We are in treason territory.
In fact, this administration has been so effective and brazen that if you were to try and write this as fiction, the scope and scale of what is occurring would be deemed unbelievable and would require toning down for the audience.
I find it particularly interesting how many popular US media people disseminate provably false Kremlin propaganda, as if someone flipped a switch.
Fascinating times.
>We are in treason territory.
Are we just going to start throwing "treason" accusations whenever a political opponent does the wrong thing? Being anti-free trade? Hurts US hegemony and makes US consumers pay more. Treason. Being pro-free trade? Sells out hard working americans while enriching corporations. Treason.
It's the perfect storm.
I don't see an end to this
Brilliant.
Trump just added some additional sanctions on Russia for helping the Houthis.
Sanctions seem worse than tariffs to me, but I'm not an expert.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sanctions-russia-based-n...
But notice how people talk now - Trump might say he is "planning" something against Russia and people take it as a proof that he is not an asset. They forget about concept of sacrificing something to gain advantage. If heat turns to much on Trump, they might let him disrupt something and then run propaganda that Trump isn't bent. Until he makes next move massively benefitting Putin.
Seems like they can be doing this over and over and general public will see it as Trump just navigating difficult geopolitical landscape and that we should "trust the process". etc.
"Trump is committing treason because he is instituting tariffs" or "Trump is a Russian asset" is not a position any reasonably intelligent person can come to without being blinded by partisanship. It's simply not a serious position to have.
NATO is already over because none of our allies can expect Trump to honor our treaty obligations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/world/europe/trump-ukrain...
I don't really see another way to take that. Have you watched the full exchange on it?
And I mean his first impeachment was because of his impounding of aid to Ukraine.
Acting like he hasn't been working towards killing support for Ukraine is ignoring his actions and his own statements.
Rhetoric is a poor substitute for actual evidence.
Many moons ago, the fringe right used a similar argument to imply that Barack Obama was pro-ISIS. After his hasty withdrawal from Iraq, ISIS filled the power vacuum. Their "caliphate" grew for years and years, with no significant intervention from the US! At the time there wasn't a great answer to the question "If Obama were pro-ISIS, what could he possibly do to advance their interests more than he already has?". Yet (hopefully) we all know that this was simply bad faith, conspiratorial rhetoric. He was obviously not pro-ISIS, and there was no evidence whatsoever that he was. So how could people possibly have entertained such an idea? Easy--they already hated Barack Obama, so they were willing to give the conspiracy theory the benefit of the doubt.
Do yourself a favor and apply the old tried and true standard: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It'll save you a good deal of embarrassment.
Tulsi isn't Trump.
> Zelensky
Trump quite reasonably called Zelensky a dictator. Ukraine can legally skip elections while under martial law, sure. But seeing as Zelensky has the power to end martial law at any time, he is single-handedly preventing Ukranian elections, depriving the people of Ukraine of their voice during what is potentially the most pivotal span of time in Ukranian history. Surely you still call Putin a dictator, even though he attained his status without directly violating the constitution?
> Trump also said Ukraine started the conflict.
Are you referring to that time Trump uttered the words "you never should have started it" in one of his word clouds while speaking to a journalist? That is evidence that he is in thrall to the Russians?
> In his last admin he said that "Crimeans want to be Russian".
The vast majority of them are Russian, ethnically and linguistically. All polling prior to the 2014 invasion showed that a significant majority would support annexation by Russia. Don't worry, you can know this fact--and even repeat it out loud!--without the bad men in the Kremlin gaining control over your mind.
He doesn't. The President of Ukraine can only propose the imposition or termination of martial law to the parliament. Nothing happens unless the parliament approves the proposal. In February, the Ukrainian parliament even adopted a resolution to remind the dumbasses calling Zelenskyy a dictator of this fact.
> All polling prior to the 2014 invasion showed that a significant majority would support annexation by Russia.
Support for joining Russia was 23% in a 2013 poll, down from 33% in 2011. The majority opinion (53%) was that Crimea should remain as it was, an autonomous region within Ukraine.
In your opinion, what should the status of Crimea be? 2013 2011
----------------------------------------------------- ---- ----
Autonomy in Ukraine (as today) 53 49
Crimean Tatar autonomy within Ukraine 12 4
Common oblast of Ukraine 2 6
Crimea should be separated and given to Russia 23 33
Don't know 10 8Ukraine should hold elections. Delaying them is bad. This is the pro-democracy position. Calling it "Russian propaganda" is nuts. Pretending that Trump's support of this position is evidence that he is controlled by the Russians is literally insane.
Fair enough--the one poll funded by the American government (through the International Republican Institute) found that Crimea wanted to stay in Ukraine, after 5+ UN polls found 60+% supporting annexation for several years in a row.
Is citing the UN data evidence of Russian mind control? No. Arguing otherwise is insane!
