Wall Street Blew It
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
wild that we wouldn't be here if folks had taken the talking points seriously, but because they could be brushed aside as bombast, they came to pass.
* He's just being bombastic
* It's just a negotiation tool
* Sure he's doing it but it's going to be a narrow policy
* Fine its broad but it's just temporary
* Yeah its broad and permanent but it won't be too harmful
* Actually it's a great idea and he's smart for doing it
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Almost word for word this week was like- Trump is a conman, you can't believe half of what he says. Trump doesn't deliver half of what he promises. He isn't very smart, just cares about his own image and ego. He is addicted to doing substanceless deals and creating crises he can do these nothing deals to resolve. So DOGE isn't real, he isn't gonna cut spending, he's gonna continue growing deficit, he won't drain the swamp or build a wall or repeal Obamacare.
And the closer is "And given all that there's no way Trump crashes the economy".
I just do not get this cult. It's an addiction to "owning the libs" at all costs.
It's not rational analysis or coherent reasoning. It's tribalism at its core.
The only sad thing during this whole ordeal is how ineffectual democratic politicians are... especially when they personally dealt with minority parties stopping them quite easily for the last 15 years. You'd think they'd learn some lessons but their failure to seize the moment is the only consistency they have.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regu...
don't know if they're cherry-picking
And from previous statements, Trump's idea of "anti-US tariff" seems to include the EU's VAT, which is sales tax that everyone including local supplies pays.
So while some of that might be cherry picking, the reasoning overall is obvious nonsense, which is worse.
I'm so tired of hearing that even when it's the Republican's fault, it's the Democrats to blame for not... What? Committing an assassination? They have zero power in the federal government. No house, no senate, no judicial, no executive. Nothing.
You are right tho, it is the fault of Republicans in Congress to let it come to this point.
All the more reason to expand the house in the future.
There.
Was.
No.
Vote.
Please, show me the bill they signed for these tariffs. Please, show me the bill for DOGE. The dissolving of the DoE. The mass firing of federal employees.
Democrats cannot do anything because Trump has dissolved the power of the legislative branch and Republicans are capitulating. He is acting unconstitutionally as a king who declared unilateral edicts. The only they can do is sue in the courts afterwards, but they would still need standing, which politicians lack.
They're also playing games where new time-limited tax cuts are counted as "costs" for their planned lifetime, but now, later, they're claiming renewing the same cuts costs nothing because they're already there. [0]
This is like a man with a mid-life crisis renting a fancy sports car saying "just one month is quite affordable", except next month he extends the lease, saying "this is fine, it's already in the budget so it doesn't cost us extra."
That matters because they're using this fake math to try to trigger special rules which let them pass budgets with fewer votes.
> The odd part is that Congress, at any time, can revoke these tariffs
Side note: Originally the law (IEEAP, 1977) [1] allowed Congress to revoke them with 50% of each house. But few years later the Supreme Court ruled that mechanism unconstitutional. This means it now requires a veto-proof supermajority of >66.6% in each house.
So yeah, with enough votes this could be done in a very short time-frame... but "enough" is such a big number that it requires most of the GOP to decide it doesn't want to destroy America after all.
[0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
The same business-industrial class captures them as the Republicans. Neither party is genuinely going to organize around class or material needs.
The real threat to America or Americans isn't a single man. It's the superstructure that enabled him.
In other words: "Wer hat uns verraten? The Democratic Party."
Medicare for all? A cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?
Neither is Bernie’s idiotic version of Medicare for all, in spite of it being a fun bumper sticker.
Y’all have gotta give up the TikTok bullshit and read some books.
Yeah, politics, where you kill your conscience for the chance of winning.
Again, this is social media political thinking. No nuance or even a vague hand wave at intellectual honesty.
