The Dumbest Trade War Fallout Begins
wsj.com
wsj.com
Haven’t heard the US anthem booed at all Canadian hockey games since the “freedom fries” days post-Iraq mobilization.
Will take a decade to recover the goodwill lost this week.
> U.S. Representative Peter King, a member of the Republican Party, deemed the suit's color combined with the subject matter of terrorism to be "unpresidential". He went on: "There's no way, I don't think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. I mean, you have the world watching.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
I found that one especially funny, because dijon mustard isn't more expensive than regular mustard! I buy dijon mustard all the time, and at least at my local grocery store the price is always within about 5% of regular yellow mustard, sometimes even less. It's not something that is out of reach of most Americans.
[Reporter] President Trump wore a tan suit.
[Trump] Let's retake the Panama Canal.
[Reporter] President Trump ordered a fancy mustard.
[Trump] We're going to invade Greenland.
He was also an awful president, in other ways.
If the goal of the Red Hats was to get more goods from Canada and Mexico, then yes, tariffs would be a dumb policy.
But the Red Hats aren't dumb. They've been planning this blitzkrieg for at least 18 months. They have thousands of intelligent people on their team and they're well organized.
It's too easy to just dismiss this as ignorance, hubris and ego.
If you recognize that they're not dumb, that they know exactly what they're doing, then they must be pursuing different and mostly hidden objectives for this to make sense.
Once the hidden objectives are revealed, we'll all recognize the horrible logic of their actions.
> Will take a decade to recover the goodwill lost this week.
Indeed. All according to the plan.
I'm sure it makes perfect sense from a business perspective. The Polish factory can do some additional cutting, packaging and transport cheaper than our own potato cutting means. You could say it makes no sense to do it ourselves, many believe this.
If you do this with many goods and services your politicians cant really have disagreeable opinions. If they pull any lever backwards or push it forwards the ecosystem starts to destabilize.
Trump enjoys negotiating, he has various tools at his disposal one of which is the most expensive military in the world. This is a very large lever to pull. He cant really extort people with it if declaring war instantly turns the domestic market to chaos. That said, it doesn't require pulling a big lever to trigger a trade war or to implode the us dollar. Donald wants to be able to press all the buttons and flick all the switches in his negotiations.
To see the goal of his negotiations you only have to look which branch of the international mafia he supports the most. If you see him grovel at someones feet you know who his true master is.
All I can see are the visible actions on the surface and try to infer from that what the underlying rationale and strategy are.
But if a new regime took control in another nation and did everything the Red Hats have done, you could infer that they had a coherent strategy that explains their actions.
When the stated rationale for an action like tariffs doesn't make sense (preventing fentanyl from Canada?), the reason it doesn't make sense is not that the action itself is "dumb", it's because the stated rationale for the action is bogus.
So they're doing tariffs for a reason and they're hiding the real reason. If you're on the inside and know the real story, you win. If you're on the outside and keep believing their stories and thinking they're just ignorant, you lose.
Then you see the largest physical movement of gold into the US in decades, and now you guess that insiders are already positioning themselves for what's coming.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/jpmorgan-...
If it takes a hoard of gold to protect yourself, then what's coming is not good.
The last one to figure out the real strategy will be left holding the bag of devalued dollars and repudiated Treasury paper.
Trump is not a genius posing as a dumbass, he’s just a dumbass. He wanted to nuke a hurricane ffs.
I agree with your take on Trump, its just that I don't believe he's the one running the show this time. Watching his EO signing bonanza it was pretty obvious he had no clue what like half of them were and was just rubber stamping other people's plans.
The more interesting aspect is which faction of the people that are handling Trump (the heritage foundation folks or the techbros) will end up on top because I don't think their interests are aligned beyond the short term.
Which is precisely the point. In a plutocracy, a monarch serves at the behest of the plutocrats. He is the CEO and they are the Board of Directors over the country.
