Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule
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As someone who works in the industry, "where" something comes from is an inherently fuzzy concept. Different parts of the government use radically different definitions. For example, under NAFTA "domestic" parts are usually things manufactured anywhere in North America. This was done to onshore automotive manufacturing that wasn't realistically going to come back to the US, but political leaders didn't want to stay in Asia. One result of these tariffs may actually be that more auto manufacturing moves to Asia as the advantage of North American manufacturing is lost.
[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/MY2025-A...
Most manufacturers will eat the cost and raise prices to a certain extent. Base models of any product tend to be manufactured in such as way that they have much looser margins.
And that was under the Biden admin, which was much less pushy. The Trump admin is much more vindictive, especially with a policy that appears to be backed personally by DJT.
Here are some interesting legal articles discussing this very thing in the Trump admin
https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2025/02/us-administration-t...
https://natlawreview.com/article/what-every-multinational-co...
Won't be surprised if Stamos quietly "resigns" in a couple months as well.
I was involved in similar efforts to remove Chinese parts from the supply chain during the previous Trump administration. It was a nightmare that involved dozens of people reviewing tens of thousands of parts across hundreds of components with multiple revisions. I was involved for two years and that wasn't even the entire thing. Most changes required multiple layers of analysis/engineering review, change proposals (which often had to pass change review boards), vendor negotiations, manufacturer negotiations, reams of documentation about changes to refit procedures for previously produced HW, testing, validation, etc.
Removing Mexico and Canada from supply chains would be even worse. Probably nigh-impossible for some OEMs.
Impossible meaning the parts aren't yet manufactured in the US, or that they can't be for some reason?
I had seen stats putting China's control of certain rare earth minerals as high as 80% and products like lithium batteries as high as 97%. I don't know the industry well enough to validate that, but I couldn't find anything refuting or disproving those numbers either. If true, we very well may not be able to make them here if China were to cut off those resources long term.
Sure you can massively overpay them, exacerbating the effect of massively rising prices for US domestic product.
Are you hinting at the second scenario? Then we’ll get to see what US democracy is about, or if those people hoarding guns to fight an undemocratic or abusive government were just overcompensating, as it looks like today.
It’s only democratic areas who don’t want voter id.
Other manufacturers can do all sorts of things to try to be compliant, but ultimately the only way to be in compliance is to bend the knee.
They’re welcome to sue, but that could take years and millions to figure out.
Are you arguing that the fuzziness was built into the system previously to allow presidents to pick winners and losers in the auto industry? Do you know if there are clear examples of past presidents actually using that power?
I agree that holding people accountable today is important if and when laws are broken. But surely you can't just stop there. We don't need to codify legal rules perfectly, but acknowledging that we can't should lead to much more hesitation with the powers we allow and the sheer size of our legal codes.
Dealing with an immediate problem first makes sense. We would need to follow that up with overhauling our laws to better ensure this can't happen again. We're never going to do that though, solving the root cause is slow, tedious, and politically untenable.
What has changed here is that loyalty to the head of state is the primary determinant for all of the gray areas — and that guy can be as arbitrary and capricious as he wants. Context always matters; context is the difference between prerogative and corruption.
That's incredibly naive. Bureaucracies have agendas either intentionally (political appointments) or organically.
The corruption may be more brazen and direct under Trump but the incentives have always been there
Unfortunately, we are waaaaay past that point.
The fuziness mentioned comes from when outside firms try and estimate the % domestic content. Unlike CBP they’re largely making estimated guesses, but luckily that’s not how the tariffs are calculated.
It's by value. And it's not just domestic only but USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada). And the tariffs are seemingly prorated by percent 'domestic' (their example math is nonsensical, but I think that was just a math fail on the writer's part) with numerous relief and rebate options available to help ease in the transition period for various auto manufacturers.
GM, Ford, and other companies have chimed in positively.
[1] - https://www.carscoops.com/2025/04/trump-eases-auto-tariffs-l...
Given how Amazon tried to start showing the cost of the tariffs on their site, Trump publicly threatened them, and they backed down with hours, I’m not so sure I read too much into anyone praising the policies of this government as it’s clear that companies are erring on the side of staying on this governments good graces publicly regardless of personal opinions.
The facts:
- There was a report that Amazon was going to begin showing prices
- Amazon clarified that was for their low-cost Amazon Haul site, not their main one
- The White House griped about them at a press briefing
- There were reports Trump called Bezos
> “The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle said in a statement. “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”
> Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon that Bezos “was very nice, he was terrific” during the call and “he solved the problem very quickly.” He added that Bezos is “a good guy.”
If this had already started being leaked to the press I doubt that it “wasn’t going to happen” and was likely past exec review at that point. Then Trump calls Bezos and Bezos overrules the team and PR damage control as if this was some rogue action. Of course it’s pure speculation but it fits the timeline of events we know about better and we know this administration is a completely unreliable narrator as evidenced time and time again (from Trump continuing to lie claiming a photoshopped photo with ms13 overlayed was actually his tattoos to claiming he’s spoken to the Chinese leader with China disputing that any conversations have been had)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-displaying-...
This is what I was taking issue with.
And also, please don't do the currently en vogue thing of mentioning something unrelated to buttress an argument against Trump.
There's plenty of on-topic fuckups from this administration that you don't need to do the Fox News-style "and what about..." emotion bait.
1. White House uses machinery of state to force the hand of private enterprise to hide impact of tariffs on prices.
2. Private enterprise acquiesces.
to "The whole thing is murky at best"?
It's pretty clear fascism to me. From wikipedia (while they are allowed to exist): "centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition".
A phone call is a bit of a coward way to describe the press secretary moaning about a hostile and political involvement of a (somehow) foreign government intervention to international journalists.
It creates a reasonable argument that Amazon will do basically anything to get some of that sweet Chinese $$$, which makes their unprecedented foray into politics (at a consumer facing level), in a way that would be completely beneficial to China, look particularly bad. This still has nothing to do with using "the machinery of the state to force private enterprise" or anything like that.
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/amazon-partnered-with-ch...
The claim was that Amazon wanted to display the added tax due to the tariff separately, which is what the white house histrionics were in response to. There is no indication that only Chinese imports would have been labelled. China is not the only country that Trumpet added tariffs on.
He relies on MAGAs not knowing what a tariff is. He wants to blame price rises on Biden - if it becomes too obvious that the buyer pays the tariffs, he would lose a lot more support.
We all have speculation about what might have happened behind the scenes -- but it's just that, speculation.
Disliking Trump isn't license to spin supposition as factual reality.
Hyperbolic phrasing for effect errodes respect for reality, regardless of which side it comes from.
(I realize there's a 50/50 chance I'm going to get a whataboutism spiel in response to this, focusing on your fascism phrasing, and how you believe it is supported. I'd encourage you to take a beat and instead consider places you were reaching past what facts supported in your original phrasing.)
Evaluating situations in a vacuum and sticking just to confirmed facts isn’t a hallmark of being considered and knowledgeable. One must also consider patterns of behavior and Trump pressuring Amazon to change a policy of both consistent with all of this. Facts in order of events:
* fact: News report that Amazon is going to show tariff impact on their Haul product
* fact: press secretary blasts Amazon in the news indicating she’s repeating a conversation she just had with Trump
* fact: Trump had a phone call with Bezos
* fact: Amazon puts out a clarifying statement they won’t be doing it.
* contradicting fact: Amazon claims they were never actually going to do it
* pattern: quid pro quo is how Trump operates. see the Ukraine call that got him an impeachment in the first term trying to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for weapons
* pattern: businesses and politicians being yes-men to Trump.
So facts + pattern = reasonable hypothesis of what happened. If you have contravening facts I’d love to hear them but you can’t just stick your fingers in your ear and pretend you have to have a confirmed fact before building a hypothesis of the likelihood of what happened.
It’s like trying to pretend Putin isn’t the one murdering dissident journalists or opposing politicians or trumping up fake charges.
Watching historical debates and speeches just makes me sad about the disparity with modern oratory.
