5 ms·

No, half of America’s voters blew it. The market is just expressing the consequences.

azemetre 2y ago
The odd part is that Congress, at any time, can revoke these tariffs but are choosing not to do so because they need them for the tax cuts the GOP will legislate later this year. The only sad thing during this whole ordeal is how ineffectual democratic politicians are... especially when they personally dealt with minority parties stopping them quite easily for the last 15 years. You'd think they'd learn some lessons but their failure to seize the moment is the only consistency they have.
- m463 2y ago
  I thought they are a negotiating tactic for countries that have their own anti-us tariffs.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    Which countries are those?
    - m463 2y ago
      I read about some here... https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regulating-imports-with-a-reciprocal-tariff-to-rectify-trade-practices-that-contribute-to-large-and-persistent-annual-united-states-goods-trade-deficits/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regu... don't know if they're cherry-picking
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Trump put tariffs on everywhere, including an island with no humans separately to the country which owns that island. And from previous statements, Trump's idea of "anti-US tariff" seems to include the EU's VAT, which is sales tax that everyone including local supplies pays. So while some of that might be cherry picking, the reasoning overall is obvious nonsense, which is worse.
      - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
        That's a complete load of tripe. I'd be interested to know which countries have anti-US tariffs rather than someone just pointing to whatever that conman spouts.
- Tadpole9181 2y ago
  They were stopped because they were following the rules to enact change: legislation. Trump is just blatantly subverting the constitution, there's no vote they can block or fill buster. It's done. Over. Kaput. I'm so tired of hearing that even when it's the Republican's fault, it's the Democrats to blame for not... What? Committing an assassination? They have zero power in the federal government. No house, no senate, no judicial, no executive. Nothing.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    It has nothing to do with legislation- the tariff power lies with the legislature inherently under the Constitution. They can revoke the delegation to the executive at any time.
    - taylodl 2y ago
      What about the fact of Democrats having ZERO POWER in the legislature did you not understand? The Republicans have taken over America lock, stock, and barrel. Legally, there's nothing that can be done to stop them until 2026. By then it won't matter. It already doesn't matter. America is already finished. It's over.
      - selimthegrim 2y ago
        Buddy I promise you I live in a much redder state than you and I didn’t give up in the last 10 years and neither should you. That being said, I do plan on moving to a swing state by 2026 and voting. If you think two or three votes in the house is like the seventh seal, I don’t know what to tell you. You sound like my roommate in 2016 who busted in the door the night of the election saying that trans people they knew on forums had decided to kill themselves and I snapped at him they should at least wait until all the votes are counted and the electoral college was finished. I would rather take my cues from the two black men walking down the street in front of my house the next day with one of them saying to the other they’d survived 400 years of this and they’d survive Trump too.
        2y ago
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > they need them for the tax cuts the GOP will legislate later this year. They're also playing games where new time-limited tax cuts are counted as "costs" for their planned lifetime, but now, later, they're claiming renewing the same cuts costs nothing because they're already there. [0] This is like a man with a mid-life crisis renting a fancy sports car saying "just one month is quite affordable", except next month he extends the lease, saying "this is fine, it's already in the budget so it doesn't cost us extra." That matters because they're using this fake math to try to trigger special rules which let them pass budgets with fewer votes. > The odd part is that Congress, at any time, can revoke these tariffs Side note: Originally the law (IEEAP, 1977) [1] allowed Congress to revoke them with 50% of each house. But few years later the Supreme Court ruled that mechanism unconstitutional. This means it now requires a veto-proof supermajority of >66.6% in each house. So yeah, with enough votes this could be done in a very short time-frame... but "enough" is such a big number that it requires most of the GOP to decide it doesn't want to destroy America after all. [0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-cuts-current-policy-baseline-deficit-budget-economy.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Economic_Powers_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
- taylodl 2y ago
  The democrats blew it by believing Americans were educated. Now they have ZERO POWER. They don't control the executive branch, they don't control the legislative branch, and they don't control the judicial branch. I'm not sure WTF you expect Democrats to do now. It's not like Americans don't have access to a plethora of history books informing them exactly how this will play out. Too bad they don't read.
  - ok123456 2y ago
    The Democrats blew it by being unresponsive to their voters' material demands and instead doubling down on hollow NGO speak. They preferred to run issue-free "vibes" campaigns. The same business-industrial class captures them as the Republicans. Neither party is genuinely going to organize around class or material needs. The real threat to America or Americans isn't a single man. It's the superstructure that enabled him. In other words: "Wer hat uns verraten? The Democratic Party."
