3 ms·

Trump announces 25% tariff on countries 'doing business' with Iran

25 points by alephnerd 10mo ago

SilverElfin 10mo ago
Weirdly low tariff. When Trump is threatening some countries with 500% tariffs, it is absurd to think this low tariff means anything. It looks a lot more like capitulation. My feeling is that Trump is weak on China, and for suspicious reasons.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
  A lot of economic activity tanks in the USA if China is treated too harshly. Manufacturing has actually gone down since Trump took office largely because of his tariffs.
  - actionfromafar 10mo ago
    We must make America great at competing with Vietnam again! A great leap backward! Lower the value of the dollar so the American worker will be motivated to do menial work greatly and cheaply.
- tjpnz 10mo ago
  Because the US economy is more fragile than most would care to admit, and China could wreck a not insignificant percentage of it overnight.
xenospn 10mo ago
[flagged]
tjpnz 10mo ago
147 countries import oil from Iran. Whether the idiot in chief could name even one of them is debatable, but it does include a significant number of supposed US allies.
- workfromspace 10mo ago
  > 147 countries import oil from Iran Could you please provide source to this claim? I asked ChatGPT but it didn't know :( Sorry...
  - tjpnz 10mo ago
    >Iran, a member of the OPEC oil producers group, exported products to 147 trading partners in 2022, according to World Bank’s most recent data. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/12/trump-tariffs-iran https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/12/trump-tariff...
    - workfromspace 10mo ago
      Oh, thank you very much. That was very helpful. I asked ChatGPT again for the source of 147, with that quote, which replied me: > I don’t know the full list of those 147 countries because the publicly available World Bank summary statistics provide only the total number, not a ready-made list of all partners. The detailed underlying data (e.g., from UN Comtrade or the World Bank’s WITS interface) would be required to extract the complete set of partner names. So I went to the World Bank WITS for Iran's oil exports and the latest data shows 65 partner countries: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/IRN/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/27-27_Fuels https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/IRN/Yea... These are just for the oil. Probably the number of countries with any active trade with Iran is higher. ( PS: Also don't get me wrong; I didn't ask the question or did the research to try to prove you wrong; I am just curious to learn more about it. I was primarily curious how is still a trade with Iran, and if the sanctions against Iran has ever changed since 2022 - especially after Russian invasion of Ukraine )
chrism238 10mo ago
Confirming that tarrifs are not a financial instrument but a political one.

25 points by alephnerd 10mo ago

Weirdly low tariff. When Trump is threatening some countries with 500% tariffs, it is absurd to think this low tariff means anything. It looks a lot more like capitulation. My feeling is that Trump is weak on China, and for suspicious reasons.

seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
A lot of economic activity tanks in the USA if China is treated too harshly. Manufacturing has actually gone down since Trump took office largely because of his tariffs.
- actionfromafar 10mo ago
  We must make America great at competing with Vietnam again! A great leap backward! Lower the value of the dollar so the American worker will be motivated to do menial work greatly and cheaply.
tjpnz 10mo ago
Because the US economy is more fragile than most would care to admit, and China could wreck a not insignificant percentage of it overnight.

xenospn 10mo ago

[flagged]

tjpnz 10mo ago

147 countries import oil from Iran. Whether the idiot in chief could name even one of them is debatable, but it does include a significant number of supposed US allies.

workfromspace 10mo ago
> 147 countries import oil from Iran Could you please provide source to this claim? I asked ChatGPT but it didn't know :( Sorry...
- tjpnz 10mo ago
  >Iran, a member of the OPEC oil producers group, exported products to 147 trading partners in 2022, according to World Bank’s most recent data. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/12/trump-tariffs-iran https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/12/trump-tariff...
  - workfromspace 10mo ago
    Oh, thank you very much. That was very helpful. I asked ChatGPT again for the source of 147, with that quote, which replied me: > I don’t know the full list of those 147 countries because the publicly available World Bank summary statistics provide only the total number, not a ready-made list of all partners. The detailed underlying data (e.g., from UN Comtrade or the World Bank’s WITS interface) would be required to extract the complete set of partner names. So I went to the World Bank WITS for Iran's oil exports and the latest data shows 65 partner countries: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/IRN/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/27-27_Fuels https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/IRN/Yea... These are just for the oil. Probably the number of countries with any active trade with Iran is higher. ( PS: Also don't get me wrong; I didn't ask the question or did the research to try to prove you wrong; I am just curious to learn more about it. I was primarily curious how is still a trade with Iran, and if the sanctions against Iran has ever changed since 2022 - especially after Russian invasion of Ukraine )

chrism238 10mo ago

Confirming that tarrifs are not a financial instrument but a political one.