I bought VOO and AMZN yesterday. First time buying an individual stock since pandemic. Kicking myself for not buying more. Still waiting a week to possibly buy more if there's another shock, but if the market's up, I'll buy less.
I just buy during big fucking crises, either individual stocks or index funds. Front page of the NYT type shit, "existential threats" to 100+ year old concerns. Boeing, Toyota, pandemic. Such opportunities only come up every 2-3 years or so. Sell after 1-2 years to get the lower tax rate.
DCA and time in market beat trying to time the market. If you're doing nothing all day but refreshing Twitter and Robinhood maybe there's some alpha but that's too much involvement for me.
The first sentence is a thought-terminating cliche and is not true. Correctly guessing the shape of the Trump tariff crash was worth an entire year in the market. Crashes that don't instantly reverse themselves tend to be more like ten years.
Feels equally plausible that there would have been an across the board increase in tariffs just to look tough. There is no logical analysis of the current situation.
Lots of stocks are up 10-15% instantly after this announcement. Curious if we'll get reports of suspicious options volume capitalizing on this information.
As easy as winning the presidency and having enough loyalty within your base to say "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." then win reelection just 8 years later?
To be clear, here, this form of "manipulation" is kind of impossible to really deal with? Or do you have something in mind that should be able to more smoothly work with this?
From the president of the united states? Especially knowing that controlling tariffs and such are easily argued to be in his core powers, in the current setting, what authority would they possibly have to do something on this?
But they would have to prove insider info? Which would require discovery against communications to/from the president. Which you know they would argue against.
So, let me rephrase, do you think it is likely that they would do anything?
Any action they are taking around deciding whether or not there is a national security interest in managing tariffs is easily covered by everyone's understanding of what is in the presidential duties. As such, it is fully off limits for any review, per last year's immunity ruling. No?
Now, congress can take away that delegation. They could also cancel any declarations. But actions taken by the admin in pursuing this will almost certainly be seen as core duties by the supreme court. As such, I don't see any real opening for review in this?
Traditionally US stockmarkets are not that easily manipulated. This type of blatent grift and insider trading was for banana republics, and that's why stock markets in those places aren't serious.
Because even with crises, over the long term the only direction is up.
Its probably not so much that people trust it but either you invest broadly (index funds) and trust long historical data that the likely direction is up or you think you have more information than other people and can beat the market.
Only if you look at American stock market data. And that's extreme cherry-picking, because the American stock market is by far the best performing over the last century. What are the chances the American stock market will be the best performing next century?
The standard claim is that "even if you bought at the absolute worst time, if you held for 10 years you would have been positive after inflation". This statement is true for the US stock market, but not true for many other stock markets.
There's "lost decade" periods in the US market as well, that's why you shouldn't invest in a single market, and should apply unit cost averaging instead of dumping all your money at once.
In nominal terms it always goes up. In real terms, like priced in gold, DJIA is cheaper today than in 1929. (13 ounces of gold today vs. 14 ounces of gold in 1929).
But how often is that true? Gold prices doubled in the past 5 years, with 10% of that coming in the past few months, after declining for most of the 2010s.
I trust the stock market only after at least 5 years have passed, preferably 10. Short term (less than that) the stock market has always been about popularity, but long term the most profitable companies always rise to the top.
Well I bought this morning (not a large trade), based not on insider information but on the obvious outcome. Also the dynamic signal that Trump spent 2h spewing utter nonsense at a donor dinner last night, but the market didn't go down this morning. Signaling that something was in the works one way or another.
Edit: best to note that Trump is still doing plenty to destroy the US economy, so be careful out there.
Frankly, everything is “obvious” in retrospect. I assumed Trump would triple down regardless of the consequences. My only conclusion is that the fluctuations of the market are going to be completely arbitrary during this administration.
Regardless of whatever happened today, it's never a good time to buy $DJT because 1) it's not profitable and 2) holders are slowly continually liquidating in a complicated manner explained by past Money Stuff articles.
The actual quote is "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT", which makes DJT either a signature and a call to buy the market if he can form a valid sentence, or a call to buy NASDAQ:DJT if he can't form a valid sentence. Take your pick. It's market manipulation either way.
Actually you did have advance warning because there has been several days of wall-to-wall finance bro and republican heads on TV saying the tariffs were batshit crazy. Under those conditions there are only two outcomes: 1. the tariffs were rolled back or 2. Trump is removed from office (and the tariffs rolled back).
Those aren't guaranteed. I do believe Trump is in danger of being removed if the economic damage of the tariffs becomes too great since the one thing truly sacrosanct in America is the economy.
But the timeline would hardly be immediate. We'd have to go through considerable pain before the government would act.
Yeah, if we lived in that world, Trump would have been removed from office during his first term for all the crimes.
It's worth noting that impeaching and removing Trump from office now would actually take fewer votes than the business of overriding the import taxes he's trying to impose with "Canadian fentanyl is scary" emergency powers.
As a big bonus, voting to remove him entirely leaves everyone far safer. He's gonna have a guaranteed tantrum of scorched-earth revenge no matter what you do, but this way he won't have official power to do it with.
3. Carve outs are made for high dollar donors like AAPL (which went up with everything else even though it is now subject to an even more terrific tariff)
Trump's whole schtick was that #1 - - get countries to negotiate.
Except China. The USA gets 25% of it's bandages from there, and that's no way to prepare to defend Taiwan.
The first order fraud would be market manipulation run by the commander in chief.
The second order play would be for Trump to tip his associates off that he was going to do this and let them profit handsomely from the bump. Congratulations Mr President: your lackies love you because they profited from fraud but moreover you now have grade A kompromat on all of them in the form of your Signal chat records showing they were complicit in market fraud!
I remember how Jimmy Carter had to sell the family farm because it was viewed as a potential conflict of interest and how Mitt Romney's father, when making his run, when asked for a single year of tax returns made them all public, arguing that a single year could easily be manipulated to show anything, and that only by seeing the entirety of multiple years could an accurate evaluation be made.
You do not become a billionaire unless you have a pathological obsession with obtaining wealth. They have structured their entire lives, often at the expense of everything else, to increase their wealth. It isn't a goal, its a lifestyle. There is no number that is "enough".
Indeed. But the path he chose since 2016 is a bit suboptimal for making money. Don’t you think? Or do you think the long con was to become president for this week?
I’m not trying to ascribe moral character either. Power, status, fame, etc are just so much more compelling.
I agree, which is why I used "wealth" and not "money", since power/status/fame is just another form of wealth. Trump seems to be a special mix of rich kid who didn't get hugged enough as a child.
Didn't his first term get his son in law a multi billion dollar deal with the Saudis? Along with all the other bullshit like getting paid because the secret service has to stay at his properties. This isn't the long con, this is just a continuation. He's a lot more organized this time around.
That is easily disproved. A good counterexample is in the book Copy This by Paul Orfalea. He had trouble in school and couldn't hold a job so he started a copy place. This became Kinko's after his nickname and grew large in part because of his systematic way of having employees and customers all treated with respect. When he got tired of the business he sold it to FedEx and shared he five billion with his family.
We need to do something about out of control inequality, such as in the past when we had strong regulations on industry, high taxes on the rich, and pervasive union membership, but lying about what is going on helps no one.
I’m trying to address the narrative I’ve seen a bunch lately that billionaires in this administration already have enough, so we can trust that they wont be financially motivated.
Notably, there was a headline that went viral on Twitter earlier this week that the White House was considering this, but after they denied it it was widely understood at the time to be fake news. How many of the people spreading it, I wonder, knew it was really true?
The entire concept of "official act" does not actually exist. It wasn't defined in the Constitution, and neither was it defined by the Supreme Court when they invented it from whole cloth.
And offered 0% tariffs on all physical goods (that includes agriculture) weeks ago. But no, Trump is financially illiterate and doesn't understand the concept of VAT.
We don’t want a race to the bottom when it comes to agricultural products. American products are cheap but they suck. Ours are better but more expensive. Making American crap expensive is good for us. That’s a good use of tariffs: avoiding flooding the market with inferior products at the cost of local made.
I think it's not that bad, when you consider all goods ands services:
"For technical reasons, there is not one “absolute” figure for the average tariffs on EU-US trade, as this calculation can be done in a variety of ways which produce quite varied results. Nevertheless, considering the actual trade in goods between the EU and US, in practice the average tariff rate on both sides is approximately 1%. In 2023, the US collected approximately €7 billion of tariffs on EU exports, and the EU collected approximately €3 billion on US exports."