Strikes like these occur daily and have become increasingly common in recent months. Holding mass gatherings under such conditions is utterly irresponsible, and any elections held in this atmosphere lack legitimacy because many voters are simply afraid to visit polling stations. Not to mention the millions of people in occupied territories who are completely unable to cast their ballots.
The narrative about Ukrainian elections - especially coming from Russia, which hasn't had free elections since the early 1990s - is indeed pure propaganda. With their progress on the frontlines stalled, this is nothing more than a transparent attempt to undermine Ukrainian unity by diverting attention to internal infighting and potentially replacing the current government with a less functional one. Zelenskyy's main political rivals share the broad consensus that elections should be held only after the war.
Ukraine's situation is a textbook example of why many (if not most) constitutions include provisions for postponing elections during wars and other emergencies.
Yet they don't ban vital gatherings, like concerts[0]. They only ban elections, for which large gatherings are hardly necessary.
> Zelenskyy's main political rivals share the broad consensus that elections should be held only after the war.
His actual main rival's party was banned. Now you see the leaders of the remaining parties toeing the line as sign of robust democracy? Is this a joke?
It's been several years, dude, time to get updated on the situation.
https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigati...
Mueller's key findings include
- Uncovering extensive criminal activity on the part of Trump associates
- that Russia engaged in extensive attacks on the US election system in 2016
- that there were numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign
- that there were multiple episodes in which Trump engaged in deliberate obstruction during the investigation
If you are taking Trump's "no collusion, complete exoneration" at his word, understand that he was lying. The report literally used the phrase "does not exonerate", and the only reason Trump was not indicted was because of the DOJ policy that you can't indict a sitting president.
There may not be hard evidence of a fire, but there is so much smoke I choke on it.
Let's not forget where this Russian asset idea started: Hillary Clinton colluded with a Russian spy to investigate Trump when he was running for president.
This combined with her running her own mail server and sending government emails through it should have landed her at least in jail for a couple of years.
But lets focus on someone trying to avoid war with Russia at all costs and attempting to make peace.
To solve this we will all have to come together and accept that nobody on either side of American Politics are on the side of the working class. Instead of pointing fingers at democrats or republicans it is beyond time for us as Americans to come together and vote in people that will work for us as a collective regardless of what political affiliations they have.
I'm guessing you're cool with the current regime's handling of sensitive information, yeah?
So instead you want to give Putin the population of Ukraine to send in to get slaughtered as soldiers for his next invasion, and also send in Americans to get killed in Canada, Mexico, and/or Greenland? A++ very peaceful no notes.
I'm afraid it is. An unholy coalition of capitalist-anarchists and ultra-conservatives is the driving force behind it. They both want to reduce the influence of the government to a level as small as possible. That can only be done by dismantling the current federal government.
That doesn't sound right...
This would make the federal government dependent on tariff income, and, as the theory goes, diminish the funds the government has as American industry grows to avoid tariffs.
Probably not going to work out as it is only a first order effect view, but that is the idea they are chasing.
Ironically (but not really if you can clearly understand his platform, any why so many bernie bros became trumpets), Trump is doing a lot of ostensibly good things for the uneducated working class at the expense of American "elite" class. The autoworkers union president literally spoke yesterday at Trumps event cheering the tariffs. A union, cheering Trump.
The stock market is off a cliff, but how many factory workers actually have an appreciable amount of stocks? Poor middle America doesn't give a fuck about that. They give a fuck about having a place to go to work and make a good living.
Trump is doing what he was elected to do. Whether or not it is possible without making things much worse seems like a long shot, but his core base has a "I don't care if we destroy the system, the system sucks!" attitude, awfully similar to Bernie bros.
> Protectionism is a left-wing, big-government policy.
It isn't left-wing. Just check the US history of protectionism. Or Germany's. Or the France's. Even the UK's. Or even simpler: look at what happened just now. How can you call Trump left-wing?
Traditionally anarchism is a left-liberal idea. Now the far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is now a circle.
They're extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists.
The ancient Greeks would have called it Tyranny. All of this has happened before.
This would severely hamstring the government, and make it incredibly difficult to reverse (you would need to re-implement income taxes, while removing tariffs, and hope to god that trading partners have mercy and forgiveness (unlikely))
Maybe don't put libertarians and feudalist together.
I believe it means libertarian in the context of present systems. In their new system, they no longer need to be libertarian. Just absolute ruler. King is even the wrong term.
Dictator
Can't believe they would be publicly calling for a monarchy, and still call themselves libertarian.
Leftist anarchists are acutely aware that power and capital accumulation go hand-in-hand.
Extreme libertarians are perfectly fine with the unfettered accumulation of capital and seemingly ignore that that results in unchecked power. Or they have faith that a “truly” free economy would somehow check itself before becoming effectively neo-feudalistic or dictatorial. As if the lion would fear the zebra.
