https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-own-the-most-u...
Domestic debt might not be such a big deal? Who is coming to collect?
Someone has to get screwed over when you do that, who do you suggest get screwed over?
What savings, USA just takes on more debt it hasn't saved anything.
Note the past tense as this advantage is now gone with Trump.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
Not all policy is rational. Oftentimes it's atavistic. Surely you have noticed by now that Trump deals in emotional arguments, not reasoned ones.
Old people with retirement needs. A lot of that debt is borrowed from SS surpluses in the past, and now the system is actually in deficit (so needs what it lent out back and then some). I’m all for screwing over boomers, psychologically I’ve convinced myself they are responsible for Trump and this mess (not entirely true, but the boomers as a generation messed things up for us before Trump was president, anyways).
Nobody cares about the big numbers when the wallets are empty.
No one collects the debt. It’s just redeeming treasury bonds. If they are no longer good then the sub prime crisis is going to look like a minor economic wrinkle.
I'm not excited that 20% of federal revenue goes pay debt interest to some investors and stockholders. Especially when much of the original debt spending also went into the pockets of stockholders, sometimes the same ones.
Of course, the actual problem is lack of control and debt spending, not the fact that investors exist.
People say that public debt doesn't matter because it domestic, but the recipients and payers are different. It doesn't cancel out when I'm responsible for paying taxes and Vanguard or JPMorgan get the debt interest.
Wouldn’t this include average people’s pensions, IRAs, etc, too?
Foundationally, national debt is about passing costs into the future, which also creates another huge dichotomy in payers and beneficiaries. Minimal federal spending is on growth, so isn't really about investment as how much value can be extracted from one group to another, largely, but not entirely overlapping group.
I’m not sure if I’m following, but a (let’s say) 20% cut to the value of an average retiree’s pension account will hurt much _more_ than the same cut to a diversified wealthy person. This is simply because poorer people are affected more by fixed costs. I don’t see where the populist angle comes in. Shouldn’t the populist angle be about targeting the “elite” specifically?
Has been widely reported that there was conflict amongst the inner circle about the extent of the tariffs and that it was Lutnick pushing for the most extreme version which is what we ended up with.
He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics.
Which accounts?
> Despite the US president attesting to the fact that he finished “top of his class” at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, his former college professor, William T. Kelley, had another view.
> After Kelley’s death, Frank DiPrima, a close friend of Kelley, revealed that the professor felt the president was a fool.
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/09/14/donald-trump-at-wh...
> It was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two world leaders could not have been further apart. The Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man who’d just received a painful enema.
Any accounts that could be taken seriously?
Look, Trump has been claiming that he graduated first in class, but never provided any evidence. In fact, he refuses to publish his college records. Why is that?
The first one is hearsay from a dead guy and the other one is a creative writing project. If you had these accounts handy from reputable sources, you would have posted them from the reputable sources. This is not the standard of commentary expected of this forum.
> Look, Trump has been claiming that he graduated first in class, but never provided any evidence.
The articles I have read on the subject suggest that this claim is impossible because he would have been on the honor roll and does not appear there. This tells me that he’s either delusional, misinformed, or a liar. It doesn’t tell me he doesn’t understand economics.
The first article also contains testimonies of some of Trumps former class mates, citing them by their full names.
> and the other one is a creative writing project.
Did you actually read past the first paragraph? You may disagree with the style, but it has some reputable sources. For example, they quote Michael Cohen's testimony in the House where he told that Trump ordered him to threat all of Trump's former schools and universities with legal action if they would ever release any records.
> It doesn’t tell me he doesn’t understand economics.
His public statements clearly suggest that he doesn't understand economics. You brought his Bachelor degree as a counter example. I tried to point out that such a degree doesn't say much if you just did the bare minimum to pass. Hell, he said it himself in "The Art of the Deal":
"In my opinion, that degree doesn’t prove very much, but a lot of people I do business with take it very seriously, and it’s considered very prestigious. So all things considered, I’m glad I went to Wharton."
Must have been worth as much as toilet paper considering his history of bankruptcies. I would be highly suspect of every person involved in letting him earn a degree in anything.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/ge...
Trump's greatest talent is in lying with a straight face, then finding explanations for the lies:
>Why the discrepancy? Perhaps this will give us an idea: Trump told Washington Post reporters that he counted the first three bankruptcies as just one.
His failed businesses include money printing machines aka casinos.
" According to the three memoranda, Russia, the U.S., and the U.K. confirmed their recognition of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively removing all Soviet nuclear weapons from their soil, and that they agreed to the following:
1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).
2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
5. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non–nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments. "
There is no 4D chess.
The main feature of them was he discovered in his first term he could do them unilaterally without Congress, and his audience would just go along with it anyway.
Clearly they will "secure the vote". Massive voter disenfranchisement is already taking place, it will go to the next level.
Do not spiral into dividing your own country. That is the real goal of authoritarian regimes.
He will likely dangle hundreds of millions in front of voters across the US to buy their vote without any repercussions.
And then make that money back through the insider dealings that prioritise SpaceX et al.
Musk's brazen [1] use of money will have an impact. Question is how much.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-musk...
Note that the White House has both (1) officially denied this, (2) provided the formula they assert was used as support for that denial; but the formula is exactly what they are denying but with two additional globally-constant elasticity factors in the divisor, however, those elasticity factors are 4 and 0.25, so...
It would have been hilarious back in 2001. It's... scarily prescient in 2025. Can satire be just too good?
[0]: https://theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-pea...
Soon to be "Numerals of America"
E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is that trump sees a war with china down the line and is worried that china has tons of factories that could be converted to make ammunition while usa does not.
If so, there is at least some logic to the base idea, but the implementation is crazy, probably not going to work that effectively, and going to piss off all amrrica's allies which would be bad if WW3 is really on the horizon.
So is destroying diplomatic relations with all their allies and trying to force ceding of power in central Europe to a former enemy who is allied to China?
Go on with ya.
He's a prick saving himself from prison whilst being willingly used to establish an oligarchic fascist state from the former USA.
The second order effects of what he's doing are pretty obviously terrible for usa, but quite frankly i dont think trump is smart enough to see that.
[To be clear i think trump is stupid, but i don't think his actions are entirely random. There is a chain of reasoning here, it just misses the forest for the trees]
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is more immediate concern there. Even if Europe still could count on the USA's NATO commitments 100% the war was a big wake-up call in terms of readiness.
E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is that trump sees a war with china down the line and is worried that china has tons of factories that could be converted to make ammunition while usa does not.
2. Alienating allies won't help the US produce ammunition
It's almost like something has changed the past few decades that is far from inevitable.
Anyways, I hope you're looking foward to prices for everything going up.
No politician in Europe, NZ, AUD or Canada would risk massive hate from their own population to even suggest anything like that. Right leaning were pushed to align with russia so thats a double no-go.
Now again it’s not a defense of the administration or to flex some sort of agenda but it’s hard to argue, the EU has underinvested in its military for decades.
The proximate cause for these tariffs is not some future event. This is post fact rationalization.
The proximate cause is still the ongoing “information” war which determines the perceived reality that is litigated in elections.
Earlier politicians played theater, acting as if the red meat being fed to voters was real on TV, but dealing with reality as need be when it came to decision making.
This was a betrayal of voters, who saw their election efforts result in legislators who didnt do what they said.
Trump does what he says. He believes WWE is real, and acts as if it is. His base believes it is real, and now reality is crashing with the fiction.
The fiction will prevail, because his party has also been working to build the power to enact their will.
Everyone sees logic here, the same way that everyone saw the emperors clothes. The alternative is illogical.
This is the reason potential reasons “we dont know” have to be postulated (war / China can make more ammunition)
Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events]. He thinks trade is a zero sum game, and thinks that someone else set up the petro-dollar system.
Trump has consistently and reiliably always cowered away from war. Using other means to stop it (see russia, NK, China, Iran). Yes I hear the "we're going to invade x, y and z" but they never acutally came to anything (is that because of his advisors?)
Trump doesn't think about future capacity, only future pride. Does this change "make american stronger, and other weaker" is pretty much the only calculus that he's doing.
Trump's thinking is roughly as following:
"Why do we have taxes when we can use tariffs to raise cash and bring power back?"
"Why don't they buy from us?"(china/rest of asia)
"why are we spending money on them, when we don't get any money back? They are weak."(NATO)
"Why are we punishing russia, they are offering deals" (Putin offering cash deals)
There is no 4d chess. Its just a man who's pretty far gone, shitting out edicts to idiots willing to implement them.
Here you go, Feb 2011: https://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/news/economy/donald_trump_c...
"The comment repeated past statements from "The Apprentice" star, who has said he wants to put a 25% tariff on all Chinese imports, to level trade imbalances in the global economy."
Doesn't help that Google's custom time range search is complete garbage. Searched for "trump tariffs" from 1/1/1980 to 1/1/2010 and almost every link is about the current tariffs but with timestamps between 1980 and 2010.
e.g. "20 Nov 1987 — President Donald Trump issued a slew of tariffs on Chinese goods", "30 Jun 1981 — Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Monday a 25% increase on electricity exports to some American states as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs", "31 Dec 1999 — IMF says too early for precise analysis on Trump tariff impact", "1 Feb 2001 — Trump's Global Tariff War Begins"
Did find a couple of links that were chronologically correct - a 1999 Guardian story about Trump wanting to tax the rich(!) and a 1987 NYT story about Reagan putting tariffs on Japan.
(duckduckgo was even worse)
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/why-trump-tar...
At most we might see a proxy war over Taiwan (i.e. the US supporting and arming Taiwan, with sanctions against the PRC). The risk would then be a widespread disruption of global trade, at which point the US would not want to be dependent on the Chinese economy or factories in any way.
I do think a lot of the details are bad. But Trump is not exactly a details guy. And while I think they could have been better (by a lot, fairly easily), I do think they are an accurate, if crude, representation of the policy vision Trump has been consistently articulating for decades (he's been talking about tariffs and trade deficits like this since the 90s).
I think it is true that most people don't understand the economic principles of tariffs, including most economists. But I do think the plan he's implemented largely comports with what he's consistently said he would do.
THIS is sanewashing.
People dont have to be insane to do this, they just have to listen to their trusted news sources.
How someone would vote for someone they know is lying is beyond my comprehension, but here we are.
Trump is neither stupid nor insane and he will have access to many very smart people, too. Based on that the reasonable assumption is that they are trying to achieve a well-defined objective and have set a plan in motion to do so.
The "game" is thus to figure it out. @ggm's comment above is one possibility.
1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader is way smarter than the rest and is capable of outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is never true. The leaders are normal people. And the institutions are as good as the founding principles that are honored by them.
(2) You just claimed trump has access to smart advisors and some hidden masterplan but you ignore all counter indication. He ousts critical journalists, nominates incompetent staff, invasion-mongers, tweets and plays golf alot.
If i can see any common factor in his insanity, its the need to have an enemy to pose as the strong man against, which indicates that trump does not have a constructive vision for the US.
That's 100% not true. A candidate leader might tell you what they're going to do, and then you elect the leader, and then they do them, but they don't propose plans once in power to see if the electorate like them.
As much as I'm not a Trump fan, I really don't like that people use a separate yardstick to measure him vs people they like.
Public consultations and transparency are two crucial and lately very under appreciated parts of democracy.
If a leader cheats the voters it is no longer democracy.
Maybe there's a website that keeps track somewhere.
The simplest solution is the right one. You are projecting intelligence, because you are used to.
This is AFTER the US government has roundly fired thousands of their experts and workforce, AND has just told everyone of its intelligence and army rank and file that there are no repercussions for a massive dereliction of duty.
AND IT IS ONLY APRIL.
It does not imply that what they are doing is a good idea or will work (whatever the objective is), just that there is more rational thought in what they are doing than what people might assume because the public does not have the information and seeing through what is going on requires insights that most people don't have, either.
Again, check @ggm comment above. I am not saying that this is what is going on but it is a possibility, and an average member of the public would never think of that scenario and thus wouldn't see the order in the apparent chaos.
Not insane, incompetent.
The problem with primarily hiring sycophants from his favorite cable news channel is that he's not getting the best, even from the GOP. This also makes him even more susceptible to people with their own agendas like Musk since no one is willing to pushback.
The UK for a good few years had a government which had both these attributes. They were only interested in policies which would appeal to their base, but eventually even those soured on them because the policies were implemented so badly.
but for some reason a whole heap of people decided to stay home this time and this is the result, hope they still feel happy with their decision
It don't want to sound too persnickety, but there is always at least one losing side in an election. It doesn't have to mean they dropped the ball, it could just mean people preferred the other option. Hindsight bias is wonderful, but you have no idea what would have happened if they'd run with a different agenda, they may have had a worse result.
The 2024 election had historically-low support from normally stalwart Democrat demographics such as Latinos, the youth vote, and black males. That, IMO, supports the conclusion that the Democrats did something wrong this time. Also, not only did those groups abstain but Trump also picked up quite a few votes from them (especially working-age black males), suggesting that they are swing voters who probably could have been swayed to stay on the Dem plantation if exposed to more convincing messaging, or a more compelling Democrat candidate.
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/markets-wrestle-with-trum...
>In a November paper, economist Stephen Miran, whom Trump has picked to chair his Council of Economic Advisors, raised the possibility that Trump could use the threat of tariffs and the lure of U.S. security support to persuade foreign governments to swap their Treasury holdings for lower-cost century bonds.
Via
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43350553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561808
Just so pple get the credit (even if they appear to be not so sane)
I'm stunned.
https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
"To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for ε and φ were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4.
Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity vary. To be conservative, studies that find higher elasticities near 3-4 (e.g., Broda and Weinstein 2006; Simonovska and Waugh 2014; Soderbery 2018) were drawn on. The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25."
Yes, let's assume the world is constant and changes are made in isolation.
These people are either malicious or incompetent. That's been the case for every single day of the decade-ish that Trump has been foisted upon us.
https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3lluo7jmsss...
Réunion is at 37%, which isn't a problem because any company in Reunion could just use an address on mainland France, but there's more: Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana are tariffed at 10%.
Does that make an easy loophole for any EU company wishing to export things to the US at a 10% tariff?
