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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

Jon Stewart talked a lot about this on Monday, both in his monologue and interview with Chris Hughes.

If you were thoughtful about economic policy and truly believed a trade war was the solution, you'd prepare ahead of time (e.g. by stockpiling things like rare earth metals that are important to your economy and likely to be impacted by retaliatory tariffs).

That they haven't done that is one more indicator that they are thoughtlessly winging this. Even if there's a solution that involves tariffs, that's not the play they're running.

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It's worth pointing out that China has been preparing for this exact trade war since 2016, when Trump first threatened it. And they have fairly good centralized command structure to force individual businesses to prepare for things like this. China is the primary target of the war, even if Trump thinks that trade imbalances with Vietnam are also theft from the US, as he frequently and loudly says. The administration has lots of China hawks, it does not have any Vietnam hawks.

Additionally, China is much better prepared for a trade war in that it has a populace that has been very well conditioned to go through hardship for longer term wins. The US does not, and there will be massive revolt for small hardship, or even the perception of hardship. This is largely why Harris lost: she was blamed for the inflation under Biden, even though the US did far better than the rest of the world economically for the period 2021-2024.

The prior trade war with China was short and inconsequential, Trump could buy off the farmers who were really hurt by it with less than a dollar sum of 10-11 digits. That won't be possible with the trade war that's currently planned, and the effects will be large enough to cause large inflation, while simultaneously providing zero methods for investors to safely build US-based production capacity.

The US has benefitted for a couple generations by being the reserve currency, meaning that we can make big mistakes and not suffer for them, while any other country would suffer. This coming trade war, if it actually happens, may finally break this exceptional status.

As much as China can prepare, it's still in a pretty vulnerable position and the whole "the Chinese people are more conditioned for hardship" is as much Chinese exceptionalism as any claim to American exceptionalism. At the end of the day they lose millions of jobs, factories shut down, and people suffer there too regardless of the CCP marketing about being "tough" and "prepared". Appear strong where you are weak or something like that. Meanwhile the US can see prices go up, but aside from a few specific items we can buy or make the things that China has been. At an increased cost, sure, but Americans can handle it.

> The US has benefitted for a couple generations by being the reserve currency, meaning that we can make big mistakes and not suffer for them, while any other country would suffer. This coming trade war, if it actually happens, may finally break this exceptional status.

Very doubtful. The main danger is lack of fortitude with continuing and enforcing policies, and letting ideological battles get the best of the Trump administration for cutting good and fair deals with the EU and others. You're welcome to invest in Chinese, Russian, or whatever capital markets, though.

We can “buy or make the things China has been”? Buy from whom? Make in what factories, with what workers, with what supplies, equipment, and materials?

Ok if we can't then you're proving the need for economic and policy measures to make it so we can.

But yes, instead of buying a made in China t-shirt you can just spend a little more and buy one made in the USA, or even other non-authoritarian governments throughout the world (EU for example).

We instituted many processes during the Biden era for bringing manufacturing to the US. They were all carrot based: provide stability for capital investments and even some tax benefits. This resulted in massive investments in factories in the US, the most in a generation.

Tariffs do not provide capital security, they do not make it cheap to build the factories and in fact gigantically jack up the cost because we need to import a lot of the machinery to get the manufacturing going, and building the entire supply chain from scratch would add massive lead time to the other factories that use the machinery.

Further, the need for onshoring cheap tshirt manufacturing is far from clear. We have massive amounts of our workforce in far more productive areas that produce absolutely massive amounts of GDP, and reallocating the workforce to tshirt manufacturing makes us far poorer.

We are cutting drastically from scientific research, where each dollar spent by the government generates 2x-10x GDP, and telling those scientists to go work in factories. The very same types of factories that our trading partners would give up in an instant if they had the hi tech scientific research instead.

What do we need? Certainly not tshirt factories. We need scientists, services, and more productive sectors of the economy. It is absolute idiocy to give up the higher tiers of the economy only possible in the US in the 21st century, to return to far lower 20th and 19th century productivity level.

I largely don't disagree with anything you wrote.

I was broadly responding to the OP's broad comment. Like yea you don't need to buy cheap crap from Temu that you saw on TikTok. And if you have to pay $5 more for a t-shirt suck it up and stop supporting authoritarian regimes. If that results in Americans working in t-shirt factories which aren't morally better or worse than any other factory, being paid higher wages and having that money stay here in our local economies at the expense of cheap goods with economic outflows to China, I say good and maybe tariffs are a good way to make that happen.

Remember, tariffs are just an economic and policy tool we can leverage. The EU uses them against China today even. I personally found the Biden administration's approach to trade to be better, but maybe we need a mix of policies to effect change?

To that effect I don't really understand your last comment about giving up higher tiers of the economy that are "only possible in the US" - we can't make computers and iPhones here. Those are those high tiers. That is a problem. Tariffs can be a tool to effect change there. Maybe not, maybe so. The status quo isn't sustainable though.

Cheap crap on Temu and phones that mainline social media into everyone's pockets are part of the circus machinery that keeps the population distracted and docile.

Nuking them is unlikely to end well politically.

As others have said, if you want to use tariffs to wage a trade war, you prepare first, so you're not cutting off the branch you're sitting on. You don't create tariffs and then build your factories.

Because you can't. It's just not possible.

But this regime has a shoot-from-the-microphone policy style which is completely irrational and unworkable, and minor considerations like practicality don't figure.

In any case, it's clear the regime is in a race between enforcing its grip on power with martial law (whatever it's going to be called) and political collapse brought about by economic collapse.

It's too early to tell, but if martial law wins, economic collapse on an unprecedented scale will follow.

You can be toxically positive and say that a lot of dead wood needed to be cleared. But in practice that just means whole swathes of the country will turn into Detroit of the 00s, but worse - rotting ghost towns, haunted by the ghosts of those who starved to death.

$5? lol try $30

The unemployment rate is what, 3%? Where are you going to find the millions of people needed to make the iPhone domestically? Immigration? Hah, that would be an interesting stance. Automation? It would work to fill some gaps, but even apple doesn't want to pay Chinese workers for tasks that machines can do today. Someone in their company decides on when they automate, and when they use elbow grease. They may be able to afford a lot of the capital outlay to greatly improve the productivity of their workers if effectively required to onshore, or they may just stop selling iPhones in the US for a few years if all cell phones become prohibitively expensive to own. If Apple can't make the economics work, I can't see who can.

> The unemployment rate is what, 3%? Where are you going to find the millions of people needed to make the iPhone domestically?

I don't know off the top of my head, but that sounds like a great problem to have and I'd be happy to do whatever it takes to make sure we have that problem.

what EU countries have a good t-shirt supply chain? do you know? I am pretty sure limited to poland, and maybe a few other eastern european countries.

as for MUSA, i buy a lot of t-shirts and none of them are made in usa, who are you thinking of?

You can Google something like "made in America t-shirts" and should find plenty of results as I did (not trying to be a jerk and say "Google it", really just trying to be helpful if you are indeed looking). I'm not sure about the European Union.

There are quite a few but just an example: https://www.american-giant.com/pages/about-us (no affiliation or any further research other than identifying from a lengthy list of made-in-USA clothing).

For some things, I agree it’s important to have domestic capability. For most things, global trade works well for everyone involved, so long as we do it in a cooperative way. The current tariff bullying approach is the worst way of building domestic capability or improving trade relations. More likely the US will sink into a decade or more of stagflation or worse as world markets move on without us, far more easily than we can become self-sustaining.

For your t-shirt example, sure we can buy US made shirts. But the US factories have a limit to what they can produce. Then what? What business person would invest in any new factories in the current environment? Where do they buy the materials to build the factory? (From our trading partners.) Where do they buy the tools and equipment used in the factory? (From our trading partners.) who do they hire to work in the factory? Former government bureaucrats? Immigrants? Oh wait!

All I did was a quick google search, but I searched what the US imports from China, to fill in the word "stuff" from your post:

"The U.S. imports a wide variety of products from China, with the top categories including electronics, machinery, and furniture. Specifically, significant imports include computers, smartphones, electrical equipment, toys, and furniture."

I just don't think there will be riots in the street over this stuff. Maybe there will be, maybe there should be, I can't say for sure. I do know kids will survive just fine without toys, and I don't see riots over furniture. I don't know about the rest of it.

The other side of the coin is interesting: What if China decided they were never going to sell anything to the US? Would people riot in the street? Even more interesting, if China really wanted to play that game, why don't they? Why are they so mad? If this wasn't a threat to them it would be a giant nothingburger on their end.

Vastly underestimating the impact.

Think of all the Made in USA stuff that makes use of Chinese components.

Many of the machines used in factories are made in China.

A lot of tool making is outsourced there (an injection molding die that might cost $50,000 to make in the US might be $10k in China, and the Chinese typically make them with a quicker turnaround time, even with shipping.

Unfortunately our homes, offices, and lots of infrastructure kinda require things like electrical equipment (amongst other trivial things like wood, metal, insulation materials, etc)

You are making a lot of bold claims without much to back it up. As someone who reads a lot about the topic, I would characterize your assessment as far removed from mainstream opinion and rosier than the rosiest professional assessments that don't come from an acolyte of Donald Trump. In other words, a fairy tale.

If you have a specific comment or point to make I'd love to talk about it. Most mainstream opinions aren't very valuable, though certainly there are some that are better than others.

When so much is thrown at the wall at once it makes it onerous and boring to respond to every slapdash point. If they had stumbled on a truly valuable and novel perspective that convincingly goes against all prevailing knowledge, I can only imagine they would have presented it with significantly more evidence than they did in that screed. Otherwise, mildly-educated people like me discard it immediately as empty rhetoric or maybe just propaganda. Aka trolling.

