Instead of Orange Man doing Tariffs would it not have been better for him to talk about shopping locally and so forth. And giving more tax breaks to companies that stay and sell in the US?
You seem to be operating under the misplaced assumption that Trump's goal with the tariffs was to actually bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy in any way. It's understandable if you haven't paid very close attention to Trump over the past 9 years. But whenever thinking about him or his policies, you have to keep one thing top of mind: Trump is a habitual liar who only cares about his own personal wealth and power.
He's not trying to bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy. He's doing market manipulation to increase his wealth and that of those who helped get him into power. He doesn't give a shit about you or me or any of the rest of us. He couldn't care less if the US crumbled into dust tomorrow, so long as he's still on top.
Look. He had the stupid tariff idea. He liked it because he likes the thought of getting his way by punishing people who defy him. That's how he sees tariffs. It wasn't a good idea. People told him that. So, being a stubborn narcissist, he wanted to do it more. Now here we are.
Even his buddy's Tesla's had to double check with him to make sure they weren't going to be tariffed, so I'm feeling that's less on Drumpf's part and more on Musk's.
Yeah, certainly if he were a normal President. But he's a textbook narcissist who only gives a shit about himself and capitulating to the ultra elite. Throw some performance goals set up by his boss Vladimir Putin, and what do you get?
Absolute fucking chaos alongside fleecing the lower 99.99% for anything you can get and manufacturing a crash in the stock market so you and your elite friends can, you guessed it, profit from it tremendously.
A rational president, you bet. This dude is not that.
The goal is not to better the country or the economy. The goal is to make money, for his friends and connections to make money, and leave everything else destroyed while they laugh.
IMO this is the major flaw. Tariffs could work in practice, but you'd have to announce them way ahead of time to give local businesses time to fill in the gap. Otherwise you'll get what happens now.
Yes but you, like everyone I seem to talk to these days, is under the false impression that Trump isn't a complete idiot who literally thinks tariffs are the solution to all problems. It's more comforting to think there's some massive conspiracy by Russia or that it's a ploy to make money off the stock market, but I truly believe that Trump actually thinks tariffs will magically fix the economy and his reactions to the backlash are legitimate shock that so many people and the markets don't agree. Yes Russia does stand to gain from this, but they don't need to pull the strings when the guy in charge is innovating economic policy so stupid that a smart person would have trouble even imagining it.
Trump decisions make more sense when you realize he is actually stupid as fuck and there's no hidden chess moves or anyone pulling the strings from the shadows. There is nobody at the wheel who is actually competent even if they're evil. This is all just the whims of a complete moron who is probably also going a bit senile as well.
And giving more tax breaks to companies that stay and sell in the US?
that's technically what tariffs do. topologically, it's the same thing: using policy to give a price advantage to domestic producers.
talk about shopping locally and so forth.
talk gets one only so far. when those numbers start to chomp into the household budget, everyone forsakes the "made in..." label in favour of the price tag.
There's a thousand better ways to handle both tariffs and free trade. We fucked up the latter with NAFTA (and CAFTA), where the EU got it right. Bringing jobs home with tariffs isn't something you just snap your fingers and do, shit takes a long time to re-align, it would've made a lot more sense to have it go through the legislature and say "hey, we're starting out at a 10% tariff on this stuff we want to bring home, and we're going to ratchet it up +2% every year until Congress doesn't pass the law again." Instead, we've got the most volatile president in history implementing tariffs by fiat: 10% 20% actually none actually 10% actually 125% for real this time. Yeah, in this situation, the best play is to just try and wait dumbass out, because there's a non-zero chance he wakes up tomorrow and declares tariffs woke.
Tariffs have been the one major actual policy position rattling around in Trump's empty skull since at least 1988. He fucking loves the idea of tariffs, for some reason.
Smart, specific targeted tariffs paired with grants/incentives to American companies to foster local production of critical goods (think CHIPS Act) can be a good thing, if they are done in such a way that it doesn’t send an entire industry/market into financial shock.
Like, if you want to onboard silicon wafer manufacturing (as a prime example); you would announce a small tariff to start off with, and a clear road-map of it increasing over time - allowing time for companies to build the necessary infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities onshore.
Once the industry has settled and matured, those tariffs could begin to be slowly pared back to ensure that free-market competition continues to keep prices in check.
But this would only work in an actual free-market economy, and not in the oligopoly-in-a-trenchcoat that currently exists in the states.