Leftist-anarchists want to keep power to an absolute minimum. Usually relying on a combination of culture and group action to wield just enough power to prevent the growth of unchecked power in the hands of a few.
In my mind, culture is the key element. The capital-worshipping, me-versus-all culture we live in would fit quite well into extreme-libertarianism and then it would devolve into defacto rule by a few. (As seems to be happening anyways. Because, again, capital accumulates, protects itself and takes power where it can when no one is willing to or allowed to work together to stop it.)
Leftist-anarchism requires a more mature, selfless, introspective, cooperative culture. Anathema to the “United” States of America.
Most anarchists, just like hard-line communists, seem totally opposed to the idea of private capital at all. To me this seems just as bad and unworkable as allowing unchecked use of capital accumulation for political gain.
They are generally not opposed to personal property, especially if the property is actively used.
Extreme libertarians, “anarcho-capitalists”, do not distinguish between productive and nonproductive property. And so they ignore the end result of private ownership and accumulation of the means of production: new rulers in some form.
Opinions on money and currency vary.
Similarly, opinions on wage labor vary, but generally they expect a laborer to receive their full worth, ie wage labor would not see profit extracted from it.
When Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with Clinton, most of the liberal Reagan republicans and neocons became Democrats. What MAGA is today is what the bulk of the GOP has always been: a coalition of social conservatives and business owners.
Isn't competition in free markets something Republicans believe in anymore? Because forcing Americans to buy inferior locally-made products at a premium through artificial restrictions surely isn't that.
Free trade and globalization are also a pacifying force, by creating mutual dependencies between countries.
Protectionism doesn't work.
I'm skeptical of this historical analysis.
The two major political parties fundamentally realigned during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Before then, Democrats controlled the south. Strom Thurmond switched from Democrat to Republican in 1964. George Wallace ran for President as a Democrat 3 times before he became an independent. Robert Byrd was a Democrat until the end. Who were the "social conservatives"? Both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon (Californians, by the way) made their names as staunch Cold Warrior anti-Communists during the McCarthy era.
I don't think there's any such thing as what "the GOP has always been", or what the Democrats have always been, for that matter. I'm old enough to have seen the parties change several times, and the definitions of "conservative", "liberal", "left", "right" morph into something unrecognizable to former adherents.
The only constant is change.
This is an incorrect analysis looking at the wrong causal factor (civil rights rather than economics). Even in 1976, Carter did great in the deep south. The realignment happened in the 1980s, due to economic growth in the south. The south went from being poor and agrarian in the 1930s to being newly industrialized in the 1980s.
> Who were the "social conservatives"?
The 19th century GOP was a coalition of religious conservatives and protectionist industrialists. MAGA is a coalition of religious/cultural conservatives and protectionist industrialists.
Carter was a southern conservative, deeply, overtly Christian, whereas Ford, the accidental President, was a northerner and social moderate.
In any case, Presidential elections are not necessarily the best indicator of political alignment. After all, some were blowouts, such as 1972, 1980, and 1984. On other other hand, note that Lyndon Johnson lost much of the south, except his home state of Texas, despite winning big elsewhere in the country. But for political alignment, you also have to look at local elections, such as state houses.
> The realignment happened in the 1980s, due to economic growth in the south. The south went from being poor and agrarian in the 1930s to being newly industrialized in the 1980s.
This makes no sense, because first, the south is still poorer, and second, the political correlation you're implying simply doesn't exist. Why would wealth and industrialization turn a state Republican when that doesn't appear to be the case anywhere else in the country? To the contrary, at present the rural areas are solidly Republican and the urban areas solidly Democratic.
> The 19th century GOP was a coalition of religious conservatives and protectionist industrialists.
I can't say I'm very familiar with the 19th century GOP, and neither of us was alive in the 19th century, but I don't think you've correctly characterized the 20th century GOP. Moreover, I don't think you can characterize "the party of Lincoln" as socially conservative either.
> You should read the primary sources from the civil war.
Please refrain from this type of comment. You should know as longtime, prolific HN commenter that they are against the guidelines.
> The gap has closed almost completely.
I don't think that's true. Some random links: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Map_of_s... https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-by-state/
In any case, it's a red herring, because again, "the political correlation you're implying simply doesn't exist."
> For most of the 20th century, that was exactly the political dichotomy. Democrats were the party of the urban and rural poor, and urban social liberals. Republicans were the party of business and industry, plus religious conservatives.
This is merely a stereotype, an overgeneralization. The reality is much more complex, and inconstant.
But there's an interesting overlap in your claim: "plus religious conservatives". So what happens when "the urban and rural poor" happen to be religious conservatives?
> In states like Georgia, the first places to turn red where affluent educated collar counties around Atlanta, which were benefitting from metro Atlanta’s economic growth.