I think that's rather unfair, and if you don't want to participate in a conversation you can just ignore the comment instead of accusing others of trolling. I'm not trolling, I like to discuss and debate these topics on the Internet, and if there are facts or concepts that you think should require a source in civil conversation you can ask for those. This is also a new paradigm shift in America and so most of the mainstream opinion articles you read don't have much more information than anyone else, and funny that you mention propaganda because that's exactly what you're going to find hidden away in those mainstream opinions.

If you go against established facts you have a greater burden to prove your views aren't bullshit. Yet people coming from perspectives that just happen to line up with the teachings of Donald Trump always seem to provide less information. Do you not notice this trend? If you want to convince people try being convincing.

What specific information are you asking me to provide and for what specific claims? Happy to do my best, but all you are doing is ranting about my post and that's neither interesting nor productive.

> cutting good and fair deals with the EU

Trump administration only succeeded in making the EU see the US as a foreign hostile nation.

At this point I think it's more likely the EU cut deals with China.

Nah, the problem is EU will face the same problems the US is facing (they don't want products dumped on their markets at subsidized costs putting their workers out of business), and a lot of the posturing (Canada I think is different) is for the public and because Trump is an asshole but the EU sees the same problem the US does. Nevermind China very overtly aiding Russia in its war in Europe which has the EU not very happy. Guess we forgot about that?

The EU is actually quite protectionist, despite public claims to the contrary. Most countries are in various fashion protective of many or certain industries.

Trump no doubt damaged ties, and again I think the Biden administration's approach was superior in many ways, but there's a limit to what agreements the EU will make with China. The manufacturing capacity that the Chinese have built isn't sustainable without a substantial increase in Chinese domestic consumption.

> Nah, the problem is EU will face the same problems the US is facing

The US problems are problems of their own making.

EU has only trade rivalries with China, not ideological issues like the US has. Those can be ironed out. And honestly the US administration also has an ideological hatred for Europe, as illustrated by the vice presidents own words. Not really conducive to any sort of deals.

As for China dumping cheap things here, as you said, EU is very protectionist (China is as well), and EU consumers have a lot less appetite for consumption than the US. I really think that is less a problem than you believe.

> Trump no doubt damaged ties, and again I think the Biden administration's approach was superior in many ways, but there's a limit to what agreements the EU will make with China.

I think you really downplay the kind of generational damage the US is doing to the relationship with former allies.

> The manufacturing capacity that the Chinese have built isn't sustainable without a substantial increase in Chinese domestic consumption.

You forget that China is only in a trade war against the US. The US is in a trade war with everyone else.

> Those can be ironed out.

Depends on the specific trade issue. There's a limit to what can be ironed out, and the large bulk of the problem is that both the EU and China are rather protectionist even compared to the United States and so for either to iron out these trade issues they'll have to both open their markets. So far that hasn't worked out for the United States, even prior to the ideological battles, and I'm not sure I see a path forward for the EU that's significantly different than the status quo.

Also China is happily helping Russia fight a war in Europe so I wouldn't be so quick to assume the EU only has a trade issue with China - that's rather naive.

> I think you really downplay the kind of generational damage the US is doing to the relationship with former allies.

I was just in France for two weeks, nobody I spoke to in my broken French really gives a shit outside of "man that guys sucks right?" The internet isn't day-to-day life. For some reason people think that political grandstanding and harsh rhetoric is only an American phenomenon and that European leaders don't do the same. The issue with Canada I would argue is much more as you are describing, and is rather unfortunate to say the least.

> You forget that China is only in a trade war against the US. The US is in a trade war with everyone else.

Sure ok - feel free to buy all the Chinese products that are made and shipped to your country from China. Best of luck! Let us know how that turns out for you.

> Also China is happily helping Russia fight a war in Europe

The US is also helping Russia in its efforts right now, it's important to underline this.

While China is more pragmatically washing their hands and keep trading with Russia, the US actually calls for Ukraine to just capitulate.

> I was just in France for two weeks, nobody I spoke to in my broken French really gives a shit outside of "man that guys sucks right?" The internet isn't day-to-day life. For some reason people think that political

1) I don't live in the internet. I barely have any online presence beyond this forum.

2) People are generally polite. I know people from the US, from very liberal to very MAGA. I try to be pleasant to them. And I don't fault them for their government, even the ones that obviously voted for the current president.

3) When I speak about generational damage to relationships, I am talking at the diplomacy level. Building a web of great allies was something that the US could do after the two world wars because the opportunity was there and they seized it. I think it will be very hard, on a diplomatic level, to repair that. This ship has already sailed.

> Sure ok - feel free to buy all the Chinese products that are made and shipped to your country from China.

Have been for a while. I don't see that as a huge problem. As I said, Europe consumers have a lot less appetite for consumption than the US ones. Partly for cultural reasons, partly because the US had the strength (yes, strength) of commandeering a huge trade deficit that actually benefits immensely its economy.

There are some industries that for strategic importance is good to have around, but I would see no benefit in bringing over manufacturing like textiles or cell phone assembly sweatshops. Those can stay in China no problem.

Protectionism is good only for what you need protectionism.

> The US is also helping Russia in its efforts right now, it's important to underline this.

1. That's definitely false.

2. China supplies intelligence to Russia and also equipment directly or indirectly.

3. The US continues to provide intelligence and directly military support to Ukraine.

> People are generally polite. I know people from the US, from very liberal to very MAGA. I try to be pleasant to them. And I don't fault them for their government, even the ones that obviously voted for the current president.

Right - but that's not because people are seething with anger at the United States (aside from Canada which is deserved), it's because life goes on.

> When I speak about generational damage to relationships, I am talking at the diplomacy level. Building a web of great allies was something that the US could do after the two world wars because the opportunity was there and they seized it. I think it will be very hard, on a diplomatic level, to repair that. This ship has already sailed.

You're over-reacting. We dropped nuclear bombs on Japan and we're best buddies now. It's certainly a temporary setback, however. There's a lot of political grandstanding but that's just for placating domestic audiences. EU and US are the same there, as is China and Russia. Talk big and all that.

> Have been for a while. I don't see that as a huge problem. As I said, Europe consumers have a lot less appetite for consumption than the US ones.

Great, this seems like a win. European customers will buy more of the Chinese products (China needs to sell them somewhere to make up for losses in US sales so that'll be going to your markets), and the US will just suffer without the imports and everyone wins and America loses. That sounds just fine to me. We can be less consumerist oriented and the EU and China can increase their consumerism. Well, unless you're suggesting the EU won't buy more Chinese made things, in which case who will buy the Chinese products?

As I said before, you very much downplay the sort of damage the US is causing to its relationship with former allies. For example, you seem to forget the very real threats of US annexing Greenland, which is part of Denmark. Such an act of war would force every EU nation to go in its defense, even non-NATO ones. This is far beyond political grandstanding.

As for the rest, I think you very much downplay the gravity of going in a trade war with the whole world at once can do to the US economy, while you massively amp up the damage simple trade between China and EU can do to EU.

This conversation quickly got nowhere anyway, and I already said everything I wanted to. Time will tell who is right. Feel free to have the last word, and have a pleasant evening.

> As I said before, you very much downplay the sort of damage the US is causing to its relationship with former allies.

No, no I'm really not. It's more so that you are overstating the damage. All of a sudden we are "former allies" now? That's nonsense.

> For example, you seem to forget the very real threats of US annexing Greenland, which is part of Denmark. Such an act of war would force every EU nation to go in its defense, even non-NATO ones.

There's 0 chance the European Union would go to war with the United States over this. Not that I condone it, but it just won't happen. The EU can't fight Russia (why are 500 million Europeans asking 330 million Americans to defend them from 180 million Russians?) let alone the United States.

> As for the rest, I think you very much downplay the gravity of going in a trade war with the whole world at once can do to the US economy, while you massively amp up the damage simple trade between China and EU can do to EU.

Well we're not really in a "trade war with the whole world" - many tariffs haven't been implemented, some are already being suspended, exceptions are carved out, etc. I don't agree with the way we're going about things, but I think you're overstating things again. The EU isn't going to absorb the former US - China trade. That's simple a fact of reality.

I'm sad you feel the conversation got nowhere, but I suppose that happens when two people just see the world fundamentally differently. I have no interest in getting in the last word, I simply am interested in discussing and debating things and so I usually reply. I sincerely hope you have a good evening as well.

> No, no I'm really not. It's more so that you are overstating the damage. All of a sudden we are "former allies" now? That's nonsense.

It’s your president and VP saying it (and a lot of their acolytes). What do you call an "ally" who threatens to invade you? And don’t say it’s not serious. The bullshit trade wars was also something that was not serious and that he would not do, until he actually did it. A tip we learnt the hard way and that may be useful: when a wannabe dictator tells you what he wants to do, believe him.

> Depends on the specific trade issue. There's a limit to what can be ironed out, and the large bulk of the problem is that both the EU and China are rather protectionist even compared to the United States and so for either to iron out these trade issues they'll have to both open their markets.

It’s not a hypothetical. The EU in general is a trade partner of China. Both have a long history of trading with ups and downs, tensions and détentes. History is full of proofs that these issues can, in fact, be ironed out. We’ve been there before.

Similarly, there were a lot of trade skirmishes between the US and the EU (and various member-states before the EU was a thing). Again, nothing you cannot solve with diplomacy, negotiations and horse trading. What you are saying is fanciful.

> Also China is happily helping Russia fight a war in Europe so I wouldn't be so quick to assume the EU only has a trade issue with China - that's rather naive.

So is the US. I don’t think you get the full picture. As a citizen of one of your oldest ally, I have to tell you: the US are not the good guys in this. Trump is demonstrating every day that we cannot trust the US long term anymore, and that you could turn hostile very quickly. It pains me, but it is true. So you can talk all day about this and think that you are reasonable, but in fact it is completely unserious. Or indeed naïve.

> I was just in France for two weeks, nobody I spoke to in my broken French really gives a shit outside of "man that guys sucks right?"