Volvo and Mercedes (freight liner) trucks are popular in the US. Truckers tell me Peterbuilt makes a good truck and compete well, but since I don't drive a truck I can't tell you what makes them better. I can tell you that Volvo and Mercedes are considered basic trucks for companies to own, while those who own their own truck like pay extra for luxury features in a Peterbuilt. (the only luxury I can see though is chrome decorations, again not being a trucker I have no clue if anything else is better or not)
Without global regulation? I think you'd need a lot of luck to survive in that environment.
Even with global regulation. I think it would take a decade to do what the federal governments could otherwise do in a year. The EU is an instructive example here.
The fundamental problem is that tariffs are a tax on the citizens of the country that charges them. Retaliatory tariffs that are high enough or specific enough to shape immediate consumption decisions can move the needle (which is why you do see such responses happening). A universal 10% tariff can affect its target in the long term, but as a short term measure it does nothing but take money out of the pockets of local businesses.
Exactly. He has run a lot of businesses in the past, with consistent results. When running the US, he'll apply similar strategies, and we'll have a similar result.
It is absolutely not textbook. It is massively self-destructive. In no universe is this a win.
This is a retreat by Trump. It's him losing. It makes him look like a joke. Or, more correctly, more like a joke.
Trump desperately wants tariffs. He thinks they're free money. He has been saying this for years and still people desperately try to sane wash it into some masterful 4D chess. The only reason this laughable 90-day pause happened is because the US house of cards is on the precipice of absolute collapse, so Trump had to bow into Bessent's attempts to turn this into some sort of China containment.
So are all those factories coming back...or aren't they? Are tariffs going to replace income tax, or aren't they? Something something war with China. Just absolute insanity by a group of charlatans, self dealers and clowns who have no idea what they're doing.
On the contrary, I think he got everyone's attention and they're coming to the bargaining table willing to make a good deal for the US. It's exactly the tactics espoused in Art of the Deal.
I think there are two things at play here.
1) Narrow the gap between the wealthy and the rest: attempt to reduce the US public sector, backtrack on globalization, and enact policies to benefit the median American, not the mean American [1].
2) Prepare the US for possible conflict with China (maybe over Taiwan) and avoid supply chain disruption that would make Covid look mild.
I think both of these things are sensible positions to take.
When you look at it through this lens, it starts to have some logic to it. Again we can debate the merits and drawbacks of this strategy, but I think it's what is behind everything. Things like his stance on Panama start to fit into the picture when you look at it this way.
It is not the actions of someone stupid or insane.
Eliminating entitlements and deregulating (particularly consumer protection) is not a great way to narrow the wealth gap. Nor is semi-firing the federal workforce and advocating for onshoring of unskilled jobs. Nor is demanding interest rate cuts. Nor is treating the stock market like a yo-yo. Nor is ignoring people without medical insurance. Nor is attempting to eliminate social security.
This could absolutely be all about asserting dominance over China. It could be a great way to deter or blunt the threat of war. It might backfire horribly. We shall see.
He is stupid. You just have to listen to him speak to understand that. But he doesn't invent policy, he has people for that.
> We can argue about the merits of his plan, but dismissing him and his advisors as stupid or insane is underestimating them.
Pretending the man didn't repeatedly bankrupt his own companies and stiff his vendors is underestimating him. We've decades worth of knowledge about how "his plan" goes.
Absolutely nothing was accomplished but the undermining of the US as a stable partner. US treasuries and the US dollar both have taken a colossal hit that is going to reverberate into much greater consequences. It is the hit on TBills that forced Trump's retreat, which his weird cult now need to spin into some 4D chess.
Like, listen to what Trump himself says to justify the pause-
How can anyone take him seriously on this sort of stuff? He flip/flops constantly. If he isn't a serious negotiator, other countries/companies aren't going to take his threats seriously.
> Confidence in the US economy is plummeting as investors dumped government debt amid growing concerns over the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs.
> Governments sell bonds - essentially an IOU - to raise money from financial markets for public spending and in return they pay interest.
> The US does not normally see high interest rates on its debt as its bonds are viewed as a safe investment, but on Wednesday rates spiked sharply to touch 4.5%
But he's also brought the whole of the US down to the mud that he enjoys fighting in.
The US shouldn't be taken seriously any more, world wide. Trump, and his Project 2025 conspirators, have proven that the US system of government had a loophole, and have taken full advantage of it to perform a hostile take over.
US soft-power was what allowed the US to dictate US law to other countries. US law doesn't even mean anything in the US itself, so the rest of the world should be suddenly ignoring a whole bunch of historic US-pressured behaviours.
Given the deportation discussions, I'd say one of the first things to go would be extradition treaties. I'm hoping copyright duration madness retracts entirely back within US borders as well.
Doesn't help America as much as some people might think. The world has seen that Trump is erratic, and America imports too much from China to just ignore the 125% (!!!) tariff on the country.
Exactly. The damage has been done; the fact that economic policy could dramatically change day-by-day makes investing and planning very difficult. In addition, the tariffs on China are insane.
One of my biggest concerns is the value of the dollar. If foreigners are discouraged from doing business with America either due to tariffs or due to other matters, how does this affect the dollar, which is a fiat currency? The US dollar is currently the world's reserve currency, which is the result of the United States' emerging victorious from WWII while Britain, holder of the world's previous reserve currency (the pound), had to contend with rebuilding as well as dealing with the loss of its empire. Fiat currencies, by definition, are not backed by assets, but are instead backed by "faith"; not in the religious sense, but in the faith that people have in the government issuing the currency. How will the world keep the faith if the custodian of the dollar acts so recklessly?
For many years I've been concerned about deficit spending and easy-money policies from central banks. However, for the past few months I've become very concerned about Trump's policies that alienate our allies and partners. What Trump and the rest of MAGA simply do not understand is that the United States is part of an interconnected world. American strength is more than just weaponry; it's also in our economy and our reputation.
Unfortunately Trump and his cabinet have done extraordinary damage to our nation in less than three months. He's like an angry man with a baseball bat smashing up irreplaceable artifacts in a museum, and sadly there is no police to stop him, because he is the chief of police. He is by far the worst president America has ever had to endure, and if this continues our nation will end up at war, either with itself or with other nations.
The Chinese are warning their citizens about travel to the U.S.
> China issued an alert warning its citizens and students of the potential risk of traveling in the U.S. and attending schools there.
>
> “Recently, due to the deterioration of China-US economic and trade relations and the domestic security situation in the United States, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism reminds Chinese tourists to fully assess the risks of traveling to the United States and be cautious,” the ministry said in an alert.
The citizens of other countries should be concerned too. Even short term plans could end badly for some disruptive measure Trump because whatever, as he did basically every week since he got in charge.
Many EU countries have done the same in recent weeks. This is less about putting diplomatic pressure, and more about warning people to avoid traveling to the US due to real danger.
The US government has already been rounding people up who haven’t committed a crime. Most notably a student from Columbia college. This is a real danger.
They've also been shipping people off to a prison in El Salvador without due process and, according to them, no way to bring them back if they send the wrong person.
Avoiding travel to the US right now is a perfectly reasonable decision.
I have a trip to China on Saturday and I'm worried about:
a. Chinese retaliation. I don't think they are going to start arresting Americans, but it might get uncomfortable if I don't have my passport in the subway station.
b. American retaliation. My wife has a greencard, this is actually worrying me more than anything, although as far as I have heard so far, we should be OK.
Trip is still on. I'm really interested in how China has changed since I left 8 years ago.
I don't think you have lived experience to back that up. There are definitely people being turned away at customs in the US, and China has targeted nationals of other countries they have disputes with (e.g. during the Huawei daughter incident and putting two Canadians in jail for two years while she got house arrest in her mansion). And anyways, having your passport in a Beijing subway station is just the way things are now (never was needed before, but they random check all the time before I left in 2016).
There have been people turned away at customs for as long as you have been alive. These are only stories because they're effective at manipulating you into believing the narrative du jour.
Yes, and I've always been the "it could never happen to me" person. But now things are volatile and chaotic. That is elevated risk, and you just shouldn't ignore it.
