[HN Gopher] Retailers will soon have only about 7 weeks of full ...
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Retailers will soon have only about 7 weeks of full inventories
left
Author : andrewfromx
Score : 395 points
Date : 2025-04-30 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Based on big box retailers in my area this is optimistic as with
| a keen eye one can already see huge numbers of missing products.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| I've never thought America could ever experience lack of goods.
| "Deficit" was a very well known term during the Soviet times and
| it was one of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed. If Trump
| wants to destroy the United States, he is acting very efficiently
| by repeating the same mistake the Soviet leaders were making.
| mstade wrote:
| It's weird to see the party claiming to be for free markets
| essentially go all-in on central planning. Black is white and
| up is down, I s'pose.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| How are tariffs (and now basically significant tariffs on
| only China now) in any way similar to a centrally planned
| economy? Tariffs have existed in every country capable of
| enforcing them for all of human history, and they existed in
| the US prior to Trump, and will continue to exist after
| Trump. Even countries we have supposed "free trade"
| agreements with still get tariffed (and impose tariffs on our
| goods).
| ForHackernews wrote:
| They're taxing certain things and then carving out
| exemptions for other things. Personal favors and political
| ideology driving the economy instead of market forces.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| That's how "free trade" agreements have worked for
| decades too. Look at the specific categories Canada puts
| protective tariffs on despite our trade agreements with
| them (in particular their agricultural goods which have
| quotas after which massive tariffs are applied).
| Governments worldwide have been subsidizing and otherwise
| favoring specific companies and industries for as long as
| civilization has existed. I don't like it when Trump does
| it too, but I don't understand the people acting like
| this is somehow a new and unprecedented thing.
| jjulius wrote:
| >I don't like it when Trump does it too, but I don't
| understand the people acting like this is somehow a new
| and unprecedented thing.
|
| Sans near-total embargoes on goods from a country, have
| we ever imposed sweeping tariffs of 145% on all goods
| coming from one of our most-imported trade partners?
|
| No, no we have not. Certain tariffs were very targeted
| for specific reasons, you are correct. But those were not
| blanket-applied haphazardly at such high levels. Hence,
| "unprecedented".
| HideousKojima wrote:
| We've had an infinity% tariff on all goods from Cuba for
| decades
| jjulius wrote:
| Those are broader economic embargoes, not tariffs. A
| _lot_ more is involved in that situation and it 's much
| more nuanced than what's happening with tariffs today.
| Hence my comment, "sans near-total embargoes on a
| country". Tariffs are taxes on goods allowed to enter the
| country - embargoes are a total elimination of trade
| (meaning we can't receive and we can't ship to) with a
| country.
|
| This is another apples/oranges comparison.
| tim333 wrote:
| Many counties manage agriculture by having quotas for
| farm products and some price regulation. If you don't do
| that in good years the crop price plummets, farmers go
| broke and then in poor years there are shortages because
| of that.
|
| Canada or the EU doing that and sorting their own food
| isn't the huge conspiracy against America that Trump
| seems to think it is.
| hyperpape wrote:
| "How dare you judge me for drinking a case of beer. I know
| for a fact you had two beers this evening!"
| jjulius wrote:
| >Tariffs have existed in every country capable of enforcing
| them for all of human history, and they existed in the US
| prior to Trump, and will continue to exist after Trump.
| Even countries we have supposed "free trade" agreements
| with still get tariffed (and impose tariffs on our goods).
|
| To what degree relative to what we're seeing now, though?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Much, much more than what we're seeing now, historically.
| Including outright banning all or nearly all foreign
| trade. See Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate for one of
| the more extreme examples.
| jjulius wrote:
| Apples, meet oranges. Japan outright banning trade with
| all other countries is different than implementing
| tariffs.
| mstade wrote:
| Others have responded more eloquently than I to this, so I
| won't. All I will say is I never equated tariffs with
| central planning, but I can see how from context you drew
| that conclusion. Tariffs aren't the only thing the
| republicans are doing under Trump, and taken as a whole the
| current administration smells - to me at least - a lot more
| politburo than the free trade champions of yesteryear.
| (Well, more like decade at this point.)
| cyberax wrote:
| Remember when Trump threatened Amazon for even thinking
| about showing the tariffs on the payment screen?
|
| Very free market.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| He called it a "hostile and political act", when did he
| threaten them?
| cyberax wrote:
| > when did he threaten them?
|
| When he called it "a hostile and political act".
|
| Remember when just officially telling people that they
| are not horses turned out to be a free speech violation?
| jimbokun wrote:
| That party has been gone for awhile. Trump has never shown
| any affinity for free markets.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| well the goods are there, its not like they stop flowing or
| something just need 30% tax on top of it
|
| edit: ok, I didnt know that bussiness stop buying, but they
| must buy somethings in the future right either buy from other
| tax exempt or buy thing with add value tax
| nemomarx wrote:
| Have you seen the news at the ports? less containers coming
| in. the goods will not necessarily keep flowing if the price
| goes up and their margin goes away
| hundreddaysoff wrote:
| I think the theory is like this:
|
| 1. new 30% tax
|
| 2. people stop buying so many goods due to (1)
|
| 3. due to lack of demand, our shipping industry seizes up and
| goods stop flowing, at least till (1) goes away
|
| My main source for that theory is
| https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-
| driver-...
| gymbeaux wrote:
| There's a bill[1] sitting in the House of Representatives
| that would abolish the IRS and replace all tax code with a
| consumption tax. In typical fashion they've written it so
| it seems like the flat consumption tax will be something
| like 24% but it's actually 30% (they word it as something
| like "24% of the total is tax" which really means "the tax
| is 30%").
|
| I'm curious when they plan on deploying this. It specifies
| a 3-year schedule so you think okay is this to be signed
| into law in 2025 so that the IRS is abolished during the
| next election year, or are they going to wait a year or two
| and have the IRS abolishment only "trigger" if Republicans
| continue to control the government beyond 2028? Or perhaps
| they will push it through if/when Democrats retake some or
| all of Congress in 2026?
|
| One thing's for sure though, the 1% will use cryptocurrency
| to dodge this consumption tax and it will (as usual)
| disproportionately affect the lower and middle classes, who
| aren't as savvy in tax fraud/evasion/"loopholes".
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-
| bill/25/t...
| zdragnar wrote:
| Either a Democratic Congress or president would prevent
| such a bill from passing. Sales taxes are inherently
| flat, which to them means regressive.
|
| The idea that we would give up progressive taxes is
| pretty antithetical to their platform, given how many
| campaign on raising taxes on high income earners.
|
| Given how slow even a single-party-controlled Congress
| is, I sincerely doubt such a bill would ever see the
| light of day.
| quesera wrote:
| > _Either a Democratic Congress or president would
| prevent such a bill from passing_
|
| The Senate still has the filibuster, as well. This will
| not pass in the current Congress either.
|
| The filibuster rule is vulnerable, but I don't think
| there's enough support from Senate Republicans to do so.
| If I'm wrong, it would be an escalation which would add
| more fuel to the 2026 fire.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| I'm always hazy on how exactly that works. I know some
| bills require a supermajority (66) and I know filibuster
| can block some bills with fewer votes than that... but it
| doesn't always work, because the 2017 tax reform bill was
| passed.
|
| Also, I remember there being talk when the DINOs were
| voting with the Republicans of ending the filibuster....
| So... I mean the current admin just ignores rules, why
| wouldn't this be the Congress that ends the filibuster?
| This could be their one shot to implement the "Final
| Solution" (Project 2025).
| quesera wrote:
| I believe very few votes require a supermajority in the
| Senate -- impeachment votes definitely do, and also votes
| to override a Presidential veto.
|
| All ordinary votes just require a simple majority, but
| the filibuster is sort of a special-case that can be
| invoked any time, requiring 60 votes to bring the vote to
| the table at all.
|
| You're right -- if this Senate abolishes the filibuster,
| it will likely be for "budget votes only" or somesuch.
| The Senate isn't quite as full of short-term thinkers as
| the House is though. I don't think the Senate Rs will go
| for it, because it's the only thing stopping a future D
| majority from doing what majorities do, and smart Rs know
| they are a minority party under ordinary circumstances.
|
| But if I'm wrong, it will mean that the Senate Rs are
| going for broke on a short-term play, and may be
| discounting future risks. That would be the behaviour of
| the very desperate, or of the very powerful.
|
| If the Senate Rs believe they are one of those two things
| -- _either one_ -- the consequences could be enormous.
|
| This is all very dramatic of course. Normally I'd dismiss
| such ideas. But the temperature is very high right now,
| and this time might actually be different, this time...
| gymbeaux wrote:
| It's optimistic of you to think we'll have a Democratic
| _anything_ for the foreseeable future. In 2016 we could
| say "well a lot of people are tired of the status quo"
| but after 2024... Nah, this what America wants. This is
| what the people who couldn't bother to vote, _voted_ for
| when they chose to stay home.
| gs17 wrote:
| Not even Democrats in control, the amount of income tax-
| related lobbying should prevent it alone.
| glitchc wrote:
| Given that the lower and middle classes pay a
| disproportionate amount of income tax, with no mechanisms
| to avoid a tax before the paycheque even arrives, I think
| this is a net win.
| pb7 wrote:
| Bottom half of the population pays ~zero taxes.
| quesera wrote:
| ~Zero _income_ taxes only.
|
| Full sales and gasoline taxes, and relative to income,
| disproportionately more.
| abletonlive wrote:
| Okay? So still effectively zero. The top 20% do the
| overwhelming amount of the shopping.
| quesera wrote:
| Are you asking for an explanation of why a consumption
| tax disproportionately affects citizens with lower
| incomes?
| pb7 wrote:
| >Given that the lower and middle classes pay a
| disproportionate amount of income tax
|
| >Bottom half of the population pays ~zero taxes.
|
| ?
| mikestew wrote:
| _Given that the lower and middle classes pay a
| disproportionate amount of income tax..._
|
| Not only is that not a "given", I'd argue that you're
| completely wrong. One doesn't have to look very hard to
| find out how much income tax is paid by lower class:
| effectively zero.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| A consumption tax would affect the lower class more than
| the 1% for two main reasons:
|
| 1. Non-discretionary spending as a percentage of income
| is much larger for the lower (and middle) classes, who
| spend 100% or near 100% of their income on "essentials"
| like food and shelter.
|
| 2. The tax itself is obscene- 30% or thereabouts. As
| others have pointed out, the poorest of the poor don't
| pay any income tax, and many essentials (like unprepared
| food) are not currently taxed. I don't recall if the bill
| would add a tax on unprepared food. I wouldn't be
| surprised if it does.
| glitchc wrote:
| Whole (or raw) foods are tax-exempt in the US. This is
| NY, other states are roughly on par:
|
| https://www.tax.ny.gov/pubs_and_bulls/tg_bulletins/st/lis
| tin...
|
| There are about 10 that still charge taxes on groceries,
| but are considering phasing them out.
|
| Shelter is always tax exempt. There is no tax on rent.
| Mortgages, if anything, come with a _tax rebate_ , as
| amounts paid can be claimed against collected income
| taxes.
| hollerith wrote:
| You did not read your own linked page: food that are
| already heated-up and ready to eat are taxable, but most
| foods are not. Whether it is a _whole_ food or a
| processed food products with many ingredients does not
| matter. Also, NY taxes soft drinks and other unhealthy
| foods (but most states do not).
|
| Also, you are wrong when you wrote, "Given that the lower
| and middle classes pay a disproportionate amount of
| income tax".
|
| In fact, most Americans who earn under about $40,000 a
| year pay no federal income tax. I believe the vehicle
| that effects this outcome is mainly the earned income tax
| credit.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Things poor people need that are still taxed:
|
| - Clothes - Shoes - Plumber/Electrician/Handyman - School
| supplies (though some states have tax holidays) -
| Gas/public transit - Car maintenance - Utility bills
| gs17 wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > FairTax is a fixed rate sales tax proposal introduced
| as bill H.R. 25 in the United States Congress every year
| since 2005.
|
| An R-GA sponsors it every year and it never gets further
| than "introduced", with fewer co-sponsors on it now than
| ever AFAIK. Technically, if it did get into law, it could
| create greater chaos, it has a provision to terminate
| itself if the 16th Amendment isn't repealed, so enough
| incompetence could eliminate taxes entirely.
| XorNot wrote:
| They absolutely do. Tarrifs are paid at point of import not
| point of sale, and who the heck wants to put something on a
| container ship for a month of transit not knowing if you can
| even afford the customs charges at the end before you sell
| it, or won't take a loss because surprise a week after paying
| tarrifs are now cancelled.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Underrated comment. People don't understand global trade
| and logistics (understandably so- it's all very complicated
| and there are multiple middlemen involved between the
| factory in China and the company in the U.S. buying the
| goods to resell - they of course being yet another
| middleman).
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "Tarrifs are paid at point of import" are they??? didn't
| they just taxed at arrival at the port? or something
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Supply and demand shocks echo for a while. How long did it
| take for toilet paper to be stocked normally during the
| pandemic in the US?
|
| Edit to add:
|
| Better example for me was the semiconductor industry. It was
| hard for _years_ to design hardware because key ICs would
| disappear. You needed to buy the ICs the moment you thought
| you might use them, a form of stockpiling that had no winner
| - it 's very expensive to buy stock that you potentially
| never use, and it deprives the rest of the market
| simultaneously.
| xnx wrote:
| When import taxes reach a certain level, it's effectively an
| embargo.
| lumost wrote:
| The tax is 145% on Chinese imports. To preserve relative
| margins companies need to increase prices by 145%. Obviously,
| you are not going to buy the extra yard camera that was 100
| dollars last week but will soon be 250.
|
| The tariffs are effectively a 30-150% price increase on all
| retail products, along with some marginal price increase on
| all manufactured goods. Given the nearly assured recession,
| it is unclear how willing American consumers and corporations
| are to eat this tax. Some businesses will take it out of the
| margin, others will pass it along.
| thfuran wrote:
| And tariffs are collected at arrival, so companies can be
| obligated to pay double to receive goods they already
| purchased when huge tariffs suddenly appear. That can mean
| spending a significant amount of extra money on goods they
| may not be able to sell profitability.
| breadwinner wrote:
| > _To preserve relative margins companies need to increase
| prices by 145%._
|
| Not true. If you have watched Shark Tank you have seen that
| products cost, as an example, $6 landed, but retail for
| $24. Tariffs are 145% of $6, so around $9. So they only
| have to increate the retail price from $24 to $33 to keep
| the same profit margin. In this example that's a 37%
| increase, not 145%.
| hnav wrote:
| _relative_ margins as in percent, $6 with 145% tariff is
| $14.7 which means to maintain the 75% margin you'd have
| to jack the price up to nearly $60. I agree that you
| don't necessarily need a 75% margin to do business, but
| it can't stay flat either because you're floating more
| than double the money on inventory. In reality prices for
| cheap crap with huge margins will probably only go up
| let's say 50% but items that have thin margins will
| definitely more than double.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The goods are _not_ there. Shipping volumes from China to the
| US are down I think by 40% right now, and shipping companies
| are outright canceling berthing in US ports right now due to
| the low shipping flows.
|
| We're about 1 or 2 months right now from some goods not being
| available in the US at any price. If people lost their mind
| over that happening during COVID, well, this is going to be
| just as bad.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Why do you think he's bullish on Bitcoin?
| pphysch wrote:
| Because it's an easy political win among demographics that
| care about cryptocurrency.
|
| ... You don't actually believe he cares about Bitcoin or the
| technology, right?
| gymbeaux wrote:
| He cares about it insofar as it's a tool he can use and
| abuse to make money. Obviously he has no interest in or
| understanding of blockchains.
|
| When the stock market (and confidence in the U.S.) falls,
| people typically flock to gold and bonds. If the U.S. is
| seen as unstable and at risk of not making debt payments,
| bonds are a bad place to move money into. That leaves gold
| (and to a lesser extent foreign stock markets).
|
| With crypto though- that's a con man's wet dream. Volatile.
| No government oversight. Crypto pump and dumps are
| literally legal (though come close to being fraud, as
| people like Du Kwon have learned).
| toddmorey wrote:
| Curious if there is anyone here who genuinely sees this as short-
| term pain / long-term gain for American economic interests. That
| is of course the political angle, but I've yet to see an
| economist concur with that theory.
|
| EDIT: I can find very few voices (not currently working directly
| for the administration). There's Jeff Ferry who believes "tariffs
| imposed during the 19th century spurred industrialization and
| ultimately positioned America as a global superpower". (That
| historical view is uncommon and wouldn't account for the current
| realities of global supply chains.)
| Scarblac wrote:
| Depends on how long term. A crash of the global economy may be
| the best way to prevent at least some climate change
| catastrophe.
| lumost wrote:
| If economic activity is linear with co2 production, the crash
| would need to be the most extreme economic depression in
| history to have an impact eg 75% reduction in global GDP. A
| 75% reduction in food production would surely cause the
| largest global famine yet recorded.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Well yes, but so will climate change itself.
| izzydata wrote:
| This will never happen willingly. Whenever it does happen it
| won't be by choice and will be because civilization has run
| out of material to produce stuff or too much of the Earth has
| become inhospitable. At least in the extreme long term it is
| a self correcting problem.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| Why is this a "political" angle? If you believe its for a long
| term gain, then you believe in a certain economic theory that
| others may not believe. What does politics hace anything to do
| with that?
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Why is this a "political" angle? If you believe its for a
| long term gain, then you believe in a certain economic theory
| that others may not believe. What does politics hace anything
| to do with that?
|
| It's a political angle because it's to the responsible
| politicians' advantage to push that economic theory. I think
| the claim is not necessarily that economists who believe this
| theory are acting politically, but that their voices may be
| amplified by politicians for, let us say, less than
| scientific reasons.
| inerte wrote:
| Choosing a certain type of economic theory or having certain
| sectors of the economy do better than others is 100%
| politics. I don't think there is an economic theory where
| everybody benefits equally around the same time without any
| downsides.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Let's assume that Trump actually has a point in divesting
| from China (which, I think, he has - his disastrous approach
| to it aside).
|
| The Democrats could never do anything against China that
| imposes short-term economical pain because their own voters
| would immediately punish them for it and the entire media
| from left to far-right would put them under fire. Even
| marginal economical pain has immediate political consequences
| - I'd argue that Harris' loss was mostly due to rising and
| unanswered problems about exploding cost of living, chiefly
| eggs.
|
| The Republicans however? They still have the same constraint
| from the left to center media and voters - but crucially,
| their own voter base is so darn high on their own supply (and
| their media has long since sworn fealty to even the most
| crackpot people), they are willing to endure anything because
| their President told them to.
|
| It's "Only Nixon could go to China" all over again, and
| frankly it's disgusting.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I certainly would like to see more American made products and
| manufacturing, unfortunately, making that happen is not just a
| matter of shuffling money around, capricious tariffs, and the
| president posturing for "deals" like a real-estate shyster.
|
| Our current situation is the result of decades of deliberate
| greedy systematic outsourcing of everything that can be
| outsourced. It's our own dumb fault. And it will take decades
| to reverse it if it's even possible. It's not a "short-term"
| kind of thing.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 'Dumb' is probably the right word. That's how a free market
| works - every actor works in their own interest. If you try
| to do something moral but it profits less, then you'll be
| competed to bankruptcy. Just how it works.
|
| We want a more 'just' system, it requires regulation, so
| everybody is playing the same game.
|
| Oh! We've deregulated. That's supposed to help make folks
| more profitable. But, whoops, it's the same playing field no
| matter the particular rules. So deregulation helps who? Big
| players, international players. Not you and me.
| aurizon wrote:
| Look at the Auto work force in 1960 and in 2025. Wages
| became so high that it drove automation/robots and created
| the Japanese/Korean/European auto industries. Had huge
| tariffs been enacted we would still have some of those jobs
| in the USA, but those lost to robotics would still be lost
| due to the basic economics of fabrication. Can this all be
| rolled back - All the King's men and all the King's horses
| can not put Humpty Dumpty together again. I can see a
| possible future where people are all paid the same $$ and
| you can not 'shop for slaves' as we do in Asia. This level
| field would take a while to achieve - even now wages in
| China have risen a lot and they are not the cheapest labor
| country now, but their assembled physical plant still
| dominates. China now has excess physical plant and must
| replace the USA as a large buyer. Other countries feel the
| same pressures and erect tariffs of their own. I see many
| years of this levelling to occur. USA will have to reduce
| these high tariffs because the USA needs many things and it
| will take 10+ years to create the physical plant that was
| allowed to rust away over the last 20-30 years - even now a
| little has returned, but the 'rust belt' has been melted
| down and it will return slowly.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >It's our own dumb fault
|
| Our being the office working city/suburb living HN posting
| white collar types who have no visibility into the non
| service parts of the economy beyond what is made available in
| our investment account dashboards.
|
| The industrial workers, the farmers, the blue collar
| tradesmen, none of them wanted this even back in 1995 or
| 2005, the evidince that rampant outsourcing was bad in the
| long term just wasn't concrete enough for their opinions to
| gain traction and there were other seemingly more important
| issues that decided elections back then and we did make a lot
| of money selling our economy out so everyone was willing to
| let outsourcing hum along even if they didn't like it.
|
| The people who made bank shipping industrial tooling to the
| far east and bulldozing old factories, the middle managers
| coordinating with overseas suppliers, etc, etc. didn't want
| to do any of those things, they were uneasy about the long
| term impacts but they did it anyway because the managerial
| class structured the economy such that that's what they had
| to do to keep the lights on.
| nine_k wrote:
| These same workers, on the other hand, do enjoy the
| inexpensive consumer goods (clothes, electronics, home
| appliances, etc) produced in less expensive places like
| China or Bangladesh or Vietnam.
|
| These countries also were lifted from poverty and into
| relative prosperity by this. It looked like a win-win,
| under a certain angle, back in the day; the US would turn
| into an innovative economy producing high-tech gear, doing
| high-grade R&D and engineering, and producing software, all
| the stuff the Bangladeshi or even Chinese were not supposed
| to be able to do comparably well. It just turned out that
| the engineering and development thrive next to the actual
| production capacity, and can be studied and learned. Now
| Chinese electronic engineering rivals that of the US, same
| for mechanical, shipbuilding, even aircraft / space and
| weapons.
|
| A similar thing once happened to Japan, then to South
| Korea: they turned from postwar ruins and poverty into
| high-tech giants competing successfully with the US by
| exporting inexpensive, good-quality stuff to the US. But
| these are politically aligned with the US and the West in
| general; places like Bangladesh or Vietnam, not so much,
| and China expressly is not.
| glitchc wrote:
| Consumer goods that on average are of lower quality and
| do not last as long, forcing consumers to make more
| frequent purchases, ultimately costing them more. In the
| 1950s one could buy a good quality toaster for life. It's
| very difficult to do so now.
| dlisboa wrote:
| That's a bad comparison.
|
| A toaster off of the 1958 Sears catalog cost US$12.50
| which amounts to ~US$ 160 today. We can make a $160
| toaster today that'll survive nuclear war but no one will
| buy it.
|
| Some things do get better with time, home appliances are
| the best example. They consume on average less energy
| today, are lighter, have more safety features, etc.
|
| Cheaper prices are also a feature: more people have
| access to goods today because of it.
|
| Not all that is old is great.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| While not all that is old is great, it's still a solid
| example.
|
| There are people who would buy a $160 toaster (I've seen
| different estimates closer to $130, I'm not sure how you
| calculated yours) if they knew it would last 50 years
| today.
|
| This shift has more to do with what businesses want than
| with consumer demand. Companies moved toward
| manufacturing goods that don't last as long, increasing
| demand by ensuring products deteriorate sooner, giving
| them more opportunities to sell.
|
| >Some things do get better with time, home appliances are
| the best example. They consume on average less energy
| today, are lighter, have more safety features, etc.
|
| While that's partly true, putting a smart screen on a
| fridge doesn't necessarily make it better. More often,
| businesses make changes to improve their bottom line, not
| to create better products overall. More durable materials
| were used in the past, and I would rank durability high
| among the most important features of physical products.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You are living under a rock if you think consumer demand
| is for expensive high quality things.
|
| Look at the gangbusters runaway successes of shops like
| Temu and Shein if you want to know where the heart of
| American consumers is. Cheap shit. People love cheap
| shit. Even if they know it is shit.
| vel0city wrote:
| I don't get this though. I had a $10 toaster from Walmart
| I bought when I went to college. It lasted me over a
| decade before I gave it away, still working fine. It was
| a pretty crappy and basic toaster (hot spots), but it was
| a crappy and basic toaster the day I bought it and was a
| crappy and basic toaster the day I gave it away. Are you
| people really destroying your toasters every year or two?
| How?
|
| And there are absolutely high-end expensive toasters that
| are waaay better than the cheap junk. But most people are
| going to choose the cheap junk in the end.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Nope. It was well understood that the American worker was
| on the chopping block back in the time of Triffin and
| even Keynes. "Win-win" was always a line sold by people
| who understood that it would actually be "win-lose" but
| who expected to be on the winning side (and generally
| were).
|
| More recently, US capital owners for the last 20 years
| 100% understood that they were selling off the industrial
| capability of the USA to the CCP. It was their monetary
| gain but our problem, so they went forward with it.
| nine_k wrote:
| Yes, but it could be sold as a "win-win".
|
| For last 20 years, I can agree; but the boom of
| outsourcung started nearly 40 years ago.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Externalize your costs, internalize your profits, build
| moats, gain cartel power, seek rent.
|
| These are the goals of any "free market" company.
|
| One of my great critiques of capitalism and the economic
| analysis of it is that all the economists seem to believe
| that every company wants to happily exist in a open
| market with lots of competitors optimizing entirely
| working to reduce costs for the consumer.
|
| All you have to do is read my first paragraph and to see
| how utterly fantastical that notion is, and why
| regulation is needed to counteract every one of those
| simple game theory power politics end goals
| nine_k wrote:
| Paradoxically for some, the state's power is needed to
| keep the markets free and competitive. An obvious example
| is the protection of property, hence state-financed
| police and courts. A slightly less obvious, but as
| important, are anti-monopoly protections.
|
| Game theory should be taught much wider, I agree.
| wbl wrote:
| The American worker has gotten continuously richer over
| that time. Is it so bad to be a nurse rather than feeding
| widgets into the widget machine?
| nottorp wrote:
| Adjusted to purchasing power?
| phil21 wrote:
| > It looked like a win-win, under a certain angle, back
| in the day
|
| This isn't really true except for perhaps the most naive
| sort of person. It was well understood by most folks that
| there were going to be winners and losers. You can't gut
| entire segments of the workforce in less than a
| generation and not expect extreme pain.
|
| It's just those people had very little political power.
|
| Exactly zero people in actual power are genuinely
| surprised by the outcome here. Perhaps they are at the
| political backlash and how powerful it became, but that's
| about it.
| cyberax wrote:
| > shipbuilding
|
| Shipbuilding? The US shipbuilding market is dead and
| stinking of deep rot. No one buys the US-made ships
| unless they _have_ to.
|
| Shipbuilding has been absolutely protected by the Jones
| Act, so predictably it became globally uncompetitive and
| obsolete.
| gruez wrote:
| >Our current situation is the result of decades of deliberate
| greedy systematic outsourcing of everything that can be
| outsourced. It's our own dumb fault. And it will take decades
| to reverse it if it's even possible.
|
| How would you reverse it?
| afpx wrote:
| After talking to a bunch of Trump voters over the past 8 years,
| I have heard a common theme. They view the policies of the past
| 50 years, driven by the 'uniparty', as they say, leading to
| eminent catastrophic collapse. To them it's existential problem
| and they only have one choice.
|
| Appealing to economists is the opposite of what they want,
| because economists look at macroeconomics efficiency which
| encourages globalism. They would rather be inefficient and hold
| on to their identity.
| soco wrote:
| Then why were they promised cheaper eggs in the campaign? And
| no wars and and and? I'd say identity or not, there was still
| a serious amount of lying involved, which also tells me the
| identity gang is actually way smaller.
| afpx wrote:
| Honestly, I sense that they believe it's all part of the
| game. And, if everyone else is doing it, why should they be
| at a disadvantage? I'm guessing here, though.
|
| If you really want answers, best thing to do is hang out in
| an area dominated by Trump supporters for a few weeks.
| Talking to them has changed my perspective on a lot of
| things. I don't agree with a lot of what they say, but I
| understand them now. They often aren't great at
| articulating their thoughts. They think in terms of macro-
| level complex systems. I shouldn't say 'think' - more like
| they intuit. They feel something is wrong, and they don't
| necessarily know why. You have to (kindly and with
| curiosity) interrogate them a bunch to figure it all out.
|
| I follow a bunch of them on X, and they seem outraged by
| some of what Trump is doing, particularly the pro-war
| stance. Hence the low poll numbers?
|
| [Sorry I really geek out on anthropology and understanding
| cultures.]
