7 ms·

Side topic, but this number puts into how crazy it was for trump[0] to go on tariff war against enemies and friends alike. All the propaganda and extortionist l

by trymas 7mo ago

Side topic, but this number puts into how crazy it was for trump[0] to go on tariff war against enemies and friends alike. All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all countries will pay up to USA. Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ? $7T of spending, $1.77T in deficit[1] and they planned to fix this hole with $100B?! Masterminds! …and now they need to refund it. NB: also puts into perspective how numb I became about reading AI and AI related sums of money, and how crazy actually those numbers are. [0] off course many knew that it’s crazy way before it happened. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_bud...

aduffy 7mo ago
They need to refund it *with interest*, according to filings cited in the article.
- mejutoco 7mo ago
  6-7 percent interest.
  - loeg 7mo ago
    SOFR is only around 3.7%. And it's, you know, an annualized rate. The earliest liberation day tariffs are only around 11 months old at this point.
    - mejutoco 7mo ago
      My source was: ``` The government has collected perhaps $180bn in IEEPA tariffs. Over the past year 1,800 companies—including Goodyear, a tyre-maker, and Costco, a retailer—have filed lawsuits to protect their right to a refund should the Supreme Court overturn them. They are now owed this money, equivalent to roughly 5% of the profits companies generated in America last year, or 0.6% of GDP—plus interest, compounded daily at an annual rate of 6-7%. ``` https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/02/26/americas-trade-chaos-is-just-beginning https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/02/26/a...
      - loeg 7mo ago
        Interesting! Seems generous.
superxpro12 7mo ago
The rest is financed by debt. The theft-class stole the rest from the govt thru debt, and expect the rest of us and the following generations to deal with the fallout while they sit on top of their obscene gobs of cash insulated from the fire they created.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
microtonal 7mo ago
Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ? Maybe that was never the point. You present it as retaliation against 'countries that are out to get us'. Introduce the tariffs, companies pay the tariffs by increasing prices for consumers, get the inevitable loss in court, return the tariff money to the companies. You just transferred $130B of wealth from citizens to companies. Bonus: people are now used to the higher prices, so post-tariffs your profits are also higher.
- MattDamonSpace 7mo ago
  The whole point is “$130B is chump change for the problems caused” and that’s true if companies as well
  - functionmouse 7mo ago
    Companies will make far more than 130b off this. There's no way they only raised prices just enough to cover the 130b and the labor required for the internal policy changes. This was a justification for price gouging. Which they will not stop doing.
    - hunterpayne 7mo ago
      Agreed, this is the real take away most people will be left with. Not only did we all pay higher prices, instead of using that money to pay off the debt we give it away to business managers who were never out that money in the first place. Politically, that doesn't accomplish what some think it does. Midterms are coming up in 8 months...and the results of the house are going to be drastic no matter which side wins. Either Trump can do what he wants or the government will be deadlocked and nothing will happen for 2 years. Neither seem like good outcomes.
      - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
        > Either Trump can do what he wants or the government will be deadlocked and nothing will happen for 2 years. That isn’t drastic, that is already how it is.
satvikpendem 7mo ago
"Trump brags in Oval Office that his billionaire pals made a killing in stocks after he pulled the plug on tariffs" > “He made $2.5 billion, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad!” Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and then NASCAR team owner Roger Penske. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-brags-oval-office-billionaire-052249693.html https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-brags-oval-office-billionair...
lokar 7mo ago
Friends? America has no friends, only client states.
- lokar 7mo ago
  I'm serious. The Trump/MAGA view of foreign policy is that the US sits at the top, we owe friendship to no one. We engage with other nations transactionally, zero sum, with the US always getting more.
  - kubelsmieci 7mo ago
    Don't antropomorfize countries. Countries can't have friends. There are only common interests. Or opposite.
    - lokar 7mo ago
      I said "Trump/MAGA", which is the person and controlling faction in US politics
    - davedx 7mo ago
      How about people?
      - lokar 7mo ago
        I think it's legitimately hard to say. Most Americans know very little about international affairs, and care even less. I think interpreting broad opinion surveys can be fraught. So, who do you count? everyone? only the informed? only people with strong views? Or do you assume people support the views and actions of the people they voted for?
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      Countries act on people's emotions. Friends and enemies are a pretty good description of a lot of international politics, much better than a dispassionate analysis of interests.
  - 7mo ago
tootie 7mo ago
It's unbelievable he's still given any semblance of credence for anything he does. Trump is just palpably stupid. He is bad at absorbing information, he is bad at analytical thinking, he is impatient, vain and rash. Aside from his tenuous legal justification, he never once publicly expressed even a fundamental understanding of the basic mechanics of tariff collection nor what balance of trade actually means. You'd constantly see his proxies on TV just put words in his mouth to bend his foolish policy into some coherent. And we're seeing it again with the attack on Iran. No strategy, no achievable objectives, no comprehension of basic facts on the ground. He's really really really just stupid.