One thing companies love is lots of uncertainty like this. It keeps their accountants entertained! "Maybe we should build a factory in the US" ... 24 hours later ... "well, not today".
What's really amazing is all the muttering from "Very Important Wall Street" type people who are saying that he's insane. Like... with that kind of salary, weren't you paying attention? We've known he wasn't right in the head for a while now. Maybe they should be replaced by AI.
It's a confirmation to those that still needed it that finance people are stupid and ideologically blinded. Trump's been speaking of tariffs for years, what made them think his mandate would be good for them?
Thailand is a good example. They have about $40b (USD) in balance of trade going the wrong way. Their initial ideas were simply to import more american petroleum, vehicles and aircraft. This likely could have accounted for more than half the difference and significantly reduced their tariff rate by just changing suppliers of already imported products.
The US news is pretty useless here. It's more nuanced than they would like to admit. Foreign sources of news are the most instructive as they're actually covering the options realistically.
Why would a company go through the trouble of building a factory when the next administration could just reverse the decision four years from now? Building factories will take years
How confident are we that there is a "next administration... four years from now"? I don't know what the number is, but it ain't 100% like it used to be.
The market is huge enough that the fact that something is being considered somewhere doesn’t mean much, right? If I consider building a factory in the woods, but I don’t have two pennies to clack together, does anybody hear it?
That was part of the entire purported purpose of this lunacy. They went on TV and everything about having people operating robots screwing in iphone screws and stuff.
Whether anyone bought into it is another matter, but opening factories is part of what they said they wanted.
The number of people who are paid to be "professional knower of things" and "professional predictor of things" who are now saying "I never could have predicted that Trump would do something as crazy as this" is just baffling.
In a sane world all these people would be ignored by media outlets moving forward.
The media outlets are part of the problem. Lots of sanewashing and "both sides". Many of them also love "CEO says a thing" articles where they act as stenographers. You see that with a certain car company's wild promises.
I sold my stocks just barely in advance of this whole debacle. I remain confused that it wasn't already priced in by that point. I am not a savvy investor by any standard.
At this point, I do wonder if long-dated (2-3 months) American-style Puts are a good idea.
The weirdness of this administration has created a lot of volatility. With American-style options you are allowed to exercise early, so if you think there's going to be a ton of ups and downs in the next few months, I wonder if this could be lucrative.
I might try this just as an experiment with one of the cheaper options.
Exercising early only makes sense in some pathological examples that do occur but practically never happen. In general, very loosely, a put is worth something for the hedge plus the amount you could get for exercising it right now. Thus, if you want to exercise it right now, you just sell it and get the hedge premium.
Also, the current VIX is the same as January of 2020. If you believe the current state of the world is less certain than the outbreak of a global pandemic, I have some options to sell you.
Yeah, misspoke, I meant selling the option, not exercising.
> Also, the current VIX is the same as January of 2020. If you believe the current state of the world is less certain than the outbreak of a global pandemic, I have some options to sell you.
I don't know if it's more volatile, BUT it it has shot way up since yesterday, and it doesn't seem too weird to think that it will go down to the numbers we had yesterday.
If I had any appreciable assets in the stock market OTHER than my retirement savings, I would sell like hell right now.
The market is absolutely delusional right now. It's not pricing in how devastating this general uncertainty is, nevermind the fact that massive tariff hikes are still in effect.
Who is incentivized in this system to say that this product is actually coming from China? Is it the US government regulators who just lost their jobs? Or the Businesses themselves who don't want to pay higher tariffs? Is it China who avoids the tariff? Is it Vietnam who just got paid for doing nothing?
The answer would typically be that the US gov't would monitor this. But that is not a muscle this administration is capable of. That would require nuance and strategy, and it's very clear from this move that this administration doesn't have that capability.
“The people who care don't know, and the people who know don't care.” The Lord of War, describing military corruption in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR.
I feel like people need to understand how they are impacting the path of least resistance when they make a change. Your change is only successful if the path of least resistance must now go where you want it to go.
You need a few people in a "living room" to put "made in Vietnam" stickers on things. That makes the living room a factory and so you are not legally tricking anyone even though your only part in the process is putting that sticker on.
Reminds me of the old rumor that the city of Usa, Japan exists so they can print "Made in Usa" on exports. They actually don't do that and Usa has held its name longer than the actual United Stats has existed but it still makes for a good story.
if tariffs are applied based on the date of departure and not the date of arrival you can definitely get away with falsifying the date. And on the off-chance you get caught you feign confusion on account of the rapidly fluctuating circumstances and the customs guy lets you just pay whatever you owe without sanction because he has a million other people saying the same thing and even if he can tell you're lying he really doesn't care anyways.
I have a friend who had to get something shipped from Australia to Germany via freight, he told me intercontinental freight shipping generally takes multiple months if you aren't Wal-Mart/Amazon and you aren't willing to pay out the ass for express handling.
>The foreign factory system is already in place for those that use it
ah but there's the small kernel of genius within the corncob that is trump's insanity: which foreign factories do you use and who will they take the shipment from and and wait fuck he just gave a 90-day extension less than a week in, will the factory let me have my money back if i cancel?
If this pattern holds (high tariffs on China, low tariffs everywhere else) there will be a booming industry of pass-through "factories" that receive shipments from China and then re-sell them as having come from Vietnam or some other intermediary country.
This exact thing happens frequently at scale. When countries put export controls in place on shipments to Russia recently, they had a sudden spike in exports to a number of countries known to re-ship products into Russia.
I bought ocean fish roe from my local Euro store. “Product of Belarus” which is of course landlocked.
I thought it was highly suspicious when I noticed, like evasion of sanctions on Russia. However, food products aren’t covered by sanctions in Canada and apparently, the Belarus packaging is to make it easier to sell German fish in Russia!
I still wouldn’t want to buy food that is packaged with the intent to trick people, even if the tricksters were German. (I think Germany is a pretty trustworthy and transparent country but that doesn’t apply to every single individual there).
Does the US Customs office have inspectors that go to Vietnamese factories and check that the factory exists, and that 51% of the assembly was actually performed there?
If not, what stops a Vietnamese shell company from sending "Vietnamese" goods through a port in China, or worst case, a port in Vietnam?
China has already been transshipping saying they assemble in vietnam with the only thing being done is stuff like taking labels that say made in china off the products.
Vietnam does not care as long as vietnamese people are getting paid something.
I'm only "celebrating" congress getting more time to reel this chaos in. Hopefully we have 20 pissed off enough GOP senators to realize that they never should have let Trump singlehandedly start yet another tarriff war.
It's not like people stopped being mad or are calling this good. Starting with a big number and dropping lower (temporarily!) was not a good negotiating strategy here.
Thinking of tariffs as a _sales_ tax, while it seems to be quite popular on this 'ere orange website, is both incorrect and very dangerous. Sales taxes, generally, are paid by the final consumer. Tariffs are paid at point of importation. This makes a big difference; if your factory makes, say, computers, sales tax impacts the (consumer) cost of the computer, but tariffs impact the cost of _all of your imported components_.
Responding in good faith to other countries’ willingness to negotiate fair trade terms isn’t exactly flip flopping. In fact he did the same thing with Mexico. If the market was paying attention it would have accounted for this…
> other countries’ willingness to negotiate fair trade terms
This is a fabricated justification. There has been literally zero public reporting of any trade negotiations post-tarifpocalypse. The only people saying there are deals being made are the White House, who have produce zero evidence of deals.
No, Trump was responding[1] to the movement of the market and in particular to the sudden spike in federal bond rates. This was absolutely not a win for Art of the Deal. There was no Deal.
Cash often refers to Money Market funds and the interest they pay tends to track inflation. There are also ibonds but you can invest a fairly limited amount in them.
I was getting 5% until recently which isn’t that far off of where inflation hit. Of course, as you say, some things are higher although a normal age retired person isn’t that exposed to them.
The fact that what they’ve been saying all along is that the goal of the reciprocal tariffs is to renegotiate with all countries for a more fair economic playing field. Many people aren’t so fickle as to just assume everything the party they don’t like is doing is insane and a big conspiracy to insider trade and ruin the world.
That's what they say but we literally went through this whole mess not even two months ago with Canada and Mexico. He's already showed he's insane and cannot be negotiated with.