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| My family is mostly Trump supporters and you might be
| glamorizing them.
|
| Sadly, it's mostly just cult of personality which I
| figure you are graciously trying to avoid assuming.
|
| Tariffs are the perfect example of this. Trump announces
| tariffs? Good, we need long-term investment in domestic
| production. Trump cancels them? Good, they are just a
| short-term negotiation tactic. Trump negotiates a trade
| deal? Good, now we get a better deal on imports from that
| country. Trump says tariffs are back on the table? Good,
| we need domestic production long-term.
|
| There are no macro-level complex system ideals here.
| Pinning them down to one claim is like fighting jelly
| where on every strike it morphs into something else.
| tim333 wrote:
| >just cult of personality
|
| I guess saying you don't understand tariff consequences
| and the like but you trust Trump to know what he's doing
| and make things great could be a reasonable position?
|
| I'm hazy on some economics myself but don't especially
| trust Trump to make thing great. But I did kind of trust
| some previous presidents to do a decent job without
| following all the policies. (Clinton and Obama seemed
| quite good).
| mgkimsal wrote:
| > but you trust Trump to know what he's doing
|
| In 2016 that _might_ have been a reasonable position
| without digging too much in to his background /history.
|
| But we've had years of him in and out of office now,
| repeatedly lying. Lying about big things, small things,
| changing the lies, doubling down on the lies. Threatening
| people who question any of his lies in even the most
| polite/positive way possible.
|
| Why anyone _today_ would "trust" him on anything is
| just... insane.
| tim333 wrote:
| But a lot of people voted for him. I think a couple of
| the main issues people voted for him on were cutting
| illegal immigration and cutting down on wokery and in
| fairness he's been effective there. If he just stopped
| with that and changed nothing else I think he'd be pretty
| popular. Sadly not though.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I live in Louisiana. This is absolutely cult of
| personality all the way down. I have no idea what the
| guy/gal upthread is talking about otherwise.
|
| In 2016 I definitely saw ads from churches in Mississippi
| on local cable TV that were totally outright political
| advocacy combined with cult of personality. I was so
| astonished, I almost filed a complaint with the FEC/IRS.
| But to top it off, I remember very well an ad of Trump's
| that said "I'll make every dream you ever dreamed come
| true."
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > You have to (kindly and with curiosity) interrogate
| them a bunch to figure it all out.
|
| The trickiest bit is navigating the, ah, _information
| gap_. If you don 't listen to Mark Levin or watch Fox
| News, your interlocutor is going to teach you about a
| bunch of things going on that you had no clue about (and
| when you look up the stuff afterward, at least 90% of
| it's pure bullshit) and you're going to get blank stares
| or hostility if you bring up any of a wide swath of
| current events that you assume _everyone_ knows about.
|
| You've gotta just roll with what they say and not do much
| talking, basically. You mustn't act surprised or
| incredulous when they make claims about things going on
| that you're _pretty sure_ aren 't real, you mustn't
| present counter-examples, you mustn't keep pushing if you
| try to broach a topic you assume is neutral and widely
| understood and they start to bristle at it.
| afpx wrote:
| Very true. I've found there's not much value in arguing
| or pointing out flaws anymore--it just leads into a
| rabbit hole. I used to do it, but over time realized
| they're mostly operating from emotion, not logic.
|
| It reminds me of that experiment where a part of the
| brain gets stimulated and the subject performs an
| involuntary action--then comes up with a logical
| explanation for why they did it, even though they didn't
| choose it. I think that's what's happening with a lot of
| these Trump supporters. They're reacting to environmental
| triggers without really understanding why. It's fair to
| say they're being driven by something external--though
| then you have to ask, what's driving that? Who's driving
| us?
|
| In the end, they're just human, like me or anyone else.
| We're all playing the Human game. No one's really 'awake'
| or enlightened. After talking to enough people, I'm
| convinced most 'truth' is concocted, and no one's
| actually in control. Truth lasts only as long as it's
| useful.
| somelamer567 wrote:
| The 'uniparty' narrative is straight out of Putin's
| propaganda playbook.
|
| The 'uniparty' narrative denigrates the Western system of
| multi-party representative democracy and checks and balances,
| and equates it with Putin's monstrously corrupt and brutal
| one-party state.
|
| Unfortunately these fascist narratives are extremely
| effective on underinformed and unintelligent people -- and
| our enemies know these people vote.
| afpx wrote:
| I don't think a lot of them view that as a bad thing. Some
| feel that 'American culture' is more closely aligned with
| 'Russian culture' than it is to 'Western systems culture'.
| Also, a surprising number describe themselves as 'Lincoln
| Republicans' and cite how Lincoln had to overstep his reach
| - to break the short-term rules to ensure survival of the
| Union.
|
| (Personally, I think they got played.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Some feel that 'American culture' is more closely
| aligned with 'Russian culture' than it is to 'Western
| systems culture'.
|
| Man, those guys are doomed. This is what they're aspiring
| to: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/apr/25/michael-alex...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Well, I hope they all discover the wonders of
| SIZO/pretrial detention very soon for themselves. Maybe
| we can rename Alaska New Vorkuta before we lease it back
| to Putin.
| lif wrote:
| Unlike you, I do not have access to that playbook you
| mention, however I do wonder about:
|
| why are there are a great many democratic nations with
| (many) more than two parties, even with new parties arising
| and old parties diminishing. (I have firsthand experience
| with some of them. I highly recommend the experience.)
|
| Is it wrong to 'intuit' that those nations may have a more
| vibrant democracy than a system of two parties that are
| both beholden to corporate capture?
|
| Of course I will not be surprised at how asking this on HN
| will affect the scrip - oops I meant to say karma of
| course! - of such an inquirer as myself.
| MandieD wrote:
| I'll bite.
|
| It's the US electoral system; each seat is individually
| elected, and the presidency is determined on a state-by-
| state basis, negating the votes of most of the country.
|
| For contrast, take Germany. Its national parliament, the
| Bundestag, is the rough equivalent of the House of
| Representatives. It has 630 seats for 1/4 the US's
| population. Half of those are directly elected by
| geographical areas in first past the post voting, but the
| other half are proportionally assigned to the parties
| according to the "second vote", on a statewide basis. As
| a voter, you might or might not vote strategically for
| your direct representative, but the second vote is where
| you can vote your heart. The state-level parties come up
| with ordered lists of potential members to seat, and
| however many seats they get for that state is how far
| down their list they count. The caveat is that these
| proportional seats are only awarded if a party gets more
| than 5% of the vote nationally. This most recent
| election, we came within a few thousand votes of another
| new party getting added to the mix, and the CDU/CSU + SPD
| coalition not having a majority between them, and that
| would have been an even bigger mess. The FDP, the party
| that broke the last coalition and caused this election to
| happen early did even worse, and lost all of its seats,
| which I think is hilarious.
|
| This all resulted in the CDU/CSU (center-
| right/conservative) getting the largest number of seats,
| the AfD (far right) getting the next (almost all from the
| former East German states), followed closely by the SPD
| (center-left), then the Greens and die Linke (leftists).
| The CDU/CSU has enough people in their leadership who
| remember what happened the last time conservative and
| centrist parties played ball with a far-right party
| (those parties no longer exist), so skipped over the AfD
| and instead negotiated a coalition contract with the SPD
| as the junior partner, whose membership recently voted to
| accept it (we'd have been complete idiots not to, and
| happily, 85% of the party are not complete idiots). The
| CDU/CSU and SPD don't love having to be in a coalition
| together, but have done this before and The Recent
| Unpleasantness Across The Atlantic has got a lot of
| people thinking a bit beyond their usual petty concerns.
|
| So German voters appeared, on average, to want a center-
| right government, and that is essentially what they're
| getting. I say "they," because I'm not (yet) a German
| citizen, but the SPD's rules allow me to be a member and
| vote on things like candidate slates and coalition
| agreements. The Chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, who is
| the leader of the party that got the most seats
| (CDU/CSU). He is very boring, which is delightful.
|
| There is a kind of senate (Bundesrat), directly chosen by
| the state parliaments (I think), but even that is
| somewhat related to population - Nordrhein-Westfalen and
| Bayern have more members than, say, Saarland and Bremen.
| I don't hear much about them, so I think they're mostly a
| veto on the Bundestag. Oh, and they pick the President,
| which is an almost 100% ceremonial position.
|
| This electoral system made being a Green supporter in the
| 1980s if you were otherwise an unenthusiastic SPD voter
| who despised the CDU (CSU if you're in Bavaria) something
| other than a de facto vote for the CDU/CSU. It also let
| the far right corral itself into the AfD instead of
| taking over the major conservative party, as happened in
| the US.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| If they think both parties are the same or working together
| why do they exclusively vote Republican?
|
| >They would rather be inefficient and hold on to their
| identity
|
| What identity?
| Izkata wrote:
| > If they think both parties are the same or working
| together why do they exclusively vote Republican?
|
| They don't. A large chunk of them were Bernie Bros before
| he dropped out of the 2016 election.
| xnx wrote:
| The long-term gain might be that this administration so
| significantly craters the economy and is so obviously
| responsible that enough voters recognize vote out enough of
| these clowns and accomplices to enact real useful reform
| (gerrymandering, electoral college, senate, filibuster, tax
| law, etc.)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| > (gerrymandering, electoral college, senate, filibuster, tax
| law, etc.)
|
| Open a news website. Several news websites. Turn on the TV.
| Talk to some people about politics. How often do those topics
| come up?
| akmarinov wrote:
| When it all crashes and burns, people would wonder how they
| got to that point
| xnx wrote:
| I agree. They definitely don't come up (or campaign finance
| reform). I wouldn't suggest a candidate run on those issues
| (a better platform would be anti-chaos), but responsible
| politicians might be able to enact them once elected.
| nine_k wrote:
| /* TV is like twitter: in order to preserve one's sanity,
| it's best to never use it, except for highly technical
| things like weather forecast or watching sports live.
| Despite that, it's the pastime of hundreds of millions. */
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Yuuuup. About half of voters don't even understand how
| marginal income tax rates work, _that_ is how little they
| know what 's going on and how anything at all works in the
| mysterious and confusing world around them, and a lot more
| are barely better off than that. Worrying about
| gerrymandering et c. is nerd shit, most people don't know a
| thing about it. They're more likely to, literally, vote on
| whether general _vibes_ are currently good or bad than to
| give any fucks about specific policies like that.
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169446/d
| e...
| rini17 wrote:
| It's not completely up to voters, it also requires credible
| third party to exist and gain traction. Because both
| Republicans and Democrats seem incapable of such reforms.
| SR2Z wrote:
| Democrats have instituted independent redistricting
| commissions, finance transparency laws, the popular vote
| compact, and many others.
|
| Do not imply that both parties are the same on this. That
| is factually incorrect and Democrats have repeatedly
| demonstrated an interest in improving democracy.
|
| The GOP, on the other hand, is cheering Trump on as he
| arrests judges and ignores due process.
| lesuorac wrote:
| They are the same on boxing out third parties.
|
| While Democrats don't like losing to Republicans they
| also don't like losing to a third party. Elected
| Democrats oppose any system that modifies the status quo
| that "correctly" elected them.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| They are not. Some form of non-first-past-the-post
| election system is necessary for any third party to
| become viable. Democrats pushed for Ranked Choice Voting
| in Maine and Alaska. Republicans have been trying to
| repeal both since implementation, and now have proposed a
| federal ban on RCV.
|
| These are not the same.
| pxx wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Hare/Instant Runoff voting
| (deceivingly marketed as "ranked-choice voting" in the
| US) neither empirically [0] nor theoretically [1]
| improves the viability of third parties.
|
| Honestly IRV is worse than plurality so there are plenty
| of reasons to oppose it other than a two-party domination
| conspiracy theory. Using IRV gives up monotonicity,
| possibilities for a distributed count, and some elements
| of a secret ballot (for even a medium-sized candidate
| list) for basically nothing.
|
| Monotonicity is not a theoretical concern. Alaska almost
| immediately ran into a degenerate case [2].
|
| [0] https://rangevoting.org/NoIrv.html
|
| [1] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-
| large_congr...
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| I would be happy to support literally any alternative
| voting scheme, but the context of this thread is
| actually-existing American democracy.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Alaska almost immediately ran into a degenerate case
| [2].
|
| And probably without even trying. Once it becomes better
| known, gaming the system like this will happen more
| often.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I'm not a huge IRV fan or anything but I don't find
| rangevoting.org to be all that convincing from a US
| perspective. Most of their references and stats are two
| decades old or non-existent (e.g. no reference for 80-95%
| of AUS voters use the NES strategy). Their primary real
| world evidence is from Australia and Ireland, where
| independents and third parties currently make up 17% and
| 47%(!!!) of their parliaments. In the US that number is
| 0.3% and effectively 0% given how closely Bernie Sanders
| and Angus King caucus with dems.
|
| Range voting may well be much better, and there are
| certainly more mathematically sound versions of ranked-
| choice than IRV, but I think they utterly fail to
| convince that IRV is just as bad as plurality. They also
| seem to only take their game theory as far as necessary
| to reflect Range Voting in the best possible light. For
| instance, they argue that voters will almost always rank
| their less preferred of the front-runners last even if
| they have greater opposition to other candidates, but
| they don't explore that candidates can and do chase
| higher rankings among voters that won't rank them #1.
| It's an obvious and common strategy (candidates were
| already doing it in my counties first ever RCV election)
| so I can only assume the reason its not mentioned is that
| it improves the soundness of RCV in practice.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Yeah, Ireland doesn't use IRV for parliament.
|
| Their link is referring to the Irish _presidential_
| election, which does use IRV--but it's a meaningless
| figurehead position, so it's unclear how relevant the
| comparison is.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| That's a good point, I was grouping IRV and PR-STV when
| proportional representation isn't a guaranteed component
| of a ranked-choice system (though many of the dem
| implemented RCV systems do use it for things like county
| board or city council seats). Australia's House does use
| IRV and is at 12% (or 15% if you subtract two vacancies
| from the major parties).
|
| Also to note, there's nothing technically stopping the US
| House from moving to proportional representation along
| with ranked-choice and dems have proposed it recently: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Representation_Act_(Unit
| e...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Un
| ite...
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| I am a huge fan of proportional
| representation/multimember districts, but I think there
| are some valid arguments that they are not constitutional
| (and a lot of invalid arguments that may nonetheless
| carry the day--c'est la vie americaine).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Baker vs. Carr and equivalent decisions are a big problem
| V__ wrote:
| To make third parties viable would require to move away
| from "First-past-the-post", which is much more heavily
| opposed by the GOP then vice versa.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >They are the same on boxing out third parties.
|
| Because we have a two party system. Third parties are
| nothing more than spoilers. If their ideas were good
| enough, they could gain traction with one side or the
| other, and build a caucus to get their candidates
| elected. But they don't, because that's never the actual
| goal.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If their ideas were good enough, they could gain
| traction with one side or the other
|
| I don't see any reason to think this is accurate.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >I don't see any reason to think this is accurate.
|
| We are living through a successful attempt at this right
| now. The Tea Party completely engulfed what was once the
| GOP and morphed into MAGAism. Sadly the progressive wings
| of the Democratic party never got the memo, and wrote
| them off until it was too late.
| JohnFen wrote:
| How is that an example? That's assuming that the Tea
| Party has good ideas and that's why it was able to take
| over the Republicans. It may very well be that the Tea
| Party's success had nothing to do with the merit of their
| ideas and more to do with an expression of rage.
| tstrimple wrote:
| The Democratic party does its best to isolate their more
| "radical" voters and politicians and does whatever it can
| to try to appeal to whatever their consultants tell them
| the "median" voter is. The Republican party embraces its
| most crazy elements from the depths of Twitter and puts
| them on a national stage.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > Sadly the progressive wings of the Democratic party
| never got the memo, and wrote them off until it was too
| late.
|
| Eh? They've never meaningfully had control of the party,
| and are surely far more willing to e.g. abandon
| neoliberalism to avoid that handicap vs. a MAGA-ified
| Republican Party that's abandoned neoliberalism, than
| most of the rest of the Democratic Party is. It's the
| 3rd-way sorts and "centrists" who've been, and remained,
| in charge of setting direction and who've just kept on
| trucking with the "we mustn't upset the status quo!" and
| "maybe courting traditional Republicans will suddenly
| start working, so we should keep trying that" strategy,
| no?
| jkestner wrote:
| Maybe the fact that you haven't been exposed to the "good
| enough" third parties is an indictment of the current
| system of media gatekeeping.
| no_wizard wrote:
| In the age of the internet, I don't think its the media
| doing the gatekeeping. Arguably, exploitive social media
| algorithms have put a serious dampening on surfacing
| better information to the average citizen, because
| unfortunately thats were seemingly the majority of folks
| consume media, and that is optimized for what is
| effectively outrage, regardless of the platform.
|
| What we've lost is independent media having outlets to
| reach an audience. Pre proliferation of centralized
| social media platforms, it was easier to find independent
| voices on the internet through more de-centralized means.
| I remember coming across the works of Fredrich Hayek and
| Paul Krugman via the same message board in the early
| 2000s. Diversity of thought was at least respected, even
| if it got heated.
|
| I've noticed a steady decline in diversity of thought co-
| existing on the internet as general social media
| coalesced around Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Snapchat,
| Twitter and TikTok. Reddit has also had a slower but
| meaningful decline in the co-mingling of ideas on merits,
| and perhaps subjectively, I feel it took longer to get
| there but ultimately has ended up in the same place, an
| echo chamber.
|
| There was a time I remember, when progressive, liberal,
| and conservative people also could seem to agree on some
| baselines, like not enabling racists.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| That's structural. Our system stabilizes at two viable
| parties. For one of the two to encourage a third party,
| without changing the system first (which would likely
| mean constitutional amendments, so, will never happen)
| would be to invite the imminent destruction of one of the
| two existing parties--probably their own, if they're
| promoting parties at-all similar to theirs.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Democrats at state and local levels have implemented
| ranked choice voting in dozens of municipalities despite
| it being beneficial for intraparty challengers and 3rd
| party candidates. Republicans have preemptively banned it
| in 11 states.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-
| choice_voting_in_the_Un...
| grafmax wrote:
| Dems are the lesser of two evils. As long as we don't
| have ranked choice voting, which requires a
| constitutional amendment, we will continue to vote in the
| servants of the billionaire class. Next time around, it
| may be the servants of the liberal billionaires instead.
| The underlying reality is that wealth inequality is anti-
| democratic as it concentrates power in the hands of the
| few.
| brewdad wrote:
| If a third party ever truly gained traction on the
| national stage, what makes you think they won't be bought
| by the billionaire class? Musk basically bought the
| government purse strings for less than $300 million.
| That's pocket change for the truly wealthy.
| grafmax wrote:
| American society is in crisis and this crisis will likely
| continue to grow economically as well as due to larger
| effects on the horizon such as global warming. From a
| practical standpoint if we are serious about unseating
| the power of the billionaire class (which is highly
| realistic as society continues to self-destruct over the
| long horizon) things like ranked choice voting should
| serve as tactical goals in a broader struggle for
| democratic process in our country. But yes it would be
| naive to consider ranked choice voting to be enough on
| its own to unseat them.
| Izkata wrote:
| Ranked choice is a bad idea if gaming the system is any
| possibility. Approval voting gets you all the benefits
| ranked choice claims to have with none of the downsides,
| with the bonus that it's easy to explain to people.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| > As long as we don't have ranked choice voting
|
| Oops
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-
| bill/3040...
| breuleux wrote:
| > As long as we don't have ranked choice voting ... we
| will continue to vote in the servants of the billionaire
| class.
|
| I don't think RCV would do much to change that. In order
| to be elected, you need to be seen, so you need a
| sizeable media presence. The billionaire class controls
| enough of the media (traditional, social and
| "independent") that the people will keep voting for their
| servants under pretty much any voting system, bar a few
| exceptions here and there. It's a fundamental issue of
| electoral democracy, not of the voting system.
|
| One potential alternative would be to switch to non-
| electoral democracy, e.g. drawing representatives at
| random rather than electing them, but that's even less
| likely to happen, and it may end up having different
| problems. At least it'd suppress all the circus around
| elections and all that party nonsense, so there's that.
| timeon wrote:
| > third party
|
| If you had open system (not one or two-party system) there
| would be more than three parties.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| based on what we've seen with Brexit, I'm not hopeful about
| the ability of voters to analyze the results of their vote.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm interested in hearing more about this. In my news
| sphere, there was a lot of doom over Brexit, it happened,
| and then the story stopped. What's it like and why aren't
| people connecting the dots?
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| It has made it much more complex to operate across
| borders and may be gradually cooling the economy
| mandmandam wrote:
| Recent estimates put the losses at PS100bn/year so far
| [0].
|
| Long term, the estimate is a 15% hit to the economy.
|
| And only 12% of people think that it went well. (For
| reference, that's about the same proportion as 'Americans
| who believe shape-shifting lizards control politics, or
| aren't sure' [1].)
|
| In personal experience, my purchases of UK products have
| taken a massive drop.
|
| And that's not even mentioning the losses to the
| environment or human rights.. So... Not what _I_ would
| call a mixed bag. More like a deeply homogeneous bag.
|
| 0 - https://uk.news.yahoo.com/damning-statistics-reveal-
| true-cos...
|
| 1 - https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/...
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It was really, really bad if you were in tech or finance.
|
| Like, I worked for a few companies (I live in Ireland)
| who had moved their roles from the UK to Ireland because
| of it.
|
| More generally, it's just made life much harder for UK
| exporters, as they now have way more customs declarations
| and tariffs on both sides.
|
| The big thing for me (and lots of Irish people) was that
| we now avoid ordering from UK sites as it's likely to
| take longer and cost more.
|
| Overall, it's been bad and kneecapping your productive
| industries on the promise (not fulfilled) of reducing
| immigration seems to be a bad idea.
|
| That being said, the UK is still there, still a big
| market so it's more that they get less investment from
| multinationals than they otherwise would have, and their
| companies face much higher barriers to export.
|
| And the worst part was that the EU introduced checks on
| agriculture immediately, while the UK didn't which
| basically meant that EU farmers were much more
| competitive in the UK than UK farmers could be outside
| it.
|
| To be clear, Brexit could have been managed much better,
| but it was a bad idea executed poorly.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| I'm curious what the response is from folks who voted for
| it. Denial? Didn't go far enough? Resignation? Change of
| mind? Something else?
| sanderjd wrote:
| I honestly don't understand the comment that started this
| thread. Brexit eventually led to a historic defeat of the
| conservative party who was (rightly) blamed for it.
|
| I guess the original commenter may have been surprised
| how long it took for that reversal to come (and that it
| didn't happen until after Covid exacerbated everything).
| archagon wrote:
| And now Reform, headed by Mr. Brexit himself, is
| clobbering both Labour and Tories in the polls: https://e
| n.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next...
| sanderjd wrote:
| You tell me, but isn't this pretty noisy so soon after
| the last election?
| gadders wrote:
| There were a lot of regulatory change projects, that
| kicked over into technology, but not a lot of other
| impact (speaking as someone who works in banking).
|
| For me personally, nothing much really has changed. You
| can't bring as much wine back from France on holiday, and
| it is harder to take your pet to Europe.
|
| The UK economy is shite, but it's not a significant
| outlier amongst other EU countries.
| youngtaff wrote:
| > There were a lot of regulatory change projects, that
| kicked over into technology, but not a lot of other
| impact (speaking as someone who works in banking).
|
| There is a huge impact on people who export things like
| food to the extent that some of them have given up
| jillyboel wrote:
| I'm in the EU and used to occasionally order stuff from
| the UK. Haven't since brexit, way too expensive now.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| yeah I thought that back in 2007
| bsimpson wrote:
| I had hoped Trump getting elected the first time would
| trigger a wave of voter reform. Instead, it just made it
| trendy to be constantly apoplectic.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Why did you think this?
|
| I have a friend who voted for Trump because
| (paraphrasing) "he's different or we need to shake things
| up". Like our entire country is some game where the
| outcome doesn't affect people.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Everyone who thinks like you needs to watch this:
|
| https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4?si=u4qVgziq6QRLoyEM
| ferguess_k wrote:
| This gives me the thought that maybe some elites who back the
| current government are looking forward to making changes, but
| it is too risky for themselves to stand up and make changes,
| so they push out Trump to make a mess so they can be the hero
| correcting all of these, with much less resistance.
| axus wrote:
| If we're indulging in conspiracy theories, I can say those
| elites are Russian oligarchs. Anyone know if Trump watches
| RT International?
|
| I'd rather use the scientific method: make predictions, let
| the experiment run, and compare to the results. Predicting
| that the national debt ceiling will be raised or removed,
| taxes cut, labor unions attacked, and "elites" not
| correcting anything or being heroes.
| bongoman42 wrote:
| Democracy is the theory that common people know what they
| want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H L Mencken.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| The economy will tank, Democrats will get elected, then when
| it's not fixed in 6 months Republicans will blame them and
| their voters will eat it up
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is the least likely outcome. Voters are more like fans
| of a sports team. They stick with the team whether or not
| they're doing well or making good or bad decisions. My
| brother would stay an Eagles fan even if they lost every game
| they played and hired software engineers instead of football
| players to play.
|
| There are people who consider themselves 4th generation
| Republicans. It's passed down through their family like their
| religion.
|
| When (not if) the economy craters, each team's news bubble
| will spin it how they like, and ultimately both teams will
| keep doing the same things and voting the same way for the
| foreseeable future.
| xnx wrote:
| Good point. Less enthusiastic Trump voters may not vote for
| a Democrat, but they might also sit out a midterm election.
| Even diehard Eagles fans probably attend fewer games during
| a losing year.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > My brother would stay an Eagles fan even if they lost
| every game they played
|
| Are you sure? People often claim this, but don't follow
| through. There's even an expression, "fair weather fan".
|
| It's true some people seem to support some political
| parties beyond all reason. But to keep the support through
| personal hardship is different, and hasn't been tested as
| often. Worldwide, nothing particular to US.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If it was just politics, I'd agree with you. And I hate
| to be the "but this time it's different" guy, but I
| really think it is different this time. Trump is more of
| a religious figure than a politician. His fans literally
| (in the literal meaning of the word literally) _worship_
| him, and he can do no wrong in their eyes. People have
| made him their entire personality. My wife 's church
| sometimes spends more time talking about Trump than
| Jesus. In a religious context, personal hardship just
| strengthens their resolve and convinces them they're
| being persecuted for Knowing The Truth, just like
| debunking a conspiracy theory only serves to further
| convince the conspiracy theorist.
|
| America is getting less and less involved with
| traditional organized religion, and I honestly think this
| personality cult is taking a lot of its place.
| rwmurrayVT wrote:
| Check out the Cleveland Browns. They have packed crowds,
| endless merchandise sales, and full-throated support of
| their team even in light of gross mismanagement, sexual
| abusers, and more losses than wins.
|
| That story applies to both sides of the aisle in US
| Government. The battle is for the 1/3 that doesn't vote
| and the sliver of folks who switch back and forth.
| vkou wrote:
| The battle is mostly for getting your base to show up.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Have you checked out the other ample entertainment
| opportunities in Cleveland lately?
| Faark wrote:
| And the same will be said about election choices.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Cuyahoga County is Democratic. You are thinking of
| Mahoning County/Youngstown.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't have to look up their attendance to tell you that
| there are a lot of die hard fans. Look at any major
| sports team that is losing and you will still see a lot
| of fans at the game. I'd expect a 50k seat stadium to
| have 20k fans even when there is no possibility of making
| the playoffs and every seat full when they are likely to
| win. That is for any sport, football because they play so
| few games is likely to be closer to selling out even when
| the team is losing just because you if you can get in you
| go.