I have a book for you that predates the "TikTok bullshit." It's called "The Fateful Triangle" by Noam Chomsky. He portrays internal Isreali thought and political currents in the early '80s, which are more or less unchanged 40+ years later. In particular, the dichotomy between the "doves" of the left who want an apartheid state with a pacified Palestinian population to live in townships whose purpose is to provide cheap labor, and the "hawks" who outright called for the Lebensraum policies that we're seeing today in the illegally occupied territories of the, as Menachem Begin called them, "beasts walking on two legs," remains unchanged.
As for Medicare for All, I don't know of anyone who has had a positive experience using the American for-profit, multi-payer healthcare system. What is the alternative bumper sticker for keeping the status quo? "I <3 Getting my claims denied" or maybe "I DON'T want to shoot the CEO"?
You’re aware, of course, that it isn’t a binary choice, right? That Medicare for All isn’t the sole and only other possibility, or that thinking it’s an idiotic idea does not, in fact, suggest that one thinks the status quo is perfect?
What, specifically, do you know about healthcare, Medicare reimbursements, or how doctors work in this country? What, specifically, do you know about how the current system functions? I’m curious what apparently extensive knowledge underpins these really strongly held opinions.
> Noam Chomsky
Who may have done a brilliant job of discussing Israeli political thought, and whose writing might’ve led you to understand what would happen if the US withdrew support and Israel was pushed into an existential conflict. Let someone know when you get to that part.
Biden? If that man was actually the one leading the country over the last 2+ years, I’ll eat your hat. All that is coming out now from multiple sources in the administration seem to indicate he hasn’t been capable of making many decisions for quite a while now.
I see posters on HN trot this out, but I'm yet to see any evidence of this. Can you point to a couple of reliable news sources reporting on this so I can read more for myself?
DNC fundraiser Lindi Li has been all over the podcasts and news (back in November a lot) talking about the challenges she saw.
I’m not sure what you consider “reliable news sources” but I have seen this topic and these authors, and Lindi Li on network, cable, and new media news sources across the spectrum.
Republicans are awful, but Democrats don't seem to want to do any better than "at least we're not them." It shouldn't be any surprise that Trump has (had?) real appeal over feckless national Democrats.
They respond to the perception of their material conditions, and the rise in inflation of the last few years has resulted in regime change all over the world.
Liberals are only just now beginning to realize this, but it remains to be seen if they'll learn at a scale that matters.
Anyway, the economy was rocking under Biden, we had the largest investments in manufacturing in decades (the advanced kind, not mud production), record low unemployment, stonks going up, etc.
Inflation is pretty much the only issue that mattered, which was a global phenomenon that America navigated better than anyone else, and there's almost nothing to say about it. Well, you can lie and say that you'll reduce prices on day one, despite having no mechanism to do so, which I suppose is the real takeaway: Dems should blatantly lie more.
These are very real ideas and concepts that average people internally and instinctively revile: they are no longer people but "human resources."
?
This is demagoguery.
Naturally and as we all know, Zuckerberg is actually the reptile. And more to the point, it really was and still is next to nobody but some right wingers who were complaining about NGOs in that fashion -- it's an optics hurdle that has to be overcome, especially as it's usually only focused in on a couple offenders but ignoring many more.
Generally, it'll take more effort and tact to explain yourself as a result, and if we're talking about where it came from, it really does appear like it's just appeared suddenly out of the rightwing-o-sphere to many.
Actual economical or other results have nothing to do with anything. It was not about that. Democrats thinking them being objectively better for economy might do something is what looses the elections.
Instead, voters were told they were better off than ever, and there was some astroturfed panic about "Project 2025."
Oh, please, if this isn't you just saying the quite part out loud.
They are enacting Project 2025. Significant portions are already done, for God's sake! Don't pretend like it's some Boogeyman made up thing!
I mean literally day one a slurry of orders practically taken straight from it were made, and it's clearly been the playbook they're operating off of.
It's not astroturfed, some of us spotted what's going on and tried to draw attention!
Except, you know, the people who came up with it. And then got put into power.
You know this, of course.
The margin is so close that one can name any of a dozen reasons why they blew it and be totally correct.