If these published rates actually going to be enforced this way, it seems like the whole EU has a very easy way to use the 10% rate.
They are not part of Schengen (but EU citizens don't need any visa, it's mostly intended to curb illegal immigration from South America via Guiana) and have the ability to use different VAT rates from mainland France, but that's all.
> The European Union (EU) has nine 'outermost regions' (ORs): Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion and Saint Martin (France), the Canary Islands (Spain) and the Azores and Madeira (Portugal). The ORs are an integral part of the EU and must apply its laws and obligations.
Not quite, at least not by default. The pre-Brexit Manx passport did confusingly include the text "European Union" on its cover, but holders of Manx nationality were only citizens of the EU if they had lived for at least 5 consecutive years in the UK or if they descended from a UK parent or grandparent.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man-variant_British_pa...
The state of British citizenship is a bit more complicated though I think. A bit like US citizenship which kinda depends on which US territory one lives, as far as I understand.
This is what I meant when I said these citizenships work in more complicated ways than the French one.
> Trump Tariffs Hit Antarctic Islands Inhabited by Zero Humans and Many Penguins
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tariffs-antarctic-islands-...
I watched the man with my own eyes as he seriously floated the idea of injecting disinfectants to treat Covid-19. That was five years ago. His mental faculties have not improved since then.
His words to me felt they were those of a typical 5 year old, or an 80 year old with dementia, asking questions about subjects he doesn't understand but desperately trying to fit in.
But no, he did then ask about injecting a disinfectant.
Now it's quite possible Trump doesn't know the meaning of the word "disinfectant".
In the same press conference he also asked if "heat and light" will get rid of covid.
(Although of course he says this as "suggestions" and the "I'm just asking questions" tactic)
Many other countries, including EU members and China, already apply tariffs and non-tariff barriers far in excess of what the US is applying now.
So why no complaints about them? Why are those tariffs a good idea but the US ones are a case of "don't know what they're doing"?
To make it convenient for consumers, large foreign platforms would automatically handle VAT at point of sale, reducing friction and thereby pushing more import.
Some specific things had tariffs - e.g., nuclear reactors, and chinese electric cars - but it was by no means the norm, and I don't think citizens liked this. The Chinese car tariff in particular feels like German automotive lobbying, stifling competition. Tesla, pre-DOGE, also showed that we would have an unsatiable hunger for import of competitive cars, it's just that an F150 isn't a competitive car in EU.
Now, because if the trade war, we end up with blanket retaliatory tariffs and a strong push for buying local products, killing imports, that just wasn't there before. US and China was already in a trade war, so I guess that was the current state of affairs there.
That's how the common market remains competitive. We lower barriers for trade inside EU, while protecting our market from outside exports. Data is all available. Cars for example, US had tariff of 2.5%, EU 10%.
This is highly misleading:
Pickup trucks, which is a major share of the US car market, had an import tariff of 25% since 1964 (so it was pretty much the same average tariff level but with the EU doing less targetting).
While demand is much lower than in the US, it's still not zero.
But I'm talking about US import tariffs, not EU.
"Light trucks" have like 80% market share in the US; if you have 25% tariffs on those (for over 60 years now, too) then there is no room to complain about 10% car tariffs in the EU, full stop.
You could make a strong argument that Fords dominance in the segment was significantly helped by protectionism (without those tariffs Ford etc. would face much stiffer foreign competition).
This is not really that different from how the F-series works either, providing a frame where the rear can be built up dependent on needs.
It's just that the F-150 is a terrible fit. Our dropside vans are small with a very large footprint-to-bed ratio, is light and have low fuel consumption, is almost always custom, and has zero luxury or otherwise private appeal. There is no demand for e.g. engine performance, as the light vehicle class has load and towing limits that are easily met.
The F-150 is too bulky for casual city use and without a need to optimize have a low footprint-to-bed ratio, is heavy with and thirsty, is often just used "as is" with the stock bed, and is often used privately with a significant "muscle" appeal. In order to be driven with a regular license and not be affected by truck speed limits, tracking requirements and driving/rest time limits, it would still be registered as a light vehicle, making any additional load bearing/towing capacity unusuable.
There's nothing wrong with models being extremely optimized for specific markets and unfit for others. I imagine there aren't many EU-style dropside vans in the US, not to mention EU-style trucks. Japanese Kei cars are an even more extreme case of such market optimization.
It's too bad no-one bought these and they went away.
Amusingly the Postal Service in our area drives them now.
Something like this or an electric van would be amazing. However, does everyone always want to borrow it? I don’t think I own anything that wouldn’t fit in a vehicle like that.
That’s interesting because German car makers actually lobbied _against_ those tariffs fearing retaliatory tariffs.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/fatal-...
This isn't a fair comparison. Local produces also have VAT reduced by the value of goods they bought locally, so it is not such a burden for a local producer vs importer who doesn't benefit from such VAT reduction at all for his costs.
Huh? VAT is transparent to all involved companies regardless of import/export in such a way that the final transaction to a consumer cover the whole VAT of the value chain.
A quick VAT tutorial:
---
The local producer buys seeds, and pays a price that includes VAT. They then sell crop for a price that includes VAT. The difference is settled with the government: The local producer gets back all the VAT they paid, and instead give the government all the VAT they collected.
A reseller buys local produce at a price that includes VAT, and sells it at a price that includes VAT. They then get back all the VAT they paid (which is exactly what the government got from the local producer from this exact transaction!), and in turn give the government VAT they collect from the final consumer.
In the end, the amount of VAT retained by the government is exactly the price paid by the last recipient of the goods. No company in the chain ended up paying VAT out of their own pocket, and no other government earned VAT.
---
Now try with imported goods: The foreign producer buys seeds at a price that includes their local VAT. They then sell crops for export at a price with no VAT. The producer gets back all the VAT they paid, and give nothing to their government as they collected none during export.
The reseller buys the foreign produce at a price without VAT and instead report and pay VAT themselves to initiate the VAT chain. They sell it at a price that includes VAT. They get all the VAT they paid back, and in turn give the government the VAT they collect form the final consumer.
In the end, the amount of VAT retained by the government is exactly the price paid by the last recipient of the goods. No company in the chain ended up paying VAT out of their own pocket, and no other government earned VAT.
Granted, the importer's country is the one stuffing their pillows with the VAT, which does not benefit the foreign producer. That's the difference.
Take two producers - one US, one local - selling their identical products at $100. US costs are $80, all out of pocket, no VAT relief, US producer's profit is $20 after the importer adds 20% VAT ($20) to reach $120.
The local guy’s $80 includes 20% VAT on inputs ($13.33 reclaimable), dropping his real cost to $66.67. He sells for $100, collects $20 VAT (total $120), then pays the government $6.67 ($20 collected minus $13.33 reclaimed). His profit’s $26.67 - still 33% more than US's $20, thanks to VAT offsets.
You have to agree that this is a very tangible advantage for local companies, no?
Let's assume as you did that the actual input has the same real cost to manufacture (ignoring e.g. local labor cost differences, fuel cost differences, government incentives, etc.), and that your example therefore needs exactly 80 USD worth of real, untaxed input in both cases.
The US producer buys this for 80 USD out of pocket as there's no VAT to pay, adds 20 USD profit and sells it for 100 USD. An importer adds 20% VAT, making it 120 USD.
The local producer has to pay VAT so their price for the same thing is 96 USD out of pocket. They get 16 USD VAT back from the government next time they file VAT (irrespective of what they sell), i.e. the "relief" undoes the VAT entirely. They add 20 USD profit making the price 100 USD, add 20% VAT, and what do you know, same 120 USD price tag.
In both cases the final consumer price is 120 USD, and after VAT is cleared the input seller gets 80 USD, the producer itself gets 20 USD profit and the government at the point of consumer sale gets 20 USD VAT.
If the local guy exports the goods to the US the VAT is refunded, making both prices 100 USD. Input seller earns the same, profits remain 20 USD, but no VAT is earned.
This is also why all companies only discuss prices excluding VAT, as the VAT is purely symbolical if it's not a consumer sale.
Tarrifs are a tool. They have both positive and negative consequences. It seems like the manner they are being applied are just random and will get most of the negative consequences with very little of the positive.
They have zero positive consequences for anyone but manufacturers.
However, as a political tactic, the sharp implementation gives them breathing room to re-calibrate before the midterms. That comes at a real GDP cost, though.
The only reason to implement them is to protect local manufacturing, which is usually a bad thing in the long run (they just become less competitive)
Since we are diving into language semantics, these are _arbitrary_ tariffs that have been shat out via a "formula" which is being fed "how much stuff they sell us" as its input.
trump said "punish everyone who we spend more money with, barring our favourites" and they gave him a set of options. He chose the one he liked the best. No he didn't read any impact assessments, if they were made. He went by gut instinct.
Its just a punt. There is no greater game plan. its just a man making policy by vibe.
What makes them arbitrary? there is no really plan to test if they are going to work, or at what point they need to be adjusted. He will keep them until he sees something on twitter/truth social that makes him reconsider.
Even though his first pass crude approximation is stupid, it's really how other countries react, and how he reacts to them that will determine whether they behave like reciprocal tariffs or not.
There is a baked-in plan to test if they're going to work: they are formulaic, based on the trade deficit. Supposing that deficit falls, they will automaticlaly readjust downwards. I don't think the trade deficit (particularly restricted to goods, as they did it) is a good proxy for that, but it's also not completely untethered from reality.
I really dont think there is a plan. Trump says he wants tariffs, this is what he got. Why would he adjust them, unless there is an upside for him? is he going to remember to re-evaluate them? does the department that generates the stats even exist any more?
This may kill more manufacturing than it creates.
I feel like that's not true (really, zero positives? never? that would mean a whole lot of people is patently stupid), but I'd like to base my opinions on facts, not feelings.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9C5Jig7XCw8&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5t...
Analogy:
1. Roommate Trump who falsely claims you're in a common-law marriage: "You're running a trade-deficit with your grocery store, so every time you buy groceries from them I'm going to punish you by taking 25% of the cost. If you don't like it, you should work there part-time to reduce the deficit. You're about equal in paying friends for food versus them paying you for food, but they need you more than you need them, so to make you hustle I'm still taking 15% from any money that goes out. Finally, you have an extreme trade-surplus with your regular employer because they just send you checks, hurray!... That'll be 10%, because reasons."
2. Critics: "That idiot is insane. That's not how any of this works. Find a divorce lawyer ASAP."
3. You: "You guys aren't consistent thinkers! I mean, why aren't you complaining about how Mrs. Johnson adds a 100% cost onto Mr. Johnson's purchases of cigarettes, as a way to get him to quit? 100% is a much bigger number, so obviously Mrs. Johnson's the real villain here, and you don't seem to care!"
____________
If you're so certain Trump has a coherent and non-dumb strategy, please describe how it's supposed to work and why you expect the results to be good things.
Why not consider US prints dollars which are used for global trade? That means other countries are subsidizing US inflation and US economy.
Why not consider the massive investments other countries have made in the US economy when buying shares, bonds, securities?
What if they impose tarrifs on US financial and IT services? What if Amazon cloud and Netflix start costing 30% more?
What if they quit using dollars for trade?
What if they start selling US stock and securities? What if they start selling US dollars?
My understanding so far based on buried comments is: other countries have tariffs on individual products they're historically good at manufacturing and they want to retain it. e.g. Milk in the Nordics, Cars in Japan and EU, Bikes in India, etc.
keyword: "selective to retain"
US is applying it across the board blindly, not to retain something that's existing, but what appears to be a blind hope of starting everything from scratch.
Buried comments say "strategy" is lacking, because these tariffs also apply on the very raw materials needed to start from scratch. The policy does not intelligently select and separate items by their current or future use to the US industry.
There is a prediction that this blunt hammer will not yield to a more productive situation, in couple of years it would only have to be quietly rolled back and strategic thinking would have to be re-applied.
The counter-counter argument is, maybe a real strategy is being worked upon, and this blunt hammer is just a leverage tool. But so far there are no concrete signals of strategic thinking, so it's currently perceived as "let's keep turning one knob after another". The lack of accompanying software updates, calculations, projections, personnel planning, etc all contribute to the notion that there is no strategy.
And at this point, it devolves into emotion and personality, which is better to stay away from.
I hope it's not the department of government something...
For example Japan wants to protect its farmers so has tariffs on rice. But that is not a simple tariff on all rice imports. There are various rules and a tariff free allowance. The largest importer of tariff free rice to Japan is the US.
I think there's a few things wrong with Trump's go to of tariffs as weapons:
- America seems to want total freedom to trade on its terms, not as partners. E.g. expecting countries to import American goods that do no satisfy customer demand or local laws.
- Trump's unpredictability will mean that companies will be hesitant to make large investments if they think the policy will change on a whim. US policy is largely controlled by a single, unpredictable, vindictive and fragile ego. That's not a good environment to build a stable and healthy company.
- The hyperbole such as calling international trade raping & pillaging. This is voluntary trade we're talking about.
- The main issue is that it's not solving the real problems of the average American. Globalization has big issues, it's kept some countries in poverty and contributed to declining living standards especially in western manufacturing. However it is just one factor amongst many that are causing hardship for small town America. A reversing of globalisation does not solve massive wealth inequality, it does not intrinsically solve low wages or abandoned factory towns. At the same time that Trump installs tariffs he's making it easier for the wealthy to concentrate ownership of assets, increase inequality, reduce employment laws and erase social protections. 14 billionaires with elite projection are not working to benefit the average American, they're working to benefit their own average.
From what I read, the average tariff applied by the EU is under 1%. Other comments say Trump has just divided imports by exports to calculate his tariff rates.
But I think the concern is more key industries for the US like autos, tech (EU never ending fines are essentially tariffs), etc. where the disparity is more dramatic. But it’s still not a 20% difference.
Another concern is the devaluation of the Euro vs the dollar due to certain economic policies. Which again is a defacto tariff.
Anyways, my guess is this is a negotiating position since 20% seems excessive, but I could be wrong.
But you can rebrand tariffs as “fines” all you want.
When they’re applied wildly disproportionately to certain firms in a certain industry from a certain 3rd party country…it’s a defacto tariff.
Let’s continue down the circular argument drain!