|
| Just fair weather fans exist. They are probably a
| majority. The minority that is die hard fans are still
| significant though.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Look at any major sports team that is losing and you
| will still see a lot of fans at the game.
|
| Arizona Coyotes?
|
| Not many fans in seats anymore.
| boogieknite wrote:
| fair weather fan is an insult used by fans to deride
| their own if they begin to waiver during the bad times
|
| go kings (sacramento)
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This is not every voter. For sure, there is the "4th
| generation Republican" or the "vote blue no matter who"
| crowd. But ~40 percent of the electorate considers
| themselves independent. I can speak from experience having
| folks who were registered GOP up until 2016, and then who
| started voting Democrat or third-party out of utter disgust
| with Trump.
|
| That will only intensify if his policies go and tube the
| economy; the reason he got re-elected was because enough
| people wanted the 2019 economy back and thought his
| policies would do it better than Harris's.
| cafard wrote:
| And there are people who love to use the term RINO who
| belong to what is essentially a re-badged Dixiecrat Party.
| Trent Lott, at the time head of the Republican Senate
| caucus badly embarrassed himself by letting people hear him
| say that Strom Thurmond was right in 1948.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This is a reasonable theory, but empirically we are
| _already_ seeing a lot of defection from the "team",
| before the real pain has even begun.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| There's a reason why Communist revolutions had a vanguard
| and political prisons.
|
| It wasn't because they're ontologically evil. It's because
| order is a very delicate thing. As we've seen, it's
| incredibly easy to espouse reactionary sentiments and get a
| lot of people supporting things out of misplaced fear.
|
| If for example you're trying to build a social/political
| project based on dialectical materialism, a particularly
| enigmatic liar is like a fire in a barn. You can't
| "Marketplace of ideas" your way out of a liar who serves to
| benefit off their lies.
|
| So what do you do? You throw them in the gulag, shoot em,
| put them to work, put them into reeducation. One liar isn't
| worth sacrificing the project as a whole.
|
| Cuba reached near 100% literacy, eradicated parasites in
| children, and took the mob bosses who ran the country out
| of power. Of course they had to show no mercy to the bay-
| of-pigs types. The people who benefited when children had
| feet full of worms and the laborers couldn't read. They
| were a fire hazard.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Even with sports teams it's only the most hardcore fans who
| keep coming to games after years of losing. Try buying NBA
| tickets for a successful team vs a losing one.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| When the voters turn on Trump, they will _not_ adopt the pet
| causes of either you or me...
| brewdad wrote:
| Good luck. Jan 29th Trump took full credit for a roaring
| stock market. Today's decline is Biden's fault somehow. 30%
| of the country (at least) will believe this with not a single
| thought as to whether it makes sense.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Assuming that voting is still a thing, too many people
| haven't yet understood where this administration is going.
| fundad wrote:
| Yeah that's what scares me. They are breaking laws AND
| lower living standards as if they won't have to run for
| reelection (or accept electoral loss) ever again.
| pc86 wrote:
| Gerrymandering is at the state level. The electoral college
| is in the Constitution.
|
| What does "senate reform" mean other than filibuster reform,
| which if you ask anyone who has studied government will tell
| you is an intentional design decision for a more deliberative
| body. "Pass laws quickly" is, depending on who you ask,
| either not the right thing you want to optimize for, or the
| exact opposite of what you want.
|
| "Tax law reform" okay great but that's going to mean 15
| different things to 10 different people.
| cyberax wrote:
| The Senate _itself_ is gerrymandering on the national
| level.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That's mixing up "gerrymandering" with "wildly
| disproportionate representation to certain states because
| of a join-up bribe from 237 years ago". Nobody's
| redrawing the lines, and in a way that's part of the
| problem.
|
| The former is much shorter to say, but... not really
| accurate.
|
| Tangential gripe: Anyone who says it's "to protect the
| rural areas" or whatever is talking nonsense. The greater
| NYC area could legally convert to ~14 new states, and all
| those very-urban voters would reap the same kind of
| unfair benefits that Wyoming does with the equivalent
| population.
| xnx wrote:
| > What does "senate reform" mean other than filibuster
| reform
|
| Along with more conventional and familiar ideas, I like to
| toss in the occasional radical one like "abolish the
| senate" to stretch people's minds a little.
| opo wrote:
| >"Pass laws quickly" is, depending on who you ask, either
| not the right thing you want to optimize for, or the exact
| opposite of what you want.
|
| Opinions on the filibuster are often also time dependent.
| If the person's preferred party has a majority in the
| Senate, then the filibuster is called an evil relic of the
| past that should be removed. If the other party has a
| majority, the filibuster is a sacred part of democracy and
| must not be touched.
| Theodores wrote:
| Brexit was similar. What amazed me about Brexit was how
| nobody that voted for it cheered when it came in.
|
| Next, I was amazed at a lack of coordinated opposition.
| Nobody joined the barricades, there was no unrest, no
| opposition party garnered votes.
|
| Biggest take away was that life went on. There was no
| shortage of goods on the shelves and nobody cared that the
| pound lost 25 percent or so.
|
| From Brexit, I anticipate much the same in America, for the
| economy to linger on due to generational wealth, with people
| just getting on with it.
|
| The pricing due to tariff taxes will also be easier to absorb
| than what people think.
|
| Imagine a finished good such as a bicycle, imported from
| China. Retail margins are not great for the retailer because
| they expect sales from accessories.
|
| If the bicycle costs USD 1000 at retail, what does it cost to
| the importer?
|
| The retailer buys the bike from a wholesaler for USD 500 and
| the wholesaler buys the bike from the distributor for USD
| 250. The distributor buys it from the importer for USD 125.
|
| Margins will be negotiated with volume and delivery
| schedules, but the bicycle, at import is only valued at 125,
| not 1000 in this simplified example.
|
| Lets assume the tariff works out so the importer has to pay
| 300 rather than 125 to get the bike out the port. Let's
| assume a 175 tariff fee. This can be passed down the chain
| much like how duty is charged on tobacco that gets imported.
|
| Hence the customer is paying 1175 for the 1000 bike, not
| 2450.
|
| The customer can buy a lower specification model of they
| don't like the price hike, or the retailer can shave their
| margins to gain market share, shift inventory and gain a
| customer. In time the price can creep up.
|
| If the tariffs were collected at Walmart rather than at the
| port then this means of handling the tariffs would not be
| possible.
|
| For a cycle manufacturer that owns the factory in China as
| well as the distribution chain to the customer, they could
| set up a shell company that imports the bicycle for a dollar,
| to then sell that bike to the retailer they own for proper
| money. The customer then pays the same 1000 with the 1.45
| absorbed.
|
| The company could also own a design office in the Chinese
| factory and sell their design consultancy services back to
| the US sales operation for millions, millions that won't be
| taxed as a tariff since it is a service, not goods.
|
| In this way the USD profits are repatriated with the factory.
| The factory sells it's goods almost for free. Next there is
| the problem of what to do with those dollars since the
| factory workers are paid in Yuan. Those dollars need to be
| sold or used to buy oil, rubber and other raw materials.
|
| This type of Hollywood accounting is standard for
| multinationals but beyond the reach of small businesses.
|
| Apple do this type of magic accounting, most famously in
| Ireland. Amazon use Luxembourg. So why the exemption for
| iPhones? Well, if Apple have to pay USD 2 in tariff taxes on
| a 1000 iPhone then that is a big deal to them. They were
| never going to have to charge 2450 for that same iPhone.
|
| Ideally a multinational makes a loss in the country of
| manufacture and a loss in the country of sale. This means
| minimum wages and no taxes paid. They then make billions in
| their chosen base for the shell company in the middle and use
| a tax haven to get the dollars out, which they then use to
| buy their own shares, thereby not paying dividends.
| mrcrumb1 wrote:
| Doesn't this analysis kind of break down if all of a sudden
| the domestically produced products shoot up in price
| because all of the components and raw materials are now
| subject to large tariffs? Suddenly there is a lot more room
| for profit if the prices of your competition goes up.
| Theodores wrote:
| Yes, for domestic manufacturers. To go with the bicycle
| example, you could assemble bicycles in the USA for a
| specific niche, maybe cargo bikes or tricycles for the
| mobility impaired. The frame, wheels, tyres, brakes,
| gears, seats and other parts would be imported with
| tariffs paid. There would be several suppliers and
| limited options for Hollywood accounting.
|
| Most of the costs would be in assembly, marketing,
| retail, shipping and sorting forth, so there would be
| just the imported parts to get the tariff tax, but you
| could just pass those costs on, for the customer to
| choose a lower specification model of they can't afford
| the product.
|
| Some easier components could be sourced from the USA, for
| example, the handlebars are just a bent tube, so why get
| a Chinese person to make it? However, the aluminium for
| that tube will be taxed with a tariff so it is unlikely
| that a guy down the road will step up to make these
| things.
|
| As mentioned, it will be like Brexit, the worst fears
| won't materialise, people will still be eating food and
| everyone will just become a lot poorer with a stagnant
| economy.
|
| With Brexit the little guy stopped selling to Europe but
| the multinational didn't skip a beat.
| blibble wrote:
| > Brexit was similar. What amazed me about Brexit was how
| nobody that voted for it cheered when it came in.
|
| this is in indication you live in a bubble
|
| I know plenty of people that were watching the clock
|
| some were very unhappy, some were jubilant, but most were
| completely indifferent
| eutropia wrote:
| > Hence the customer is paying 1175 for the 1000 bike, not
| 2450.
|
| No, all of these business rely on percentage margins to
| stay cashflow positive, not absolute revenue. It's possible
| that a few companies will absorb a small amount of the
| percentage, and result in it costing 2200 or something, but
| the tariff is not like VAT, it won't get "tacked on at the
| end", because each step in the chain depends on economies
| of scale that in turn depend on demand that are sensitive
| to price. Price going up decreases sales, which incurs
| additional overhead per sale, etc. Businesses are not going
| to give up their net margin for free, they'll only do it if
| it's the least bad way to address the shortfall of sales as
| a result of price increases.
| Theodores wrote:
| You are correct in that it is all based on margins. I am
| used to the UK where there is VAT, plus multiple steps in
| an import chain, from importer, distributor, wholesaler
| and retailer. With some brands the importer is the
| distributor, sometimes the distributor is the wholesaler
| and sometimes the wholesaler is the retailer. Supply
| chains depend on the product to some extent and if the
| product is exclusive to a given supplier.
|
| In B2B there is typically a doubling of price at each
| step so the 'trade price' appears incredibly cheap to a
| customer, yet that is a multiple of the import price.
|
| Each step has its own risks and overheads so it is not
| greedy to have these markups.
|
| B2B customers are in a strong position to negotiate
| prices and B2B sales staff know their customers well. It
| is therefore entirely possible for costs due to tariffs
| to be passed down the chain without everyone doubling
| that tariff tax at every stage. There is no incentive to
| do so, or for those costs to be absorbed.
|
| What I am saying is that it works more like a customs
| duty rather than a simple price hike.
|
| Wait for the panic to die down and see how this happens.
|
| Two observations, much like Brexit, life goes on, shops
| are full and people still eat. Then, as for the vast
| bounty that the guy in the White House expects to raise,
| there is very little and no cash windfall arrives.
|
| Clearly some products are more complex than others, I
| only really know typical e-commerce stuff, not
| automobiles that go across the Mexican border three times
| as they get assembled.
|
| I have noted that the media has mom and pop entrepreneurs
| importing things such as plastic spoons for autistic
| pigeons to clean their ears with or diapers for left
| handed crypto-bros, where they are going to be exposed to
| the tariffs bigly. The media have not had typical medium
| sized retail businesses that buy goods from wholesalers
| that deal with distribution companies.
|
| I am no fan of the tariffs or the orange man but I did
| live through Brexit and have my reasons not to go into
| panic mode.
|
| I also think historical comparisons to tariffs a century
| or more ago are not helpful as the distribution chain has
| evolved over time. In these distant times a tariff would
| act like a customs duty on tobacco or alcohol.
| joshstrange wrote:
| "I am not an economist"
|
| But from what I've read/heard/understand tariffs can have the
| effect of on-shoring but only if they are fixed an unlikely to
| change/fluctuate. On-shoring production is not quick. Some
| Trump rep made a comment about how they delayed the tariffs on
| phones/computers 3 months because "Companies would need time to
| move production" which is just laughable, as if anyone could
| move production in 3 months (let alone 3 years).
|
| None of it matters since the Trump admin changes its mind like
| it changes its socks. No serious company is going to do more
| that PR about how they are moving production back to the US
| because they can very easily get burned when Trump changes his
| mind. Moving production is a massive task and getting caught
| half-way through with policy changing (making it no longer
| profitable) could be a death blow to some companies.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| From an economic standpoint, completely free trade is best.
| From a national interest standpoint, the more key industries
| that are local, the better. The more inefficient, the more
| employment. And yes... that means higher prices for most
| everything.
| cjfd wrote:
| So, a reasonable middle ground is what is needed. A country
| should not have so much outsourced that it is extremely
| vulnerable to supply chain problems. And a country should
| also not have so much local production that it is inefficient
| and poor. I think that tariffs have a role to play here but,
| obviously, they should not be ridiculous like the Trump
| tariffs. They should be a lot more predictable and if tariffs
| are adjusted they should change slowly over time to not cause
| economic disruptions.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Since there is no way for the US to compete based on cost
| or capacity (we just don't have the workforce numbers) with
| China, then the only other option is to force domestic
| supply chains to spring up through restrictions.
|
| I think we should do pretty much exactly what China does:
|
| 1.) you want to sell a product to the US? You have to
| produce it here and the facility must be partially owned by
| a US company. Also you must transfer IP.
|
| 2.) Since we can't get away with massive forced and/or
| slave labor (legally), then create a new visa class for
| temporary workers that is excluded from minimum wage,
| worker protections, social security, etc. (yes, basically a
| slave class)
|
| Once we build capacity and knowledge back, then start shift
| back to a more domestic workforce.
|
| Very very nasty... but doable. The other option is to just
| nuke China.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I suppose those U Chicago economists who proposed
| adopting an immigrant, might be onto something in this
| climate.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > slave class
|
| > other option is to just nuke
|
| Ah yes the two choices americans have in their lives...
| enslave someone, or genocide someone. From the 1500s to
| the 2000s, some things don't change. Some even call it
| american ingenuity :-)
| cloverich wrote:
| This line of thinking IMHO requires strategic tarrifs. I
| think many people on both sides would (did, under Bidens last
| term?) support tariff's for national security. The reason
| blanket tariffs are a bad strategy here, even if they also
| cover the national security aspects, is because the voting
| population doesn't like prices to rise across the board, and
| will nearly 100% vote out whoever implements them, with the
| aim of supporting someone who claims they will reverse the
| policy.
| toss1 wrote:
| There is a reason high tariffs are only implemented after very
| long, multi-generational intervals, e.g., 1820s, 1890s, 1930s,
| 2020s.
|
| The consequences are so bad that everyone who remembers the
| disasters brought on by high tariffs must be dead for anyone to
| think it is a good idea.
|
| So, even if the purported goals are good, even achieving them
| will be outweighed by the disaster.
|
| Plus, companies in countries protected by high tariffs
| inevitably become globally uncompetitive.
|
| Edit, add: Even worse, most high tariff schemes have
| distinguished between placing the high tariffs on only finished
| goods and exempting the raw materials or components from the
| tariffs. This administration makes almost no such distinctions,
| just sprays tariffs everything, so harms US manufacturers as
| well. The only exemptions are the ones who pay tribute (e.g.,
| sponsoring inauguration, etc.), so it is almost more of an
| extortion scheme than a tariff plan. A particularly bad example
| was revealed as the Japanese delegation came to negotiate,
| asked what concessions the US wanted, and could get no straight
| answer [0]. It seems the US group just expects the tariffed
| nations to supplicate and bring adequate gifts, not make
| adjustments according to a master plan. Very strong indication
| there is no plan, which is the worst possible case.
|
| So, while I completely agree with the concept of looking for a
| silver lining, I'm not seeing any...
|
| [0] https://petapixel.com/2025/04/21/japan-cant-get-an-answer-
| on...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >There is a reason high tariffs are only implemented after
| very long, multi-generational intervals, e.g., 1820s, 1890s,
| 1930s, 2020s.
|
| You need to read more history. The link between tariffs, or
| any specific federal policy, and how a time period looks to
| the next generations is iffy at best and probably not really
| correlated much or at all.
|
| The 1820s-40s were looked upon by following generations the
| way many look at the 1950s today. From the POV of the mid to
| late 1800s it was seen as uncomplicated and peaceful because
| the tension and strife leading up to the civil war and the
| cultural messiness that followed had yet to build. From the
| POV of the industrial economy of the late 1800s and early
| 1900s it was seen the same way but with a heavier emphasis on
| cleanliness and purity because even if you were nominally
| poorer and subject to more chance of starvation living and
| working on a farm you owned was arguably nicer than a
| tenement and factory you didn't.
|
| The 1890s on through the 1920s were also looked upon fondly
| by subsequent generations as a time of massive progress.
| Mechanical power via fossil fuels and steam became the norm,
| railroads were everywhere, factories sprung up, all manner of
| goods and services formerly reserved for the wealthy became
| the domain of the everyman.
|
| Obviously the 1930s don't get looked fondly upon and the jury
| is still out on the 2020s.
| dboreham wrote:
| Tay Bridge syndrome.
| evo_9 wrote:
| Kevin O'Leary, Aka Mr Wonderful, has appeared on CNN a number
| of times defending tariffs.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| I think of him more as an FTX Spokesperson and TV talking
| head who got absolutely wrecked playing Celebrity Jeopardy
| by... Aaron Rodgers.
|
| Not exactly an economist of note.
| massysett wrote:
| I wouldn't measure much by someone's ability at Jeopardy.
| It's called trivia because it's trivial.
| breadwinner wrote:
| ...against China specifically. He appeared to be more anti-
| China (because of IP theft and so on), than pro-tariffs.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Hi, studying economics :)
|
| The issue is that labor productivity (level of tech) in
| American mfg hasn't broadly increased at the rate we'd need to
| manufacture many things at reasonable prices for the American
| consumer. This makes Baumol's cost disease a huge issue:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect You can see this
| manifest in healthcare as one of the most egregious examples;
| the top cause of margin pressure for hospitals is labor:
| https://www.hfma.org/press-releases/health-systems-near-
| thei....
|
| While we can still manufacture things that require
| comparatively high levels of skill, technology, and capex, it's
| never again (absent a depression greatly outstripping the
| 1930s) going to be profitable to pay American workers to make
| t-shirts rather than Bangladeshis.
|
| There's a good argument to be made that a combination of
| outsourcing and illegal labor caused problems by suppressing
| investment in tech and automation for thirty years plus, and
| there _are_ certain things we probably _should_ make here. But
| ultimately the stuff we actually need to manufacture are things
| core to sustaining life and the military. Medical supplies,
| weapons, food, oil, metals, chemicals, etc.
|
| We can, with time and good industrial policy, bring back some
| manufacturing. That _would_ be a case of short-term pain for
| long-term benefit. But even then, that 's true only insofar as
| we give people a shot to actually buy American. Moonshot
| investments in roboticization and industrial automation for a
| few years would really make this easier, along with using the
| huge amount of post-HS education dollars we spend to focus on
| training skilled engineers to implement this sort of thing,
| along with things like skilled machinists. But these tariffs
| don't really give American companies a shot.
|
| We cannot, with any reasonably-good outcome, bring back
| manufacturing _jobs_. That midwest factory worker is never
| going to be paid $30 /hour plus pension/retirement
| contributions, good medical, etc. to make regular, el cheapo
| consumer goods.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _factory worker is never going to be paid $30 /hour plus
| pension/retirement contributions, good medical, etc. to make
| regular, el cheapo consumer goods_
|
| Well, this is possible, but it will take very few workers to
| produce the huge amount of goods to make it profitable. Case
| in point: e.g. a Novo Nordisk factory that produces like half
| of the EU supply of insulin employs like 15 workers per
| shift, who mostly oversee automation at work, handle incoming
| / outgoing trucks, and ensure physical security of the plant.
|
| It's the same thing that happened to the US agriculture: in
| 1800, it used to employ like 80% of the population, in 2000,
| 2% to 3%. Machines replaced human labor almost fully.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Sorry, to clarify: by "factory worker" I'm referring to the
| pre-offshoring state of your typical American factory job.
| A skilled employee who's closer to a plant operator and
| troubleshooter than an assembly-line drone is, of course,
| another case and can make very good wages.
|
| Your parallel to ag is a good one: it's something we need
| to be here, and we wisely embraced automation to ensure 1.
| we could do it even in wartime, when our male population is
| needed elsewhere, and 2. that we could produce in a way
| that cost little for the average consumer and the export
| market. We need the same thing to happen here.
|
| I mentioned the "factory jobs aren't coming back" point
| more because Trump is playing hard to a rust-belt base that
| wants those jobs back, doing this in some ways as a hand-
| out.
| nine_k wrote:
| Absolutely. A factory worker doing something that a
| Bangladeshi factory worker is doing (expertly but
| manually sewing garments or shoes) can only make
| comparably much to the Bangladeshi worker, and would need
| to survive in comparable conditions, unable to afford
| more.
|
| Places like Bangladesh are experiencing the industrial
| revolution; to remember what it looked like in England,
| read some Dickens (or even K. Marx, haha); for the US,
| read some Mark Twain or Theodore Dreiser. It was bleak.
|
| The paradise of 1950s, when a Ford factory worker could
| be the only breadwinner in a middle-class family, was
| only possible because most of the rest of the world was
| devastated by WWII, from which the US emerged relatively
| unscathed.
| greybox wrote:
| > only possible because most of the rest of the world was
| devastated by WWII
|
| Maybe this is the situation the Trump administration is
| striving for
| wbl wrote:
| Recombinant insulin is exactly the kind of high value IP
| the US excels in producing.
| acdha wrote:
| Historically, yes. The arson performed on our research
| funding puts that at risk for anything which isn't
| already clearly close to commercially viable.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I generally agree with everything you're positing here,
| except for this...
|
| > the top cause of margin pressure for hospitals is labor
|
| While it's true that the highest cost to _hospitals_ is
| labor, the highest cost to _consumers_ is insurance company
| bureaucracy.
| jf22 wrote:
| Is it? I know insurance bureaucracy has overhead but is it
| more than personnel or materials?
| energy123 wrote:
| Is it?
|
| https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/insurance-companies-arent-
| the-...
| jimbokun wrote:
| What is the dollar amount for each component?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Any casual glance at the finances of a health insurance
| company will quickly throw cold water on the "health
| insurance companies are greedy scamming dirt bags"
|
| Then go look at the finances of those who take in insurance
| money.
|
| Trust me, it's _very_ (read: very) clear who holds all the
| bargaining power in the healthcare market. People target
| their anger at insurance companies because that is who they
| pay. "My healthcare provider is good and my health
| insurance is evil" is exactly backwards. You are not the
| one paying $400 for your "I have a head cold" virtual
| visit.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > You are not the one paying $400 for your "I have a head
| cold" virtual visit.
|
| Provided you pay for your insurance, in all likelihood
| you already have.
| _bin_ wrote:
| The data don't bear this out. Insurance companies do
| represent some level of inefficiency and are easy
| scapegoats, but saying this only prevents people from
| better identifying and fixing actual cost centers. Here's a
| good breakdown of contributions to total national health
| expenditures by type in 2023:
| https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-
| spe...
|
| You'll notice that hospitals are the largest component.
| Physicans and clinics are also substantial. Insurance costs
| fall under "Other health", which includes "spending on
| durable and non-durable products; residential and personal
| care; administration; net health insurance; and other
| state, private, and federal expenditures."
|
| Drug costs, the other frequent alleged cause, are even
| smaller, representing less than a tenth of expenditures.
| Tallain wrote:
| If you go to the source of the data linked there --
| cms.gov -- you'll see that this is only one side of the
| equation: health spending by product.
|
| This explicitly does not include insurance costs.
|
| Private health insurance costs are covered by "healthcare
| spending by major sources of funds" and reached 1.5
| trillion, the same dollar amount as hospitals cost as a
| product group.
|
| https://www.cms.gov/files/document/highlights.pdf
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I agree with almost everything you said except there's one
| founding assumption that enables offshore manufacturing that
| you describe.
|
| And that is a secure seas. Well, I don't think piracy or u
| boat torpedoing and many other forms of threats to overseas
| trade is going to appear in the near future, I do think that
| overseas shipping is going to get less secure.
|
| China is exerting its "rights" in its near area seas and
| attempting to expand further. Ukraine has shown that capital
| naval vessels can be threatened with cheap drones. The red
| sea trade is being assaulted by Somali raiders and yemeni
| rebels armed with Iranian missiles.
|
| The other thing I think is missing from your analysis is that
| the cost of labor to business is laden with healthcare costs.
| And the US has the most expensive healthcare by far in the
| world. So perhaps a comprehensive universal healthcare system
| and reform of all the profit and rent seeking systems that
| are in the medical establishment in the United States would
| need to be reformed. Can't wait for that unicorn to fly.
|
| So again, while I agree with a lot of your analysis and it
| matches mainstream economic analysis, this mirrors a lot of
| my criticisms of economic analysis. It basically is a defense
| of capital interests and the rich, and strenuously avoids
| analyzing anything that doesn't serve those interests from a
| fundamental assumption standpoint.
| _bin_ wrote:
| This is a good point. Rep. Rogers' amendment to DOD for
| FY25, which just came out, includes:
|
| - $1.53B for expansion of small unmanned surface vessel
| production.
|
| - $1.8B for expansion of medium unmanned surface vessel
| production.
|
| - $1.3B for expansion of unmanned underwater production.
|
| - $188mm for development and testing of maritime robotic
| autonomous systems and enabling technologies.
|
| - $174mm for the development of a Test Resource Management
| Center robotic autonomous systems proving ground.
|
| - $250mm for development, production, and integration of
| wave-powered unmanned underwater vehicles.
|
| Perhaps less-safe seas will mean it's better to on-shore,
| but we do seem to be focused on keeping them secure. If
| nothing else, while America is more capable of autarky than
| most, we still pull a lot of critical minerals and other
| feedstocks from other places.
|
| The healthcare debate is really complicated. We do spend a
| ton, but we also demand an extraordinarily high standard of
| care. We don't tend to deny people anything and waitlists
| are very rare. Now while a universal healthcare policy is
| doable, a lot of Americans would demand some level of
| additional private care, which means net healthcare
| spending might rise between the two systems.
|
| I tend to hear arguments for universal healthcare like
| "negotiating drug prices". While that could save some
| money, we spend less than one-tenth of total dollars on
| prescription drugs. Hospitals are still the largest chunk
| at ~30%, and I'm unsure how universal care would
| realistically save us money there. Doctors/clinics are
| about 20%, and I don't see obvious savings there, either.
| "Other health" is opaque but there's potential for savings
| here; it includes "durable and non-durable products,
| residential and personal care, net health insurance, and
| other state, private, and federal expenditures."
|
| This is a very hard problem to solve, and is compounded by
| the fact that we have an incredibly unhealthy population. I
| also hesitate to attribute this to "lack of care": obesity
| is massively comorbid with heart disease (the leading cause
| of death in most states), diabetes (a large ongoing drain
| on the health system), and end-stage renal disease
| (dialysis accounts for ~2% of the _entire_ federal
| budget.). And yet, obesity is strongly prevalent in _every_
| income group, across men and women both.
|
| There are people who say we have a moral obligation to give
| free healthcare to everyone. I don't agree, but I
| understand that's moral position. But I am less sure that
| data bear out the idea that publicizing healthcare would
| magically save so many dollars.
|
| I'm not "avoiding" criticizing the rich or capitalism. I'm
| just not motivated by my personal morality to do so. I
| understand you and others are, and can respect that too,
| but these are two separate conversations: on one hand, what
| is practically right and wrong with the current policies?
| On the other, how ought we to act? The latter underlies the
| former and, if you want to criticize the former on grounds
| of the latter, you've got a long row to hoe. It's probably
| easier to segment practical discussions to one place and
| moral dialogue to another.