- 2snakes 7mo ago
  It is a different kind of intelligence: System 1 instead of System 2. I guess you could call it startup style.
  - tootie 7mo ago
    Being impulsive doesn't mean you have a good system 1 intelligence. Quite the opposite. His system 1 sucks and is driven entirely by superficial biases and ego. His system 2 appears to be moribund as he rarely comes up solutions beyond the same facile reasoning his system 1 comes up with. He has neither intellect nor good instincts.
hightrix 7mo ago
> tariff war against enemies This is an interesting way to frame a tax on Americans, but it aligns with this administrations actions.
arunabha 7mo ago
It's clear that there was no reasoned thought behind the tariff push. Tariffs can work if implemented in a principled way and coupled with a complementary industrial policy to develop critical sectors of the economy. Instead, we had a completely chaotic implementation of tariffs which seemed to be completely at the whim of Trump with zero supportive industrial policy. So much so that the term 'Taco' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out was coined to describe Trump's approach. The charitable explanation is that Trump had no plan and was making it up as he went along. The less charitable explanation is that the chaos was an intentional feature to enable a quid pro quo of favourable policy in exchange for under the table payments via crypto or 'investments' in his family's various businesses. When you couple completely illegal application of a supposed 'emergency' to invoke tariffs with a chaotic, whim based implementation, is there any wonder that they failed?
- everforward 7mo ago
  The studies I’ve seen seem to indicate that tariffs can work but are like running with scissors. The artificially reduced competition will spur buying domestic products, but can also make domestic producers complacent. They don’t develop new features because they have an almost captive audience, until foreign producers advance enough that people will pay the tariff premium for better foreign products. Then it’s a catch-22. Domestic producers are behind on technology so killing the tariffs will bankrupt them, but raising the tariffs only leans into their complacency.
  - Saline9515 7mo ago
    There are better ways than tariffs. For instance, you can increase VAT and use the proceeds to decrease taxes on work, or cut taxes for specific sectors. This way your economy is more competitive internationally, while avoiding the distorsions of tariffs. Tariffs can also be footguns as they increase costs on imports for upstream supplies, making downstream local producers less competitive. VAT is much better for this as it is refunded when you export.
usefulcat 7mo ago
I had the same thought, but really I think a lot of it is just spectacle for his more gullible followers. I mean, FFS--we have a nominally Republican candidate who campaigned on raising taxes and was elected anyway! You'd have to be pretty gullible to think that raising taxes on imported goods won't result in price hikes at the checkout counter.
jonathanlydall 7mo ago
Maybe I don't understand as I'm an outsider, but as per my recent comment on this topic [0], I fail to see the logic of how "other countries" pay the US when the tariffs are paid by the importer and not the other country which is exporting. I do acknowledge that import taxes can in theory help local industries, especially if the other countries are subsidizing exported goods. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238951
- epolanski 7mo ago
  Tariffs almost never make sense, unless it's an industry that's super important for your own survival. Capitalism is about efficiency, and eventually there are going countries where producing certain items will always be more efficient. East asian countries have spent decades innovating and investing in their manufacturing capabilities. Also, one thing that grinds my nerves are the narratives of trade balances that only focus on physical goods but conveniently ignore services. US exports trillions in software, ai, music, videogames, financial services, cloud, and that's conveniently ignored. Eventually tariffs come back biting those who issue them, because the moment your local industries don't need to compete anymore to survive, they have no incentives to innovate.
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    It's not that it's conveniently ignored. It's that a services economy, while lucrative in the good times, leaves you lacking self sufficiency and resilience. We should never have let manufacturing leave to the extent that we did, all in the name of efficiency over all else. Of course it goes without saying that launching an absurdist comedy interpretation of a global trade war is not the way to fix the problem.
    - collinmcnulty 7mo ago
      I don’t have a source for this handy, but I believe that in terms of goods produced, manufacturing is actually still alive and well in the US. It’s just that this is done by a much smaller and more automated workforce.
blitzar 7mo ago
I am old enough to remember when the great minds at DOGE found $10T a year of fraudulent Social Security spending which would have cut the total governement spending from $7T a year to negative $3T. The DOGE refund cheque is of course, in the mail.
dude250711 7mo ago
> All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all countries will pay up to USA. Sounds a bit like Brexit.
levzettelin 7mo ago
> Astronomical tariffs [...] and from all of this they got only $130B ? Which is it? A number can't be small and large at the same time.
- californical 7mo ago
  To steel-man their sentence, it’s a large number to extract from US citizens, nearly $500/person. But it’s a small number in terms of government deficit and current spending