Tariffs and fines, for lack of better words, are both aligning incentives through financial penalties, but they are still different things.
The EU (governmental body) created laws to price in negative externalities and punish offenders until they correct their behavior. Fines will punish corps (private citizens) directly, with little collateral damage, until they stop being anti-competitive.
A fine forces a 1)small target to follow 2)a specific law and uses, like tariffs, financial penalties to achieve this. That law is a long term reflection of people's local culture and values, and it 4)can be appealed and judged. 3)A negative externality was priced in as a law and a fine.
-- Right now, you have the Trump admin (gov body) applying tariffs to other countries (gov body) because they want manufacturing (private citizens) back in US soil. There is clear widespread collateral damage.
A tariff shapes the economic behavior of a 1)big target and, like fines, also uses financial penalties to achieves this. The desired economic outcome is a 2)trading strategy of a temporary administration. There is collateral damage. 4)There is no court, judge or 3rd party to appeal to, you as a government can only try to negotiate with the other government. 3) Two governments that were having mutually beneficial and consensual trading are now no longer doing so, there was no negative externality here, and while Trump may claim so it does not make it true that other countries were taking advantage of America. See trade balances considering products and services, as one example of lies trying to make it look like US was getting short changed by the world, it was not.
If tariffs and fines still feel like the same thing, it's only because 1)corporations have become government-sized and have achieved government-like powers; and 4) that 3rd party of the judicial branch seems to be more and more taken over by just the government itself, who might actually be a gov-sized and gov-powered corporation.
Just 3 days ago it was almost $500 million to various car manufacturers, the biggest piece to Volkswagen. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
In 2021 it was $900 million to Volkswagen and BMW https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/sv/ip_21_...
In 2019 it was $370 million to automotive suppliers: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/sk/ip_19_...
In 2016 it was $3 billion to truck manufacturers: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_16_...
That list keeps going. And these are just the EU actions. National governments have their own enforcement. Germany fines Volkswagen for another billion in 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/13/vw-fined-1b...
Treating fines on US companies as a tariff means we should also count Volkswagen $4.3 billion fine for Dieselgate as a hidden tariff. Do you agree with that?
But specifically when it comes to tech (which is overwhelmingly US companies), there is a massive imbalance. Tariffs are one mechanism by which that imbalance can be tilted.
"EU privacy regs are just laws you can choose to follow if you don't want to get fined!" Yes, and tariffs are laws you can choose to follow (by producing US market products in the US) if you don't want to get fined.
Again, US companies will also need to pay tariffs on imported goods, so it's not just targeted at EU companies. It's a tariff on geographic production.
I don't agree with much of this administrations policies, but to claim the EU hasn't created an imbalance in the way it extracts "fines" from US tech companies (and the incentives around that) doesn't reflect reality.
AGAIN, I don't agree that either the EU fines or US tariffs are a good idea. But the logic of using a tariff to correct this imbalance is sound.
Of course fines on tech companies disproportionately affect US companies. They’re the biggest tech companies!
If you broaden your view to look at other industries you’ll find things are much more balanced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act#Large_onl...
Edit: it's definitely worse if you go deeper into the rabbit hole. Sister legislature, Digital Markets Act:
Booking.com insisted on the fact that it is one of the only European companies that is a global success and that as they are not the most dominant actor in this sector, they should not be disincentivized while competing with bigger companies.
So yeah, "please only punish non-EU companies" definitely sounds like a trade barrier.
Comply with EU legislation for activity within the EU and there are no fines so it’s hardly a tariff
But I’ve dealt closely with EU compliance on these matters, and the fines are absolutely levied selectively and in bad faith on areas that are impossible to comply with on the timelines provided or ever. They have absolutely turned into strategically punitive taxes on an industry that the EU has no answer to, so in effect, yes, they are tariffs.
With all due respect, when you are given years to comply, the problem is not that the timeline is impossible, but that your organization chooses to ignore the regulation.
If the same laws had been passed in the US, the company would have complied already.
"THE LAW IS THE LAW" is not an logical argument. Tariffs are also imposed via legislation (laws).
Just as EU companies have to abide by EU privacy regs, US firms also have to abide by US tariff regs.
Exactly, so we agree fines are not tariffs then?
> Just as EU companies have to abide by EU privacy regs, US firms also have to abide by US tariff regs.
Yes, also by nature, only importers pay tariffs, so most tarrifs will be paid by US firms, just like most EU fines are paid by EU companies. I don't see a disagreement here.
> "THE LAW IS THE LAW" is not an logical argument
It's not mine. I'm saying that if you don't commit a crime or by negligence let a crime happen, you won't get fined. Some criminals are never caught, and we can talk about two-tiered justice system, but just, I don't know... Don't commit crime? The risk to be fined will be 0 then.
But when I decide to reduce all foods by at least 10%, lower my protein and carbs by 25%, pledge I'll remove at least 30% of metals from my diet and will be doing a 4 day fast twice a week in order to become an olympic level athlete by next year, people say I don't know what I'm doing!
How can people possibly be against nuanced thoughtful dieting yet be against my sudden do it all at once approach? It's totally inconsistent, what idiots everyone else is.
>So why no complaints about them?
Because that's not true.
This has been persistently claimed but I have yet to see evidence on this. In most cases it's including VAT which doesn't make sense since local manufacturers pay that as well.
Obviously VAT isn't a "trade barrier", if anything it's a "consumption barrier" and it's the same for every business that EU citizens give money to (i.e. if I bought a robot hand that cost $2000 to make from an EU company, I'd likewise be paying €400 VAT on top of that).
Source?
> ... The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4.
> ... The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25. ...
None of the values are related to their names in any way
Trump personally may or may not understand it (I think he does) but his political superpower is his willingness to stand up in public and say complete bullshit knowing that it's bullshit, knowing that some people are fools who will uncritically believe the bullshit, and other people are cynics who who will nod along with the bullshit either to make money out of the rubes or because they think it serves a strategic purpose.
You can waste years wondering which side of Hanlon's razor someone is on, but it's important to remember that obsessing over such dilemmas can lead to paralysis. Just like there are a lot of street hustles and cons that depend on confusing/misleading the mark before tricking or mugging them out of their money, there are a lot of political gambits that depend on inducing analysis-paralysis in opponents. Manufacturing dilemmas is also a key element in military strategy.
My advice is to stop worrying about whether these people are such fools that you owe them some sort of empathy and an effort to save them from themselves, or you will end up like Charlie Brown having the football pulled way by Lucy yet again. It is OK to cut them off and treat them as bad actors, for the same reason you should often round off quantitative values instead of obsessing over precision.
Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?
>There is no way these people don't understand the difference between expressing a trade deficit as a ratio and actual tariffs laid by other countries.
I don't think most people deny that these are capable individuals. The problem is - I think the people in Trump's inner circle now are sycophants first. They know what Trump is doing is destructive, but they are just choose to be yes men. Remember, this isn't Trump's first go-around, and the majority of people who stood up to Trump the first time (Pence, Barr, Perry, Price, Rex Tillerson) are gone.
Funny enough wikipedia has an article[1] about this that is so large that it has many sub articles. Ultimately, I can't trust that his appointments are exercising any sort of discernment because a large number of his 2016 appointees were fired for doing so.
In short, Fitzgerald could be a genius, but all signs point to him being a yes-man that would rather sink the ship than stand up to Trump.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dismissals_and_resigna...
To hide their motives, if you think they are just dumb then you will not look for the real reason they do it.
Not sure that is what happens here, but that is a very common reason to play dumb.
I told you: because it creates a strategic dilemma that paralyzes the opposition. The same reason a hustler pretends to be dumb to lure the mark, the same reason trolls use shitposting to bait people.
His name is Howard Lutnick. He was CEO of a financial firm called Cantor Fitzgerald. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Lutnick
It is not as if he is going to die of starvation because of tariffs. He has no skin in the game.
If this is the case, we could at least likely put to rest most concerns that Trump will be implementing much of Project 2025.
I'd be very surprised if he had too much to do with that plan directly. Assuming that's true, and if he's only surrounded by yes men, no one is there to convince him to do anything other than exactly what he himself wants to do.
But in this case: what is the game plan? What are they trying to achieve? Is it simply chaos, so that they can rule in perpetuity?
You probably want to be more careful with how you phrase that. The Republican party passed the Civil Rights Act and ended slavery, among other things.
Those may not be the type of Republicans you are thinking of today, but they still had that little (R) next to their names.
Way more Democrats in both houses of Congress voted for it than Republicans (to be fair the Democrats held the Senate 67-33). A Democratic president signed it. His Democratic predecessor asked for it. How do you figure "the Republicans did it"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#By_pa...
Lutnick clearly has zero actual influence in this administration. He's a barking dog sent to do TV soundbites, and his explanations are often full-bore nonsensical or completely contradictory to his prior explanations. Foreign officials (such as Canada) have repeatedly come out of meetings with Lutnick almost...assuaged....as if Lutnick is saying "he isn't really going to do this...there's no way", because even Lutnick doesn't realize just how stubborn Trump is about his outrageously stupid ways. These guys keep trying to pretend this is all some masterful negotiating strategy by the Art of the Deal master.
And based upon 100% of Trump's history in government, it won't be long before Lutnick and Bessent are out of this admin, both will be "RINOs" attacked by the MAGA cult, and they'll both be telling the tale of how outrageously stupid Donald Trump is. Like closing on 100% of Trump's administration in the first term.
Just look at the lead up to these tariffs. The day before Trump was still "deciding". This is something that a team of expert economists should have worked on for months, probably to conclude that free and liberal trade is what made the US the richest large country on Earth, but instead it was something that everyone had to sit around and wait for Trump to pull something out of his ass.
Trump has openly and widely talked about tariffs replacing income tax for years. This administration is clearly one where no one ever can counter any harebrained idea from Trump -- and they're all incredibly stupid ideas from that incredibly stupid man -- so whatever nonsensical takes he has they have to all try to make talking points around and create some post facto rationalizations. It is the most dangerous administration in human history, and the American voter looked at this traitorous, constitution-shredding, law-breaking imbecile and said "more please!"
There is no 4D chess happening here[1]. There isn't even checkers happening. No masterful long term negotiating strategy. It's just a fumbling moron (rapist, charity-stealing imbecile) that is doing the most nonsensical way to deal with a deficit rather than, you know, raising taxes. And to be clear the US deficit is untenable and needs to be dealt with, and the head in the sand approach by successive governments is not reasonable, but combining DOGE's ham-fisted stupidity with Trump's economic destruction and the deficit is likely going to be much, much worse. The US is on the fast track to insolvency.
"But China....next war....China!"
Trump started this whole thing by attacking allies. By dissolving alliances and trying to economically harm its closest friends. Precisely the opposite of expectations if the US were seriously trying to counter China.
[1] Aside from corruption. Tariffs are the foundation of corruption because everyone has to come, hat in hand, begging for exemptions. There is going to be a line to the White House of manufacturers and importers, from Apple to military contractors, begging for special waivers. Which they'll get if they grease the right palms, as this is the most blatantly corrupt administration in US history.
If one does want to impose a large block of tariffs, it does seem reasonable that you would want to keep details quiet until the entire package is announced. You wouldn't want other countries responding early
And these apply immediately. This is an administrative impossibility. CBP is going to have a disastrous couple of weeks about this rag tag collection of barely defined nonsense.
This is 100% disaster, top to bottom.
The comment I replied to was claiming that Trump himself was still deciding what the tariffs would be until this week. My question was how we could be so certain of that.
As far as reciprocity goes, how is this plan not based at least in part on reciprocity? They claim other countries have taken advantage of the US and we're on the losing end of trade deficits. The tariffs they announced seem to be based entirely on trade deficits/surpluses with each country.
I have no idea if this would work or what the administration's real motives are, but the on the surface it sure seems like they proposed tariffs that target the problem they claim - trade imbalances.
And really that is a silly theory regardless. The US would achieve maximum effectiveness by doing a normal tariff legislative process and then soberly discussing with all parties. Instead it's constant on/off brinksmanship. Because Donald Trump is a profoundly stupid imbecile with a simpleton, child-like understanding of the world. There is going to be customs and business chaos as this is factored in.
>As far as reciprocity goes, how is this plan not based at least in part on reciprocity?
It has zero bearing on reciprocity. Reciprocity is matching the other party's tariffs.
If you're richer than the other party, or if they sell things that you want but you don't sell things that they want, that isn't reciprocity. It's like if I tariff my children when they buy from McDonalds -- I mean, McDonalds doesn't buy from me! - and claim it's reciprocity. That would be insanely stupid, right?
It's a massive tax hike on Americans -- a regressive tax that will hit the working and middle classes the hardest -- shrouded under some patriotic America thing. No way anyone falls for this...right?
You're probably thinking of that one dead badger.
That's how you devolve into a 3rd world country by the way. I've lived in 3rd world countries and seen this over and over again. That's why 3rd world country stock markets don't go up - because locals have a distrust in them. Locals know insider trading is rampant.
I went from a low risk investor to betting on US doing stupid stuff and stated making real money. Cognitive dissonance investment I think.
How doesn’t need to make as many of them anymore, so that’s a saving.
Far as I can tell, the ideal would have been to simply double incoming tariffs, but that would be infeasibly large. This was a way to generate a plausible smaller number that can be increased later on an individual basis depending on how the country responds.
It's not that there's no strategy, it's that it was designed by reckless amateurs who haven't done the reading, haven't consulted with anyone that understands all the trade-offs, and have an uncapped appetite for risk.
The TV version works out perfectly, since the writers control the ending.
Maybe they know the consequences, but to give you a idea... it was 1.5% before. The new ones will be equivalent to Brazilian tariffs in 1989 before opening the economy (31%, data from World Bank).
Now, Brazilian tariffs, which have one if the most closed economies, by weighted average, is 7%.
China, have 2.2%.
The United States will be an autarchy, similar to how LaTam was in the 70's, when tried this exact idea. The tariffs being as high instantly, will impact the economy, later, the country will probably grow, which is what they expect, but this is not a productive grow. Because your new factories now are not competing with external products, so your productivity go down, this means real income will also go down.
So yeah, some people at best (if is not a robot doing the job) will have a job in a factory, but on what he will be able to spend with his wage won't make it worth even for this person.