The US have an advantage because regardless of the disagreements with France (and there were many), ultimately either side could rely on the other in the long run. Again, look at recent history. French people were at the "your countrymen are fine but your government sucks" with Russia about 10 years ago, they always have been mostly Russophile. Now, the vast majority of the population would tell you that Russians are murderous war criminals and brainwashed sycophants. What changed was that Putin got aggressive and it turned out that actually a lot of Russians supported him.

The parallel with the US right now is clear. Trump is agressive and you collectively support him. He won the election fair and square, including the popular vote.

So, give it time. 4 years of this and there will be much less sympathy for normal American people in Europe.

> For some reason people think that political grandstanding and harsh rhetoric is only an American phenomenon and that European leaders don't do the same.

Again, you don’t understand. The issue is war at our doorstep and a hostile neighbour that thinks its sphere of influence includes half the continent. It is not grandstanding, it’s about our future. Look at what most European governments are doing and you will see that they are dead serious.

> Sure ok - feel free to buy all the Chinese products that are made and shipped to your country from China. Best of luck! Let us know how that turns out for you.

You don’t have a commercial problem with China. Nothing existential, anyway. China did not prevent you from reaching a peak in manufacturing what, 2 years ago? It does not prevent you from having an overwhelming military, or a disproportionate amount of soft power. It does not prevent you from flooding the world with your services.

The trade deficit is a red herring. You do have a strategic problem with China, because they want to kick you out of their backyard, and they want their turn at being the bully in chief. We are not in the same situation.

> Again, nothing you cannot solve with diplomacy, negotiations and horse trading. What you are saying is fanciful.

Why is it that the EU and China can have a long history of trade and détente, but the United States can't or doesn't? Remind me which country brought China into the WTO? Which country negotiated opening of Chinese markets to the world? Which country provided direct military support to China against the Japanese? Your premise is faulty. The United States has a long history with China and can engage in the same diplomacy and negotiation that the EU or its member states can. We also have agency, less you forget.

And why are you suggesting that the United States cannot also solve issues with diplomacy? Certainly in my view the Trump administration is doing a bad job at it today, but so what? Things change. Maybe we have tried diplomacy and been undercut along the way? You are being overly reactionary to words and statements and espousing an ideal that this is somehow "it" or the end of everything. I mean look at where you are already - you're literally arguing that the United States is helping Russia fight a war in Europe...

Last I checked the US has and continues to provide tens of billions of dollars in direct military equipment and financial support to Ukraine, and has continued to do so since the start of the war.

Trump running his mouth hasn't changed that, and I'm not sure if you're just spouting misinformation or generally misinformed, but China isn't providing that support to Ukraine, and it is providing support, albeit covertly, to Russia. How in the world do you equivocate the actions of China and the United States here?

It's unfortunate to read comments suggesting that I "don't understand" when you're borderline parroting Russian misinformation and suggesting the US is helping Russia.

> We are not in the same situation.

Then why the complaints? The EU can increase their trade and imports with China of very valuable technology at cheaper prices and the United States as we would like can reduce that trade. Everyone is happy.

What "the same problem" EU sees? Because one huge problem EU has is America being literally hostile nation, aligning itself with Russia and capitulating to it. Oh, and threatening annexation of parts of EU.

And and hostile tariffs from USA on flimsy excuses.

I believe we were talking about trade and tariffs, so the same problem that the EU would see in this context is that Chinese manufacturing is generally better and cheaper than what western nations currently do, so the EU will have to maintain current protectionist policies or enact further trade restrictions with China or risk losing jobs to cheaper and better products from China. Germany is going to protect its auto industry, for example.

Europe specialises in high-value manufacturing - aerospace, precision tools and machinery, some pharma. China has been trying to enter those markets, but not with great success.

China is much better at components, consumer items, and mid-weight machinery.

The EU also sells a lot of food, including staples like pasta, and also niche/prestige branded foods, some with localised brand name protection. (Like balsamic vinegar from Modena.)

They're not really competing markets. The auto industry is one of the few sectors with direct competition, and the EU is working on setting minimum prices instead of tariffs.

Not great success yet. But sure, hopefully the EU and China can work out a great trade deal that works for them since they're not as you say competing markets, and everyone but America wins. That sounds great to me.

It's not exceptionalism as much as authoritarianism. The lockdowns that happened in China for COVID were real and extreme. Meanwhile there were no lockdowns in the US and a significant chunk of the electorate acts as though there was extreme government overreach and in response gained control of large chunks of government with those arguments.

Sure, the Chinese government finally capitulated to citizen demand eventually, but the degree of control compared to the US is hard to overstate.

Americans nearly rioted over unenforced (effectively voluntary) Stay-At-Home and business closures that were openly ignored by business owners. If we can't even survive a few months of not buying khakis and eating at Olive Garden, how are we going to survive a hardcore and sustained trade war?

Americans are just like anyone else for the most part, albeit with some cultural differences.

We can put up with hardship just like anyone else, though our suburban ecosystems and factory farming make that more difficult than need be, it's just that we haven't had a real need to face true national hardship since World War II perhaps.

I don't disagree with the COVID-19 lockdowns or anything like that, but I'm not sure that's the best example here because as a nation we weren't really aligned on that being a hardship necessary to endure sacrifice.

And you think trade war with China is something that the entire nation believes is necessary hardship, when even Trump allies like Musk are speaking out against it, as is the entire business world?

Well I don't think it'll be that much of a hardship, but yea I don't think everyone is exactly aligned with how the Trump administration is going about it. Generally speaking "we have a problem with China - they took our jobs!" has broad consensus, at least in my experience. Also politically the Biden administration and others have undertaken steps to defend US economic interests against China.

I see no evidence that we will be aligned this time. A large portion of the population will be angry and blame Trump and the Republicans who supported this.

Personally I see it as a win-win. Tough on China, people get mad about their trinkets being more expensive, and then they kick the traitorous fools out of office and we go back to more sensible Democratic foreign policy and tough on China stances.

The same Americans who voted in Trump and gave Republicans in Congress a majority because of inflation? How long do you suppose it will take to build all the industries in the US to replace Chinese goods, and who is going to be performing the cheap labor making those goods after deportations kick into high gear?

America has survived stagflation before in the 70s, but there was a large political fallout.

> At the end of the day they lose millions of jobs, factories shut down, and people suffer there too regardless of the CCP marketing about being "tough" and "prepared".

I have the feeling, not only from this comment but also those about Foxconn suicide nets, that people have a hard time judging quite how big things in China are.

Losing a million jobs would change China's unemployment rate by… 0.14% of the workforce.

Great then it is very simple and it won't bother them too much and we can gain 100k* jobs or so and pay more to make things here and everyone is happy. China can stomach the loss of a few million jobs and they shouldn't complain since it's no big deal.

* Job loss/gains wouldn't be 1-1 as new US factories would likely use fewer workers.

> * Job loss/gains wouldn't be 1-1 as new US factories would likely use fewer workers.

Why in the world would you think this is the case? China leads the world in manufacturing efficiency, maybe behind only Japan and South Korea.

Oh so we would gain more jobs then? So we'll take a highly automated factory in China, shut it down since it won't be selling products to the US, build that factory here even though it might be a little less automated, and then we'll have the same number of jobs and maybe more than the Chinese factory had? Sign me up! That sounds awesome.

If there is a goal for more factories in the US, and it's certainly not clear at all that this is a policy goal of the current US executive branch, there's not a clear route to achieving that goal.

If the factory gets staffed at all, it will be competing in a labor pool in the US that only has 4.2% unemployment. The high employment rates, and inability to find workers during Biden's presidency, led employers to revolt against Biden.

The question is whether those automated factory jobs will be better than other jobs for the workers, whether they will be created in places with the appropriate worker pool (education, unemployment high enough etc.).

There's also the question of whether there's anybody willing to build some new high-cost automated factory when the same capital could be deployed to another purpose that likely has a far higher capital return rate. There's almost zero protection that the impetus for having the expensive highly-automated factory--namely the tariffs--will exist past for most of the life of the factory. Or in fact if they will even be in place by the time that the factory is constructed and ready to go, which will take a minimum of 3-4 years.

All the stars have to align perfectly for some sort of new jobs to appear and then it's not clear that they will be better than existing jobs. And if it does happen, we all suffer from several years of being poorer in the mean time.

All great points and great questions - today however they're not really available for consideration because those jobs remain in China.

I mentioned in another post, but I think having a 4.2% unemployment rate and putting even more pressure on that rate is a good thing, particularly for workers who will see wages rise, and technology as new automation techniques will be created to also alleviate that same pressure.

The status quo today is, well, we have none of that and those factories sit in China and we continue to buy things and ship them over - not really great for the environment either.

> And if it does happen, we all suffer from several years of being poorer in the mean time.

Yes, that's kind of how America operates - quarter by quarter. We focus on the short-term and worry about Temu products* doubling in price, but fail to see the long-term implications - economic outflows, loss of manufacturing capacity and know-how, etc.

* Yes, I know China manufactures more than these specific products and "we can't", which is all the more reason we need to figure out how to do it, even if it costs more money to do so. Absolute efficiency and the cheapest possible price for a good/product are not ends in themselves, but outcomes to economic policy decisions we make.

They'd think it because otherwise the prices would be too high and it would be difficult to sell the goods. If iphones go to $3000, the market for iphones will get much thinner.

That doesn't explain the ratio. If a highly efficient and automated China is employing (say) 1e6 people to supply US demand, it's implausible that anyone (including the US) would be able to spot a way to fire 90% of the factory workers when rebuilding the production line at same capacity anywhere else (including the US).

Of course, I simplify. But despite the wage difference, China's no longer the place you go to substitute expensive machines for cheap humans.

The wage difference between the USA and China also means that for any given product, there's a minimum tariff below which it still makes more sense to import and pay the tariff rather than to pay local workers. To paint a very broad brushstroke, if I naïvely compare GDP/capita, that's about 558% — from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... I get US 90,105 and China 13,688; then 90,105/13,688 = 6.58…, less 1 because tariff of 0% means the importer pays 100% of the money to the exporter.