Sure, but that reasonable and nuanced idea has nothing to do with what Trump's position on tariffs has always been. He's just a dipshit that doesn't understand the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics, or that the entire economy of of a country that controls its own currency (and especially one that controls the world's reserve currency) doesn't work the same way as an individual household or business.
My morning caffeine clearly hadn’t kicked in because I stupidly forgot to circle back round to that point. 🤦🏻♂️
Ultimately, my biggest worry is that Trump’s absolute piss-poor understanding and implementation of tariffs has very likely ‘poisoned the well’ to the point that they could probably never be successfully implemented in our lifetime by an actual competent Government - assuming the US ever gets another chance to elect one ever again.
Ultimately, my biggest worry is that Trump’s absolute piss-poor understanding and implementation of tariffs has very likely ‘poisoned the well’ to the point that they could probably never be successfully implemented in our lifetime by an actual competent Government
Well, it's not as if they had much chance of happening anyway, given the neoliberal status quo for decades before that, so... 🤷
We're violating trade agreements with our tariffs. But giving tax breaks to companies that re-shore industry would also likely violate trade agreements, because it would create 'unfair competition'. Kinda like the way that China has given subsidies to certain industries--such as solar panel producers--has created unfair competition, since they have far lower costs than other solar panel producers. As such, tax breaks and incentives would probably also hurt our trade relations, because we would essentially be taking jobs out of other countries. ...But that would probably hurt out relations with other countries far, far less than what we're doing now.
Honestly, there's not a great way to bring manufacturing jobs back in a way that doesn't harm our relationships with other countries, or our national interests in some way. By purchasing shit from companies with lower labor costs/standards of living/higher levels of labor abuse/etc., we've undercut our ability to produce the same goods at a competitive price while also keeping our own standards. Even if we went back to pay ratios between workers and executives that existed 50 years ago (I think that lowest to highest ratio in large companies was about 150:1 in the late 60s), that wouldn't be enough to keep our living standards, avoid labor abuses, and still be competitive with shit we get from China.
This is compounded by the fact that we do have some of this manufacturing in the US, because it's more-or-less required by the Barry Amendment (USC 10 §2533(a)). But the costs are astronomical. Take a backpack made by Mystery Ranch. Their Black Jack 80--identical to the USSOCOM SPEAR Patrol bag they make, just with another name--is $1200. The version that's made in Vietnam and is not Barry-compliant, was about $400. The materials and craftsmanship were substantially identical, but the fabrics were sourced from outside the US, and the manufacturing was done outside the US. There's no reasonable way that the US gov't can subsidize those kinds of costs.
Of course. Republicans hate paying taxes. you can give back taxes to companies by giving them more money. You can even "reverse tariff" by subsidizing products that you want to be cheaper than the same imported products from China.
Tariffs are one of the worst ways to deal with this type of problem.
You can either convince people with a carrot to do what you want and hope they will comply or make them comply with a sharp expensive stick 🤷♂️ Orange man doesn't seem to like carrots
That’s factually not true; what happens to a company with no competition but also no customers and no suppliers? There is a reason why the most successful companies aren’t isolated from the world
The reality is that there is no tax break large enough to make up the difference in costs for a lot of things. Even with tariffs China is still cheaper.
Yes, literally anything communicated or a plan would have been better. A fart in an enclosed room of crowded people would have been a better way to communicate than what this orange idiot did.
If you want to boost USA manufacturing industries I'd look at the sector that killed it first.
Bring in international capital controls, forex restrictions, limit consumer / mortgage credit maybe bring in some directed credit requirements. Badically the bank regulation that was chucked out in the 1970s. When us msnufacturing industry mysteriously started to decline. 70s recessions were not only caused by oil price shocks, and the sectoral shift was reinforced by bank liberalisation.
I'd think you'd want to force the USA finance industry to invest (at least some decent amount) in the future of USA productive capacity, instead of letting them invest in China's future and have an arms race to fuel a perpetual domestic property bubble.
Tarrifs might still be part of it - but if your domestic companies can't borrow, they can't grow or maintain/develop asset base.If they don't have working capital facilities, they liquidate fast.
Tax breaks might work/help (as might tarrifs), but if taxes are all on profits, you still need to borrow against the future to make the investment in the present (i.e. make a loss and pay no tax anyway) to build the productive capacity. They'd be better for short payback or labour intensive industries than for capital intensive industry - without other stuff.