Given my skepticism of everything else you've already said, I'm not inclined to take anything without proof, but that's not really the issue here. My objection to your theory is not whether it can explain the political situation in the south but rather whether it can explain the political situation in the rest of the country, and I don't see any evidence that it can. Otherwise it's just cherry-picking.
> Abolition was driven by fundamentalist Christians, especially in the midwest.
Not all religion is socially conservative. There are various sects of Christianity in various parts of the country, each with their own social and political tendencies. The civil rights movement also came out of the church, e.g., the Reverend Martin Luther King, the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
> Remember that we didn’t have DNA in the 1850s, so the notion that the races were equal was a moral assertion, not a scientific one.
It's still a moral assertion.
Don't think that data point is as good as you imply it is.
> This is an incorrect analysis looking at the wrong causal factor (civil rights rather than economics).
Boy, is THAT ever a contrarian take, verging dangerously close to crank theory. Economics was distinctly in third place as a factor in the political parties' realignment. In first- and second places were the Vietnam War (nationwide) and civil rights (in the South, with race riots and black militarism being a factor nationally).
1. VIETNAM: I came of age during that era. I was very politically aware. My family on both sides had been Democrats for decades. Most of my family switched to the GOP in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their main driver was dislike for the Vietnam War protestors (and for race rioters).
Most of my family regarded support for the government's war policy as a patriotic duty, even if they happened to harbor doubts about the merits of specific policies. That was true during both the LBJ and Nixon administrations. (The men on both sides of my extended family were pretty much all veterans, from WWII, Korea, and/or the Cold War.)
2. CIVIL RIGHTS: I grew up in various southern states during the 1960s and early 1970s (my dad was military, we moved around). You need to read up on the GOP's so-called Southern Strategy, starting with Nixon's courting of George Wallace voters and continuing with Reagan's dog-whistle support for "states rights," Lee Atwater and the Willie Horton campaign ad for GHW Bush, etc.
A signature moment was when arch-segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond switched from being a southern Democrat to the GOP — and was welcomed. Sure, other reasons were cited for these switches, but those were mostly window dressing.
The race riots of the mid- to late 1970s, and the publicity attending the Black Panthers, were also a factor in my extended family's switch to the party of "law and order" (the GOP). Example: During the rioting after MLK's assassination in 1968, my dad carried a .45 pistol on his commute to work in downtown Washington D.C. And in our suburban Maryland neighborhood — populated largely by military, CIA, Air America, etc. — my dad and other men on the block loaded up their hunting rifles, put them close to the front door, and gave us kids strict instructions not to touch them. They did that because of rumors that carloads of black rioters were roaring down the streets in white neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails. (That certainly never happened in our neighborhood — or anywhere, AFAICR.) My family members weren't racist, but they regarded obeying the law as paramount.
History would disagree with this. Republicans and Big Business were always for free trade and globalism.
Because in 80's-90's, big-corp was salivating over that sweet cheap-cheap foreign labor. To put this on Democrats is a retcon.
The far left and the far right are not the same either where do you even get that! A far left party in the american context is something like democratic socialism, or sure why not actual marxist-leninism. While the far right is proud boys, groypers, literal neonazis, christian integrationists. You may have equal distaste for both but that doesn't mean they share anything else.
Once you go down the rabbit whole of trying to define 'anarchist' , there are actually dozens of definitions, and they all argue about who is really anarchist. So, that they don't agree that some other group isn't 'really anarchist', I take it with grain of salt .
These extreme Republicans want to get rid of government. I'm using the highest level gloss over, that No-Government is Anarchism.
I'm sure in reality, humans would re-coalesce up in communes/tribes/feudal groupings, and thus re-form local groups, and is that still Anarchism? At what point of organization do we stop saying something is 'anarchism'. I'm just saying, when the US breaks up because there is no government, it will be anarchy, and that seems to be what Republicans are shooting for..
Which is why I avoided providing or using any definition of anarchism, instead describing the actions of people who consider themselves anarchists.
> and they all argue about who is really anarchist.
Yes, but there is only one group who consistently considers themselves anarchists but who exactly zero other anarchist groups recognize as anarchists. All other anarchist movements have at least one mutually-recognized peer movement. I'm not saying this is an absolute or the only definition, but it's very useful in this context. There is something different about ancaps.
> These extreme Republicans want to get rid of government.
They do not! They are not proposing an elimination of the military or police departments or prisons, for example. They are using the DoJ to pursue political enemies, the executive branch to enact and enforce tariffs. In fact exactly the parts of the state that are used to create and enforce hierarchy. I do not know any anarchist movements, other than anarcho-capitalism, that has this goal.
I understand why your view of it is alluring, I find it to be so as well. But I have found that it simply has very little explanatory power for this situation.
The only thing the far left and right truly share I think, is radicalism. By which I mean an intention or acceptance of rapid and comprehensive change to the dynamics of daily life for the whole population. But the actual changes they want have virtually no overlap.