So we get entertainers and silver tongued devils for politicians whose primary skillset tends to overlap heavily with that of conmen.
Speaking of figures with no mainstream appeal, Plato wrote extensively, and utterly prophetically, about this phase of democracy in The Republic, and how it will inevitably lead to tyranny. It's playing out as if from a script.
Basic stuff, like if you don't know what 5 - 1/4 equals or what cells are. If not, maybe you shouldn't have as loud a say in choosing political leadership?
This is the reason that politics has largely shifted from a game of knowledge and vision, to one of mud slinging, ad hominem, and appeals to emotion, fearmongering, and so forth. It's not because the electorate doesn't know enough, but because they have poor emotional control, making them easy to manipulate. It's exactly how conmen, operate with Wiki offering the typical pattern as exploiting "the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed." [1]
And I see no clear solution to this.
This administration is governing by executive action congruent with the pacing of news cycles. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, which makes it futile to make long term plans. No?
Tesla has been one of the best selling car across the world. I don’t think it’s just the parts alone.
Edit: incidentally, only mentioning SA as academics there developed the theory around it, to the best of my knowledge.
> The implicit justification for valuing Tesla now is not "we sell good cars", it is state capture.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43023325
Indeed I also heard it in context of South Africa. But Wikipedia also has other, earlier examples too.
Apple builds phones in China, but Teslas are built in Oakland. I just find it pretty cool.
Sure but all of the inputs and components to those parts come from other countries. I suppose it depends on how you define terms.
Current politics aside, I think: Canada and US have 'very much' in common (I'd risk saying (imho) 85% common 'stuff'). Canada, US and Mexico have 'plenty' in common (mostly Christian, capitalism/consumerism, way of life) (I'd risk saying (imho) 70% common 'stuff'). Once Mexico sorts out this 'minor' (cough-damn!!!-cough) problem (mass graves, decapitated and/or missing students, murder of anyone that doesn't want uncontrolled drug trafficking, etc.) this idea could start becoming a reality.
The US civil war decided that states doesn't have those rights so it became a country instead of a union.
I won't say that NAFTA is dead, but supply and production lines were designed with the assumption the parts could cross the borders any number of times without paying duty. The WSJ looked at the Ford 10-speed transmission used in the F-150 and it apparently crosses the Canadian border at least 3 times, paying different duties each time depending on the content (machined aluminum casting, steel planetary gear sets, subassemblies, etc.)
My guess is that by imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the government is intending to block the Chinese firms who are attempting to back-door their way into the US economy by building factories in the traditional maquiladora areas. Bold move, let's see how it plays out.
* kogod American auto index: https://kogod.american.edu/autoindex/2024
Honestly, at this point I think Canada would be better off partnering with China. At least their tariff policies don't change from hour to hour. Canadian policy should be to rescind the tariffs on China made EVs going forward.
NAFTA was already killed off by 45. USMCA is being actively destroyed by 47. Canadians simply cannot trust the USA to be a reliable partner in anything now with present leadship.
The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)
Companies with 84% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 1% of the MSRP, companies with 70% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 15% of the MSRP, etc.
This is a common sense way to incentivize companies to make parts here without requiring perfection.
Here is the proclamation:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/amen...
> The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)
Um... unless I'm missing something, agree it's not a if/then rule, but in practice, that's exactly how the formula works?
84% domestic = 16% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (16-15) = 25% tariff on 1% of MSRP
85% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (15-15) = 25% tariff on 0% of MSRP - which is nothing
86% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (14-15) = 25% tariff on -1% of MSRP - but let's assume the Gov't isn't going to pay companies so effectively 0% again
So yes, it's a tariff that effectively activates below 85% domestic content.
Any vehicle at 85% is exempt
Any vehicle at 84.999% or less pays a tarrif
That tarrif may be 1 cent or $100,000, the headline doesn't say anything about that.
Given the need for transparency though it would be best if every item bought in america highlights the exact cost of the tarrif, same as it highlights sales tax. Indeed America is fairly unique in advertising pre tax prices (buy a can of coke for $1, it comes to $1.07 at the store), it would make sense if prices were also advertised pre tarrif too, in terms of transparency. I wonder how the administration could encourage that.
Exactly. Neither does the story.
That was the point of the top comment. The story doesn't explain that the tariff may be 1 cent and completely trivial. It should have.
It's similar to giving special status to Apple by not penalizing their China-based manufacturing, then hoping that OTHER not-too-big-to-fail companies will be able to do what Apple couldn't (manufacture at a competitively cheap price onshore) while additionally facing this unfair competition.
It seems it'd be more effective to have incremental (based on % domestic manufacture & labor) rewards/penalties for those making changes rather than carve-outs for those too-big-to-fail and making competition even harder for those you are trying to incentivize.
Also, never mind manufacturing - how about addressing IT offhsoring, which is something far easier for US companies to change if incentivized/penalized appropriately. Is it really domestic clothing sweatshops that we want to encourage, not domestic high-tech industry with well paying jobs, paying high taxes, and helping retain onshore talent in an area of importance to national security?
It doesn’t. Trump is clearly trying to negotiate these tariffs away. So they don’t incentivise moving production. Just taxing everyone but Musk.
Oops! Scratch that, now that China won't back down on their retaliatory tariffs, they were always a tool to make China "fall back in line" or something. Yeah, destroying our own economy ought to teach them a lesson.
This shit is so transparent, I'm amazed as to how 30% of the country can still endorse this clown and his circus. My mental image of the average republican voter is now that of a toddler trying to fit a square into a circle hole while drooling on themselves.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, good sir, Trump has personally made 200 deals [0] that are totally real, they just go another school.
[0] https://time.com/7280114/donald-trump-2025-interview-transcr...
Essentially the deal splits covered natural resource profits between the US and Ukraine, and says that Ukraine will have to pay for future military "aid" out of their share of the proceeds.
Of course Ukraine can renege on the deal in the future if they feel they no longer need the US support that it brings them.
What Ukraine gains here is:
- Continued military support from the US that they are now paying for
- The US having skin in the game
- Language in the agreement that labels Russia as the aggressor (well, duh, but it'll piss off Putin)
What the US really gains is:
- Ability of Trump to say he made a deal, even if it appears to be one that may prolong the war rather than end it (he's hoping MAGA voters will forget he promised to end it)
- Some ongoing repayment for past and future military aid, which is entirely reasonable
- Tesla model 3 - 70-75% US/Canada content
- Tesla model Y - 70% US/Canada content
- Tesla Cybertruck - 65% US/Canada content
- Tesla model S - 65% US/Canada content
Perhaps it is calculated differently since no one hits 85%.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/MY2025-A...
Biden was pressured by unions to snub Tesla at the EV summit. This personally offended Elon, who then went to support Trump with all sorts of tactics including buying Twitter to amplify his voice.
Though, also, neither decision impacts limitations on donations to candidates, both address limitations on expenditures (in Buckley’s case by non-candidate persons independent of campaigns, by candidates from personal funds, and by candidates in aggregate; CU mostly deals with the first of those where the legal person is a corporation and not a natural person.)
Yeah, how dare they do the things that make reactionaries be... reactionary.
And it was inevitable that the more mainstream automakers would sell more evs then Tesla as EVs became a larger and larger share of cars sold. Granted it's taking longer than expected but Tesla is no longer the majority even if it's overall has a large plurality but falling pretty fast
They see themselves as the smartest, strongest, most clever people in history. They don't need some group moderating their plans, much less one made of people they hired. Any suggestion to the contrary is a strike against the natural order that they perceive reality through.
Further he really isn't a conservative. He's still running around on X talking about how we need to double the number of H1-B's and other social-left causes. Cutting spending through DOGE is something every Republican has talked about for decades, and I don't think it's a major flip for him to want to do that.
It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots of tech bros are into it.
That is the story the auto companies like to tell, to make unions look damaging to workers and communities. From what I've read, the migration had a lot to do with race. But regardless, do either of us have any evidence to share? (not me right now)
Similar things happened in most major industries. The other one I'm familiar with is GE Locomotive, who moved their engine facility to Grove City (which still never unionized), and now has a major facility in Fort Worth as well.