Import Substitution: A Tried and Tested Policy for Failure https://www.kspp.edu.in/blog/import-substitution-a-tried-and...
>Import substitution is a policy by which the state aims to increase the consumption of goods that are made domestically by levying high tariffs on foreign goods. This gives an advantage to the domestic manufacturers as their goods will be cheaper and preferable in the market compared to foreign products. India adopted this model post-independence, and it continued till the 1991 reforms. Due to import substitution, the domestic producers captured the entire Indian market, but there was slow progress in technological advancements, and the quality of Indian products was inferior to the foreign manufactured ones. But after the reforms, the Indian market was opened to everyone, and the consumer got the best value for the price he paid. The Make in India policy of the present government is reminiscent of the pre-1991 inward-looking Indian state.
In the US it will be even worse. The US is already high-tech economy outsourcing low value-adding manufacturing to foreign countries while industries move towards higher value-adding products. After the tariffs, US manufacturing sector will sift to lower value-added, lower complexity products.
Like, imagine now that all your computers will be more expensive/worse. This will affect services from like, a law firm - to a tech company. Will make harder for young buy good computers and start to code, etc.
I say this as a Brazilian, to us Brazilians watching, this is like: Why are the U.S repeating the same mistake?
I don't think Americans know this, but here in Brazil, we also have phone, tablet and PC national brands (Positivo¹, Multi², Philco³). National TV brands like Semp, AOC, Mondial. A ton of home appliances brands like Mondial, Philco, Britânia.
But why Americans don't know them? Because they only exists because of the tariffs. So they only exists in Brazil internal market. They are worse than foreign brands, but they exists because it's cheaper to buy a Mondial Kitchen Stand mixer than a Kitchen Aid!
And worse that most of these products are only white-label Chinese products, sold way more expensive than the real chinese ones.
This also create a whole gray market. A lot of people start smuggling products without import tax.
And this only with a 7% average tariff. Not the U.S 29% lol. Brazil with 31%~ prior to the 90's was WAY worse than this. A lot of brands just died when we opened a little the market (Consul, Brastemp, were Brazilian big fridge, Washing machine etc makers, they got bought by Whirlpool in the 90's)
American Brands then will now look for the U.S gov to ask for exceptions too, and this create a lot of corruption. And after you put these tariffs and there's a whole new companies made to internal market, it's almost impossible to remove because of the lobby from these companies (and corruption).
[1] https://loja.meupositivo.com.br/ [2] https://www.multilaser.com.br/ [3] https://www.philco.com.br/
The fact that Americans don't even recognize it anymore may make a better case for the policy than against.
The policy is good for uncompetitive manufacturing - and so you are in support of it? Why is that less-competitive manufacturer from Philly who couldn't compete anywhere but Brazil more important than the people of that country?
My only point was that Philco was being used as an unknown crappy Brazilian brand example. It used to be an American company that actually made quality things, and through outsourcing and general 'physical and financial enshittification' is pretty much an unknown to Americans now.
If you're in favor of quality things being made in the US, it's an argument for said policy.
There is nothing that says tariffs cause quality things to be built locally and the examples are counter to that.
So it's not easy to conclude they are the same in any fashion.
The question is what would happen today if the US ends up in the same situation. Will we go back to producing top tier electronics, or get stuck with crappy brands taking advantage of the situation? It's hard to say. I'd guess a mix of both. Top tier stuff would probably in house what they can, but the low end would get much, much worse. But that's just me guessing.
The US does targeted tariffs all the time, including 100% on Chinese electric vehicles because otherwise they could undercut the entire US auto industry.
Blanket tariffs have been tried. We can point to examples. They are bad. Economists agree here too. The US and allies have worked long and hard at reducing barriers to trade and we have avocado toast in January to thank for it. The alternative is to suggest the US can and will be the best at everything (or at least at enough things to offset the obvious loss in purchasing power of people).
A bit of an aside: there is this bizarre "anti-global" thing gaining more traction. Global trade ties economies together disincentivizing war. Isolationism promotes war because you need to own more to grow the economic pie. It drives towards taking over other territories, like, say, Greenland or Canada. Trade expands the economic pie.
Wait, what did you just say? The U.S. government has decimated its research funding?
Oh, well, at least the U.S. has a lot of high quality colleges churning out highly educated Americans, so that still may not be as much of a problem…wait, did you say Americans are increasingly turning away from college due to the high costs and the resultant loans that cannot be terminated even in bankruptcy, because the government has been cutting back significantly on funding education for years now?
Oh well, at least the U.S. is welcoming to immigrants who have founded over 50% of unicorns and usually tend to be the most dynamic and brightest slice of their country’s populations, so it may maintain its technological edge…
Wait what? Oh god.
Which worked exceptionally well for China, South Korea, Japan and pretty well for Russia and India.
One of the reason why China's import substitution was almost unreasonably effective was because domestic companies were driven to compete fiercely with each other.
(In America there is a drive to do the opposition- wall street likes consolidation and oligopolies)
And yeah, once your national industrial ecosystem is sufficiently powerful most countries suddenly get religion about removing all tarriffs everywhere. This is what America was like in the 90s - and they were just as obnoxious about that as they are about this - the exact opposite.
These days Chinese protectionism is not necessary to keep the offshoring train running and only American protectionism will arrest it.
That this ultimately had the effect of diminishing the manufacturing base in the US doesn't speak to the ability of US or Chinese companies to compete.
China is a centrally planned economy. To argue it's more competitive than the US is again not tenable.
Yeah, in 2003. The US offshores to Bangladesh or vietnam for cheap labor now and has for a long time.
Manufacturing is offshored to China simply because it cant be done in the US at anything resembling a reasonable cost, not because labor is cheaper. That is because the Chinese industrial ecosystem is unparalleled.
>China is a centrally planned economy. To argue it's more competitive than the US is again not tenable.
The economic dogma of the late 90s is getting a little long in the tooth now. Not least because it was completely blindsided by the rise of China.
It turned out that the most effectively run economies were a hybrid of distributed and centrally planned (China has open internal markets while credit allocation is largely centrally planned).
Have you seen the 70s or the 80s? I was a child during the 1980s when India was a socialist state. There were very few private enterprises, because there was absolutely zero government support. Taxation peaked at 90% during the early 1970s under Indira Gandhi, who also nationalized many of the largest private companies - because private enterprise was seen as a bad thing. It was also impossible to bring in foreign investment, because that would come with profit motives.
Basically, the comparison you're drawing is not really accurate. The current Make in India plan is very similar to the US bringing in strategic manufacturing back into the US; a plan which has had bipartisan support (for example, the CHIPS Act). It incentivizes businesses (including foreign companies) to set up manufacturing units in India. And is quite the opposite of what was happening during India's socialist era.
That type of protective policy works for India in incentivizing manufacturers to come build locally because Indian labor is still dirt cheap and the government will work with you to give you what you need without the pesky nimbyism, environmentalism, etc getting in the way of factories. US is not in the same case.
> Even though Make in India is not a classic import substitution case, it aimed to reach that end.
So it's not really import substitution. But let's ignore that article, it's not a serious piece anyway.
A key idea of Make in India is to make and export - which means that unlike socialist-era import substitution (via tariffs and permissions), the ones which aren't good enough will fail fast and cheap. It won't lead to people driving HM Ambassador cars for 40 years.
Whether Make in India will succeed or fail is a very different matter, of course.
>Does that mean that until a coherent set of economic and political ideas, comparable to Keynesian or Hayekian paradigms of old, has taken shape as an alternative way of running contemporary societies, no serious change in the existing mode of production can be expected? Not necessarily. Outside the core zones of capitalism, at least two alterations of great moment occurred without any systematic doctrine imagining or proposing them in advance. One was the transformation of Brazil with the revolution that brought Getúlio Vargas to power in 1930, when the coffee exports on which its economy relied collapsed in the Slump and recovery was pragmatically stumbled on by import substitution, without the benefit of any advocacy in advance.
[1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/perry-anderson/regim...
Before Vargas rule (around the 30-40's), Brazil was an agrarian state, basically commanded by coffee barons and so on.
Brazil got the independence in 1822, and abolished the slavery in 1888. During this time, it was reigned by Dom Pedro I and Dom Pedro II. When the empire ended the slavery (one of the latest countries to end), the military and the agrarian folks, did a republic coup. In Brazil we call this republic "Coffee with Milk republic", because it was not a democracy yet (only 4% could vote), and the power was divided by São Paulo (Coffee state) and Minas Gerais (Milk state).
It's a long and complex story, but in short, in 1930, Vargas did what we call "1930 Revolution". It was a dictatorship, he persecuted the Brazilian integralists (fascists) and communists (and banned foreign languages aimed at banning italian/german/japanese speakers etc). The dictatorship ended, he got removed, and later he comes by election, in the first Brazilian proper democracy, with huge people support.
Anyway, besides all that, he basically industrialized the country. Moved the country from an agrarian state to modern industrialized state. But not only because of import substitution, he created like Ministry of Health, Education, all the modern BR state that we know. Penal code, and everything is still from 1940.The industrialization was mainly led by state-owned companies. He created a state owned oil company (Petrobras), created a state owned car company (FNM), steel company (CSN), mining company (Vale), etc.
The development during this time, was basically making the state to be the one that would industrialize the country.
The military dictatorship goal was different, after all, it was a coup against "the communists", with the U.S support at the time. So the industrialization was also led by the private sector, protected by the state with the huge tariffs, and some areas they just banned imports.
Instead of the FNM car company for example, we had then Gurgel, a private company making cars.
Of course, a lot of these companies died when Brazil opened the economy in the 1990s, exactly bcause they were not competitive and wasn't exporting anything anyway.
But one thing that people need to keep in mind always, it's how all of that makes the product expensive. A car in Brazil it's way more expensive than in the U.S and so on.
But I don't how much about it, maybe these are already solved problems. After all VAT already exists and faces similar challenges.
Your high school grad (or high school dropout) isn't going to get one of those finance or software jobs. But they could get a factory job, if we can get those back.
So the best spin I could put on this is that the emphasis is on physical goods because that's where the people who are hurting in the current economy could find real work.
(Of course, if that were the case, the reasonable thing to do would be to explain that, instead of just acting like services didn't exist as something that is traded.)
LaTam is perfect example on how bad this "wide" protectionism is. There's a ton of economic papers about it.
If you really want protectionism, you could do something more similar to how South Korea did, by choosing specific sectors of economy you want to "protect", to create a "national industry".
Most protectionist industrial policies also exempt imports of machines and other supplies used in factories.
e.g. It makes no sense to put tariffs on machines used in a factory in the USA. AS that would make it more expensive for a factory to operate if they have to import a more expensive machine from Germany. "Buy a machine from the U.S", that would mean a more expensive machine likely, as it only exists because of tariffs.
That basically means you'll have factories on best case scenario, but your cars, your computers, phones, won't be exported.
So, if thats the real underlying reason for all these steps then US is the warmonger here attacking literally everybody preemptively. 5D chess at least.
Trump has literally said that if Canada doesn’t like the tariffs, they should just let the US annex them!
Or, in America's case, arresting their decline.
Global trade reduces war
In the short term you can't just create a new garlic farm in a day.
In the long term it will still be more expensive (if american garlic was the cheap option they would have used it from the get-go) but there will probably be more adjustments then in the short term
That's part of the reason why these tarrifs are so stupid. There is no warning on the specifics so there isnt time for companies to come up with alternative plans. Given how inconsistent trump is, there is also limited incentive to seek alternative supply chains, because who knows if he will just change his mind again.
For instance, tariffs on cars vary from 25% to 47%. It is quite the status symbol to drive an imported car.
Their policy has always been to develop their own car industry, so foreign manufacturers had to set up factories in the country but even that could not be fully foreign-owned and had to be through a joint-venture with a local manufacturer. I believe Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai (opened in 2019) was the first fully foreign-owned car factory they allowed.
If what you say is true, tarrifs should not exist in any country. And yet, most countries are using tarrifs.
What if a particular country is using dumping and sell at prices so low, it will kill a particular industry? And after they kill it, they start jacking prices at unseen levels and you will have to pay because you don't have a choice?
If a country is doing price dumping, there's even legal ways of protecting these sectors, by applying to WTO (but the U.S basically killed the WTO). But even if the U.S don't trust the WTO, they could apply antidumping tariffs to these specific sectors (like the 100% tariffs Biden administration did to EVs).
U.S is not doing this right now, it's protecting "all sectors" of the economy. There's no other reasonable developed country with a 29% tariff.
You can check here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS
You'll also notice that most developed or growing economics have low tariffs...
On specific industries they want to protect. Not completely across the board.
If you want to use that for argument, you should include US sales taxes in the calculation too. Which could be fair, I guess.
Also, every person in the US can import goods to a value of $800 per day without having to pay any duties. In Europe you have much less generous rules, and sometimes the limit is €0.
And as long as taxes on labour exist, I don't think anybody can complain about other types of taxes. Any negative economic impact that tariffs or any other taxes have are doubly worse from taxes on labour.
I've been seeing your perspective a lot lately online - that this will somehow cancel income tax. Where is that coming from? I haven't heard a single thing about that from the administration. Where is the basis?
I understand rationally that there was an economy before the US plunged the world into neoliberalist global free trade in order to build its trade empire, and there will probably be an economy after... but likely not a US trade empire.
But another thing is investment uncertainty. The mechanism by which protectionist tariffs are supposed to work functions over a timespan of a decade or two - foreign imported goods are made more expensive, and so when investors believe they're confident in future tariff conditions, they spend money on domestic factories to produce goods, which have a large setup cost and gradually pay back the difference relative to their good-importer competitors that are paying high tariffs.
If investors can't form a confident prediction on future tariff conditions, investors can't invest; The sheer uncertainty of having a lunatic making up random numbers for every country over lunch and then rolling them out at close of market is instead going to scare them off. Trump has gone back and forth over tariffs with Canada and Mexico over the past couple months, and this doesn't just demonstrate that tariffs can be set extraordinarily high for arbitrary reasons, but that they can be set back to zero for arbitrary reasons. Both of these transitions cause economic ruin for one investor or other; If it's going to happen every few months then nobody is going to build factories or launch import supplychains, at least not for competitive prices. The risk of going bankrupt tomorrow (or in four years when the next administration takes over and abruptly cancels every tariff) on what is basically a coinflip then gets priced into consumer goods for both producers and importers.
