Dow plummets 600 points after Trump orders US manufacturers to leave China | Hacker News Reader

Dow plummets 600 points after Trump orders US manufacturers to leave China

cnbc.com

40 pointsremarkEon23 comments

Point of order: Does the US president have authority to "order" US companies to move out of China?

(My instincts scream: no. At least not by tweeting...)

Not by tweeting, but I'm sure the US Government could through legislation implement something along the lines of "If you have any operations in america and the majority of your manufacturing/imports/etc. is in China, you have to move your manufacturing processes in x timeframe or subject to penalties."

Sure, by a presidential order.

Yeah he could probably do it by connecting certain components to "National Security".

No he doesn't. It would require the law to change and he doesn't have that power. However he keeps increasing tariffs far enough I guess it's the same thing.

This seems like the most likely plan, since that's the only lever Trump can operate.

He could declare a 10,000% tariff on iPhones if he wanted.

I am not a lawyer.

The role doesn't have that de facto power, but he could enact things that effectively make it the de jure law by forbidding US companies doing business with the US federal government from using anything that sources some or all of its goods and services that have a dependency on a Chinese supply chain. The anti-BDS rules that some states have is what I would consider to be the precedent here [0].

Given that the president also has frequent campaign rallies, he can persuade voters to boycott companies that again source components from a Chinese supply chain. His official campaign baseball caps aren't made in China though some unofficial ones are sold on Amazon that come from China [1]. I guess the same would go for US flags.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sancti...

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-hat-china/

Heard an opinion that he used that phrasing in order for it to get translated into Chinese a certain way.

"plummet": Closed 25,628.90 -623.34 -2.37%

According to http://www.dogsofthedow.com/histogram-m.htm "95% of the time the Dow has a daily change between ±2.1%; and 99% of the time the Dow has a daily change between ±3.2%."

All of the indicators are flashing bright red for an incoming recession and furthering this pointless one-upmanship will just further speed things along. He's already increasing the tariffs even further and eventually things are gonna crash.

That is his game plan. Trade deficit complaints are all a ruse to constraint markets leading to resession and crash. Then his wealthy cronies can buy up stocks at a huge discount before the next president comes along and fixes everything.

He won’t be re-elected if we have a recession. Note how he called the Fed chairman the enemy today for not lowering the discount window rate 100 basis points.

It's an interesting question whether there is any chance he could be re-elected.

The site fivethirtyeight.com has a page that shows approval polling of presidents since Truman overlaid with Trump. The only President significantly more unpopular than Trump at this point in their Presidency was Carter. The only Presidents who were roughly as unpopular at this point, were Obama and Reagan, oddly enough, both of whom of course were re-elected.

But I think those facts fail to capture what is unique about Trump's polling. Every President since Truman, excepting Trump, has had high points where they had well over 50% approval. Trump's polling is uniquely nearly flat since the beginning of his presidency. He's currently about 42% approve, 54% disapprove, and it's getting worse, but this is actually not the worst rating he's had - late 2017 was worse. In other words, there seems to be no trend.

I think you give him to much credit, the only plan he has is to make him look great, any grandstanding that makes him look good is what he does.

Without expressing an opinion on whether you are correct or not, it seems like practically every day since his inauguration, I read where someone says "he can't be doing <nefarious thing> because it would be too obvious!" And the other half of the time, people say "what he's doing can't be that bad, because he's not trying to hide it at all!"

The grammar and style of Trump's tweet puts me in mind of some Usenet folks, like maybe John Grubor (google "John Grubor medpot" to get a flavor). What's going on here?

Considering his popular support, his style of communication is likely very similar to those of his constituents (a large segment of the electorate).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com