That's not what I mean. What I understand was that, in many cities (not just Detroit), racism led to the factories leaving.
One is that the auto manufacturers wouldn't hire black people into serious jobs - for a long time, all they could be was janitors, etc. I read one account that they went to local black leaders for recommendations and one person had a graduate degree - CPA or MBA, iirc. They got a dead-end clerical job or something like that.
Union workers were often actively hostile, even when union leadership welcomed them. Multiple times they walked out when one black person was hired.
Also, local racism crushed the black community, which would be the workforce. Redlining effectively prevented black people from living outside certain neighborhoods and prevented them from getting loans. They ended up packed into these neighborhoods, subject to white slumlords who charged exhorbident rents. Schools were awful. With little education, no money, no access to credit, and even if you overcame all that, no opportunity for career. Don't forget police brutality, race riots against blacks everywhere, lynchings in the South, etc.
There is more I'm not remembering atm.
If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it.
I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly
I'm sure the targeted aspect of that one is applauded by the same side that is unhappy about this tariff.
At least in the tariff case, it's an objective numerical target and probably even achievable by other manufacturers. Ford is only 5% away from the target for some of its models.
I am not even sure how impactful it is, that Washington state does something different. Like ... Are things built or sold there by a large amount? What makes Washington state special? And what are their intentions? And can their lower level rules actually override what is decided at the country level by Trump's gang?
It is bad enough, that people have to deal with hearing about all the crazy stuff the orange clown or his henchmen do on a daily basis. There is a limit to how much people want to deal even more with political stuff from the US, you know?
Did his competitors do something similar in Washington?
To be making this claim, you must be an vehicle supply chain expert, so can you tell the rest of us which parts can be domestically sourced in the US and which can't?
Also, why is the Model S is stuck at 80%?
Ford will quickly get to 85%, but you can’t deny this is yet again a move that is touted as “pro-America” yet somehow mainly benefits Musk (or Trump or someone in their orbit).
If Tesla was writing these rules, surely they'd have chosen the 80% threshold instead.
I doubt they see the Ford Mustang as being in their same target market, and wouldn't be a reason to increase the standard.
The fact that Elon Musk is personally involved in the decision making and cabinet level discussions and personally benefits immensely- and exclusively- from this special carve out looks like rank corruption on the surface and at face value. Any other administration in history would be investigated until the cows come home if something comparable had ever happened. Even if it somehow eluded the rule makers that they exempted 95% of one companies sales to the exclusion of all other companies and that companies CEO had curried extensive favor with the administration and this was a mistake, the appearance of gross impropriety and conflicts of interest should cause a rapid reset and roll back. I suspect, however, it will not be rolled back, and that they were entirely aware of what they were doing. This is what kleptocracy looks like.
I think as people feel financially squeezed, they get less strict on how to get by. This leads to acceptance of "take the money and run." The loss of the middle class is the source of many woes.
Otherwise I don't see any other rule that would ask the foreign company to move most of it's workforce and production capacity.
Search for "laptop" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listin...
Same for all the smaller dedicated devices (audio recorders, camera, controllers etc.)
Those didn't go the barrel plug route in the first place to allow for charging through the same port, and would have been a loophole if barrel was mandated. USB-C was honestly the only option that made sense IMHO.
Most of those used either USB or a barrel plug depending on their size.
raspberry pi, e-readers
USB.
Same for all the smaller dedicated devices (audio recorders, camera, controllers etc.)
Many of those use smaller barrel plugs, appropriate for their lower voltage.
The main problem with USB-C is the tiny fragile connector (search for images of "bent USB-C"), and the fact that it's a standard that tries to be what should really be a bunch of separate standards. It's hard to get a barrel plug wrong. It's too easy to get USB-C wrong, and cause damaged devices:
Besides, apple are one of the decision makers in the usb c standard, the legislation mandated a standard, but not a specific one, just the same one for all, and this forum which includes apple decided to go with usb c https://www.usb.org/members
The DSA is the part that applies to all companies in some way as well (things like the need for moderation and a way for people to reach you with complaints). The DMA is about the market and how to deal with monopolies.
Everyone else can start rearranging their supply chains and building new factories to comply. Easy peasy right? Be up and running in a few weeks, at most, right?
Many companies like Honda are now moving part of domestic production to the US.
Come on. It’s blatant corruption in broad daylight. Don’t try and both sides it.
But to answer your question directly if Obama had declared a fake economic emergency to consolidate power to himself and used that emergency power to abruptly pass a series of sweeping tariffs with no clear strategy or messaging and then selectively rolled back some of those tariffs in a way that only benefitted a specific company. Yes. I would feel the same.
...or to create massive stock market front-running opportunities with plausible deniability.
"But, but, Hanlon's razor!". Sorry, but at this level of responsibility, incompetence equals malice.
We fscking all have to live with the consequences. That includes those of us who could not vote for an alternative.
Not only that, Trump is actively lying about negotiating them down [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-foreign-ministry-says-x...
There are two reasons to believe this is applicable here: 1. Trump has a track record of quid pro quos (Adelson being a salient example). Musk is definitely seeking his pound of flesh 2. Lutnick urged people to buy Tesla (shocking and explicit favoritism) The view that this is just incentivizing local production is naive.
The rules are written with full knowledge of the current market situation and the understanding that companies can't re-engineer their supply chains overnight.
The rule-writers had full knowledge about which companies would and would not immediately benefit from this rule. They wrote it accordingly.
This doesn't compare to the EU rulemaking discussion for that reason. If the EU rules were written so that only a single company was hit by the rule, people would be saying the same thing.
Remember when Oklahoma‘s requirements for a new school bible coincidently where only met by the Trump bible?
You can't argue in good faith about "well, that's the rule" when the rule was very obviously constructed that way to achieve this specific purpose.
Not that your point is entirely invalid, just that I think the context is probably different (though I'm not sure exactly what EU comments you're referring to).
Given such visible conflicts of interest, the administration should be bending over backwards to dispel perceptions of impropriety. The fact that they aren't, and that these coincidences keep occurring, should be telling.
This administration's policy decisions aren't particularly stable.
* Bogus emergency is up for review
* Congress discussing stripping power
* Constitutionality in question
* Public going to to bury them in the midterms if this keeps up
Yes, you can. Such a law cannot direct punishment or assign guilt to a particular individual or entity without a judicial trial, or it would violate the Bill of Attainder clause, but laws doing other things that apply to a specific named individual or entity are (unless they violate some other provision) Constitutional; in fact, in some cases they are necessary to satisfy other Constitutional rules.
https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-st...
Tesla is now above that price from March again. Orangehorseshoe loves Tesla!
Price changes absolutely change the buying market. What a weird thing to say. A lot of people will never buy a Tesla, a lot still will (they delivered 300k+ vehicles in Q1). The ones who still will buy will also consider the price.
Tesla has lost significant ground just because Merlin started playing politics. Target is suffering badly from their DEI decision.
Globally, Tesla is in even worse shape. No one in Europe will be buy one now. China makes their own EVs.
The stock is being propped up by institutional investors. Eventually even that will collapse.
Uhm, wait a moment.
The truely dangerous phase is reached, when the frantic cosplaying shows no effect and the conclusion slowly crawls towards "insanity is what you do with your life". Because then you have people with nowhere to go and the tools of the past, wishing for an end.
Integrity, honesty, and principles is literally what they mean by the word "woke" when they harass people for being it.
No it isn't, and saying things like this just adds noise. What they mean by the word "woke" is a worldview that delegitimises the things they aspire to or worked hard for (status based on power based on individual agency), and prioritises other forms of social currency (victimisation by external forces) in a way they find performative.
If you genuinely don't think that each side has principles, which in fact overlap considerably, you aren't very curious about the world.
ETA: In case you are genuinely interested in learning about how liberal and conservative people differ psychologically, Jonathan Haidt is a very good person to read.