The most frustrating of Trump's projects are not just when he shreds your rights or shreds precedent or tries to topple the government, but when he looks favorably at a policy you think is a good idea (like having a manufacturing sector) and chooses to pursue it by running around with a flamethrower setting everything ablaze because on some lever somebody's taught him about the Broken Windows Fallacy wrong, as a joke, and he's upgraded it. During his administration, we circle the wagons and declare that the policy is a terrible idea. Post-Trump, the absolute ruin that the execution of that policy predictably brought will discredit it for the rest of your adult life.
Other countries have effectively gone from moderately democratic elections to sham elections. Turkey is one major country that is going through this process at the moment.
They are not experts in the field. But loyalists for a trump autocracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOz4UgTW5-0
I recommend reading the summary of the video if you don't have time.
> cheap labor factories again isn't going to happen in 2025
It is not going to happen ever unless we plan to move people from better paying jobs in McDonalds and WellsFargo to China styled factories or we allow much higher immigration levels from South America.
Trump admin and his advisors genuinely believe that tariffs are good, that they will create factories and jobs within USA and enable white families to raise families on a single income. They think rest of the world's existence is a mistake, they hate Europe, China, India and South America. They don't know much about Africa and admire Russia.
As the USA makes itself a trade pariah and other countries forge new relationships amongst themselves, we're permanently devalued. The world will (continue to) move on without a backward-looking, unreliable, sad, and obnoxious USA.
They absolutely learned. They learned those soybean farmers they screwed through outright incompetence or being too stupid to govern would still consume their propaganda and happily vote for them again.
I said they expect the outcomes people are complaining about. They've workshopped this, and are aware how this is playing out. I would be very surprised if there is a significant leak of "we didn't expect this" anytime soon.
Trump believes in tariffs, I don't.
Devaluing dollar does not reduce debt measured in dollars. It only makes US debt less valuable to forefingers.
Devaluing dollar can work well only if foreign investments into US stop or reverse. "foreign investors at the end of last year owned 18% of U.S. stocks, according to Goldman Sachs" The trend has already reversed https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/foreign-demand-us-assets-... Killing foreign demand for US assets more permanently is possible but it means financial market crash.
What WILL happen is recession. Atlanta Fed GDPNow dropped from -2.8 to -3.7 percent in a week. https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow?date=2025-04...
- If everything overnight costs 20% more for the American consumer, it equals 20% less disposable income and less purchasing power.
- US companies, even the few ones not directly affected by tariffs, are going to be hit by less demand, and that in the aggregate is going to affect the performance of all American companies.
- So, it makes sense to dump as much American stock (and perhaps other instruments) as rationally possible.
The rest of the world is also going to feel the shock, though at this point is unknowable to what extent, and it also depends on the policies governments outside USA enact. In Sweden for example, we react to imported USA inflation by increasing central bank rates and catapulting the country into recession, and I totally see that happening in the next few weeks. Even it does not, it is what the public expects, and already many may be reigning in on consumption and investment. And dumping American stocks like crazy.
The US would still have to pay the debt in Dollars. Devaluation affects currency exchange rates. Debt would be less valuable in Yen and Renminbi but just as expensive for the US government.
After hypothetical successful debt relinquish negotiations, any new US debt would have similar interest rate to Argentinian debt, 30% or so. Wall Street would shrink and London (or Frankfurt) would become new global financial center.
In reality, countries do just as what they do now. They raise counter-tariffs. The US faces coutertariffs from everyone. Other countries only from the US. Trade between countries other increase and they gradually adjust. Europeans start buying less iPhones and buy more Androids made in South Korea. Less Fords more Nissan.
I wonder... they're all made in China anyway. And shipped from there directly, not through the US. I'm sure that either the US tariffs won't apply to them, or Apple will shuffle some subsidiaries so they don't.
Don't tell me it matters who makes the hardware, it's the OS that sets the experience.
The plan is to change voting laws to put their thumb on the scale and make sure Democrats can't win elections: voter ID (but with no easy, cheap way to get an ID), gerrymandering, directing the DOJ and FBI to cancel elections and eliminate candidates, stocking riots to justify a state of emergency...
Your "Reichstag fire" is coming soon, America.
b) A lot of those people who didn't have IDs have either gotten IDs or died off by now, so the Republican advantage of voter ID laws has faded.
c) Given (b), Republicans have moved on to other tactics like voter purges, shutting down registration offices and polling stations to create long lines in urban districts, gerrymandering, and limiting early voting and mail in voting. One of their favorite tactics is limiting early-voting mailboxes to one per precinct, whether that precinct has 1,000 voters or 1,000,000. You can guess which way the crowded urban precincts tend to vote.
The whole idea is just to put their thumb on the scale enough to discourage some small % of voters in the swing states that determine our president every four years. If you live in California, no one cares how you vote for President.
(Wish I could find a photo of a giant, fake driver's license on foam core with a rectangle cut out for the person to stand behind when a photo was taken.)
As a European I also find insane elections are held on workdays (in France it is always on Sundays), that you may have to wait in line for hours to vote, that voting stations may be hours from where you live, etc.
That's not really an issue, if you have enough polling stations. Denmark typically have elections on a Tuesday (but can technically be any day of the week). We have 80%+ turnout, one of the highest in the world, for countries without mandatory voting. The day of the week doesn't matter, IF you ensure that it sufficiently easy for people to vote.
If you actively try to make it inconvenient/impossible for people to vote, then it doesn't matter if it's on a Sunday. My take is that part of the US political system need as few voters as possible to turn up in order to have a chance of winning, so they will make it as complicated and inconvenient as they need it to be.
So show your drivers license at the voting booth? Why is that unacceptable?
If they just said "accept more IDs" instead of "stop voter ID requirements" people wouldn't think its a problem, but that isn't what democrats are saying.
People using others papers to vote, that is much harder if you must display a photo ID together with the papers you received that says you are allowed to vote.
Voting without an ID is like opening a bank account without an ID, its just dumb. Oh wait, I heard you had that as well in USA, which is why you have issues with identity theft...
Except every analysis has shown people are not doing this. Oddly, the few times there have been real cases, it's often GOP voting more than once or for their dead spouse or some such.
Think of it, if someone is truly not eligible to vote, why expose themselves to additional scrutiny for a single likely inconsequential vote?
Where fraud could happen is at scale, and with DOGE getting access to all systems and dismantling the agencies that guard against voting fraud, I feel that once again we're seeing that every accusation is an admission.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5147732/voter-fraud-exp...
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/reso...
It's another GOP boogie man used to suppress the vote. Personally, I'm a fan of legally mandating everyone vote or pay a fine like in Australia.
It would be different if we were solving a problem with voter ID laws because then you're balancing rights with real pragmatism. You can as hypothetical about it as you want, you can go down the slippery slope fallacy if you want, but the evidence shows us we do not have an issue here.
It would also be different if IDs were easier to come by, because then the burden is not disproportionate to the problem. But neither of these things are true.
Instead we're just enacting barriers to the use of our constitutional rights, barriers to participation in society, not to solve a problem but to enact a political end.
There's also additional requirements of your gender matching your ID (which eliminates many transgender folks), your name matching on all documents (good luck if you're a married woman), etc.
Folks are rightly pointing out that these laws are engineered to suppress votes, and you seem to not be willing to listen to understand why.
Are you saying democrats will engineer these laws to suppress votes? Is that why democrats don't have voter id laws? The GOP isn't relevant here, we are just wondering why democrat states can't seem to do this.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/chal...
> Nearly 500,000 eligible voters do not have access to a vehicle and live more than 10 miles from the nearest state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. Many of them live in rural areas with dwindling public transportation options. > More than 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles from their nearest state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week.
https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/how-id-requirements...
> According to the study, between 15 and 18 million people in the U.S. lack access to documents proving their birth or citizenship, which can be integral to acquiring other forms of IDs.
This can force circular dependencies: for example, older black or Native American people who were born when they weren’t welcome at hospitals might never have been issued a birth certificate so they first need the travel, expense, and difficulty to get one from the clerk where they were born. Poor people are far more likely not to have bank accounts, so they can’t establish their in-state residency that way, etc.
None of these are insolvable problems but the people pushing restrictions haven’t been willing to put effort into solving them and often make things worse by cutting office locations and hours in ways which disproportionately impact poor and minority voters.
Because you have to have an ID to do almost everything else in the country so everybody already has an ID and opposition to voter ID makes no sense.
Also many states have accompanied their stricter voter ID requirements with reducing the number of offices that process applications and with reducing the hours they accept applications so that even if you can get a free ride to an office you might have to take an unpaid day off from work to do so. That can be a significant loss for many poor workers.
> Because you have to have an ID to do almost everything else in the country so everybody already has an ID and opposition to voter ID makes no sense.
Yet many millions get by without an ID [1]. A lot of things you probably think cannot be done without an ID actually can.
For example how can you cash a paycheck without an ID? You need an ID to open a bank account. An answer is you can cash checks using a third party endorsement. You don't need a bank for that. You just need a trusted friend who has a bank account. I'd guess that this is what the 6% of Americans without bank accounts do (23% among those making less than $25k/year) [2].
How about getting a job without ID? First, there are a lot of people who don't need jobs (e.g., the stay at home partner in a household where one partner works and the other takes care of the house). Second there are a lot of job that pay cash and are off the record.
Also there are a fair number of people who once had ID but no longer do. It has been a very long time since I've actually needed to show my driver's license to anyone.
My banking is all online, as is my check cashing (my bank has a great "deposit by photo" function).
When I signed up for Medicare, Medigap, and a Part D plan that was all through ssa.gov and medicare.gov, with no need to show ID. That was apparently all covered by when I showed ID years ago when I set up ID.me as a login method for my ssa.gov account. It will likely be the same when I apply for Social Security benefits. Afterwards all my interaction with SS and Medicare should be through ssa.gov and medicare.gov.
If when I'm older I am no longer fit to drive and let my driver's license expire and don't remember to get a state photo ID then there is a good chance I can live the rest of my life comfortably without ever running into anything where that causes problems.
The simplest way, though, to see that it is possible to get by reasonably well without an ID is to note the large number of undocumented workers that the current administration is trying to kick out. They are able to come here, find places to live, and get paying jobs all without a state issued photo ID.
Whatever they are doing citizens can do too.
[1] https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/23percent-of-low-income-amer...
Seems to work fine. I dont think we have ever had any issues with that system.
It works because voting in Australia is compulsory. They must have your name on their list, they cross if off it and hand over the ballot paper. The checks and balances you might expect and done after the event, making it fairly secure.
Only of those checks is you did vote, and a fine follows if you didn't.
I work a furry convention in the Southern US, about 3% of our attendees have some ID related malady - can't get a timely appointment at DMV, missing core documentation, unable to prove residency, etc - nevermind rural voters who may live hours from a DMV.. which they can't get to without a license (assuming they can afford a car) or a ride. No bus service to speak of either.
Its a huge issue, I'd 100% support voter ID if getting an ID was free and easy, without it I'm skeptical.
I feel bad for the people in states that don't require court orders for this because they apparently have the worst time trying to update accounts.
Yeah, everyone you know has a valid ID because you don't live in a battleground state that is currently fighting electoral welfare. Republicans don't care to put up barriers to getting an ID in California, Texas or New York.
Do you think there's a chance there's a selection bias to your random sampling of the population?
Incidentally, there are many less privileged people around me and, let me tell you, they're not going to work on foot.
The selection bias of extrapolating an entire country (not to mention one as large and diverse as usa) by using your friend group should be very obvious.
Incidentally, my friends are much more likely to not need to drive at all (tech or otherwise who WFH) than the average person around me.
> live in a large city
Ah yes, large cities. Famous for their rural populations.
Wait, are you telling me that rural populations have less proclivity to drive?
FWIW googling, allegedly 1 in 10 people in rural america do not have a license. Or at least that is the claim floating around the internet. So yes, i think figuring out if this is a real issue should include both checking on rural and urban people, along with many other demographics. It is not obvious how this situation differs between urban/rural.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/feb/19/john-olive...
> driver's license
Republicans are trying to make it so that the vast majority of drivers' licenses do not work either. You may have to get a new one, with passport-level paperwork.
[1] https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20I...
[2] https://papersplease.org/wp/2024/06/07/who-lacks-id-in-ameri...
In other words, it's not "people need driver's licenses to vote".
Trump changed voting rules to require proof of citizenship[1].
Disenfranchising 21 million voters makes sense now, no?
[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/213-...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/25/politics/voting-proof-of-...
I have never met a single person in my life that doesn't have a government ID. Have you? They never drove a car? Bought alcohol? Gotten on an airplane? Forget having a bank account, they've never cashed a check? Maybe they are so poor they have never had a check, but wait, collecting food stamps requires a government ID card. Having a job requires two forms of ID! If they are disabled they need an ID to collect disability checks. If they are old they need an ID to use medicare.
Everything requires an ID, I've never met anyone who didn't have an ID, and I've never met anyone who claimed to actually know someone personally that didn't have an ID.
It's completely ridiculous and stupid, but go ahead piva00, if 10% of people don't have an ID card you should be able to rattle off a name or a thousand. Where are they? What do they do all day?
Edit: this is getting downvoted, but nobody is even willing to claim to know a single person without an ID card
Edit: aredox: https://chatgpt.com/share/67ee42f4-9b4c-8006-aad9-ce3b275ec5...
>Name one person who can legally vote but was prevented from voting from this.
Literally thousands of people were barred to vote by last-minute voting roll purges. Virginia, Georgia...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/eligib...
On top of that, making vote more difficult through technicalities (voter roll purges, increased friction to vote, increased uncertainty if one can vote and will be punished if not eligible due to a technicality, etc.) further tilts the scale of who votes or not, either being barred by technicalities or fear.
None of that has any place in a real democracy, if democratic values are to be uphold it should be as easy as possible for any eligible voter to exercise their vote if they so wish.
You want anecdotes to fight against statistics, I think you got stuff reversed there, mate...