- Dylan16807 7mo ago
  The percents were huge. The income was comparatively useless.
arrosenberg 7mo ago
The point is to bankrupt the country so the robber barons can buy up all the assets for pennies on the dollar.
perfectstorm 7mo ago
this reminds me of the Indian government's (read Modi's) demonetization efforts of 2016 which caused 80+ deaths and huge headaches for the common people. In the end, more than 99.3% of the demonetized money came back in circulation. Elect a clown, expect a circus. true for the oldest democracy in the world and also true for the largest democracy.
thinkcontext 7mo ago
The $130B is only part of the economic costs of the tariffs. Many companies and people changed their buying behavior, either paying more to a domestic company or maybe a company in a country with a lower tariff rate or changed their behavior to not require an item all together. We've also heard about small companies that have gone out of business. I'm not an economist but I assume economists are writing papers about this kind of thing to estimate the effects.
guywithahat 7mo ago
I mean 130 billion is a significant amount of money, and it's more remarkable given the tax is unnoticeable to the average consumer and primarily impacted foreign manufacturers (either forcing them to move to the US or more friendly countries). The deficit wasn't built in two years and I don't think it could be solved in two years either.
- loeg 7mo ago
  > it's more remarkable given the tax is unnoticeable to the average consumer The idea that consumers don't notice higher prices is wild. > and primarily impacted foreign manufacturers Also not true?
outside2344 7mo ago
The dude is a moron: to think there was any thought behind this is to be insane.
ks2048 7mo ago
> they planned to fix this hole with $100B?! No one is or ever was planning on fixing any "holes". Trump is drilling holes all over the boat and taking what he can. After he's dead, others will have to deal with the sinking ship.
zelphirkalt 7mo ago
The biggest damage is the souring of relations with other countries, who now no longer see the US as a reliable business partner. They have nudged countries in the EU to rather look to China. The longer Trump is in office, the bigger the damage gets. The long term course might already be set away from the US and towards China. The loss for the US cannot even be estimated yet. Also the US is working hard on losing their military dominance. Engaging in unnecessary wars, offending its allies left and right, who are now starting to invest more into their own military, since they have learned, that they cannot rely on the US any longer, while China plays the catch-up game and is getting closer to US military capability every year. Reputational damage is enormous of course and the US hands China easy PR wins after wins. This seems to be the current trend. Projecting this into the future, it seems likely, that in 10, 20, 30 years from now, the most powerful global player might be China, instead of the US. Obviously, in decades a lot can happen. Future US administrations however have got a lot of repair work cut out for them. How can they convince international partners, that this does not repeat in the future, the next time a crazy administration is elected? Can they at all? Or can they fix the political landscape in their own country in that timespan? It kinda looks like their are stuck.
rayiner 7mo ago
[flagged]
- Sparkle-san 7mo ago
  That approach may need to be reexamined as it didn't appear to work. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4872657-us-goods-trade-deficit-hits-all-time-high-in-2025-what-does-it-mean-for-q4-gdp https://seekingalpha.com/article/4872657-us-goods-trade-defi...
  - rayiner 7mo ago
    It will take decades to work.
    - donkeybeer 7mo ago
      It will be a decades long path to ruin.
- donkeybeer 7mo ago
  Ask Brazilians, they will write a nice book for you on tariffs.
unyttigfjelltol 7mo ago
No, Trump manufactured negotiating leverage out of thin air— nothing, really. He extracted concessions on something like a bluff. Plus, didn’t he also extract a budget that in retrospect wasn’t appropriate had the tariff revenue been removed?
- hcknwscommenter 7mo ago
  The budget wasn't appropriate regardless of tariffs. And OP's point is that 130B is a tiny number that no where near makes up for the loss in tax revenue from the very very stupid "OBBB".
maxlin 7mo ago
-They only got 130B -They planned to fix all this with 100B? I see what you did there. 70B eh? They only got 50B. A paltry 20B? The real number though, was gotten in a relatively short time. And now replacement tariffs are on the way. And many companies have re-thought of manufacturing outside US with the higher tariffs always being the possibility in the future too.
- hcknwscommenter 7mo ago
  If the OP had (incorrectly) rounded 130B to 200B, OP's point would have still been perfectly understandable and correct. Your odd quibble about rounding completely misses the point. Whooosh.
SlightlyLeftPad 7mo ago
That $130B will pay for 4 months of the Iran war with a current run rate of <checks clipboard> $1B per day. We’re definitely not going to get even a reduction in healthcare costs any time soon.
belter 7mo ago
[dead]
kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago
Hedging in case Argentina might need another bailout.
bigmadshoe 7mo ago
The purpose of the tariffs was to strong-arm countries into unfair trade deals, not to collect revenue
- dragonwriter 7mo ago
  The purpose of the tariffs was to appeal to the part of the domestic constituency that has belief in protectionist policies as a good in and of themselves rather than a means to an ends, not to achieve some direct material policy outcome outside of the scope of political enthusiasm.
bbshfishe 7mo ago
[dead]
bbshfishe 7mo ago
[dead]
userbinator 7mo ago
and from all of this they got only $130B ? I wonder if your thoughts would be any different if they managed to get enough to actually pay off the deficit?

