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I’m curious whether it’s more the tariffs, or the uncertainty. No one knows what will happen on a day-to-day basis: the chaotic (and illegal) decision-making le
by macintux 1y ago
I’m curious whether it’s more the tariffs, or the uncertainty. No one knows what will happen on a day-to-day basis: the chaotic (and illegal) decision-making leaves everyone wondering what’s next.
- YZF 1y agoThe hiring slowdown predates tariffs. For various reasons CEOs either believe they can do more with less people, or that they can hire cheaper people in other geographies, or both. Businesses (tech or financials) don't seem to be telegraphing uncertainty, S&P 500 revenue is at all times high and trending up, earnings/profit all time highs and trending up, valuations all times high and trending up.
- vkou 1y ago> The hiring slowdown predates tariffs. That's true, but it didn't predate the election of a man who has made his understanding of tariffs and economics crystal clear in the months and years leading up to January 2025.
- mattmaroon 1y agoThe tariffs this time are far in excess of anything he did previously or promised to do while running for office again and took nearly everyone by surprise though.
- denismi 1y agoThis pre-election BBC summary - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy343z53l1o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy343z53l1o - pretty clearly spells out what has eventuated, describing it as a "central campaign pledge": > Trump has made tariffs a central campaign pledge in order to protect US industry. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most imported foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.
- trebligdivad 1y agoI don't think there's that much surprise at the tariffs on China; it's the tariffs on the rest of the world, especially friendly countries like Canada that are the big surprises. Also, who believes politicians campaign pledges?
- thunderfork 1y ago[dead]
- burnerthrow008 1y ago> Also, who believes politicians campaign pledges? Only all the people who voted for them and all the people who voted against them?
- rusk 1y agoUS elections have a shockingly low turnout compared to other countries so not the affirmative you were hoping for
- dgfitz 1y agoMaybe if Harris had made a few she would have won…
- const_cast 1y agoShe did, everyone just sort of... pretended she didn't. So they could have plausible deniability for voting for Trump. See also: Harris is an elite! (Trump is more elite), Trump knows business (he's a pretty bad business man), Harris did nothing in office! (She was VP), Trump is the underdog! (He's literally already been president)
- dgfitz 1y agoShe did? What was her platform? I never did figure it out.
- jibal 1y agoIt didn't take informed people by surprise. We still see people denying that Trump had anything to do with Project 2025, whereas honest informed people knew that he very much did.
- mattmaroon 1y agoNobody informed saw massive tariffs on India, Brazil, etc. If you were right the stock market wouldn’t have tanked because the smart money would have priced it in.
- r2_pilot 1y agoMaybe the smart money shorted on the tank. After all, if you know there's going to be a downturn in a known time period that's a smart move. I believe it's worth analyzing who sold what and when, if not for insider trading, then at least for historical knowledge.
- cmurf 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mattmaroon 1y agoThere are other options, it’s not that simple. They may foresee an economic slowdown (they certainly say they do at every opportunity), they feel they are currently overstaffed, the ETF and hedge fund managers who own most of their stock are pressuring them to save money because they don’t like what they’re reading in the tea leaves, etc.
- epistasis 1y agoThat was the entire point of hiking interest rates, to slow down the economy and stop inflation. Tariffs are universally acknowledged to cause inflation, and we would be in a recovery path if it weren't for the delays that tariffs are causing right now. It is rather interesting to see the difference in standards of accountability for different presidents. Some are responsible for the economy even if its behavior is not sure to their actions. Others are not responsible for poor economic performance even when taking actions universally agreed to harm the economy.
- jibal 1y agoLet's be clear on who has these different standards: primarily Republicans, members of the party whose lifeblood is hypocrisy.
- blurbleblurble 1y agoThey sold us out in the name of holy apocalyptic chaos and destruction
- gdilla 1y agoAll they had to do was prey on fragile white grievances, and it worked.
- jibal 1y ago"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -- LBJ
- Der_Einzige 1y agoRemember what straws they had to grasp at to critique obama? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
- NooneAtAll3 1y agoS&P 500 or S&P 10, tho?
- jaynate 1y agoNearly 10% of the s&p 500 value is one company- nvidia. The mag 7 make up a significant portion. Prosperity isn’t distributed, it’s concentrated and the stock market is not even close to the only measure of the health of the American economy.
- cyanydeez 1y agoMarket bubbles combined with parallel political bubbles are probably the real black swan event coming down the pike
- stirfish 1y agoWhat is a political bubble? I googled it, but I'm getting definitions closer to "my news feed only shows me what I want to see"
- Yizahi 1y agoIf I had to guess - "political bubble (bursts)" is when an extremely incompetent and/or radical politician suddenly is elected to one of the top posts in a country. So it's like a closed off boiling pot - incompetent radical has 5% of the electoral base and nothing happens, then 10%, then 20%, 30%, 40%, still nothing, and then one day he "suddenly" crosses 50% threshold and bubble bursts, he is now in charge for real. For example in France their own Le-Trump aka Marine Le Pen had 41% votes last election cycle, so nothing really happened and system centrists won again, politics remained moderate and predictable. But if she or her ideological successor even takes 50%... hooboy, EU will see some Orbanification just like USA does today.
- cyanydeez 1y agoStart with the idea of political capital and end with the monumental loss of value and trust in the political system
- PeterStuer 1y agoIt is more the volatility for sure. Tarrifs have existed forever and business has always coped with them.
- pstuart 1y agoThis is different -- the tariffs are being applied and changed chaotically, with no direction on actually serving the point of protecting native industry. The goal of the tariffs is to replace income tax, everything else is a smokescreen. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/trump-tariffs-replace-income-tax.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/trump-tariffs-replace-income...
- whatevaa 1y agoThey didn't change monthly.
- ldoughty 1y agoYou can't write a business plans/proposals and get loans/management approval on these kinds of tariffs. Imagine trying to get a loan from a bank to make a USA manufacturing plant, pointing to the 150% Chinese tariff. A week later the tariff is 25%. Does your math still work? Probably not. Will that bank continue the loan? Nope. Will the bank even entertain a similar proposal from someone else right now? Nope. If you want to grow USA manufacturing you need to subsidize it, or give private industry confidence it's not going to lose them money. If you can't do that, your relying on charity / non-profit / philanthropy... And I don't see many of those in manufacturing.
- infecto 1y agoI would say more about general uncertainty than volatility but similar thought. Disagree on the reason though, tariffs like we are experiencing have not been in our existence for a couple generations. And especially not in the modern connected global market. I don’t believe most if not all of us have experienced such an immature and erratic administration. We are taxing trade partners, flip flopping on rules and nobody knows what to make of it.
- nnurmanov 1y agoI live in such country, local currency volatile, laws are changing. There is no long term planning, projects should span 1-2 years and if they bring income, then you are lucky. In long term the situation is no good
- motbus3 1y agoMy guess is just, well, a guess, but the real impact of tariffs will take some time to hit. For now it is a turbulence of the uncertainty, but as people understand how to work on this situation we'll see numbers getting more stable. My second guess is that inflation will grow as other markets will learn to deal with the situation. It is taking some time, but other economic blocks might make strong moves altogether causing at least a bruise in the metrics. Also we need to remember that the guy responsible for the numbers was fired for allegedly political reason and that could have been political and no one will ever be sure. So how can one trust the numbers in that situation? It has been... Weird