Edit: ah, lol, I think I need to repeat your own words back to you:
> This is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance and is also asking someone else to prove nonexistence of a situation.
Do you know anyone in your country who doesn't have a state issued ID card? It's simply not true that 10% of people lack a state ID, it's absolute fiction made up for political reasons. If you bother to look it up (of course you can't be bothered) you would find that it comes from a single phone poll which they then extrapolated using census data. It's beyond dubious.
> None of that has any place in a real democracy, if democratic values are to be uphold it should be as easy as possible for any eligible voter to exercise their vote if they so wish.
So Norway isn't a real democracy? Ireland? Germany? Sweden? Netherlands? Italy? India? Greece? Why aren't you on their forums calling them fake democracies?
It's very easy to go find made up statistics published by political groups. I could go find a 'statistic' that says 98% of people in the US have IDs. In fact, here: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2019/p...
The US highway administration says that 102% of driving age individuals in 3 US states have valid driver's licenses. 102%. That's a statistic published by the government. Don't try to explain to me that "you can't have more than 100%" because that's just an anecdote, mate. You have to just believe whatever the statistic says.
Where I live right now it's simply impossible because it's required to have an ID, we are also 10 million people so it's pretty easy to not fall into the cracks.
Back in my native country (Brazil), yes, I do know people who did not have any form of documentation up to when they died, like my great-grandfather, or a former's colleague grandmother.
> It's simply not true that 10% of people lack a state ID, it's absolute fiction made up for political reasons.
It's not about state IDs, read the fucking thing I posted, it's about "proof of citizenship" which 10% of the population does not have ready access for it, and rules have been changed for voters needing proof of citizenship, learn to read before spouting vitriol, please.
> So Norway isn't a real democracy? Ireland? Germany? Sweden? Netherlands? Italy? India? Greece? Why aren't you on their forums calling them fake democracies?
Here in Sweden is really easy to vote, nothing even close to what the US does to its voter rolls, or states deciding to purge them right before elections to tilt the scales, etc.
You simply are talking past through me, it's clear as day that people in the USA who want to vote many times cannot vote, you live there so probably have read more articles about this happening than I ever did. That is a problem, it's a fact, and it's used for political manipulation, 10% of the population will have increased friction to exercise their right to vote, that's simply anti-democratic, plain and simple :)
The hypocrisy here is astonishing. You are fine with your country requiring an ID but not mine. I think it's really telling that everyone on this thread is concerned with letting people vote without an ID, but nobody is saying we should try to help get people IDs because without an ID your life must be a complete shambles and they have no access to many basic government benefits or just basic things in life.
A state ID is proof of citizenship. There is no federal ID card in the US. I'm sorry, you shouldn't express opinions on these things when you clearly don't have basic understanding of what is going on.
> You simply are talking past through me, it's clear as day that people in the USA who want to vote many times cannot vote
Right, that is what the media puts out there, but it never actually happens. That's why I said it must be easy to find at least one actual person who couldn't vote, because supposedly there are so many. I've never met one nor heard of one. In the worst case they give you a 'provisional' ballot and in the event the election is close enough they check each one to see if that person was qualified to vote before counting it, but they ALWAYS let you vote. I had to do a provisional ballot in Santa Cruz, California (one of the most liberal cities in the US) to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. It's not uncommon, but they NEVER turn anyone away from voting. I'm sorry, but you just have absolute ignorance here.
Basically you need very specific letters where your exact name and address must match but those are issued without checking. So if one uses your middle initial instead of your name then no ID for you until you get it reissued.
In Texas they have a shortage of staff issuing the ids too so there is a 3 month delay after you apply to find out what you did incorrectly https://www.statesman.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/08/19/t...
Simplest answer is they don't care, wash their hands off of the whole thing and then democrats complain that it's the requirement to identify voters that block them. But it's not a strange requirement, it's as you say, a completely normal part of being a citizen to get an ID, and a duty for a voting citizen to do what they need to do to get that ballot in.
And even if black people were somehow disenfranchised from getting IDs, it doesn't prevent the non-black people to vote rationally, in the end. So no excuse.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/eligib...
As a black American who had crackheads in my family, I don't know anyone who was totally incapable of getting an ID card. I only ever see the argument brought up by white people on the Internet. Tyranny of low expectations. Heaven forbid that black adults be expected to shoulder some personal responsibility and figure out how to meet the basic requirements to exercise their civic duties, same as white people.
"The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man." -- Malcom X
My mother's side of my family is from North Philadelphia, same state as the first black woman featured in this video.
I spent three weeks in the US in 2021 when my mother had a psychotic breakdown and I had to put her life back together on short notice. She had lost her wallet and all ID. I got her a brand new birth certificate in Philadelphia and a NJ State ID to replace her Driver's License. This required setting up some appointments either online or via phone, and bringing some documents along, but it was manageable.
Expecting someone to have original birth certificate, SSN proof, and spouse's death certificate is....normal adult document management. I deal with a similar "burden of proof" every time I go to my local Japanese city office, or to immigration to renew our residency.
The next anecdote in the segment blasts Sauk City, Wisconsin for the ID center being closed on most days. According to Copilot, Sauk City is 96% white, with a median household income over $78,000 and a population of less than 4000. So a small middle class town of white people rarely has the ID office open? How is that supposed to support the argument that mandatory ID requirements disproportionately affect minorities again?
The second half of the John Oliver clip focuses on the voting events not the identification acquisition problem so I don't consider that part relevant and won't dissect it.
So it always blew my mind Americans split themselves in random colors (especially the hispanics, like, why) and enrages me the self-described "whites" are so dismissive of the ability of "black people" to be, like, completely normal and boring and able to get whatever form is needed to vote...
Our ID department has buses with computers and cameras/fingerprint machines on them, they go to remote villages and stuff and take everyone's bio data, then return a few weeks later and give everyone their cards.
There is literally NO valid excuse for NOT implementing voter ID.
NONE.
If we can do it, the richest country in the world can do it.
Such a pathetic hill for American Democratic party to die on.
I think democrats started out with good intentions, helping enfranchise black voters a part of the civil rights act .... but somehow they have made it their morality point and refuse to accept that it is no longer fit for purpose.
They should made no voter-ID a temporary measure and created proper voter-IS systems in the meanwhile.
Democratic states collect taxes and implement policy independently, they CAN do this, at least in their own areas.
Start there first!
Start small, but START. Start from Democrats accepting what every LEFT leaning person the rest of the world accepts: Photo ID is necessary, not to reduce voter fraud or whatever, but necessary to increase TRUST in the system.
It's a cost, just pay it. Yes you will lose 'face' to republicans, don't care.
Start small, start with free/cheap photo ID in deep democratic cities (I know local govt providing service, what an idea!).
Once saturation reaches 80% plus, start enforcing voter ID laws to cajole the last 20% to start applying, carrot and stick. Start offering door-step service for those unable.
Democrats pay taxes, don't they? start using them.
Spread to other cities in democratic states. So what if it takes 10-20 year? Times passes like nothing.
And once you have SET the standard of cheap, reliable access to Photo ID... and when democrats in power in the federal government again, they can use that to help implement cheap photo ID elsewhere, but even if Missouri doesn't get voter ID, it doesn't excuse democratic states NOT having it.
The fact that the DMV is only open three days a month or whatever? If it's a democrat led city, FIX it. If it's a republican city, you can come to it later.
But NOT starting, as some sort of fake 'rights' issue? Bullship.
Start. Start Small, Start NOW. in 25 years you won't even remember this.
That sounds like it would be way easier if those people had id's...
It is an Anglo-American thing not to have PhotoID probably related to never been invaded in the last two hundred years.
The issue is that to get back in power the Democrats need votes top overturn Republicans and so the IDs in Republican states matter those in Democrat states do not. So better top show full disapproval as they won't lose any seats over that and can keep some pressure up.
Some people in the UK had the same 'oh no we are being outnumbers' sort of mentality, and without mandatory ID, they had no sane voice in their head to tell them 'don't be silly, we track people with cards'.
It's funny how much the existence of the card gives the masses a weird sense of peace.
The population WANTS this piece of bigotry, heck our ancestors voted for the damn thing it, it's literally the 2nd amendment of our the constitution.
You can't blame NADRA for including it in their forms, they do it on government demand. Heck, I had to sign the damn thing to get my damn passport, there is no escaping it.
But NADRA also has vans that go village by village providing photo-ID on the doorstep. And THAT is accessibility.
Do I wish this piece of bigotry wasn't in on our forms? Yes. Today Ahmedis; tomorrow Shias; day after who knows, it might be me.
Does it mean CNIC are BAD? NO, they are perhaps the only actually part of cour damn governance, being able to provide ID.
We could obviously do better, but NOT having ID is crazy.
There's no "government comes to you" to give you an ID. And, many Democrats would love to make it easier to get an ID, but the Republicans often deliberately make it harder to get an ID.
They shut down offices and reduce hours of locations, so people have to travel farther and take more time off work. They increase the bureaucratic requirements and hurdles, so people are more likely to need to take multiple trips.
I personally wouldn't have a problem with making a voter ID a requirement to vote, if we could also agree to make it as easy as you describe to get an ID. The problem is the GOP wants to require getting a voter ID and simultaneously make it harder to get an ID.
This in fact exposes the heart of American democratic failures: Even in states with Democratic city/state majority.... things don't work.
If some one in Missouri can't get ID, ok, that's a republican state... but if a person in New York or California can't get ID.... whose fault is it? It's all democrats as far as the eye can see.
They run/fund the DMVs, not the feds, they collect taxes and implement policy, so why can't THEY do it?
I am not an american, I don't have time for these petty excuses.
It's not that you don't have time for the excuses. It's that you are chiming in on a system you know nothing about and simply swallowing the propoganda that you read online.
If your mayor is actively undermining your ability to get an ID in order to surpress your vote, what does "holding him responsible mean"? And if your mayor is doing this at the behest of a billion dollar superpac that has run the number and realized that if they could get 1% reduction in opposition votes by implementing voter ID laws, what is lower class person to do?
It's incredibly easy to get an ID in democratic states, and the voter ID laws aren't about targeting states like California. They almost always target battleground states like Wisconsin where there are billions of dollars spent in TV ads. If you could guarantee that your opponent could like 2-3% of the vote by spending 1 billion dollars on Voter ID bullshit vs spending 10 billion on TV ads, what would you choose?
Electoral warfare is far more salient in US politics than in Pakistan - or any other country. The Heritage Foundation (one of the largest republican think tanks) already confirms that voter fraud is a non-issue - but billion dollar PACs have managed to convince a pakistani on the other side of the world that Voter ID is a real issue. You should ask yourself why you - a pakistani - has such strong feelings about Voter ID when Voter Fraud is completely a non-issue when both political sides look at the data.
Is it that Voter ID is a real issue, or has the billions being spent on making us think it's an issue bled into the media you consume as well?
Because as I said somewhere else in this post, when americans are unhappy, they spread their frustration on the entire world with a shovel.
And when I see that this frustration arises from something as stupid as voter ID, I wonder why they don't just fix it. I am not interested in the actual voter fraud numbers or some random foundation... I am interested in YOU guys being happy. And if (a sufficient number of) YOU believe in voter fraud, then for ffs, get voter ID, we all have it, why can't you?
It's like with the kids' blankie to save them from the monster under the bed, don't argue about the probability of bed monsters, understand the frankly low cost of providing the blankie, realise it's not worth quibbling about and just GIVE IT TO THEM.
It isn't about about voter fraud, it's about trust in the system. When americans don't feel trust in the system, they are unhappy. And when they are unhappy, they are often distracted by their elected leaders by other things.... things that affect the entire world, like tariffs or wars.
I don't speak about Brazilian issues, not because they don't affect us (we import soybeans from them which affects chicken prices, for example) but the effect is less... catastrophic.... but a Texan sneezes, I get the flu here.
It's part of the curse of being the world hegemon.
I'm not explaining this just for you - but anyone else reading this post. Here is a video from Paul Weyrich, a highly influential republican, in the 1980s discussing why voter turn out should be reduced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4wxlCGIu0
The symptoms are "trust in the system", "voter id" and "voter fraud". The PROBLEM is one major political party has found it extremely advantageous to ensure as few people vote as possible. If every American got voter ID tomorrow, republicans would simply invent a new issue to manufacture distrust in the system in order to suppress votes. Then another pakistani/european/canadian will be flabbergasted as to why American just don't do X and how all their friends do X everyday.
That's why I'm saying the problem is complex. You are viewing the problem as "Americans just won't adopt voter ID", and on it's face you are probably confused as to why a country as rich as America can't do Voter ID. What I'm saying the problem is that it is actually financially and politically advantageous for one party so sow distrust in the voting process (and this isn't some leftist conspiracy, this is openly admitted by them). Once you understand that you will see why Voter ID is so salient. It's not that we can't do Voter ID, its that Voter ID is the current boogeyman to sow distrust and if that is ever solved, we will simply invent a new problem in order to suppress voters.
Our government and population WANT to disenfranchise them, we WANT to be bigoted against them, and if photo-ID didn't exist, voter rolls STILL exist and then we would use THOSE to lynch them or whatever.
When it's America, then it's somehow different. I even laid it out for you clearly that republicans WANT to disenfranchise them, but your prescription is that we need a 25 year plan to offer photo IDs on the cheap.
>and if photo-ID didn't exist, voter rolls STILL exist and then we would use THOSE to lynch them or whatever.
The irony in telling Americans to build a 25 year plan to roll out photo ID when they don't even solve issues for your government. Do you not see how foolish it is to tell Americans to spend time solving a problem that YOU KNOW won't solve the issue of government targeted disenfranchisement? You wrote 500 odd words telling Americans to build a system you just admitted doesn't work to solve the underlying problem.
They don't solve issue for us because we deliberate include the bigotry into the system.
We are bigoted regardless of voter ID.
But it does solve problems for other countries, like the actually leftist countries in Europe etc.
And it could solve problems for you.
Just because we are 3rd world hell-hole doesn't negate the effectiveness of voter-ID.
We choose to puncture our tyres, doesn't negate the effectiveness of wheels.
And?
I am sorry, you fear.... governing? Because that's what life is. You fix one issue, some other arises.