Arbitrary corrupt incompetency is what they're looking for.
Caring about other, having respect, being sensitive, these are all 'woke' things from the "great awakening" cult.
I want more affordable college and the people in charge want to send people like me to concentration camps through kangaroo courts. This is the difference.
Wilhoit’s Law has never been truer.
I suspect this divergence comes from people who have internalized the 1960s civil rights movement view, and whose chief concern is the government protecting minorities from the majority. Meanwhile, the more traditional Anglo-american view is chiefly concerned with protecting the majority from the government.
From what I see and know, among conservative supporters violence against police is strongly condemned and to be harshly punished, as is any form of protest that is arguably the slightest bit disruptive.
> chiefly concerned with protecting the majority from the government.
In fact, by their actions, they make the government - police and prosecutors - free to abuse people in almost any way with no reprocussions. One of the latest Trump executive orders even tells the DoJ to go after any legal authority prosecuting police.
And by their actions, they are chiefly concerned with using the government to persecute and suppress anyone they disagree with.
> 60s ... traditional
It's a nice tactic to try to attribute those who disagree to a passing fancy, and your beliefs to 'tradition'.
The question is who the police are being deployed to protect, private citizens or the government itself. Ordinarily police are deployed to protect citizens from criminals, so it’s bad to attack the police. But the Capitol police are protecting government officials from citizens, so attacking them is less bad. That’s the view.
> 60s ... traditional It's a nice tactic to try to attribute those who disagree to a passing fancy, and your beliefs to 'tradition'.
The assertion that the civil rights era signaled a major shift in views about the relationship between individuals and the government is hardly controversial. There’s a book on this idea (probably more than one): https://lawliberty.org/did-the-civil-rights-constitution-dis....
Indeed, folks in the progressive left share more or less the same premise. If you talk to a progressive about foundational principles like federalism and limited government, the chief response is that those ideas were championed by our forebearers so that the government wouldn’t be powerful enough to protect minorities from the majority. The point of disagreement is about whether the new approach is better than the traditional one.
We live in different bubbles, it seems. I haven't heard that argument. I have heard that 'states rights' is intended to workaround various federal rules, including civil rights.
The foundation is that "all ... are creatd equal", which includes all members of minorities. The Bill of Rights is there to protect unpopular minorities from the majority. The majority can always protect itself by changing the law.
Edit:
> https://lawliberty.org/did-the-civil-rights-constitution-dis....
I skimmed through this. The source is anti-left; of course they are going to give characterizations like that. And look at this piece of doublespeak:
When I talk about civil rights, the reader should not get the impression that I’m friendly to segregation, or hostile to the civil rights movement as it existed for the whole of the 20th century up until 1964. In fact, I’m very much in sympathy with the claims to an agitation for equal citizenship that went on up till then, but there were problems in the Civil Rights Act that were not evident at first.
They won't say they are hostile to the Civil Rights Act and every solution to problems like segregation, oppression of minorities and women, etc. And they don't offer any other solution. They are "very much in sympathy with the claims to an agitation", however. :)
That’s the same argument from the other direction. The federal government, as designed, wasn’t powerful enough to protect minorities from the majority. Those rules entailed a major expansion of federal power. Indeed, you can see the seams in the civil rights laws. For example, Title VI’s ban on discrimination in public education is implemented through conditions on federal funding. Because the federal government can’t legislate such a ban directly.
> The foundation is that "all ... are creatd equal", which includes all members of minorities. The Bill of Rights is there to protect unpopular minorities from the majority.
That’s exactly the civil rights era retconning of the constitution I’m talking about. The statement that “all men are created equal” has nothing to do with minorities. Read the context right before and right after: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip.... The statement is about self determination: the right of a people to determine their own form of government. The equality being referred to is the equality between Britain and its monarch and the colonists.
The founders said almost nothing about protecting minorities from the majority, except perhaps in the context of religious freedom. Their concern was exactly the opposite: that a minority cabal in the government would oppress the majority.
The context before and after is quite well known; I don't have to read it. What they say is that 'all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, among those life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And to protect those rights, governments are instituted among men.' (from memory, probably a few errors).
All means all - minorities included. The equality is for "all men"; rights are for "all men". Nothing is said about Britain and its monarch, except in your dreams of rationalizing oppression. The language is plain and clear, part of the reason it is so well-known.
A document cannot simultaneously holds all minorities to be equal with a right to liberty and accommodate slavery as it existed in the 1700s. Some of the signers may personally have disagreed with slavery but it seems difficult to say that the document itself represented a repudiation of the practice.
That's a unique take fundamentally at odds with the very concept of the Senate.
But I think leftists would share the same premise! They would phrase it differently, they’d say something like: “the founders were white men who wanted to limit government power so the government wouldn’t be powerful enough to do things like end slavery or take their property.” But that’s the same argument. The traditional view is a small government of enumerated powers. The post-civil rights view is a powerful federal government that can protect minorities from democracy.
> They won't say they are hostile to the Civil Rights Act and every solution to problems like segregation, oppression of minorities and women, etc. And they don't offer any other solution.
That doesn’t logically follow. The analogous mistaken argument would be saying that those who insist on due process for deportations must support illegal immigration, because “they don’t offer any other solution.” Of course that argument is wrong. Those people simply aren’t willing to compromise on due process to address illegal immigration.
Similarly, you can be unwilling to compromise on federalism and limited government, even if it’s to address oppression of minorities. That doesn’t mean you support such oppression, simply that you prioritize other values more highly.
Yes it does, in fact. And while people can try to doublespeak and have everyone parsing it out, all that matters is where you end up.
James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States, wrote:
> "This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system ...[or else] oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished... Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."
As well as : > "In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful."
As well as:
> "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure."
This is why he distinguishes between the civil rights movement before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was only concerned with preventing government enforced segregation.
In life, in practice, there isn't meaningful difference. They still drown because you abandoned your responsibilities.
I must have missed the outpouring of Republican support for the black lives matter protests when they were attacked by police riots or when police stations were attacked. No private citizens being protected there, and the protesting was directly against government oppression (including of the 2nd amendment even!).
The point is that even in very clear cut situations where the police are in the wrong, and have trampled over the very 2nd amendment rights that Republicans claim to love so much, it's then still crickets from Republicans. So this alleged "violence against the government is treated as distinct" seems to be just more post-hoc rationalization nonsense.
The problem is that rayiner is continually trolling with gut-appealing half-truths, sidesteps the straightforward logical implications as long as he can by responding tangentially, and when he can't do that any longer he just bails on the conversation rather than confronting the contradiction.
I guess I'm just glad us actually-conservatives (meaning everyone from "RINOs" to "the left" that actually respects our societal institutions enough to not want to see our country on the scrap heap) have reached a critical mass to beat back this wall of disingenuous bad-faith bullshit.
I hope so.
Unless it's the Jan 6th protesters.
Or the so-called "trucker convoy" across the border up here in Canada. (Convinced half the new-found hostility to us comes from this incident somehow getting on the radar of people who normally barely acknowledge Canada as existing)
In the end it's very much tribal, and little to do with the substance of issues and more to do with perceived teams.
Suffice to say, like most ideologues, the beliefs make sense when analyzed in accordance with the logic rules of the holder of the beliefs.
Think of the beliefs being discussed more as doctrinal tenets of a pseudo religious sect, and you get a little closer to the thinking of the adherents.
Members of the in-group have divine right and shouldn't be bound by laws. Anyone who opposes them is the enemy and should be harmed or destroyed.
For them, Sweden and North Korea are on the same spectrum of communism and will end up the same.
The problem with the saying "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" is that a lot of people haven't forgotten history; they simply never learned it in the first place.
https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...
It's just half of a truism: people apply different standards to "their side". As true of the left wing as the right.
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
> There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
What groups? What people? Are they on HN? Are you responding to them?