To be clear I was suggesting that the number of jobs gained in the USA would not be 1-1 with the number of jobs currently in a given hypothetical factory. I.e. the Chinese factory loses 100 jobs, a corresponding American factory is unlikely in my view to gain 100 jobs, and instead the number may be much lower.

I guess it's possible if China is that good at efficient manufacturing that the number of jobs in the United States would increase relative to the job loss of the same factory in China, but I wouldn't view that as a bad thing. Higher employment and more wage pressure for regular workers, and companies will have to invest in better technology and processes to alleviate that wage pressure.

Why do you expect to gain jobs?

The US is currently at fairly high employment[0]. To a first approximation, if you attempt to move factory jobs to the US, not only do you need to build a factory, someone not currently working in a factory has to loose their non-factory job… or you have to encourage a lot more parenting and wait about 18 years[1].

More likely is that the US looses all the jobs that the imports were dependent on, and unemployment goes up.

"Dependent on" is also hard to determine. Lots of people now rely on smartphones, and even in a scenario like this the phones themselves won't evaporate overnight — they won't even really shift back to being the status symbol for the wealthy that they once were given how cheap the cheap brands are, but for the stake of illustrating the impact of consequences, *if* they were to shift back to being that status symbol, gradually there would also be much less call for mobile app developers and Uber, Delivery Hero, etc. drivers.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

[1] or whatever school leaving age + 9 months works out as; theoretically there's also "encourage immigration", but that's already been ruled out.

> Why do you expect to gain jobs?

Because we don't live in a static equilibrium with respect to population? Even if we didn't gain jobs because the population was stagnant, this just puts wage pressure on employers to the benefit of workers. Or is that not a good thing?

But you are providing an argument against your own point:

> More likely is that the US looses all the jobs that the imports were dependent on, and unemployment goes up.

> The US is currently at fairly high employment[0]. To a first approximation, if you attempt to move factory jobs to the US, not only do you need to build a factory, someone not currently working in a factory has to loose their non-factory job

Which is it?

> Because we don't live in a static equilibrium with respect to population? Even if we didn't gain jobs because the population was stagnant, this just puts wage pressure on employers to the benefit of workers. Or is that not a good thing?

Wage pressure in this case would be pointing in the opposite direction.

First: If the average tariffs are less than something like 558%, at current salaries and exchange rates it is currently still cheaper to import, because US salaries (well, nominal GDP/capita, I approximated) are on average that much higher than Chinese salaries. The Chinese can cope with this because of two things you don't have: (1) lower starting expectations because they're moving through the process of industrialisation and started low, (2) lower cost of living. This means that below that level (which a more detailed analysis will likely show varies between products), all the tariffs do is act like a stealth purchase tax that reduces aggregate demand without inducing production to relocate (though production may *claim* to relocate for reasons of political correctness, they won't actually move from tariffs below this level).

Second: The only way to free up US workers to work in these factories, is to first cause massive unemployment so that people are willing to take on much lower paid manufacturing jobs. Otherwise everyone says "no, I will not take this stupid manufacturing job that pays $6.5k/year, why would I want that? This won't even cover my rent!"

And that $6.5k/year is what I've heard Foxconn pays line workers — great when your rent is $2k/year; awful when your rent is $2k/month. If there were any wage uplift from moving the jobs themselves, it would act exactly like a permanent tariff, and lower aggregate demand accordingly.

> Which is it?

Which is what?

Those are the same point.

To move a factory, people have to stop doing the work they're currently paid to do.

Destroying your ability to import things that people need for their work will indeed free up people to make those things in local factories, by massively increasing unemployment. Do you, personally, want to switch from your current job to making iPhones?

> To move a factory, people have to stop doing the work they're currently paid to do.

> Destroying your ability to import things that people need for their work will indeed free up people to make those things in local factories, by massively increasing unemployment. Do you, personally, want to switch from your current job to making iPhones?

I don't, but that's because it wouldn't be economically productive for me to do so. For someone working at Waffle House it might be.

Let's be very clear though that every economic decision we make as a country has repercussions, and winners and losers. Remember the coal workers who had to Learn 2 Code?

> all the tariffs do is act like a stealth purchase tax that reduces aggregate demand without inducing production to relocate (though production may claim to relocate for reasons of political correctness, they won't actually move from tariffs below this level).

Well we do need to raise taxes to pay for these services we want and/or to reduce the national debt. I don't believe that this is the best or only way to do that but that's a nice benefit in the scenario you are describing. If we purchase less that's better for the planet too.

No doubt many companies won't relocate at least in the short term, but some will.

I don't disagree with your assessment related to the average tariffs right now, but that figure is very much subject to change, and something like the exchange rate where China has put artificial pressure on the currency to keep it lower in value than it might otherwise be is an example that I think would be worthwhile analyzing when looking at the entire picture.

> The Chinese can cope with this because of two things you don't have: (1) lower starting expectations because they're moving through the process of industrialisation and started low, (2) lower cost of living.

Cope in what way? America will be just fine even with higher prices or even supply change shortages and can find other manufacturers to produce goods. China will be just fine too losing money and jobs but finding other markets like the EU for products that no longer come to America. Both countries can cope with less trade with each other. I've seen this trope repeated time and time again in these discussions about how China somehow is exceptional and can cope with struggle more than Americans and it's just as faulty of an assumption as claims to American exceptionalism are.

> Wage pressure in this case would be pointing in the opposite direction.

> Those are the same point.

I don't think so but maybe you cold elaborate if you have the inclination? It's also a little difficult to discuss because neither of us have really laid out assumptions very well so we may be discussing different things at times.

Generally speaking though in the case of unemployment rates which I think is what I was responding to, having to build new factories in the United States (however many) with a low unemployment by definition would increase wages simply due to labor supply and demand.

The person I was responding to (again going off memory here and could be wrong and I apologize if so - maybe it was you! :) ) was supposing that this was a bad thing or that the jobs couldn't come back because of the low unemployment rate because there wouldn't be any workers.

I disagree with that general assessment completely.

We would see a rise in wages and increases in investment in automation and manufacturing technology due to the rise in labor cost.

> it does not have any Vietnam hawks

Only chickenhawks that dodged the draft

In the mind of a serial bankrupcy expert being in debt gives one leverage. In reality all the piled up treasuries give China breathing room and their sell-off would put the US under stress. The US may be the largest customer of China but is dwarfed by internal customers and the rest of the world. Loosing customers hurts China but it can be compensated. Now as a supplier of volume goods China is much harder to substitute. And as a supplier of specialized high-tech goods China is impossible to substitute. Loosing suppliers in manufacturing breaks complete value-chains so there is colateral damage. On the other hand imagine some smaller critical US component breaking a supply chain in China - there will be fewer of such cases and bad cases can be handled with exceptions. Much different from the US situation where there are many more specialized components from all over the world are impacted.

Let's look at car head-lights. These are highly integrated components, designed and manufactured by third parties using tools made by forth parties with the knowledge not in the hands of the car manufacturer. Swapping them may well need re-designs and re-certification. Hard to put an estimate on the overall process but it won't be quick.

And last but not least how is new business attracted: The rule of law makes a country safe for an inherrently very risky process of overseas investments. Expats are critical resources for knowledge ramp-up and managing the first years. Billionairs with a seat on Trumps table may not care so much about the rule of law but SME business do. Expats who may move with their family need to be able to rely on visa, green cards and travel being safe. The opposite of what is needed to attract business is done as far as one can see from afar.

A trade war with no clear path for winning started from a position of weakness.

China's economic situation right now is worse than the US. They have incredible debt (accounting for provincial debt which is essentially state debt, China is not a federation), a massive housing asset bubble, and an aged population that is expensive to care for. Never mind also being stuck in a deflationary cycle with a high youth unemployment rate. And this is just working with the self-reported numbers from an authoritarian regime.

The biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the biggest crunch to China will be the worker. People in the US will need to buy less shit, and pay more for what they do buy. People in China will need to work fewer hours and bring home less money.

Of course, the situation is fractal and ridden with unknowns. But I think a lot of people have this view of China as being a young slick economic powerhouse and the US being a weak economy with old decrepit money pile. That's far from the truth.

What is the difference between paying more for the item VS having less money to spend? Both to me seem like being unable to afford the things you need.

Americans buy a ludicrous amount of stuff they only think they need. American consumerism is unrivaled in the world.

In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity. From having too many calories available cheaply. Let that sink in. The US is so much further from "needs not being met" than anyone understands.

right, but so far the consumerism has been the only thing doing bread and circuses away from the real problems of housing and whatnot.

it's interesting that many things like televisions and phones went from being multiples of rent or mortgage payments, to the reverse, so now cutting back on consumer spending to afford necessities wouldn't do a whole lot.

I'm not worried about the consumer aspect at all. It will be painful and maybe pull the wool off all the trumpets eyes, reveling his idiocy. But people are not going to be starving. Maybe starving for new clothes and iPhones like they get all the time.

I do worry though about embedded costs up the supply chain the depend on Chinese made things. The parts of parts that go into machines that are made domestically. I think that has potential to be the real knife in the back. Most things need all the pieces to work, and even though the machine is 90% made in USA, the last 10% that is a Chinese export is going to cause pain in all sorts o unexpected places.

The US has one of the largest agricultural sectors in the world, it should be no surprise that food is not in short supply. But we don't live in an era where people live in homes built from local gathered sticks and rocks and just need food to survive, our modern lives depend on far more than just food. Poor people are fat because we made extremely calorie dense foods the cheapest foods, poor people often shop by calorie per dollar, not because they have extra cash to throw around.

Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford.

<< Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford.