I guess if you mean income tax breaks for workers in certin types of jobs/companies, that is interesting. Either way you need quite a lot of monitoring to avoid corruption of just wierd distortions with unintended consequences. That's what banks lending to businesses should do and be good at, monitoring their loans and their debtors.
shopping locally doesn't shift supply chains as fully as tariffs can, like if you buy orange juice at the store, the plastic for the container could've been made from saudi Arabian oil, but tariffs allow that to be more from American. but yeah, what you described would be far better
I don’t have a helpful answer to your question, but wouldn’t it be better to call him something that’s actually an insult about his character rather than his vanity, like “First Felon” or “First Rapist” or something? Not that he’s the first of any of those but “First” is a descriptor commonly reserved for the White House
59 Comments
db2@lemmy.world · 122 pts · 1y
His goal is to enrich himself and hurt others while getting praised like a toddler that just shit on the toilet for the first time.
Chozo@fedia.io · 42 pts · 1y
In truth, he missed the bowl but still wants that praise, anyway.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
Well, he sure is shitting.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de · 71 pts · 1y
Why do you think Donald Trump has any clue about anything he is doing? Has he not repeatedly demonstrated the opposite?
shittydwarf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 15 pts · 1y
He's simply doing what Putin says, no thinking on his part
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1y
He only has concepts of a plan.
His words, not mine.
Thorry84@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 1y
He will have the concepts of a plan in a couple of weeks. Literally any day now...
Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
or this presumption he gives a shit about the peasants.
punkwalrus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
I often think he's a second grader lying on his oral book report.
vvilld@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 42 pts · 1y
You seem to be operating under the misplaced assumption that Trump's goal with the tariffs was to actually bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy in any way. It's understandable if you haven't paid very close attention to Trump over the past 9 years. But whenever thinking about him or his policies, you have to keep one thing top of mind: Trump is a habitual liar who only cares about his own personal wealth and power.
He's not trying to bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy. He's doing market manipulation to increase his wealth and that of those who helped get him into power. He doesn't give a shit about you or me or any of the rest of us. He couldn't care less if the US crumbled into dust tomorrow, so long as he's still on top.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub · 37 pts · 1y
Look. He had the stupid tariff idea. He liked it because he likes the thought of getting his way by punishing people who defy him. That's how he sees tariffs. It wasn't a good idea. People told him that. So, being a stubborn narcissist, he wanted to do it more. Now here we are.
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 1y
Trump doesn't want you to buy local. He wants you to shop on Amazon and drive a Chinese-built Tesla.
db2@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y
*tesler
Chozo@fedia.io · 5 pts · 1y
"I love to slur!"
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 1 pts · 1y
Even his buddy's Tesla's had to double check with him to make sure they weren't going to be tariffed, so I'm feeling that's less on Drumpf's part and more on Musk's.
kmartburrito@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 1y
Yeah, certainly if he were a normal President. But he's a textbook narcissist who only gives a shit about himself and capitulating to the ultra elite. Throw some performance goals set up by his boss Vladimir Putin, and what do you get?
Absolute fucking chaos alongside fleecing the lower 99.99% for anything you can get and manufacturing a crash in the stock market so you and your elite friends can, you guessed it, profit from it tremendously.
A rational president, you bet. This dude is not that.
Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 1y
The goal is not to better the country or the economy. The goal is to make money, for his friends and connections to make money, and leave everything else destroyed while they laugh.
The tariffs not making sense is expected.
eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 1y
He's not trying to act in the interest of the United States.
He works for Putin.
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y
The orange man also could've given all the major CEOs a heads up since it takes years to build a factory.
Thavron@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 1y
IMO this is the major flaw. Tariffs could work in practice, but you'd have to announce them way ahead of time to give local businesses time to fill in the gap. Otherwise you'll get what happens now.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 3 pts · 1y
The first flaw is not discussing things with the people in charge of tariffs such as the secretary of treasury.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1y
Yes but you, like everyone I seem to talk to these days, is under the false impression that Trump isn't a complete idiot who literally thinks tariffs are the solution to all problems. It's more comforting to think there's some massive conspiracy by Russia or that it's a ploy to make money off the stock market, but I truly believe that Trump actually thinks tariffs will magically fix the economy and his reactions to the backlash are legitimate shock that so many people and the markets don't agree. Yes Russia does stand to gain from this, but they don't need to pull the strings when the guy in charge is innovating economic policy so stupid that a smart person would have trouble even imagining it.
