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Trump was taking about tariffs, but nobody thought he’d take them this far, this fast. To be fair, it makes sense that if his…plan… is going to work, he needs

Trump was taking about tariffs, but nobody thought he’d take them this far, this fast. To be fair, it makes sense that if his…plan… is going to work, he needs to get in it quickly. 4 years isn’t a long period of time and if the country doesn’t recover economically before then the next president will absolutely just undo whatever he did. Even the midterms are a time limit. If things are bad enough then it would absolutely get people to vote for those that’ll take the power of tariffs back out of the president’s hands and back into congress’s. It’s actually kind of a big flaw with our system as a whole. Countries like China can do more long-term plans without worrying about silly things like electability. In this case, in theory I think Trump is right to wave our big economic stick around. In reality it won’t work because everyone can just wait for his time to be up. Even if countries negotiate there’s no reason to think they won’t reneg in 5 years.

whatever1 2y ago
We have the Senate for these long term decisions. But somehow it has become a useless bureaucracy due to the partisanship. Technically the President is not allowed to dictate financial policy. The current actions are done in the name of “emergency”, bypassing the Senate.
cm2187 2y ago
He has at most 3 to 6 months to get this sorted. After that a recession is all but guaranteed. His voters may not own stocks, but the people who own stocks are responsible for a huge part of consumer spending, and when they cut on spending, it is Trump voters who lose their jobs. As Cruz said, he has a very narrow window to not be wiped out at the midterms. I don't think anyone who voted Trump signed up for a recession.
Infinity315 2y ago
We do not want manufacturing jobs, they suck. America has an amazing thing going on where we can trade 1s and 0s in exchange for physical goods. We have an infinite renewable resource which costs nearly nothing to reproduce infinitely. We have a defacto monopoly on technology and digital services. I understand the national security reasons for having a domestic commercial manufacturing base. However, there is ZERO economic reasons to bring back manufacturing jobs.
- whatever1 2y ago
  Just wait until we ramp up the t shirt manufacturing. Dozens of dollars will flow. DOZENS!
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  >We have an infinite renewable resource which costs nearly nothing to reproduce infinitely. We have a defacto monopoly on technology and digital services. That doesn't work for ever. And Trump was voted by the blue collars. So he wants to create more blue collar jobs.
- WtfRuSerious 2y ago
  The exception, of course, are the poor and lower working class who have no technical expertise or training, or would be unable to learn same... for those individuals the prospect of a manufacturing job is a step-up.
  - Infinity315 2y ago
    The types of manufacturing jobs which would be a step up would be high-tech and high gross-margins manufacturing (which we already do), not whatever crap China is producing. If you want the quality of life of a Chinese manufacturing worker - which is still much worse than that of a retail worker in America - sure. There is no basis in reality that the kind of jobs Chinese manufacturers would yield a higher quality of life for a blue collar worker. Furthermore, those kinds of jobs are not long for this world. They're inevitably going to be automated away and the replacement jobs robotics maintainers are not ever going to be in numbers great enough to replace those manufacturing jobs. It's beyond stupid especially when you consider that the labor market was already incredibly strong at ~5% unemployment.
    - Gud 2y ago
      A lot of skilled jobs were shipped of to China, particularly heavy industry.
      - 2y ago
DeathArrow 2y ago
>Countries like China can do more long-term plans without worrying about silly things like electability. China always does long term and very long term plans and executes them. US, on the other hand, is much more agile and reacts very fast to changes and opportunities. Probably the best strategy is a mix of both, have long term plans but be able to react fast when needed.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  I’m about to sound like a China shill, but China reacts and executes very fast when they need to. A stupid example is both implementation and removal of pandemic protocols. The second society started protesting, they acted pretty fast.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ruicraveiro 2y ago
I think that you are ignoring Newton's 3rd law, which pretty much can be applied to economics in this case. What made the US really great was the fact that it was the center of the liberal world order and the coalition of friends that it built around itself, including the EU countries. Let's see how well the US does when it loses most of its friends. Focusing on the EU, the US wants to balance the goods trade deficit with the EU, but it has a services surplus with the EU. Goods deficit vs services surplus roughly balanced each other before the tariffs. Guess what we in the EU will need to do? In the end it will be loose-loose for everyone, but in the long run the then friendless US will be the biggest loser.
Yeul 2y ago
This reminds me of an amusing anecdote in Dutch history. In the late 1930s the queen of the Netherlands asked her prime minister if he had read a certain book written by the German leader. He had not.
ModernMech 2y ago
> Trump was taking about tariffs, but nobody thought he’d take them this far, this fast. Stop saying "nobody". People predicted this. The people who are blindsided by this dismissed the people who predicted it as crazy, hyperbolic doom casters. Yet today, when their predictions come to fruition, they don't even exist. Here's a wild idea: let's start listening to the people who had the foresight to predict this instead of pretending they don't exist because it soothes our own egos for having missed this.
EasyMark 2y ago
He's not doing tariffs though. He's doing some kind whacked out plan that he can somehow correct decades of trade imbalance with "tariffs" when all he can do really is start a second Great Depression by riding the nuke all the way to ground zero like Major "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove

whatever1 2y ago

We have the Senate for these long term decisions. But somehow it has become a useless bureaucracy due to the partisanship. Technically the President is not allowed to dictate financial policy. The current actions are done in the name of “emergency”, bypassing the Senate.

