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Comment by thfuran | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't pass muster. If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection.

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These "here's the actual reason they're doing this!" things rarely hold up under any amount of scrutiny.

Then again, they're tempting because the things they're doing are also really bad ways to accomplish Trump's stated goals.

The "actual reason" always seems to be virtuous in the end. Like "omg Trump had such good intentions!!! He just made a lil implementation booboo". It's always giving mountains of good faith to people who have lied for decades and lie today. Nothing about the clear market manipulation or greed of the party.

I don't even think the market manipulation argument stands. That gives them too much credit.

Trump's hand was forced and he had to retreat. Like the market kept having little bursts before this, based simply on the core reality that this is a trade war that the US cannot stomach without extraordinary financial damage, so everyone just kept waiting for the out. It is far more exposed and doesn't have the "cards", as Trump says, that they think they have.

The guy really, really wants his tariffs, so who knows where we even are now. He will not, under any circumstance, back down. We saw that with Canada -- various pauses, then steel and aluminum tariffs, then car tariffs, then a 25% across the board tariff for non USMCA compliant goods. First he even targeted USMCA. Based upon a lie. He desperately wants these tariffs, and as the very special person he is, he has learned absolutely nothing from today and will be back at the trough when he thinks he gets another go.

The most amazing thing are the Trump faithful who hold this as a win. This is quite possibly the most disastrous outcome of all -- the uncertainty. It is going to be economic calamity for the US.

But maybe Trump can announce that Uganda has removed a tariff or something.

Humans struggle to find meaning where there is none to find.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Agreed - that's a huge indicator that they don't care about fixing the deficit. But they also don't want to be seen making it vastly worse.

I don't think the GP argued they want to balance the books.

In fact, if they wanted to balance the books, they wouldn't care about the interest rate. The only reason to bet your economy into reducing the interest is if you want to go deeply negative on the books.

> If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection

That can be explained by the fact that the cabal also doesn't like paying taxes.

And that they’d use tariffs as a regressive tax to replace income tax increases.

2 step challenge to die downvoters:

1. Find instances where Trump or the billionaires backing him and/or in his cabinet are open to increasing tax as a solution to the deficit

2. Explain why the the administration and it's members are deadset against an effective IRS & Biden's effort to increase staffing at the IRS.

> That doesn't pass muster. If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection.

It's not about balancing the books. It's about not making a problem far worse.

You remember the global financial crisis of 2008? The reason most of the bailed out countries requested bailouts was their bonds spiraling out of control when they had to refinance their debt. That was the primary reason they reached out to the likes of IMF and had to undergo austerity programs.

The Trump administration put the US on that path with their global tarrifs and provoking their main trading partners, specially China.

While I agree on the direction I don't think the specific argument completely holds.

The countries in this situation in 2008 where European countries that forfeited their central banks. Having relatively recently switched to the Euro made this situation relatively novel and those governments not used to not have access to this last resort tool. There was also a lack of legislation at the European level to give the central bank authority to intervene. And culturally some countries where much more scared by their recent history by the inflation risk. Which led to push backs and delays in the face or urgency. It's now probably roughly sorted at the EU level.

The USA don't have and never had this issue. The position of the FED is very clear: it will never let the US govt default. So the only risk for US bond holders is inflation (and price if they want to exit early).

If they wanted to balance the books they'd print money and distribute it to US citizens.

They care about inflation too though. Trump is old enough to remember the high inflation 1970s well so he won't make that mistake. Kids today probably won't remember it other than an item from "ancient history" and might make the mistake, but Trump won't.

Does he? He really wants the Feds to lower interest rates on top of everything else. He might have gotten that wish if he did absolutely nothing with economic policy and rode off the "bidenomics" he chastised for years.

There's definitely not 100% logic involved in his plans.

Inflation is a tax but if there is selective redistribution it is a selective tax.

> They care about inflation too though.

Trump cares about inflation as a talking point to get elected and for no other reason.

Any assessment of Trump’s actions that implies that he personally has a cogent strategy immediately loses credibility in my eyes. If you want to say the people around him think or feel a certain way and are influencing him based on that, fine. But he’s clearly just doing things that hit some nexus of “people around me say this will work” and “I personally, on a vibes basis, think this will be fun.”

Or, "everyone is talking about this, so I want it, it's mine"

I think he does whatever he thinks will get the most views.

> Trump is old enough to remember the high inflation 1970s well so he won't make that mistake.

He's already done it; he pioneered the strategy of sending out covid lockdown checks.

The money supply figure from his first term makes me doubt this very much.

I mean he's old enough to remember Biden's inflation, following his trillion dollar spending bills

I mean these tarrifs will cause inflation. We already know that

I would argue there are better and worse kinds of inflation. Wrecklessly printing more money is a worse kind of inflation than a new semi-optional tax, or inflation due to wages rising

The treasury department didn't print money for no reason. Stabilizing the economy during Covid is a much better reason then a pointless and stupid trade war

If they cared about inflation they wouldn't have instituted massive inflation causing tarrifs. Economists are saying there is a chance 70s style stagflation might come back into fashion

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-09/fed-offic...

That's fair but I suggest that they are actually deficit hawks for the long term. In the short term, they've got financing troubles hence they care about the yield.

