Anonymous wrote:Elections have consequences.

Liberals lost. Everywhere. Now we have a grown up in charge

A grown up ruining the economy?

If any day exposes the differences between urban elites and most of the country, this day does

Just had a great couple meetings with contractors working on my house in North Carolina far from the beltway bubble.

None of them are impacted by the tariffs. None of them were Hispanic. They lived in the area since childhood, an electrician, a plumber, a contractor and helpers.

All of them support stopping the overwhelming immigration that replace US workers with cheap labor and all of them support tariffs to bring back manufacturing to US.

Maybe we should be able to build our own anti-biotics without the globalists demanding their cut.

Good Day!

if only we were warned

https://bsky.app/profile/victorshi.bsky.social/post/3llvei6vw5c2o

Kamala Harris predicted this exact moment happening:

“Understand that part of Trump’s plan is to put in place a national sales tax of at least 20% on everyday goods and necessities.”

She warned us over & over again & she was so right.

Anonymous wrote:Elections have consequences.

Liberals lost. Everywhere. Now we have a grown up in charge

A grown up who has cause the biggest job loss in modern history, and has cut trillions of worth from our markets, is driving up or debt and deficit spending and is severing ties with our global trade and military partners.

Please explain how any of this benefits the average American?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tariffs are unfair, why is it ok for other countries to put them on USA made goods?

Think of it this way....you buy stuff from Safeway, but Safeway doesn't buy anything from you. That is a trade deficit. But you still get what you need from Safeway for a price that is acceptable to you. Why is this a problem?

You need a personal trade surplus in order to buy from Safeway.

I trade my labor (my “trade” product) for dollars from my employer. I use those dollars to buy from Safeway.

If I have a trade deficient, meaning I don’t trade my work for dollars, I just go further and further in to credit card debt.

And the way to deal with debt in this example, real world, is to have billionaires pay their fair share, not cut nickles from your personal spending.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tariffs are unfair, why is it ok for other countries to put them on USA made goods?

Think of it this way....you buy stuff from Safeway, but Safeway doesn't buy anything from you. That is a trade deficit. But you still get what you need from Safeway for a price that is acceptable to you. Why is this a problem?

THANK YOU

Anonymous wrote:I started another thread about how bad these tariffs will be, but Jeff shut it down because of this one. But I'll rephrase my question:

How bad is it?

This analysis (https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/where-we-stand-fiscal-economic-and-distributional-effects-all-us-tariffs-enacted-2025-through-april)

suggests ~2T in revenue (after adjusting for retaliations and internal accommodations) and a corresponding decrease of 2-5000 in purchasing power, that is highly regressive. US GDP will be down by ~100B per year permanently and growth will be down by about 0.5 pp. Independent of whether it leads to a small increase in US manufacturing base or Congress passes further regressive tax cuts, how large is it in real terms? Is it as bad as "Biden inflation" or worse?

You can’t build a manufacturing base on uncertainty. The reason we lost our manufacturing base is because post WWII was a unique moment (global destruction that did not affect the U.S.) that was never going to last forever. Biden tried to fix it and his industrial policy might have helped the U.S. compete in green economy. Any manufacturing that it created will be done by robots and highly educated tech workers to keep them running and improving. So the premise of Trump’s tariffs are deeply flawed.

Biden’s inflation will look like a tiny blip in comparison. It was a tough 24 months after a disruptive global pandemic. Trump’s tariffs will bring high inflation and kill employment. Buckle up buttercup.

When looking at the US's relationship with other countries, you cannot simply focus on tariff rate, trade deficits and surpluses.

For example Japan, has high tariffs for some goods, but it has also invested almost $800B into the US economy, creating jobs for Americans. Canada has invested almost $750B.

China and many of America's allies hold US treasuries, which allows the US to go into debt to provide services for US citizens.

Other countries have gone along with the US dollar being the reserve currency. This allow the US to borrow at lower rates than the rest of the world.

For those of you who say other countries are taking advantage of the US, are you factoring all of the contributions other countries make to the US economy?

I started another thread about how bad these tariffs will be, but Jeff shut it down because of this one. But I'll rephrase my question:

How bad is it?

This analysis (https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/where-we-stand-fiscal-economic-and-distributional-effects-all-us-tariffs-enacted-2025-through-april)

suggests ~2T in revenue (after adjusting for retaliations and internal accommodations) and a corresponding decrease of 2-5000 in purchasing power, that is highly regressive. US GDP will be down by ~100B per year permanently and growth will be down by about 0.5 pp. Independent of whether it leads to a small increase in US manufacturing base or Congress passes further regressive tax cuts, how large is it in real terms? Is it as bad as "Biden inflation" or worse?

Anonymous wrote:Russia is missing from the tariffs list. But he did not forget to put tariffs on some penguins. Tell me again how he isn't a Russian asset destroying the country from within.

Because the "reciprocal tariffs" have nothing to do with tariffs or market access. They are entirely about goods trade deficits.

So these tariffs are on imports. Wait until we get the reaction from the world on exports! You think the current situation is bad but it's only 1/2. The exports will hit the other way - guarantee fall out there too. When you speak of trade it's 2 sides.

So Trump wanted to punish countries for not helping the US. I don't think it's about revving up US Econ as it is about pettiness. So he used the trade deficit numbers for math for new tariffs which is not really how you work a tariff!

I really think he's going to back this down. Other countries will be cutting us out left and right. Worse scenario we will be screwed on such a level between imports and exports the US will sink into a recession even worse than other countries who at least will form alliances on exports.

I just don't think it's actually survivable unless Trump relaxes the current numbers. My bet is that he will and this whole thing is another one of his whims. Seriously, the numbers he has isn't just a hit on the economy it's pretty much suicide. If you know anything about economics you get that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tariffs are unfair, why is it ok for other countries to put them on USA made goods?

Think of it this way....you buy stuff from Safeway, but Safeway doesn't buy anything from you. That is a trade deficit. But you still get what you need from Safeway for a price that is acceptable to you. Why is this a problem?

You need a personal trade surplus in order to buy from Safeway.

I trade my labor (my “trade” product) for dollars from my employer. I use those dollars to buy from Safeway.

If I have a trade deficient, meaning I don’t trade my work for dollars, I just go further and further in to credit card debt.

Russia is missing from the tariffs list. But he did not forget to put tariffs on some penguins. Tell me again how he isn't a Russian asset destroying the country from within.

Anonymous wrote:If tariffs are unfair, why is it ok for other countries to put them on USA made goods?

Cause there's a tariff and then there's what he did yesterday which goes waaaaaay beyond just tariffs. He put them on every import. The math he used was based on trade deficit - how else does Vietnam get leveled with a tariff of 60-70%?!?!

He's so dumb they didn't even do the right math! He didn't use the tariff numbers to increase - if he did it would be like 10-15%.

My hope is as quickly as this was announced he will scale back as he sometimes does...

Anonymous wrote:If tariffs are unfair, why is it ok for other countries to put them on USA made goods?

Who said they were unfair? They are economically destructive to the US at the rates and breadth Trump is doing them.