While also saying they were going to be a replacement for the IRS and to stop illegal immigrantion and drugs and force Canada to become the 51st state.
The President's advisors are saying multiple contradictory things. You're right that they're saying that the reciprocal tariffs are a negotiating ploy, which implies that they'll negotiate a much lower rate. But at the same time they're also saying that they're going to use the tariffs to raise enough revenue to replace income taxes as the main way of funding the government, which implies that the tariffs will stay high. Then they're also saying that the tariffs will be used to support domestic manufacturing, which implies that the tariffs will stay high and predictable.
It doesn't make sense that the tariff policy can be both leverage in a negotiation with the ultimate goal eliminating trade barriers and also so high and predictable that they can raise something the 10-20% of GDP.
The logical conclusion is that there is no plan here - we're living in a world like England under Henry VIII, where everything is done based on the whim of the king, and the advisors try to justify it ex post facto.
Even if that was the idea, the agreements are worth less than the paper they are written on. He is boo-ing and shredding trade agreements that he made himself during his first term. He says one thing one day and the complete opposite the next day.
> How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?
Who cares? Business leaders & the politicians they helped elect are stripping the copper from the country. Whatever's left when they're done is someone else's problem.
I care?? Much of my family works in trades, have their own small businesses with employees and are very much subject to tariffs for their supplies. They did not vote for any of this.
If they voted for Republicans, they did in fact vote for this. It doesn’t need to be like this, congress and specifically the Republican majority which controls it can act to reclaim the power of tariffs from the president _at any time_.
All of this chaos is specifically because they have chosen to be complicit instead of opposing the president. If you want the madness to stop, call your representatives. Speak to your family and ask them to do the same.
If it passes under a Republican Congress and it's a simple bill (primarily revoking presidential emergency tariff authority), then it'll probably have enough bipartisan support in the Senate, but maybe not House, to be veto proof.
Democrats need about 4 GOP senators to get the bill passed.
Theyll need 19 or 20 to get the inevitable veto override. I guess we'll see how these events have shaken congress and if thars enough to take trumps toys away.
Also note that they could also impeach Trump at any time. The sort of crimes that justify impeachment are pretty easily demonstrable at this point so all they need are the votes. They'll have just under half in the House and Senate from the Democrats, so they only need a handful of Rs in the House and (the hard part) a bit over 1/3rd of the Rs in the Senate.
So if they can find like 20 R senators who realize that they no longer support a Mad King, they're all set.
Trump has been spewing financially illiterate nonsense about tariffs for literally 40 years, and was very explicit that he wanted to do this in the election campaign.
I think the "who cares?" was rhetorical. I suspect the commenter you're responding to is in the same place that am - politically exhausted and, for the time being, apathetic.
We didn't vote for any of this to happen. We voted for the adult. But the reality is that this country held fair elections and the population democratically elected someone that is a somewhat ambiguous melange of amoral, stupid, craven, venal, and selfish.
Many of us knew shit like this was going to happen and that it's going to be a very long 4 years. We are getting exactly what we collectively asked for.
I'll poke my head out for the 2026 elections and see if there's anything worth saving...
I also presumed the elections were fair, but there is evidence that they weren't (beyond the usual tactics of disinformation and voter disenfranchisement). Analysis of voting patterns in swing states looks pretty suspicious, to the extent that a pretty simplistic algorithm could even be deduced[0].
Maybe not all of them as individuals, but them as a public. It's not just a fluke of the last election, over the past two decades the u.s. has given control of all branches of government to Trump.
Beyond that, IMO, the public doesn't really care about tariffs. Right now there is a lot of noise because this kind of capricious threat/application of tariffs is something new, but the tariff chaos will become boring background noise in a few months and people will move on to the next thing.
You should care because uncertainty leads to cancelled & deferred projects, which leads to reduced demand, which leads to reduced jobs.
If I don't know if Trump is literal or serious about re-shoring to normalize trade deficits, or its just a revenue gimmick, or if its all going to be delayed, or negotiated away ... am I moving any production back to the US? No.
Plants are cancelling orders as they are uncertain what the tariff might be by the time goods ship.
Woo, I get to vote for yet another slate of billionaire-picked, barely functional, walking corpses repeating the same bland pro-corporate slogans and accomplishing nothing of value for four years before we hand the country back over to the nutjobs for another round. So engaging.
If everyone who stayed home had voted for a third party that party would have won. Even if they split between two third parties, they would have sent a powerful message. Instead they made it clear they don't care. Now add in those who thought the major party was the only way to make a difference. BTW, if you votes for Harris you wouldn't have lost anything by voting third party and it would have sent a message to the Democrats.
Oh, I looked. To my knowledge, Harris was the best choice even including third parties. Stein and West are both whackos and no one else even made it on enough ballots to win.
If everyone who stayed home had voted for the same third party, it would have won. That's unlikely.
It's also unlikely that it would have been split between only two additional parties. In my state we had 5 parties on the ballot. Colorado (to pick one at random) had 12.
If there was any real movement to get non-voters to vote for a third party, there would likely be even more of them. As it is, each of those parties took a fair bit of effort to get on the ballot, knowing that at best they would "send a message".
If the message is "we don't like you", then the message has been received, for many years. But the reply is "OK, go get people to agree on somebody else", and that's the sticking point.
Yes, but the big problem is that these same business leaders and politicians are going to be the ones who get first bite at the apple. And so how they plan is going to impact what's left for everyone else.
I don't care because they burned the system to the ground, I care because they're gonna salvage what they need and nothing else.
I guarantee lots of people in The Swamp are getting word on planned announcements so they can make their stock market bets before the news is announced.
The administration has signaled that they expect to negotiate acceptable balance-of-trade deals with the US's Asian allies over the next few weeks. If that happens, I can see businesses being certain enough to make investments. Until then I'm bracing for a recession too.
The idea would be that different parts of the supply chain would build factories in the US to avoid tariffs. Money collected on tariffs would be redistributed in the form of tax cuts.
The end goal would be 0% corporate and income taxes, funded with high tariffs. Over time the US re-industrializes.
> The idea would be that different parts of the supply chain would build factories in the US to avoid tariffs.
Right, because the US doesn't have diamonds, vanilla, coffee beans or the many other things it needs? How do you avoid tariffs like this?
The US still needs fish from the penguins. What's the plan? To tell penguins to stop fishing and come to the US and work in factories?
> The end goal would be 0% corporate and income taxes, funded with high tariffs.
Well you have that right. When there's 0% of the people working no 1 will be paying corporate and income tax. It'll just crash.
> Over time the US re-industrializes.
Like it's gone? You do know the US is the 2nd largest global manufacturer right? That is even today. So do we need to blow that up 1st in order to re-industrialize?
> The idea would be that different parts of the supply chain would build factories in the US to avoid tariffs.
Building a factory is a 3-5 year task, with a decade-long payback time. And at any point, tariffs can be removed, making all that investment futile.
And even then, there's no guarantee that the factory is going to help people. If it's a lights-out facility staffed with robots, then it'll just be producing more expensive goods, with all the profits staying in its owners' pockets.
Who would trust the US after this? Why would a company build a factory in a lawless state run by a moron like this who thinks blanket tariffs work and could replace taxes?
You'll definitely be hit one way or another. The question is whether businesses can predict what their tariff hit will look like next year and plan around it, or can't and need to hold onto their cash until they know which investments are or aren't worth it.
I feel like you're arguing against something I didn't say. I agree there's a good chance the president will make up new tariffs or fail to negotiate some of the current ones. If that happens then trade deals with Asian allies won't reassure anyone. That's why I'm still preparing for a recession.
The EU is very slooow to act. It might happen during the next administration but only if each 27 of them are convinced it's a good idea. Like the 2% fot NATO which now is insufficient. How about 5%, since Russia is prepared for war and we have China to worry about.
I don’t get this take. We already negotiated trade agreements. That’s what got ripped up with all this tariff nonsense. Why would anyone expect the US to respect the next negotiation? The damage here was reputational. That can only be repaired with time. It can’t be negotiated.
It's easy for us on the Internet to talk about how untrustworthy the US is and how little a negotiation means. It's a lot harder for trade authorities in a country to tell all their US exporters "hey, the Americans are being obnoxious, so your business is probably going to fail and we're not gonna do much about it". If you asked me to negotiate with the US in this situation, I absolutely would refuse, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening in practice.