The Democrats blew it by no cravenly violating norms like refusing to seat a supreme court justice because it was too close to an election.
EXACTLY the thinking that won Trump the election. Reduce legitimate concerns to the deplorable desires of the unwashed masses.
We need another "Why Trump won?" postmortem, as it seems people haven't learned yet.
That doesn’t make it wrong though
Similarly, only a handful of democrats (and ex-democrats) are actually doing anything to make big public statements, to direct people as to what a useful usage of their energies could be.
Oh, and they could do things like not put David Hogg as a vice chair in a way that not only looks corrupt, but far more importantly has absolutely no strategic sense at all -- who asked for that guy?! He's looked like a complete idiot at virtually every debate he's been to, believes in virtually nothing except total gun control conveyed in a sanctimonious, tactless, trivially hateable manner that instantly alienates many americans who might be willing to listen to nearly anyone else in context of all that's going on... I could keep going, the point is this is a guy with absolutely no redeeming qualities except his well-off family with a father in the FBI, which just confirms narratives while not even providing an otherwise competent person.
Most importantly though, they don't know how to fix their behavior or optics as a conservative-lite party that only moves to the right now, that only "compromises" by giving ground for nothing in return.
If you're a socialist
If you're LGBTQ
If you're an environmentalist
If you're single-issue on healthcare
If you're bothered by the situation in Palestine
If you're a voting reformer
If you're any one of these things
Then you have NOTHING at this point, just a party where people who tried to speak for you and usually did so tactlessly and poorly, then started blaming you for the election saying "if only we were a little more conservative! Then we would have won the election!"
Sorry for the rather rambling post, but I think it should do a good job of expressing the core anger and dissatisfaction that's being felt, and why they're both not doing enough + look unpalatable to a huge chunk of their own voters now.
Now, interestingly, the GOP has shifted to being largely pro-tariff—except for a few staunch free-market conservatives like Rand Paul.
Strange world …
As in, I could buy tariffs as a strategic decision to help build own industry in some are ... but these are just not that. These were originally used in conjunction with annexation threats, then with lies and are deployed with no regards to own citizens.
Trump has a lot of leeway to declare emergency rulings and to have those enforced in the short term. Such powers come with a short leash that require appeals to be addressed in a short time frame.
That mechanism was upended twenty four days ago when US Republicians effectively "stopped time" ..
Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.
"Each day [..] shall not constitute a calendar day"
This does not appear (on my admittedly brief search) to be something routine in US resolutions.
There's some further commentary here:
The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced—as Democrats have recently done—it has to be taken up in a matter of days.
But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration.
Can someone explain like I'm a college freshman?
* Trump declared emergency Tariff powers.
* An appeal was made to stop this.
* The appeal has to be heard and voted on within X number of "Calendar days"
* "Calendar days" usually means "every day of the week, including weekends and holidays, as a 24-hour period from one midnight to the next."
* However this term has been "redefined in a context" such that it no longer means that ... (just with respect to the appeal against Trump's tariff powers)
with the result that the filed appeal will never be heard or voted on within the current session.
Programmers likely are familier with changing the meaning or type of things within a context .. it's a procedural version of that.
My faith in American "democracy" has faded significantly.
edit: fix the vote count.
I don't feel arrogant about this, I feel depressed and angry.
Same slowness with the reaction to Deepseek recently.
1. The tariffs have not yet been felt. This is all projection. Once people feel the tariffs things are going to get much worse.
2. China has already retaliated. EU will announce retaliatory tariffs next week. Trump is likely to take it as a challenge and double down.
Of course everyone will be doing so at the same time, competing for the same finite factor capacity.
For example - If your Nike right now for example, you might be winding down Vietnam production volume and trying to spin up more volume in existing country footprints, while also trying to find new factories there as well. And then those suppliers will be looking for new suppliers for shoestrings and metal eyelets and 100 other things. And those suppliers will be searching for new suppliers of cotton, polyester, steel, cardboard, etc.