Trump doesn't need to be smart, he just needs to have sway over the single-party Management, which he does. The "destroy shit and burn bridges" is the job of Management, who ensures the security of investments made by the Board.
What the comment above you is pointing out is that major banks are stockpiling gold likely because a major crash is around the corner.
Now, what they haven't said is that these current events are actually a part of the NRx (Neo-reactionary) manifesto proposed by Curtis Yarvin at BIL in 2012. Yarvin's playbook served as a major piece of the guiding philosophy behind Project 2025. People like Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, and yes Elon Musk, have all been taking notes from Yarvin's proposals for a hard-reset on the U.S. government. Even DOGE is an implementation of Yarvin's RAGE (Retire All Government Employees).
Likely, the plan is to sunset the FDIC (another New-Deal safeguard that slows corporate gains) and replace the ACH with with a new and private system backed by plutocratic investment. In order to do this, the plutocrats must take control of the Treasury's payment systems, and the FBI must be neutered to prevent investigation into this. These two things are happening now.
Next, the economy must be destabilized in order to set the precedent for either legislature or emergency powers that dissolve the FDIC and reroute ACH transfers through the new system (likely Musk's X). This destabilization is what the tariffs are for.
When all forms of cash-flow are under plutocratic control, it becomes very unlikely that domestic funds could be raised to oppose them, no matter how politically or socially motivated the masses may be. Elections can even continue if the people want, but the funds won't make it to the opposition, the news of that won't make it to the majority of the general populace, and there won't be an organization that is able to investigate why.
Trump doesn't need to know or understand any of this, however. All he needs to do is sign off on what the Board of Plutocrats tell him to. Whether they can actually pull off this switch-over is the real question.
The top 10% of the U.S. controls 60% of it's wealth, and 813 of it's 345,000,000 people are billionaires. You and I aren't rich enough to do anything but wait and see what happens. But hey, in a couple centuries, Rome will spit in two again, so there's that at least.
Zoom out.
If the goal is to stop cooperating with other nations to remove any restraint on oligarchs, imposing punitive tariffs on your closest allies makes perfect sense. So does trashing all multilateral institutions from the UN to NATO, the EU to the World Health Organization.
You know that other nations will fight back so just as in conventional warfare, you reserve an unconventional capability.
The nuclear option in trade war is to renege on your debts. Congress probably wouldn't go along with selective default on Treasury bonds, but if your engineers control the Treasury payment system, you have fine-grained control of who gets their interest and principal repaid and who doesn't. Declare an emergency and wage economic war.
Sure, interest rates will skyrocket and the dollar will devalue, but that's what you want, right? A lower dollar helps you win the trade war and you can blame the "terrorist" countries for it instead of taking any responsibility for breaking the financial system.
Disaster capitalism at its most exquisite.
Not on on the oligarchs attempting to rule, that much is obvious. It's that the oligarchs we have are extremely stupid. Elon Musk has exposed how little he knows about anything multiple times, and the same goes for the other billionaires attempting to wrest control.
They're attempting to follow a children's playbook as if it was an engineering manual for how to become kings. I think they will absolutely crash the economy, but I don't think the plutocrats will survive or be able to pick up the pieces.
As I've mentioned before, Romans already figured this out. Bread and circuses. But the plutocrats are not willing to maintain the flow of bread, nor are they willing to create circuses. They aren't even willing to follow the typical fascist playbook of empowering the military and bribing them off with additional benefits and loot.
This kind of situation can only lead down two roads if they keep attempting a smash and grab hostile takeover: Either a American-style French Revolution or a military coup.
The Plutocrats don't want or intend to "destroy" the economy; that would be foolish. They want to laterally move it out from under checks & balances and into systems under their more direct control, at a pace that the already compromised DoJ and FBI cannot keep up with.