|
| Expenditure data:
| https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-
| spe...
|
| Obesity prevalence by income:
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db50.htm
| abtinf wrote:
| > it's never again going to be profitable to pay American
| workers to make t-shirts rather than Bangladeshis.
|
| Indeed, America is the world leader in manufacturing
| Bangladeshis ;)
| gadders wrote:
| >>But ultimately the stuff we actually need to manufacture
| are things core to sustaining life and the military. Medical
| supplies, weapons, food, oil, metals, chemicals, etc.
|
| Well and having chip fabs as well.
|
| More generally, though, there is another variable in-between
| wages and cost of products, and that is profits.
|
| Perhaps the likes of Apple, Amazon etc could maybe make do
| with a few less billion in profits.
|
| I read an article (in, I think the NYT) about how, prior to
| Jack Welch at GE, companies used to boast in their annual
| reports about how well paid their employees were. The only
| company I know of that does this now is CostCo.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Perhaps, but I do see this as a mostly-disconnected issue.
| Companies in China are extremely profit-seeking. We're
| talking about countries that run literal sweatshops, so
| let's stipulate worker's rights and living wages aren't
| high in their considerations.
|
| I agree that paying workers well is a good thing; I like
| that the advanced mfg model still allows people to give
| good salaries. But, I don't see how it's strongly tied to
| the issue of tariff policy in terms of economic outcomes.
| energy123 wrote:
| To emphasize, there's a massive difference between high-end
| manufacturing which is important for national security, and
| manufacturing of toys and t-shirts, especially in an economy
| with a low 4% unemployment. Those low-end manufacturing jobs
| can't come back to the US, and nor should any attempt be made
| to make that happen. Any industrial or trade policy that
| doesn't factor this in is not pareto optimal.
|
| Another thing to point out is that there's no national
| security justification for bringing back even high-end
| manufacturing from close allies like Canada.
|
| A good trade and industrial policy is one that tries to
| protect key industries _among allies_ instead of insisting on
| every single important industry being done locally.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Well, there are some that absolutely should be done
| locally. Supply chain risk goes up hugely during time of
| war. We are very good at protecting shipping lanes but not
| perfect. Canada is a fine place to leave things as she
| shares a land border with us; Europe, for some things, is
| not. Industries needn't be wholly relocated, but at least
| some level of manufacturing for many of those key areas
| must remain either in America or very close to us.
| treis wrote:
| Never is a long time. The more capital, skill, and energy
| intensive manufacturing becomes the more likely it will end
| up in the US. As an example, you don't want your 100 million
| dollar t-shirt making machine in Bangladesh. You want it in
| the US where you have 24/7 power, no risk of revolution,
| cheap capital, access to skilled labor and so on. You can
| take the $25 an hour hit to pay a US worker because it's
| practically nothing compared to the machine.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Absolutely. Right now, though, people haven't built nine-
| figure ultra-robotic t-shirt factories _because_ they can
| "cheat" around the issue of tech advancement and requisite
| R&D investment because they can just offshore to avoid
| spending that money. And, when that happens, it will employ
| a dozen people rather than hundreds or thousands.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think that even if tariffs were the solution this
| administration is not competent enough to make it work.
| mrangle wrote:
| The long term gain is an attempt to turn an unsurviveable
| disaster into a survivable nightmare, economically speaking.
| pphysch wrote:
| I think it's the other way around.
| mrangle wrote:
| I know it's not.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I think this depends on what you mean by "American economic
| interests", ie top-line numbers or the economic future of
| individual Americans.
|
| I genuinely believe that this will be a decade long struggle to
| generate a long-term benefit to the American nation (ie, the
| average person) via tariffs as a tool of class warfare and
| economic restructuring. If you read around MAGA forums, you'll
| see this described as a "Mag7 problem, not a MAGA problem".
|
| But that may not be what you're asking.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Very few and here is why. Making structural changes to an
| economy requires a lot of investment. But tariffs reduce
| investment in two ways:
|
| 1. Tariffs directly take money out of the coffers of private
| companies and move it into the government. Private companies
| therefore have less money to invest.
|
| 2. Tariffs are a tax on economic activity and therefore
| suppress it. This causes companies to want to hold more cash
| and invest more conservatively. Major changes take appetite for
| risk, which tariffs reduce.
|
| In addition, the arbitrary, legally questionable way in which
| this particular set of tariffs has been imposed means they are
| not affecting long-term corporate planning. Instead most
| companies are seeking to just "wait them out" while issuing
| hollow press releases with big numbers they think the president
| wants to see.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Yes, factories do not teleport.
|
| Skilled and willing workers (except, ahem, Mexicans) don't
| grow on trees in a couple months.
|
| Motivation for companies to pay real wages to Americans
| doesn't exist
|
| Tariffs are a consumption tax that will probably be highly
| regressive.
|
| Honestly, it seems like the Trump administration thinks he's
| they're just playing a game of civilization or some other 4x
| game and just needs to adjust the slider for a couple cities
| in order to enact broad-scale production changes.
| AlexB138 wrote:
| There is also the fact that tariffs are protectionist and
| reduce competition in the market. It allows lesser products
| to succeed due to where they're made, rather than on the
| merit of the product. This inherently makes companies less
| competitive and less required to respond to consumer demand.
| That means long-term weakness and even less ability to
| compete.
| danaris wrote:
| It's important to be careful with value judgements like
| this.
|
| Tariffs allow _otherwise more expensive_ domestic products
| to compete against cheaper products from abroad.
|
| In and of itself, that says nothing about quality one way
| or another. In practice, it often means the opposite of
| what you suggest: domestic goods are often of higher
| quality, and/or are made by workers in better conditions,
| because of stricter laws here than in the places
| manufacturing has moved to. (And not by coincidence--the
| cheaper labor and looser laws are exactly _why_
| manufacturing moved to those places.)
|
| Of course, all of this only applies when tariffs are
| carefully considered, strategically applied, and left in
| place for a long and predictable length of time.
| packetlost wrote:
| This is the _theory_ behind tariffs when applied to
| specific industries or products because the tariff amount
| can be adjusted to suit the dynamics of that market. When
| applied broadly I can 't see how it won't just increase
| costs and create incentives to not compete on quality
| when you now are "the cheap option".
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Agreed, and tariffs are an impediment to specialization,
| which is the basis for innovation that drives long-term
| economic growth.
|
| Surgeons can push the limits of better and better surgery
| if they can spend their entire career focused on just that.
| If they're required to farm or sew clothes half of every
| day, they will not be able to advance surgery as far.
|
| The same specialization-driven innovation happens between
| companies who can trade freely, and between countries who
| can trade freely. Paul Krugman won a Nobel prize for
| exploring this idea.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You should probably tell the Soviet Union that who used
| to give graduate students at Tashkent State University a
| cotton picking quota albeit one much more lenient than
| the undergraduates
| abtinf wrote:
| 3. The net of trade and capital flows is zero. In other
| words, foreigners who export to America in exchange for
| dollars have to get rid of those dollars somehow. If they
| aren't buying American goods and services, their only option
| is to save/invest in America. Tariffs cut off this investment
| stream into America.
| sharemywin wrote:
| America's trade surplus in services rose to $293 billion in
| 2024, up 5% from 2023 and up 25% from 2022, according to
| Commerce Department data.
| op00to wrote:
| No, no one with a brain thinks that. Our economy is built on
| interconnected trade and cheap crap from developing economies.
| billy99k wrote:
| Yes. China already dropped some of their tariffs today. More to
| follow.
|
| The goal was never to bring manufacturing back to the US. It's
| to negotiate new tariffs.
|
| With China specifically, I could also see a deal that included
| stricter enforcement of US IP laws, which is definitely
| destroying businesses and the job loss that comes with it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Very clever 4D chess. But you wouldn't plan to make that come
| about by repeatedly punching yourself in the face, would you?
| Oh, and also punching all the allies you'd need to help you
| in the face too.
| timeon wrote:
| > The goal was never to bring manufacturing back to the US.
|
| It was or at least it was stated as goal. However the
| narratives changes quite often with these tariffs.
|
| > China already dropped some of their tariffs today.
|
| Such as?
| dboreham wrote:
| You won't find anyone because one of Trump's defining themes is
| to always do the opposite of what smart people say you should
| do (and meanwhile denigrate smart people as a class). So by
| definition whatever he is doing will only be supported by dumb
| people.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Curious if there is anyone here who genuinely sees this as
| short-term pain / long-term gain for American economic
| interests.
|
| I don't. I see this as the intentional razing of the US economy
| and interests.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| There is an old saying that a man lost his precious sword when
| sitting on a moving boat. Instead of jumping into the water, he
| simply left a mark on the side of the boat where presumably the
| sword slipped into the river. "What are you doing?", his
| friends asked curiously. The man replies, "Oh, I think it's too
| dangerous to get into the water right now, so I'll mark the
| place and get into the water when the boat arrives. It's
| safer!"
| bsimpson wrote:
| Jon Stewart talked a lot about this on Monday, both in his
| monologue and interview with Chris Hughes.
|
| If you were thoughtful about economic policy and truly believed
| a trade war was the solution, you'd prepare ahead of time (e.g.
| by stockpiling things like rare earth metals that are important
| to your economy and likely to be impacted by retaliatory
| tariffs).
|
| That they haven't done that is one more indicator that they are
| thoughtlessly winging this. Even if there's a solution that
| involves tariffs, that's not the play they're running.
| sam_goody wrote:
| I know nothing of economics, and am not trying to defend
| Trump's moves.
|
| But, it is possible that his policy of "do everything at
| once, without taking the time to do it right" is more
| reflective of his belief that whatever he tries [even just
| being president] will be fought, so his options [from his
| POV] are "do it now" or "don't do it at all", not "do it
| right".
|
| EDIT: Am willing to be learn, would the downvoters explain -
| do you disagree that this is his view? Or does his
| understanding not matter when he acts upon it?
| alextheparrot wrote:
| That's a premise that would make me consider the wiseness
| of my actions.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Have you listened to the guy talk? There isn't a
| comprehensible thought in there, and there hasn't been for
| years. He's old, older than Biden was when he started his
| term, and probably suffering from dementia.
|
| edit: The pro trump voting bloc showed up. Comment went
| from +2 to -3 in a minute. This chain will probably be
| flagged to death within the hour.
| thejazzman wrote:
| I used to believe this. Now I believe we're supposed to
| believe this, and continue ignoring how calculated this
| mess actually is... and it's always too late when enough
| people catch on :(
| jillyboel wrote:
| I'm sure there are competent people whispering evil
| things in his ear, he appears very easy to influence.
| Just look at how he keeps flip flopping on Ukraine every
| time he talks 1-on-1 with Zelenskyy versus when he gets
| back to being surrounded by his cronies.
|
| That doesn't make Trump any less demented.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _> I'm sure there are competent people whispering evil
| things in his ear_
|
| They have a guy who can make the stock go up or down with
| a tweet, and usually seems to agree with the last thing
| he's heard. It's not difficult to see how this could be
| exploited for financial gain.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| FWIW he seems to be losing this power. The last two weeks
| it feels like the market seems to be treating his
| emissions more like "whatever you say, old man" than it
| was last month.
|
| Now it's just about the concrete numbers and "wait and
| see." It all looks a lot higher right now than I imagine
| makes any sense, but you know what they say about the
| market and irrtionality...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some of that is the market doing the "la la la la la
| can't hear you!" thing, though. Which won't make the
| problem go away.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I suspect it's more... routing around the manipulation.
| If you have people basically obviously doing deliberate
| dump&pump&dump&pump loops... that only happens a few
| times before -- on the aggregate -- it gets averaged out
| by people figuring out that's what is happening.
|
| There's plenty of people who are like myself... moved
| into cash just before Stupid Day, and then have been
| buying red, selling green every time He has a Nocturnal
| Idiot Emission / Repent cycle. I made a little bit of
| money, which is better than losing it... and now I'm
| just... waiting. There's likely millions of people like
| this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some of both.
|
| JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon went from "get over it" to
| "oh fuck a recession" in a matter of weeks.
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/12/business/jamie-dimon-
| tariff-u...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Oh yeah for sure, I think we'll shortly hit the "... And
| Find Out" phase where the Reality TV Show becomes very
| unpleasant Reality
| bsimpson wrote:
| FWIW, Bill Maher met him, and said his public persona is
| an act.
| jillyboel wrote:
| This isn't even about how much of an asshole Trump is.
| It's about how he literally cannot string a sentence
| together.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not worth anything. I don't know where people get
| this idea that someone's "real" persona consists only of
| the things they say in intimate private settings. A guy
| who runs around saying things he knows aren't true and
| calling people names is a liar and a bully, even if he
| understands himself to be playing some kind of role or
| acts politely in 1:1 conversations with Bill Maher.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| It might be that his private persona is an act. Why is
| that not a possibility?
| echoangle wrote:
| Depending on the personae (is that a word?), it would be
| pretty clear, no? If one is really stupid and one is
| brilliant, how would the brilliant one be an act? If you
| can act brilliant, you are brilliant.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Trump seems to be a stupid person's ideal of what
| 'brilliance' is. So... his acting as brilliant _is_ their
| version of brilliant, regardless of anything else. He is
| their alternative fact.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Also the weakling's idea of tough guy and the poor guy's
| ideal of a rich man.
| overfeed wrote:
| > If you can act brilliant, you are
|
| Reminds me of a story told by someone who was an intern
| or assistant for a politician (or consultant?) way back
| in the day before social media. They recount their first
| experience watching the politician at a town hall - they
| were late and apologetic, and gave a speech that was
| funny, compelling and authentic and the crowd ate it up.
|
| They attended the next town hall, and the principal was
| late again, and proceeded to give the same speech, beat
| for beat. The same routine was repeated dozens more times
| at dozens of locations with different audiences, save for
| the politicians staff. In truth, the politician was not
| as funny or as sincere as the practiced speech and
| routine made them seem.
|
| All this to say; acting funny or brilliant behind closed
| doors without cameras rolling doesn't mean you actually
| are those things. It's easy to recycle the same schtick
| after years of honing it and figuring out what works and
| what doesn't, Trump has impeccable showman instincts.
| hectormalot wrote:
| The story is from a co-host with Boris Johnson for some
| award ceremony. It's a great read: https://m.facebook.com
| /story.php?story_fbid=2449074521979085...
|
| With Johnson I at least had the impression that he
| understood the showmanship aspect of it really well. Less
| so with Trump, at least it seems less polished.
| overfeed wrote:
| It indeed was Boris - thank you! It's weird to compare my
| faulty recollection to the actual account; only 2
| occasions narrated, not dozens - though it is implied,
| and the narrator wasn't an intern.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Bill Maher is a coward who is groveling because his
| personal sense of self-importance makes him believe he
| will end up in CECOT.
| cyberax wrote:
| Groucho Marx quote comes to mind: "He may look like an
| idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you.
| He really is an idiot."
| sam_goody wrote:
| I didn't say he is rational or even comprehensible - I
| said that he believes everyone is out to get him, and
| that explains the rushing way he acts.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| The only reason he was the least bit acceptable to begin
| with is that Biden was even older.
|
| But after Biden dropped out, nobody seemed to notice any
| more.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's because the GOP is mostly as bunch of greedy
| hypocrites who will say anything to gain power. They
| aren't actually thinking or using logic or acting in good
| faith.
| TylerE wrote:
| They're being fought because many of the things he has done
| are wildly unconstitutional.
| ipaddr wrote:
| He has to do everything at once because he is a lame duck
| president so that part makes sense. The conflicting
| messages sudden reversal of plans causes the biggest
| issues.
|
| Normally someone makes a case and tries to sell it to the
| public, congress. What's the purpose of tariffs to bring in
| income or to bring back jobs or to level trade agreements?
| You can't do all things at once and how does that work with
| other promises like lower prices. The lack of an overall
| plan is causing the issue.
|
| If you take immigration he has a plan and he stuck to it
| and those are where his highest approval numbers are.
| Imagine he one day opens the border another day closes it
| starts kicking out American families the next day invites
| the world back in. That's his trade policy.
|
| Get a solid plan, understand the downsides and if you can
| live with it stick with it and keep the personal insults
| out.
| triceratops wrote:
| > he is a lame duck president
|
| Doesn't his party control both houses of Congress?
| klipt wrote:
| Then why is he trying to rule 99% solo by executive order
| instead of working with congress to pass legislation?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| 1: I agree he should. Tariffs by presdential order is an
| obscene power for Congress to delegate.
|
| 2: What 10 democrats would work with Trump? It would be
| gridlock for four years (which is fine).
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Because he's a moron.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| They have majorities, but arguably to "control" Congress,
| you need 60 votes in the Senate, otherwise most
| legislation can be blocked by the filibuster.
|
| Do we love or hate kyrsten sinema for protecting the
| filibuster now?
| triceratops wrote:
| By that definition there hasn't been a non-lame-duck
| President since Obama for a few months in 2009.
| thowfaraway wrote:
| I'm just saying having a majority doesn't mean fully
| controlling congress. It has nothing to do with whether
| one is a lame duck.
|
| Also, posting limits are annoying as fuck.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Still hate her (but Harry Reid far more). The filibuster
| is why we are in this mess - we can't ever fix a problem.
| There will always be 41 Senators (often representing more
| cash and/or cows than people) to pass meaningful
| legislation.
| intended wrote:
| How is he a lame duck President??
|
| Hes the most powerful President America has seen in
| living memmory.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Or least-scrupulous, which looks similar in the short-
| term. :p
| bluGill wrote:
| He is no more powerful than any other president. He has
| been using his power more than others - and demonstrating
| why most don't use it (well some of the reasons, there
| are a lot of other reasons not to use power).
|
| However time is marching forward and as always happens
| other politicians are catching on - the house will be in
| full campaign mode in less than a year (except a few who
| retire - and the scary possibility that some have already
| lost a primary). 1/3 the senate is in the same situation.
| The 2026 election season is (as always) scaring a lot of
| politicians and in turn they will be trying to figure out
| what to do about it.
|
| I can't tell you what will be done about it. Each
| politicians will make their own decision behind closed
| doors. Each will be re-evaluating their decision as every
| poll and constitute letter comes in (not to mention other
| indicators like the economy). As a result he will be
| losing power as congress starts to worry about the effect
| of his actions.
| khalic wrote:
| Given how much soft power the US lost by defunding USAID
| and alienating its allies, he's actually the weakest
| president in a long time.
| kergonath wrote:
| The strongest president of the weakest USA. It's not
| mutually exclusive, there are lots of all-powerful
| dictators in tiny countries.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > He has to do everything at once because he is a lame
| duck president
|
| He is not. A President is a lame duck between the
| election of their successor and the end of their term,
| not at the beginning of their Constitutionally-final
| term.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| That's the traditional meaning, but also commonly used to
| refer to politicians who are term limited, and can't run
| again.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame_duck_(politics)#United
| _St...
|
| _A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen
| as a lame duck from early in the second term, since term
| limits prevent them from contesting re-election four
| years later._
| vkou wrote:
| He does not believe he can't run again, so it's a doubly
| inappropriate description.
| wombat-man wrote:
| And who will stop him from running again?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| How bad are the economy and midterms going to be? Will
| Republicans think that supporting a 3rd Trump term will
| be good for their own reelection prospects?
| goatlover wrote:
| Trump and Steve Bannon have talked about finding a way to
| run for a third term.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > Get a solid plan
|
| That is not the solution. In business yes, but for the
| president the answer is still NO.
|
| Presidents should be eliminated for writing executive
| orders. It should be a constitutional amendment if
| necessary. Everything the president wishes to order is
| either under the responsibility of the legislature or is
| already within the President's scope of responsibilities.
| bluGill wrote:
| Every president has used executive orders.
|
| However congress shouldn't have left something so
| important as tariffs up for modification by executive
| order.
| gadders wrote:
| It is also reflective of the fact that mid-terms are in 2
| years and election campaigning starts in 3. Even if you
| believe tariffs will work, there will be short term pain.
| Best to run through that now in the hope that economic
| indicators are improving come election time.
| chasd00 wrote:
| that's been my thought on the admin's motiviations, do
| the hard part now and hopefully ride the wave back up
| through the midterms. voters have a short memory.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sure, but what's going to cause a recovery from the
| Trump-cession we're about to enter? The pain is obvious,
| but where's the gain? America can't compete on cost with
| Chinese manufacturing, else it'd already be doing so, so
| you just end up with expensive "made in USA" stuff rather
| than cheap "made in China" stuff. The price hikes will be
| here to stay if that's the path we're going down.
|
| How do we get cheap fruit & veg in the winter when it's
| not growing season in the US? If we're not going to
| import it, then I guess we need to grow it here in
| hothouses, and that's not going to be cheap either.
|
| I'm guessing the midterms will be a bloodbath for the
| Republicans, and Trump is unlikely to care unless he
| takes his own 3rd term talk seriously.
| fizx wrote:
| If Trump believes that, it would reflect a complete lack of
| self-confidence in his negotiating skills.
| intended wrote:
| Your question: Is it possible. Answer: Anything is
| 'possible'.
|
| This is a sufficient question, and sufficient answer for a
| meager understanding of how economies work.
|
| For the kind of place _America_ is, with the kind of
| intellectual, economic, and procedural fire power it holds?
|
| Again, he isn't President of some backwater, and he isn't
| lacking for advisors, to give even more sophisticated
| analyses than what any Econ 101 student can do.
|
| And now, to your own point:
|
| > he tries [even just being president] will be fought,
|
| by who? the Repubs have all 3 branches. Thank god,
| otherwise people would spend another decade ignoring the
| obvious and blaming forces other than Trump and Trumpism
| for Trump's actions.
|
| ---
|
| The emperor has no clothes. Everything else, is people
| projecting from past Presidents upon the tableau they see.
| wokwokwok wrote:
| You're being down voted because you're not saying anything
| meaningful.
|
| Yes, you can argue that [person] is [performing an action]
| because they believe, from their POV that [reason1,
| reason2, reason3].
|
| > Or does [what person believes] not matter when they act
| upon it?
|
| Yes.
|
| What people choose to believe is distinct from fundamental
| baseline reality.
|
| Let me put it another way for you; if I believe that
| fairies have invaded from space and I go out smashing
| peoples cars because, I personally, believe that this will
| make the fairies go home...
|
| ...does it help to argue about whether I believe in fairies
| or not?
|
| It does not.
|
| The arguement must be about _whether fairies exist in
| baseline reality or not_.
|
| What _I believe_ is not a point worth discussing.
|
| ...so, to take a step back to your argument:
|
| Does he believe this will help? Who. Gives. A. Flying.
| Truck? Does it matter what he believes? Can we speculate
| what he thinks? It's a useless and meaningless exercise and
| a logical fallacy; because anything can be justified if the
| only criteria are "you believe it will work".
|
| The discussion worth having is, in baseline reality, will
| it actually help?
|
| Which is what the post you are replying to is addressing;
| but instead or following that up, you've moved this
| discussion into a meaningless sub thread of unprovable
| points about what people may or may not believe.
|
| Which is why you've received my downvote.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| This is a concept that is seemingly alien to Americans.
|
| The consequences of your actions matter even if you
| disagree. When your actions hurt people, _you 've still
| hurt people_. Doesn't matter what you thought you were
| doing.
|
| You see this kind of thinking through all levels of
| American life. You, personally, are the _only person on
| the planet_ who matters, fuck everyone else and let them
| deal with the consequences. You run a red light and
| someone else gets T-boned and killed? That 's their
| problem, you got to your destination 3 minutes faster.
|
| The trump administration is simply the manifestation of
| how sick our country is.
|
| It's going to take us generations to recover from this
| kind of societal illness, if we ever can.
| sophacles wrote:
| I downvoted you because it's politics, and there is always
| opposition, a plan worth acting on includes handling the
| opposition and having contingencies. This is true for every
| politician in every context for the history and pre-history
| of humanity.
|
| The fact that the MAGAts are so utterly incompetent that
| even the idea of opposition sends them into chaos and
| whining fits _while they control the executive, legislative
| and judicial branches of government_ is itself supportive
| of if the "these morons are too stupid to make a plan"
| type theories. Instead of planning they attacked anyone who
| asked how they would handle the obvious consequences, they
| deny that the obvious consequences that are clearly
| happening are actually happening. They attack anyone asking
| for metrics that the plan is working, make unbacked claims
| that they are in talks to fix the situation that caused the
| trade war (while refusing to even articulate what the goals
| are and attacking anyone who asks that too). They aren't
| even communicating with each other to coordinate something
| that looks like a plan: how many times have one group of
| lackeys been talking about plan X while another group or
| the president himself does the opposite to the surprise of
| everyone.
|
| There is no evidence that one of the key bullet points of a
| campaign platform was ever more than a bullet point - no
| plan, no attempt to prepare for consequences, nothing
| indicative of a plan at all. They truly believed that
| imposing tarrifs would magically make factories appear
| overnight.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I'd be willing to consider that, but he's doing a ton of
| things that very clearly have _no_ upside and obvious
| downsides. As one example, he literally fired entire
| departments that were _generating_ money for the
| government. It's too clear that he's just doing whatever he
| happens to think of without putting any thought into
| whether it will actually be helpful.
|
| I am firmly of the opinion that his only goal is the be the
| center of attention, and the more outrageous the things he
| does are, the better. Ie, there's no such thing as negative
| publicity.
| padjo wrote:
| You forgot his other goal m, which is to make him and his
| family wealthier. The back and forth on tariffs was
| certainly insider traded to hell.
| sisjfmalalxm wrote:
| The dismantling of government is an ideological goal --
| increasing government revenue isn't a primary objective
| ted_dunning wrote:
| It isn't Trump's ideological goal. His only ideology is
| being the center of attention and twisting arms to get
| bribes.
|
| Other people in the administration or in the penumbra may
| have ideologies more advanced than this, but Trump
| definitely does not.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I downvoted you because there's nothing to suggest this
| viewpoint is grounded in reality, so it's not really worth
| discussing. His leadership style has always been autocratic
| & opposition from SCOTUS and his own party is pretty much
| non existent and the opposition from the opposition party
| is soft (not that they have the numbers to do too much
| anyway). He has basically ignored whatever pushback there
| had been in other policy.
|
| He could do it the right way, if he wanted to.
| drecked wrote:
| What is this "it" you speak of.
|
| Is it the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico? Or is
| it the rescinding of those tariffs a day later. Or is it
| the pause but when the pause was supposed to end nothing
| really changed?
|
| Or is it the liberation day tariffs on everyone? Or the
| subsequent reduction of liberation day tariffs a few days
| later but an increase in tariffs against China.
|
| Or is the "it" the fact that the administration reveals
| these major market moving actions a few hours before making
| them public to friends, family and donors?
|
| Once anyone can figure out what "it" is supposed to be one
| can have a discussion about whether it's good or not.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Yeah, worse than the tariffs is the drastic policy
| changes by the day/hour.
|
| You can't expect companies to make long term capital
| investments when everything is in flux like this.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >without taking the time to do it right" is more reflective
| of his belief that whatever he tries [even just being
| president] will be fought, so his options [from his POV]
| are "do it now" or "don't do it at all", not "do it right"
|
| This seems completely wrong and ascribes motivations to
| Trump he clearly doesn't have. I think his framing is much
| more "everything I do is correct therefore this will work."
| Everything he does makes sense when framed that way.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, I think there's plenty of evidence to contradicts
| the theory that Trump is somehow "now or never" decisive.
|
| For example, his habit of promising all sorts of things
| in "two weeks" and then doing nothing. [0] Neither "now",
| nor "never", but always "soon".
|
| Or look at the stream of inconsistency from the White
| House about quantum-mechanical tariffs, as they endlessly
| mutated between: On, off, on but only when being
| observed, paused, never paused that was fake news, on but
| a different _set_ of tariffs, off because a fabulous deal
| was made but don 't ask about the details because you
| wouldn't know that country anyway, etc.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZLmhF7TgzY
| kergonath wrote:
| > For example, his habit of promising all sorts of things
| in "two weeks" and then doing nothing. [0] Neither "now",
| nor "never", but always "soon".
|
| Something he has in common with Musk.
| juniperus wrote:
| It has to do with countries not buying US treasuries. That
| used to be how the dollar system worked. Now that countries
| aren't, tariffs are being used as an alternative. You can
| read the war finance article series for some background:
| https://advisoranalyst.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/08/zoltan...