This is just sneering. You're not responding to a particular argument or person - you're you're just creating a fictional (in that they don't exist as a coherent, self-identified group, and are only a group in your own mind based solely off of these attributes) until group of people with some alleged hypocrisy and using them to dog-whistle indirectly attack a group of people based on some political ideology that you don't like (and which is largely irrelevant to the alleged hypocrisy that you're inventing). This is some of the most anti-intellectual drivel possible and the diametric opposite of what belongs on HN.
If anything, they are doing exactly what they promised. They were against globalism and elites and international agreements and governance and they are being true to their words.
I’ve read a lot of Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell back in the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. I also voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 primary and regular elections. I used to consider myself a Rothbardian-style libertarian. While I still view the Austrian School of Economics with high regard, my biggest problem with Rothbardianism is Rothbard’s 1990s turn to the right before his passing around 1995, and its deleterious effect on libertarianism. Rothbard supported “right-wing populism” as a way for the libertarian movement to advance. Rothbard supported Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run (though Rothbard would fall out with Buchanan over the latter’s support for protectionism), and Rothbard even went as far as to support the notorious David Duke’s gubernatorial campaign in Louisiana. This right-wing populism strategy led to the paleolibertarian movement, which is limited-to-no government fused with a culturally conservative outlook. However, it’s this cultural conservative mindset that has led so many libertarians to be so enamored with Trump. Trump, after all, is a much more bombastic version of Buchanan, who has a similar ideology. It seems protectionism can be overlooked when people view “wokeness,” and not a breakdown of rule of law, is the biggest problem in American society…
Ironically, it was Rothbard himself who complained earlier in his career about right-wingers who “hated the left more than they hated the state,” yet so many libertarians today are willing to embrace the far-right because they view the left as enemy #1. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a post or article sympathetic to Pinochet, I’d probably have enough for a nice MacBook Pro.
I realized over the years that while I’m still very skeptical of government power, I don’t hate the state, and I prefer good government over chaos. I value liberal institutions and feel they should be defended.
Although I'm more Georgist these days.
Also not sure if the idea of paying out people from this tax makes much sense. Arguable it made more sense when he wrote it, before the social state.
To me it is logically impossible to reconcile the two positions. You simply can’t be a pro-authoritarian libertarian.
You can’t really espouse libertarian values while being what is coded as “culturally conservative”, because that worldview demands conformity and the mechanisms to enforce same, which are inherently anti-liberty.
A good rule of thumb is that anyone who had any issue whatsoever with other people wearing masks during the pandemic are pretty obviously not pro-individual-liberty and just factional culture brawlers.
There seems to be a lot of definiton drift in the term “libertarian”, and that seems wrong to me. (The same thing happened to my other primary identifying social group, “techno”. I spend a lot of time yelling at clouds now.)
An example would be how Barry Goldwater, a proto-libertarian, was able to win some solidly Democratic Deep South states in 1964, the first to do so since Reconstruction. It wasn’t because those Southerners had a libertarian moment. No, it was because Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although Goldwater supported civil rights and voted for previous civil rights legislation, he felt that the 1964 act was an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of private businesses. However, there were many voters in the South who were swayed to vote for Goldwater not because they were libertarians, but because they supported discrimination, and despite their support for Democrats from Reconstruction through the New Deal, anti-discrimination laws were enough for them to break nearly a century of party loyalty.
During the pandemic, I was dismayed by anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers who used libertarian rhetoric to engage in reckless behavior that harmed not only themselves, but others, especially the immunocompromised. It’s one thing to be saddened and taken aback by the extraordinary powers governments at various levels took during the pandemic. Unfortunately, any type of principled opposition to government overreach during the pandemic was overwhelmed by all sorts of selfish, reckless acts. I was completely dismayed by the behavior I’ve witnessed, disappointed not only with various levels of government, but also with some conservatives and libertarians who managed to make COVID a “culture war” matter.
It turned out many of the libertarians I’ve looked up to were just very articulate right wingers. When push comes to shove, they’d excuse people like Trump, Le Pen, Putin, and the like, justifying them under the guise that we’d be worse off under a standard-issue Democrat or a social democrat like Sanders or AOC. I’m not a Democrat by any means, but the past decade has shown the damage that MAGA-style right-wing populism could do to a country. I’m not a Bernie Sanders supporter, but Bernie or even AOC would be less destructive to society than Trump and his allies.
I am completely saddened by the culture wars and how we are unable to solve structural economic and political problems in America because we are mired in the culture wars. This is tearing our country apart and may make the world worse off as other nations fight to fill in a power void made available by a descending United States.
The rich, like the poor, are free to live under bridges and starve.
Libertarianism is very simple and easy to dismiss out of hand if you believe this about it.
When I was younger I'd do online political tests and invariably come back with left-libertarian. Then the detour into cpunks, ancap, and the "two axis political chart" made me see myself unaligned and see a lot of utility in rightism. But that started to fall apart when it became clear that fundamentalism doesn't address the big picture of emergent layers of complexity. Ironically it was Moldbug's writing that nudged my transition back to seeing myself as latently left-aligned. No matter how much you'd like to, you can't fight thermodynamics!
In addition to that, it always had a strong southern "state rights" dog whistle. Personally I never liked Murray Rothbard. And the Rothbardian full on appropriation of Mises. Plus they often welcomed 'libertarians' that had very bad ideas, like Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
In terms of Austrian economics, I always much prefer the George Mason people. I think the economics fundamentals of Austrianism were very forward thinking and they produced a lot of great stuff and people, both directly and in the larger bubble of associated researchers.
> I realized over the years that while I’m still very skeptical of government power, I don’t hate the state, and I prefer good government over chaos. I value liberal institutions and feel they should be defended.
I think American Libertarianism basically went way to far into hyper-individualism and total freedom of action and defense of historical privileges and laws. While different classical liberal philosophies would focus way more on the cost of those actions and negotiation a balance between individual freedom and society.
Classical liberal philosophy was never supposed to mean that you can park your car anywhere and throw garbage out of the window or that you can carry your gun everywhere.
Also I think there is a huge difference between restricting government on a federal level and on a local level. I don't think any philosophical school has really figured out this issue. Both centralizing and localizing have lots of problems.
I'm at the point where I am not really have a clear 'movement' that I can point to. I still agree with much of the criticism of communism, socialism and many typically left ideas. I disagree even more strongly with the far-right.
In Europe we have central parties, but those often are socially conservative and have sub-optimal economic policy and bad local politics. So like many others I have to end up voting center-left even if I don't agree in principle with their philosophy.
On thing that helped me is not to think of absolutes and end-states, and only think of incrementalism. Even if I disagree with the something in principle. As current laws exist I might support things I wouldn't in a different situation.
In Swizterland where I life, at least we can often vote on specific issues. And that can cut across parties. And the consensus based federal government is globally unique and works pretty well for stability and consistency.
He made a shit ton of promises and many were nonsensical and contradictory. But that doesn't change that he hasn't delivered on them. The problem is people see him doing the most ridiculous stuff people thought he would drop and assume that means he kept most of his promises
>> One of Trump’s most audacious promises was that he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office — or even before.
“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,”
It's not my fault he made such a dumb, impossible promise. It is true he broke it.
He never backed that officially though, right? It's just that everyone rational knew what's happening anyway, but otherwise - even the not knowing about it was a lie, not an explicit promise.
It's truly remarkable how much honest material there is to criticize Trump with, yet folks insist on repeating blatant lies.
Yes, that is the "blatant lie" being discussed.
I don't get what you mean. It's not some secret - it's available for everyone to read. It's also written by people who are all around Trump and who got influential positions from him. It's been talked about for ages. Trump not knowing about it would be extremely weird. (Or if he actually never heard about it, that would mean he's extremely clueless - I'm not sure what's worse for him)
You are confusing that with Agenda 47. While Project 2025 was all those things you describe, that Trump endorsed any of it or is implementing any of those destructive things simply isn't true.
He's faithfully implementing Agenda 47, just like the majority of people in this country elected him to do. And all of those people expected the storm before the calm.
You seem to have missed, "highly illegal".
But sure "the trains are running on time"
https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/donald-trump-jr-m...
True to their word!