cm2187 2y ago

He has at most 3 to 6 months to get this sorted. After that a recession is all but guaranteed. His voters may not own stocks, but the people who own stocks are responsible for a huge part of consumer spending, and when they cut on spending, it is Trump voters who lose their jobs. As Cruz said, he has a very narrow window to not be wiped out at the midterms. I don't think anyone who voted Trump signed up for a recession.

Infinity315 2y ago

We do not want manufacturing jobs, they suck. America has an amazing thing going on where we can trade 1s and 0s in exchange for physical goods. We have an infinite renewable resource which costs nearly nothing to reproduce infinitely. We have a defacto monopoly on technology and digital services. I understand the national security reasons for having a domestic commercial manufacturing base. However, there is ZERO economic reasons to bring back manufacturing jobs.

whatever1 2y ago
Just wait until we ramp up the t shirt manufacturing. Dozens of dollars will flow. DOZENS!
DeathArrow 2y ago
>We have an infinite renewable resource which costs nearly nothing to reproduce infinitely. We have a defacto monopoly on technology and digital services. That doesn't work for ever. And Trump was voted by the blue collars. So he wants to create more blue collar jobs.
WtfRuSerious 2y ago
The exception, of course, are the poor and lower working class who have no technical expertise or training, or would be unable to learn same... for those individuals the prospect of a manufacturing job is a step-up.
- Infinity315 2y ago
  The types of manufacturing jobs which would be a step up would be high-tech and high gross-margins manufacturing (which we already do), not whatever crap China is producing. If you want the quality of life of a Chinese manufacturing worker - which is still much worse than that of a retail worker in America - sure. There is no basis in reality that the kind of jobs Chinese manufacturers would yield a higher quality of life for a blue collar worker. Furthermore, those kinds of jobs are not long for this world. They're inevitably going to be automated away and the replacement jobs robotics maintainers are not ever going to be in numbers great enough to replace those manufacturing jobs. It's beyond stupid especially when you consider that the labor market was already incredibly strong at ~5% unemployment.
  - Gud 2y ago
    A lot of skilled jobs were shipped of to China, particularly heavy industry.
    - 2y ago

DeathArrow 2y ago

>Countries like China can do more long-term plans without worrying about silly things like electability. China always does long term and very long term plans and executes them. US, on the other hand, is much more agile and reacts very fast to changes and opportunities. Probably the best strategy is a mix of both, have long term plans but be able to react fast when needed.

tokioyoyo 2y ago
I’m about to sound like a China shill, but China reacts and executes very fast when they need to. A stupid example is both implementation and removal of pandemic protocols. The second society started protesting, they acted pretty fast.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

ruicraveiro 2y ago

I think that you are ignoring Newton's 3rd law, which pretty much can be applied to economics in this case. What made the US really great was the fact that it was the center of the liberal world order and the coalition of friends that it built around itself, including the EU countries. Let's see how well the US does when it loses most of its friends. Focusing on the EU, the US wants to balance the goods trade deficit with the EU, but it has a services surplus with the EU. Goods deficit vs services surplus roughly balanced each other before the tariffs. Guess what we in the EU will need to do? In the end it will be loose-loose for everyone, but in the long run the then friendless US will be the biggest loser.

Yeul 2y ago

This reminds me of an amusing anecdote in Dutch history. In the late 1930s the queen of the Netherlands asked her prime minister if he had read a certain book written by the German leader. He had not.

ModernMech 2y ago

> Trump was taking about tariffs, but nobody thought he’d take them this far, this fast. Stop saying "nobody". People predicted this. The people who are blindsided by this dismissed the people who predicted it as crazy, hyperbolic doom casters. Yet today, when their predictions come to fruition, they don't even exist. Here's a wild idea: let's start listening to the people who had the foresight to predict this instead of pretending they don't exist because it soothes our own egos for having missed this.

EasyMark 2y ago

He's not doing tariffs though. He's doing some kind whacked out plan that he can somehow correct decades of trade imbalance with "tariffs" when all he can do really is start a second Great Depression by riding the nuke all the way to ground zero like Major "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove