Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

The news today - almost across the board from liberal and conservative sources - is starkly negative in assessing Trump's chaotic trade policy. The most neutral assessments revolve around getting trading partners to talk about removing monetary and non-monetary trade barriers to US products and services shipped abroad. Also revealed is the divide among West Wing advisors in Trump's circle between tariff hardliners (Navarro) and moderates (Bessent). It looks like moderates have prevailed - for now.

Even those come with the caveat that the path forward is not at all clear given the 90d pause in most of Trump's tariffs. Thus, there's as much uncertainty about the impact of tariffs at the rates Trump is talking about going forward as there was before the pause. Chaos within the WH is, apparently, still present.

The administration's shifting depiction of it's trade and tariff policies may be consistent with Trump's overall behavior and characterized as some kind of a "grand strategy" (his people have said that this morning). The downside is that when he says something about trade policy himself or his spokes people do, his history of twisting the facts to his view or flat-out lying have become so regular that anything that is said about US trade policy isn't believable...... and let me be clear: I'm not a "Trumper" or an apologist for his trade policy behavior. I did not vote for him. What I post here that may sound like support for DJT and his trade policy is simply a reflection of my willingness to entertain the arguments for and against both sides of said trade policy. I'm a neutral observer with a lean toward favoring a lot of things Trump has done since his inauguration - the way his trade policy regarding tariffs was implemented is not among those.

Even though I'm glad trump's pause, or retreat if that's what you want to call it, caused the markets to sharply reverse course, futures this morning indicate some of that gain is going to be given up today. IOW, the uncertainty that started with the imposition of Trump's tariffs remains a powerful force of downward pressure on them. That will likely be the prevailing sentiment for a while.

[Dr. Strangelove]

There are still significant tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada. Three of our biggest trading partners. That and the fact that he's keeping in place the 10% minimum in place during the "pause" has bled off some of the market euphoria.

There's talk that the bond market overnight was going to turn ugly had Trump not done what he did.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I think even cons here might agree this is hilariously accurate.

[CGVT]

The fucking piece of shit caved and made sure his cronies could profit.

This is what you fuckers voted for.

[klondike]

You lefties are hilarious. As if you all loved the tariff imbalance the U.S. has with almost every country. Finally we have someone with enough balls to fight back. Oh yeah, GO CHINA! Down with America!!

[froot loops]

Take an economics class.

Apparently rightists are now command economy people for the greater good of the nation!

Being the reserve currency is great. Trade deficits means you are getting things! Go shopping at a Walmart.

[Dr. Strangelove]

You lefties are hilarious. As if you all loved the tariff imbalance the U.S. has with almost every country. Finally we have someone with enough balls to fight back. Oh yeah, GO CHINA! Down with America!!

The issue is we don't have a "tariff imbalance" with most countries. We have a trade imbalance (a totally different thing) and that's because we're the richest country on planet earth and can buy more shit than anyone else.

[CGVT]

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[froot loops]

Again, if you want to raise tariffs, it should be done in Congress. It should not be done by one man, that was true for Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and now Trump. Every time these presidents imposed tariffs, it was not good. But this latest nonsense takes the cake. These are not national emergencies. If you are putting tariffs on every country (North Korea and Russia exempted) there is no emergency. There is nothing Madagascar is doing with vanilla and titanium that makes it a problem with the US. We are not going to re-shore diamond mines in America after punishing Lesotho with tariffs.

The CHIPs act was something that was passed and it was a protectionist measure to reshore domestic chip production. Klondike has probably never heard of it.

We have trade imbalances because the country is wealthy. It can buy things like GPUs from Taiwan, that are in high demand around the world.

The US benefits from a $100 billion trade deficit from Canada because Canada exports over $400 billion dollars worth of crude at a discount. That means cheaper gas.

Even with yesterday's alleged "pause" the effective tariff rate on imported goods in the US went from 2 percent to 25 percent. People lost their shit with inflation after COVID.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Finally we have a President with the balls to take on Mauritania and the Island of Reunion. They've been ripping us off FOR YEARS!!

[froot loops]

I was a thoroughly mediocre economics student in college but listening to some of these maga arguments remind me of the Esurance old ladies facebook commercial. "That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works."


thats-not-how-this-works-thats-not-how-any-of-this-works.gif

[STFU]

This place still stinks.

[klondike]

Finally we have a President with the balls to take on Mauritania and the Island of Reunion. They've been ripping us off FOR YEARS!!

Right. As God said it should be. They all kneel to the boss. Besides Chinaaa. This is all bluster and hard-line negotiations by Trump and you all fall for every bit. Let's see the end-game.

[froot loops]

There is no end game, they can't even explain what their goal. You like Trump, so anything he does you will try to reverse engineer it for the goal you want

[THE_WIZARD_]

The end is near. Trump is Hitler. Threat to democracy. Threat to the world. Sell all your assets. To me. For pennies on the dollar. Please.