Trump decisions make more sense when you realize he is actually stupid as fuck and there's no hidden chess moves or anyone pulling the strings from the shadows. There is nobody at the wheel who is actually competent even if they're evil. This is all just the whims of a complete moron who is probably also going a bit senile as well.
scottrepreneur@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
You must be new here.
Nemo@slrpnk.net · 11 pts · 1y
He doesn't do "better".
ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
that's technically what tariffs do. topologically, it's the same thing: using policy to give a price advantage to domestic producers.
talk gets one only so far. when those numbers start to chomp into the household budget, everyone forsakes the "made in..." label in favour of the price tag.
Archangel1313@lemm.ee · 7 pts · 1y
Randomgal@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 1y
The goal wasn't tho further the economy. The goal was to further racism and hate.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 1y
There's a near-infinite number of better things trump could have done.
superkret@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1y
Including "nothing at all".
0ndead@infosec.pub · 6 pts · 1y
You are more qualified to run the country than our current sitting dictator
joyjoy@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 1y
Are you referring to some kind of "opportunity economy"?
conditional_soup@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 1y
There's a thousand better ways to handle both tariffs and free trade. We fucked up the latter with NAFTA (and CAFTA), where the EU got it right. Bringing jobs home with tariffs isn't something you just snap your fingers and do, shit takes a long time to re-align, it would've made a lot more sense to have it go through the legislature and say "hey, we're starting out at a 10% tariff on this stuff we want to bring home, and we're going to ratchet it up +2% every year until Congress doesn't pass the law again." Instead, we've got the most volatile president in history implementing tariffs by fiat:
10% 20% actually none actually 10% actually 125% for real this time. Yeah, in this situation, the best play is to just try and wait dumbass out, because there's a non-zero chance he wakes up tomorrow and declares tariffs woke.grue@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Tariffs have been the one major actual policy position rattling around in Trump's empty skull since at least 1988. He fucking loves the idea of tariffs, for some reason.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Smart, specific targeted tariffs paired with grants/incentives to American companies to foster local production of critical goods (think CHIPS Act) can be a good thing, if they are done in such a way that it doesn’t send an entire industry/market into financial shock.
Like, if you want to onboard silicon wafer manufacturing (as a prime example); you would announce a small tariff to start off with, and a clear road-map of it increasing over time - allowing time for companies to build the necessary infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities onshore.
Once the industry has settled and matured, those tariffs could begin to be slowly pared back to ensure that free-market competition continues to keep prices in check.
But this would only work in an actual free-market economy, and not in the oligopoly-in-a-trenchcoat that currently exists in the states.
grue@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Sure, but that reasonable and nuanced idea has nothing to do with what Trump's position on tariffs has always been. He's just a dipshit that doesn't understand the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics, or that the entire economy of of a country that controls its own currency (and especially one that controls the world's reserve currency) doesn't work the same way as an individual household or business.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
Oh, absolutely!
My morning caffeine clearly hadn’t kicked in because I stupidly forgot to circle back round to that point. 🤦🏻♂️
Ultimately, my biggest worry is that Trump’s absolute piss-poor understanding and implementation of tariffs has very likely ‘poisoned the well’ to the point that they could probably never be successfully implemented in our lifetime by an actual competent Government - assuming the US ever gets another chance to elect one ever again.
grue@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Well, it's not as if they had much chance of happening anyway, given the neoliberal status quo for decades before that, so... 🤷
radix@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
It's harder to do insider trading if you aren't manipulating markets by posting contradictory statements every morning from your gold-plated toilet.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Yeah that would be reasonable policy that doesn't ruin our global trade relations
HelixDab2@lemm.ee · 0 pts · 1y
Weeelllllll...
We're violating trade agreements with our tariffs. But giving tax breaks to companies that re-shore industry would also likely violate trade agreements, because it would create 'unfair competition'. Kinda like the way that China has given subsidies to certain industries--such as solar panel producers--has created unfair competition, since they have far lower costs than other solar panel producers. As such, tax breaks and incentives would probably also hurt our trade relations, because we would essentially be taking jobs out of other countries. ...But that would probably hurt out relations with other countries far, far less than what we're doing now.
Honestly, there's not a great way to bring manufacturing jobs back in a way that doesn't harm our relationships with other countries, or our national interests in some way. By purchasing shit from companies with lower labor costs/standards of living/higher levels of labor abuse/etc., we've undercut our ability to produce the same goods at a competitive price while also keeping our own standards. Even if we went back to pay ratios between workers and executives that existed 50 years ago (I think that lowest to highest ratio in large companies was about 150:1 in the late 60s), that wouldn't be enough to keep our living standards, avoid labor abuses, and still be competitive with shit we get from China.