The Military is an expensive operation and the Plutocrats actually are willing to maintain the flow of bread to the right places. When the cash-flow is under plutocratic control, their military budget can be used to ensure no disruptions to the new system. Enough service members will still get their paychecks as to not incur any wrath over the switch. Military High-Command might be in political trouble, sure, but where it counts is the vast numbers of Low-Command, who are a mix of those directly loyal to Trump or those duty-bound to the orders of the compromised and rapidly replaced High-Command. When both still get their paychecks, both will hesitate to interfere with that cash-flow.
Adherence to the Constitution was based on an honor system that we did away with in November by not showing up to vote to continue it. At the end of the day, what drives the function of the Military is money. "No bucks? No Buck Rodgers."
All of the American people, from rich to poor, have survived terrible economic crashes before, and this one probably won't be any worse to the top 10% than 1929 was. But consider this: If you made $1000/hour, working 24 hours/day, 7 days/week, 52 weeks/year for 100 years, you still wouldn't make enough money to even compete with the upper end of these guys. The average American is desperately trying to maintain a life that is so utterly insignificant to this wealth that bribery isn't even necessary; a return to the currently declining status quo continues to suffice. The allowance of entry into the middle and upper classes are their own benefits and loot. It's a suffocation strategy. And social media is the circus.
Ultimately, the way this coup works is that Americans will not be bothering to risk their livelihoods to rise up for a French Revolution. The Plutocrats are counting on the same incompetence in us to assure their success as we are in them to assure their failure. But they have all the wealth, and now the power. Do gamblers ever actually defeat the casino?
For all our sake, I hope you're right and I'm wrong, but it doesn't look like it this time around. No empire lasts, though, so there is indeed hope after our lifetimes.
They're already working towards cutting military benefits, so this doesn't hold up. It's more than just keeping the paychecks moving but also keeping or improving quality of life. The moment they gut military healthcare and tell them to find private health instead it's not gonna look good for loyalty if Trump orders them to shut down protests.
As for the flow of bread, they're not willing to make short term sacrifices to solidify control. The fascist play would've been to use the power of the government to artificially lower food prices and create single payer healthcare to placate the masses until the takeover is total and complete. But tariffs will continue to raise food prices, eggs will spiral out of control and people will blame the person in charge.
> All of the American people, from rich to poor, have survived terrible economic crashes before, and this one probably won't be any worse to the top 10% than 1929 was.
This is true, but a key point is that the far right has fostered an immense level of anger and hatred. An economic crash would be met with unprecedented violence from people that suddenly can no longer afford basic healthcare or food. One of the key indicators of this issue is that the multiple attempts on Trump's life didn't come from anyone on the left, but from the right. The assassination of the healthcare CEO wasn't a communist plot, but rather from a person that followed along with the conservative mindset until the medical system radicalized him. An actual Great Depression event triggered by the looting of the federal government would send these individuals into overdrive.
The Plutocrats aren't running a hearts-and-minds campaign here; they neither need nor want to placate the masses. The masses hold far less power than businesses and corporations do. This is about subjugating the only citizens who matter: those businesses and corporations that might be able to sway the masses through pay. Egg prices soaring are not a concern for those who are too rich to notice or bite the bullet. It exclusively matters to you, me, and others at or beneath our level, who cannot effect change.
A return to 1880s or 1930s levels of crime is not a fear of the Plutocrats, but an expectation. It is part of those short-term "sacrifices", the memetics of disorganized in-fighting they anticipate to solidify their control. The 20th Century was just a Golden-Era short reprieve from this status-quo. Now, some will blame the person in charge, and a few of those will even march, and it will effect as much change as it has in the last decade. Others will blame the scapegoats, and a few of those will even march, and it will effect as much terror as it has in the last decade.
The amount of anger and hatred that any dissenting masses can foster against the Right is still not enough to even match the sway of the wealth of the Plutocrats who use the Right as a tool to secure their wealth and mobility. Those assassins were not Leftist, no, but they didn't lead to any sustained or organized movements. Neither did they inspire more people to turn up and vote against the man they attempted to relieve society of, nor were they considered a part of the Right by its plebeian loyalists. Both of these outcomes are the goals of the Plutocrats who use their police and information networks to rapidly suppress such disorganized violence and set an example.
