending on locality.
And as if that wasn't bad enough on its own, the NWS picked that day in particular to bring EAS offline for system updates. Feels good knowing SPC and NWS don't have redundancies and apparently can't delay this kind of thing 24-48 hours with day's advance notice that system might be necessary on a given day, huh? It's actually been a trend, picking days with the worst weather forecasts to bring the EAS system down for updates across the country.
So, warnings did go out...but they were too late to do any real good, and reach was spotty. Some people got texts from county/state/municipality alert systems, but nothing from NWS went out. Sirens didn't go off either. Frankly, not that they would have done much good against an EF-4, but it would have been better than nothing.
Individual country can still try to make 1 on 1 deal. Say there's an impasse in trade negotiation because of something (probably something agricultural, cause secretly the EU mostly is just an agriculture lobby). Maybe Hungary go see the US and say they'll accept to let the agriculture products in, in exchange for no tariff, US accept and start trading directly with Hungary. Hungarian company then start exporting those products to the other EU countries, labeled as "made in Hungary". Now the EU has to decide if they want to exclude Hungary from no barrier internal EU trade.
Trump says he'll delay a threatened 50% tariff on the European Union until July
President Donald Trump says the U.S. will delay implementation of a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union from June 1 until July 9 to buy time for negotiations with the bloc.
apnews.com
Man he folded even faster this time around, didn't even implement it.
Must be crazy living as a Trump supporter, having to constantly switch position every 2-3 days.
It's not like they have any grounding in reality anyway; it's easy to reimagine the world with every one of Trump's lies.
Trump is demanding the names and nationalities of all of Harvard's foreign students.
www.newsweek.com
My guess: He wants to individually "investigate" and deport all of them, probably to an offshore prison.
Donald Trump demands Harvard students' names
"We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard BILLIONS OF DOLLARS," Trump said on Truth Social.
www.newsweek.com
My guess: He wants to individually "investigate" and deport all of them, probably to an offshore prison.
You mean like when Colbert and lefties bought Teslas? Maybe y'all should stick to principles like don't buy from companies that are extremely anti-consumer to begin with instead of caring about the CEO/owner's politics. Or 'member when Target was the 1st major retailer to say people could use whatever bathroom they wanted? Lefties loved them and now Target is being boycotted by lefties. Must also be crazy living as a lefty...
Trump says he'll delay a threatened 50% tariff on the European Union until July
President Donald Trump says the U.S. will delay implementation of a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union from June 1 until July 9 to buy time for negotiations with the bloc.
Man he folded even faster this time around, didn't even implement it.
Must be crazy living as a Trump supporter, having to constantly switch position every 2-3 days.
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bill maher trying to call anyone else out on hypocrisy is almost as much of a self own as unironically posting anything by bill maher in the first place lmao
Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf
April 21, 2025
Credit...Lia Darjes, "Plate VII"
By Larry David
Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the Old Chancellery and was led into an opulent living room, where a few of the Führer’s most vocal supporters had gathered: Himmler, Göring, Leni Riefenstahl and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII. We talked about some of the beautiful art on the walls that had been taken from the homes of Jews. But our conversation ended abruptly when we heard loud footsteps coming down the hallway. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room.
He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on my back. I found the whole thing quite disarming. I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out, it would be perceived as un-Führer-like. That amused him to no end, and I realized I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.
He said he was starving and led us into the dining room, where he gestured for me to sit next to him. Göring immediately grabbed a slice of pumpernickel, whereupon Hitler turned to me, gave me an eye roll, then whispered, “Watch. He’ll be done with his entire meal before you’ve taken two bites.” That one really got me. Göring, with his mouth full, asked what was so funny, and Hitler said, “I was just telling him about the time my dog had diarrhea in the Reichstag.” Göring remembered. How could he forget? He loved that story, especially the part where Hitler shot the dog before it got back into the car. Then a beaming Hitler said, “Hey, if I can kill Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, I can certainly kill a dog!” That perhaps got the biggest laugh of the night — and believe me, there were plenty.
But it wasn’t just a one-way street, with the Führer dominating the conversation. He was quite inquisitive and asked me a lot of questions about myself. I told him I had just gone through a brutal breakup with my girlfriend because every time I went someplace without her, she was always insistent that I tell her everything I talked about. I can’t stand having to remember every detail of every conversation. Hitler said he could relate — he hated that, too. “What am I, a secretary?” He advised me it was best not to have any more contact with her or else I’d be right back where I started and eventually I’d have to go through the whole thing all over again. I said it must be easy for a dictator to go through a breakup. He said, “You’d be surprised. There are still feelings.” Hmm … there are still feelings. That really resonated with me. We’re not that different, after all. I thought that if only the world could see this side of him, people might have a completely different opinion.
Two hours later, the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door. “I am so glad to have met you. I hope I’m no longer the monster you thought I was.” “I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.
Most foreign students at Harvard are the children of very wealthy and/or powerful people, including other heads of state. Trump is stupid, but, probably, not so stupid it wants the heat from sending those students to an offshore prison. More likely they'll just be told they can't return after summer break. I also think this is more likely just another Trump style power play at getting higher education to bend the knees to Trump and play by its rules.Trump is demanding the names and nationalities of all of Harvard's foreign students.
Donald Trump demands Harvard students' names
"We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard BILLIONS OF DOLLARS," Trump said on Truth Social.
My guess: He wants to individually "investigate" and deport all of them, probably to an offshore prison.
Also, maybe just some good 'ol Trump style pettiness
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