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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely. The wall that Mexico was going to pay for was also a bad idea in so much as building the infrastructure to build the wall in more remote parts of the border would actually make crossing the border illegally easier, not harder.

But I think Trump is pretty reliable at least trying to deliver what he promises. And since presidents have basically full control to tariff, I don't see anything stopping from instituting world crippling tariffs on day one of his presidency. So get prepared for the price of computers to double at least. I would stock up before January.

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> So get prepared for the price of computers to double at least

That's really the least of my worries. The 60/20 tariffs are so broad, they're going to hit every industry hard. And people voted for Trump because they hated inflation! Unbelievable.

The uncertainty is crazy, on the one hand I can't imagine that they'll actually want to cause people that much pain, especially with midterms only 2 years away, on the other hand, are they really just going to run a normal boring republican administration?

Totally objectively, not in regards to any specific person's personality, or the things they've said, or "Political Party bad" I don't know how you make such big structural change that is going to cause that kind of pain in under 4 years without some kind of anti-democratic push.

Trump doesn't really have a chance in the midterms: his popularity is likely to be underwater a week or two after his inauguration. So I don't think he is going to sweat them, and he will try to cram in as much in 2 years before he basically becomes a lameduck. Ideally, he will focus his effort on settling scores, spending his hard and soft capital on dumb stuff, like a full congressional hearing on Hunter Biden or something else. He could also executive order a bunch of heavy tariffs early, which should put the whole political establishment in damage control for the 2 years that he can do anything. If he has really smart advisors that he actually listens too, he could potentially do a lot more, but I don't think that will come to pass.

> The uncertainty is crazy, on the one hand I can't imagine that they'll actually want to cause people that much pain, especially with midterms only 2 years away, on the other hand, are they really just going to run a normal boring republican administration?

Right now, the markets seem to largely think that he won't do this. Which, to me, honestly, is a bit weird; no-one ever went bust betting on Trump doing bloody stupid things that he said he'd do. I'd be somewhat surprised if he doesn't at least try.

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