The question is not what you can afford. The question is what you can get. And whatever else you want to say about US system, it made the ability to show that you have $desired_item257 relatively easy to obtain even at low income level. It is genuinely not impossible to own status luxury items with aggressive financing.

In the US half of consumer spending is done by only the top 10%

[1]: https://hive.blog/economy/@davideownzall/in-the-us-the-top-1...

There is a lot of poverty in the US.

It's more expensive to buy and prepare fresh food than shelf stable ultra processed foods and requires more time. Poor people have access to 'poor' calories. I would wager that children would also inherit the eating habits of poor parents.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20720258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684391/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254327/

This is flat out advocating "the Maduro diet" as a good thing.

> In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity.

Are there any developed countries where "can get enough calories" is a real question?

Long term savings, productivity increases, and infrastructure investments. Buy less today to have more tomorrow. The us individual hardly saves at all, the US gov/society has financed decades of deficit spending n the outcome of ww2, 20th century global industrialization, and the “exorbitant privilege” of financing/coordinating it.

Common opinion is that china has the opposite problem, with massive productivity outputs being shipped overseas and a population base who cant/wont consume their own outputs.

While this is all true, China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling t-bills) whereas the leadership in the US is so economically illiterate that it thinks trade deficits are theft and that tariffs are free tax money that will strengthen the US.

The US's current leadership is so economically illiterate that most of the people who backed Trump thought he was just joking about his economic policy. When the stock market finally realized that he was so stupid as to follow through on campaign promises the stock market tanked. It is currently only held up at current depressed levels because it is assumed that Trump will back away from the trade war.

Though the US economy is the strongest and healthiest on the planet by a large margin, and while typically the president of the US has minimal impact, we find ourselves in a strange situation where the president has found a way to throw all that supremacy away.

>China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling t-bills)

China has been divesting itself of treasuries for a long time: a) because they create coupling between the two economies, and b) they know that the US will simply freeze them if China invades Taiwan. If China dumped all of its treasuries at once, it would hurt a little, but not that much.

A small amount of selling T-bills from bond vigilantes already caused Trump to drastically pull back his plan once. If a holder as large as China started a big dump of T-bills it would cause a massive financial disaster. China would feel some pain too, but the US having far higher interest rates as it rolls over new debt into new T-bills would be extremely difficult for us. We are at economic Mutually Assured Destruction levels this is still a lever that China can pull that is in their favor.

In some sense Trump and co would want China to sell their t-bills. It will weaken the dollar (increasing competitiveness of US exports) and strengthen the yuan (decrease competitiveness of Chinese exports).

To some degree is it possible to frame this whole situation as America intentionally tanking the dollar because it is too strong (which has happened twice before, albeit in more diplomatic ways). The hard part though is getting our economic allies to go along with it while also not abandoning dollar supremacy.

How does the strongest boxer ever intentionally get weaker to avoid permanent injury, while also keeping bettors confident in his winning streak? It kind of needs to be done, but man I cannot think of a worse person to execute this than Trump.

I'm sure that China will suffer greatly from any trade war, and I'm positive the US will blink first. Chinese consumer and workers are already significantly less likely to revolt, stop working, drag their country down. The second that dollar store becomes $10store in the US, it'll be pandemonium, and they only have a single person to blame for their troubles. China? They may be doing anti-competitive trade practices and haven't been put to task, but if you ask the Chinese citizen who to blame on the trade war, it'll be trump. If you ask a US citizen who to blame for this trade war, it'll be trump.

In this case, that seems pretty accurate? Trump is indeed the one that started the trade war. External enemies are easier to unite against etc.

Our tiktok/instragram/youtube has been downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few weeks.

Sounds like we need to really start hustling and push the lie flat movement hard on the Chinese platforms.

In the meantime Trump will find a way to blame Biden, he has already started.

> downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few weeks

Can you link some examples? I (shamefully) have been spending a lot of time on TikTok lately but it's mostly devoid of politics.

My YT home page is still the same 3-4 topics I already watch most often. No politics.

I made a new TikTok account out of curiosity after Trump "saved" the platform. No exaggeration, half of the "For You" content was from "Team Trump" or Charlie Kirk. They are actively pushing propaganda, but I've seen no signs that it's Chinese propaganda, unless you assume that Bytedance is bowing to Trump, and that Bytedance is controlled by the Chinese Government, which just raises more questions.

Youtube Premium is the only "streaming service" I actually pay money for, and I use it quite a bit. Rarely ever does something off the wall get pushed to me. I do consume politics on YT, and occasionally something right wing shows up, but it's rare. I have no doubt that this stuff would be prioritized on a new account though.

> I've seen no signs that it's Chinese propaganda, unless you assume that Bytedance is bowing to Trump

Have you not noticed that he keeps pushing out the enforcement date for the tiktok sale legislation?

He's extremely transactional. So why do you think he keeps giving them a break?

Probably because the content on TikTok is extremely favorable to Trump. I don't see how that counts as propaganda coming straight from the CCP.

The TikTok bill appeared to have died on the vine until it started to get a lot of Pro-Palestine content then all of a sudden it reappeared and the ban got put into law. I think Trump stopping the ban was actually the first major loss for pro Israel interests(certainly not the last we have seen so far).

They've removed a lot of por Palestine content by shadowbanning creators and not recommending videos, though. Not really a loss :(

I would say its not that extreme on the platform(I still see the week old TikTok posts sometimes reposted on other platforms) but regardless, the damage has been done. As they continue to lose this information war, their tactics become more and more unhinged. See the recent bill banning boycotting Israel products with a punishment of a million dollars fine. It was met with such backlash that politicians quickly withdrew it. Even MAGA jumped on board to block that.

I actually have made it a personal rule to never sign up for TikTok. Instagram usually gets the stolen reposted content of whatever trends on TikTok a week ago. Browsing Instagram on the phone you are just swiping and taking in whatever the algorithm feeds you and unless you save it, that content might be gone forever. Who knows how much slop has just "drive by" messed up my brain.

Nevertheless I saved a couple pieces I found interesting or amusing:

[1]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGz-LXXRuZT/

[2]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIcfiVwyobj/

[3]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIctsOCC5Zy/ (<- that one got me bopping to the song lol)

[4]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DItvZlXtnPJ/

[5]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DI4AcPvMuCt/ (Guess the algorithm thinks I like Tom & Jerry lol)

[6]: https://www.instagram.com/barto_lovo/reel/DILkfVzt-vs/

[7]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIPhTmjSOIb/

> Sounds like we need to really start hustling and push the lie flat movement hard on the Chinese platforms.

Why?

The more obvious solution is to just blame the person responsible for the mess instead of trying to get involved with other countries' politics.

Like it or not this is a competition between two nations. If they are going to push content that sways the populace by exploiting weaknesses why not the other way around?

You are acting like this started as soon as Trump opened his mouth, its been in the shadows for years but it really ramped up after he started this nonsense.

It's a competition between nations, but why support the political party that straight up says they hate you just because China also hates them?

Like, if I hate the idea of eating kittens, and someone I hate also says they hate the idea of eating kittens, I'm not going to say "oh hell no, I can't let them shittalk OUR kitten eaters!"

I'm just going to be like "yeah, they have a point on this one", accept that a broken clock is right twice a day, and move on. Nationalist/jingoist garbage just for the sake of it makes countries worse.

There are many ways you can look at this situation. In my view, I don't think its a matter of hate. You gotta separate the actions of the clown on top with the actions of the government. The government is tasked with protecting the people and ensuring their best future. To them, it does not matter if its competing against China or any other country. Its not personal, its business.

To that end, the US's rivals have long used its weaknesses against it. While there are unconfirmed reports that China and Russia helped to prop up BLM in 2020, we do know for a fact that the USSR fanned the flame of racial tensions during the cold war. The best way to fight this? Get as close as you can to a fix for the problem. In that regard the USSR's attacks could have been used against them as a motivation to improve things and the US has improved.

Likewise its questionable if pushing the lie flat movement would harm regular Chinese people. From the government's POV, it looks bad: Chinese people being worked to death, can't afford a one bedroom apartment and one couple has to take care of possibly four elderly people. Of course some will just decide to 'opt out'. Makes China look bad while also possibly helping regular Chinese people in the long run.

>If you ask a US citizen who to blame for this trade war, it'll be trump.

Not the MAGA/Fox News Watcher, they simply don't live in reality.

Luckily the "swing" voters aren't that dumb, they will realize they fucked up voting for Trump and he's to blame even if they won't admit it.

China faces many long-term headwinds but they're not in crisis yet. The Chinese housing bubble has been deflating since 2020. The state pension and healthcare systems are less than generous so care for the elderly is not that expensive (yet). And Chinese government debt is less than half the US despite being 5x the population.

At the end of the day, the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt, but China is far better placed to weather the loss than the US.

> the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt

Just noting that trade can often find a new country so it's unlikely that 8% will all simply vanish. How much will vanish I don't know, but not all.

Whereas it is near certain that items going into the US will be priced higher. Tariffs have to be policed after all.

Do you have any links to support the assertion that China debt is worse than US?

I think most of the Chinese debt is actually internal, whereas most of the US debt is external?

China is also a large external creditor, for example holding a large amount of treasury bonds from other countries.

I certainly don't know how either of those impact the calculus of which is worse and/or more manageable though.

Almost all of US debt is internal. Social security and the federal reserve are the two biggest holders. Only 25% is in other countries, and the largest single other country is Japan at 3%.

If there is a secret Trump plan to devalue the dollar and force us treasury holders to accept cheaper longer term debt, the biggest plenary will be to social security.

One visualization:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-...

(Though on the last numbers I saw had the UK and China with far more similar amounts of holdings.$

Calling T-bills debt is only half the picture. They function more like dollars, whose value can be deflated or increased after issuance merely by changing interest rates.

Great info. I imagine most of that 20% of Intra-Governmental Debt is Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid?

US debt is also mostly internal. 2/3 of all US bonds are held by US citizens or companies. Of the foreign holders of US bonds, Japan holds the most.