    - taylodl 2y ago
      But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Biden was one of the most successful presidents in US history, but in this Republican-led post-factual world facts don't matter. The blame for that rests solely on US citizens. They've allowed themselves to be lulled into the fantasy that the party will continue on and on regardless of reality. Well, the party is over.
      - ok123456 2y ago
        > But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Medicare for all? A cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?
        jmye 2y ago
        Gaza was not a need of the vast majority of their voters, whatever a handful of college kids who are utterly incapable of understanding basic international politics think of themselves. Neither is Bernie’s idiotic version of Medicare for all, in spite of it being a fun bumper sticker. Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books.
- tlogan 2y ago
  I recall that the GOP once introduced a bill requiring congressional approval for any changes to tariffs. I believe it was proposed sometime around 2015—or perhaps even earlier, around 2005. I’m not entirely sure of the exact date. What I do remember is that Democrats strongly opposed the bill at the time, as they were generally supportive of tariffs during that period. Now, interestingly, the GOP has shifted to being largely pro-tariff—except for a few staunch free-market conservatives like Rand Paul. Strange world …
  - watwut 2y ago
    Being pro-rational-tariffs and being pro massive tariffs that are calculated as ration of export deficit and originally used to damage former allies are two different thigns. As in, I could buy tariffs as a strategic decision to help build own industry in some are ... but these are just not that. These were originally used in conjunction with annexation threats, then with lies and are deployed with no regards to own citizens.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    They aren't pro-tariff, and the dissent will grow. But the GOP is absolutely captured by the Trump cult. Any deviation from conformance with whatever nonsensical thing Trump says today is seen as disloyalty by the cult. Normal checks and balances are gone.
- defrost 2y ago
  Mmmm, I'm not so sure about that anymore ... at least not for a while yet. Trump has a lot of leeway to declare emergency rulings and to have those enforced in the short term. Such powers come with a short leash that require appeals to be addressed in a short time frame. That mechanism was upended twenty four days ago when US Republicians effectively "stopped time" .. Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025. ~ https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/211/text?s=2&r=3&q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22%5C%22shall+not+constitute+a+calendar+day%5C%22%22%7D https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio... "Each day [..] shall not constitute a calendar day" This does not appear (on my admittedly brief search) to be something routine in US resolutions. There's some further commentary here: The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced—as Democrats have recently done—it has to be taken up in a matter of days. But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration. ~ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-12-2025 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-12-2025
  - azemetre 2y ago
    I honestly don't understand this "stopped time" tactic? Reading the sources seems more confusing. Can someone explain like I'm a college freshman?
    - defrost 2y ago
      It's an odd piece of procedural technicality. * Trump declared emergency Tariff powers. * An appeal was made to stop this. * The appeal has to be heard and voted on within X number of "Calendar days" * "Calendar days" usually means "every day of the week, including weekends and holidays, as a 24-hour period from one midnight to the next." * However this term has been "redefined in a context" such that it no longer means that ... (just with respect to the appeal against Trump's tariff powers) with the result that the filed appeal will never be heard or voted on within the current session. Programmers likely are familier with changing the meaning or type of things within a context .. it's a procedural version of that.
pstuart 2y ago
Actually, about 31% of the voters blew it. There were ~245M eligible voters and ~77M cast the deciding vote. My faith in American "democracy" has faded significantly. edit: fix the vote count.
- apetresc 2y ago
  If they didn't vote, they are, by definition, not "voters".
  - pstuart 2y ago
    I prefaced it with eligible which sets the context for the outcome, i.e., what kind of "mandate" is implied by the outcome.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  That would make it well over half of eligible voters who blew it. Those who chose incorrectly as well as those who chose no vote at all.
  - ungreased0675 2y ago
    I wonder if you can appreciate just how arrogant that sounds. Even if you disagree, people generally have reasons they act the way they do.
    - mcphage 2y ago
      I’m sorry, are you saying that a decision is correct because it is popular?
    - pstuart 2y ago
      Feel free to school me on all the valid reasons they had. Just bear in mind that I have no love for the opposing party either, I just consider them the lesser of two evils. I don't feel arrogant about this, I feel depressed and angry.
littlexsparkee 2y ago
Voters too, but the fact that the business community gave no serious pushback given what was at stake and anyone with Econ 101 exposure could clearly foresee grave consequences... This is their wheelhouse for crying out loud. Voters aren't always sophisticated but Wall Street should know better.

