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Everything the current US administration has done has been an unmitigated disaster. Tariffs are taxes. Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man
by cdrnsf 2mo ago
Everything the current US administration has done has been an unmitigated disaster. Tariffs are taxes. Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man who could not run casinos successfully is not going to change that. His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most. Add to that continued environmental damage, domestic policy dictated by a regressive religious minority and a lack of interest in performing the duties of the position in favor of caring about only what it can be leveraged for. A failing state operating on grievances and stupidity.
- Spooky23 2mo ago[flagged]
- aorloff 2mo agoThe Democrats are not smartening up. The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc. The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class. Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating
- 8note 2mo agoDSA are democrats. clearly they are smartening up
- chermi 2mo agoSmartening up in the sense of winning elections? Or serving their constituents?
- YZF 2mo ago[flagged]
- mittensc 2mo agoThey are part of the democratic party so they are democrats. As for their agenda, you are wrong.
- db48x 2mo agoThey themselves literally say out loud that they want to abolish our existing institutions. If you want to debate that point, go debate the DSA candidates themselves.
- YZF 2mo agoI'm going to believe what they say: https://www.dsausa.org/ https://www.dsausa.org/ "The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few." "Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society." "democratic socialism" is an oxymoron. socialism conflicts directly with democratic values. At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side. All previous socialist "experiments" were not democracies.
- weakfish 2mo agoDSA is its own party; DSA affiliated candidates only run as democrats because the US system basically all but disallows third party success. I guarantee you that DSA members would not associate themselves with neoliberal Democrats at all, given the choice.
- stackghost 2mo agoHow is that different than the Tea Party republicans?
- weakfish 2mo agoI didn't say it was. I don't know enough about the Tea Party to confidently give my opinion, I am a bit too young to have been politically aware when they were in their heyday as far as I know.
- aorloff 2mo agoUnfortunately, I have to disagree. Smartening up would have been the Democratic Party ejecting Swalwell because he was a known creep. Instead he was the front runner for the CA Governor until like a couple months before the election when scandal, NOT the party cleaning house, took him out.
- delusional 2mo ago> he populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc. Leading but honest question: Are those candidates the same as Trump? I do not see how they share anything other than strategy and spin, and those things don't make policy.
- aorloff 2mo agoStrategy and spin don't make policy ? Wag the Dog (movie) came out like 3 decades ago
- SoftTalker 2mo ago[flagged]
- bastawhiz 2mo agoThat would be confusing considering he forced a vote to release the Epstein files.
- honr 2mo agoIf that is confusing to you, you are probably not ready for politics :-) Politicians act with hypocrisy or twisted plans (where the most straightforward conclusion is not necessarily the truth) all the time. Random example from yesterday: the same person who said 19 T deficit is too much before being elected, contributed to moving the deficit to above 40 T. However, I also highly doubt Schumer would be in Epstein files. People seem stuck on the meme that being in Epstein files is the main reason why someone acts one way or another. This degenerate over-simplification has to stop.
- lowbloodsugar 2mo agoThe Democrats are part of the system.
- jmyeet 2mo agoI really don't want people to be left with the impresion that this is Democratic Party incompetence. It is not. They are complicit in pretty much everything the Trump administration has been doing. They know what works. Just do what Obama did in 2008 and run on a populist economic platform. They don't want to do that. It's a choice, not incompetence. If Chuck Schumer is asked about the weather, he'll first check with Netanyahu. Just look at what Senatorial campaigns Schumer supports and doesn't. There's a lot of suspicion that Schumer (and the DSCC) is going to leave Abdul El-Sayed out to dry because he's anti-Israel, basically. Mandela Barnes got similar treatment in 2022. And yet you have blockbuster challenges like Jaime Harrison's, which spent $130M to oust Lindsey Graham. He lost by 10. Trump won by 12 so I guess he gained 2? Well done, everybody, the system works. Oh and what did the DNC do with Jaime Harrison after he spent $130M to lose by 10? They made him the DNC Chair. The Democratic Party loves a loser. Just like Howard Dean.
- peter422 2mo agoThe vast majority of sitting Democratic senators voted against funding for Israel this year. The DSCC funding is a drop in the bucket of the overall funding in these races, and they have their own goals which may or may not be aligned with the party as a whole. If your single issue is Israel funding (which it probably shouldn’t be but that is your choice), the Democratic Party and presidents did far more to reign in Israel’s behavior than republicans.
- ethbr1 2mo agoI think parent's broader message was the Democratic party leadership being out of touch with potential Democratic voters. Support for Israel's current government (elections in October 2026) being but one example.