We are in for this ride, at indefinite intervals, for the next 3.75 years. Well, unless congress grows a collective sack (unlikely) or President Trump comes to his senses on macro economics (past experience suggests this is impossible).
> How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?
They cannot. This is how you can tell Trump was never a real businessman, but rather a TV host and a celebutante. I'd venture nearly all major American business, public and private, depend on stability in the American government. Trump's actions make it painfully clear he is not, and never was, really part of the "business" or "deal making" world.
I joked to a friend that Trump is going to cause a new religion to start. One that makes people pray that today he does what they want (e.g. just shut up and not yell "China, 500% tariffs!")
Or one that makes people pray that one of those cheeseburgers he's been eating finally does something...
> Well, unless congress grows a collective sack (unlikely) or President Trump comes to his senses on macro economics
We in Argentina feel for you: it's exactly the same for us, replacing Trump with Milei. And with the added humiliation of Milei being a lapdog to Trump.
This phrase of yours "unless congress grows a sack" is exactly how we feel about our own congress in Argentina.
That's a Stephen Miller passion project, Trump only cares about it in so much as it get's him votes for his real passion project: the money grift with a side of staying front & center in the news.
The President can only legally set tarrifs in an "emergency". Planning tarrifs 90 days out is really stretching the definition--I'm not holding my breath, but maybe the courts will uphold the constitution on this one?
Normally there are rules regarding how long an emergency can last. This is why, I kid you not, the Republican controlled Congress declared there are no more calendar days in this session of Congress. Every day is March 11. So they'll let him do it as long as he likes.
This is also how this shambling ghoul gets what any actual citizen of earth would consider a third term. It's already done! This is why he said "you'll won't have to vote again."
The president is only 50 days into his term forever; time is stopped. Hell upon us eternal.
> Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.
Referring to 50 U.S.C. 1622(c) [2]:
> (1) A joint resolution to terminate a national emergency declared by the President shall be referred to the appropriate committee of the House of Representatives or the Senate, as the case may be. One such joint resolution shall be reported out by such committee together with its recommendations within fifteen calendar days after the day on which such resolution is referred to such committee, unless such House shall otherwise determine by the yeas and nays.
> [and so on and so forth with fairly stringent time limits all the way through the legislature]
(As somebody who’s never been to the US—come on, am I the only one who finds legal questions like this to be basically irresistible RTFM bait?)
For the extended RTFM: IT's another country's laws and politics. Why am I expected to read their laws and logs of their whatever houses they have to understand something that would not even improve my life? Let alone when their own citizens would have trouble finding these an understanding the meaning down below?
I've seen my share of "well ackshually, this cool technical hack will circumvent the law and outsmart the judges", but thought judges wouldn't fall for such bullshit. Now, I'm not so sure. This is the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time.
This is not quite like the stereotypical case of that, as the legislature first said it wants something to happen one way, and then—later and with a different set of lawmakers, but still—the same institution effectively said that, on second thought, no, just in this case it wants it to work another way. Which seems like a simple case of the legislature changing its mind, something it should definitely be able to do as a matter of course?..
And I mean, both of the houses participated in the first part but only the lower house in the second (AFAICT), so maybe there’s something iffy about that for example. Then of course there are all the suggestions about how the statute these tariffs were ostensibly instituted under (the IEEPA) may not actually authorize tariffs; or that if it does authorize that, then it effectively amounts to the legislature delegating all of its power over tariffs to the executive, which does not entirely sound in tune with the Constitution.
But you see how this starts to look like something you’d want to consult an actual expert on constitutional law about, not dismiss out of hand or listen to random opinions on the Internet on. It’s not immediately clear what even a perfect court would decide here.
Notably, not the first time this legal fiction has been used, but I don’t really get what the previous uses were for. E.g., for the 2021–2022 Congress, section 7 of the War Powers Resolution[1], as well as House rules[2] XIII clause 7, XXII clause 7(c)(1), and XV clause 7 (all of which require something to be done within a prespecified number of either calendar or legislative days) were all suspended[3]
from 2021-01-03 to 2021-01-28 by HR 8 [4],
from 2021-03-13 to 2021-04-22 by HR 118,
from 2022-08-01 to 2022-09-30 by HR 1289,
from 2022-10-03 to 2022-11-11 by HR 1396,
from 2022-11-21 to 2022-11-28 by HR 1464,
from 2022-12-22 until the end by HR 1529,
which looks like vacations, campaigning and such? I’m not really sure, but it’s evident the formula had already been out there and was not a momentary fit of insanity and/or legislative genius (the Congress before that one used it too, for example), I’m just not sure what it was used for before.
>I'm more focused on upping my cash reserves and bracing myself for a recession.
I'm doing the same because I'm legitimately in fear of both economic troubles and/or losing my job as a result of all this uncertainty.
I have cut my personal spending to nearly zero aside from essentials and have been hoarding my money. It's the only sensible option when planning for one's future becomes impossible.
We have nine months of expenses in cash outside of retirement accounts and working up to 12 by the end of next year. But besides that, I’m not changing anything about our investment plans or our travel plans.
I have been in the job market since 1996 and had to find a job both last year and the year before. I’m on my 10th job. None of the fundamentals ever change:
Live below your means so you can take a job that pays less than you are making, keep an emergency fund, keep an updated resume and career document. Also keep an active network and always be interview ready.
Also play the political game at your job and be sure to be in profit centers not cost centers. Market yourself both internally and externally.
As someone semi-retired, I was already reasonably conservatively invested. When all this kicked off dumped some more equities. Maybe I could have done a bit better waiting. Who knows? I know I’m happy being that much more liquid.
>How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?
They're not supposed to. The only people who are planning anything in this scenario are Whitehouse insiders coordinating stock frontrunning from Signal group chats.
It'll be "fun" to see all the "negotiations" that happen with other countries, where they offer a crazy array of bribes / emoluments to WH insiders.
Which is perfectly fine, now that we have Executive Order 63, Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement to Further American Economic and National Security. This is no longer something the DOJ looks for or tracks, with AG Pam Bondi having to sign off on any potential investigations after a 180-day pause.
> How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?
Honestly, that's one thing that makes me happy about these tariffs: big business is used to getting its way, and tariffs are very much not what they wanted. I've enjoyed the articles about Wall Street Billionaires getting mad and feeling helpless.
It's not a prisoners dilemna because you also lose by defecting while everyone else is cooperating.
The thing to recognize and internalize is that the world is a lot more win-win than our psychology has been evolved to recognize. Nationalism, realpolitik, xenophobia - all of these are ideologies that make you poorer and worse off, not giving you some secret insight into the truth of human nature.
Everyone else is not cooperating though. Just because you think nationalism, realpolitik, and xenophobia (and slave labor, for that matter!) are all bad things that one shouldn't partake in, doesn't mean the rest of the world feels the same way, such that they will extend you the same courtesy.
My country is now doing badly just because an impressive gathering of idiots from across the Atlantic voted for an egotistical maniac.
I do not care about turning the other cheek, I want him gone. This will not get fixed until Americans understand that fascism only leads to ruins and suffering.
He literally did a pump and dump crypto scam on his first day in office. That he is a scam artist only motivated by personal wealth and power gain is obvious to any and all remaining sane individuals on this planet. Too bad the majority of American voters aren't.
Serious question: what's with the wave of utterly stupid comments on HN?
Is it yuppie college grads working in silicon valley startups who have always had a thick abstraction layer between them and the system that gives them their paycheck? Is it trolls? Is it lifelong diehard contrarians (the same thing as trolls really)? Is it something else?
You also cant actually legally own most Chinese stock. IE "internet" stocks. What you can buy is an instrument intended to track them. Its called a VIE.
That Alibaba stock you have? No, its a share from a seperate company setup in the Cayman Islands which should track the Alibaba stock. They are circumventing a Chinese law that makes foreign investment in Chinese companies illegal. It's a bad idea to own these.
That doesn't stop people from trying -- according to Yahoo Finance, FXI (iShares China Large-Cap ETF) was one of the most-traded (by volume) ETFs yesterday.
I'm well aware--not saying it's a good idea to invest in China, but many investors are trying it now thanks to the success of companies like DeepSeek. I have a feeling many of them will be eating large losses in the not-so-distant future.
