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I was just talking to a couple friends of mine, about this, yesterday. They run a medium-sized manufacturing business that has almost all their work done overse

I was just talking to a couple friends of mine, about this, yesterday. They run a medium-sized manufacturing business that has almost all their work done overseas. Another friend of mine was just laid off, as a transportation broker, directly because of the tariffs. The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. I feel as if this was not well thought-out. Maybe megacorps, like Tesla, can weather it, but many smaller businesses have no buffer. That said, the manufacturing imbalance and trade imbalance is a very real problem that needs to be solved. I just feel as if we are approaching it in a manner that is simplistic, and favors only very large corporations.

bloudermilk 2y ago
It’s as if these policies were created without any concern for the well being of SMBs and consumers.
- garciasn 2y ago
  s/SMB.*$/anyone./g
- sorcerer-mar 2y ago
  It is a literal stupid person calling the shots. He literally thinks trade deficits are the US "losing" or "giving away" money to foreign countries, and he believes (correctly, in a way) that we can tariff our way to perfect trade balance.
andrewflnr 2y ago
> I feel as if this was not well thought-out. No need to hedge. Anyone with their head on the right way around can see how much thought went into it.
DrillShopper 2y ago
> The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. That is their goal - to drive out the small and medium businesses so that the president's donors can swoop in with private capital offers to enrich themselves.
- sorcerer-mar 2y ago
  No it's not. He's just a very unintelligent person surrounded by sycophants. Trump almost certainly doesn't even have an ulterior motive here. He has loudly proclaimed for decades his belief that trade deficits are the same as a subsidy or giveaway to the other country.
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    I never said it was explicitly Trump's goal, just that it was (with his knowing or not, and him not knowing is much more concerning) the goal of his administration (the people who really run the economic policy) here.
    - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
      I think that may be their goals, but also that the policy is not actually being driven by their goals. The tariff rates were calculated by trade deficits. That's it. That has "following stupid dictate from Dear Leader" written all over it.
atoav 2y ago
"Not well thought out"? This was the equivalent of putting on a blindfold and throwing random darts at a world map. On top of that the reasons they gave are contradictory, because in the end the truth is the tariffs were based on the vibes one specific man had held since the 80s. However the world is very different since then. Not even the numbers make sense. If the goal was to punish people with whom the US has a high trade deficit, why slap a 10% fee on those who don't have a trade deficit at all? This tells countries: "No matter what you do, we will abuse our position of power anyways" instead of telling them "If you behave we both will benefit". But maybe that wasn't the reason, instead it was manufacturing? Then why on earth not pair tariffs with incentives and help for corporations who want to move their production lines to the US? With the current volatile climate in the US nobody is going to move anything, except maybe away from the US.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  Let's be careful. It wasn't really "vibes", especially not at the start. There was a very clear cut ("simplistic" would be too generous) formula that determined the tariffs. Granted, probably the tone of the "negotiations" since then has been vibe-influenced...
  - atoav 2y ago
    The formula is utterly nonsensical. Sorry, but I have first semester art students who apply more care when choosing electronic components for their first project after 8 hours of instructions. And art students are not exactly known to be math-heads. The first thing you'd do is to check for edge cases, like how the formula treats countries that you just extract wealth from like Lesotho. If you have 10 interns spending 20 minutes on each of the 194 countries that takes you a single 8 hour work day tops.
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      Yes, the formula is appallingly stupid. But it is a formula. If it was "vibes", do you think Trump would have anything to say about Lesotho at all? Or the Heard and McDonald islands? Maybe we're disagreeing on the term.... I just think we should be careful to use rigorously correct criticisms of the cheeto. There's still plenty to say. Ed: thinking more, I think the best way it could still be vibes based is if they only evaluated the formula for China, said "looks good", and mass-applied it with no further thought.

bloudermilk 2y ago

It’s as if these policies were created without any concern for the well being of SMBs and consumers.

garciasn 2y ago
s/SMB.*$/anyone./g
sorcerer-mar 2y ago
It is a literal stupid person calling the shots. He literally thinks trade deficits are the US "losing" or "giving away" money to foreign countries, and he believes (correctly, in a way) that we can tariff our way to perfect trade balance.

andrewflnr 2y ago

> I feel as if this was not well thought-out. No need to hedge. Anyone with their head on the right way around can see how much thought went into it.

DrillShopper 2y ago

> The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. That is their goal - to drive out the small and medium businesses so that the president's donors can swoop in with private capital offers to enrich themselves.

sorcerer-mar 2y ago
No it's not. He's just a very unintelligent person surrounded by sycophants. Trump almost certainly doesn't even have an ulterior motive here. He has loudly proclaimed for decades his belief that trade deficits are the same as a subsidy or giveaway to the other country.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  I never said it was explicitly Trump's goal, just that it was (with his knowing or not, and him not knowing is much more concerning) the goal of his administration (the people who really run the economic policy) here.
  - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
    I think that may be their goals, but also that the policy is not actually being driven by their goals. The tariff rates were calculated by trade deficits. That's it. That has "following stupid dictate from Dear Leader" written all over it.

atoav 2y ago

"Not well thought out"? This was the equivalent of putting on a blindfold and throwing random darts at a world map. On top of that the reasons they gave are contradictory, because in the end the truth is the tariffs were based on the vibes one specific man had held since the 80s. However the world is very different since then. Not even the numbers make sense. If the goal was to punish people with whom the US has a high trade deficit, why slap a 10% fee on those who don't have a trade deficit at all? This tells countries: "No matter what you do, we will abuse our position of power anyways" instead of telling them "If you behave we both will benefit". But maybe that wasn't the reason, instead it was manufacturing? Then why on earth not pair tariffs with incentives and help for corporations who want to move their production lines to the US? With the current volatile climate in the US nobody is going to move anything, except maybe away from the US.

andrewflnr 2y ago
Let's be careful. It wasn't really "vibes", especially not at the start. There was a very clear cut ("simplistic" would be too generous) formula that determined the tariffs. Granted, probably the tone of the "negotiations" since then has been vibe-influenced...
- atoav 2y ago
  The formula is utterly nonsensical. Sorry, but I have first semester art students who apply more care when choosing electronic components for their first project after 8 hours of instructions. And art students are not exactly known to be math-heads. The first thing you'd do is to check for edge cases, like how the formula treats countries that you just extract wealth from like Lesotho. If you have 10 interns spending 20 minutes on each of the 194 countries that takes you a single 8 hour work day tops.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    Yes, the formula is appallingly stupid. But it is a formula. If it was "vibes", do you think Trump would have anything to say about Lesotho at all? Or the Heard and McDonald islands? Maybe we're disagreeing on the term.... I just think we should be careful to use rigorously correct criticisms of the cheeto. There's still plenty to say. Ed: thinking more, I think the best way it could still be vibes based is if they only evaluated the formula for China, said "looks good", and mass-applied it with no further thought.