The odd part is that Congress, at any time, can revoke these tariffs but are choosing not to do so because they need them for the tax cuts the GOP will legislate later this year. The only sad thing during this whole ordeal is how ineffectual democratic politicians are... especially when they personally dealt with minority parties stopping them quite easily for the last 15 years. You'd think they'd learn some lessons but their failure to seize the moment is the only consistency they have.

m463 2y ago
I thought they are a negotiating tactic for countries that have their own anti-us tariffs.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  Which countries are those?
  - m463 2y ago
    I read about some here... https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regulating-imports-with-a-reciprocal-tariff-to-rectify-trade-practices-that-contribute-to-large-and-persistent-annual-united-states-goods-trade-deficits/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regu... don't know if they're cherry-picking
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Trump put tariffs on everywhere, including an island with no humans separately to the country which owns that island. And from previous statements, Trump's idea of "anti-US tariff" seems to include the EU's VAT, which is sales tax that everyone including local supplies pays. So while some of that might be cherry picking, the reasoning overall is obvious nonsense, which is worse.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      That's a complete load of tripe. I'd be interested to know which countries have anti-US tariffs rather than someone just pointing to whatever that conman spouts.
Tadpole9181 2y ago
They were stopped because they were following the rules to enact change: legislation. Trump is just blatantly subverting the constitution, there's no vote they can block or fill buster. It's done. Over. Kaput. I'm so tired of hearing that even when it's the Republican's fault, it's the Democrats to blame for not... What? Committing an assassination? They have zero power in the federal government. No house, no senate, no judicial, no executive. Nothing.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  It has nothing to do with legislation- the tariff power lies with the legislature inherently under the Constitution. They can revoke the delegation to the executive at any time.
  - taylodl 2y ago
    What about the fact of Democrats having ZERO POWER in the legislature did you not understand? The Republicans have taken over America lock, stock, and barrel. Legally, there's nothing that can be done to stop them until 2026. By then it won't matter. It already doesn't matter. America is already finished. It's over.
    - selimthegrim 2y ago
      Buddy I promise you I live in a much redder state than you and I didn’t give up in the last 10 years and neither should you. That being said, I do plan on moving to a swing state by 2026 and voting. If you think two or three votes in the house is like the seventh seal, I don’t know what to tell you. You sound like my roommate in 2016 who busted in the door the night of the election saying that trans people they knew on forums had decided to kill themselves and I snapped at him they should at least wait until all the votes are counted and the electoral college was finished. I would rather take my cues from the two black men walking down the street in front of my house the next day with one of them saying to the other they’d survived 400 years of this and they’d survive Trump too.
      - 2y ago
Terr_ 2y ago
> they need them for the tax cuts the GOP will legislate later this year. They're also playing games where new time-limited tax cuts are counted as "costs" for their planned lifetime, but now, later, they're claiming renewing the same cuts costs nothing because they're already there. [0] This is like a man with a mid-life crisis renting a fancy sports car saying "just one month is quite affordable", except next month he extends the lease, saying "this is fine, it's already in the budget so it doesn't cost us extra." That matters because they're using this fake math to try to trigger special rules which let them pass budgets with fewer votes. > The odd part is that Congress, at any time, can revoke these tariffs Side note: Originally the law (IEEAP, 1977) [1] allowed Congress to revoke them with 50% of each house. But few years later the Supreme Court ruled that mechanism unconstitutional. This means it now requires a veto-proof supermajority of >66.6% in each house. So yeah, with enough votes this could be done in a very short time-frame... but "enough" is such a big number that it requires most of the GOP to decide it doesn't want to destroy America after all. [0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-cuts-current-policy-baseline-deficit-budget-economy.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Economic_Powers_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
taylodl 2y ago
The democrats blew it by believing Americans were educated. Now they have ZERO POWER. They don't control the executive branch, they don't control the legislative branch, and they don't control the judicial branch. I'm not sure WTF you expect Democrats to do now. It's not like Americans don't have access to a plethora of history books informing them exactly how this will play out. Too bad they don't read.
- ok123456 2y ago
  The Democrats blew it by being unresponsive to their voters' material demands and instead doubling down on hollow NGO speak. They preferred to run issue-free "vibes" campaigns. The same business-industrial class captures them as the Republicans. Neither party is genuinely going to organize around class or material needs. The real threat to America or Americans isn't a single man. It's the superstructure that enabled him. In other words: "Wer hat uns verraten? The Democratic Party."