When you and I can't afford eggs anymore, we will just stop buying eggs, while still showing up to our jobs. I hope this pisses someone off enough to spark a domino-effect, but Nazi Germany didn't fall from within, and the U.S. Plutoracy is not likely to during our lifetime either. But hey, after the Trade Wars, if we indeed still have our jobs, things might reach a normalcy similar to life in the PRC, so after the dark period there's at least that to look forward to.
What he wants changes by the minute, and multiple people have confirmed he only really repeats what the last person he spoke to said.
So it's really the agenda of the people around him, who are a mix of Project 2025'ers, Billionaire Oligarchs who want to solidify control, and foreign money, esp. Russian & Chinese money, who want to fracture NATO and the global order.
Tank the US economy so stocks fall, the economy stumbles, and the BRICS have a chance at the world order. In exchange, the wealthy get to own the US.
Specifically, running a trade war for a couple months will tank stocks and make it easy for Capital to buy up everything. Now they own the gov'mnt and all the business. Same basic play as with Brexit -- tank the economy, burn international bridges, exactly follow the Russian playbook, and in exchange we'll let a handful of you rule like Tsars.
He's too old to have early onset dementia.
I have lots of pretty negative things to say about said followers but I don't want to get hellbanned by dang.
What the US really wants imo is for Canada to tariff Mexico so we can remove the Canada tariff without undermining the Mexican one. Pretty much guarantee we'll see Trump pushing Canada to do that in the upcoming negotiations.
Mind you, I don't know if Trump has thought that far. But "own Canada, but good bye ruling majority"? I'm not sure he really wants that.
Obviously I don't have access to Donald Trump's brain, so I am only able to judge things from how they are. How they are, at least right now, seems to indicate a completely economically illiterate person.
It's especially frustrating that these people are always looking for secret "codes" being spelled out by politicians, instead of actually listening to anything they actually say. I saw a meme recently that said Trump was wearing a purple tie to signify unity between Republicans and Democrats, despite the fact that Trump spent the entire talk complaining about Democrats.
It's infuriating, and it's worse than "stupid", it's outright dishonesty on their end.
often it doesn't even involve making stuff up -- just let the rubes spew dumb ideas via social media and run some mild repost bots.
the point is that there is so much dumb stuff any real, valuable speculation gets lost in the noise, and correct (if only semi-credible) discussion gets drowned out by other bits.
Good ol' "U R MR GAY" strikes again.
It's not exclusive to conservatives, I know plenty of left-leaning people who do dumb stuff like this too, but it does seem to have become the identity of the party after Trump took over.
> It's a power he has, I̶'̶d̶ [of] course he's going to exercise it,
Dang? Surely not!
I've read that a major bank advised there was a <20% chance of those tariffs actually happening. Polymarket was at 30% a couple days ago.
They assumed he was bluffing.
https://polymarket.com/event/will-trump-impose-large-tariffs... ("Will Trump impose large tariffs in his first 6 months?")
There is no need to speculate about Trump’s motives. He said that he wants to annex Canada. I see no reason not to take what he says at face value.
The last person I had a cogent discussion about this stuff with was interesting. This is years ago, before the first Trump presidency. Very strongly aligned to organized religion (Catholic) having come out of a wierd pentecostal movement and lost contact with family. Very much "destroy the joint" and so backing Trump, yet hated Vance with a vengeance as "not really from west virginia and a scumbag" -I wonder what he makes of things now? So many contradictory pressures! Nice guy. I like talking to people even when I don't agree.
I tend to flag stories which bore me (which may be bad behaviour) or which look to be seeking to monetize from low effort deliverable. It would have to be an utterly repellant top level line of reasoning for me to want to flag it. Something arguing for CSAM or Race theory. I avoid the trans debates like the plague, and CoC discussions tend to be there these days but I wouldn't flag one just because its about a CoC issue.