Didn't they just announce a 1 trillion budget for defense?

Yep, apparently that's in the works. They aren't going to reduce the deficit or debt. It soared during Donald's first term and will again.

Subtext: $1T executive slush fund.

Back to the days of the military acting like thugs, slightly worse than acting as the world police.

Gotta be honest, I think it's more likely that Trump just has a strange fixation on tariffs. I don't really think there was a whole lot of planning around them other than "I want them".

How he's deployed them and spoken/written about them makes me think he thinks it's a good way to strong arm countries and he wanted to strong arm everyone.

Well congress has until July to reign them in before they (and the people) lose even more money in their savings. They better be swift.

What's in July?

That's 90 days from now.

Could you elaborate on what will happen in July?

That's 90 days from today when the tariffs are supposed to take effect again.

There's no actual commitment here. He could reverse again tonight. He signaled ongoing dissatisfaction with countries that had retaliated, so may well take further action there during the 90 days, which 90 days are, again, meaningless in that they don't bind him at all, and even if they did, he's done a bunch of things he's "not allowed to" and so far has gotten away with tons of it.

You're right. But as we see with TikTok, he loves to talk big but keep kicking thr can down the road instead of backing off. There will inevitably be more spats in the meantime (especially with the EU), but I wouldn't be surprised if he extends it more when July looms (assuming that congress bill is still struggling to pass).

I think it's because it's one thing he can control all by himself. Look at all the attention he's receiving. The "will he/won't he" reality TV. Put a tweet saying X%. No, they won't be cancelled. Yes I'm suspending them for 90 days. And so on.

He has a long record of advocating for tariffs. He thinks they're a good idea.

Except he can't. They're abusing a legal loophole that probably can be easily defeated in court if anyone interested can actually locate their balls to do it

All the way up to the SCOTUS, at which point it'll be a 7-2 vote in Trump's favor.

I'm not saying he won't win the case but you're daft if you think it won't be 5-4 on the grounds that congress actually has to pass something to signal their intent to the courts.

The question here is not whether congress has to pass something, the question is can congress delegate this authority which is explicitly set by the constitution.

There were a bunch of sentences regarding non delegation of powers of congress, mainly for federal agencies, and courts deciding that congress can't delegate those faculties, so, by the book, this would be a similar situation. There is actually an ongoing case for this aspect of the discussion:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/07/trump-tariff...

The are a few republican judges that dont seem too keen on having their names attached to the demise of American empire

maybe 2 which is not enough

I believe that particular ship has sailed.

Even fewer that won't fall in line if threatened to be doxxed to the MAGA mob via Xitter.

How many of them are on the SCOTUS?

I don't believe he can get a 7/2 ruling in SCOTUS. But I do believe he can get Republicans in the current Congress to jump for him, and to try to ensure their majority by disenfranchising people before the midterms.

reasonably he can, even if its illegal. unless he gets inpeached and removed, theres no mechanism to stop him.

even then, congress can vote but who would actually remove him from power?

> I think it's more likely that Trump just has a strange fixation on tariffs

It's the only "powerful" thing he can use that doesn't require him going back to congress.

That's obvious. You can find news clips from the late 80's/early 90's where he is mouthing off about tariffs. That rut is eroded deep in his brain...

He definitely does, and has since at least the '80s.

That and his self-image as The Best Negotiator (while his actual "negotiating tactics" are really just mob-boss intimidation and bullying) are a huge part of what's going on here.

Trump has had a bizarre fixation on trade deficits since the eighties. Back then he blamed Japan. Now it's China. It's his one and only ideological commitment.

Deficit hawks would not lower taxes for richest segment, which were sure money in exchange of maybe money. Nor would they slash IDS

No, they are nor deficit hawks. They don't care about deficit, except when trying to blame it on someone else.

There are very few politicians that are actually deficit hawks. The majority that claims that position are actually entitlement hawks. That is, they use fear of the deficit to talk about the need to reign in social security, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, and any other form of government assistance regardless the size or impact on the government budget.

Meanwhile the DoD, CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, DHS, and ICE have never had a politician seriously consider reducing their funding.

What if (and I realize this is an extremely pessimistic take) their plan is to just default on the debt and rely on military blackmail? Sure, there's a Constitutional prohibition on questioning the validity of USA debt, but the administration shrugs at the Constitution on a weekly basis. The endless whining about how 'unfairly' other nations are treating the US, 'ripping us off', 'laughing at us' etc is a precursor for aggressive action, and I think it's quite likely that at some point they'll come out and say 'we don't have to pay debts to countries that have been scamming us the whole time.' About one quarter of the population will support MAGA no matter what, and if things get bad enough the administration can just announce they've been 'forced' to take over Greenland and Canada.

A flashing negative warning sign of this would be issue of new kinds of Treasury securities with new complex rules.

That sounds like it would completely destroy the US economy and government budgets (at which point the only thing left to do is to establish a war economy under authoritarian rule and continue war? I don't even know, it sounds completely bananas...)

Everyone’s a deficit hawk in the long term. It’s easy to talk tough on reducing dept at some non-specific time in the distant future probably after you leave office.

If your rate is 0% fixed (just a hypothetical), you can roll-over your bonds indefinitely for free. This means, in practical terms, your debt is 0.

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