| robbiep wrote:
| There is no issue with countries buying us treasuries.
| They sail off shelves. Until the current administration
| started to make it look like there's a possibility that
| the country may bankrupt itself, which threw a risk
| component into US debt for like the first time ever
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I think the real risk isn't USA going bankrupt as much as
| the dollar losing significant value relative to other
| currencies, thereby making holding US debt a bad deal for
| overseas holders, and/or possibility that Trump could do
| something previously unthinkable such as stopping
| interest payments on debt or trying to "make a deal" and
| renegotiate payments in some way.
| coliveira wrote:
| Trump's goal is strengthening his position in power.
| Changing the economy so that companies, states, and foreign
| countries depend on him is just what he wants.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I didn't downvote, but I don't think this seems like a very
| well thought out description of Trump's behavior. He
| doesn't care if he "will be fought", he wants to be fought,
| dramatically, because that's the show he's putting on. The
| fight is the whole point.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Perhaps, but who's the audience? Trump's 1st term
| fighting the "fake news" media was popular with MAGA and
| didn't cost them anything. Fighting rest of world on
| trade might also be popular in theory "trump being
| tough!", but will MAGA voters really eat it up if they
| are personally suffering financially as a result (&
| they'll be suffering the most since red state incomes
| tend to be lower than blue state ones).
|
| Of course maybe the audience is Trump himself. He enjoys
| playing tough guy and could care less about the people
| who voted him in, or anyone else for that matter.
| sanderjd wrote:
| No, I don't think people are going to eat it up. I think
| he's screwing this all up, badly. He's an adept showman
| but very far from being infallible.
| jancsika wrote:
| > "do everything at once, without taking the time to do it
| right"
|
| Testing tariffs in realtime is nothing like, say, fuzzing
| idempotent methods in a framework.
|
| It is a lot more like testing sending out spam from a set
| of static IP addresses. It's not just that you could fail--
| it's that you could end up fucking up those IP's ability to
| send email into the foreseeable future.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| You are making a valid point, in form of a question,
| despite the downvotes.
|
| Presidents do typically get a pass during the first 100
| days, and they do try to fit in as much as possible before
| inertia bogs down whatever they are trying to do.
|
| I've heard the same said about Roosevelt (FDR). That he
| came in and made radical changes, defied courts, upset the
| norms, etc...
|
| The problem is that the current president is going a bit
| more 'radical' than anybody has experienced since, lets say
| late 30's Germany. Like the executive order to send
| military equipment to the police to, lets say, 'quell
| dissent'.
|
| So even thought Presidents do make big moves in the first
| 100 days, this is so far beyond norms, that saying it is
| "just typical of presidents in first 100 days" is really
| downplaying what is happening.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| It seems that many did not come across
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
| ... and are still busy trying to figure out the allegedly
| intricate but evidently incorporeal designs this
| administration is wearing.
| kergonath wrote:
| > it is possible that his policy of "do everything at once,
| without taking the time to do it right" is more reflective
| of his belief that whatever he tries [even just being
| president] will be fought
|
| By whom? He has a subservient congress and the Supreme
| Court in his pocket. And he is willing to ignore anything
| the judiciary says anyway. Who is in a situation to hinder
| him right now, and in the next 2 years, in the US?
| jldugger wrote:
| It's hard to see what the Trump administration is doing and
| not assume their preferred outcome is hot war with China.
| wombat-man wrote:
| It kinda feels like they aren't taking time to consider the
| effects of their actions, and assume things will somehow
| work out.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed
| up things and creatures and then retreated back into
| their money or their vast carelessness... and let other
| people clean up the mess they had made."
|
| --The Great Gatsby
| crooked-v wrote:
| "Kinda"?
| conception wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
|
| Dugin envisions the fall of China. The People's Republic of
| China, which represents an extreme geopolitical danger as
| an ideological enemy to the independent Russian Federation,
| "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled".
| Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet-Xinjiang-
| Inner Mongolia-Manchuria as a security belt.[1] Russia
| should offer China help "in a southern direction -
| Indochina (except Vietnam, whose people is already pro-
| Russia), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia" as
| geopolitical compensation.[9] Russia should manipulate
| Japanese politics by offering the Kuril Islands to Japan
| and provoking anti-Americanism, to "be a friend of
| Japan".[9] Mongolia should be absorbed into the Eurasian
| sphere.[9] The book emphasizes that Russia must spread
| geopolitical anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main
| 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."
| daveguy wrote:
| > The book emphasizes that Russia must spread
| geopolitical anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main
| 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."
|
| And what better way to facilitate the scapegoating of the
| US than having an incompetent aggressive fool in the
| Whitehouse.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| On the back of incredibly stupid identity politics that
| is easy to instigate in online spaces like twitter, where
| all the journalists go to find out what the most
| important topics in people's lives are...
| pfdietz wrote:
| My theory is that by sufficiently pissing off allies, we
| get kicked out of alliances, and that lets Trump reduce
| military spending. Without the tit-for-tat of military
| spending for social programs, the federal government gets
| massively downsized. The end goal is shrinking the
| government back to levels not seen proportionally since
| before WW2.
| sasper wrote:
| Trump already agreed to increase military spending by
| 12%, hitting a trillion dollars a year.
| pmontra wrote:
| The reach of the US economy to the rest of world will be
| back to before WW2 too. If the USA step back other
| countries will fill the space they leave, especially if
| the USA vacate the military bases in Europe. Those
| countries will be more free to swing to another security
| and economy partner.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| My question is how it's possible to massively shrink the
| government without simultaneously shrinking the economy
| and country as a whole.
|
| The lack of stockpiling or any other preparations before
| issuing the shock to the markets makes me think this is a
| quick sell off of the country that only benefits a few
| investors at the top.
| kergonath wrote:
| There is nothing preventing him from bringing the fleets
| and the boys back to the US and cutting the budget right
| now. In fact, he's doing the opposite.
| joezydeco wrote:
| If you read Marcy Wheeler [1], she points out that the
| Trump administration just can't figure out how to
| negotiate. All three failed "deals": Harvard, Ukraine,
| tariffs.. there's just no _ask_ there.
|
| You're going to start a hot war with China
| demanding....what? That they reload the container ships
| with Shein clothing?
|
| [1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/29/mr-art-of-the-
| deal-str...
| jldugger wrote:
| Thats kind of my point -- they've been given an ultimatum
| that is logically impossible, and the only road left is
| escalation.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| > the only road left is escalation.
|
| The other road is isolation, which I find much more
| likely. They'll just cut us off completely and deal with
| it.
| jldugger wrote:
| China has no interest in isolating from the rest of the
| world, Taiwan especially.
| okanat wrote:
| OP meant the US. The world and its allies will isolate
| US. Just like they did with Soviets.
| ben_w wrote:
| These are not totally exclusive -- the world may isolate
| the USA, and the USA may escalate with anyone (or
| everyone) to a hot war.
| benzible wrote:
| The other possibility is that there's no strategy or goal
| beyond the fact that Trump likes the word "tariff".
| kergonath wrote:
| I don't see the Chinese willing to escalate, at least not
| kinetically. For now, it looks more likely that they are
| going to let the US have enough rope to hang themselves,
| seize opportunities, and play the long game.
| greenavocado wrote:
| The upcoming shortages are a new Pearl Harbor incident. The
| self-induced crisis will be fully blamed on China then
| leveraged to drum up popular support for a war against China.
| tunesmith wrote:
| What of the theory that they just want to inflate their way
| out of a debt crisis?
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| We would need to see some evidence of significantly
| reducing the rate that we take on new debt.
| mgfist wrote:
| The only way to achieve that would be hyperinflation,
| which would be a worse option than the debt crisis
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Covid lab leak theory wasn't enough?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You're an optimist. I kind of expect the Trump
| Administration to roll over when China goes to take Taiwan.
| coliveira wrote:
| China will just say they're not blocking products, the US
| just needs to remove the self-induced tariffs and their
| products will come back.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Good point, though I'm pessimistic about people seeking
| the perspective of They, and pondering it, when Dear
| Leader says They did it
| epistasis wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that China has been preparing for
| this exact trade war since 2016, when Trump first threatened
| it. And they have fairly good centralized command structure
| to force individual businesses to prepare for things like
| this. China is the primary target of the war, even if Trump
| thinks that trade imbalances with Vietnam are also theft from
| the US, as he frequently and loudly says. The administration
| has lots of China hawks, it does not have any Vietnam hawks.
|
| Additionally, China is much better prepared for a trade war
| in that it has a populace that has been very well conditioned
| to go through hardship for longer term wins. The US does not,
| and there will be massive revolt for small hardship, or even
| the perception of hardship. This is largely why Harris lost:
| she was blamed for the inflation under Biden, even though the
| US did far better than the rest of the world economically for
| the period 2021-2024.
|
| The prior trade war with China was short and inconsequential,
| Trump could buy off the farmers who were really hurt by it
| with less than a dollar sum of 10-11 digits. That won't be
| possible with the trade war that's currently planned, and the
| effects will be large enough to cause large inflation, while
| simultaneously providing zero methods for investors to safely
| build US-based production capacity.
|
| The US has benefitted for a couple generations by being the
| reserve currency, meaning that we can make big mistakes and
| not suffer for them, while any other country would suffer.
| This coming trade war, if it actually happens, may finally
| break this exceptional status.
| ericmay wrote:
| As much as China can prepare, it's still in a pretty
| vulnerable position and the whole "the Chinese people are
| more conditioned for hardship" is as much Chinese
| exceptionalism as any claim to American exceptionalism. At
| the end of the day they lose millions of jobs, factories
| shut down, and people suffer there too regardless of the
| CCP marketing about being "tough" and "prepared". Appear
| strong where you are weak or something like that. Meanwhile
| the US can see prices go up, but aside from a few specific
| items we can buy or make the things that China has been. At
| an increased cost, sure, but Americans can handle it.
|
| > The US has benefitted for a couple generations by being
| the reserve currency, meaning that we can make big mistakes
| and not suffer for them, while any other country would
| suffer. This coming trade war, if it actually happens, may
| finally break this exceptional status.
|
| Very doubtful. The main danger is lack of fortitude with
| continuing and enforcing policies, and letting ideological
| battles get the best of the Trump administration for
| cutting good and fair deals with the EU and others. You're
| welcome to invest in Chinese, Russian, or whatever capital
| markets, though.
| skywhopper wrote:
| We can "buy or make the things China has been"? Buy from
| whom? Make in what factories, with what workers, with
| what supplies, equipment, and materials?
| ericmay wrote:
| Ok if we can't then you're proving the need for economic
| and policy measures to make it so we can.
|
| But yes, instead of buying a made in China t-shirt you
| can just spend a little more and buy one made in the USA,
| or even other non-authoritarian governments throughout
| the world (EU for example).
| epistasis wrote:
| We instituted many processes during the Biden era for
| bringing manufacturing to the US. They were all carrot
| based: provide stability for capital investments and even
| some tax benefits. This resulted in massive investments
| in factories in the US, the most in a generation.
|
| Tariffs do not provide capital security, they do not make
| it cheap to build the factories and in fact gigantically
| jack up the cost because we need to import a lot of the
| machinery to get the manufacturing going, and building
| the entire supply chain from scratch would add massive
| lead time to the other factories that use the machinery.
|
| Further, the need for onshoring cheap tshirt
| manufacturing is far from clear. We have massive amounts
| of our workforce in far more productive areas that
| produce absolutely massive amounts of GDP, and
| reallocating the workforce to tshirt manufacturing makes
| us far poorer.
|
| We are cutting drastically from scientific research,
| where each dollar spent by the government generates
| 2x-10x GDP, and telling those scientists to go work in
| factories. The very same types of factories that our
| trading partners would give up in an instant if they had
| the hi tech scientific research instead.
|
| What do we need? Certainly not tshirt factories. We need
| scientists, services, and more productive sectors of the
| economy. It is absolute idiocy to give up the higher
| tiers of the economy only possible in the US in the 21st
| century, to return to far lower 20th and 19th century
| productivity level.
| ericmay wrote:
| I largely don't disagree with anything you wrote.
|
| I was broadly responding to the OP's broad comment. Like
| yea you don't need to buy cheap crap from Temu that you
| saw on TikTok. And if you have to pay $5 more for a
| t-shirt suck it up and stop supporting authoritarian
| regimes. If that results in Americans working in t-shirt
| factories which aren't morally better or worse than any
| other factory, being paid higher wages and having that
| money stay here in our local economies at the expense of
| cheap goods with economic outflows to China, I say good
| and maybe tariffs are a good way to make that happen.
|
| Remember, tariffs are just an economic and policy tool we
| can leverage. The EU uses them against China today even.
| I personally found the Biden administration's approach to
| trade to be better, but maybe we need a mix of policies
| to effect change?
|
| To that effect I don't really understand your last
| comment about giving up higher tiers of the economy that
| are "only possible in the US" - we can't make computers
| and iPhones here. Those _are_ those high tiers. That is a
| problem. Tariffs can be a tool to effect change there.
| Maybe not, maybe so. The status quo isn 't sustainable
| though.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Cheap crap on Temu and phones that mainline social media
| into everyone's pockets are part of the circus machinery
| that keeps the population distracted and docile.
|
| Nuking them is unlikely to end well politically.
|
| As others have said, if you want to use tariffs to wage a
| trade war, you prepare first, so you're not cutting off
| the branch you're sitting on. You don't create tariffs
| and then build your factories.
|
| Because you can't. It's just not possible.
|
| But this regime has a shoot-from-the-microphone policy
| style which is completely irrational and unworkable, and
| minor considerations like practicality don't figure.
|
| In any case, it's clear the regime is in a race between
| enforcing its grip on power with martial law (whatever
| it's going to be called) and political collapse brought
| about by economic collapse.
|
| It's too early to tell, but if martial law wins, economic
| collapse on an unprecedented scale will follow.
|
| You can be toxically positive and say that a lot of dead
| wood needed to be cleared. But in practice that just
| means whole swathes of the country will turn into Detroit
| of the 00s, but worse - rotting ghost towns, haunted by
| the ghosts of those who starved to death.
| adra wrote:
| The unemployment rate is what, 3%? Where are you going to
| find the millions of people needed to make the iPhone
| domestically? Immigration? Hah, that would be an
| interesting stance. Automation? It would work to fill
| some gaps, but even apple doesn't want to pay Chinese
| workers for tasks that machines can do today. Someone in
| their company decides on when they automate, and when
| they use elbow grease. They may be able to afford a lot
| of the capital outlay to greatly improve the productivity
| of their workers if effectively required to onshore, or
| they may just stop selling iPhones in the US for a few
| years if all cell phones become prohibitively expensive
| to own. If Apple can't make the economics work, I can't
| see who can.
| ericmay wrote:
| > The unemployment rate is what, 3%? Where are you going
| to find the millions of people needed to make the iPhone
| domestically?
|
| I don't know off the top of my head, but that sounds like
| a great problem to have and I'd be happy to do whatever
| it takes to make sure we have that problem.
| agolsme wrote:
| what EU countries have a good t-shirt supply chain? do
| you know? I am pretty sure limited to poland, and maybe a
| few other eastern european countries.
|
| as for MUSA, i buy a lot of t-shirts and none of them are
| made in usa, who are you thinking of?
| skywhopper wrote:
| For some things, I agree it's important to have domestic
| capability. For most things, global trade works well for
| everyone involved, so long as we do it in a cooperative
| way. The current tariff bullying approach is the worst
| way of building domestic capability or improving trade
| relations. More likely the US will sink into a decade or
| more of stagflation or worse as world markets move on
| without us, far more easily than we can become self-
| sustaining.
|
| For your t-shirt example, sure we can buy US made shirts.
| But the US factories have a limit to what they can
| produce. Then what? What business person would invest in
| any new factories in the current environment? Where do
| they buy the materials to build the factory? (From our
| trading partners.) Where do they buy the tools and
| equipment used in the factory? (From our trading
| partners.) who do they hire to work in the factory?
| Former government bureaucrats? Immigrants? Oh wait!
| dgfitz wrote:
| All I did was a quick google search, but I searched what
| the US imports from China, to fill in the word "stuff"
| from your post:
|
| "The U.S. imports a wide variety of products from China,
| with the top categories including electronics, machinery,
| and furniture. Specifically, significant imports include
| computers, smartphones, electrical equipment, toys, and
| furniture."
|
| I just don't think there will be riots in the street over
| this stuff. Maybe there will be, maybe there should be, I
| can't say for sure. I do know kids will survive just fine
| without toys, and I don't see riots over furniture. I
| don't know about the rest of it.
|
| The other side of the coin is interesting: What if China
| decided they were never going to sell anything to the US?
| Would people riot in the street? Even more interesting,
| if China really wanted to play that game, why don't they?
| Why are they so mad? If this wasn't a threat to them it
| would be a giant nothingburger on their end.
| TylerE wrote:
| Vastly underestimating the impact.
|
| Think of all the Made in USA stuff that makes use of
| Chinese components.
|
| Many of the machines used in factories are made in China.
|
| A lot of tool making is outsourced there (an injection
| molding die that might cost $50,000 to make in the US
| might be $10k in China, and the Chinese typically make
| them with a quicker turnaround time, even with shipping.
| standardUser wrote:
| You are making a lot of bold claims without much to back
| it up. As someone who reads a lot about the topic, I
| would characterize your assessment as far removed from
| mainstream opinion and rosier than the rosiest
| professional assessments that don't come from an acolyte
| of Donald Trump. In other words, a fairy tale.
| ericmay wrote:
| If you have a specific comment or point to make I'd love
| to talk about it. Most mainstream opinions aren't very
| valuable, though certainly there are some that are better
| than others.
| standardUser wrote:
| When so much is thrown at the wall at once it makes it
| onerous and boring to respond to every slapdash point. If
| they had stumbled on a truly valuable and novel
| perspective that convincingly goes against all prevailing
| knowledge, I can only imagine they would have presented
| it with significantly more evidence than they did in that
| screed. Otherwise, mildly-educated people like me discard
| it immediately as empty rhetoric or maybe just
| propaganda. Aka trolling.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > cutting good and fair deals with the EU
|
| Trump administration only succeeded in making the EU see
| the US as a foreign hostile nation.
|
| At this point I think it's more likely the EU cut deals
| with China.
| ericmay wrote:
| Nah, the problem is EU will face the same problems the US
| is facing (they don't want products dumped on their
| markets at subsidized costs putting their workers out of
| business), and a lot of the posturing (Canada I think is
| different) is for the public and because Trump is an
| asshole but the EU sees the same problem the US does.
| Nevermind China very overtly aiding Russia in its war in
| Europe which has the EU not very happy. Guess we forgot
| about that?
|
| The EU is actually quite protectionist, despite public
| claims to the contrary. Most countries are in various
| fashion protective of many or certain industries.
|
| Trump no doubt damaged ties, and again I think the Biden
| administration's approach was superior in many ways, but
| there's a limit to what agreements the EU will make with
| China. The manufacturing capacity that the Chinese have
| built isn't sustainable without a substantial increase in
| Chinese domestic consumption.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Nah, the problem is EU will face the same problems the
| US is facing
|
| The US problems are problems of their own making.
|
| EU has only trade rivalries with China, not ideological
| issues like the US has. Those can be ironed out. And
| honestly the US administration also has an ideological
| hatred for Europe, as illustrated by the vice presidents
| own words. Not really conducive to any sort of deals.
|
| As for China dumping cheap things here, as you said, EU
| is very protectionist (China is as well), and EU
| consumers have a lot less appetite for consumption than
| the US. I really think that is less a problem than you
| believe.
|
| > Trump no doubt damaged ties, and again I think the
| Biden administration's approach was superior in many
| ways, but there's a limit to what agreements the EU will
| make with China.
|
| I think you really downplay the kind of generational
| damage the US is doing to the relationship with former
| allies.
|
| > The manufacturing capacity that the Chinese have built
| isn't sustainable without a substantial increase in
| Chinese domestic consumption.
|
| You forget that China is only in a trade war against the
| US. The US is in a trade war with everyone else.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Those can be ironed out.
|
| Depends on the specific trade issue. There's a limit to
| what can be ironed out, and the large bulk of the problem
| is that both the EU and China are rather protectionist
| even compared to the United States and so for either to
| iron out these trade issues they'll have to both open
| their markets. So far that hasn't worked out for the
| United States, even prior to the ideological battles, and
| I'm not sure I see a path forward for the EU that's
| significantly different than the status quo.
|
| Also China is happily helping Russia fight a war in
| Europe so I wouldn't be so quick to assume the EU _only_
| has a trade issue with China - that 's rather naive.
|
| > I think you really downplay the kind of generational
| damage the US is doing to the relationship with former
| allies.
|
| I was just in France for two weeks, nobody I spoke to in
| my broken French really gives a shit outside of "man that
| guys sucks right?" The internet isn't day-to-day life.
| For some reason people think that political grandstanding
| and harsh rhetoric is only an American phenomenon and
| that European leaders don't do the same. The issue with
| Canada I would argue is much more as you are describing,
| and is rather unfortunate to say the least.
|
| > You forget that China is only in a trade war against
| the US. The US is in a trade war with everyone else.
|
| Sure ok - feel free to buy all the Chinese products that
| are made and shipped to your country from China. Best of
| luck! Let us know how that turns out for you.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Also China is happily helping Russia fight a war in
| Europe
|
| The US is also helping Russia in its efforts right now,
| it's important to underline this.
|
| While China is more pragmatically washing their hands and
| keep trading with Russia, the US actually calls for
| Ukraine to just capitulate.
|
| > I was just in France for two weeks, nobody I spoke to
| in my broken French really gives a shit outside of "man
| that guys sucks right?" The internet isn't day-to-day
| life. For some reason people think that political
|
| 1) I don't live in the internet. I barely have any online
| presence beyond this forum.
|
| 2) People are generally polite. I know people from the
| US, from very liberal to very MAGA. I try to be pleasant
| to them. And I don't fault them for their government,
| even the ones that obviously voted for the current
| president.
|
| 3) When I speak about generational damage to
| relationships, I am talking at the diplomacy level.
| Building a web of great allies was something that the US
| could do after the two world wars because the opportunity
| was there and they seized it. I think it will be very
| hard, on a diplomatic level, to repair that. This ship
| has already sailed.
|
| > Sure ok - feel free to buy all the Chinese products
| that are made and shipped to your country from China.
|
| Have been for a while. I don't see that as a huge
| problem. As I said, Europe consumers have a lot less
| appetite for consumption than the US ones. Partly for
| cultural reasons, partly because the US had the strength
| (yes, strength) of commandeering a huge trade deficit
| that actually benefits immensely its economy.
|
| There are _some_ industries that for strategic importance
| is good to have around, but I would see no benefit in
| bringing over manufacturing like textiles or cell phone
| assembly sweatshops. Those can stay in China no problem.
|
| Protectionism is good only for what you need
| protectionism.
| ericmay wrote:
| > The US is also helping Russia in its efforts right now,
| it's important to underline this.
|
| 1. That's definitely false.
|
| 2. China supplies intelligence to Russia and also
| equipment directly or indirectly.
|
| 3. The US continues to provide intelligence and directly
| military support to Ukraine.
|
| > People are generally polite. I know people from the US,
| from very liberal to very MAGA. I try to be pleasant to
| them. And I don't fault them for their government, even
| the ones that obviously voted for the current president.
|
| Right - but that's not because people are seething with
| anger at the United States (aside from Canada which is
| deserved), it's because life goes on.
|
| > When I speak about generational damage to
| relationships, I am talking at the diplomacy level.
| Building a web of great allies was something that the US
| could do after the two world wars because the opportunity
| was there and they seized it. I think it will be very
| hard, on a diplomatic level, to repair that. This ship
| has already sailed.
|
| You're over-reacting. We dropped nuclear bombs on Japan
| and we're best buddies now. It's certainly a temporary
| setback, however. There's a lot of political
| grandstanding but that's just for placating domestic
| audiences. EU and US are the same there, as is China and
| Russia. Talk big and all that.
|
| > Have been for a while. I don't see that as a huge
| problem. As I said, Europe consumers have a lot less
| appetite for consumption than the US ones.
|
| Great, this seems like a win. European customers will buy
| more of the Chinese products (China needs to sell them
| somewhere to make up for losses in US sales so that'll be
| going to your markets), and the US will just suffer
| without the imports and everyone wins and America loses.
| That sounds just fine to me. We can be less consumerist
| oriented and the EU and China can increase their
| consumerism. Well, unless you're suggesting the EU won't
| buy more Chinese made things, in which case who will buy
| the Chinese products?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| As I said before, you very much downplay the sort of
| damage the US is causing to its relationship with former
| allies. For example, you seem to forget the very real
| threats of US annexing Greenland, which is part of
| Denmark. Such an act of war would force every EU nation
| to go in its defense, even non-NATO ones. This is far
| beyond political grandstanding.
|
| As for the rest, I think you very much downplay the
| gravity of going in a trade war with the whole world at
| once can do to the US economy, while you massively amp up
| the damage simple trade between China and EU can do to
| EU.
|
| This conversation quickly got nowhere anyway, and I
| already said everything I wanted to. Time will tell who
| is right. Feel free to have the last word, and have a
| pleasant evening.
| ericmay wrote:
| > As I said before, you very much downplay the sort of
| damage the US is causing to its relationship with former
| allies.
|
| No, no I'm really not. It's more so that you are
| overstating the damage. All of a sudden we are "former
| allies" now? That's nonsense.
|
| > For example, you seem to forget the very real threats
| of US annexing Greenland, which is part of Denmark. Such
| an act of war would force every EU nation to go in its
| defense, even non-NATO ones.
|
| There's 0 chance the European Union would go to war with
| the United States over this. Not that I condone it, but
| it just won't happen. The EU can't fight Russia (why are
| 500 million Europeans asking 330 million Americans to
| defend them from 180 million Russians?) let alone the
| United States.
|
| > As for the rest, I think you very much downplay the
| gravity of going in a trade war with the whole world at
| once can do to the US economy, while you massively amp up
| the damage simple trade between China and EU can do to
| EU.
|
| Well we're not really in a "trade war with the whole
| world" - many tariffs haven't been implemented, some are
| already being suspended, exceptions are carved out, etc.
| I don't agree with the way we're going about things, but
| I think you're overstating things again. The EU isn't
| going to absorb the former US - China trade. That's
| simple a fact of reality.
|
| I'm sad you feel the conversation got nowhere, but I
| suppose that happens when two people just see the world
| fundamentally differently. I have no interest in getting
| in the last word, I simply am interested in discussing
| and debating things and so I usually reply. I sincerely
| hope you have a good evening as well.
| kergonath wrote:
| > No, no I'm really not. It's more so that you are
| overstating the damage. All of a sudden we are "former
| allies" now? That's nonsense.
|
| It's your president and VP saying it (and a lot of their
| acolytes). What do you call an "ally" who threatens to
| invade you? And don't say it's not serious. The bullshit
| trade wars was also something that was not serious and
| that he would not do, until he actually did it. A tip we
| learnt the hard way and that may be useful: when a
| wannabe dictator tells you what he wants to do, believe
| him.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Depends on the specific trade issue. There's a limit to
| what can be ironed out, and the large bulk of the problem
| is that both the EU and China are rather protectionist
| even compared to the United States and so for either to
| iron out these trade issues they'll have to both open
| their markets.
|
| It's not a hypothetical. The EU in general is a trade
| partner of China. Both have a long history of trading
| with ups and downs, tensions and detentes. History is
| full of proofs that these issues can, in fact, be ironed
| out. We've been there before.
|
| Similarly, there were a lot of trade skirmishes between
| the US and the EU (and various member-states before the
| EU was a thing). Again, nothing you cannot solve with
| diplomacy, negotiations and horse trading. What you are
| saying is fanciful.
|
| > Also China is happily helping Russia fight a war in
| Europe so I wouldn't be so quick to assume the EU only
| has a trade issue with China - that's rather naive.
|
| So is the US. I don't think you get the full picture. As
| a citizen of one of your oldest ally, I have to tell you:
| the US are not the good guys in this. Trump is
| demonstrating every day that we cannot trust the US long
| term anymore, and that you could turn hostile very
| quickly. It pains me, but it is true. So you can talk all
| day about this and think that you are reasonable, but in
| fact it is completely unserious. Or indeed naive.