The Chinese stock market...is not a fun place. It hasn't done very well in the last 5 years (unlike the US stock market) and is still way too subject to insider trading to be very accessible to most people. You can go with an emerging markets fund, but I would only do that as a hedge.
Very sure that he (or family members) are shorting stocks and then rebuying. This really feels like somebody deliberately creating market reactions, to benefit from them.
It's amazing what Trump's accomplished for the US, isn't it.. he's dragged the country so fast downhill that China is looking more and more the better business partner.
There are structural differences between the US and Chinese stock markets that remain unchanged. The policy changed but the relationship between the President and the stock market did not change.
Legally no, but normatively, yes. It was previously expected that the president wouldn't deliberately ruin the American economy for his own ego. That can no longer be expected.
US is the biggest consumer market, the most dynamic economy, and the wealthiest country in the world. No real world metric would ever implicate US as uninvestable. What this move is doing is making a few things very clear
1. US is decoupling full on from China. Any ally negotiating will have to show that they are not helping china to export, by putting up similar tariffs on China. Basically, declare your allegiance. And so far, no one has unexpectedly sided with China.
2. For the laggards who are waiting until the last seconds to move away from Chinese supply chain, trump is giving them more time but also telling them, hey it’s your last chance
3. Short squeeze for those who dare attack US economy
4. Navarros is the chief architect and his vision is aligned with trump to fully execute his plan. Just go read his book, he lays it all out
> A Wall Street Journal poll released Friday[1] found 52 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, compared to 44 percent who approve. The disapproval is 12 points higher than the 40 percent who said in October that they had an unfavorable view of Trump’s economic plans.
> Pollsters found 54 percent said they oppose placing tariffs on imported goods, while the percentage who said tariffs will raise prices on consumer products rose from 68 percent in January to 75 percent in March.
>Despite the media tantrum the market only dropped back to early 2025 levels at the most.
A) This is obviously wrong if you spend even 5 seconds looking it up, unless you misspelled "2024"
B) You can't just ignore that they spent several days telling financial journalists it was just a negotiating tactic and leading them to believe this might be peeled back quickly.
Yes, but I don't think we've ever had a president pop a market bubble at a date & time of his choosing. Funny for the party of "don't let the government choose winners & losers" and all that.
>He's turned the US stock market into the same model as China's - the entire up/down rests on the leaders words.
Not only stock market. The whole "Project 2025" point is to turn everything from the "rule-based" approach to "unitary-executive's-really-a-King's-whim" approach.
Just today - the export control or lack of it on specific Nvidia chips isn't really result of security needs of US, instead it is just a result of Jensen getting a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Just like in Russia.
I remember reading Unqualified Reservations ten years ago and thinking "this guy is a fucking nut!" and now his (Curtis Yarvin's) monarchist ideology seems to have walked right into the white house
Trump 2 isn't Trump 1. These are uncharted waters indeed
The Chinese stock market is flat while their GDP rises because their economy is not based around the stock market. US economic management is entirely based around pumping the stock market.
When you say "buddies" what you really mean is "banks", "hedge funds" and "people to whom it was obvious that announced tariffs were bonkers". If you had the foresight and market sense, you could have made money, too. But you were scared, sold low, and now when it came back up, you suddenly found yourself at a loss (or the so-called "unrealised profit")
Of course they were bonkers. You still had to know when the bottom was and when he was going to announce the reversal. Many people assumed he would keep it up for at least a week before pulling back. If he had the market would have pulled back even more. It's easy to time the market when you're from the future.
Honestly, HN is obsessed with finance; it seems at times like it's all you think about. But when it comes to basic trades, suddennly it's all excuses and "easy to time the market when you are from the future".
A lot of people made money today; no, they are not all Trump "buddies"
Common sense is a kind of skill. You don't have to make "optimal" trade, too, so the true dip doesn't matter only thing that matters is recognising that a ticker is undervalued.
There's markets can be irrational angle, of course, but it doesn't apply here.
Trump delaying the tariffs was only common sense after Trump delayed the tariffs. Before Trump delayed the tariffs, common sense was that Trump would not delay the tariffs.
Again, you're just taking pure luck and rebranding it as common sense, using survivor bias.
If you still insist you had a crystal ball, then I ask you: Did you predict the 125% non-delayed tariffs on China, or did you think he would delay all the tariffs? Are you still predicting the 125% tariffs on China will be delayed?
Using "common sense" to both divine that Trump is so incredibly stupid as to suggest obviously bad economic policy but simultaneously smart enough to revert it is gambling.
There is no 5D chess going on. There is entropy, Trump is an agent of chaos. He is not stupid, nor is he intelligent, he is destructive.
You have better odds sticking to cartomancy or other forms of divination. I have no issue with gamblers, but I do take issues with gamblers who are so delusional as to think they can see that which is unseen.
Probably the bond market reaction caught the admin off-guard, possibly indicating a liquidity crisis. As usual, wont someone think of the overleveraged hedge fund managers?!
The blatant market manipulation is what really kills me about this. Just 2 hours prior he posted on Truth Social that it's a "good time to buy". Nothing really matters anymore, and 90-day pause is already showing his cards that the same bear-bull market run is happening in July. It's just crazy to discredit the full faith and credit of the US Stock Market and dollar in such a brazen fashion.
Not to mention, with increasing China's tariffs - he STILL hasn't made compelling domestic policy to bring manufacturers here, and has put the cart before the horse by punishing U.S. companies for doing offshoring, before giving them a chance to build domestically. He's only made the super-cheap offshoring approach more expensive (but not more expensive than domestic production). Post-tariff offshoring is STILL a lower expenditure than (A) the investment of domestic infrastructure, (B) the runway of cash it takes before becoming sustainable, and (C) the ongoing wages, maintenance, and taxes to continually maintain it.
I think he's well aware that the reasons he is giving for his actions make no sense. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a plan, he's just lying about it.
As for the actions themselves, they're pretty much his standard operating procedure:
> I think I can get away with bullying these people, so I will
When he talks about the existing agreements being unfair, he means that we have leverage that we're not using. The proposed tariffs are proportional to the trade deficit because the trade deficit is a reasonable proxy for how invested that country is in its economic relations with the US. You can extort more from somebody who is heavily invested, and less from somebody who is lightly invested. It's a classic protection racket, just on a sliding scale.
He's trying to look ignorant because it's at least a better look than showing the malice that actually drives him.
Ever since the tariffs were first announced I've been trying to understand if there is any method to the madness.
There is sound reasoning behind the tariffs, and I can at least understand the motivations. However, to execute the vision behind the tariffs would be tantamount to severely contracting the American economy, and the voters would never agree to go hungry in order to militarily independent.
He knows what he's doing, but him and his ilk are openly lying to the American public because no one would ever agree to it.
It's not like the tariffs are gone. It's still 10% for everyone but China. That only seems small in comparison to what was being proposed before.
I wonder will EU and others wait out 90 days while negotiating or match the 10% in kind
That seems to be the current strategy, and I happen to appreciate it.
I'm pretty mad a the US for fucking up the entire world right now, but I also realise that acting on that anger is a bad idea. I appreciate the EU having some long discussions while the emotions fade.
What percentage is VAT in Europe? Typically around 20%? Maybe Trump should enact a 10% sales tax instead of a tariff and then everyone would obviously be completely fine with it, problem solved.
Maybe you should learn how VAT work? If you actually know better then all the economists, explain in detail how VAT is like a tariff instead of repeating this trite lie?
The world wouldn't care if he introduced a federal 10% sales tax (provided it was implemented similar to VAT, ie. non-protectionistic)
The WH repeats this lie constantly. Anytime they get pushed on the absurdity of tariffs they mention VAT like it's in anyway related. The right wing outlets then amplify and we further dumb down America.
Because it would reduce US consumption of their exports. Just as a tax on consumption of up to 27% in Europe massively reduces Europe's consumption of US exports.
No, it does not seem fair for Europe to take measures to dramatically reduce European consumption of US exports when the US does not take measures to dramatically reduce consumption of European exports. To be fair, the US would need to do something to dramatically reduce US consumption of European exports.
it is however unfair that the US takes advantage of europe by mot having proper food and safety standards, not to mentioning using slave and undocumented labour.
same thing with privacy, the US is abusing europe by not having comprehensive privacy standards equivalent to the GDPR. only california is not defrauding the EU
> Just as a tax on consumption of up to 27% in Europe massively reduces Europe's consumption of US exports.