In terms of today's landscape there is a list of things like LGBTQ issues, race, gender equality, abortion, religion, etc., and if you avoid things on that list you'll find a huge overlap between the views of the far left and the far right. Both are broadly opposed to what's popularly called neoliberalism, the post-Reagan/Clinton post-cold-war order, and the reasons for this opposition overlap quite a bit if you again avoid the topics that I listed. From that perspective, blowing up the system is the goal. When they see trade policies like these crash the present system, they view that as a success because they think the current system is such a mistake that it must be smashed.
(I am not making a judgment in this post, just explaining the landscape.)
I’ve been a left liberal my whole life. We haven’t gone anywhere.
It's called Oligarchy.
Shutting down USAID, cutting education, health benefits and dismantling the checks on executive power do nothing to curb what criticize. These actions actually destabilize and only give greater chance that what you dislike becomes more prevalent.
USAID is not a shadowy cabal, it is not an element of the deep state. It can be corrected, even isolated from harm, by reorganizing their leadership to a board instead a administrative seat. You're just not arguing in good faith, and I really have to wonder why you're falling for talking points aimed at the lowest-intelligence voting bloc.
It’s naive to think we can clean out the NSA, FBI, and CIA. I’ll take what I can get.
It's naive to shoot the messenger and think you've killed the message. If USAID is a conduit for the FBI and CIA's wrongdoing, then we haven't actually punished anyone responsible. We're cheering on our own ineptitude, patting ourselves on the back for dismantling a "deep state" on paper, one that still exists with the exact same motives.
If you have any privileged knowledge of USAID that proves me wrong, I welcome you to share it. It sounds like we both agree that the real problem is intelligence agencies that would disguise themselves in a Red Cross truck if given the opportunity. But sure, let's demonize the Red Cross instead of the people ignoring the conventions of lawful warfare. They are the issue.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZunZuneo
Even if without cover CIA involvement, they operates parallel social services that don't answer to a foreign government to advance a foreign governments priorities.
Every Pakistani I talked to (living in Pakistan) has a negative view USAID and foreign NGOs. Why do you think that would be?
When you dismantle a government, which does include judiciary/legislative powers, who is gonna counterweight the executive branch?
This tariff regime is simply a “minimal viable product” aimed at the idea of reducing structural trade deficits.
This is how they cut taxes without cutting taxes. They've even said as much: "We'll do this huge tax cut and revenue from tariffs will pay for it." But tariff revenue IS tax. It's just a tax on spending versus income. It's quite clever because a tax on spending disproportionately impacts the poor and the middle class (who spend a much higher percentage of their income).
In fact he called these tariffs along with Trump's plan to cut taxes on he wealthy an absurd transfer of wealth:
> Trump's absurd idea to replace the income tax with a sales tax on imported goods would be the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history. If enacted, taxes would go up by over $5,000 a year for a middle class family, while those in the top 0.1% would get a $1.5 million tax break.
https://xcancel.com/BernieSanders/status/1850933809384137106
And Trump's economic plan "insane"
> https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-...
Many agree, most polls have Trump far underwater in his handling of the economy.
> Respondents gave Trump poor marks for his handling of the economy, which 37% approved of, with 30% approving of his work to address the high cost of living, an issue that also dogged Biden.
https://www.reuters.com/default/trump-approval-falls-43-lowe...
Which is why I was pointing out your comment is disingenuous by insinuating Sanders would support the tariffs because it's anti-free trade.
This is the equivalent of saying that any anti-war protester is instantly a complete ideological pacifist. It's illogical.
I challenge you to find a policy paper endorsed by Sanders that said "let's do universal tariffs on the entire planet by taking the inverse of our trade balance - and leave Russia out of it".
Everyone knows tariffs are a tool, often meant to encourage domestic production (when applicable and feasible) or to protect against unfair foreign trade practices.
They do not work as a permanent source of revenue in the modern era, and they can never operate as both a strong source of revenue AND a tool for repatriation of production. If they work as revenue, that means production stays foreign. If they work as incentive, they will diminish in revenue.
Nothing about this makes sense unless your goal is to tear down the US and the USD as a global economic power and global reserve currency. This is not about making America strong.
This idea of blanket tariffs to try and kickstart industries is unique.
Not that I understand it, cuz am noob:
Admin thinks US dollar is too strong. So they want to devalue it. Which will then trigger a sell off of US Treasuries, further devaluing the US dollar.
I have no idea if this is the Admin's actual plan, the merit of such a plan, or if there's any realistic hope for achieving the intended outcome.
If any one can make any of this make sense, please chime in. TIA.
Trump is treating each country as a separate issue and wants to reduce the deficits with each of them. That's completely stupid because even if every country got rid of all trade barriers and protectionism there would still be deficits with some countries and surpluses with others because different countries need to import different things.