by trymas 7mo ago

aduffy 7mo ago

They need to refund it *with interest*, according to filings cited in the article.

mejutoco 7mo ago
6-7 percent interest.
- loeg 7mo ago
  SOFR is only around 3.7%. And it's, you know, an annualized rate. The earliest liberation day tariffs are only around 11 months old at this point.
  - mejutoco 7mo ago
    My source was: ``` The government has collected perhaps $180bn in IEEPA tariffs. Over the past year 1,800 companies—including Goodyear, a tyre-maker, and Costco, a retailer—have filed lawsuits to protect their right to a refund should the Supreme Court overturn them. They are now owed this money, equivalent to roughly 5% of the profits companies generated in America last year, or 0.6% of GDP—plus interest, compounded daily at an annual rate of 6-7%. ``` https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/02/26/americas-trade-chaos-is-just-beginning https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/02/26/a...
    - loeg 7mo ago
      Interesting! Seems generous.

superxpro12 7mo ago

The rest is financed by debt. The theft-class stole the rest from the govt thru debt, and expect the rest of us and the following generations to deal with the fallout while they sit on top of their obscene gobs of cash insulated from the fire they created.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

microtonal 7mo ago

Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ? Maybe that was never the point. You present it as retaliation against 'countries that are out to get us'. Introduce the tariffs, companies pay the tariffs by increasing prices for consumers, get the inevitable loss in court, return the tariff money to the companies. You just transferred $130B of wealth from citizens to companies. Bonus: people are now used to the higher prices, so post-tariffs your profits are also higher.