|
| > I was just in France for two weeks, nobody I spoke to
| in my broken French really gives a shit outside of "man
| that guys sucks right?"
|
| The US have an advantage because regardless of the
| disagreements with France (and there were many),
| ultimately either side could rely on the other in the
| long run. Again, look at recent history. French people
| were at the "your countrymen are fine but your government
| sucks" with Russia about 10 years ago, they always have
| been mostly Russophile. Now, the vast majority of the
| population would tell you that Russians are murderous war
| criminals and brainwashed sycophants. What changed was
| that Putin got aggressive and it turned out that actually
| a lot of Russians supported him.
|
| The parallel with the US right now is clear. Trump is
| agressive and you collectively support him. He won the
| election fair and square, including the popular vote.
|
| So, give it time. 4 years of this and there will be much
| less sympathy for normal American people in Europe.
|
| > For some reason people think that political
| grandstanding and harsh rhetoric is only an American
| phenomenon and that European leaders don't do the same.
|
| Again, you don't understand. The issue is war at our
| doorstep and a hostile neighbour that thinks its sphere
| of influence includes half the continent. It is not
| grandstanding, it's about our future. Look at what most
| European governments are doing and you will see that they
| are dead serious.
|
| > Sure ok - feel free to buy all the Chinese products
| that are made and shipped to your country from China.
| Best of luck! Let us know how that turns out for you.
|
| You don't have a commercial problem with China. Nothing
| existential, anyway. China did not prevent you from
| reaching a peak in manufacturing what, 2 years ago? It
| does not prevent you from having an overwhelming
| military, or a disproportionate amount of soft power. It
| does not prevent you from flooding the world with your
| services.
|
| The trade deficit is a red herring. You do have a
| strategic problem with China, because they want to kick
| you out of their backyard, and they want their turn at
| being the bully in chief. We are not in the same
| situation.
| watwut wrote:
| What "the same problem" EU sees? Because one huge problem
| EU has is America being literally hostile nation,
| aligning itself with Russia and capitulating to it. Oh,
| and threatening annexation of parts of EU.
|
| And and hostile tariffs from USA on flimsy excuses.
| ericmay wrote:
| I believe we were talking about trade and tariffs, so the
| same problem that the EU would see in this context is
| that Chinese manufacturing is generally better and
| cheaper than what western nations currently do, so the EU
| will have to maintain current protectionist policies or
| enact further trade restrictions with China or risk
| losing jobs to cheaper and better products from China.
| Germany is going to protect its auto industry, for
| example.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Europe specialises in high-value manufacturing -
| aerospace, precision tools and machinery, some pharma.
| China has been trying to enter those markets, but not
| with great success.
|
| China is much better at components, consumer items, and
| mid-weight machinery.
|
| The EU also sells a lot of food, including staples like
| pasta, and also niche/prestige branded foods, some with
| localised brand name protection. (Like balsamic vinegar
| from Modena.)
|
| They're not really competing markets. The auto industry
| is one of the few sectors with direct competition, and
| the EU is working on setting minimum prices instead of
| tariffs.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's not exceptionalism as much as authoritarianism. The
| lockdowns that happened in China for COVID were real and
| extreme. Meanwhile there were no lockdowns in the US and
| a significant chunk of the electorate acts as though
| there was extreme government overreach and in response
| gained control of large chunks of government with those
| arguments.
|
| Sure, the Chinese government finally capitulated to
| citizen demand eventually, but the degree of control
| compared to the US is hard to overstate.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Americans nearly rioted over unenforced (effectively
| voluntary) Stay-At-Home and business closures that were
| openly ignored by business owners. If we can't even
| survive a few months of not buying khakis and eating at
| Olive Garden, how are we going to survive a hardcore and
| sustained trade war?
| ericmay wrote:
| Americans are just like anyone else for the most part,
| albeit with some cultural differences.
|
| We can put up with hardship just like anyone else, though
| our suburban ecosystems and factory farming make that
| more difficult than need be, it's just that we haven't
| had a real need to face true national hardship since
| World War II perhaps.
|
| I don't disagree with the COVID-19 lockdowns or anything
| like that, but I'm not sure that's the best example here
| because as a nation we weren't really aligned on that
| being a hardship necessary to endure sacrifice.
| simiones wrote:
| And you think trade war with China is something that the
| entire nation believes is necessary hardship, when even
| Trump allies like Musk are speaking out against it, as is
| the entire business world?
| ericmay wrote:
| Well I don't think it'll be that much of a hardship, but
| yea I don't think everyone is exactly aligned with how
| the Trump administration is going about it. Generally
| speaking "we have a problem with China - they took our
| jobs!" has broad consensus, at least in my experience.
| Also politically the Biden administration and others have
| undertaken steps to defend US economic interests against
| China.
| adamc wrote:
| I see no evidence that we will be aligned this time. A
| large portion of the population will be angry and blame
| Trump and the Republicans who supported this.
| ericmay wrote:
| Personally I see it as a win-win. Tough on China, people
| get mad about their trinkets being more expensive, and
| then they kick the traitorous fools out of office and we
| go back to more sensible Democratic foreign policy and
| tough on China stances.
| goatlover wrote:
| The same Americans who voted in Trump and gave
| Republicans in Congress a majority because of inflation?
| How long do you suppose it will take to build all the
| industries in the US to replace Chinese goods, and who is
| going to be performing the cheap labor making those goods
| after deportations kick into high gear?
|
| America has survived stagflation before in the 70s, but
| there was a large political fallout.
| ben_w wrote:
| > At the end of the day they lose millions of jobs,
| factories shut down, and people suffer there too
| regardless of the CCP marketing about being "tough" and
| "prepared".
|
| I have the feeling, not only from this comment but also
| those about Foxconn suicide nets, that people have a hard
| time judging quite how big things in China are.
|
| Losing a million jobs would change China's unemployment
| rate by... 0.14% of the workforce.
| ericmay wrote:
| Great then it is very simple and it won't bother them too
| much and we can gain 100k* jobs or so and pay more to
| make things here and everyone is happy. China can stomach
| the loss of a few million jobs and they shouldn't
| complain since it's no big deal.
|
| * Job loss/gains wouldn't be 1-1 as new US factories
| would likely use fewer workers.
| simiones wrote:
| > * Job loss/gains wouldn't be 1-1 as new US factories
| would likely use fewer workers.
|
| Why in the world would you think this is the case? China
| leads the world in manufacturing efficiency, maybe behind
| only Japan and South Korea.
| ericmay wrote:
| Oh so we would gain more jobs then? So we'll take a
| highly automated factory in China, shut it down since it
| won't be selling products to the US, build that factory
| here even though it might be a little less automated, and
| then we'll have the same number of jobs and maybe more
| than the Chinese factory had? Sign me up! That sounds
| awesome.
| epistasis wrote:
| If there is a goal for more factories in the US, and it's
| certainly not clear at all that this is a policy goal of
| the current US executive branch, there's not a clear
| route to achieving that goal.
|
| If the factory gets staffed at all, it will be competing
| in a labor pool in the US that only has 4.2%
| unemployment. The high employment rates, and inability to
| find workers during Biden's presidency, led employers to
| revolt against Biden.
|
| The question is whether those automated factory jobs will
| be better than other jobs for the workers, whether they
| will be created in places with the appropriate worker
| pool (education, unemployment high enough etc.).
|
| There's also the question of whether there's anybody
| willing to build some new high-cost automated factory
| when the same capital could be deployed to another
| purpose that likely has a far higher capital return rate.
| There's almost zero protection that the impetus for
| having the expensive highly-automated factory--namely the
| tariffs--will exist past for most of the life of the
| factory. Or in fact if they will even be in place by the
| time that the factory is constructed and ready to go,
| which will take a minimum of 3-4 years.
|
| All the stars have to align perfectly for some sort of
| new jobs to appear and then it's not clear that they will
| be better than existing jobs. And if it does happen, we
| all suffer from several years of being poorer in the mean
| time.
| adamc wrote:
| They'd think it because otherwise the prices would be too
| high and it would be difficult to sell the goods. If
| iphones go to $3000, the market for iphones will get much
| thinner.
| ben_w wrote:
| That doesn't explain the ratio. If a highly efficient and
| automated China is employing (say) 1e6 people to supply
| US demand, it's implausible that anyone (including the
| US) would be able to spot a way to fire 90% of the
| factory workers when rebuilding the production line at
| same capacity anywhere else (including the US).
|
| Of course, I simplify. But despite the wage difference,
| China's no longer the place you go to substitute
| expensive machines for cheap humans.
|
| The wage difference between the USA and China also means
| that for any given product, there's a minimum tariff
| below which it still makes more sense to import and pay
| the tariff rather than to pay local workers. To paint a
| very broad brushstroke, if I naively compare GDP/capita,
| that's about 558% -- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L
| ist_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... I get US 90,105 and
| China 13,688; then 90,105/13,688 = 6.58..., less 1
| because tariff of 0% means the importer pays 100% of the
| money to the exporter.
| ben_w wrote:
| Why do you expect to _gain_ jobs?
|
| The US is currently at fairly high employment[0]. To a
| first approximation, if you attempt to move factory jobs
| to the US, not only do you need to build a factory,
| someone not currently working in a factory has to loose
| their non-factory job... or you have to encourage a lot
| more parenting and wait about 18 years[1].
|
| More likely is that the US _looses_ all the jobs that the
| imports were dependent on, and unemployment goes up.
|
| "Dependent on" is also hard to determine. Lots of people
| now rely on smartphones, and even in a scenario like this
| the phones themselves won't evaporate overnight -- they
| won't even really shift back to being the status symbol
| for the wealthy that they once were given how cheap the
| cheap brands are, but for the stake of illustrating the
| impact of consequences, *if* they were to shift back to
| being that status symbol, gradually there would also be
| much less call for mobile app developers and Uber,
| Delivery Hero, etc. drivers.
|
| [0] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-
| situation/civilian-une...
|
| [1] or whatever school leaving age + 9 months works out
| as; theoretically there's also "encourage immigration",
| but that's already been ruled out.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > it does not have any Vietnam hawks
|
| Only chickenhawks that dodged the draft
| heisenbit wrote:
| In the mind of a serial bankrupcy expert being in debt
| gives one leverage. In reality all the piled up treasuries
| give China breathing room and their sell-off would put the
| US under stress. The US may be the largest customer of
| China but is dwarfed by internal customers and the rest of
| the world. Loosing customers hurts China but it can be
| compensated. Now as a supplier of volume goods China is
| much harder to substitute. And as a supplier of specialized
| high-tech goods China is impossible to substitute. Loosing
| suppliers in manufacturing breaks complete value-chains so
| there is colateral damage. On the other hand imagine some
| smaller critical US component breaking a supply chain in
| China - there will be fewer of such cases and bad cases can
| be handled with exceptions. Much different from the US
| situation where there are many more specialized components
| from all over the world are impacted.
|
| Let's look at car head-lights. These are highly integrated
| components, designed and manufactured by third parties
| using tools made by forth parties with the knowledge not in
| the hands of the car manufacturer. Swapping them may well
| need re-designs and re-certification. Hard to put an
| estimate on the overall process but it won't be quick.
|
| And last but not least how is new business attracted: The
| rule of law makes a country safe for an inherrently very
| risky process of overseas investments. Expats are critical
| resources for knowledge ramp-up and managing the first
| years. Billionairs with a seat on Trumps table may not care
| so much about the rule of law but SME business do. Expats
| who may move with their family need to be able to rely on
| visa, green cards and travel being safe. The opposite of
| what is needed to attract business is done as far as one
| can see from afar.
|
| A trade war with no clear path for winning started from a
| position of weakness.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| China's economic situation right now is worse than the US.
| They have incredible debt (accounting for provincial debt
| which is essentially state debt, China is not a
| federation), a massive housing asset bubble, and an aged
| population that is expensive to care for. Never mind also
| being stuck in a deflationary cycle with a high youth
| unemployment rate. And this is just working with the self-
| reported numbers from an authoritarian regime.
|
| The biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the
| biggest crunch to China will be the worker. People in the
| US will need to buy less shit, and pay more for what they
| do buy. People in China will need to work fewer hours and
| bring home less money.
|
| Of course, the situation is fractal and ridden with
| unknowns. But I think a lot of people have this view of
| China as being a young slick economic powerhouse and the US
| being a weak economy with old decrepit money pile. That's
| far from the truth.
| tommica wrote:
| What is the difference between paying more for the item
| VS having less money to spend? Both to me seem like being
| unable to afford the things you need.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Americans buy a ludicrous amount of stuff they only think
| they need. American consumerism is unrivaled in the
| world.
|
| In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity.
| From having too many calories available cheaply. Let that
| sink in. The US is so much further from "needs not being
| met" than anyone understands.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| right, but so far the consumerism has been the only thing
| doing bread and circuses away from the real problems of
| housing and whatnot.
|
| it's interesting that many things like televisions and
| phones went from being multiples of rent or mortgage
| payments, to the reverse, so now cutting back on consumer
| spending to afford necessities wouldn't do a whole lot.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm not worried about the consumer aspect at all. It will
| be painful and maybe pull the wool off all the trumpets
| eyes, reveling his idiocy. But people are not going to be
| starving. Maybe starving for new clothes and iPhones like
| they get all the time.
|
| I do worry though about embedded costs up the supply
| chain the depend on Chinese made things. The parts of
| parts that go into machines that are made domestically. I
| think that has potential to be the real knife in the
| back. Most things need all the pieces to work, and even
| though the machine is 90% made in USA, the last 10% that
| is a Chinese export is going to cause pain in all sorts o
| unexpected places.
| AngryData wrote:
| The US has one of the largest agricultural sectors in the
| world, it should be no surprise that food is not in short
| supply. But we don't live in an era where people live in
| homes built from local gathered sticks and rocks and just
| need food to survive, our modern lives depend on far more
| than just food. Poor people are fat because we made
| extremely calorie dense foods the cheapest foods, poor
| people often shop by calorie per dollar, not because they
| have extra cash to throw around.
|
| Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how
| much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| In the US half of consumer spending is done by only the
| top 10%
|
| [1]: https://hive.blog/economy/@davideownzall/in-the-us-
| the-top-1...
|
| There is a lot of poverty in the US.
| jgalentine007 wrote:
| It's more expensive to buy and prepare fresh food than
| shelf stable ultra processed foods and requires more
| time. Poor people have access to 'poor' calories. I would
| wager that children would also inherit the eating habits
| of poor parents.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20720258/
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684391/
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254327/
| XorNot wrote:
| This is flat out advocating "the Maduro diet" as a good
| thing.
| epistasis wrote:
| While this is all true, China knows all the economic
| levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling
| t-bills) whereas the leadership in the US is so
| economically illiterate that it thinks trade deficits are
| theft and that tariffs are free tax money that will
| strengthen the US.
|
| The US's current leadership is so economically illiterate
| that most of the people who backed Trump thought he was
| just joking about his economic policy. When the stock
| market finally realized that he was so stupid as to
| follow through on campaign promises the stock market
| tanked. It is currently only held up at current depressed
| levels because it is assumed that Trump will back away
| from the trade war.
|
| Though the US economy is the strongest and healthiest on
| the planet by a large margin, and while typically the
| president of the US has minimal impact, we find ourselves
| in a strange situation where the president has found a
| way to throw all that supremacy away.
| noqc wrote:
| >China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of
| pain to the US (eg selling t-bills)
|
| China has been divesting itself of treasuries for a long
| time: a) because they create coupling between the two
| economies, and b) they know that the US will simply
| freeze them if China invades Taiwan. If China dumped all
| of its treasuries at once, it would hurt a little, but
| not that much.
| epistasis wrote:
| A small amount of selling T-bills from bond vigilantes
| already caused Trump to drastically pull back his plan
| once. If a holder as large as China started a big dump of
| T-bills it would cause a massive financial disaster.
| China would feel some pain too, but the US having far
| higher interest rates as it rolls over new debt into new
| T-bills would be extremely difficult for us. We are at
| economic Mutually Assured Destruction levels this is
| still a lever that China can pull that is in their favor.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| In some sense Trump and co would want China to sell their
| t-bills. It will weaken the dollar (increasing
| competitiveness of US exports) and strengthen the yuan
| (decrease competitiveness of Chinese exports).
|
| To some degree is it possible to frame this whole
| situation as America intentionally tanking the dollar
| because it is too strong (which has happened twice
| before, albeit in more diplomatic ways). The hard part
| though is getting our economic allies to go along with it
| while also not abandoning dollar supremacy.
|
| How does the strongest boxer ever intentionally get
| weaker to avoid permanent injury, while also keeping
| bettors confident in his winning streak? It kind of needs
| to be done, but man I cannot think of a worse person to
| execute this than Trump.
| adra wrote:
| I'm sure that China will suffer greatly from any trade
| war, and I'm positive the US will blink first. Chinese
| consumer and workers are already significantly less
| likely to revolt, stop working, drag their country down.
| The second that dollar store becomes $10store in the US,
| it'll be pandemonium, and they only have a single person
| to blame for their troubles. China? They may be doing
| anti-competitive trade practices and haven't been put to
| task, but if you ask the Chinese citizen who to blame on
| the trade war, it'll be trump. If you ask a US citizen
| who to blame for this trade war, it'll be trump.
| ratorx wrote:
| In this case, that seems pretty accurate? Trump is indeed
| the one that started the trade war. External enemies are
| easier to unite against etc.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Our tiktok/instragram/youtube has been downright
| _flooded_ with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few
| weeks.
|
| Sounds like we need to really start hustling and push the
| lie flat movement hard on the Chinese platforms.
|
| In the meantime Trump will find a way to blame Biden, he
| has already started.
| raydev wrote:
| > downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the
| last few weeks
|
| Can you link some examples? I (shamefully) have been
| spending a lot of time on TikTok lately but it's mostly
| devoid of politics.
|
| My YT home page is still the same 3-4 topics I already
| watch most often. No politics.
| platevoltage wrote:
| I made a new TikTok account out of curiosity after Trump
| "saved" the platform. No exaggeration, half of the "For
| You" content was from "Team Trump" or Charlie Kirk. They
| are actively pushing propaganda, but I've seen no signs
| that it's Chinese propaganda, unless you assume that
| Bytedance is bowing to Trump, and that Bytedance is
| controlled by the Chinese Government, which just raises
| more questions.
|
| Youtube Premium is the only "streaming service" I
| actually pay money for, and I use it quite a bit. Rarely
| ever does something off the wall get pushed to me. I do
| consume politics on YT, and occasionally something right
| wing shows up, but it's rare. I have no doubt that this
| stuff would be prioritized on a new account though.
| decimalenough wrote:
| China faces many long-term headwinds but they're not in
| crisis yet. The Chinese housing bubble has been deflating
| since 2020. The state pension and healthcare systems are
| less than generous so care for the elderly is not that
| expensive (yet). And Chinese government debt is less than
| half the US despite being 5x the population.
|
| At the end of the day, the US represents only 8% of
| China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that
| will hurt, but China is far better placed to weather the
| loss than the US.
| freefrog1234 wrote:
| Do you have any links to support the assertion that China
| debt is worse than US?
| XorNot wrote:
| Direct exports from China to the US is 15% of their
| total. It's the largest fraction but not a majority.
|
| The US has tarriffed the entire world, and every category
| - finished goods and raw materials.
|
| I'm Australian: I'm shopping on Aliexpress in another
| window right now. I'm going to keep doing that.
|
| China has far more options in this then the US.
| eunos wrote:
| > Additionally, China is much better prepared for a trade
| war in that it has a populace that has been very well
| conditioned to go through hardship for longer term wins
|
| It's funny that I saw more and more opinions that Chinese
| will win the trade war by shopping and eating out more.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Democracies can't plan far ahead.
| Arnt wrote:
| Tell that to the Austrians, Italians or indeed the EU.
|
| The Brenner tunnel is part of an EU-wide transport network
| called TEN, planned and built since he nineties. It hasn't
| taken 30 years because of delays, but rather because it
| required planning far ahead and a lot of execution.
| okanat wrote:
| They can. They need nonpolitical institutions with actual
| power. Yes it adds bureaucracy but it is more resilient. It
| doesn't take away from democracy, on contrary it
| strengthens it. The juridical power is one of those. Just
| like we don't vote on every single law, we should empower
| people who spend their entire career on specific areas of
| expertise to make long-term decisions. EU has this to a
| point. The US doesn't. Almost all of US institutions are
| political.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > That they haven't done that is one more indicator that they
| are thoughtlessly winging this.
|
| Devils advocate argument could be that they needed to do this
| immediately and could not take the time to stockpile.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Devils advocate argument could be that they needed to do
| this immediately and could not take the time to stockpile.
|
| But they did not, though. Nobody gave any argument about
| why it needed to be done now instead of in 6 months or a
| year. We can speculate all we want, but the overwhelming
| evidence points to recklessness and stupidity.
| tw04 wrote:
| Not to mention if your goal is to fix a trade imbalance with
| a specific country, you kind of need all of your allies to
| help you with it or it's never going to work.
|
| As I've done with just about everything that makes no sense
| from this administration, I go back to: what would Russia
| want?
|
| Russia would want the US to piss off both all of its closest
| allies and its largest trading partner at the same time,
| because it would significantly weaken the country, and
| potentially result in social unrest. They would want Trump to
| continually talk about annexing neighbors because it
| justifies their attempts at annexing Ukraine.
|
| Until someone can give me an explanation that makes more
| sense than: Putin is pulling Trump's strings - I'm going to
| continue to just assume he's literally a Russian asset.
| scorps wrote:
| At the risk of going full Sweeny Todd with Occam's Razor,
| what if it's as simple as enriching himself and his cohort
| via market manipulation?
| tengwar2 wrote:
| For that to work, you need to know that the market will
| recover. One short bout of playing with tariffs might be
| recoverable, but he's reaching the stage of long-term
| damage on tariffs such that companies are avoiding
| import/export relationships with the USA. Also hacking
| off allies doesn't fit with enriching him or his cronies.
| sounds wrote:
| Hard to argue with that. If I can inject a random
| thought, might not even be worth a reply.
|
| What if the goal is to deepen income inequality? Opening
| up low income jobs by deportation. Impoverishing
| households whose primary savings were in stocks, not
| business ownership or real estate. Hurting consumers,
| especially those whose disposable income is lower.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| It most certainly is. This crew would rather be kings of
| a ruined plantation of a country than to have a middle
| class with any economic or political power. And that goes
| double for their attitude toward non-whites.
|
| Every lower middle class person, can "command" about 100
| other 1/100ths of a person to supplant their life with
| food, fuel, vehicle, staples, etc. But billionaires have
| the labor of 1000s or more people at their fingertips. It
| doesnt matter if the 1000 are destitute, undernourished,
| sick, weak, dumb, or unhappy, as long as they're
| subservient enough to maintain or increase class
| division.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Hanlon's Razor could also be used here, and it isn't
| treason or greed, but just plain old stupidity.
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| Putin has convinced Trump, both overtly and covertly,
| that Trump can have what Putin has - personal control
| over a country of oligarchs. All Putin has to do to pull
| strings is feed Donald pointers that he willingly laps
| up.
| geoka9 wrote:
| Why not both? Russia mentoring the US admin on speed
| running towards authoritarianism (good for the cohort)
| while making the country weaker (good for Russia).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This genuinely looks like a real "emperor has no clothes"
| scenario.
|
| Trump is 100% convinced his (long disproven both theoretically
| and empirically) trade theory is true, and no one can talk him
| out of it.
|
| So it has to play out until the effects are unbearable.
|
| Or until congress votes to take his tariff powers away:
| https://www.kwch.com/2025/04/30/senate-voting-resolution-tha...
| dralley wrote:
| >Trump is 100% convinced his (long disproven both
| theoretically and empirically) trade theory is true, and no
| one can talk him out of it.
|
| Also nobody tries particularly hard. The secret to longevity
| in a Trump administration is to effusively praise the boss
| constantly and minimize direct contradictions. Which turns
| into "good tzar bad boyars" - the boss is never wrong, only
| badly advised.
| tuyguntn wrote:
| > "tariffs imposed during the 19th century spurred
| industrialization and ultimately positioned America as a global
| superpower"
|
| it's not "the one thing", which contributed to it. There are
| multiple factors which spurred industrialization, some of them
| are: * Europe and Japan was destroyed and they
| had other problems to deal with * Soviet Union was seen
| as an enemy * Many US soldiers returned home from war
| and they needed a job * When many people started working
| in manufacturing, they needed different optimizations for their
| process, which lead to more manufacturing
|
| Tariffs may have helped, but they were not the only reason. as
| an example, look at Brazil today, they have lots and lots of
| tariffs
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > Many US soldiers returned home from war and they needed a
| job
|
| It was a combination of US soldiers returning home after
| drawing government pay while fighting abroad, rationing
| limiting what could be purchased by those who remained home,
| and the one-two-three punch of the GI bill subsidizing land
| purchases, the interstate highway system effectively creating
| the American suburb, and process improvements from the war
| making automobiles drastically cheaper.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I'm not an economist, but I think the _theory_ has merit. I don
| 't think the execution does, if only because we almost
| certainly only have 4 years until the tariffs are mostly
| reversed. The complete lack of long-term planning is a major
| failure of out political system compared to places like China.
|
| If I were Trump, I instead would have pushed congress to take
| away the power of tariffs back from the presidency and make
| something like the Fed to manage them instead, with some checks
| added in. I normally don't like unelected officials making
| policy like that but in this case I don't see what else would
| work. As we've seen, broad tariffs are very unpopular even if
| they might be necessary, and we'd need them to have the
| potential to stick around much longer for them to be effective.
|
| That said, I'm willing to bet this will finally put the nail in
| the inflation coffin. Taking money away from consumers and
| "burning it" by returning it to the government is the best way
| to deal with inflation.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > If I were Trump, I instead would have pushed congress to
| take away the power of tariffs back from the presidency and
| make something like the Fed to manage them instead, with some
| checks added in. I normally don't like unelected officials
| making policy like that but in this case I don't see what
| else would work. As we've seen, broad tariffs are very
| unpopular even if they might be necessary, and we'd need them
| to have the potential to stick around much longer for them to
| be effective.
|
| The power of the tariff is typically reserved for Congress;
| the executive has declared an emergency giving itself that
| power, while Congress (specifically the House) has abdicated
| its responsibility by redefining "legislative days" to extend
| the length of the emergency.
|
| > That said, I'm willing to bet this will finally put the
| nail in the inflation coffin. Taking money away from
| consumers and "burning it" by returning it to the government
| is the best way to deal with inflation.
|
| Long term, maybe; short term, it'll spike inflation as the
| price of both raw materials and finished goods will rise to
| account for the tariffs.
| cyberax wrote:
| > That said, I'm willing to bet this will finally put the
| nail in the inflation coffin. Taking money away from
| consumers and "burning it" by returning it to the government
| is the best way to deal with inflation.
|
| Nope. Tariffs are associated with higher inflation, as
| consumers have to pay more. Over long term, if tariffs
| depress the economic growth and cause a recession, they
| indeed _might_ lower the inflation.
| fencepost wrote:
| The problem is the chaos.
|
| No competently run company is going to invest in more-expensive
| domestic production based on what the administration is doing
| because there can't be any expectation that policies will
| remain in place until production can be brought online. It
| doesn't even make sense to consider _planning_ to onshore
| production because there 's no reasonable expectation that the
| current policies will be in place in a month, much less in the
| year or more needed for a production change.
| tim333 wrote:
| I believe tariffs could be helpful in certain areas if done
| carefully, but don't think the current administration is up to
| it. Examples of successful use of tariffs might be South Korean
| industries like car making.
| csomar wrote:
| No. Most of these goods are things like blankets and spoons. Do
| you really want to manufacture those to be at the lead? Even if
| you hate China, you can offshore them somewhere else (ie: South
| of America). Instead, the policy should have been a targeted
| one: That is target a few key industries that are critical (ie:
| ship building) and put forward a plan to move capacity back to
| the US.
| bz_bz_bz wrote:
| Ray Dalio disagrees with the current Trump implementation but
| does think that a trade rebalance is necessary. I would say he
| "concurs with that theory" more than most traditional
| economists, but he thinks there are much better routes we can
| take to lessen the pain.