- jmyeet 2mo agoYou need to realize just how performative most votes in Congress are. The Democrats, for example, will vote for all sorts of progressive policies when they know they won't pass. For example, Kamala Harris was a co-sponsor on a Medicare for All Bill. She didn't run on that in 2024. What's the difference? Well if she won in 2024, she might have to deliver on it. In 2019, Trump was in the White House so there's zero chance it would pass. Republicans do this too. Two of the seats they're at most risk of losing are Maine and Alaska held by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (respectively). They currently have 53 votes (well, 52 with Mitch McConnell MIA). That means they can pass things with 50 votes (and JD Vance's tie break) on anything that can get past or doesn't require cloture (eg approving judicial nominations, reconcilation). So, every time you have a controversial nomination or bill, you'll often find Collins and Murkowski vote no because their votes aren't needed. The leadership is insulating them from attack. But when their votes are needed, they're there (eg Collins's required vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh). As for the number of Democratic senators who voted against weapons for Israel, it is significant because it never would've happened 5 years ago, but it's also mostly performative because there's no way it was going to pass. As another example, Democrats did a rare move to invoke the filibuster last year to stop ICE funding. This resulted in a government shutdown and important programs being punitively defunded (eg there was a reserve fund for food stamps that was intentionally not tapped). What happened? The Republicans needed 60 votes to force a vote. There were 52 votes. 8 Democratic senators crossed the floor to vote with Republicans. That's so weird. It's the exact number required. What a coincidence. Whatever that number was, 1, 5, 8, 12, it doesn't matter. There will most of the time be that number of exact senators requried. This, by the way, is part of the rotating villain role within the Democratic Party. This is how calculated it was. All 8 of those who crossed the floor were either retiring or they weren't up for re-election in 2026 so the voters couldn't punish them. John Ossoff, the current liberal darling, was going to be one of the 8 but he's facing re-election this year so Chuck Schumer whipped another vote to replace him. Another classic example was the Epstein transparency act. Trump threatened members who signed the discharge petition. Mike Johnson actually shut down the House for 7 weeks to try and get those that did to change their vote. yet when the discharge petition got 218 votes (the minimum required), suddenly the votes in the House and Senate were almost unanimous. Well, if support was almost unanimous, why not just have a vote to begin with? Mitch McConnell can really be credited with pioneering a new era of obstruction in the Senate. He realized there was a political cost to some votes. Some things were popular and he didn't want to pass them so he'd just make sure they never made it to the floor for a vote. So my point is that imagine the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House in 2029 and that same Israel funding bill came up. Will all those Senators and House representatives vote for it when it might pass and become law? Nope.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- silisili 2mo agoI'd argue more largely that the right is a loose coalition of people with differing goals...whether it's conservatism, lower taxes, anti immigration, religious right, etc. I'm reminded how my econ professor would say that hardened bootleggers and hardcore Christians would pretend to be friends just long enough to vote to keep alcohol illegal. I feel like the Dems should have an easy time in the next elections if they don't fumble it given the current state of things. On the other hand, they seem to purity test each other in ways that make such a coalition harder to attain.
- ethbr1 2mo agoThe current US right is a hodgepodge in terms of what they love, but for Trump's victories was unified by who they hate.
- Spooky23 2mo agoDon’t bike shed. Tax and spend Trump is making your gas more expensive and allowing you Latin American burgers to out American farmers out of business.
- stouset 2mo agoThe Republican base doesn’t give a shit about “tax and spend” either. For all their hand-wringing about deficit spending, Republican administrations have for decades been the party of excessive spending and ballooning deficits. They’ve demonstrated over and over that their core principles don’t actually exist, and are simply maxims that they have heard often enough that they blindly parrot them back.
- naijaboiler 2mo agoTheir core principles do exist. It’s really racism
- BobbyJo 2mo ago[flagged]
- bjourne 2mo agoSo either they care about the safety of women and children, or they want to have some brown skinned and "weird" people to heave their hate on. I know which possibility I think is most likely...
- BobbyJo 2mo agoThat's a false dichotomy.
- unethical_ban 2mo agoI recommend this short piece, "The Missing Mood"[0]. It describes the concept that the motive and behavior of someone as it relates to a proposed set of actions is important. e.g. Someone proposing war might be correct, but one hopes a war hawk laments the need to go to war, vs. celebrating it and being bloodthirsty. Fox News ideology may at times declare opinions that, in complete isolation, might seem reasonable. "Border control", "safe streets", "responsible government" etc. But they approach it from a place of exaggeration and lies, and an outright visceral anger and hatred toward migrants, trans people, etc. They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security. So I agree with your parent comment, that Fox News and many of its viewers pick and choose what to say they're angry about, either out of intellectual dishonesty or, in the case of the viewer, outright ignorance or deeper thought about the whole picture of the government and society right now. [0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.htm...