The issue is NOT complex, let's admit it... you just don't want to lose 'face'. You have hitched yourself to the no-ID bandwagon for so long it kills you to admit it was wrong.
Democrats are trying to pretend something is a civil rights issue which NO left-leaning politician the rest of the world considers it to be so. TRUST in the system is paramount, this why Trump is in the office, it seems american citizens trust him more than they trust democrats.
It's a governance/bureaucratic issue. But as the guest on Jon Stewart's podcast said[1], democrats just can't govern.
Any other person would think of it a 25-year plan and start NOW. Start small, start with the most democratic cities in democratic states, and start offering photo ID on the cheap, on the doorstep. Use all those taxes you collect for it. Then move on to other cities in the democratic state, then slowly move outward.
Maybe one day you will again hold the federal government and then you can use the learning from that to help implement it elsewhere... and even if red states don't implement, at least you will have started something good, and you will have something to PRESENT.
But don't mind me, I am just going to spend sometime just trying to understand how trump's tariffs affect us (29%!!!), I feel I will be facing some severe shortages soon.
Please explain to me clearly where I was wrong? What is the problem you have identified and the solution that I gave that was incorrect?
This rest of the text you posted is a massive non-sequitor. I identified to you that (1) there is no voter fraud problem (2) voter ID would not fix anything except cost the government more money and (3) it's a false claim made to disenfranchise voters.
Please clearly, explain whats wrong, backed with relevant data about voter fraud instead of waffling about Ezra Klein and John Stewart on a completely different issue.
>I am sorry, you fear.... governing?
I fear spending money trying to solve a made up problem. Something you pretended to care about when you brought up Ezra Klein. Except in the case of Voter ID you oppose Ezra Klein and you actually want to spend money doing bullshit that solves nothing. Please identify what is actually solved that is worth someone spending 25 years of their life handing out voter IDs.
Ah I see.
But yes, I agree, it is a pathetic problem for a 1st world country to have - just sort it out.
absolutely not! we have had massive migrations both from India (after independence) and Afghanistan (after the russian occupation). This is NOT a given.
Things have NOT been easy... and in fact dare I say, our ID department is rather dumb and stupid. I personally have had MULTIPLE issues with them.
But we have been doing SOMETHING, and the fact that the US doesn't... is insane.
When a child is born, the parent has to get them registered at the local council office. And then when my first card was made at 18, my dad went with me as verification, he attested that I was child #X as per the family tree, they confirmed someone with my name was in that family tree in their records, and used that as verification for me.
If parents are not available they can use relatives, as long as there is a family tree link. Not sure how they do it otherwise, but there is some system for refugees etc too.
Now imagine the opposite. A government that’s not interested but rather is motivated in denying some people an ID. Why it increases that’s party likelihood of staying in power.
https://youtu.be/rHFOwlMCdto?si=OjoxCfE1noxvw3Fz
And you need to do paperwork, which means you have to pay and find time. How do people with 2 or 3 jobs do?
https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2024/01/number-of-licensed-dr...
So forgive me for being flippant but....how hard can it be?
>>How do people with 2 or 3 jobs do?
I assume they drive to those 3 jobs, so they somehow found a way.Again, sorry for being dismissive, and I appreciate it might be time consuming at costly - but still, 91% of all American adults have found a way to do this, so my point is that driving licences(along other documents) seem like a perfectly acceptable form of ID for voting?
Where did you hear this? When I lived in Pennsylvania, it was really easy to get a state ID. Just go into the DMV, show them your documents, pay the fee ($42 now), and you have your ID within the hour. They had centers all around the city, and they're open on Saturdays. Personally, I think this is an extremely weird hill for Democrats to want to die on. Most independent and swing voters think its a reasonable requirement.
> Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.
> We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.
Anyway, this is sort of by-the-by. Most adults have driver's licenses, and no one in Alaska is going to reject your Tennessee-issued DL so it is a de-facto national id.
In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your voting population from voting because they lack an unrelated document (why should a driver's license be linked to ability to vote?) would be considered a major flaw.
You may elect to have your DL as a voting document as a convenience. It doesn't mean you have to have one in order to vote. A state's Board of Elections will issue you a voting document.
It's not, it's just one of many acceptable forms of id - along with a passport, birth certificate, and probably few others.
>>In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your voting population
Unless they are stopped from obtaining any document then they aren't barred from anything. Most Americans don't have a passport either but no one would argue that they are barred from travelling internationally, they just have to go and get a passport issued.
Making it difficult (as the article states, this 9% do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship) is essentially barring with extra steps.
I hate this semantics/loophole game Americans like to play, seems to be quite common in your society to use the "akshually, technically" and going completely against the spirit of something. The spirit is: this makes it more difficult to vote, it will inevitably bar some people from voting, it's just salami-slicing...
I'm not American and I don't know why you'd assume I am - to me the fact that americans don't have ID requirements to vote is insane.
>>as the article states, this 9% do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship
Again, do they simply not have them because they never bothered to get them, or are they unable to obtain them? That's quite a big difference.
I also hope we're not saying that if someone turned 18 and just simply never bothered to obtain any kind of acceptable ID(and there are usually many) then it's somehow unfair to not let them vote - because I really struggle to see how that would be true.
I get it that some states try to disenfranchise people and obviously that's wrong but the answer to that cannot be "voter id requirements are bad".
You also seem to think everyone has a car and thus a driving licence.
And that's before talking about voter roll purges, gerrymandering and putting ballot boxes and stations away from "certain type" of voters.
I don't see how those two are related. In UK driving licences are also used as de facto ID everywhere(you can even get on domestic flights using your driving licence lol), and everyone gets one when they turn 18 because just get a provisional driving licence(identical to a normal one but with an L on it to indicate learner driver), no car necessary. In effect everyone in the country has a driving licence even if they don't drive or own a car. And you just apply by post, no need to go anywhere,
Obviously it would be much better to do it like other European countries do it and just issue everyone with an actual ID when they turn 18, but what UK is doing is close enough equivalent of this. So if the US has the DMV and already has an easily accessible way for people to get driving licences......what's the problem?
Some would be caught out if their passport has expired.
https://www.southend.gov.uk/elections-registering-vote/chang...
Just look at the actual facts, as you say.
https://theconversation.com/almost-2-million-people-in-the-u...
The voting booth refused to even register this, yet the apologists claim only 1 in 400 were denied.
"We found that around 0.5% of all voters reported being turned away at polling stations as a result of lacking ID in the local elections of 2023. We also found that four times as many people (around 2%) reported not voting because they knew they didn’t have the right ID."
2.5% is 1 in 400
You need ID to do a lot of stuff just like any other country.
(as an aside, it would be very funny to me if the they used the driving license for electronic signing of official communication with the authorities like we use it in some countries in the EU).
But also because of that registration, getting a kind of ID involves making an appointment at the county house, filling in a form and handing over a recent portrait photo. It's a bit of a hassle but nothing extreme.
This whole thread is gold. People just casually discussing why it is necessary for America to enslave the world AND it is beneficial for the world. The color revolutions were successful in other countries until the DeepState decided to bring that "social engineering technology" to home. Somehow people think they can contain such moral corruption just as plasma is contained using electromagnetic coils in fusion reactors.
Trump lost the $30k–$50k democraphic by 9 points in 2016, but turned around and won it by 6 points in 2024—a 15-point swing! Meanwhile he won the $100k–$200k and $200k+ demographics by ~2 percentage points in 2016, but lost it by 5+ points in 2024 even while winning the popular vote.
It's possible that this was a one-off and not a major permanent realignment, but it's definitely not as clear cut as it used to be.
Voter ID is very common and sensible. The UK introduced it recently and while it did disenfranchise people this was not to the benefit of the party in power when the law was introduced.
Basically the law they would need is "states can do whatever voter ID they want, if it's free and easy to get ID and 9X% of voters not just _can get it, but actually actually have it, otherwise they can't". Or they could have made a federal ID and ensured everyone gets it.
But Democrats always felt that even going ner voter id laws were a bit dangerous. It always rang like "voter suppression" to them (and in many ways it probably was). But they missed the chance to make it impossible for Republicans to abuse it as voter suppression - and here we are now, worrying that there will be voter ID laws despite many lacking ID. It's infuriating.
Why the idea of "we'll just make sure people have ID" is so unimaginable is just completely impossible to understand. It doesn't matter that there is no actual in-person voter fraud. Voter ID laws are a good thing anyway - if everyone actually has ID. It adds trust to the process and god knows the US needs a process where people actually believe it's secure, not just one that IS secure.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political battle. That's a line at which we ban accounts, regardless of what your politics are or aren't. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations.
If you'd please revert to using HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3llu...
given that they've done most of the things they accuse others of, I wouldn't be surprised if they win by 110%.
Why do you think we are naive and you aren't?
There won't be any elections. We will stick with Trumpism. We will be our own best friends, Morty. The outside world will be our enemy. We will do great things Morty, we will do the greatest things. A Trump administration for a 100 years. A Trump administration forever. Over and over. Running around, the Trump administration forever.
They have no plan, not even a concept of a plan. Trump is just hoping that he can get lucky with a good outcome, but that is really improbable. This is a huge opportunity for China though if they make deals with everyone else to the exclusion of the USA.
Even the idea of moving production back the USA is misguided, we are already at low unemployment, and haven’t made enough investments in automation like the Chinese are doing ATM. I doubt China will let us import that tech to setup our own factories quickly without worrying about who will work them.
The plutocracy has fully captured the government and now seeks its ultimate goal: complete transfer of all tax burden to the 99%. For this end they cut the government spending, wrecking the democracy and they impose tariffs to generate fake temporary revenues, so they can argue that the huge tax cut (dwarfing all that came before) is economically sound and fully justified.
This will wreck the global economy and with the coming bad times (wars, famine, extreme migration) nobody will have the presence or the governmental weight to rein in these few rich man.
What is the more likely explanation is all the countries with trade surpluses will feel the pain long before the US and agree to much better terms than before.
The PM of Canada had already indicated progress is being made on their trade deal.
When countries put a high tariff on US goods while enjoying low or no tariffs when exporting to the US - that’s an unfair arrangement.
Vietnam for example: US 46% tariff, Vietnam average 15% tariffs.
This will hurt the US far more than it hurts other countries, as other countries will just start to bypass the US and trade with other nations.
Who would trust goods from the US or having them as part of your supply chain after this?
Trade with other nations?
These are exports to the US, which is 25% of the world’s GDP.
Who is going to replace that demand?
You think Vietnam, where 30% of GDP are US exports, is going to be hurt less than the US where Vietnam makes up 3.9% of imports?
These tariffs are a huge mistake according to almost every mainstream economist, I hope instead of parroting the party line you’ll be able to admit their failure in a few years.
And if you artificially keep your exchange rate 10% higher, that’s an effective 10% tariff on US imports.
I have no idea if the tariffs will work but I don’t fault a country for saying “we’re matching the tariffs you apply to our exports”
So does every country in the world, this is neither surprising nor reason to slap tariffs on imports (which will hurt US consumers).
> I have no idea if the tariffs will work
We have lots of examples from history of tariffs not working, so there is that. They lead to trade wars, and then sometimes to real wars, never to prosperity.
The unparalleled prosperity the US enjoyed in the last few decades before 2008 was driven by open global trade and being the currency of last resort and the centre of world markets. I think there is a lot of complacency in the US about that position, and we're seeing the beginning of the end.
Do you think Canada’s tariffs on dairy products has worked to protect the industry? Seems like it has?
Claiming that free trade has benefited the US is true, but the benefit has gone to the top at the expense of the bottom.
Europe uses tariffs to protect domestic industry and when the US decides to do it, suddenly it’s wrong?
The US uses selective tariffs already, which is fine though not actually that helpful IMO, what is new is absurdly high punitive and blanket tariffs on everything. This will tank the stock market, raise prices, cause a recession and perhaps most importantly ruin the reputation of the US as a safe haven.
The absurd tariffs on trading partners that don’t matter like Laos are a perfect illustration of how much thought went into this.
Thing A is currently manufactured in China | Vietnam | whatever lower cost country and sold for $x today. Slap on 50% tariffs so now it costs $1.5x. That provides an incentive to produce thing A locally sure.
But if you can already produce thing A locally for $x, you wouldn't have offshored the production in the first place. Maybe producing thing A locally will cost less than $1.5x, but it'll still be more than $x. So cost still end up increasing.
Am I missing something?
Company absorb costs all the time. If you think cutting your price by 10% will boost sales by 20%, you do it because total profit is higher even though per unit profit is lower.
And the reverse is true - companies might increase prices and accept lower volume.
Not to mention not all items are interchangeable. Is a car made in Mexico worth the same as the same model made in Germany?
And now that's 50c extra in taxes to the government for every other part of the supply chain consuming $5 trash cans as an expense.
They see a way with china by the end of the decade so they are trying to remove dependence on their manufacturing and flip Russia to our side.
Except there isn’t any guarantee of a war with china, it’s just an idea they have. For all we can tell they have no intention of that. Taiwan is tricky though
Corp one has two factories one smaller one in the us one bigger one in the eu. They will now shift more of the production to the us from eu to avoid tariffs.
Corp two only has a factory in the eu. They will now build another factory in the us to be able to avoid tariffs and keep selling their goods at competitive prices.
In the past, countries would put tariffs on importing cars, but not on importing car parts (with some complex definition of what constitutes a car and a car part. IIRC, there once was a loophole where one imported a car and converted it into a van by removing back seats to avoid a tax on importing vans)
Nobody is building a new factory, based on tariffs that they expect to be gone in three years time.
For many industries it might not make sense unless it's a 5-10 years long plan, the risk of investing a lot to build a new factory, bringing it online over the next 2-3 years, to then have tariffs removed and making your new shiny factory more expensive to run than one outside of the country, will also be factored into the total cost.
The tariffs are so broadly applied that the risk factor is much more massive than anything the USA experienced before (like during the Japanese cars era of the 70s/80s), it's wishful thinking the domino effect will happen in the short/medium-term.
If costs goes up then either prices go up too or margins go down or a mix of both.
Your second sentence indicates the more significant problem though, because that uncertainty on timelines makes even the 3-4 year time horizon questionable. Nobody is going to invest anything based on tariffs that may go away or change next week and the only way you can tell if they're sticking around is waiting so long you don't have time to make the investment any more.