| chasing wrote:
| The Trump/Musk administration is a superb example of how big
| ideas alone aren't enough to accomplish major goals. You could
| agree with the need to bring back manufacturing jobs. You could
| agree with wanting to stick it to China. You could agree our
| federal government is too large and inefficient. You could
| agree that free speech is under attack or that our borders are
| insecure. Or that penguins are inherently untrustworthy and
| should not be engaged with economically. Whatever.
|
| When people actually want to solve large problems they _want_
| information and input. They move with deliberation and
| precision so they can accomplish the goal without creating
| unnecessary harm or stress. They communicate. I know: Techbro
| doofuses will be, like, "I know everything already, just do it
| all right now YOLO!" But that's not how the world works.
|
| There is no evidence that these major actions are being taken
| with any amount of care. They're erratic. They're often
| illegal. They're clearly creating destructive side-effects.
| Instead of engaging with real information, the administration
| seeks to destroy it. Musk, in my opinion, has big ideas he
| thinks are good but no mechanism to actually implement them in
| a good way. Trump is just an ignorant, self-serving man. He
| neither knows nor cares except to the degree that something can
| make him feel powerful in the moment.
| codazoda wrote:
| Here's just one example where I think, "maybe".
|
| I've been shopping for an Airbrush. These were a dream of mine
| as a kid. Back then the major brands were Made in the USA and
| were expensive enough that they were out of reach for 14 year
| old me.
|
| Today the main companies from back then have "Made in the USA"
| on their websites but Badger (https://badgerairbrush.com)
| doesn't look like it's been updated since 2018 and Paasche
| (https://www.paascheairbrush.com) seems only slightly better.
|
| Another popular and slightly newer brand is Iwata from Japan.
|
| I suspect that Chinese imports have been eating these companies
| lunch for decades. I suspect that the Chinese government is
| subsidizing the products and their shipping and artificially
| lowering the cost and that they have been doing this for a very
| long time.
| adwn wrote:
| > _I suspect that the Chinese government is subsidizing the
| products and their shipping and artificially lowering the
| cost and that they have been doing this for a very long
| time._
|
| Why would the Chinese government be subsidizing _airbrushes_
| of all things? Is that a strategically important industry?
| Are they planning on capturing the global airbrush market? To
| what end, exactly?
| photonthug wrote:
| My first reaction also but think about it. An airbrush
| isn't an airbrush but a pneumatic system. An electronic toy
| isn't a toy but an electronic system. At a large enough
| scale and over a long enough time frame.. lots of things
| are strategically important when you're talking about the
| basic ability to manufacture stuff independently
| vel0city wrote:
| Right? Its like a ballpoint pen. A basic commodity. But
| there's a lot of challenge in manufacturing the tiny
| balls and the tips to such a high amount of precision to
| mass produce quality ones cheaply.
|
| Just looking at the diagram of the airbrush, there's a
| little bit of complexity there in machining all of that
| good, quickly, and at scale. Lots of little parts to
| control it which to work well need to have high quality
| machining.
|
| https://badgerairbrush.com/images/101_Illustration.jpg
| jollyllama wrote:
| The better question to ask is for _which_ American economic
| interests. What you 're witnessing is a form of explicitly non-
| socialist class warfare led by conflicting groups of elites.
| strathmeyer wrote:
| It's a bargaining tactic from a lunatic. Trump thinks countries
| will call him offering to do things to have the tariffs
| removed. You are applying reason to someone who has been
| showing signs of dementia for decades.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The one economic theory of trade that seems most solid is
| competitive advantage but it does rely on trade between
| independent equal partners, rather than trade between a
| dominant superpower and a client state run by a puppet
| government controlled by said superpower.
|
| Fundamentally, the neoliberal project created a lot of
| billionaires in the USA and associated wealthy enclaves by
| pushing manufacturing out to US-controlled client state
| sweatshops while also importing lower-paid workers, from H1B
| visa holders in tech to undocumented labor in construction and
| agribusiness. The resulting wealth inequality has led to
| political instability and unexpected consequences (eg the Rust
| Belt not backing Democratic candidates who promoted TPP etc.)
|
| The reality is, reversing de-industrialization and abandoning
| neoliberalism would require a massive state-sponsored effort to
| update the basic infrastructure - electrical grids, roads,
| high-speed rail, ports, bridges, fiber-optic networks, schools
| for engineers and researchers - everything that makes
| competitive industrial manufacturing possible.
|
| The notion that tariffs alone could accomplish such a massive
| transition by pressuring private capital to build all that
| infrastructure is ludicrous. Capital flight from the USA is far
| more likely - so a massive socialist project would be needed,
| including high taxes on the wealthy and cross-border capital
| controls to prevent capital flight (as existed in the USA in
| the 1960s) - all of which is heresy to the acolytes of Milton
| Friedman.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong and Apple will open an iPhone factory in the
| USA this year with entry-level living wages of $35/hr
| (inflation-adjusted to 1960s factory wages) and the
| shareholders and executives will take a massive cut in
| renumeration to avoid iPhone prices spiking to levels where
| consumers won't touch them. I rather doubt it, though.
| coliveira wrote:
| Tariffs may be helpful for some areas of the economy, but the
| scorched earth strategy used by this administration is
| guaranteed to hurt the economy more than it helps. First of
| all, the US is posing as an enemy for every other nation,
| including so-called "allies". It is an isolationist program
| that will inevitably weaken the status of the dollar (no need
| for dollars is the US is not interested in trading).
| sanderjd wrote:
| My two cents is that if this had been, from the start, a
| dedicated effort to decouple the US economy from Chinese
| producers, for national / economic security reasons, then they
| might have been able to convince me that the short term pain
| might result in something long-term beneficial.
|
| The major problem they have with that, though, is that they
| started with Mexico and Canada, and then progressed to
| declaring (trade) war on _the entire world_ , moves which are
| exactly the wrong thing if the goal was to painfully but
| beneficially decouple with China. In order to achieve that
| goal, we would have needed to _strengthen_ our trading
| appliances with other countries in North America, Asia, and
| Europe. But they 've done _exactly the opposite_.
|
| (Note, though, that even this strategy wouldn't be getting much
| if any love from _economists_. It 's hard to find credible
| economists who think tariffs are anything but dumb,
| economically. But we would see a lot more support from foreign
| policy folks, many of whom do think that economic decoupling
| from China would be good for non-economic reasons, despite
| being painful economically.)
| tootie wrote:
| Renegotiating trade with Mexico and Canada was one of his
| most prominent achievements of his first term. Fair to say
| that deal wasn't substantially different from NAFTA, but it
| was a deal that he approved. To come back a few years later
| and blow it up as being completely unfair is just screaming
| that he is acting on pure emotion and not logic. Even if he
| were capable of giving a coherent justification for his
| actions, he's proven himself to be a completely unreliable
| negotiating partner. Other countries are refusing to deal
| with any intermediaries like Lutnick or Navarro because they
| are all pushing separate agendas and Trump has not held to
| any of them. They're just going to wait for him (or Congress)
| to break.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep, the giant Canada tariffs, in particular, as his first
| act on trade, was probably the most deeply weird and
| inexplicable thing I've seen a major world leader do in my
| lifetime.
|
| I've seen lots of policies I've disagreed with or despised,
| but very few that are just _weird_.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| The trouble with people who keep trying to show me the
| potential positives with this administration are that even if
| they were there, and they often are not, they're an accident if
| they exist - not an intended result. These guys are just
| wrecking shit based on their own interests - looking for a
| silver lining is helping them out.
| matwood wrote:
| > Curious if there is anyone here who genuinely sees this as
| short-term pain / long-term gain for American economic
| interests.
|
| I think at a base level someone must think that isolationism is
| good. Personally I think the world should be building deeper
| connections not less in order for humanity to move to the next
| level. I fear that we'll never reach that level without an
| existential force (like aliens showing up a la Star Trek).
| Until then, our petty differences will continue to get in the
| way.
| masto wrote:
| I think it is the permanent end of American
| economic/political/cultural dominance, which is a long-term
| gain for the world, but it's going to put the hurt on a lot of
| people (myself included). I am not quite altruistic enough to
| celebrate being sacrificed in this way, but I can see that when
| the future history books are written, they may look back at
| this as the end of a blight.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> short-term pain / long-term gain for American economic
| interests
|
| That only works if the policy isnt changing day to day (or
| across presidential cabinets / administrations.) It takes a lot
| of capital and time to build local factories, and I would not
| feel comfortable with that investment w/o assurances there will
| still be a market for local goods next week, next month, or in
| 10yrs
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah this is the biggest issue. No one is going to make a
| long-term investment to accommodate such a capricious policy
| maker. And certainly not with Congress making noises about
| overriding him. The upfront costs of reshoring manufacturing
| need to be amortized over many years to make sense and
| there's no belief these policies will be in place that long.
| legohead wrote:
| From an economic perspective these new blanket import tariffs
| are a classic own-goal: tariffs are good for developing
| industries, but these levies hit huge, mature supply chains, so
| the main outcome is higher consumer prices, squeezed real
| wages, and slower growth.
|
| A common example is Smoot-Hawley's tariffs deepening the Great
| Depression, and early 2025 data already show trade and hiring
| slipping, but we won't know the full effect for a while.
|
| As for the "bring manufacturing to the US" argument - tariffs
| often reroute, not reshore. GoPro moved from China to Mexico,
| Apple from China to India, Hasbro from China to Vietnam, to
| name a few.
| nostrademons wrote:
| The benefits of it are almost entirely "resilience during
| wartime". Economists tend not to consider war very much,
| because it is chaotic, tends to strike at random moments that
| are only loosely related to economic conditions, and involves
| people actively destroying productive capacity instead of
| building it up. But of war is a given, you can see some fairly
| obvious benefits of having critical supply chains entirely
| contained within your borders. There's ample historical data to
| back that up too: Japan (with its energy supply chain almost
| entirely outside of its borders) was forced to embark on wars
| of conquest in the rest of Asia to secure its energy needs,
| while the U.S. (which at the time was both a large oil producer
| and a large manufacturer) could sit behind its oceans and only
| enter the war when Japan's territorial ambitions collided with
| it.
|
| Likewise, if you take "WW3 is going to happen in the near
| future" as a given, almost all of the Trump administration's
| actions make sense, from the crackdown on dissent to the effort
| to deport any foreign nationals to the saber rattling against
| Greeenland and Panama to "drill baby drill" to appeasement of
| Russia to the increased defense budget to the tariffs and
| efforts to bring semiconductor and drone supply chains
| stateside to the elimination of climate change programs. The
| strategy is very clearly to hole up between our two oceans and
| produce everything ourselves while the rest of the world
| destroys itself.
|
| Of course, you can't _say_ "WW3 is imminent" without making it
| significantly more likely and scarring your populace to boot,
| which creates some very strong information distortions and
| illogical actions.
| j45 wrote:
| Don't see how this will be short term pain.
|
| Supply chains took a long time to get established again after
| covid for things coming in.
|
| Do Americans really want to do the manufacturing they don't
| want to do anymore?
| rayiner wrote:
| What makes you think economists know everything? How long did
| doctors lobotomize people? You think economics as a field is
| more scientific today that medicine was in the mid-20th
| century?
|
| Economists across the political spectrum also agree that
| investment taxes and corporate taxes are bad: https://www.npr.o
| rg/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Where was the
| appeal to economists when Trump cut the corporate tax rate
| during his first term?
| inciampati wrote:
| > EDIT: I can find very few voices (not currently working
| directly for the administration). There's Jeff Ferry who
| believes "tariffs imposed during the 19th century spurred
| industrialization and ultimately positioned America as a global
| superpower". (That historical view is uncommon and wouldn't
| account for the current realities of global supply chains.)
|
| IIRC At the same time (early 20th c.), the US was a major net
| importer of people. This led to a very low effective tariff
| rate.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Maybe long-term gain, but it would take a long time. And
| businesses aren't going to invest if they think policy might
| completely reverse in 3 years with a new government.
| dismalaf wrote:
| There was literally centuries of European history where every
| European government had massive tariffs on the others.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
|
| This era also featured lots of wars between European nations
| and spurred foreign conquests/colonialism.
| Havoc wrote:
| Given the shoddy execution I doubt there will be gain even if
| there was a hypothetical path in the theory
| EasyMark wrote:
| We could have sensible policies if that's their goal, we are
| too reliant on our primary adversary for far too many things,
| but there could have been a controlled separation of economies
| instead of this slit our own wrists and see what happens policy
| from the Big Brains who brought us Project 2025. I swear I used
| to not think that Putin had kompramat on Trump, but every day
| that theory seems more and more solid rather than whack
| conspiracy theory.
| krapp wrote:
| Yeah, what positioned America as a superpower was nuclear
| weapons and having an infrastructure not reduced to slag by
| World War 2.
| foobar1962 wrote:
| American retailers. The rest of the word is only seeing rushes on
| popcorn, which we're eating as we wait to see the what happens.
| betaby wrote:
| Prices are climbing up in Canada. So, no, I don't see Canadians
| rush on popcorn.
| k4rli wrote:
| *American retailers
|
| An important detail.
| csomar wrote:
| Huawei stuff is on a hot sale in Malaysia. I was looking for
| laptops the other day and not only they have a 10% discount but
| they are bundling around 30% of the laptop value in free stuff
| along with it:
| https://consumer.huawei.com/my/offer/laptops/matebook-x-pro-...
| buyucu wrote:
| I'm sure we'll experience shortages of popcorn when things get
| really hot.
| vanc_cefepime wrote:
| https://archive.is/QKowS
| macinjosh wrote:
| Politics aside. American big box stores are full of so much junk
| no one actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it.
| Reducing consumption is great for the environment and our sanity.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| We don't produce products on someone needing it, but someone
| buying it. If there are these products then people buy them and
| seemingly want them.
|
| The US does not tax trash, it taxes the origin of products.
| That applies regardless of if it's good or bad.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I somewhat agree with you. But let's consider a normal
| supermarket (in almost any country in the world) 80% of the
| aisles are full of junk and literal poison: Sugared cereal,
| soda, low quality beer, hyper-processed snacks and cookies,
| frozen slop food, etc.
|
| Then furthest in the back you have the fresh produce: Eggs,
| vegetables, meat and chicken, fish sometimes, dairy and bread.
| The good stuff.
|
| Now look down the shopping carts of your fellow shoppers:
| Filled to the brim with big boxes of the most unhealthy sewage
| on offer. They are subsidizing your shopping for quality
| ingredients from near and far.
|
| I think it's the same with other stores. The low quality junk
| that appeals to the average shopper is subsidizing the quality
| niche item that you need to buy.
| junga wrote:
| > Eggs, vegetables, meat and chicken, fish sometimes, dairy
| and bread.
|
| Thank you. I didn't realize until now that some
| cultures/regions distinguish between meat and chicken. Had to
| turn 41 for learning this.
| deadbabe wrote:
| There's meat, game, and chicken.
| gruez wrote:
| >American big box stores are full of so much junk no one
| actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it.
|
| Seems pretty paternalistic to me. Why not let people decide for
| themselves whether they "actually need" the $5 plastic trinket
| from china? Do you not trust adults to make informed decisions
| on what they're buying?
| colingauvin wrote:
| The argument is that $5 retail price comes nowhere close to
| capturing the true cost of the item. If the items were priced
| to have all their negative externalities included, such as
| loss of American jobs, fair labor, slave labor, environmental
| damage, shipping subsidies, etc, the bill would be much more
| than $5 and far fewer people would rationally buy them.
|
| The free rational market has no way to price these in.
| zdragnar wrote:
| We've been using "sin taxes" for a very long time, especially
| on tobacco and alcohol. Nothing new there, really.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| This is a bad comparison.
|
| Tobacco and alcohol, both of which have objective,
| measurable negative health outcomes supported by decades of
| research, versus some vague notion of "junk products" as
| defined by... who? And this is without even getting into
| the fact that the tariffs will raise the price of
| _everything_ , not just these supposed "junk products."
| AngryData wrote:
| And they have been a regressive tax on the poor since day
| one and not helped anybody.
| charlie90 wrote:
| No I don't. The only thing consumers care about is price.
| They don't consider pollution, waste, labor conditions.
|
| So if the only lever you have to affect consumers is price,
| then you must factor in the negative factors with higher
| prices.
| Closi wrote:
| Why not tax the negative factors then, rather than the
| country of origin?
|
| i.e. If the price is supposed to be a lever for labor
| conditions, why just tax China heavily and not Bangladesh?
|
| Why tax more fuel-efficient European cars instead of
| American-Built Jeep Grand Cherokees?
|
| And if reducing plastic waste is the priority, why would
| Trump's day include unbanning plastic straws?
|
| Answer: It's not actually about reducing negative
| externalities, it's about geopolitics, otherwise it
| wouldn't be so negatively weighted towards a single actor.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Do you think people should be allowed to buy a new car that
| gets like 5 mpg or should we restrict environmentally
| unfriendly products?
| hnav wrote:
| In theory we already penalize 5mpg cars with gas guzzler
| taxes, CAFE penalties and gas taxes. I think CAFE should be
| reworked to not penalize smaller, more fuel-efficient
| vehicles i.e. no more light-duty truck bs.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Yes, but the person I was responding to was against
| taxes?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Why then is this only applied to "junk" from overseas?
| faefox wrote:
| Nothing says free-market small-government conservatism quite
| like telling people what they do and don't need!
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm reminded of all those pictures of Soviet leaders who were
| used to empty stores wandering into an ordinary US supermarket
| and having their minds blown by the abundance. Every now and
| again an American tries to suggest that actually the empty
| supermarkets are better.
| lif wrote:
| thank you for stating what - based on the comments that have
| not been killed in this thread - very few here want to hear.
|
| In defense of those who may sincerely disagree, they may
| frequent higher quality retail than the bulk of U.S. shoppers.
| mahogany wrote:
| Is everything in the store junk? This is ultimately a non-
| sequitur -- the tariffs are not targeting junk, and not
| everything made in China is junk. Prices across the board will
| go up, a tax on everything.
|
| It's funny that the same party that likes to warn of "you will
| own nothing and be happy" is now defending economic policy that
| will decrease material wealth, but it's ok because it is "good
| for you" to practice having less.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Consumption can have bad effects on health and the environment.
| But those effects are from particular kinds of consumption.
|
| For example, buying solar panels is probably good for the
| environment and public health. On the other hand, buying sugary
| sodas is probably not so good for your health and maybe has
| some minor negative environmental impact. Most things are more
| complicated; running shoes might be good for your health and
| bad for the environment.
|
| The tarrifs are just a blanket tax on all consumption, so I
| imagine the effects will be a wash. We're getting rid of the
| good and bad.
| 34679 wrote:
| This seems to imply that the only thing we import from China is
| junk. That hasn't been the case for decades. Beyond the junk we
| have pretty much the entire consumer electronic market, and
| beyond that the equipment running the infrastructure required
| for many of those electronics to operate. Beyond that, we have
| equipment for communication and navigation networks for
| government and first responders, and the countless components
| required for their vehicles or an effective response to crisis.
| Then we have the vast variety of equipment required for modern
| farming, each piece containing countless Chinese components,
| even if it's an American made tractor.
|
| There is no possible way for anyone to foresee the totality of
| effects from a serious trade war with China, but I can assure
| you, it will be far worse than a lack of junk on store shelves.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Politics aside. American big box stores are full of so much
| junk no one actually needs
|
| How dare you question the free hand of the market!
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| This is plain bad economic policy disguised as a moral crusade
| against hyper consumption.
|
| If this administration cared at all about the environment, they
| wouldn't be opening up public land for oil drilling or firing
| hundreds of scientists working on climate reports as mandated
| by Congress [1].
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-climate-assessment-
| rep...
| mrweasel wrote:
| You do you think ordered the junk? Do you think all the junk is
| Chinese, because that's all they know how to make, or because
| the US business who ordered it wanted it to be as cheap as
| possible?
|
| I don't as such disagree with you that the junk needs to go,
| but there's also a big difference between a $2000 Lenovo
| laptop, made in China, and a $0.50 gadget, sold for $10, also
| made in China. You'd need to disincentivize companies from sell
| these products to consumers, then the flow of Chinese junk will
| stop.
| bArray wrote:
| > While President Donald Trump pressed pause on his sweeping
| tariff regimen and placed a 10% blanket tax on other countries,
| he taxed China more. He placed a 145% tariff on China, which
| retaliated with a 120% duty on American goods. No trade deal has
| been made, and it is unclear whether there are negotiations
| happening. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has put the onus on
| China to come to the table and ink a deal. Still, just under half
| of the port's business emanates from China, Seroka explained. So
| things could be bleak until then.
|
| Fundamentally this is a game of chicken, and China will
| definitely blink first. This will be for a few reasons:
|
| 1. Unemployment in China is rocketing. Prior to the trade war in
| February it was sitting at an estimated 16.9% [1] (although it's
| difficult to believe the stats). In the US it sits at about 4.2%
| [2], which feels about right with the UK at 4.4% [3]. China
| doesn't have the "disadvantage" of a significant welfare system,
| but these people will become increasingly desperate to survive
| and burden the system in one way or another.
|
| 2. With unemployment so high in China, demand for jobs is
| increased and the salaries are decreased. With less excess money,
| domestic spending is largely reduced. With the excess stock
| produced for the US market no longer being delivered,
| manufacturers look to dump into the domestic market at below cost
| just to recoup some of their investment and to pay back the
| supply chain. Remember that with such low margins, manufacturers
| often get supplies on the promise of payment upon selling the
| goods they prepare. You're looking at complete supply chain
| disruption from top to bottom even if the manufacturer didn't
| export to the US.
|
| 3. The Chinese housing market continues to be an extremely large
| problem. Housing represents approximately a third of their
| economy and you have several key problems. Prior to the trade
| war, Chinese property developers were having customers buy
| properties (with mortgages) before ground was broken and using
| this money and borrowing to develop the properties at relatively
| low margins. Due to corruption and corner cutting, a considerable
| number of these buildings were "tofu dregs" (meaning poorly
| constructed). Despite these cost cutting measures, there was
| still not enough money available to develop the promised
| properties. This lead to the likes of Evergrande, Country Garden,
| Zhongzhi, Vanke, etc, to (begin to) fail. The customer's money is
| gone and the bank paid it out to the developer, so the customer
| is still on the hook for a property that doesn't exist - the bank
| tells them to pay up and to take up their issues with the
| property developer. Even those that managed to get a property
| found that the developers were desperately liquidating properties
| at discount rates to cover debt interest, lowering the value of
| properties in the market. With reduced income, increased mortgage
| rates due to instability, some look to sell their properties and
| escape the backlog of missed mortgage payments. Those people may
| find their property devalued by some 50%, and that they still
| have an outstanding debt despite selling the property and
| receiving no equity due to the devaluation of the property.
|
| Although not outwardly said, the Chinese leadership have long
| considered themselves at war with the US. They have celebrated
| every issue the US has had, reacted negatively when the US
| experiences wins, and generally want to see the US fail. We're
| talking about the same CCP of the Mao Zedong era that considered
| the UK, US and Japan as enemies to crush. This is why that
| despite very obvious economic issues being experiences, the CCP
| refuse to negotiate.
|
| > "What we're going to see next is retailers have about five to
| seven weeks of full inventories left, and then the choices will
| lessen," Seroka told CNBC. That doesn't mean shelves will be
| empty, but in Seroka's hypothetical, it could mean if you're out
| shopping for a blue shirt, you may see 11 purple ones--but only
| one blue that isn't your size and is costlier.
|
| Maybe you can't find a blue shirt for a while and have to wear a
| purple one whilst textile manufacturing is scaled up in other
| asian/middle-eastern nations, but things could be far worse.
|
| > Earlier Tuesday, Gabriela Santos, JPMorgan Asset Management
| chief market strategist for the Americas, told CNBC: "Time is
| running out to see a lessening of the tariffs on China." Everyone
| knows the tariffs are unsustainable, she said, but markets need
| to see them actually drop.
|
| Translation: The tariffs will affect _our_ bottom line. Remember
| that JPMorgan as an entity do not care if jobs are lost in either
| the US (historically) or China (currently), as long as it does
| not affect their margins. The idea that JPMorgan does well and so
| does the US populace is wishful thinking.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-youth-jobless-
| rat...
|
| [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
|
| [3]
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin...
| oidar wrote:
| > The idea that JPMorgan does well and so does the US populace
| is wishful thinking.
|
| I'm trying to think of a public traded company that could be
| true for. It just doesn't seem that there is going to be a
| company that is tied to the fortunes of the US populace.
| Conagra maybe.
| bArray wrote:
| True, but I think it's important to point out that JPMorgan's
| concerns don't overlap with those of normal working people.
| card_zero wrote:
| The Chinese are saying he has already blinked first.
|
| > And it does appear that Trump has blinked first, last week
| hinting at a potential U-turn on tariffs, saying that the taxes
| he has so far imposed on Chinese imports would "come down
| substantially, but it won't be zero". Meanwhile, Chinese social
| media is back in action. "Trump has chickened out," was one of
| the top trending search topics on the Chinese social media
| platform Weibo after the US president softened his approach to
| tariffs.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpq7y8vl55yo
| colingauvin wrote:
| There is no scenario where the trade war ends, without both
| sides being able to declare victory to their constituents.
| That's just politics.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| China "blinked first" about a week ago. Publicly they assert
| that they'll never back down, while on the backend they
| aggressively remove tariffs in an attempt to keep their
| economy running.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-creates-list-us-
| ma...
| klooney wrote:
| > China will definitely blink first.
|
| I'm not sanguine. I think their leadership prides itself on
| being tougher and smarter than American leaders, and I think
| when they look at the results Canada and Mexico have gotten,
| complying with Trump, they're not going to feel like compliance
| will help.
| titaphraz wrote:
| > China will definitely blink first
|
| There are other countries in the world apart from US and China.
| US has effectively alienated most of these with tariffs (save
| for Russia).
|
| So prepare for a lot of friendly blinking between these
| countries to gang up on the bully.
| bArray wrote:
| You might think so, but in reality, what happens is people
| say this publicly and then try to befriend the bully
| privately to get favourable treatment.
|
| I'm not saying that it's right, it's just an observation.
| xzzx wrote:
| You've misinterpreted your first source -- that's the _youth_
| unemployment rate and not the overall rate. The correct
| comparison is 5.1% to the US's 4.2%.
| bArray wrote:
| > You've misinterpreted your first source -- that's the
| _youth_ unemployment rate and not the overall rate. The
| correct comparison is 5.1% to the US's 4.2%.
|
| You are correct, I cannot edit any more.
|
| In any case it is definitely trending upwards [1], and I'm
| hearing from people inside China that unemployment is rapidly
| increasing. A lot of factories are either on pause or shut
| down until further notice.
|
| That all said, it's unclear how many of those are gainfully
| employed, or how that would even be measured in China. There
| are many working in the delivery economy that sleep homeless.
| I think those working unsustainably is also on the increase.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_China
| dlisboa wrote:
| > Fundamentally this is a game of chicken, and China will
| definitely blink first.
|
| China thinks in terms of decades and their population is very
| culturally disciplined. They will endure years of economic
| downturns if necessary. Historically they have.
|
| They also have quite a few advantages being a planned economy,
| with a higher appetite for wealth redistribution than the US
| and the hability to shift investments very quickly. This quells
| most internal dissatisfaction that recessions bring.
|
| They merely have to wait it out, as they have. Trump dropped
| some tariffs without them doing anything.
| bArray wrote:
| > China thinks in terms of decades and their population is
| very culturally disciplined. They will endure years of
| economic downturns if necessary. Historically they have.
|
| I think this is a lie that somehow gets propagated in the
| West. They are not somehow smart and forward thinking, they
| are stuck within a dictatorship.
|
| Over a span of 3 years from 1959 15-55 million people died in
| China [1]. It wasn't because of a natural disaster. It wasn't
| because of a war. It's wasn't because of a disease. It was
| purely because the leadership was trying to achieve the same
| ambitions as they do today.
|
| Nothing changed, it is still the same party and CCP will go
| to the same lengths to try to achieve it again. The result in
| 1961 was a -27.3% growth [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China#Ann
| ual...