MattDamonSpace 7mo ago
The whole point is “$130B is chump change for the problems caused” and that’s true if companies as well
- functionmouse 7mo ago
  Companies will make far more than 130b off this. There's no way they only raised prices just enough to cover the 130b and the labor required for the internal policy changes. This was a justification for price gouging. Which they will not stop doing.
  - hunterpayne 7mo ago
    Agreed, this is the real take away most people will be left with. Not only did we all pay higher prices, instead of using that money to pay off the debt we give it away to business managers who were never out that money in the first place. Politically, that doesn't accomplish what some think it does. Midterms are coming up in 8 months...and the results of the house are going to be drastic no matter which side wins. Either Trump can do what he wants or the government will be deadlocked and nothing will happen for 2 years. Neither seem like good outcomes.
    - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
      > Either Trump can do what he wants or the government will be deadlocked and nothing will happen for 2 years. That isn’t drastic, that is already how it is.

satvikpendem 7mo ago

"Trump brags in Oval Office that his billionaire pals made a killing in stocks after he pulled the plug on tariffs" > “He made $2.5 billion, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad!” Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and then NASCAR team owner Roger Penske. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-brags-oval-office-billionaire-052249693.html https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-brags-oval-office-billionair...

lokar 7mo ago

Friends? America has no friends, only client states.

lokar 7mo ago
I'm serious. The Trump/MAGA view of foreign policy is that the US sits at the top, we owe friendship to no one. We engage with other nations transactionally, zero sum, with the US always getting more.
- kubelsmieci 7mo ago
  Don't antropomorfize countries. Countries can't have friends. There are only common interests. Or opposite.
  - lokar 7mo ago
    I said "Trump/MAGA", which is the person and controlling faction in US politics
  - davedx 7mo ago
    How about people?
    - lokar 7mo ago
      I think it's legitimately hard to say. Most Americans know very little about international affairs, and care even less. I think interpreting broad opinion surveys can be fraught. So, who do you count? everyone? only the informed? only people with strong views? Or do you assume people support the views and actions of the people they voted for?
  - Dylan16807 7mo ago
    Countries act on people's emotions. Friends and enemies are a pretty good description of a lot of international politics, much better than a dispassionate analysis of interests.
- 7mo ago

tootie 7mo ago

It's unbelievable he's still given any semblance of credence for anything he does. Trump is just palpably stupid. He is bad at absorbing information, he is bad at analytical thinking, he is impatient, vain and rash. Aside from his tenuous legal justification, he never once publicly expressed even a fundamental understanding of the basic mechanics of tariff collection nor what balance of trade actually means. You'd constantly see his proxies on TV just put words in his mouth to bend his foolish policy into some coherent. And we're seeing it again with the attack on Iran. No strategy, no achievable objectives, no comprehension of basic facts on the ground. He's really really really just stupid.

2snakes 7mo ago
It is a different kind of intelligence: System 1 instead of System 2. I guess you could call it startup style.
- tootie 7mo ago
  Being impulsive doesn't mean you have a good system 1 intelligence. Quite the opposite. His system 1 sucks and is driven entirely by superficial biases and ego. His system 2 appears to be moribund as he rarely comes up solutions beyond the same facile reasoning his system 1 comes up with. He has neither intellect nor good instincts.

hightrix 7mo ago

> tariff war against enemies This is an interesting way to frame a tax on Americans, but it aligns with this administrations actions.

arunabha 7mo ago

It's clear that there was no reasoned thought behind the tariff push. Tariffs can work if implemented in a principled way and coupled with a complementary industrial policy to develop critical sectors of the economy. Instead, we had a completely chaotic implementation of tariffs which seemed to be completely at the whim of Trump with zero supportive industrial policy. So much so that the term 'Taco' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out was coined to describe Trump's approach. The charitable explanation is that Trump had no plan and was making it up as he went along. The less charitable explanation is that the chaos was an intentional feature to enable a quid pro quo of favourable policy in exchange for under the table payments via crypto or 'investments' in his family's various businesses. When you couple completely illegal application of a supposed 'emergency' to invoke tariffs with a chaotic, whim based implementation, is there any wonder that they failed?

