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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Let's see how the trade war of all trade wars will play out for average Joe down in Mississippi. All while social safety nets are disintegrating underneath his feet.

What's dangerous about this is not the plan itself, but that there won't be anyone to confront Trump about his half-baked, or downright disastrous plans.

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Maybe? Democrats had the chance to propose something better, but they decided to prop up a geriatric puppet until they couldn't, and then were forced to prop up his widely unpopular VP. I'll take trade war over domestic goods shortages, which is what price caps inevitably create.

This is the core problem:

The economy isn't shit. The economy is booming. Job growth has been good, summer consumer spending was good. Real wage growth has outpaced inflation the past 18 months.

Inflation is going down. Interest rates are going down.

America came out of this victorious, compared to other countries that faced the exact same post-COVID woes.

The problem is that democrats couldn't convey this stronger. Republicans managed to spread the doom and gloom more than facts.

Now it's going to be trade wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, more crony capitalism. Trump is fixated with tariffs, because in his mind, deal-making comes down to strong-arming the other party. Trump seems to be oblivious of the soft power the US has wielded for decades. That's also about to get flushed down the toilet - all countries in the world are embracing for Trump-style "negotiations".

I know it is not good to engage in victim blaming...but maybe the voters do get what they deserve?

Perhaps the economy as a whole is doing great, but the facets that impact the individuals across the nation are not. Many/most people feel that they have less in their pocket AND their refrigerator at the end of the month than ever before.

What you call victim-blaming may be mixing up cause and effect. Voters aren't stupid. They hear "the economy is doing great!" but they see their grocery bills. Maybe the victims are just tired of being victims and voted accordingly?

Maybe another perspective on this is that Democrats were preaching to the upper arm of the K-shaped recovery that everything is fine with their bureaucracy in charge (because nobody actually cares about Biden or Kamala personally), and the people on the lower arm voted on "Hell no, it's not!" This was the Springfield, OH thing, where the media tried to laugh it off as a few racists claiming pet-eating, but a small town was truly stretched beyond its limits through illegal immigration.

The economy is great for about 20% of the population, maybe 30%. Take a drive down no-where town anywhere in the US and you'll see the economy doesn't work for most people. All of middle America (geographically) has been absolutely gutted by globalism, among other things.

Peter Santenello has a good YouTube channel where he goes around the country (and world) and interviews regular people. It will give you some insight on the economy for the remaining 70%.

https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello

I genuinely hope Trump's plan works to alleviate this but I don't think even rampant protectionism can put the cat back in the bag for the heyday of American manufacturing. I expect it to go about as well as it did for the Soviet's insular economy.

Based on this video, it seems like the problem there is social security checks given to young people and drugs, and not the lack of jobs.

For one, hopefully the good folks of Mississippi will get some of their cotton growing and ship building jobs back.

You are severely underestimating the American ability to strong-arm other nations in their economic favor.

Last time Trump tried, it ended up costing farmers tens of billions. That time (2018) the tariffs were under 30%, this time around, he's promised 60%.

I thought farmers were bailed out, so it was the taxpayer and consumer who paid the costs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_farmer_ba...

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