There is signal within HN-flagged articles, for an enterprising LLM.
Even articles that are tech in nature like the access to Treasury payments or the stories about the people working for him.
I’ve seen the HN mod go out of his way to unflag actual conspiracy theories and yet here we are where real significant news can’t be discussed because of the people involved.
I do think that a cohort of people who probably always felt more aligned to the ethos behind Musk/Theil/Bezos and who resented being "shamed out" might be more willing to show their point of view now. The quickest path for them would be a mixture of tart comment contradicting my view, and flagging top levels (or comments) to get out of the problem quickly. It's ironic perhaps, that the best path for a libertarian is to chill speech, but its quick and effective.
(yes, thats probably insulting somebody)
Regular politics can be discussed elsewhere, that makes sense.
But stories involving technology in the government should have a place here, even when the people involved are the likes of Elon Musk.
And stories involving tech leaders acting in our government should have a place for discussion here too. But of course what’s happening is deeply destructive and unpopular, so some people who support that agenda want to keep it quiet.
Frankly people will hate us forever after this.
They're just going to lie and say their life is actually better now, or they're going to lie and say prices have actually gone down somehow, or they're going to lie and say that this is all the Democrats' fault, or they're going to lie and say it's some kind of divine thing.
His followers just make shit up. I think trying to prescribe logic to it is akin to trying to "prove false"; the entire premise is malformed.
This comment is getting downvoted now, presumably by people who think it's totally obvious which event in Venezuela nico is talking about, but can't be bothered to enlighten me. I wonder if the different downvoters even agree with each other about which one it is.
But the US president don't have the same power Maduro had, and have competent bureaucracy (in this case, the Fed). Anyway the comparison does not really work anyway. We lack data points. I'll wait 6 months before making any judgments.
> The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates to guard against the deca-millennium bug (the “Y10K” problem) which will come into effect in about 8,000 years. As you may have noticed any reference we make to a year begins with a zero: 01977, 03012, 02000, 00521, 01215, etc.
> It’s an idiosyncrasy to which we are dedicated. It’s nerdy fun, but it has a serious point, too. As our co-founder Stewart Brand points out: the present moment used to be the unimaginable future.
I am pretty confident that I am not wrong, but if prices do somehow drop I’ll admit I was.
I don't really know if countries have a "credit score", but it does seem like it's greatly going to erode away at foreign nations' trust of the USA if we aren't going to honor our trade deals.
Strange, considering bringing the price of eggs down seemed to be a key message in their campaign? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BPT3xe6jbk
For an economically smarter tariff response from Canada, rather than 25% on US imports, we could have put in export tariffs to equalize everything at 25%, so e.g. 15% on energy and whatever theoretical amount on fertilizer to bring it up also to 25%.
You are assuming that MAGA are capable of self reflection and admitting mistakes. I doubt that vast majority of them are capable of critical thinking.
Obviously Biden's administration was so terrible, so damaging, that the catastrophic reverberations of it will be felt for years to come. Drastic actions will need to be taken, and sacrifices will need to be made. That sort of thing.
``` We are the best because of our culture/genes (genetics was Nazi, culture was italian/Spanish fascism), but a global cabal led by both external and internal ennemies (often communists or anarchists for the fascists, plus jews for the Nazis, hence "judeo-bolchevism") prevent us from reaching our full potential, which will only be reached if we get all the "Lebensraum" or "Spazio vitale" we deserve. ```
Weirdly it create this contradiction, of an enemy undeserving but temporally stronger. Another secondary feature i find interesting is how fascism target first "strong" conservatives before liberals (Shleicher was killed, Luther and Bruning quasi-ignored). Weak turncoats however are treated very well (Von Papen is the most obvious example).
This is a sacrifice Trump and Elon are willing to make.