I think a multi-party parliamentary system would be better at finding middle ground, but it's silly to say that the two-party system keeps politics "fixed".
I would say that in this case, it's a party aligning to an individual far more than it has ever been in the past. Racist Southern Democrats didn't become Republicans because they were enamored with a Republican leader, they changed parties because they found themselves misaligned with the Democratic Party's pivot to civil rights.
I wholeheartedly agree that a parliamentary system would serve the US better.
The Trump administration seems to run a protectionist policy, with a deregulated home market. This will hurt exports as it makes products more expensive, but also less likely to be able to comply with the regulations of other markets, e.g. in the EU, which is heavily regulated. US companies have a reduced incentive to comply with EU rules, if they know they have a protected market at home they can milk instead.
It's much in the same vein that Putin allows a few token 'opposition' politicians to exist.
Its an extremely big difference from the Biden era where any post critical of the vaccine and backed up with papers was taken down pronto. This was even confirmed in several senate hearings.
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/27/zuckerberg-biden-administra...
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/10/mark-zuckerberg-says-biden-p...
As a non-American, I was very happy when Musk bought out twitter - it was ridiculous being unable to criticize vaccines - you couldn't even articulate the Indian government's stance on Pfizer and how Pfizer refused to provde test data. "Freedom of speech" was utterly non-existent in that era.
> “The words ‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’ are considered slurs on this platform,” Mr Musk wrote in June.
> “Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.”
> The newly enforced policy, first reported by TechCrunch on Tuesday, saw some users greeted with a full-screen warning when trying to publish a post using the terms on the X mobile app.
The fact that this is arbitrarily enforced isn't exactly painting it as a haven for free speech. The only thing worse than absolute censorship (which is obvious and can be routed around) is stochastic, inconsistent censorship - which gives him and his defenders a fig leaf[1] to hide behind.
Look, maybe you prefer the new brand of censorship X has adopted. It sounds like you do. Great. But what you can't do is call it a free speech platform, while keeping a straight face.
[1] I would like to point out, as an example: that China doesn't censor the internet - you just mysteriously have your connection go to shit and drop out if you try to search for 4/15.
Did you ever try writing a mRNA-vaccine critical post during the Biden administration on twitter, quoting factual sources and linking to scientific papers ? Your account got banned pronto.
And as we all know now - it was done at the behest of the US white house.
And that's not an argument that you're going to do well with. Because the claim is utterly pants-on-head, irredeemably farcical, as is anyone who would stand behind it.
---
But, secondly, if you read the screenshots in the link, you'll see that the posts are being suppressed.
---
And thirdly, you don't see me claiming that pre-Musk Twitter was any kind of bastion of 'free speech absolutism'. I'm not making that argument.
The argument I'm making is that post-Musk Twitter definitely isn't one.
I think you might just want an excuse to believe what you already believe
> reflect what voters want.
The changes made thus far present at least a decade of rebuilding to fix, and we're only 100 days in.
We're never out of time but the problem is time? There is absolutely a point of no return.
The problem is the time frame of the fix
If the US ends up a smoking ruin it can still be fixed, it'll just take longer.
The problem with the US is though, that they have the most powerful military on the planet, and the US ending up in smoking ruins probably means lots of other places going down with it, when the US looks outside for reasons of its failure. It is quite dangerous.
Maybe they don't like the fact that there's people out there making 500 grand a year? At least not while they're struggling to make ends meet on 50 grand a year.
Now your leaders are supposed to be wise enough to not take down the 500 grand a year guys. But what if they aren't?
Yet people seem to have far less concern about people with such relatively low wealth.
But it's not really compatible with a system where one person represents millions. You'd need something recursive such that no person represents more than a hundred or so, that way there's time to circle back and explain why certain complaints aren't being addressed this cycle and such. You know, responsibility of leadership to the people.
It's also not really compatible with a system where your representative for foo-type issues must also be your representative for bar-type issues, because "competent people" is too broad of a category to be useful.
How to get there from here? I'm not sure but it seems like it'll require a more significant discontinuity than we've seen so far.
What does each one do? What agency does each have?
They get 20 minutes a year to speak assuming a 2000 hour working year.
In a single seat district system, increase in seats its also proven to improve representation for minorities.
I don't think the expansion by itself is a fix-all solution.
One of the issues is that you have many single issue districts and those that get elected can vote whatever they want on everything else. That is both good and bad in some situations.
> They get 20 minutes a year to speak assuming a 2000 hour working year.
Congress isn't about making public speeches, its about legislating in congress. Turning congress into a TV show is part of the issue in the first place.
I think the larger problem with democracy in general is that constituencies are no longer geographic. A software engineer in Austin and one in San Jose have far more in common than a software engineer in Austin and a Tractor dealer in Austin.
The representative for Austin has to represent the conflicting views of both the Tractor dealer and the software engineer.
> I think the larger problem with democracy in general is that constituencies are no longer geographic.
I think that is a good point. Specifically on federal level. On local level geographic still matters.
Its basically the old socialist argument about class system. Just with a much more complex class system.
I guess you could have some sort of cluster analysis putting into X different interest clusters and you could vote for a representative in each. And then somehow calculate an optimal congress.
"Vote for me, I'm representing technically inclined fantasy nerds that like cat girls"
Not sure that is the solution. But you are right that the 'pyramid' style system used in most countries could be improved on. A simple version of this is basically to do all federal votes for congress and use some kind of representation algorithm.
The issue with this is that doing a political campaign on a federal level is insanely expensive. And I can't even imagine if each congress person had to try to get elected on federal level. The amount of political adds would be crazy.
I really don't have the solution and its hard to run experiments on things like this.
> The representative for Austin has to represent the conflicting views of both the Tractor dealer and the software engineer.
Smaller countries does help her, as geographic area gets smaller more interested are represented.
Along these lines, policy kind of went to shit when they got rid of earmarks.
It used to be some congressman from rural Ohio being able to vote in favor of union stuff his people want but the party doesn't because he knows the bill has some pork for his district to make his people happy so he'll be secure next election.
Now that guy's security next election is all dependent on party funding so he's gotta vote the party line every time and any deviations from the party line are a complex game of favor trading and backroom dealing and whatnot.
In Britain, you basically get removed from the party very quickly and as an independent its incredibly hard.
Trump is only the latest example of how parties are weak in the US.
Farming, Tech, Fossil Fuels, Civil Rights, etc. Maybe as many as 50.
Each one puts up candidates, perhaps on a list basis,
You give everyone 10 votes to distribute to those candidates. If you're really into supporting Farming, you might put 10 votes to Farmers and screw the rest. If you are more widely concerned you might put a couple in tech, a couple in civil rights, one in space, etc.
Those votes are then distributed and the number of representatives are chosen in proportion. If Farming gets twice the votes as Tech, they have twice the congressmen, and Farming gets twice the representation at a national level.
If you don't have this, you end up with widely supported low level things (say a 15% support evenly across the country - truckers for example) with no representation, but areas where there are high levels of concentrated support (Tech for example) with a lot of representation.
Its an interesting concept, I don't know of anybody that has fully defined how this would work.
I imagine a sort of cultural "open enrollment" period during which anyone can mark anyone else as their representative. Perhaps we create four or five categories that we need representation in (foreign policy, infrastructure, education, monetary policy... something like that), so you gotta then find four or five representatives which you personally know and trust.
Then we follow the directed representation graph to its terminal nodes (or cycles) and those are the representatives that we ask to get together and get things done. Those are our leaders. They meet only sometimes, the rest of the year they spend working with their constituents.
You don't have to be tapped in to see that whatever is said on Fox becomes Republican dogma very quickly. That's why half the country is more concerned that Zelenskyy is, somehow, a dictator, and less concerned that we ushered Russian state media into our white house.
It's an embarrassing state we're in, but many voters have been fostered with complete incuriosity with what Republican politicians stand for.
Essentially if you have the very strong support of 10-15% of the party voters, you’re untouchable.
Of course that also relies on those “I don’t want Trump” republicans actually voting for him.
