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Comment by ComplexSystems | Hacker News Reader

No arguments there. I certainly expect tariffs will lead to inflation getting much worse.

View the tariffs as carbon tax that represent the true cost of goods being produced in a coal heavy country and transported on boats that burn the most dirty kind of oil possible. It makes the whole thing look quite nicer and the economic cost a bit more worth it.

The per-ton CO2 emissions of those boats is still much, much lower than by truck or rail. Large ships are insanely efficient at moving cargo; that's why it's so economical to transport stuff across the planet.

There are no roads or railroads between China and US so the bulk efficiency by ship can not be directly compared. The first rule in decreasing emissions are reduce, so reducing the need to transport goods half way around the world are an effective measure against emissions.

Ship fuel (also called bunker fuel) is the dirties form of fuel there is and goes way beyond CO2 emissions. It is heavily contaminated and because of incomplete combustion it contribute heavily to pollution in water, atmosphere, and coast cities. The environmental impacts of heavy fuel oil spills also converts the ships into mobile nature disasters. The costs from oil spills generally spills over to society and people who live near the cost, rather than being carried by the shipping company. Collecting the real cost of that risk should be part of the product price when importing goods.

Tariffs are fungible, so the same tariffs could be used for the purpose of protectionism, geo-political stability, CO2 emissions in transportation, CO2 emissions in production, oil spill insurance costs, air/water pollution, regulative differences in worker rights, or differences in product safety. It can make the market competition more fair or unfair, and depending on what goals one have the definition of fair and unfair will likely change. People who lean both left and right can find arguments both in favor and against, likely at the same time given the fungible nature of tariffs.

Thus if one want to look at it on the bright side, pick the benefits of the political goals that talks to you.

Now factor in the manufacturing CO2 in a country with lax pollution regulations vs in the US...

Isn't the question, a/ travels across the globe + rails and truck vs b/ maybe rails + truck ?

Not arguing that the carbon tax is legit. It hasn't been proven yet that it isn't just a way to collect money while pretending to do something about the environment.

Well but maybe Chad in Nebraska would appreciate buying a Halloween decoration for $0.50 on wish!?!

We should maybe just reconsider in general what kind of thing is economically viable

He and his family certainly would if all they can afford to make it a special weekend is plastic crap from the dollar shop.

The real concern isn't that consumerism is threaten, as you seem to indicate that could be a good thing in fact.

I consider the U.S slowly becoming 19th century China.

I would like to remain positive but it might even be worse.

Globalisation, the U.S economy has been relying on developing countries to provide raw and finished produce. Not only de-industrialized, the population suffers from some superiority complex that makes it even hard to accept it may have to learn how to work and make stuff. Betting on AI to solve the universe, a migration to Mars.

Orders of magnitude more potent Pharmaceuticals. fantanyl is a hundred times more potent than Opium, a hundred times cheaper, and far easier to smuggle and conceal.

The U.S got to wake up, not just reconsider its consumerism culture.

If it hits major economic metrics in a way that makes him nervous, watch out for what he might do to the Fed. So long to a relatively-depoliticized institution. He was already grumbling about them in 2020. Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see.

>Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see.

Why would he not? It's not like he respects institutions such as the Supreme Court. And what repercussions has he ever faced for the destruction of norms and guardrails? If anything, he gains even more support.

I’m banking on the resulting stupid-low interest rates to refi my mortgage to help survive the guaranteed crash after. Not even joking. Great sympathy to those for whom that’s not an option. I figure there is an outside chance that such a move will fail to drop rates to the level it normally would because banks will also be worried, in which case I guess I’m just screwed as much as everyone else.

Damn whoever used that “may you live in interesting times” curse once to many times.

My fear is that something like this will happen, a bunch of well off people will take advantage, the lower classes will get clobbered much more than they have so far and transition to actual unrest.

What disrespect has he shown, ever, for the Supreme Court? And if the norms mean giving all of our tax dollars to NATO for nothing in return, why wouldn't you destroy those norms? After all, I voted for him on that basis.

> all of our tax dollars to NATO

Total US spending on all defense, not just NATO, is ~$900 billion or ~13-14% of federal spending. NATO has a total annual budget of less than $4 billion and we cover something like 15% of that budget, less than 0.001% of military spending and some infinitesimal portion of overall spend.

> for nothing in return

The US gains incomparable wealth from controlling the global prime currency. Part of the enforcement of this primacy is 750 military bases in 80 countries, giving the US a force projection capability greater than any empire in human history. For the US, NATO is just a just an organizational tool to manage resources among it's allies.

Also, the US is the biggest defense exporter, by a large margin: 14B$, with 3B$ for France in second place.

So many of those dollars spent by NATO (by the US and it's partners) come back to the US economy.