Direct exports from China to the US is 15% of their total. It's the largest fraction but not a majority.

The US has tarriffed the entire world, and every category - finished goods and raw materials.

I'm Australian: I'm shopping on Aliexpress in another window right now. I'm going to keep doing that.

China has far more options in this then the US.

> biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the biggest crunch to China will be the worker

Why do you think America will have a layoff- and insolvency-free recession?

> Additionally, China is much better prepared for a trade war in that it has a populace that has been very well conditioned to go through hardship for longer term wins

It's funny that I saw more and more opinions that Chinese will win the trade war by shopping and eating out more.

Not to mention if your goal is to fix a trade imbalance with a specific country, you kind of need all of your allies to help you with it or it's never going to work.

As I've done with just about everything that makes no sense from this administration, I go back to: what would Russia want?

Russia would want the US to piss off both all of its closest allies and its largest trading partner at the same time, because it would significantly weaken the country, and potentially result in social unrest. They would want Trump to continually talk about annexing neighbors because it justifies their attempts at annexing Ukraine.

Until someone can give me an explanation that makes more sense than: Putin is pulling Trump's strings - I'm going to continue to just assume he's literally a Russian asset.

At the risk of going full Sweeny Todd with Occam's Razor, what if it's as simple as enriching himself and his cohort via market manipulation?

For that to work, you need to know that the market will recover. One short bout of playing with tariffs might be recoverable, but he's reaching the stage of long-term damage on tariffs such that companies are avoiding import/export relationships with the USA. Also hacking off allies doesn't fit with enriching him or his cronies.

Hard to argue with that. If I can inject a random thought, might not even be worth a reply.

What if the goal is to deepen income inequality? Opening up low income jobs by deportation. Impoverishing households whose primary savings were in stocks, not business ownership or real estate. Hurting consumers, especially those whose disposable income is lower.

It most certainly is. This crew would rather be kings of a ruined plantation of a country than to have a middle class with any economic or political power. And that goes double for their attitude toward non-whites.

Every lower middle class person, can "command" about 100 other 1/100ths of a person to supplant their life with food, fuel, vehicle, staples, etc. But billionaires have the labor of 1000s or more people at their fingertips. It doesnt matter if the 1000 are destitute, undernourished, sick, weak, dumb, or unhappy, as long as they're subservient enough to maintain or increase class division.

Hanlon's Razor could also be used here, and it isn't treason or greed, but just plain old stupidity.

Putin has convinced Trump, both overtly and covertly, that Trump can have what Putin has - personal control over a country of oligarchs. All Putin has to do to pull strings is feed Donald pointers that he willingly laps up.

Why not both? Russia mentoring the US admin on speed running towards authoritarianism (good for the cohort) while making the country weaker (good for Russia).

> If you were thoughtful about economic policy and truly believed a trade war was the solution, you'd prepare ahead of time (e.g. by stockpiling things like rare earth metals that are important to your economy and likely to be impacted by retaliatory tariffs).

Somewhat disagree -- stockpiling things is exactly the consumerism mindset that we (Americans) have all taken for granted and that no one seemed to have realized the potential growth in investing and/or building _actual_ infrastructure to accommodate the massive amounts of e-waste EOL versus just shipping them in bulk abroad to places like China.

I remember a story not too long ago where the CCP instituted a policy where they formally declared via the WTO to reduce their imports of American e-waste and effectively killed that faux industry. Faux as in that the stories that followed showed that our own recycling programs were just fronts to launder money than perform actual processing -- whether it'd be from lax oversight, cross-border shipments, mislabeling of contaminants, or being complicit in schemes to inflate their recycling credits globally.

Maybe its not directly REE related but we sure could have had those industries when it is still less unfavorable than the cost-benefit ratio of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing though the irony is, we're now less reliant on uranium imports from Kazakhstan and Russia (of all places).

It's hard to see what the Trump administration is doing and not assume their preferred outcome is hot war with China.

It kinda feels like they aren't taking time to consider the effects of their actions, and assume things will somehow work out.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness... and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

--The Great Gatsby

"Kinda"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Dugin envisions the fall of China. The People's Republic of China, which represents an extreme geopolitical danger as an ideological enemy to the independent Russian Federation, "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled". Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet–Xinjiang–Inner Mongolia–Manchuria as a security belt.[1] Russia should offer China help "in a southern direction – Indochina (except Vietnam, whose people is already pro-Russia), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia" as geopolitical compensation.[9] Russia should manipulate Japanese politics by offering the Kuril Islands to Japan and provoking anti-Americanism, to "be a friend of Japan".[9] Mongolia should be absorbed into the Eurasian sphere.[9] The book emphasizes that Russia must spread geopolitical anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."

> The book emphasizes that Russia must spread geopolitical anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."

And what better way to facilitate the scapegoating of the US than having an incompetent aggressive fool in the Whitehouse.

On the back of incredibly stupid identity politics that is easy to instigate in online spaces like twitter, where all the journalists go to find out what the most important topics in people's lives are...

Yup. That is how the incompetent fool in the Whitehouse pulled it off. Scam of the century.

My theory is that by sufficiently pissing off allies, we get kicked out of alliances, and that lets Trump reduce military spending. Without the tit-for-tat of military spending for social programs, the federal government gets massively downsized. The end goal is shrinking the government back to levels not seen proportionally since before WW2.

Trump already agreed to increase military spending by 12%, hitting a trillion dollars a year.

The reach of the US economy to the rest of world will be back to before WW2 too. If the USA step back other countries will fill the space they leave, especially if the USA vacate the military bases in Europe. Those countries will be more free to swing to another security and economy partner.

My question is how it's possible to massively shrink the government without simultaneously shrinking the economy and country as a whole.

The lack of stockpiling or any other preparations before issuing the shock to the markets makes me think this is a quick sell off of the country that only benefits a few investors at the top.

There is nothing preventing him from bringing the fleets and the boys back to the US and cutting the budget right now. In fact, he’s doing the opposite.

If you read Marcy Wheeler [1], she points out that the Trump administration just can't figure out how to negotiate. All three failed "deals": Harvard, Ukraine, tariffs.. there's just no ask there.

You're going to start a hot war with China demanding....what? That they reload the container ships with Shein clothing?

[1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/29/mr-art-of-the-deal-str...

Thats kind of my point -- they've been given an ultimatum that is logically impossible, and the only road left is escalation.

> the only road left is escalation.

The other road is isolation, which I find much more likely. They'll just cut us off completely and deal with it.

China has no interest in isolating from the rest of the world, Taiwan especially.

OP meant the US. The world and its allies will isolate US. Just like they did with Soviets.

These are not totally exclusive — the world may isolate the USA, and the USA may escalate with anyone (or everyone) to a hot war.

The other possibility is that there's no strategy or goal beyond the fact that Trump likes the word "tariff".

I don’t see the Chinese willing to escalate, at least not kinetically. For now, it looks more likely that they are going to let the US have enough rope to hang themselves, seize opportunities, and play the long game.

What you say sounds very disturbing, and also resonates with me in a way.

But one can still hope that the economic "warfare" won't become a literal one.

I'm not saying that I can tell how likely a real military conflict between any of China, Europe, India, Russia, the US actually is.

What I can tell is that even fellow agnostics should... pray (or hope) that this isn't the most likely scenario.

In this regard, I don't care about globalization, injustice + capitalism.

I truly just hope for the lesser evil.

Regardless of the continent, political system, leaders.

That seems like the sensible take, offshoring all manufacturing does not seem smart long term, but Trump is recklessly smashing things while stretching the powers of the executive branch.

I know nothing of economics, and am not trying to defend Trump's moves.

But, it is possible that his policy of "do everything at once, without taking the time to do it right" is more reflective of his belief that whatever he tries [even just being president] will be fought, so his options [from his POV] are "do it now" or "don't do it at all", not "do it right".

EDIT: Am willing to be learn, would the downvoters explain - do you disagree that this is his view? Or does his understanding not matter when he acts upon it?

That’s a premise that would make me consider the wiseness of my actions.

Have you listened to the guy talk? There isn't a comprehensible thought in there, and there hasn't been for years. He's old, older than Biden was when he started his term, and probably suffering from dementia.

edit: The pro trump voting bloc showed up. Comment went from +2 to -3 in a minute. This chain will probably be flagged to death within the hour.

I used to believe this. Now I believe we're supposed to believe this, and continue ignoring how calculated this mess actually is... and it's always too late when enough people catch on :(

I'm sure there are competent people whispering evil things in his ear, he appears very easy to influence. Just look at how he keeps flip flopping on Ukraine every time he talks 1-on-1 with Zelenskyy versus when he gets back to being surrounded by his cronies.

That doesn't make Trump any less demented.

>I'm sure there are competent people whispering evil things in his ear

They have a guy who can make the stock go up or down with a tweet, and usually seems to agree with the last thing he's heard. It's not difficult to see how this could be exploited for financial gain.

FWIW he seems to be losing this power. The last two weeks it feels like the market seems to be treating his emissions more like "whatever you say, old man" than it was last month.

Now it's just about the concrete numbers and "wait and see." It all looks a lot higher right now than I imagine makes any sense, but you know what they say about the market and irrtionality...

Some of that is the market doing the "la la la la la can't hear you!" thing, though. Which won't make the problem go away.

I suspect it's more... routing around the manipulation. If you have people basically obviously doing deliberate dump&pump&dump&pump loops... that only happens a few times before -- on the aggregate -- it gets averaged out by people figuring out that's what is happening.

There's plenty of people who are like myself... moved into cash just before Stupid Day, and then have been buying red, selling green every time He has a Nocturnal Idiot Emission / Repent cycle. I made a little bit of money, which is better than losing it... and now I'm just... waiting. There's likely millions of people like this.

Some of both.

JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon went from "get over it" to "oh fuck a recession" in a matter of weeks. https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/12/business/jamie-dimon-tariff-u...