There is zero chance this happens without cost AND disruption! So things can get worse before they get worse!
Where do you think they will be felt and by who?
My guess is among Trump supporters, especially among those solid blue collar middle class vocal MAGA ones, most of these tariffs will not be felt in any really meaningful way. The tariffs that might affect the middle class (basically east Asia) will be the first ones that end up negotiating them away before American consumers feel them…because it’s in those countries best interest and they know it.
The biggest danger to Trump from these tariffs are from the GOP politicians and conservative retirees and nearing retirement age who will not be happy with the stock market if it doesn’t stabilize soon. The price increases don’t hurt them, it’s the impact on their portfolios.
Plus, truly rich are getting lower taxes. Tariffs are partially meant to offset those looses.
Coffee will go up, but most food staples will not be all that volatile because Mexico got the out. Coffee is weird one though…because people will gladly pay 30% more for coffee on account of it being more an habit/addiction.
Mexico has old tariffs in place, they did not got an out. They do not have new tariffs put on them on top of previous tariffs. Even domestic foods can go up when fertilizers used to grow them are more expensive. Or when transportation is more expensive.
China did not just "eat the tariff". First, tariff is paid by domestic consumer, foreign company is not paying that. Second, China announced retaliatory tariffs.
What cheap domestically produced goods?
Is it the numbers he used to justify the tariffs? The article we're commenting on shows Trump has always seen that any trade deficit at all is unacceptable.
Even zero tariffs in Vietnam is not going to zero out the US's deficit with them, Vietnamese people can't afford to buy that many goods from the US , and the US can't manufacture that many clothes or shoes for their own market.
Even Australia, which has a trade surplus with the US, got tariffs. What negotiations will work for them?
Or will he take tiny, pointless wins just to sound strong like in the early negotiations with Canada/Mexico? Are the talking points just bluster?
Also reduced competition might lead to overall higher prices.
Likewise, the US imports fertiliser: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/fertilize...
Several critical minerals just aren't mined at all in the USA, they have to be imported. Anything that needs those to be produced, just got more expensive, regardless of where the factory is.
Your domestically produced cars were made from imported parts, sometimes with multiple border crossings.
Your domestically produced big tech runs on servers with many imported components.
For the rest of my life, if anyone ever again unironically says we need a businessman for president, I will laugh in their face.
Tariffs could go away on Monday… or inexplicably be doubled.
[1] "I’ve heard from a reliable source, that Trump smells of soiled diapers, Axe Body Spray and hotdog burps.": https://www.indy100.com/politics/trump/trump-smell-kinzinger...
Stocks are still historically expensive, and have much room to decline further.
Seeking peace of mind? Proceed to Bogleheads.org and read.
Maybe its for the best so people are finally rid of this madness.
Vietnam, for instance, supposedly is on the phone "negotiating". But what is Vietnam going to negotiate? It has negligible trade barriers or tariffs -- we all realize the reciprocal thing is a ridiculous lie -- and an income per capita of like $2,500. Vietnam cannot fix the fact that they're cheap labour that quite literally benefits the US lifestyle.
In other words, after this profoundly stupid, catastrophically economically ignorant debacle, they're trying to back out yet again.
It is simply staggering how much of an idiocracy the US has become. In any normal government this clown would have people stopping him from this insanity. Instead he has slobbering bootlickers like Howard Lutnick trying to rationalize every bit of insanity.
And things will not return back to normal. Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage have already been done to the US, and this time they aren't going to fixed by another backtrack.
I mean, people sign the death sentences of companies that have gradual decline of their stock prices over the course of some mere two months... and then it rebounds, and then you check the one-year graphs and are wondering why were you worried.
So I don't know. Is it really so bad? Honest question. I am a layman.
Any details on that re-organization of trading patterns?
I would say that during COVID it was much, MUCH more serious. And yet here we are, back in years long bull market.
With Trump… he's already talking about a third term, despite the constitution.