everforward 7mo ago
The studies I’ve seen seem to indicate that tariffs can work but are like running with scissors. The artificially reduced competition will spur buying domestic products, but can also make domestic producers complacent. They don’t develop new features because they have an almost captive audience, until foreign producers advance enough that people will pay the tariff premium for better foreign products. Then it’s a catch-22. Domestic producers are behind on technology so killing the tariffs will bankrupt them, but raising the tariffs only leans into their complacency.
- Saline9515 7mo ago
  There are better ways than tariffs. For instance, you can increase VAT and use the proceeds to decrease taxes on work, or cut taxes for specific sectors. This way your economy is more competitive internationally, while avoiding the distorsions of tariffs. Tariffs can also be footguns as they increase costs on imports for upstream supplies, making downstream local producers less competitive. VAT is much better for this as it is refunded when you export.

usefulcat 7mo ago

I had the same thought, but really I think a lot of it is just spectacle for his more gullible followers. I mean, FFS--we have a nominally Republican candidate who campaigned on raising taxes and was elected anyway! You'd have to be pretty gullible to think that raising taxes on imported goods won't result in price hikes at the checkout counter.

jonathanlydall 7mo ago

Maybe I don't understand as I'm an outsider, but as per my recent comment on this topic [0], I fail to see the logic of how "other countries" pay the US when the tariffs are paid by the importer and not the other country which is exporting. I do acknowledge that import taxes can in theory help local industries, especially if the other countries are subsidizing exported goods. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238951

epolanski 7mo ago
Tariffs almost never make sense, unless it's an industry that's super important for your own survival. Capitalism is about efficiency, and eventually there are going countries where producing certain items will always be more efficient. East asian countries have spent decades innovating and investing in their manufacturing capabilities. Also, one thing that grinds my nerves are the narratives of trade balances that only focus on physical goods but conveniently ignore services. US exports trillions in software, ai, music, videogames, financial services, cloud, and that's conveniently ignored. Eventually tariffs come back biting those who issue them, because the moment your local industries don't need to compete anymore to survive, they have no incentives to innovate.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  It's not that it's conveniently ignored. It's that a services economy, while lucrative in the good times, leaves you lacking self sufficiency and resilience. We should never have let manufacturing leave to the extent that we did, all in the name of efficiency over all else. Of course it goes without saying that launching an absurdist comedy interpretation of a global trade war is not the way to fix the problem.
  - collinmcnulty 7mo ago
    I don’t have a source for this handy, but I believe that in terms of goods produced, manufacturing is actually still alive and well in the US. It’s just that this is done by a much smaller and more automated workforce.

blitzar 7mo ago

I am old enough to remember when the great minds at DOGE found $10T a year of fraudulent Social Security spending which would have cut the total governement spending from $7T a year to negative $3T. The DOGE refund cheque is of course, in the mail.

dude250711 7mo ago

> All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all countries will pay up to USA. Sounds a bit like Brexit.

levzettelin 7mo ago

> Astronomical tariffs [...] and from all of this they got only $130B ? Which is it? A number can't be small and large at the same time.

californical 7mo ago
To steel-man their sentence, it’s a large number to extract from US citizens, nearly $500/person. But it’s a small number in terms of government deficit and current spending
Dylan16807 7mo ago
The percents were huge. The income was comparatively useless.

arrosenberg 7mo ago

The point is to bankrupt the country so the robber barons can buy up all the assets for pennies on the dollar.

perfectstorm 7mo ago

this reminds me of the Indian government's (read Modi's) demonetization efforts of 2016 which caused 80+ deaths and huge headaches for the common people. In the end, more than 99.3% of the demonetized money came back in circulation. Elect a clown, expect a circus. true for the oldest democracy in the world and also true for the largest democracy.

thinkcontext 7mo ago

The $130B is only part of the economic costs of the tariffs. Many companies and people changed their buying behavior, either paying more to a domestic company or maybe a company in a country with a lower tariff rate or changed their behavior to not require an item all together. We've also heard about small companies that have gone out of business. I'm not an economist but I assume economists are writing papers about this kind of thing to estimate the effects.

guywithahat 7mo ago

I mean 130 billion is a significant amount of money, and it's more remarkable given the tax is unnoticeable to the average consumer and primarily impacted foreign manufacturers (either forcing them to move to the US or more friendly countries). The deficit wasn't built in two years and I don't think it could be solved in two years either.