Oh yeah for sure, I think we'll shortly hit the "... And Find Out" phase where the Reality TV Show becomes very unpleasant Reality

FWIW, Bill Maher met him, and said his public persona is an act.

This isn't even about how much of an asshole Trump is. It's about how he literally cannot string a sentence together.

It's not worth anything. I don't know where people get this idea that someone's "real" persona consists only of the things they say in intimate private settings. A guy who runs around saying things he knows aren't true and calling people names is a liar and a bully, even if he understands himself to be playing some kind of role or acts politely in 1:1 conversations with Bill Maher.

It might be that his private persona is an act. Why is that not a possibility?

Depending on the personae (is that a word?), it would be pretty clear, no? If one is really stupid and one is brilliant, how would the brilliant one be an act? If you can act brilliant, you are brilliant.

Trump seems to be a stupid person's ideal of what 'brilliance' is. So... his acting as brilliant is their version of brilliant, regardless of anything else. He is their alternative fact.

Also the weakling's idea of tough guy and the poor guy's ideal of a rich man.

> If you can act brilliant, you are

Reminds me of a story told by someone who was an intern or assistant for a politician (or consultant?) way back in the day before social media. They recount their first experience watching the politician at a town hall - they were late and apologetic, and gave a speech that was funny, compelling and authentic and the crowd ate it up.

They attended the next town hall, and the principal was late again, and proceeded to give the same speech, beat for beat. The same routine was repeated dozens more times at dozens of locations with different audiences, save for the politicians staff. In truth, the politician was not as funny or as sincere as the practiced speech and routine made them seem.

All this to say; acting funny or brilliant behind closed doors without cameras rolling doesn't mean you actually are those things. It's easy to recycle the same schtick after years of honing it and figuring out what works and what doesn't, Trump has impeccable showman instincts.

The story is from a co-host with Boris Johnson for some award ceremony. It’s a great read: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2449074521979085...

With Johnson I at least had the impression that he understood the showmanship aspect of it really well. Less so with Trump, at least it seems less polished.

It indeed was Boris - thank you! It's weird to compare my faulty recollection to the actual account; only 2 occasions narrated, not dozens - though it is implied, and the narrator wasn't an intern.

Bill Maher is a coward who is groveling because his personal sense of self-importance makes him believe he will end up in CECOT.

Groucho Marx quote comes to mind: "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."

I didn't say he is rational or even comprehensible - I said that he believes everyone is out to get him, and that explains the rushing way he acts.

The only reason he was the least bit acceptable to begin with is that Biden was even older.

But after Biden dropped out, nobody seemed to notice any more.

That’s because the GOP is mostly as bunch of greedy hypocrites who will say anything to gain power. They aren’t actually thinking or using logic or acting in good faith.

They’re being fought because many of the things he has done are wildly unconstitutional.

He has to do everything at once because he is a lame duck president so that part makes sense. The conflicting messages sudden reversal of plans causes the biggest issues.

Normally someone makes a case and tries to sell it to the public, congress. What's the purpose of tariffs to bring in income or to bring back jobs or to level trade agreements? You can't do all things at once and how does that work with other promises like lower prices. The lack of an overall plan is causing the issue.

If you take immigration he has a plan and he stuck to it and those are where his highest approval numbers are. Imagine he one day opens the border another day closes it starts kicking out American families the next day invites the world back in. That's his trade policy.

Get a solid plan, understand the downsides and if you can live with it stick with it and keep the personal insults out.

> he is a lame duck president

Doesn't his party control both houses of Congress?

Then why is he trying to rule 99% solo by executive order instead of working with congress to pass legislation?

1: I agree he should. Tariffs by presdential order is an obscene power for Congress to delegate.

2: What 10 democrats would work with Trump? It would be gridlock for four years (which is fine).

1.) I agree. However, if it other countries can impose tariffs at the drop of a hat and it takes a literal act of congress to pass a tariff, they'll never happen. Would that be a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not. Congress is obviously mostly useless. I was reading, of all things, a buzzfeed a few months ago where the biggest gripes of current house/senate members were along the lines of "it takes way too long to get anything done" and "I'm pretty sure most of my peers drink on the job"

I used the "act of congress" phrase intentionally, as it is generally a euphemism that describes, among other things, how long something can take or how hard it is to approve a thing.

I don't have a good solution to that problem.

Because he's a moron.

They have majorities, but arguably to "control" Congress, you need 60 votes in the Senate, otherwise most legislation can be blocked by the filibuster.

Do we love or hate kyrsten sinema for protecting the filibuster now?

By that definition there hasn't been a non-lame-duck President since Obama for a few months in 2009.

I'm just saying having a majority doesn't mean fully controlling congress. It has nothing to do with whether one is a lame duck.

Also, posting limits are annoying as fuck.

Still hate her (but Harry Reid far more). The filibuster is why we are in this mess - we can’t ever fix a problem. There will always be 41 Senators (often representing more cash and/or cows than people) to pass meaningful legislation.

Removing the filibuster can be done by majority vote, as it's just a rule of the Senate.

Yeah, that's why I blame Harry Reid.

How is he a lame duck President??

Hes the most powerful President America has seen in living memmory.

Or least-scrupulous, which looks similar in the short-term. :p

He is no more powerful than any other president. He has been using his power more than others - and demonstrating why most don't use it (well some of the reasons, there are a lot of other reasons not to use power).

However time is marching forward and as always happens other politicians are catching on - the house will be in full campaign mode in less than a year (except a few who retire - and the scary possibility that some have already lost a primary). 1/3 the senate is in the same situation. The 2026 election season is (as always) scaring a lot of politicians and in turn they will be trying to figure out what to do about it.

I can't tell you what will be done about it. Each politicians will make their own decision behind closed doors. Each will be re-evaluating their decision as every poll and constitute letter comes in (not to mention other indicators like the economy). As a result he will be losing power as congress starts to worry about the effect of his actions.

Given how much soft power the US lost by defunding USAID and alienating its allies, he’s actually the weakest president in a long time.

The strongest president of the weakest USA. It’s not mutually exclusive, there are lots of all-powerful dictators in tiny countries.

I'd argue post 9/11 Bush was the most powerful president. There was nothing that man wasn't allowed to do during that time. If Trump was president during that time.... Not something I want to think about.

> He has to do everything at once because he is a lame duck president

He is not. A President is a lame duck between the election of their successor and the end of their term, not at the beginning of their Constitutionally-final term.

That's the traditional meaning, but also commonly used to refer to politicians who are term limited, and can't run again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame_duck_(politics)#United_St...

A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen as a lame duck from early in the second term, since term limits prevent them from contesting re-election four years later.

He does not believe he can't run again, so it's a doubly inappropriate description.

And who will stop him from running again?

How bad are the economy and midterms going to be? Will Republicans think that supporting a 3rd Trump term will be good for their own reelection prospects?

They turned right around to pick him after the insurrection.

It looks like we are in for a pretty bad time economically. But even so, he is running the party. Wouldn't shock me if he ran again and got nominated.

I'd not be surprised if Republicans supported an illegal 3rd term run, other than the fact that I think they'll save their own reelection prospects first if it comes to that.

Trump and Steve Bannon have talked about finding a way to run for a third term.

> Get a solid plan

That is not the solution. In business yes, but for the president the answer is still NO.

Presidents should be eliminated for writing executive orders. It should be a constitutional amendment if necessary. Everything the president wishes to order is either under the responsibility of the legislature or is already within the President's scope of responsibilities.

Every president has used executive orders.

However congress shouldn't have left something so important as tariffs up for modification by executive order.

No, the executive order was an invention of Lincoln to bypass congress to expand war powers.

That is easy to refute.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federa...

While it might be easy to refute that article does not refute what I said. The only evidence to the contrary found in that article is an executive order from the 1830s that was repealed two years later, which doesn’t make a strong case of disagreement.

The article doesn't say what they were but George Washington issued eight.

It is also reflective of the fact that mid-terms are in 2 years and election campaigning starts in 3. Even if you believe tariffs will work, there will be short term pain. Best to run through that now in the hope that economic indicators are improving come election time.

that's been my thought on the admin's motiviations, do the hard part now and hopefully ride the wave back up through the midterms. voters have a short memory.

Sure, but what's going to cause a recovery from the Trump-cession we're about to enter? The pain is obvious, but where's the gain? America can't compete on cost with Chinese manufacturing, else it'd already be doing so, so you just end up with expensive "made in USA" stuff rather than cheap "made in China" stuff. The price hikes will be here to stay if that's the path we're going down.

How do we get cheap fruit & veg in the winter when it's not growing season in the US? If we're not going to import it, then I guess we need to grow it here in hothouses, and that's not going to be cheap either.

I'm guessing the midterms will be a bloodbath for the Republicans, and Trump is unlikely to care unless he takes his own 3rd term talk seriously.

If Trump believes that, it would reflect a complete lack of self-confidence in his negotiating skills.

Your question: Is it possible. Answer: Anything is 'possible'.

This is a sufficient question, and sufficient answer for a meager understanding of how economies work.

For the kind of place America is, with the kind of intellectual, economic, and procedural fire power it holds?

Again, he isn't President of some backwater, and he isn't lacking for advisors, to give even more sophisticated analyses than what any Econ 101 student can do.

And now, to your own point:

> he tries [even just being president] will be fought,

by who? the Repubs have all 3 branches. Thank god, otherwise people would spend another decade ignoring the obvious and blaming forces other than Trump and Trumpism for Trump's actions.

---

The emperor has no clothes. Everything else, is people projecting from past Presidents upon the tableau they see.

You’re being down voted because you’re not saying anything meaningful.

Yes, you can argue that [person] is [performing an action] because they believe, from their POV that [reason1, reason2, reason3].

> Or does [what person believes] not matter when they act upon it?

Yes.

What people choose to believe is distinct from fundamental baseline reality.