- BobbyJo 2mo agoI implore you to simply talk to a few conservatives living normal lives in the real world. I am related to many and grew up in the south. I assure you, most are not nefarious. > They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security Conservatives, above all else, assume everyone in government is corrupt and terrible, hence wanting smaller government. That they can't reconcile that with their love of social security is a matter of self preservation, not malice.
- shoopadoop 2mo agoHuh? Check out the Twitter feeds of your favorite Republican or Republican-aligned personalities. It's racial or nationalistic dog whistles all day every day.
- goatlover 2mo agoHope the voters remember this for the next couple election cycles.
- fhdkweig 2mo agoThey didn't in the last couple. Those elections went 49% vs 51%. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the next couple. They feign surprise, but it isn't like it was a mystery as to what he was going to do. He campaigned on everything he is doing.
- edgyquant 2mo agoThe last few elections have been the most active in history, especially in 2020 essentially everyone voted.
- XorNot 2mo agoWhich should inform the credibility of anyone declaring one issue or another would definitely motivate voters to come out and vote for whatever policy they want to say is a winner: the last two elections, despite enormous new voter activation, the split in preference followed polling trends anyway. The great fiction of American politics at this point seems to be the belief that the non-voting population are definitely an election margin who'll definitely come and vote for you provided you support <commentators preferred policy here>.
- wild_egg 2mo agoYou're funny
- ragebol 2mo agoThey won't. Hope to be wrong though
- CamperBob2 2mo ago"But...but...but what about gender equity in high-school sports?" - Voters
- brightball 2mo agoI get that statistics can be manipulated but... https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/reports/ism-pmi-reports/pmi/july/ https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/... > Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the seventh consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report. > The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. > “The Manufacturing PMI® registered 55.6 percent in July, 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent). The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row.
- edgyquant 2mo ago[flagged]
- atoav 2mo agoReally? I know people in the hardware space for whom the tariffs have been an unmitigated disaster. They had to go through a lot to not lose their customer base outside the US. I have seen many US-people with businesses swearing about that admin, especially the smaller ones.
- A_D_E_P_T 2mo agoUh, I'm in manufacturing in the US and EU. Can confirm the tariffs are a total disaster. It's increasingly difficult and expensive to ship raw materials and components to the US! "Just find US suppliers." It's not that simple. There are a lot of things that simply aren't made in the US. (The majority of tool steels, all titanium alloys, everything made of tungsten, and I could go on all day.) Besides, dealing with the Chinese is like life on easy mode. Handshake agreements are always respected. In most cases service and support are 24/7. Importantly for QoL, they never make you fill out a dozen forms, pay for a D&B report, "let's get on a Zoom call to touch base," and all of that nonsense. American B2B firms aren't really into customer service, as a general rule, I think.
- rayiner 2mo ago[flagged]
- chermi 2mo agoTariff is a naughty word because of its proven negative side(main) effects. Not all taxes are equal. Regressive ones suck.
- rayiner 2mo agoIt's not "proven." At the 10,000-foot view, the magical market theory folks implemented their ideas about free trade since Reagan. And who is happy with the result? Tariffs were a core policy of the United States from Alexander Hamilton through Lincoln to the early 20th century and, empirically, they worked pretty well!
- chermi 2mo agoOk cool let's go back to then and cut the budget to match. Sounds like a decent tradeoff to me I guess. I would prefer a more incremental experiment though. I'm not a free market fundamentalist. I also don't think we ever had a free market. Implementation details always matter. My standing policy is basically small informed perturbations around free trade, included targeted tariffs. Everything has tradeoffs. Restricting lumber from canada and fucking Americans? Not smart. Letting China openly steal from us? Asymmetric trade policies hurting the US? Also not smart.
- rayiner 2mo agoNobody likes free trade. Democrats can only get away with it because they are so much better on healthcare. They can cobble together a coalition of big businesses and service workers whose jobs can’t easily be shipped to China. But healthcare is carrying to whole weight of that compromise.
- win311fwg 2mo agoThe trouble is that the US realized long ago that they could get free stuff by giving out imaginary paper (aka trade deficit) ad infinitum and, in turn, stopped doing much. China, on the other hand, doubled down on trying to do everything and now has the luxury of largely being able to ignore the rest of the world. The US could theoretically start doing things again, but it is never clear how to make that happen. The people much prefer to get free stuff (who wouldn't!?). Even if you can convince them otherwise, a lot of the institutional knowledge required to do things is gone. As capital moves to where it is most economically useful, the 'free stuff' economic structure has shaped where the capital is found. To move to a 'do things' economy would require turning the capital allocation upside down. To have all the pieces fall into place to see all that align just right requires great upheaval. Maybe tariffs really are trying to be the catalyst to convince the people that free stuff isn't the way to bring on the revolution, but even if that's the case, that's a different environment to how tariffs were used historically.
- chermi 2mo agoNot absolutely everything. You can make a very strong negative claim without hyperbole, and be a more trusted source in the process.