| dlisboa wrote:
| It's a really shallow analysis to claim nothing has changed
| in China since Mao, specially politically.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| I don't see how any of this refutes the claim that the
| Chinese population has a much greater pain threshold than
| the US. If anything, you're only bolstering the claim.
| joleyj wrote:
| ... says Bill Maher.
| faefox wrote:
| I don't think the population at large fully appreciates just how
| bad things could (and most likely will) get once these pre-tariff
| stocks are depleted. There is no magic wand to stand up new
| supply chains for the gazillion products we import from China
| overnight or even in the next several years. This promises to be
| more dramatic than the COVID supply shock only this time the
| damage will be _entirely self-inflicted_ and - maybe -
| unrecoverable.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The markets continue to assume that there won't be any impact.
| When they do talk honestly you see Bloomberg interview finance
| leaders saying they aren't making big bets because they have no
| idea what to expect.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > they have no idea what to expect.
|
| that's the key. "the subprime risk is contained", remember
| that? Anyone who claims they know what the economy is going
| to do 6 months from now should prove it with their stock
| portfolio.
| joering2 wrote:
| Sadly I agree with unrecoverable. Not only China is not stupid
| and is not waiting around, but also this idea that American
| people under democratic system can withstand longer oppression
| than a hard core regime that makes people missing every day, is
| astonishing. We will have Americans riot on the streets,
| meanwhile Chinese people will just get a tad smaller rice
| bowls. And then you have Canada, India and most significant
| countries there that this Administration continues to offend.
| Canada is going thru rounds of serious talks to take up large
| amounts of goods produced in China, so is India. We might be at
| the point that if/when a new Administration comes and is ready
| to restart talks, China may say "sorry we don't have anymore
| hands/factories to produce goods and we are very happy with
| what we sale to Canada/China/[insert any country name that is
| not US]".
|
| Side note, how is bringing back manufacturing really what
| American people want? Do you want to live next to a huge
| factory polluting air and creating unbearable noise? You think
| you children can or want to work as hard as Chinese folks doing
| repetitive tasks in stinky inhumane factories? At what rate? $2
| per day? The reason it all got pushed outside of USA is exactly
| because the level of lifestyle Americans wanted and like. Now
| apparently we are being told by this Administration that
| "having cheap goods is not American dream."
|
| God help us all!
| ZeWaka wrote:
| I think it'll have to get /really/ bad in the US before
| anything close to a general strike/popular riot happens. We
| have plenty of bread and circuses to go around in the
| meantime.
| whazor wrote:
| Supply chains are incredibly complex. Even if a supplier is
| based in the U.S., they might be reselling Chinese-made goods.
| When tariffs hit or restrictions are imposed, those suppliers
| may simply stop selling the affected products. That can leave
| entire factories unable to operate due to missing components,
| which often take months to redesign or source alternatives for.
|
| In theory, real-time trading systems could reduce the impact of
| such disruptions. But in practice, global logistics still runs
| on Excel sheets, emailed quotes, phone calls, and months-long
| shipping cycles.
| matteoraso wrote:
| I don't think that people realize that this is bigger than just
| the tariffs now. Even if Trump completely backs down, he's
| shown himself to be too unstable to do business with. I don't
| think that I'm exaggerating when I say that American hegemony
| is in terminal decline because of this. Maybe forcibly removing
| Trump (which will never happen) can help slow the decline, but
| the international community is still going to divest from
| America.
| faefox wrote:
| Yeah. Trump 1.0 had a lot of the same mindless flailing but I
| think a lot of folks were prepared to write it off as an
| aberration. For him to be reelected after everything (and I
| mean _everything_ ) shows the world that, no, it really is
| true that a considerable segment of the American populace
| will gleefully burn it all down as long as they can totally
| own the libs along the way.
| inverted_flag wrote:
| What's everyone stocking up on before the shortages begin?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Electronic components. In the Trump economic crisis the dollar
| will be worthless and we will barter with capacitors and IC.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I was looking at that ~5 months ago, but with the eye to also
| building up savings, so not just spendinding willy-nilly. We
| ended up deciding not to replace/upgrade an computers or other
| electronics, my first-gen M1 macbook I was thinking about
| refreshing but didn't REALLY need it.
| mustyoshi wrote:
| Next week's volume will be down, but the next next week is back
| up to last year's volume...?
| deadeye wrote:
| We are at an inflection point in manufacturing. The next
| industrial revolution will combine AI and robots.
|
| Manufacturing jobs of the future will be fewer and higher in the
| value chain, requiring technical abilities. Workers won't be
| mindless stamping parts over and over.
|
| Now, the question is, do you want our adversaries to develop and
| own this new era or do you want the US to lead this next
| generation of industrialization?
|
| Finally, if you don't think China is our adversary, then we're
| not living in the same reality.
| mvid wrote:
| Owning automation and high tech manufacture is likely important
| for the country. It's too bad we have the absolute least
| qualified person and party to pull it off in charge
| gs17 wrote:
| > or do you want the US to lead this next generation of
| industrialization?
|
| The current administration's actions are not meaningfully
| helping push us towards that. There are plenty of things they
| could do to help motivate that, but what they've done so far
| isn't really in that direction.
| morkalork wrote:
| The USA has sleep walked into an awkward position:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-03-21/-chine...
| https://militarnyi.com/en/news/usa-unable-to-make-drones-wit...
| dayvigo wrote:
| AGI which will lead to ASI is going to happen before 2030, and
| the US is going to lose because of tariffs. Thinking in terms
| of decades rather than years will be a fatal mistake.
| qwertox wrote:
| Add to this the lack of interest of serving others:
| https://x.com/jasonvonholmes/status/1910643605896908821
|
| TLDW: "Americans are a bunch of babies, they're hard to work
| with", which basically applies to all developed countries. It's
| the same in Germany.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Can't watch the video now, but when I worked on a smart home
| project, they worked with manufacturers in China Shenzhen
| because they are just that much better, there is an entire
| industry designing, manufacturing, inspecting, packaging stuff
| the way you want it, everything done in weeks even for a small
| company.
|
| European companies, at least in this niche were not only more
| expensive, but worse quality, slower, more bureaucratic.
|
| Now, how this anecdote translates to other industries, of
| course I don't know, but Shenzhen, I was told, it's something
| hard to even imagine as a European.
| misiek08 wrote:
| Again, like during COVID, few people will earn gazillions. They
| will have stock and they will push it slowly into market with
| extremely high prices accepted by consumers. It is very smart
| what they are doing, like always - and the only thing that
| matters is money.
| mindcrash wrote:
| April 27 2025: Port of Seattle - EMPTY
|
| April 30 2025: Port of Rotterdam - Congesting shipment containers
| originally inbound towards the United States but halted (by
| Chinese exporters?). Also risking storage and transhipment of
| containers inbound to Rotterdam. (Heard on local news a few
| minutes ago)
|
| If Trump keeps this up, within ~12 weeks he is not going to
| destroy the economy of the United States but the entire West...
| colechristensen wrote:
| >If Trump keeps this up, within ~12 weeks he is not going to
| destroy the economy of the United States but the entire West...
|
| He'll find someone to blame for forcing him to change
| direction.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| I think they want to impose tariffs on everyone and then remove
| them from all that are willing to sanction china and help
| isolating it. 7 weeks should be more than enough to pull that off
| or fail. How beneficial it would be for the american economy
| either way I don't know. I mean all these people are not
| intelligent. They are just busy.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Sanction China to what ends? For what objective?
| thuanao wrote:
| BRICS is larger than G7 now by GDP and most of the world has
| deep trade relations with China.
|
| US bluff is called. They can't win a war with China, militarily
| or materially.
|
| US wasted half a century and trillions on lost wars, instead of
| investing in its citizens. China did the opposite. And those
| fruits are just beginning to ripen.
| twothreeone wrote:
| > They can't win a war with China
|
| Nobody wins in that war, that's why either side is so
| reluctant to start it.
|
| > BRICS is larger than G7 now by GDP
|
| That's BS. Easy to debunk. Try harder. https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/BRICS#/media/File:BRICS_AND_G7...
| thuanao wrote:
| Current membership of BRICS (BRICS+) is larger GDP than G7.
|
| Either side!? Only the USA speaks of China as having no
| right to exist and attacks Chinese sovereignty openly at
| every opportunity.
|
| The USA started the trade war, not China. US leadership and
| its propaganda news channels constantly speak of war with
| China. Not as a war to defend US territory but as a war to
| topple the Chinese government. The current defense
| secretary, Pete Hegseth, wrote in his book "American
| Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free", that if Trump could
| return to the White House and Republicans could take power,
| "Communist China will fall--and lick its wounds for another
| two hundred years".
|
| Hegseth said China "are literally the villains of our
| generation", and warned, "If we don't stand up to communist
| China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem
| someday".
| twothreeone wrote:
| Relax, that's just words. War starts with weapons. And I
| would disagree that the US started the trade war. China
| has been much more aggressive than any other country when
| it comes to trade policy, certainly more aggressive than
| the US ever was. Ask literally any company on the planet
| who wants to do business in China. Or ask the Kenyan's,
| or Nigerian's about who operates and uses their railways.
| The only difference is that the Politburo doesn't
| (openly) discuss its policy. That doesn't mean its
| actions are hidden, the intention is clear.
| yen223 wrote:
| Which country has sanctioned China as the result of the tariffs
| so far?
|
| Most Asia-pacific nations have expanded trade with China, to
| make up for the shortfall from reduced trade with America.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Cue toilet paper panic Part II. Interesting to see how this plays
| out.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Big Toilet Paper really doesn't want Americans to get into
| using bidets, so they will make sure there is enough supply to
| feed the panic buying.
| toast0 wrote:
| I mean, I don't doubt it, but I don't think the US imports much
| toilet paper. Not that factual basis is required for a panic.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Can we NOT start another fake scarcity scare? Businesses are
| importing less (from China, in this case) due to tariffs because
| they expect demand to drop due to the increased prices that would
| be passed down to consumers. They are not going to stop importing
| goods that have inelastic demand, where everyone will just have
| to absorb the higher prices. PLEASE do not start panic buying,
| which does create [temporary] shortages and generally causes
| unnecessary harm :/
| hnav wrote:
| that's basically the goal here, getting people to panic spend
| to squeeze the last little bit out of the COVID debacle before
| things return to normal.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I agree we won't see empty shelves, excepting maybe some food
| items, as if people don't buy things due to the higher price,
| they'll just sit on the shelves.
|
| I'd caution that no demand is totally inelastic though. The
| classic example is people not reducing their insulin use if the
| price goes up, but in actual practice, people absolutely do
| just that.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| A huge percentage (35%-65% depending on what source you
| believe) of American families are living paycheck to paycheck
| are are therefore extremely price sensitive. They are the ones
| buying cheap stuff in Walmart.
|
| Not everyone will be buying expensive hothouse tomatoes come
| winter. People who can no longer afford to buy imported produce
| will change their habits and just buy more unhealthy stuff that
| they can afford.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Someone help me figure out: Shouldn't anti-capitalists be
| cheering this on? Way less consumption and incentives for
| businesses.
| linsomniac wrote:
| What do you mean by "anti-capitalists"?
|
| Because today's climate in the US seems, even related to the
| tariffs, to be heavily weighted towards making those with deep
| pockets even deeper. The confusion in the markets, for example,
| have been a perfect opportunity for those properly placed to
| rake in a ton of money. Ditto with DOGE ending spending on a
| lot of projects, moving it commercial providers.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| Weird gotcha attempt. Who are you even speaking to? Are these
| "anti-capitalists" in the room with us right now?
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Outside of the US? Yes, I've seen some South American leftists
| saying "good, comeuppance".
|
| But overall? No, extreme shortages will mean people won't be
| able to receive essential goods. If they're sick, they could
| die. If their housing is precarious, extra costs of necessities
| could push them to homelessness. If they've been looking for a
| job to pay for necessities, good luck because businesses will
| be closing left and right and everyone will be looking for a
| job.
|
| This combined with moves to strengthen police aggression and
| protect police who fall on the wrong side of the law means any
| protest against these moves will be met with greater violence.
| We were already seeing people being blinded or killed by riot
| police during BLM protests.
|
| Imagine what kind of violence will be used against protestors
| who don't have anything to lose. They'll have lost their jobs,
| and with it their healthcare. They won't be able to afford
| housing, food, household objects, entertainment, etc. People in
| the US don't protest because we don't have social safety nets
| to fall back on. Now protestors wont have to worry about
| falling any deeper.
|
| So no, being anti-capitalist doesn't mean being pro a hyper-
| capitalist sabotaging the system people rely on to survive
| without any meaningful plan to fix or replace it. This is just
| chaos.
| AngryData wrote:
| Capitalism =/= trade. Non-capitalist =/= not trading.
| MaoSYJ wrote:
| this opens a interesting scenario where drug cartels may be the
| answer to a logistic problem since they already have the
| infraestructure for drugs. Could they diversify and smuggle tech
| products given their volume/weight ratio?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Organized crime has a long history of involvement with
| smuggling other kinds of products. It's common to smuggle
| electronics to countries with high import taxes (e.g. Brazil)
| and cartels have been involved with high value produce imports
| like luxury goods and avocados for years.
| buyucu wrote:
| smuggling makes sense for products light in size and value but
| large in value. it does not make sense for toilet paper.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Almost funny to imagine the world where cartels will smuggle
| large quantities of Switch 2's to sell to Americans.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i don't see why not, they sure as hell do it with avocados.
| dotcoma wrote:
| MAGA? How about SUITPA?
|
| Stock up in toilet paper again.
| ck2 wrote:
| Can you imagine empty shelves all summer in America like it's
| soviet union?
|
| Definitely going to happen because it will take months for
| shipping to return, just like the pandemic supply-chain
| disruptions.
|
| And maybe the tariffs stay while manufacturing decides to wait
| FOUR YEARS instead of changing anything.
| netsharc wrote:
| Soon: the White House team's going to go to grocery stores
| stocking up their shelves before Trump visits, Potemkin-
| village-style...
|
| Makes me think of the anecdote of Yeltsin entering a random
| grocery store, seeing their shelves full, and being shocked
| (the stop wasn't scheduled, and he assumed the US would've
| created a Potemkin grocery store):
| https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/13/how-a-russians-grocery-...
|
| Wikipedia:
|
| > Following the grocery store visit, Yeltsin and his entourage
| flew to Miami, their final location before returning to the
| Soviet Union. During the flight, Yeltsin was in a state of
| shock regarding the grocery store and remained speechless for a
| long time. According to Sukhanov, it was during the flight that
| "the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed inside" Yeltsin.
| Following his silence, Yeltsin asked aloud, "What have they
| done to our people?", questioning the Soviet Union's struggles
| with food. In a later biography, Yeltsin commented regarding
| his grocery store visit,
|
| >> When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of
| cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first
| time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet
| people. That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has
| been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to
| think of it.
|
| Heh, perhaps we should compare it to that fucking "useful"
| idiot Tucker Carlson going to a Russian grocery store...
|
| If the shelves are empty in September, can someone recreate
| these photos, but with empty shelves:
| https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/Bori...
| (assuming the press is still free at that point, and there's no
| risk of being sent to the gulag...).
| Mr_Eri_Atlov wrote:
| 7 weeks until this Wile E. Coyote nation realizes there's no
| ground beneath our feet and it's a long way down.
| timewizard wrote:
| It's been a long time coming. Sentiments like this in the
| article highlight why:
|
| > "Nobody wins," he said. "China is America's factory."
|
| China is a sovereign country on the other side of the world.
| Making the entirety of your supply chain dependent on it is
| madness. And while the article strains to talk about "blue and
| purple shirts" you should probably be more concerned about
| where the pharmaceuticals are made.
|
| This article is writing from the perspective of those who are
| set to lose money on this horrible system of commerce. From my
| perspective they failed to read the writing on the wall and ran
| the system into the ground because it was the only way for them
| to keep their profit margins juiced.
|
| > "We're not talking about higher prices and companies figuring
| out ways to pass that on," Santos said. "We're talking about
| actual disruption to the supply chain."
|
| They say this as if it could only be a bad thing. What happened
| to the spirit of innovation and commerce in this country?
| Someone wrote:
| I'm surprised that 7 weeks of inventory is mentioned as being
| alarming.
|
| https://retalon.com/blog/inventory-turnover-ratio says
|
| _"The average inventory turnover across retail is around 9x"_
|
| That means they have about 6 weeks of inventory.
|
| Of course, it varies by industry, but for many, that shouldn't be
| alarming.
|
| What do I misunderstand?
| dimal wrote:
| In seven weeks, there may be no way to restock. Six weeks
| inventory probably seems fine when there's a constant inflow.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm kind of lost on why there will be no restock. The price
| increased, they didn't ban everything.
|
| What am I missing?
| rtsil wrote:
| Unpredictability. If you restock and the tariffs are
| eliminated or significantly reduced a couple of weeks/month
| later, that's a disaster. So the best attitude is to wait
| and see.
| ImaCake wrote:
| The price increased for sending stuff to the USA. It didn't
| for every other consumer market in the world.
| dade_ wrote:
| US ports are quiet and shortages are next, but with that
| will also come panic buying and hoarding.
| https://www.npr.org/2025/04/18/nx-s1-5367762/the-busiest-
| por...
| disqard wrote:
| So, a toddler is shaking a snowglobe.
|
| This entire section is full of people (not everyone, but several)
| analyzing it carefully, as if it were a scientist handling a moon
| rock inside the nitrogen environment of a glovebox.
|
| I can't see anything productive emerging from this post-hoc
| theorizing.
| ivape wrote:
| We didn't even have more than one debate this election cycle
| going over economic policy. I was big Ron Paul fan on foreign
| relations, but whenever he went into economics you could see
| his views were just a little nuts. Practical fiscal
| conservatives were asleep at the wheel on this one.
|
| For those that went through Brexit, can you detail when the
| larger population realized it was stupid? That's the only
| pattern I can see the U.S matching at this point.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| I couldn't put an exact time frame on it, but it took several
| years before the pro-Brexit politicians ran out of 'it will
| get better soon' arguments and the (majority of the) populace
| realised that they'd been had.
| thechao wrote:
| The MAGA ideologues can stay cultists longer than we can
| stay solvent? I'm in Texas, and I've got a neighbor, down
| the road, who _was_ in custom home construction; he 's out
| of business now. Why? He can't import lumber, reliably; he
| used to hire "under the table", and he bought small steel
| supplies in bulk from Alibaba. So... pretty much his entire
| business model is kaput. He keeps telling me that, any day
| now, Trump's 11D chess moves are going to make him (my
| neighbor) solvent again. He just sold his (white) truck,
| and is selling his house. Still flying his Trump flag,
| though.
| reactordev wrote:
| 11D, got to wait for the 12D move to fix everything. /s
| franktankbank wrote:
| Big if true. One more ; ought to do it.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Sounds like the type that buys lottery tickets every week
| actually believing that they will hit one day. Just a
| matter of time.
| silisili wrote:
| I think this is probably the same phenomenon that makes
| people fall for romance scams despite the obvious red
| flags. Like a sunk cost fallacy for human emotion - is
| there a term for that? Nobody seems to want to admit they
| were wrong or 'had', so do the alternative - being had
| even more.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| The other 51 percent for are sophisticated economic
| analysts who ended up hoarding toilet paper and pasta
| during Covid.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Still plenty (nowhere close to a majority, but more than a
| few nutters) who are certain the problem is we didn't have
| a hard enough Brexit. The reason the scientific method is
| considered an actual discovery is that this whole "In light
| of new data I realise I was wrong" just isn't how we tend
| to behave.
|
| For many Leave voters, the fact they voted Leave
| necessarily means voting Leave was correct - some of them
| rationalise this as "I was lied to" => "Maybe Leave was the
| wrong choice but I was misinformed" plenty more reached
| "Leave was correct but politicians screwed up Leaving
| somehow, it's not my fault". The current iteration of the
| Nigel Farage party, named Reform, takes this sort of line.
|
| Once I was writing about the Achilles and the Tortoise
| story in GEB where the Tortoise rejects Modus Ponens and
| Achilles discovers, the hard way, that it's useless to
| argue any point with an interlocutor who rejects this
| principle. Somebody else on HN pointed out that most people
| probably would not accept Modus Ponens. And they're
| probably right, as hopeless as that outcome is.
| navane wrote:
| The Italian socialist opposed joining ww1. The
| nationalists wanted to join, and the Italians joined, on
| the British and French side. They fought so bad that the
| British had to send troops to the new Austrian - Italian
| front, effectively weakening the allied effort and thus
| the spoils of the war were none for the Italians. Who did
| the fascists blame, the nationalist for joining this
| folly? No, the socialists for sabotaging their efforts.
| stouset wrote:
| As an American, is that the generally-accepted viewpoint
| now? That Brexit was a mistake? If so, do people feel like
| it was an honest mistake, or do people generally believe
| that the politicians and businesspeople who supported it
| were either incompetent or hoping to benefit personally at
| everyone else's expense? Something else?
|
| I'm asking because I'd really like to believe that there's
| a point where a convincing majority of Americans will wake
| up and realize that Republican (and particularly Trump)
| politics are a sham and have been unabashedly so since _at
| least_ the first Trump administration. I would like that,
| but I 'm not hopeful at this point.
| navane wrote:
| I'm not in England but in mainland Europe and yes, I
| don't know a single person who sees Brexit benefiting the
| Brits. It was all lies and pandering for politicians
| benefits.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Long long before.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| > For those that went through Brexit, can you detail when
| the larger population realized it was stupid?
|
| 49 percent for sure knew and voted against.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's not fair to characterize Brexit -- a ridiculously over
| simplistic yes/no referendum question -- as being inherently
| bad.
|
| I think a charitable reading of your comment ought to replace
| _Brexit_ with _the subsequent implementation of Brexit by
| successive Conservative governments_.
|
| That's also quite possibly what you meant anyway, but it's
| still worth saying aloud.
| ivape wrote:
| I could have used wars as an example (Iraq, Afghanistan,
| Vietnam), but Brexit feels like more of a parallel as it's
| non-violent and somewhat economic. We will absolutely have
| a conclusive outcome for what we've decided to do as a
| nation. The unfortunate thing is we are not going to get
| back 4 years of our lives. It's just going to evaporate and
| that's the thing that political fervor masks. You got one
| life, you can spend it fighting China, _I suppose_. In the
| case of Europe, you can spend it exiting it, _I suppose_.
| There 's a serious opportunity cost here that wasn't
| properly discussed due to the zealotry of both sides.
|
| Policy discussion seems to be something the masses cannot
| handle without clearly defining an "other". I feel
| Jeffersonian (bigoted) in suggesting that it's a mistake to
| give ordinary people access to this debate. Almost like
| letting ten year olds get involved in how mom and dad
| handle the mortgage.
| gmac wrote:
| There are an infinite number of Brexits we didn't get. We
| only got to try one. For most purposes I think it's pretty
| reasonable to equate 'Brexit' with that one.
|
| Frankly, I don't think any of the Brexits we stood any
| chance of actually getting could have been good: it was
| only a question of how bad the one we eventually got would
| be.
|
| And the problem with the less bad Brexits was: they would
| be less bad, but they would also be more directly
| comparable with no Brexit (e.g. "in order to improve trade
| we're going to follow all the EU's rules but not have a say
| in any of them").
| master_crab wrote:
| Yes. Yes, Brexit was inherently bad. And its implementation
| made it worse
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit#:~
| :...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-19/brexi
| t...
| gtowey wrote:
| What does it say that people who voted "yes" without a
| clear plan of action already on the table?
|
| It's like signing your name on a blank contract and
| trusting the counterparty to write up something that's good
| for you.
| analog31 wrote:
| The Republicans successfully turned economic issues into
| social ones. Previously, immigrants were stealing our jobs.
| Now they're stealing our cats.
|
| The three pillars of the Republican party were conservatism,
| religion, and race. I'm not saying every R is concerned about
| all 3 of these, but that they couldn't win elections without
| all 3 of them. Over the past 50 years, traditional
| conservatism has been hard pressed to explain itself to the
| working class in light of the rising prosperity of liberal
| democracies, and has become further detached from reality.
| People are becoming less religious, and more racially
| diverse. I think the R's realized that they were running out
| of runway, and also figured out how to exploit nearly 100%
| dominance over the "new" media.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The canary should be when the administration starts suggesting
| any economic indicators for the rest of the year are really due
| to the last administration and have nothing to do with this
| administration.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The canary is already dead then, as they've blamed the stock
| market on Biden several times now.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Already happening.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/trump-economy-tariffs-gdp-7494825...
|
| " Trump was quick to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe
| Biden, for any setbacks while telling his Cabinet that his
| tariffs meant China was "having tremendous difficulty because
| their factories are not doing business," adding that the U.S.
| did not really need imports from the world's dominant
| manufacturer. "
|
| He also posted on Truth Social today, blaming Biden for the
| economy.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Truth Social post blamed Biden for the economy today. That's
| been a consistent drumbeat.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Why is the president allowed to impose tariffs? Congress should
| have a say in it.
| atrus wrote:
| The president can do whatever they want as long as congress
| doesn't stop them. And congress...isn't stopping them. Not many
| lines here to read between.
| Loughla wrote:
| Exactly. The system of checks and balances, like most things
| apparently, only works if the people doing the things make it
| work. And they're refusing to do that.
|
| Our Congress is complicit in this mess.
| EasyMark wrote:
| So we're recreating the covid supply chain crisis on purpose so
| Trump can try and build an island, fortress America? Seems like a
| great idea put forth by great people.
| conductr wrote:
| This all feels very familiar, I stocked up on toilet paper this
| past weekend just in case.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| > The U.S.-China trade war fallout has begun. The Port of Los
| Angeles anticipates plummeting cargo traffic until a deal on
| tariffs is reached, but the Trump administration has not
| indicated whether negotiations are happening. Time is running
| out, a JPMorgan chief market strategist said.
|
| As is so often the case, Fortune is burying the lede here and
| making the situation look better than it is. The administration
| _has_ indicated that negotiations are happening, but China has
| denied that any such negotiations have occurred [0]. Given the
| trump administration's horrendous track record of blatant lies,
| there is no reason to believe them.
|
| In the best case, there are quiet negotiations going on, but
| there's a real chance here that trump is fully losing his mind,
| his mental state has been on the decline for years and the things
| he says are becoming more incoherent by the week.
|
| I am more inclined to believe that there are effectively no
| ongoing negotiations, and our trade policy is being determined
| largely by whoever gets the last word in with trump before he
| tweets something idiotic. This is an unsustainable situation.
|
| If you live in the US, now is an excellent time to contact your
| senators and representatives and demand some accountability.
|
| [0] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-
| report/china-...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| De-coupling from an authoritarian adversary is a worthwhile
| objective, but there are more competent ways of doing that.
|
| Back in Trump's first term he put up some targeted tariffs. They
| were reasonable, effective, non-destructive to the economy, and
| Biden actually kept them. Good trade policy often become
| bipartisan.
|
| There's a way to repeat that success. To effectively incentivize
| supply chain re-shoring, without destroying the economy and stock
| market, and being so effective and smart that the next
| administration keeps the policy, even a Dem admin. Which is:
|
| 1. increase tariffs gradually, stepwise, over the first two years
| +/- of his admin. Also get the math right, not 4x too high.
|
| 2. tariffs only on China and other adversaries, not our
| democratic friends and allies. China is the main economic problem
| anyway, not EU, Canada, Mexico, Japan, etc.
|
| 3. use other tools in addition to tariffs like tax policy for
| manufacturers (tax credits, accounting changes around equipment
| amortization, etc). Don't be that guy with only a hammer for whom
| everything is a nail, diversify, use all the tools available.
|
| A graduated, predictable, multi-pronged approach confers the
| policy stability and predictability companies need to forecast,
| plan, invest, and hire. That makes it more likely the next
| administration will continue the tariff policy, even a Dem admin.
|
| But Trump and Navarro's ham-fisted approach that tanks the stock
| market and causes shortages and inflation is not going to last.
| Companies won't invest and hire under those circumstances. It
| will implode, potentially discrediting the entire concept in the
| public's view, making it more difficult to implement an actually
| effective and sensible policy instead.
| apricot wrote:
| If you elect a clown _twice_, how can you not expect a huge
| circus?
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