But let’s assume that all happens and it’s not the fault of republicans because they are apethetic. How do you explain the congress and senate members who back him?
But then they also vote for him in the general election, since he won, so I conclude he has the support of the Republican base.
If you were evaluating him as a regular person you'd conclude he was demented or otherwise had significant brain damage, and was the no-inhibition combative type that needed to be in a facility. But his word salad apparently appealed to enough people's self-centeredness to end up as President instead. Maybe my happy place can be imagining he's got aphasia, doesn't want any of these harmful policies either, and he's suffering right along with the rest of us.
If you want free markets look more to Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore (#1 on the "Index of Economic Freedom").
One of the virtues of proper free markets is the markets largely figure which companies win in a relatively non corrupt way, rather than politicians leaning on the scales.
The difference is between Singaporean policymakers/civil servants and their counterparts from elsewhere is that the former are actually world-class in terms of competence, and their interventions are generally very well-designed/well-justified.
We can learn a lot from the policies, both free market and otherwise. And we shouldn't learn from others.
No free market person thinks of Singapore as some prefect example. As that doesn't exist. So you have to take example from different places. And Singapore has more good examples then most.
Sure, from a financial perspective, particularly around mortgages.
Singapore owns the HDB, which owns the leasing rights to 80%+ of all residential property and almost all land in the country. Issuing 99 year leases to citizens and PRs.
Imagine if the US government owned all land rights, built virtually all apartments and instigated racial quotas to match the demographics of the country; then subsidized the price drastically to make it affordable for the population. That's what Singapore does.
This isn't unique either.
The other libertarian wet-dream Hong Kong has a similar land-leasing policy. The major difference there is that 999 year leases were allowed at one point (rare and no longer issued).
In fact the only freehold property in Hong Kong is St John’s Cathedral.
The person above pointed out that Singpore, is #1 on the "Index of Economic Freedom" and the rank high in other such indexes.
Housing policy in regards to ownership maybe a counterpoint to that, but we are not looking at individual policy but the at everything.
If you want to dispute the claim that Singpore is not 'free market' at all, then please direct me to an index with better methodology in that regard.
> Sure, from a financial perspective, particularly around mortgages.
That to, but that's not primary what I am talking about.
No I'm talking about zoning and many, many, many other types of regulation. Plus of course, tax code and many other things.
Typically new land for a city is rezoned, then a developer comes in, build there and often inherits the infrastructure to the city to maintain. Then the city collects some property tax from that.
That is different then the Singapore model but its also a gigantic intervention in pretty much every aspect of the housing market.
Not to mention the government hold many plots of lands that could be developed. The government owns quite a lot of land.
The direct ownership is only one aspect, what you can do is another.
And as I said, I'm not disputing that in such a ranking, their land and housing policy could be considered as a negative compared to the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Ac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
Meanwhile, as others have pointed out, our current president has been advocating for tariffs for about as long as the Republicans were in favor of the free market.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trumps-tariff-str...
Which is the relevant part. I’m not really concerned with historical positions of the party itself so much as the politicians themselves, none of whom were alive a century ago.
https://fee.org/articles/10-crazy-examples-of-unrelated-wast...
2) whether anything that happened in the last month is going to promote more domestic manifacturing is quite dubious at best.
As a quick excercise:
- for almost every industry new factories would be needed to significantly increase domestic production
- you are disencintivized to mix foreign and domestic materials if you plan to export (as you are going to pay potentially double tariffs)
- most things (especially cars) have long supply chains
- building a factory takes both non-trivial investment and at least a few months
And you get that for many products it would take sorta
lenght_of_supply_chain * (few_months + gathering_fund_permits_time)
My claim was merely that the situation was analogous. So yes, it is the point, in my view.
There is a grey area where you can do things that the electorate may want, which also happen to benefit your cronies. This overall issue is more severe for big government types, since more largesse is getting handed out.
I'd additionally highlight your use of the term "relevant electorate". Which underscores that "cronies" and "voters" may be the same people.
Direct Tesla subsidies would probably be quite popular with Tesla workers. That's a relevant electorate. Would that therefore make direct Tesla subsidies defensible? That's what your argument seems to imply.
>2) whether anything that happened in the last month is going to promote more domestic manifacturing is quite dubious at best.
I suspect some of the items from the FEE list won't be particularly effective at their stated goal either. In general, people will disagree about the likely effectiveness of government programs. So I'm not sure "likely effectiveness" is a great way to check for favoritism.
Would be nice to see a technical definition for how the % imported is worked out.
85% of parts != 85% of cost
The rules for calculating what percentage of a vehicle is domestic or foreign made are obscure. It's not clear what rules they're going to be using for this tariff exemption yet.
It could be possible that the 15% foreign content of a car could make up 30% of the cost of goods sold, for example. If the parts come from China they could have a 125% or higher tariff applied, pushing the share of BOM cost even higher.
The idea is that automakers will get special exemptions from the tariffs for what they do import.
Handing out tariff exemptions was one of the red flags people were raising during this process. It becomes a lever the administration can pull to grant favor to specific companies. Everyone else suffers.
"Final" regulation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addr...
https://www.nhtsa.gov/part-583-american-automobile-labeling-...
I can only assume they're all actually largely ok with it.
I would not have imagined that they just never thought about things like that in general and now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of situation has happened. I have no previously considered reactions or plans for most things and life just smacks me in the face like I've been walking with my eyes closed, but I'm a hapless midwit.
I only mean to imply they are people who know how to get what they want, and are willing to do more or less anything.
There is a new story that Amazon is going to overtly display the tarrif on every price. That is like 1% of the kind of thing I'm thinking of.
He didn't pull it but that's a seperate issue and actually exactly my point, why not? Or for that matter, maybe he did pull it, maybe he caused the story to even appear in the first place, or maybe they will do it regardless what he just said. Maybe he has something less obvious he's working on, or maybe he's somehow fine with the tarriff.
Most people in power lack critical thinking skills, having earned their position primarily due to the circumstances of their birth and the people they know.
It is incredibly rare for someone who is competent enough to weild such levers of power to be granted access to them.
The "US is an oligarchy, the corporations are in control" was always a false narrative.
If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not because they have no power to wield.
Good grief. There are times when I read some posts and it is like reading youtube comments under madtv skit 'apple i-rack' asking what it means... how do you not know what it means?
Good grief, this is just an axiomatic belief, then. No evidence will sway you one way or another.
But that doesn't mean they have enough power to influence the president and to correct course.
Fine. Let us have it your way.
What does it mean?
Sometimes a stupid guy gets elected by low-information voters, and enacts stupid policies that crash the economy. There isn't any secret illuminati meeting where they can tell him to stop.
They know what they would do, if this were under any other president: make phone calls, write editorials in major newspapers, start donating to future political rivals.
But this is Trump. He's surrounded by equally corrupt lackeys, and immediately fires anyone showing a shred of morality. The entire federal government does his bidding. He sues news media until they settle with him for millions, signs executive orders banning specific law firms from working with the federal government until they offer him millions in legal services, cuts off money from states that dare defy his will, and demands universities let the federal government investigate all staff in Middle East studies. Any business leader who stands up to him will be crushed. The best way to keep making money is to get on his good side, like Elon.
This is literally tyranny. Thank goodness there are plenty of judges willing to stand against the obviously illegal acts.
I don't mean the damage isn't consequential. What I mean is he has very obvious and simple motivations and reactions. For the purposes of somehow dealing with him, it's not all that important that "he might do anything". It seems obvious that anyone who wants to deal with him should take that as given and move right past worrying about what he might do and assume that he will, for sure, do anything. But he will do so for completely basic reasons and in response to completely basic stimuli.
A bullfighter completely antagonizes the bull into a frothing unthinking frenzy, on purpose, and owns the bull.
The bull is actually totally predictable and manipulable, and not because the bull can be reasoned with.
Musk and some few on the right are the only ones not being complete idiots about handling him. They are getting everything they want from operating him.