This is the thoughtless incineration of trust in a network of relationships, and that has to be earned back.
It's unclear how long that will take even if the GOP loses the next few presidential elections given how much US policy can change from one term to the next.
The world will be waiting to see if Trumpism ends with Trump or if it becomes something they have to account for possibly taking power every four years.
This has ramifications for any long-term investment into the US like factories and manufacturing. The risk has just shot up and will be much slower to come down.
[0] eg "the deficit" should really be named the surplus as it's money representing the collected proceeds from our world wide demurrage currency that other countries still keep buying into because using it is just that advantageous.
1. It can take years to make something and seconds to break it. These changes are so drastic and damaging that we may permanently set our economy back decades, especially when if other countries no longer trust us.
2. It puts a lot of faith in politicians to admit mistakes. The disastrous trade policies of the 1930s were never gotten rid of until after they led to WWII.
A normalization of dishonesty and an unsatisfactory status quo, with only one person offering anything that sounds like change.
He, being a guy quite literally facing prison time if he didn't win, promised untold riches for all Americans if he won. An era of prosperity. That everything would be nothing but greatness from a newly respected super power.
I mean...anyone with any reason knew it was outrageous nonsense, of the worst sort of political puffery. Basically a cliche of the worst political nonsense.
He and his supplicants started the "okay, maybe things will be bad for a while" weeks after his inauguration when it was blatantly obvious that it was all ridiculous lies. His supplicants are now talking about how Americans should feel empowered going without goods and luxuries.
That's the thing about liars. It's like with DOGE starting by getting the cult all excited about the imaginary $5000 cheque they would all get from all those easy savings, but after a few months, when it is blatantly obvious that the deficit has gone up (and thus far there have been exactly 0 cases of fraud found), there'll be a different tune. Same thing about his team of cybercriminal misfits who claim they're going to super rewrite everything -- anyone who has worked in this field long enough have had to endure incompetent clowns like that, and six months in we'll hear a list of "why the code they inherited was the worst code in the world, and..."
Who in their right mind would care this much? Real estate investors: https://x.com/GrantCardone/status/1907993458687549892
People were worried about Trump launching a coupe on the government. In the meantime, this is a coupe over the US economy - this is a blatant attempt to hand economic power from business investors to land investors. From industry to land wealth.
Trump is a capitalist trojan horse. He says it himself that he does not believe in competition. That the best/first brand should win and the others should lose. The most famous person should get the job over some nerd. He inherently does not believe in markets as a source of wealth.
Why would a large commercial real estate investor who's been losing money hand over fist since COVID want to massively lower interest rates and through stocks tanking gain incredible leverage versus companies that rent his properties? It is purely his own personal advantage.
As per usual.
I've had years to deal with this guy's antics and I'm still agog at how well he's created a literal cult. The only thing respectable about him is his acumen for playing the media and the peanut gallery.
Now we can't build anything, and the other side is still holding out hope that eventually we'll be able to fix by just taxing more - despite the fact that Congress won't even vote to prevent themselves from insider trading...which means the middle class will continue to bear the downward pressure.
> Now we can't build anything
Yeah, this isn't due to the debt. Most infrastructure projects in the US are disasters (usually due to layers of outsourcing, tons of consultants, corruption, lack of competence) that cost multiple times their equivalents elsewhere in developed countries.
It's exactly like in healthcare - the US spends more to get less than similarly developed countries. The amounts available to spend aren't the issue here, the terrible use is.
As far as I understand, however, there's not much of a path between the current tariff measures and reducing the US debt. Especially not with the tax cuts or if war with China is still in the books.
Serious question - when did you start paying attention to NGOs?
While the world swings from one authoritarian brand to another it does feel like a lonely place here for those of us that just want less intervention in everything.
- High interest rates trying to combat inflation.
- AI, tech's latest, greatest thing is looking like a flop, at least from hype perspective.
- Tariffs.
So no, it's mostly the tariffs.