  - taylodl 2y ago
    But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Biden was one of the most successful presidents in US history, but in this Republican-led post-factual world facts don't matter. The blame for that rests solely on US citizens. They've allowed themselves to be lulled into the fantasy that the party will continue on and on regardless of reality. Well, the party is over.
    - ok123456 2y ago
      > But they weren't unresponsive to the actual needs of their voters. Medicare for all? A cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?
      - jmye 2y ago
        Gaza was not a need of the vast majority of their voters, whatever a handful of college kids who are utterly incapable of understanding basic international politics think of themselves. Neither is Bernie’s idiotic version of Medicare for all, in spite of it being a fun bumper sticker. Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books.
tlogan 2y ago
I recall that the GOP once introduced a bill requiring congressional approval for any changes to tariffs. I believe it was proposed sometime around 2015—or perhaps even earlier, around 2005. I’m not entirely sure of the exact date. What I do remember is that Democrats strongly opposed the bill at the time, as they were generally supportive of tariffs during that period. Now, interestingly, the GOP has shifted to being largely pro-tariff—except for a few staunch free-market conservatives like Rand Paul. Strange world …
- watwut 2y ago
  Being pro-rational-tariffs and being pro massive tariffs that are calculated as ration of export deficit and originally used to damage former allies are two different thigns. As in, I could buy tariffs as a strategic decision to help build own industry in some are ... but these are just not that. These were originally used in conjunction with annexation threats, then with lies and are deployed with no regards to own citizens.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  They aren't pro-tariff, and the dissent will grow. But the GOP is absolutely captured by the Trump cult. Any deviation from conformance with whatever nonsensical thing Trump says today is seen as disloyalty by the cult. Normal checks and balances are gone.
defrost 2y ago
Mmmm, I'm not so sure about that anymore ... at least not for a while yet. Trump has a lot of leeway to declare emergency rulings and to have those enforced in the short term. Such powers come with a short leash that require appeals to be addressed in a short time frame. That mechanism was upended twenty four days ago when US Republicians effectively "stopped time" .. Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025. ~ https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/211/text?s=2&r=3&q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22%5C%22shall+not+constitute+a+calendar+day%5C%22%22%7D https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio... "Each day [..] shall not constitute a calendar day" This does not appear (on my admittedly brief search) to be something routine in US resolutions. There's some further commentary here: The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced—as Democrats have recently done—it has to be taken up in a matter of days. But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration. ~ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-12-2025 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-12-2025
- azemetre 2y ago
  I honestly don't understand this "stopped time" tactic? Reading the sources seems more confusing. Can someone explain like I'm a college freshman?
  - defrost 2y ago
    It's an odd piece of procedural technicality. * Trump declared emergency Tariff powers. * An appeal was made to stop this. * The appeal has to be heard and voted on within X number of "Calendar days" * "Calendar days" usually means "every day of the week, including weekends and holidays, as a 24-hour period from one midnight to the next." * However this term has been "redefined in a context" such that it no longer means that ... (just with respect to the appeal against Trump's tariff powers) with the result that the filed appeal will never be heard or voted on within the current session. Programmers likely are familier with changing the meaning or type of things within a context .. it's a procedural version of that.

pstuart 2y ago

Actually, about 31% of the voters blew it. There were ~245M eligible voters and ~77M cast the deciding vote. My faith in American "democracy" has faded significantly. edit: fix the vote count.

apetresc 2y ago
If they didn't vote, they are, by definition, not "voters".
- pstuart 2y ago
  I prefaced it with eligible which sets the context for the outcome, i.e., what kind of "mandate" is implied by the outcome.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
That would make it well over half of eligible voters who blew it. Those who chose incorrectly as well as those who chose no vote at all.
- ungreased0675 2y ago
  I wonder if you can appreciate just how arrogant that sounds. Even if you disagree, people generally have reasons they act the way they do.
  - mcphage 2y ago
    I’m sorry, are you saying that a decision is correct because it is popular?
  - pstuart 2y ago
    Feel free to school me on all the valid reasons they had. Just bear in mind that I have no love for the opposing party either, I just consider them the lesser of two evils. I don't feel arrogant about this, I feel depressed and angry.

littlexsparkee 2y ago

Voters too, but the fact that the business community gave no serious pushback given what was at stake and anyone with Econ 101 exposure could clearly foresee grave consequences... This is their wheelhouse for crying out loud. Voters aren't always sophisticated but Wall Street should know better.