For example say country A needs some natural resource that they have no domestic supply of, so they import that from country B. A uses that to produce goods for their own use and for export.
Country B's biggest need is some other resource that they lack, so they use the money they get from selling their resource to A to buy the resource they need from C.
In this scenario A runs a trade deficit with B and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this.
edit: The White House deputy press secretary posted their formula and it is just trade_deficit/2*total_imports per country just dressed up with a lot of fancy language to make it seem smarter but the two extra terms are constants.
Oh man if people in the White House are just using ChatGPT...
https://chatgpt.com/share/67ee890e-b400-800b-ac83-90a6147d32...
(edit: fixed link)
404.
> White House are just using ChatGPT
Likely, Grok? https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_e8b4c405-3bb8-4f01-9...
Nah, all it has to do is offer to be "helpful" and do stuff for us and we'd be like "sure, go ahead, take over, here let me cut and paste your advice right into a policy document."
Oh wait its a 10% tariff on Australia too. Better make a new version of this chart with a -117% benefit to the US then...
If you think trying to balance out the trade deficit with every single country without any other nuanced consideration whatsoever is a good approach, that’s one thing (a lot of people would disagree), but there’s no getting around that the information around this is either misinformed or deliberately misleading.
From one economist who was cited in the rationale:
> It is not clear what the government note is referencing or not from our work ... But I believe our work suggests a much higher value should be used for the elasticity of import prices to tariffs than what the government note uses. ... The government note uses a value of 0.25 for ‘the elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs’, denoted with the Greek letter phi. But our estimates found a value of 0.943 — very close to 1 — for this elasticity.
From another:
> this is where the discrepancies between our work and the table that President Trump showed arises ... our results suggest that the EU should not be tariffed, and yet they set high tariffs against them. Finally, our range of optimal tariffs is substantially lower than the ones the Administration just announced.
But it does provide a convenient fig-leaf rationalization for the class of over-confident economically illiterate folks to cling to, so it seems to have succeeded.
see: https://www.ft.com/content/bbaa8daf-b7b0-4dca-bc23-c2e8eee68...
non-paywall: https://archive.ph/wip/JMgcP
IIRC he is a lawyer, a field where strategically deploying intellectual dishonesty is particularly advantageous.
This is a real human being making these apologetics and using classic distraction and whataboutism techniques
(He's also getting about as close as you can get to the "out-and-out racism" line as you can get without maybe technically crossing it. Though I think he did cross it when it comes to Irish Catholics.)
You state this as fact that we should all agree on. Why should we do this? Why not rely on our allies and friends to do what they do well, while we continue to do what we do well? Is trade not the basis of peace? If we stand alone, we must ask why we must.
Generally, the clamoring for domestic production comes down to: 1. Employment. But because we are more prosperous, our employment is aimed elsewhere. We have jobs for people that are less dangerous, less manual, and better paid.
2. A fear that without domestic production, we're at a strategic or military disadvantage. But it's not that we _can't_ produce in an emergency, we can and have historically (see: oil in the 1970s). What protects us most is hegemony, which is threatened by things like across-the-board trade wars.
3. Nostalgia for the good ol days. Look, if you want to work in a factory, we have lots of them here, still. Nobody will stop you from putting on the hard hat. But in all likelihood you have a less stressful, less dangerous, and better-paying job today.
There really isn't an argument for this. Our trade was - as all trade is - mutually beneficial. Right now we're pushing the glass to the edge of the table when it was perfectly fine where it was.
One other important note: there are things we literally cannot produce domestically due to lack of natural availability (food products, certain textiles)
1) mandatory saving for future, like a Social Security for the country (which is ironically also comprised of Social Security)
2) investments made into the future of the country. People buy T-bonds because they're reliable returns. Low risk, relatively low reward. If suddenly our future looks less bright, our debt will slow, but it will be a pretty telling canary in the coal mine.
It's baffling to me that people generally don't grasp this. They treat it as though we're just ... buying stuff on a credit card.
I somehow keep eating 6-10 eggs a week despite not having a chicken.
The US is in the envyable position of having developed a globally dominant service sector. Putting that at risk of retaliation by imposing tariffs on all imports, including the lowest margin stuff like screws and bolts is utter insanity.
https://www.ft.com/content/aee57e7f-62f1-4a57-a780-341475cd8...
Cargo culting "manufacturing jobs" isn't actually a plan.
(I also notice nobody is talking about bringing back switchboard jobs or typing pool jobs)
Is laying our heads at the GDP idol's feet a reasonable measure of what these activities contribute to national welfare?
https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
That it's relative share in GDP is down during that time means that other sectors were growing even faster (think Google, Netflix and so on, so services instead of things). That the service sector gains in relative importance is actually a sign of an advanced economy, every modern economy looks like that, not just the US.