This is compounded by the fact that we do have some of this manufacturing in the US, because it's more-or-less required by the Barry Amendment (USC 10 §2533(a)). But the costs are astronomical. Take a backpack made by Mystery Ranch. Their Black Jack 80--identical to the USSOCOM SPEAR Patrol bag they make, just with another name--is $1200. The version that's made in Vietnam and is not Barry-compliant, was about $400. The materials and craftsmanship were substantially identical, but the fabrics were sourced from outside the US, and the manufacturing was done outside the US. There's no reasonable way that the US gov't can subsidize those kinds of costs.
HubertManne@piefed.social · 4 pts · 1y
we don't collect enough taxes as is.
tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 1y
Tariff = more money into Fed govt. -> funnel money from Fed govt into his and his friends pocket.
This is a faster way to get money out of the populace and into his accounts.
Brkdncr@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Of course. Republicans hate paying taxes. you can give back taxes to companies by giving them more money. You can even "reverse tariff" by subsidizing products that you want to be cheaper than the same imported products from China.
Tariffs are one of the worst ways to deal with this type of problem.
payhn@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 1y
You can either convince people with a carrot to do what you want and hope they will comply or make them comply with a sharp expensive stick 🤷♂️ Orange man doesn't seem to like carrots
BussyCat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
The problem is if you hit everyone with a stick sometimes they just leave and you are left just playing with your carrot by yourself
payhn@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 1y
I'm business the last one standing is the winner. That could be his goal
BussyCat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
That’s factually not true; what happens to a company with no competition but also no customers and no suppliers? There is a reason why the most successful companies aren’t isolated from the world
FelixCress@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Far too sensible.
tempest@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1y
The reality is that there is no tax break large enough to make up the difference in costs for a lot of things. Even with tariffs China is still cheaper.
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
Yes, literally anything communicated or a plan would have been better. A fart in an enclosed room of crowded people would have been a better way to communicate than what this orange idiot did.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 1y
He's trying to raise revenue in a way he can control.
Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 1y
oo1@lemmings.world · 1 pts · 1y
If you want to boost USA manufacturing industries I'd look at the sector that killed it first.
Bring in international capital controls, forex restrictions, limit consumer / mortgage credit maybe bring in some directed credit requirements. Badically the bank regulation that was chucked out in the 1970s. When us msnufacturing industry mysteriously started to decline. 70s recessions were not only caused by oil price shocks, and the sectoral shift was reinforced by bank liberalisation.
I'd think you'd want to force the USA finance industry to invest (at least some decent amount) in the future of USA productive capacity, instead of letting them invest in China's future and have an arms race to fuel a perpetual domestic property bubble.
Tarrifs might still be part of it - but if your domestic companies can't borrow, they can't grow or maintain/develop asset base.If they don't have working capital facilities, they liquidate fast.
Tax breaks might work/help (as might tarrifs), but if taxes are all on profits, you still need to borrow against the future to make the investment in the present (i.e. make a loss and pay no tax anyway) to build the productive capacity. They'd be better for short payback or labour intensive industries than for capital intensive industry - without other stuff.
I guess if you mean income tax breaks for workers in certin types of jobs/companies, that is interesting. Either way you need quite a lot of monitoring to avoid corruption of just wierd distortions with unintended consequences. That's what banks lending to businesses should do and be good at, monitoring their loans and their debtors.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
shopping locally doesn't shift supply chains as fully as tariffs can, like if you buy orange juice at the store, the plastic for the container could've been made from saudi Arabian oil, but tariffs allow that to be more from American. but yeah, what you described would be far better
BmeBenji@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 1y
I don’t have a helpful answer to your question, but wouldn’t it be better to call him something that’s actually an insult about his character rather than his vanity, like “First Felon” or “First Rapist” or something? Not that he’s the first of any of those but “First” is a descriptor commonly reserved for the White House
13igTyme@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1y
Americans shopping local does help Putin. Full stop.
Death_Equity@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1y
A salient question is why Democrats, like Pelosi, wanted reciprocal tariffs a couple decades ago and then changed their mind.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Better that they change their mind on bad policy than stubbornly stick to it
Death_Equity@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
They should take that to heart two years ago.
The Democrats have stuck to failed policy so hard and it has cost the American people consistently.
ogmios@sh.itjust.works · -7 pts · 1y
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
No, it's made me hard core about just NOT buying at all.