It might be different if Trump came in with a clear, transparent tariff plan on day one. But they're already all over the place and being implemented in extremely unpredictable ways. Some people might argue his unpredictability is an asset in general, but it's absolutely not in this case.
They won't be competitive prices though; they'll have to charge more because of the capital costs in setting up a whole new factory and supply chains, increased labour costs, and having to pay tariffs on importing parts.
I imagine that not being able to export cars from this factory due to reciprocal tarrifs will also drive up prices, due to things like lost flexibility, redundancy, and economies of scale.
This also means higher prices across the board for consumer goods, but the worker still net benefits greatly.
Who does not benefit: The people who do not work. And that's fine. But it's also this class of people who make the entire political and media class, and hacker class apparently, so that's why we have this enormous resistance.
"Domestic production will replace imports" is conditioned on the cost of domestic production being lower than the cost of imports with the tariffs added. "Just spin up new factories with capital investment, raise wages substantially to get people to change careers from service industries, and train all these new people" isn't going to be a cheaper approach to building furniture than continuing to import it from Vietnam with a high tariff.
The effect will be minimal new domestic manufacturing and higher prices for large numbers of goods.
And low paid workers in the service sector aren't low skilled and costly to get going. They're intelligent and honest, and would be fine workers in manufacturing if given the opportunity. They're working in the service sector because those jobs couldn't be off-shored.
But the second scenario is a massive investment. It not only requires the economics of it to work today, it requires knowing what the situation is 1 or 2 decades down the line. You can't build a car factory in two years. Barely in four. And even if you do, it doesn't matter if it's likely to operate at a loss in 8 years!
The most important thing for that type of investment is stability and predictability, not just "the costs will be lower for at least 2 years now! or maybe 2weeks we don't know since the tariffs seem to come and go depending on which side of bed the local czar wakes up on".
If they do they’re lying. The mechanism by which tariffs restore production is by raising prices. That makes it more lucrative to invest in serving that market. If producers have to absorb the tariff, they won’t boost production and the tariff is just a corporate tax increase.
> to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD
That’s called inflation!
tax cut financed by the tariffs? Will buy/mislead a lot of voters when those checks would get sent mid next year.
Especially those voters who couldn't notice that all those countries having tariffs (and VAT) are worse economically than US in major part because US didn't until now have much tariffs to speak of.
It took over a hundred years for countries to once again have economic trust with France again when they went hard on tariffs in the 1600s causing war.
Who in their right mind would negotiate with a man known to rip up existing agreements on a whim?!
I have a feeling that this will knock the United States down a peg economically to the point where we look back on Liberation Day as America’s Brexit
Given how dependent usa is on foreign debt, that sounds crazy to me.
If they accomplish that sort of thing, they wont be able to borrow at favourable rates anymore. That seems incredibly bad for usa. Am i missing something on how severe that would be?
edit: Also the USA is nowhere near a default, unless congress chooses to not raise the ridiculous debt ceiling policy.
However, because they are doing it so early, they will have time to recalibrate and bake in exemptions until the market / inflation is happy. Up to and including backing off of the policy entirely, if that ends up being necessary. As a political strategy, it is perfectly timed to allow Trump to "save the economy" from his own policies. This is true imo independently of what you may think about the policy as policy.
When it comes to the policy as such, recipirocal tariffs, conceptually, are designed to incentivize the overall global reduction in tariffs. So, as a headline, implementing "reciprocal tariffs" is actually favorable to free trade. However, there are some important details that they have fucked up, such as identifying tariffs with trade deficits in general, and in particular identifying them with trade deficits in goods only. That is really the component of the policy that doesn't make sense, and it is important.
Most likely, they will recalibrate and/or provide a lot of exemptions, particularly as the midterms approach. As a political tactic, I think it will work out fairly well, if they respond to the feedback appropriately - that's the big question though, and that uncertainty is the most significant reason for the market drop.
I say pessimism but in case it's not clear I'd prefer a democrat victory, both in the immediate past and in the coming midterms.
Fwiw I'd prefer the republicans win again, so my optimism is actual (not that I don't have substantial criticisms of the current admin's policies). However, it is refreshing to have a content-focused exchange on the internet about politics, so h/t to you :)
I don't think "reputational harm" exists in international relations. I do think the terms of future bilateral negotiations may be less favourable to the US for a while but if they are too iniquitous they won't get ratified in Congress.
Maybe some significant 20+ year investment choices redirect. Some future 56th president will complain 47 laid the seed of this disadvantage. In every other respect after the noisy bit is over people do what they do.
I don't like the mechanism he chose to implement them, or the sharpness with which they were imposed, but I do think implementing actual proper reciprocal tariffs phased in over a reasonable period of time was a good idea. And I agree with you re: the service/goods issue. Them excluding services in their trade deficit calculation is by far the dumbest part of this plan.
The prez is literally holding up placards where half the numbers on it are mislabelled and they rest of the numbers are that mislabelled/misunderstood number divided by half
That sounds like garden variety incompetence to me not 5D chess
And damn the consequences for everyone else, including the people who elected him, he doesn’t consider that in his calculations, which is what makes them so confusing for those who think he is playing by normal rules of politics or business.
I think Trump is getting unpopular actions out of the way quickly, perhaps planning to announce an income tax reduction later to save the midterm elections.
The difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that all the "establishment" R politicians who were "corrupt" or "deep state" but willing to work with him could at least steer the ship in the first term. Those people are gone and all who remain are ideologues and yes-men. Trying to find logic in the madness strikes me as someone going through the stages of grief near death, trying to find sense in a senseless, uncaring world. Take occam's razor, no one is steering the ship at the white house right now.
I really wish I was more optimistic and share your position that voters are driven by self-interest. I hope you're right though.
I agree that that's their understanding. I'd argue that in reality they don't, they can't. International relations are a very complex system. And there is no precedent of an empire wilfully dismantling its periphery.
I really don't enjoy the whole "may you live in interesting times" thingy
I believe that's an unrealistic vision, not least since America's debt means it cannot afford significant shrinkage of its global market or a loss of its status as reserve currency, but I believe autarkie is the goal none the less.
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
https://archive.today/latest/www.ft.com/content/fba87dd3-514...
Trump’s team consider financial policy interventions to be crucial in a grand reordering of global finance and trade
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/markets-wrestle-with-trum...
>In a November paper, economist Stephen Miran, whom Trump has picked to chair his Council of Economic Advisors, raised the possibility that Trump could use the threat of tariffs and the lure of U.S. security support to persuade foreign governments to swap their Treasury holdings for lower-cost century bonds.
Via
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43350553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561808
Just so pple get the credit
The answer to this is pretty simple, although American Exceptionalism makes it hard to see for many Americans. For every other country, most could see pretty clearly that they'll not plan on holding free elections going forward.
The aftermath will probably be complete isolation of the US, because no country will want to trade with them. And the administration is fine with that, because they're not interested in keeping the status quo of democracy alive.
More influence for them, less influence from outside. That's how oligarchs think and act.
With global ones like this - they are absolutely oblivious what will happen.
The plan may be that there are no more elections, or that the only people who are allowed to vote are identified MAGA supporters. Does this seem impossible? Everything Trump has done would have been considered impossible only a couple of months ago.
What Trump reveals is the utter apathy of Americans. They're sheep in lions' clothing, not the other way around.
Why on earth would you spend millions and billions of dollars on investing into a ROI-10-year factory, when a cheeseburger overdose or, heaven forbid, the Dems winning another election will take that investment and turn it straight into the toilet?
Not to mention that you'll be locked out of the world's markets, thanks to reciprocal tariffs.
Furthermore, Trump has never bought his own groceries, pumped his own gas, or interviewed for a job so retail prices and layoffs are abstractions "for plebs". Plus, he's reaching the end of his life so he doesn't have very much proverbial skin in the game since his motivations revolve almost exclusively around himself.
They slapped 10pct tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands. Literally uninhabited islands in Antarctica.
It's certainly an interesting strategy. Let's see how it plays out.
There's nothing strategic about a 4 column excel spreadsheet and one formula.
I don't understand, who's holding that "foreign held debt"? foreign countries I suppose, so which countries do you have in mind?
For one, it's not China, which holds a large amount of US treasury bonds (so basically, China is a lender of USD). So the revaluation of USD would work great for China: one, the value of the China-held USD bonds increases, and second, the price of Chinese exports decreases in USD terms.
So help me understand, what's the plan with the revaluation of USD?
While we cannot predict the future, it's moving faster. The world system is under immense stress. Complexity at this scale increases the chance of black swans and unpredictable outcomes. Many powerful actors are reacting simultaneously in divergent directions, which can reshape the trajectory altogether. We are vulnerable to cascading surprises.
Well, a lot of economists, including one Nobel Prize winner (Paul Krugman) have commented on this being a bad idea for the economy...
On the off chance that those people who are supposed to know what they are talking about are all wrong and haven't thought about it being some genius diversion tactics -- it's generally still a pretty bad idea for a government to effectively ask everyone to "tough it out" and "just trust me bro".
It's really disappointing that people are actually trying to theorize this as some kind of genius plan. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the amount of irreparable damage they have already done to regular folks is unacceptable (uh... I'm sure some nutters out there think that DOGE is keeping track of all the damages they have done and will pay everyone once their genius plans have worked out).
That kind of logic really amazes me.
I think they know, they care and decided that it is a reasonable way forward given very limited (trade and budget deficit) options. Otherwise I think you are spot on.
To spitball some ideas on your midterm comment (again, agree to it). One possibility is they see it as an unavoidable loss, plan on using veto to maintain course set during the first 2 years (which is why they rush) and hope to be in the updraft phase by the November 2028 elections. Maybe.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from their public actions is that they believe they can more or less enforce all their policies by executive order and that they're very sure they will be keeping the executive in 2028.
Not sure why, despite long and consistent experience, that people keep thinking he’s anyone but exactly who he appears to be. There’s no grand plan, calculated risk, or 4D-chess. The clown is just putting on a performance, based on his immediate feelings, and the immediate reaction of the crowd. There’s nothing else there.
While I agree they probably have some idea what will happen, don't forget that these same people added a journalist to a group chat where they planned a military attack. They fired a bunch of critical people and then didn't know how to get in touch with them to try and rehire them. Assuming they're total idiots isn't much of a stretch.
We have too much debt and we are going through a time of austerity. Trump is a side show for the sock puppets to have content to talk about.
Anyone who can't see that is probably a sock puppet themselves.
Austerity sucks. The alternative is worse long term. Get on with your life and delete social media. Stop being a mindless fucking sock puppet.
Trump ran on a campaign that voting is a pain and you won't have to do it again if he wins. Since then he's maintained that third term is the plan. Doesn't really matter how upset the voting population is if you're going to ignore their votes.
There could be someone who understands this. But this someone never shows their face in public, or provides any rationale for the policies beyond the nonsense like "reciprocal tariffs" or similar nonsense. I mean the literal board with tariff percentages that was held up had numbers that made NO sense, to anyone! Yet there are no critical questions?
It's beginning to feel like a conspiracy theory. That behind the obvious idiots who are the faces of the policies, are some other, less inept people who are pulling the strings. But who would this be?
> they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.
If there are elections in 2026 and 2030 then what follows is a blue wave in the midterms and millions of disappointed voters who had their 401k's gutted, saw prices of most goods increase 10%+ in 2 years, saw little to no tax cuts, lost their jobs if they worked for the government, and lost their social security.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege?wprov=sft... 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529614 2: https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
Are we really going to see this happening in 2 years? I'm not sure about this. The cost of Mexican/South Asian factories are still a lot lower than US.
What you will see is many promises of massive investment, conspicuously scheduled to break ground around 2028ish.
I seriously doubt this administration understands any of this. I agree that they don't care, but I don't think they know what's going to happen. No one does.
I think you're making the same mistake a lot of observers are making: you're looking at this from an economic perspective, and think those decisions were taken on an economic basis. But that is likely not the case.
The Trumpist movement is entirely focused on political aims: re-establishing old hierarchies of power inside the country, and entrenching them for good. The important work is the slashing and burning of welfare and safeguards for lower and middle classes, putting minorities "back in their place", and entrenching the wealthy into positions of absolute dominance. Everything else is a distraction, to keep newspeople busy and the population focused on recreating an idealized, "Happy Days" 1950 society. Enemies will be created to make you hate, this or that policy will be picked up or dropped just to keep you arguing, and meanwhile the important work is made irreversible. Once you destroy what was built over a century, it will take decades to rebuild them, and meanwhile the New Normal will take root and become impossibly hard to remove.
Fascism and nazism did not move from economic principles - they picked up what they needed as they went, opportunistically, because their main aims were fundamentally political. The Trump II administration works in the same way: the priority is political dominance to achieve political aims at societal level, everything else is tangential and opportunistic.
They tried to steal an election already - it's pretty easy to understand why they are making decisions as if they don't have to worry about elections anymore
Democracy is not some magic spell that will bring the administration back to normality. Democracy only works as long as all players continue to act as if democratic decisions are binding. The executive branch have already shown they are more than willing to go against the judicial branch. They could do the same with the legislative branch. Questioning the legitimacy of elections, or actively rigging elections, is a possible next step in the same playbook.
We should focus on how the actions of the current administration work as means to consolidate their power. A powerful minority can rule over a majority, as long as their keys to power are upheld.
It's bully tactics.
For ex see Canada's fentynal importation issue, which was something invented to justify a natsec emergency legally. The numbers don't have to be real, just plausibly deniable.
If it didn't hit midterms it would hit the next presidential race. You gotta pick your poison. I guess they decided it's better to just get it over with.
They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get their reset in a belief they can make it less like the Smoot-Hawley great depression because so many other economic levers exist now, including floating currency, MMT, and massive fintech.
Personally I think it's a mistake but hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive. They know. They just don't care. Some amount of foreign trade will absorb the cost. Not all, not most. Not all prices in the US will rise and some substitution will happen although spinning up cheap labor factories again isn't going to happen in 2025. Maybe by 2027? Rust belt sewing shops and Walmart grade cheap goods production lines?
What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?