Basically if you ignore computers, there was zero growth in manufacturing sector. If you take computers into account but ignore processing power increase, there was zero growth. So pretty much the only driving force in the manufacturing sector for the last 20 years was Intel, AMD, Nvidia. This is even with the increased productivity per person in manufacturing sector (so there was also massive reduction in employment).
It is highly concerning and the numbers were very much cooked up.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
You might as well say we "de-agriculturized" because we automated farming.
Like, we can't make more fish. Avocados take a few years to grow new trees. Steel mills don't just appear in Ohio.
The worst part is that, even if you believe Donny, he's so mercurial with these tariffs that no one is going to give you a loan to do anything about any of this. This Katy Perry doctrine [0] he's established is just poison to any sort of capital investment. You've got no idea if any of these tariffs will make it to Monday, let alone to the time it takes the mortgage on your t-shirt factory to be paid off. And then you've got a new administration in four years and no idea if they will keep that protection for you either. How are you going to plant a whole vineyard and get it profitable in 4 years when grape vines take 7 years to mature to fruit bearing?
There's no point to any of this, even if you believe him.
[0] 'Cause you're hot, then you're cold You're yes, then you're no You're in, then you're out You're up, then you're down You're wrong when it's right It's black, and it's white We fight, we break up We kiss, we make up
https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3llu...
"Do _____ and maybe we can cut you some slack on the tariffs"
If there is a point and it's not just absolute stupidity.
Sure, they might be trying to do this. But I'd give that a ~3% chance.
There is no 'there' there.
They are 'burning down your house to cook a steak.'
The emperor has no clothes.
There are many more ways to say it, but as truly unbelievable as my mind keeps insisting it is, these people are just plain-jane morons.
The exact same kind of fail-upwards, born on third thinking they hit a triple, grindset grifter, loser mid-level management nepobabies.
Could not have put it better myself.
Welcome back.
Huge swaths of midwestern farmers will go bankrupt if tariffs are imposed. Subsidies and exemptions are being specifically added to prevent the complete collapse of multiple red state economies due to the harm from the tariffs.
Even things like oil and mines aren't guaranteed safe, because of complexities around where refineries are, loss of export market, or weakness of dollar offsetting any nominal gains when looking at actual purchasing power.
Another way of reducing trade deficits would be to make Americans so poor that they can't afford to buy things from overseas. Eliminating trade deficits in itself isn't a rational economic goal.
Having said that, American manufacurers on average will likely benefit (though maybe not if their raw materials are too much more expensive), but this benefit will only come at the cost of American consumers, who are denied cheaper options from overseas by the tariffs
Trump’s bet is that the upsides will be borne disproportionately by his base, while the downsides will be borne disproportionately by Democrats’ laptop-class base. It’s not irrational to think that will be the result.
Yes everybody, we are taxing all of your groceries - but all of those American coffee and banana farms (!) will be protected.
So given that, I would have assumed that this administration would focus on making things more affordable. Instead, I'm seeing people try to explain to me that, actually, raising the prices across the board is a good thing!
To put it plainly, it seems like the administration raising prices is, in fact, not a good thing for Americans. And I don't see how American labor can produce things that are more affordable than what we can buy now. So it seems like a net negative, because ultimately they are choosing to make everything more expensive for consumers.
I'm sure there are more companies, but that is all I've seen so far.
That tanks the revenue from the tariffs, which would make them an ineffective replacement for income tax.
I mean he's gone bankrupt 6 times including managing to bankrupt a casino a business where on average people give you money to get less money in return... He also confuses simple economic terms like equating trade deficits with tariffs.
That's imminently doable but would require more work than plugging in 2 numbers from the US trade delegation website so we get this complete lie instead. Trump has had it in his head for ages that trade deficit == tariff (or is lying about that to make his supporters swallow this as the US just fighting back) and it's a completely broken understanding of trade.
That’s just defining what a trade deficit is, it doesn’t explain why trade deficits arise. For example, other countries have cheaper labor and laxer environmental regulations. Simply looking at the country’s tariff rates on U.S. goods doesn’t account for the whole picture.
Besides, if the trade volume is what determines the tariff, why would any country want to have a trade surplus with the US? The best solution for other countries is to artificially limit their exports, or find more reliable trading partners.
I do agree that this madness will only encourage other countries to conduct their trade elsewhere.
Because the U.S. can buy from Uruguay only as much as 3.5 million people in that country can produce.
Next that's always going to be imbalanced because they produce goods cheaper and can't afford as much as the equivalent chunk of people in the US.
Assume good faith.
So we've exported our worst paying, most environmentally damaging industries? I mean the rivers catching fire was probably exciting but I'm not exactly pining to bring that back...
Tariffs can only set those industries up for internal markets, other countries will just continue to buy from the cheaper source so the protected industry has to continue to be protected.
Additionally who's going to work these labor intensive industries? We're already at 4.1% unemployment, there's not vast masses of people waiting for low paying work as seamstresses and one of the other major prongs of the Trump ideology is reducing immigration drastically so we're going to squeezed on that end too.