> or ~13-14% of federal spending

it's actually 50% percentage of "discretionary spending" (meaning the spending that the government gets to decide how to allocate with without changing social security laws, so essentially the "federal budget"

> And if the norms mean giving all of our tax dollars to NATO for nothing in return

All your tax dollars? How much do you think the US spends on defense without giving anything to NATO? Do you think that’ll somehow decrease if you leave NATO? It just means you’ll have to handle everything yourself. At least currently the US gets to charter about half of all their craft from various European allies.

Not for the justices, but for the institution of the Supreme Court. He files frivolous lawsuits and appeals designed to give his appointees the opportunity to legislate from the bench (e.g., "official acts"). He appoints blatantly partisan judges at all levels of the federal judiciary. And he sabotaged the FBI's inquiry into Kavanaugh's history, which is standard for any appointee at that level, by having any concerns be routed to the White House instead of handled by actual investigators. In short, he's demolished any pretense that the Court exists to enforce laws fairly, and has turned it into an unapologetic arm of the MAGA Republican party.

> if the norms mean giving all of our tax dollars to NATO for nothing in return

We do not give our tax dollars to NATO, at least not in any meaningful way. NATO's entire budget as an organization is about $4B/year, which includes valuable shared command/control systems. For the most part, we fund the American military, and we commit to using it in concert with our allies in certain scenarios.

In exchange, we get incredibly valuable hard and soft power. We get access to land in Europe to use as bases, which are staging areas for potential worldwide threats (e.g., an imperialist Russia). We get shared intelligence. We get goodwill with the rest of the West, so that they'll join our trade pacts. We get commitments of Polish tanks and British spies and French manpower if there ever to be a hot war, so that the US can focus on what it does best (air and naval superiority).

But also, you're the only one who brought up NATO. There are myriad unrelated norms that Trump broke the first time around, and will certainly break further this time, that make the institution of "the American government" less able to serve its purpose. Norms like, a president can't pardon himself. A president can't use his position to direct foreign powers to patronize his own businesses. A president can't summon a violent mob to Washington to overturn an election. A president can't conspire with state legislatures and militias to disregard the results of their states' elections. A non-sitting president can't steal classified documents, and can't have ongoing secret communications with a foreign power. A president keeps special counsel at arm's reach. A president shouldn't use tax policy to explicitly punish states that don't vote for him.

Everything you wrote in your first paragraph sounds pretty boilerplate. You can't seriously say he has gone above and beyond Biden, Obama, or Bush. And if he's not unique, then your vendetta seems personal, which makes you seem hypocritical.

So your answer to multiple specific examples is "nah, the other guys probably do it too, trust me bro"? Yes, Trump went beyond all recent presidents, in pretty much every way.

Sabotaging the FBI's background check is absolutely without comparison. It was corrupt and inexcusable.

While yes, all presidents will tend to appoint justices they agree with, you cannot in good faith say that there is any comparison between Jackson and Sotomayor on the one hand, and Kavanaugh and Barrett on the other, in terms of qualifications to sit on the bench. And that's just at the Supreme Court level - the whole affair in Florida with Aileen Cannon is another level of obscene.

The "official acts" decision is completely without legal historical merit, and was made up out of whole cloth to allow Trump's appointees to protect him from any consequences from the judicial branch (remember that whole idea of three co-equal branches of government?). No other president has dared make so bold a claim, both because the idea that the Court should be subservient to the president is clearly at odds with how the American government has worked for almost its entire history, and because they didn't have personal crimes to cover up.

I do have a vendetta against Trump, but you have the cause and effect backwards. I don't think he's a bad president because I hate him, I hate him because I think he's a bad president who is dangerous to me personally, to the United States as an institution, and to the continuation of the human race. But perhaps even more than that, I hate him because he has enabled and legitimized pathetically transparent bad-faith arguments like this.

I think someone who really respected the institution wouldn't snatch a Justice appointment away from another President.

Your "for nothing in return" is actually for the capitalization of the US dollar as the world reserve currency. If you thought price inflation was bad after Trump's last spree of helicopter money, just wait until other countries' USD reserves are being dumped in earnest.

Dump in favor of what? Euros? Yuan? Gold? For better or worse there's still no practical alternative to the dollar as the world reserve currency, regardless of how the supply is inflated. The BRICS group keeps talking about creating a new currency for international trade but they can't agree on anything specific.

The EU seems like a more stable thing than the US these days. Japan has always been a stable thing. The west can’t really do India or China, but those would also make better options than the US right now. It’s not unprecedented for people to flee the USD.

You're missing the point. There's not enough Euro or Yen denominated assets to make that work.

https://www.nber.org/digest/apr20/why-euro-hasnt-become-inte...

That's just an accounting problem. Once the countries start dumping dollars and buying Euros, the ECB can just create new Euros out of thin air to prevent it from appreciation.

Your own link basically says: "dollar is more stable and scalable, so people use it".

Could always move to a basket of currencies, that’s been proposed before

All of the above with some real-time algorithmic settlement wizardry tying them together? Plenty of neoliberal looting to be had on the transition from countries holding high masses of assets to lighter weight just-in-time financial engineering, too.

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