- thiht 2mo agoAs a non American, curious to know what has not been a disaster under Trump II specifically
- chermi 2mo agoNuclear stuff. btw what's more probable - every single thing that has been done under this presidency is unambiguously negative, or it's mostly negative? It's so easy to just NOT take the most extreme stance, and almost certainly to like 10 9s more accurate. Yet I'm downvoted for it.
- jascination 2mo agoThis is such a weird hill to die on dude. People are angry and it's been an embarrassing disaster filled with fraud on the highest scale, jumping on the fact that 1 out of 500 of his policies hasn't been bad just makes you look like you've completely missed the point
- chermi 2mo agoI don't like false statements, fuck me right? Accurate models of reality matter. If you stick to the belief that 100% of trump presidency is negative, you will eliminate from your options the policies that were positive.
- thiht 2mo agoIf the only good thing you can name is "nuclear stuff" it’s not a stretch to say it’s a complete disaster though. When people say "everything" they don’t mean "everything", it’s just easier than saying "everything except that 1 thing".
- pbhjpbhj 2mo ago>His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most Are you sure, it seems mostly based on illegal share trading. Murdering foreigners and sending soldiers to die is a lever Trump/his handlers keep pulling because they 'win' $millions every time.
- unethical_ban 2mo agoOne could call facilitators of his self-enrichment and abuse of office "flatterers".
- techteach00 2mo ago"regressive religious minority" yes, Israelis and the evangelicals that worship them.
- mancerayder 2mo ago[flagged]
- techteach00 2mo agoWhy didn't you have a problem with my criticism of evangelicals?
- wslh 2mo agoThat minority largely votes against the current government, so presumably you're claiming that it nevertheless exercises disproportionate influence across both parties and opposing ideological groups. What mechanism gives this particular minority such unusual political power? Why can it acquire influence that other groups competing for political power cannot?
- mancerayder 2mo agoIt came off as suggesting another group was being mentioned, apologies for reading into the commentary.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- tradertef 2mo agominority in population numbers. not in political influence.
- fooker 2mo ago> Manufacturing is still declining Do you have evidence for this?
- goodness4all 2mo agoThat’s the point. He wants to crash the monetary market and he has allllll the investments in digital currencies, ai, data centers, energy, computation & weapons. Why prop up a system that literally tried to kill him and will wreck havoc on his family after he’s outta office stripped of power. Dude is operating on death ground right now.
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- lostlogin 2mo ago> That’s the point. He wants to crash the monetary market and he has allllll the investments in digital currencies, ai, data centers, energy, computation & weapons. I think you’re giving him too much credit. He is just a mouthpiece for various people, he can’t make a plan and stick with it, and never has.
- fluidcruft 2mo agoTariffs end up being worse than taxes. They get collected, passed on to consumers, overturned by courts, and then handed to the companies that raided prices.
- throwitaway222 2mo agoI think they proved last year that most of the tarrifs were not going to consumers. It actually worked as an excellent business tax that did not get passed on. High tariffs are leftist ideology.
- narmiouh 2mo agoReference? Here is an article from the newyorkfed with an excerpt which isn't in line with what you are claiming. And it is quite likely that even those that didn't raise prices initially, aren't going to keep absorbing those costs forever (no such thing as free-lunch), these studies were done only 3 months into the tarriffs. https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/06/are-businesses-absorbing-the-tariffs-or-passing-them-on-to-their-customers/ https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/06/are-bu... "Consistent with textbook economics, tariffs generally resulted in higher prices to customers. Indeed, roughly half of businesses reported raising prices of goods directly subject to tariffs. Interestingly, a significant share of businesses also reported raising the selling prices of their goods and services unaffected by tariffs. Many businesses indicated they increased prices to cover other rising costs such as wages and insurance, though it is possible that in some cases, businesses were taking advantage of an escalating pricing environment to increase prices. For example, something similar happened in 2018-19 as firms increased their prices on dryers when tariffs rose on washing machines from China, even though dryers were not subject to tariffs."
- throwitaway222 2mo agoLiberals had forever been linked to unions and Unions are linked to making products in the United States. All of the unions have shifted to the right because they're now the ones making the tariffs. Clinton sold them out. Ever visit Alibaba and learn that the importers are still paying $1200 for 12 washing machines and then reselling it to you with a Maytag logo on it for $1200 EACH?
- pinkmuffinere 2mo ago[flagged]
- 0ckpuppet 2mo agoA lot of people who voted for Trump aren't surprised by this. The didn't vote for Trump to win as much as they voted for Democrats too lose. What does it take to lose to Trump twice, and by some accounts three times?
- kylehotchkiss 2mo agoToday in manufacturing: I saw one time use mouthwashes at target (ugh). Made in china. We can’t make overpriced pouches or mouthwash here