Finally we've done mass tariffs before and it always ends badly. Remember Smoot-Hawley? it deepened the Great Depression because people thought they could turn to protectionism to prop up and bring industry to the US. It just doesn't work when broadly applied.
Now, take that kind of mindset and apply it across the country—that’s how you end up with 40% of the population easily swayed.
But the truth doesn’t bend to emotions.
It took a new political party to uncover years of fraud, waste, and abuse—amounting to over half a billion dollars—and that’s just from auditing a handful of government entities. All the findings? Publicly available online.
Yet somehow, the focus remains on vilifying Trump and criticizing Elon.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-doge-false-claim-bill...
https://fortune.com/2025/03/13/doge-saved-federal-government...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-website-now-saved-105-billion...
https://fortune.com/2025/04/02/doge-claimed-contract-savings...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con...
> All the findings? Publicly available online.
You surely realise you are doing exactly what you criticise here? You are accepting a government propaganda narrative unquestioningly without verifying any facts.
The DOGE claims have been proven false numerous times. Get off your high horse and do some reading.
Maybe it's the "Why not inject disinfectant to beat covid" [1] for the economy. But this time nobody around him said no. (note: added around him)
To cure trade deficits imposing tariffs is rather like injecting bleach yes.
> Rex Tillerson on Trump: ‘Undisciplined,’ ‘doesn’t like to read' and tries to do illegal things
Sadly, people didn't vote for Trump so much as they voted for "anti-woke." Or: I am tired of being looked down on and this is my revenge.
It is. This is being done as part of a plan, with full intent.
The US presently suffers from future shock and stilted political process. We need more parties and better voting options both in the HR department and the mechanical process like ranked voting.
Since both parties benefit from the status quo, we shall see no change.
Paragraph 3 is a cynicism I don't yet fully buy: There are enough liberals and so-called Democrats that care about this country that perhaps they will be open to ranked-preference voting and the opening of our "political markets" to save the country.
Partial on paragraph 1. Biden should have left a lot sooner, and Harris, loyal to the president and unable/unwilling to break with him on anything of value, should not have been the "pick".
But she was and is infinitely better for this country than Trump in every manner, unless we're into accelerationism. I don't think she is incompetent. She was unwilling.
The only people promulgating this red herring would never have voted for her anyway.
> She was a poor public speaker,
Compared to Trump? A man known for his incoherent ramblings?
Post-Carter United States (and South Korea, and Japan, and the UK, and much of the developed world in general) is a prime example of the follies of prioritizing numbers-on-a-spreadsheet growth in the short term, over a balanced and robust domestic economic engine that ensures a healthy, happy, stable populace that wants to have kids (since they have the money and time to be good parents).
The Clinton social program cuts combined with the Bush II tax cuts is what gave us the poor distributional effects of the 2001-2008 expansion, which both set the stage for and magnified the impact on all but the narrow slice at the top of the Great Recession; while they seemed harmless in the unusually strong boom economy they were implemented in, monentary nominal budget balance acheived that way has had massive adverse long term effects.
It also, contrary to your claim, didn't pay down any of the national debt, which increased by at least $100 billion every year of the Clinton presidency.
If you have a debt problem, you need to both raise income and cut unnecessary spending. Clinton - and every Democrat since Carter, really - only ever did the latter, and always targeting the working class for spending cuts as opposed to the corporate or wealthy classes. God forbid we curtail subsidies to fossil fuel companies or sugar producers or big box stores with a disproportionate amount of workers on government assistance programs, god forbid we stop bailing out failed banks or bankrupt private enterprise, let’s instead make sure poor people can’t have housing and children can’t have three meals a day.
Throwing large numbers around without examining how those numbers were achieved is what politicians and despots bank on the populace trusting, because once you know how those figures are reached, you’re confronted with how the system really works and suddenly have a distaste for it.
I know it's a Republican joke to blame evil meddling globalists for the US's problems but it sure seems like a bunch of people looking to ruin the US for their own global ambitions are running the show right now.
I'm no economist, but I can see that there are second order effects that this addresses that other systems would lack.
1) Tit for tat on tariffs doesn't work because of other barriers to trade such as currency manipulation, subsidies, regulations, etc.
2) We've learned from games such as iterated prisoner's dilemma that strategies that succeed are ones that clearly communicate how they'll act and respond. A clear formula such as deficit/imports accomplished this. Countries know exactly what they must address in order to access US markets.
3) You can end up playing whack a mole with countries in that they can set up shop in other countries to bypass tariffs in their own country. By applying a consistent formula to all countries, you no longer have to play whack a mole.
When you put someone incompetent in charge of a country, a company, or a sports team, collapse is inevitable, no exceptions. We’ve seen it play out over and over again because of stupid choices only driven by ego.
Now it’s the US’s turn