loeg 7mo ago
> it's more remarkable given the tax is unnoticeable to the average consumer The idea that consumers don't notice higher prices is wild. > and primarily impacted foreign manufacturers Also not true?

outside2344 7mo ago

The dude is a moron: to think there was any thought behind this is to be insane.

ks2048 7mo ago

> they planned to fix this hole with $100B?! No one is or ever was planning on fixing any "holes". Trump is drilling holes all over the boat and taking what he can. After he's dead, others will have to deal with the sinking ship.

zelphirkalt 7mo ago

The biggest damage is the souring of relations with other countries, who now no longer see the US as a reliable business partner. They have nudged countries in the EU to rather look to China. The longer Trump is in office, the bigger the damage gets. The long term course might already be set away from the US and towards China. The loss for the US cannot even be estimated yet. Also the US is working hard on losing their military dominance. Engaging in unnecessary wars, offending its allies left and right, who are now starting to invest more into their own military, since they have learned, that they cannot rely on the US any longer, while China plays the catch-up game and is getting closer to US military capability every year. Reputational damage is enormous of course and the US hands China easy PR wins after wins. This seems to be the current trend. Projecting this into the future, it seems likely, that in 10, 20, 30 years from now, the most powerful global player might be China, instead of the US. Obviously, in decades a lot can happen. Future US administrations however have got a lot of repair work cut out for them. How can they convince international partners, that this does not repeat in the future, the next time a crazy administration is elected? Can they at all? Or can they fix the political landscape in their own country in that timespan? It kinda looks like their are stuck.

rayiner 7mo ago

[flagged]

Sparkle-san 7mo ago
That approach may need to be reexamined as it didn't appear to work. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4872657-us-goods-trade-deficit-hits-all-time-high-in-2025-what-does-it-mean-for-q4-gdp https://seekingalpha.com/article/4872657-us-goods-trade-defi...
- rayiner 7mo ago
  It will take decades to work.
  - donkeybeer 7mo ago
    It will be a decades long path to ruin.
donkeybeer 7mo ago
Ask Brazilians, they will write a nice book for you on tariffs.

unyttigfjelltol 7mo ago

No, Trump manufactured negotiating leverage out of thin air— nothing, really. He extracted concessions on something like a bluff. Plus, didn’t he also extract a budget that in retrospect wasn’t appropriate had the tariff revenue been removed?

hcknwscommenter 7mo ago
The budget wasn't appropriate regardless of tariffs. And OP's point is that 130B is a tiny number that no where near makes up for the loss in tax revenue from the very very stupid "OBBB".

maxlin 7mo ago

-They only got 130B -They planned to fix all this with 100B? I see what you did there. 70B eh? They only got 50B. A paltry 20B? The real number though, was gotten in a relatively short time. And now replacement tariffs are on the way. And many companies have re-thought of manufacturing outside US with the higher tariffs always being the possibility in the future too.

hcknwscommenter 7mo ago
If the OP had (incorrectly) rounded 130B to 200B, OP's point would have still been perfectly understandable and correct. Your odd quibble about rounding completely misses the point. Whooosh.

SlightlyLeftPad 7mo ago

That $130B will pay for 4 months of the Iran war with a current run rate of <checks clipboard> $1B per day. We’re definitely not going to get even a reduction in healthcare costs any time soon.

belter 7mo ago

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kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago

Hedging in case Argentina might need another bailout.

bigmadshoe 7mo ago

The purpose of the tariffs was to strong-arm countries into unfair trade deals, not to collect revenue

dragonwriter 7mo ago
The purpose of the tariffs was to appeal to the part of the domestic constituency that has belief in protectionist policies as a good in and of themselves rather than a means to an ends, not to achieve some direct material policy outcome outside of the scope of political enthusiasm.

bbshfishe 7mo ago

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bbshfishe 7mo ago

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userbinator 7mo ago

and from all of this they got only $130B ? I wonder if your thoughts would be any different if they managed to get enough to actually pay off the deficit?