Comment by bryant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryant | Hacker News Reader

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In your sources, "strategic" (or surgical[0]) tariffs are mentioned, which is perhaps the only accepted practice for applying tariffs compared to blanket tariffs.

As it happens, you've now twice doubled down on claiming both administrations would've imposed tariffs, and the manner in which you conveyed your point ("Tariffs? Inevitable regardless of the office holder. Prepared for by both sides, for a long time now. In a complex economy that few to no people in public discussions understand.") implies that both policies would've been equal when in fact it's quite clear even from your links that the two approaches would've been different - Biden/Harris' surgical application vs Trump's current blanket tariffs.

The repeated implication that the two policies would be equivocal is at best a failure to understand the debate and, at worst, in bad faith.

[0] https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/trumps-pr... - "This isn’t normally the way presidents act when it comes to tariffs. Additional tariffs are generally imposed very selectively, under trade remedy statutes crafted by Congress. They are actions taken pursuant to a finding that a particular product is involved in a specified unfair trade act, or it may be that the new tariff is a surgical retaliatory measure to open a market for a specified American product."

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Went ahead and chucked the thread into archive.is so it's not lost to the sands of time. I guess now I'll bow out in a manner that's not valid :)

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You tell me what I supposedly implied, and then set that up as a shifted-goalposts straw-man argument.

Which in my experience is consistently the sign of someone who can't take the "L".

It's common with people who "argue in bad faith". In contrast with your "twice doubled down" accusation of me doing so, we have actual hard evidence of you arguing in bad faith.

Your argument consistently relies on gaslighting me as to what my unstated beliefs are.

Tactics of a scoundrel, or perhaps just a person unskilled in having "good faith" debates.

I more than understand the debate. I'm even being polite surrounding your general and clear lack of information on how the global monetary system works and its current state of affairs. That is, your lack of context for tariffs. Because if you had it, you'd realize how dumb this conversation is.

You can't keep the discussion on-track without needing to shift it, in order to feign superiority before telling me that you again won't be back. A shameful demonstration!

The original argument was whether tariffs were going to be applied or not, in any administration.

I stated that they were unavoidable. I didn't make any statements in regard to exactly equivalent tariff policies across administrations. You created a prior non-existent argument, blew it up, and stomped off.

Comparative intended granular tariff policy isn't even even an interesting discussion in my opinion. I don't think that the realized strategy would be predictable for either administration, whatever they said in the past. Nuance of tariff policy is too granular to predict. In spite of any prior statements. I don't believe that such statements are evidence of firm commitment, just direction.

But I'm glad you now admit that the Harris administration would have applied tariffs.

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