The left probably can't play that same trick since they probably can't figure out ways to tell him he's great and get leftie things out of him. Or forget left & right just business where they're all assholes, everyone can't play the same suck-up game. Musk is apparently doing suck-up without looking like a weak begger suck-up. Or he's allowing himself to look like just enough of a beta to keep Trump from feeling threatened, yet, like how his maga hat isn't red. Flouting the uniform, yet, not. It's probably a fine line there. And there is only room for a few magic pretend-beta slots. Trump will simply not give good behavior to very many people no matter what they say, so if all 100 people in his circle were all the perfect suck-up, still only a couple will get what they want and the rest get pissed on.
So anyone that didn't happen to win that lottery (or just weren't as good as Musk at that game) will have to go the other way which is poking him with a stick.
But they aren't. In the left vs right arena the left just continues to try to use rational arguments and appeals to reason on people who don't give a shit about that. Just who are the dummies when it comes down to that?
Though I wasn't originally intending to talk left or right but just about chaos impacting business and these supposed hard nosed rutheless powerful captains of the world just letting it happen. They only care about one thing, and he's burning that one thing by the billions, and they are...what? Nothing?
So when I say "I can only assume they are somehow ok with it" I mean there must be things I don't know. Like ultimately this doesn't really hurt Bezos and the like all that much. Like they make money on whatever happens somehow. Or they think longer term and they are ready to absolutely gorge themselves on some kind of bounce back in a couple years because they are somehow positioned exactly right. Like how at a smaller scale how Equifax ultimately made a shit ton of new money as a result of having their web site hacked. Maybe all the Bezos's of the country are just arms dealers who make out no matter what.
I don't know. Perhaps everyone's right and they are all tools no better equipped than myself. But I just think that's a kind of stupid take. Some probably are, and some surely are not. I am quite sure I can not solve Apple's Trump problem better than Tim. I simply wonder, what the heck are they doing? It looks from here on the ground like they aren't doing anything. But I can only assume that just means I can't see anything that matter from here, and don't know how to read what I can see.
Honestly, I feel kinda conflicted. From one point, I always looked up to the American values, and way of life. But it's becoming increasingly misaligned with my own values and the things I find important in life.
Otoh, I listened to conservative ratio the other day and the general tone was "good, he is making them mad and he doesn't care."
If that's the way policy decisions are going to be made every time conservatives come to power in the US, then it's best that the rest of the world not go down with the US when the time comes.
Someone asked what is the car model with the most American parts right now? We will make everyone meet that benchmark or better.
Though they did it with tax credits not tariffs. To get the tax break you had to buy a car made in America. (Which pissed off car makers outside the US)
If I understand the below from NPR, then few electric cars qualified back then as wel, and one of the few was Tesla Model Y
"As of May 3, 2024, eligible vehicles include the best-selling Tesla Model Y, the budget-friendly Chevrolet Bolt (which is no longer in production, but can still be found on some dealer lots), the Volkswagen ID.4 "
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1219158071/ev-electric-vehicl...
This, in all its many forms, is part of why the economies of dictatorships perform badly.
There's a mall that closed and, for a while, there were hundreds parked in that lot waiting to be sold (and they were).
And, all used goods bought at secondhand stores are tariff-exempt as well. And so is FB marketplace, Craigslist, and others.
My protest is meager, but effective for us - we just will buy used and use 'Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle' where we can. EnEnough of us doing that will slow and hamper the economy (read: rich peoples' money).
There was a loophole in the past where you could take delivery of a car in a foreign country, drive it for a while, and then go through the process of importing it as if you were moving back to the United States. I don't know if the new tariffs honor that loophole or not.
Or are you just saying that if I buy a car that's already in the US and has already had any import tariffs due at time of import paid, I won't have to pay them again? That's a lot less interesting.
Pretty cool. Lots more info on reddit threads.
https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...
I knew someone who tooled around Europe for a month before dropping it off to be shipped to her without having VAT incurred (though it was a couple decades ago).
I was strongly considering importing a 25-year-old kei truck from Japan before the tariffs were announced.
Even buying one locally that is already registered doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to continue registering it.
If new cars become much more expensive, used cars will become much more expensive. This isn't even a theoretical idea. The exact thing happend in 2020-2021 when you couldn't buy a new car.
This is what many don't understand about tariffs in general: you put tariffs on foreign goods and anything exempt will simply raise their prices to match.
https://www.americanautomakers.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/...
Versus 80%? Those five percentage points are worth a double-digit tariff.
Right?
Punitive legislation? Lawfare? Crony capitalism but for the other companies?
Deflection, whataboutism, sealioning with a side of demanding sources for what is essentially the use of a greater than sign.
If they were allowed to the US market we know what would happen here.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-scales-back-ta...
that's an oligarchy.
Can we boot these dickfucks from office yet? Jesus christ
But Ford can probably get the USA content for gas-powered Mustangs up from 80% to 85%. The electric version is made in Mexico, but once Ford's Blue Oval City plant in Tennessee comes up in 2027, that will move to the US.
Of course, who knows where Trump will be by then.
Also a friendly reminder that all these tariffs are being made possible by a "state of emergency" declared by Trump because of fentanyl coming from Canada and China. Otherwise, only Congress would have the power to impose tarriffs.
So shall we just be honest and say we're heading towards a centrally planned economy, China style?
Or was it an in-kind deal for his amateur-hack-a-billy work at DOGE?
Musk as presidential prostitute is not something I had on my bingo card when he first arrived on the scene.
This is the kind of bullshit your reputation will never recover from - no matter how many puff pieces you buy or retweet.
RIP Tesla.
RIP Elon.
This is what happens when you go along with lawfare or weaponized government.
The canon gets turned around and pointed the other way soon enough.
Examples?
Here are the EV incentives that I'm aware of that happened during the Biden administration.
• $7500 tax credit for qualifying vehicles. It only applies to cars below a certain MSRP which disqualified the Tesla Models S and X, but that same limit excluded many other cars from many other companies too. The rest of Tesla's models have many configurations below the MSRP cutoff that did qualify.
There were also rules on battery materials sourcing, which disqualified about 80% of the EVs that were then available in the US. Those did hit some specific trims of the Model 3 for a few months but Tesla was able to switch to using the same batteries that the unaffected Model 3 trims used, restoring the credit.
• The National Electrical Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which provided grants for building EV charging infrastructure. Tesla qualified and received considerable money from NEVI grants.
• There were some grants specifically intended to boost EV manufacturing with union workers. Tesla does not have any unionized plants so was de facto excluded.
• There were grants for building a network of EV truck charges. Tesla submitted a project proposal but it was not accepted.
What else was there?
Major effect of Trump's trade war is yet to be felt. I think Americans' perception of Trump will get much worse soon, and Tesla's brand image will follow suit. A tariff exemption is cute but I don't think that's enough to save Tesla.
> New York state lawmakers have launched an effort to shut down Tesla’s stores in the state
From: https://electrek.co/2025/04/28/ny-lawmakers-shut-down-teslas...
> WA Legislature considers new tax aimed at Elon Musk’s Tesla
From: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legisl...
"For my friends? Anything! For my enemies? The law [and new taxes]!"
The other EV meetings organized by the Biden administration were all specifically about EVs in the context of specific legislation the administration was proposing, and they only invited companies that were supporting that legislation.
Yeah we allowed a deranged billionaire to transform auto industry, even if it cost us democracy and threats of fascism and authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.
Completely delusional.
The place we went wrong wasn't incentivizing Tesla, it was allowing the other guy to escape conviction.
To me it is like claiming without iphones we wouldn't have gotten smartphones or touchscreens until a decade later. Except PDAs and touch screens already existed, apple just got a few years jump start on a big brand model before many other companies did the math on how cheap mobile computing and touch screens were becoming.
With automakers it seemed like in the 20-teens they all shrugged and said, "looks like hybrids are the best we can do". Then Tesla started selling sedans and SUVs and exactly one legacy auto design cycle later we got the electric Mustang, Golf, 3-series, etc. I think they would have milked ICE as long as they could had no one come along with a successful ev.