Uhm, it also reduces consumption of locally produced goods, not just something imported into Europe. Its like...a sales tax, the only reason it is treated differently from a sales tax at all is because of its more fair rebate system.
MAGA really has gotten people to believe all the VAT BS. VAT is basically a sales tax for all products. It does not typically advantage import or domestic products.
If Trump wants to implement a 10% sales tax on everything purchased in the US that would not be considered a tariff and no one would retaliate.
Per ratio closer to about 1 to 1.5 percent. It differs a bit per country due to deduction rules and additional tariffs. If you leave those out and only look at regular tariffs it is 1.39%.
If USA keeps 10% tariffs for everyone equally, why should we interfere? Serious question.
I believe that Trump is shaking things off, but his goal is to introduce a fixed "tariff" like a soft VAT.
He is just testing (and profiting with $$$$$) what happens when you do things like 30% there, 24% there, etc. But his long term goal is a fixed tax. In that context, who are we to judge them? We also have VAT on imports.
I think you misunderstood: VAT is applied to (approximately) everything a citizen of a country buys: imports and domestically produced products. Exports from a country are entirely irrelevant to whether applying VAT to imports is unfair to US imports to that country, as compared to the US charging a “VAT” on _only_ its imports.
VAT is applied to services too, at least here in Europe.
Now, if we were to split VAT in two: 1. tax on imports, 2. tax on whatever goods/services people in that country pay/buy, you could keep just the 2 and have free trade with other countries with zero tax. Or the opposite, do tax on imports and free trade inside your country.
The fact that VAT has always been like that (1 and 2 together), it doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
Not sure why we should care about how a country decides to apply taxation in their own country, especially if that country sets a more or less equal tax for everyone - that's understandable.
> 1. tax on imports, 2. tax on whatever goods/services people in that
> country pay/buy, you could keep just the 2 and have free trade with
> other countries with zero tax.
That is completely ridiculous. Why would there a VAT on, say, domestically produced pasta on the grocery shelf, while the Italian import pasta right next to it has none?
To allow free trade of certain goods which your country needs more.
This is why tariffs are much more flexible, because they allow you to, let's say, trade oil at a cheaper price, while pasta (widely produced in europe) at a higher price.
It's how the EU today works BTW. In german shops you can buy locally produced pasta or imported Italian pasta (no import tax), both with 7% vat on it. Now you can claim "but this is EU...".
Why can't this free trade be done with individual countries for specific products then?
You and the parent poster are talking past each other. They asked:
> Why would there a VAT on, say, domestically produced pasta on the grocery shelf, while the Italian import pasta right next to it has none?
You answer (correctly) that that isn't the case, both boxes of pasta have the same VAT applied to it.
In light of this, I think people are really struggling to understand what you're arguing for or against here. The whole subthread started by someone pointing out that the 10%-for-everyone version of trump's tarrifs is very different from European VAT, since European VAT applies to all products sold to consumers, regardless of whether they are imported or not. That is, indeed, a vital difference. You seem to argue that it's not the case, while giving examples of how it is the case, leaving everyone confused.
There a lot to be said for ignoring other countries tariffs and just having free trade. Hong Kong and Singapore basically did that for decades and grew fast and became wealthy. Tariffs mostly hurt the countries introducing them.
There are some exceptions. Sudden changes can be painful if you built a factory to service some market and they block the sales all of a sudden. But a 10% across the board tariff may not make it worth retaliating.
It's like saying income taxes and tariffs do their damage in similar ways. They do. Income taxes are another thing that mostly just hurts the country introducing them.
What does VAT have to do with anything? What are you even trying to say? It applies both to domestically produced products and imports in the same way..
> Why forgive VAT what we can't stand in tariffs
Now replace VAT in that sentence with incomes tax, alcohol duty, property taxes.. makes no sense.
VAT applies equally to domestic and imported products and doesn't affect the balance. Tariffs only apply to imports, thus giving domestic producers an advantage (either lower prices or higher profit margins).
It's not a fixed tax where there is the same rate everywhere: when you check the tariff table, you can see that there is a different rate for each item (e.g. 9.4% for Cotton Jeans) and then it says in Chapter 99 that you pay "9.4% + xxx%" where xxx is the special rate for the country.
So it's xx% that goes on top of a rate defined by the type of the item.
Importers care because unlike VAT or sales tax, it makes them x% more expensive than competitors. Consumers care because tariffs paid are in addition to sales taxes or VAT.
There's actually some confusion about that. They said they paused the global tariffs but didn't mention the Canada and Mexico tariffs.
If the 10% global tariff is in addition to the Canada and Mexico tariffs, the net tariff rate on those countries could be quite high. Combined with 125% tariffs on China and we would have very burdensome tariffs on 3 of our largest trading partners.
The rally is because Trump caved to pressure and is backtracking earlier claims that he wasn't going to change his policy.
I obviously can't say for sure, but my guess for why you're being downvoted: we don't need humans telling us what the AIs think. We're all capable of knowing that for ourselves.
What I'd guess most of us are interested in is what you have to say.
In the context of Hacker News, when the "worked conclusions" are that of an AI (however accurate or well trained), yes, I suspect that people tend to prefer that less than the opinion of a random stranger.
I'm here for the people. No AI is going to tell me what you think about something.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 392 ms ] threadhttps://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-...
* Observation valid for the next 30 seconds. Certain restrictions apply.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-fifth-avenue-...
So, let me rephrase, do you think it is likely that they would do anything?
I'd say arguably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_ad...
Now, congress can take away that delegation. They could also cancel any declarations. But actions taken by the admin in pursuing this will almost certainly be seen as core duties by the supreme court. As such, I don't see any real opening for review in this?
Its probably not so much that people trust it but either you invest broadly (index funds) and trust long historical data that the likely direction is up or you think you have more information than other people and can beat the market.
Only if you look at American stock market data. And that's extreme cherry-picking, because the American stock market is by far the best performing over the last century. What are the chances the American stock market will be the best performing next century?
Edit: best to note that Trump is still doing plenty to destroy the US economy, so be careful out there.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...
Clearly some listened or simply had knowledge the announcement was coming.
But the timeline would hardly be immediate. We'd have to go through considerable pain before the government would act.
Yeah, if we lived in that world, Trump would have been removed from office during his first term for all the crimes.
It's worth noting that impeaching and removing Trump from office now would actually take fewer votes than the business of overriding the import taxes he's trying to impose with "Canadian fentanyl is scary" emergency powers.
As a big bonus, voting to remove him entirely leaves everyone far safer. He's gonna have a guaranteed tantrum of scorched-earth revenge no matter what you do, but this way he won't have official power to do it with.
Trump's whole schtick was that #1 - - get countries to negotiate.
Except China. The USA gets 25% of it's bandages from there, and that's no way to prepare to defend Taiwan.
The second order play would be for Trump to tip his associates off that he was going to do this and let them profit handsomely from the bump. Congratulations Mr President: your lackies love you because they profited from fraud but moreover you now have grade A kompromat on all of them in the form of your Signal chat records showing they were complicit in market fraud!
Shit like this is why! It deterred them from firebombing the entire goddamn economy to make a buck for their friends and followers!
Are you sure you remember that? Jimmy Carter put his farm in a blind trust, he didn't sell it.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/02/24/fac...
https://www.tastingtable.com/1204239/why-president-jimmy-car...
notes:
>Carter sold all his personal stocks, and he put his interest in Carter Warehouse and Carter Farms into a blind trust.
I’m not trying to ascribe moral character either. Power, status, fame, etc are just so much more compelling.
We need to do something about out of control inequality, such as in the past when we had strong regulations on industry, high taxes on the rich, and pervasive union membership, but lying about what is going on helps no one.
I’m trying to address the narrative I’ve seen a bunch lately that billionaires in this administration already have enough, so we can trust that they wont be financially motivated.
> THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!
- @realDonaldTrump today at 6:37 AM PST
Edit: On second thought, he wouldn't even have to, since he already has immunity anyways.
> For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.
- Oscar Benavidez, Peruvian dictator
Who would stop them? Certainly not their voters.
Lee Kuan Yew referred to Europe as "fort Europa" for a reason many decades ago..