Let me put it another way for you; if I believe that fairies have invaded from space and I go out smashing peoples cars because, I personally, believe that this will make the fairies go home…

…does it help to argue about whether I believe in fairies or not?

It does not.

The arguement must be about whether fairies exist in baseline reality or not.

What I believe is not a point worth discussing.

…so, to take a step back to your argument:

Does he believe this will help? Who. Gives. A. Flying. Truck? Does it matter what he believes? Can we speculate what he thinks? It’s a useless and meaningless exercise and a logical fallacy; because anything can be justified if the only criteria are “you believe it will work”.

The discussion worth having is, in baseline reality, will it actually help?

Which is what the post you are replying to is addressing; but instead or following that up, you’ve moved this discussion into a meaningless sub thread of unprovable points about what people may or may not believe.

Which is why you’ve received my downvote.

This is a concept that is seemingly alien to Americans.

The consequences of your actions matter even if you disagree. When your actions hurt people, you've still hurt people. Doesn't matter what you thought you were doing.

You see this kind of thinking through all levels of American life. You, personally, are the only person on the planet who matters, fuck everyone else and let them deal with the consequences. You run a red light and someone else gets T-boned and killed? That's their problem, you got to your destination 3 minutes faster.

The trump administration is simply the manifestation of how sick our country is.

It's going to take us generations to recover from this kind of societal illness, if we ever can.

I downvoted you because it's politics, and there is always opposition, a plan worth acting on includes handling the opposition and having contingencies. This is true for every politician in every context for the history and pre-history of humanity.

The fact that the MAGAts are so utterly incompetent that even the idea of opposition sends them into chaos and whining fits while they control the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government is itself supportive of if the "these morons are too stupid to make a plan" type theories. Instead of planning they attacked anyone who asked how they would handle the obvious consequences, they deny that the obvious consequences that are clearly happening are actually happening. They attack anyone asking for metrics that the plan is working, make unbacked claims that they are in talks to fix the situation that caused the trade war (while refusing to even articulate what the goals are and attacking anyone who asks that too). They aren't even communicating with each other to coordinate something that looks like a plan: how many times have one group of lackeys been talking about plan X while another group or the president himself does the opposite to the surprise of everyone.

There is no evidence that one of the key bullet points of a campaign platform was ever more than a bullet point - no plan, no attempt to prepare for consequences, nothing indicative of a plan at all. They truly believed that imposing tarrifs would magically make factories appear overnight.

I'd be willing to consider that, but he's doing a ton of things that very clearly have _no_ upside and obvious downsides. As one example, he literally fired entire departments that were _generating_ money for the government. It's too clear that he's just doing whatever he happens to think of without putting any thought into whether it will actually be helpful.

I am firmly of the opinion that his only goal is the be the center of attention, and the more outrageous the things he does are, the better. Ie, there's no such thing as negative publicity.

You forgot his other goal m, which is to make him and his family wealthier. The back and forth on tariffs was certainly insider traded to hell.

The dismantling of government is an ideological goal — increasing government revenue isn’t a primary objective

It isn't Trump's ideological goal. His only ideology is being the center of attention and twisting arms to get bribes.

Other people in the administration or in the penumbra may have ideologies more advanced than this, but Trump definitely does not.

I downvoted you because there's nothing to suggest this viewpoint is grounded in reality, so it's not really worth discussing. His leadership style has always been autocratic & opposition from SCOTUS and his own party is pretty much non existent and the opposition from the opposition party is soft (not that they have the numbers to do too much anyway). He has basically ignored whatever pushback there had been in other policy.

He could do it the right way, if he wanted to.

What is this “it” you speak of.

Is it the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico? Or is it the rescinding of those tariffs a day later. Or is it the pause but when the pause was supposed to end nothing really changed?

Or is it the liberation day tariffs on everyone? Or the subsequent reduction of liberation day tariffs a few days later but an increase in tariffs against China.

Or is the “it” the fact that the administration reveals these major market moving actions a few hours before making them public to friends, family and donors?

Once anyone can figure out what “it” is supposed to be one can have a discussion about whether it’s good or not.

Yeah, worse than the tariffs is the drastic policy changes by the day/hour.

You can't expect companies to make long term capital investments when everything is in flux like this.

>without taking the time to do it right" is more reflective of his belief that whatever he tries [even just being president] will be fought, so his options [from his POV] are "do it now" or "don't do it at all", not "do it right"

This seems completely wrong and ascribes motivations to Trump he clearly doesn't have. I think his framing is much more "everything I do is correct therefore this will work." Everything he does makes sense when framed that way.

Yeah, I think there's plenty of evidence to contradicts the theory that Trump is somehow "now or never" decisive.

For example, his habit of promising all sorts of things in "two weeks" and then doing nothing. [0] Neither "now", nor "never", but always "soon".

Or look at the stream of inconsistency from the White House about quantum-mechanical tariffs, as they endlessly mutated between: On, off, on but only when being observed, paused, never paused that was fake news, on but a different set of tariffs, off because a fabulous deal was made but don't ask about the details because you wouldn't know that country anyway, etc.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZLmhF7TgzY

> For example, his habit of promising all sorts of things in "two weeks" and then doing nothing. [0] Neither "now", nor "never", but always "soon".

Something he has in common with Musk.

It has to do with countries not buying US treasuries. That used to be how the dollar system worked. Now that countries aren’t, tariffs are being used as an alternative. You can read the war finance article series for some background: https://advisoranalyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/zoltan...

There is no issue with countries buying us treasuries. They sail off shelves. Until the current administration started to make it look like there’s a possibility that the country may bankrupt itself, which threw a risk component into US debt for like the first time ever

I think the real risk isn't USA going bankrupt as much as the dollar losing significant value relative to other currencies, thereby making holding US debt a bad deal for overseas holders, and/or possibility that Trump could do something previously unthinkable such as stopping interest payments on debt or trying to "make a deal" and renegotiate payments in some way.

Trump's goal is strengthening his position in power. Changing the economy so that companies, states, and foreign countries depend on him is just what he wants.

I didn't downvote, but I don't think this seems like a very well thought out description of Trump's behavior. He doesn't care if he "will be fought", he wants to be fought, dramatically, because that's the show he's putting on. The fight is the whole point.

Perhaps, but who's the audience? Trump's 1st term fighting the "fake news" media was popular with MAGA and didn't cost them anything. Fighting rest of world on trade might also be popular in theory "trump being tough!", but will MAGA voters really eat it up if they are personally suffering financially as a result (& they'll be suffering the most since red state incomes tend to be lower than blue state ones).

Of course maybe the audience is Trump himself. He enjoys playing tough guy and could care less about the people who voted him in, or anyone else for that matter.

No, I don't think people are going to eat it up. I think he's screwing this all up, badly. He's an adept showman but very far from being infallible.

> "do everything at once, without taking the time to do it right"

Testing tariffs in realtime is nothing like, say, fuzzing idempotent methods in a framework.

It is a lot more like testing sending out spam from a set of static IP addresses. It's not just that you could fail-- it's that you could end up fucking up those IP's ability to send email into the foreseeable future.

You are making a valid point, in form of a question, despite the downvotes.

Presidents do typically get a pass during the first 100 days, and they do try to fit in as much as possible before inertia bogs down whatever they are trying to do.

I've heard the same said about Roosevelt (FDR). That he came in and made radical changes, defied courts, upset the norms, etc...

The problem is that the current president is going a bit more 'radical' than anybody has experienced since, lets say late 30's Germany. Like the executive order to send military equipment to the police to, lets say, 'quell dissent'.

So even thought Presidents do make big moves in the first 100 days, this is so far beyond norms, that saying it is "just typical of presidents in first 100 days" is really downplaying what is happening.

It seems that many did not come across https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes … and are still busy trying to figure out the allegedly intricate but evidently incorporeal designs this administration is wearing.

> it is possible that his policy of "do everything at once, without taking the time to do it right" is more reflective of his belief that whatever he tries [even just being president] will be fought

By whom? He has a subservient congress and the Supreme Court in his pocket. And he is willing to ignore anything the judiciary says anyway. Who is in a situation to hinder him right now, and in the next 2 years, in the US?

Democracies can’t plan far ahead.

Tell that to the Austrians, Italians or indeed the EU.

The Brenner tunnel is part of an EU-wide transport network called TEN, planned and built since he nineties. It hasn't taken 30 years because of delays, but rather because it required planning far ahead and a lot of execution.

They can. They need nonpolitical institutions with actual power. Yes it adds bureaucracy but it is more resilient. It doesn't take away from democracy, on contrary it strengthens it. The juridical power is one of those. Just like we don't vote on every single law, we should empower people who spend their entire career on specific areas of expertise to make long-term decisions. EU has this to a point. The US doesn't. Almost all of US institutions are political.

> That they haven't done that is one more indicator that they are thoughtlessly winging this.

Devils advocate argument could be that they needed to do this immediately and could not take the time to stockpile.

> Devils advocate argument could be that they needed to do this immediately and could not take the time to stockpile.

But they did not, though. Nobody gave any argument about why it needed to be done now instead of in 6 months or a year. We can speculate all we want, but the overwhelming evidence points to recklessness and stupidity.

The upcoming shortages are a new Pearl Harbor incident. The self-induced crisis will be fully blamed on China then leveraged to drum up popular support for a war against China.

What of the theory that they just want to inflate their way out of a debt crisis?

We would need to see some evidence of significantly reducing the rate that we take on new debt.

The only way to achieve that would be hyperinflation, which would be a worse option than the debt crisis

Covid lab leak theory wasn’t enough?

You’re an optimist. I kind of expect the Trump Administration to roll over when China goes to take Taiwan.

China will just say they're not blocking products, the US just needs to remove the self-induced tariffs and their products will come back.

Good point, though I'm pessimistic about people seeking the perspective of They, and pondering it, when Dear Leader says They did it

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