"For technical reasons, there is not one “absolute” figure for the average tariffs on EU-US trade, as this calculation can be done in a variety of ways which produce quite varied results. Nevertheless, considering the actual trade in goods between the EU and US, in practice the average tariff rate on both sides is approximately 1%. In 2023, the US collected approximately €7 billion of tariffs on EU exports, and the EU collected approximately €3 billion on US exports."
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...
Why do Peterbilt trucks still exist? Don't US truckers deserve to drive Scanias and Volvos?
Even with global regulation. I think it would take a decade to do what the federal governments could otherwise do in a year. The EU is an instructive example here.
Sigh
It's great if you're up for some gambling.
He's not unstable, just very aggressive. He did have a plan.
We can argue about the merits of his plan, but dismissing him and his advisors as stupid or insane is underestimating them.
This is a retreat by Trump. It's him losing. It makes him look like a joke. Or, more correctly, more like a joke.
Trump desperately wants tariffs. He thinks they're free money. He has been saying this for years and still people desperately try to sane wash it into some masterful 4D chess. The only reason this laughable 90-day pause happened is because the US house of cards is on the precipice of absolute collapse, so Trump had to bow into Bessent's attempts to turn this into some sort of China containment.
So are all those factories coming back...or aren't they? Are tariffs going to replace income tax, or aren't they? Something something war with China. Just absolute insanity by a group of charlatans, self dealers and clowns who have no idea what they're doing.
I think there are two things at play here.
1) Narrow the gap between the wealthy and the rest: attempt to reduce the US public sector, backtrack on globalization, and enact policies to benefit the median American, not the mean American [1].
2) Prepare the US for possible conflict with China (maybe over Taiwan) and avoid supply chain disruption that would make Covid look mild.
I think both of these things are sensible positions to take.
When you look at it through this lens, it starts to have some logic to it. Again we can debate the merits and drawbacks of this strategy, but I think it's what is behind everything. Things like his stance on Panama start to fit into the picture when you look at it this way.
It is not the actions of someone stupid or insane.
[1] https://youtu.be/bzWrA6jRbTM?si=uwvgpg0RprDBPEeU&t=253
Your lens needs cleaning.
> Prepare the US for possible conflict with China…
By pissing off every close ally we have?
This could absolutely be all about asserting dominance over China. It could be a great way to deter or blunt the threat of war. It might backfire horribly. We shall see.
He is stupid. You just have to listen to him speak to understand that. But he doesn't invent policy, he has people for that.
It ain't his. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Schwartz_(writer)
> We can argue about the merits of his plan, but dismissing him and his advisors as stupid or insane is underestimating them.
Pretending the man didn't repeatedly bankrupt his own companies and stiff his vendors is underestimating him. We've decades worth of knowledge about how "his plan" goes.
Like, listen to what Trump himself says to justify the pause-
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmfosw5usb2f
Basically "everyone was saying this was really stupid -- getting "yipeee" -- so I paused it". Not "Haha now I've got them where I want 'em!"
These pauses and this chaos is literally the worst of both worlds. Christ, he would have done better either cancelling them or going full bore.
Congress needs to remove his ability to levy tariffs under his imaginary emergencies.
Also see: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yrr0e7499o
> Confidence in the US economy is plummeting as investors dumped government debt amid growing concerns over the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs.
> Governments sell bonds - essentially an IOU - to raise money from financial markets for public spending and in return they pay interest.
> The US does not normally see high interest rates on its debt as its bonds are viewed as a safe investment, but on Wednesday rates spiked sharply to touch 4.5%
we can wipe out humanity if we get cranky
The reasonable world doesn't take Russia or China seriously. US is about to be added to that list.
Also, we're now busy building nukes. Morons.
The US shouldn't be taken seriously any more, world wide. Trump, and his Project 2025 conspirators, have proven that the US system of government had a loophole, and have taken full advantage of it to perform a hostile take over.
US soft-power was what allowed the US to dictate US law to other countries. US law doesn't even mean anything in the US itself, so the rest of the world should be suddenly ignoring a whole bunch of historic US-pressured behaviours.
Given the deportation discussions, I'd say one of the first things to go would be extradition treaties. I'm hoping copyright duration madness retracts entirely back within US borders as well.
One of my biggest concerns is the value of the dollar. If foreigners are discouraged from doing business with America either due to tariffs or due to other matters, how does this affect the dollar, which is a fiat currency? The US dollar is currently the world's reserve currency, which is the result of the United States' emerging victorious from WWII while Britain, holder of the world's previous reserve currency (the pound), had to contend with rebuilding as well as dealing with the loss of its empire. Fiat currencies, by definition, are not backed by assets, but are instead backed by "faith"; not in the religious sense, but in the faith that people have in the government issuing the currency. How will the world keep the faith if the custodian of the dollar acts so recklessly?
For many years I've been concerned about deficit spending and easy-money policies from central banks. However, for the past few months I've become very concerned about Trump's policies that alienate our allies and partners. What Trump and the rest of MAGA simply do not understand is that the United States is part of an interconnected world. American strength is more than just weaponry; it's also in our economy and our reputation.
Unfortunately Trump and his cabinet have done extraordinary damage to our nation in less than three months. He's like an angry man with a baseball bat smashing up irreplaceable artifacts in a museum, and sadly there is no police to stop him, because he is the chief of police. He is by far the worst president America has ever had to endure, and if this continues our nation will end up at war, either with itself or with other nations.
> China issued an alert warning its citizens and students of the potential risk of traveling in the U.S. and attending schools there. > > “Recently, due to the deterioration of China-US economic and trade relations and the domestic security situation in the United States, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism reminds Chinese tourists to fully assess the risks of traveling to the United States and be cautious,” the ministry said in an alert.
Can't blame them honestly
Avoiding travel to the US right now is a perfectly reasonable decision.
a. Chinese retaliation. I don't think they are going to start arresting Americans, but it might get uncomfortable if I don't have my passport in the subway station.
b. American retaliation. My wife has a greencard, this is actually worrying me more than anything, although as far as I have heard so far, we should be OK.
Trip is still on. I'm really interested in how China has changed since I left 8 years ago.
What's really amazing is all the muttering from "Very Important Wall Street" type people who are saying that he's insane. Like... with that kind of salary, weren't you paying attention? We've known he wasn't right in the head for a while now. Maybe they should be replaced by AI.
The US news is pretty useless here. It's more nuanced than they would like to admit. Foreign sources of news are the most instructive as they're actually covering the options realistically.
Curious about what your go-to sources are?
Whether anyone bought into it is another matter, but opening factories is part of what they said they wanted.
In a sane world all these people would be ignored by media outlets moving forward.
The weirdness of this administration has created a lot of volatility. With American-style options you are allowed to exercise early, so if you think there's going to be a ton of ups and downs in the next few months, I wonder if this could be lucrative.
I might try this just as an experiment with one of the cheaper options.
Also, the current VIX is the same as January of 2020. If you believe the current state of the world is less certain than the outbreak of a global pandemic, I have some options to sell you.
> Also, the current VIX is the same as January of 2020. If you believe the current state of the world is less certain than the outbreak of a global pandemic, I have some options to sell you.
I don't know if it's more volatile, BUT it it has shot way up since yesterday, and it doesn't seem too weird to think that it will go down to the numbers we had yesterday.
Puts are a necessary hedge now for your 401ks or stock grants.
The market is absolutely delusional right now. It's not pricing in how devastating this general uncertainty is, nevermind the fact that massive tariff hikes are still in effect.
But then these are politicians they will declare 2*infinity tariffs.
Who is incentivized in this system to say that this product is actually coming from China? Is it the US government regulators who just lost their jobs? Or the Businesses themselves who don't want to pay higher tariffs? Is it China who avoids the tariff? Is it Vietnam who just got paid for doing nothing?
The answer would typically be that the US gov't would monitor this. But that is not a muscle this administration is capable of. That would require nuance and strategy, and it's very clear from this move that this administration doesn't have that capability.
The foreign factory system is already in place for those that use it
I have a friend who had to get something shipped from Australia to Germany via freight, he told me intercontinental freight shipping generally takes multiple months if you aren't Wal-Mart/Amazon and you aren't willing to pay out the ass for express handling.
>The foreign factory system is already in place for those that use it
ah but there's the small kernel of genius within the corncob that is trump's insanity: which foreign factories do you use and who will they take the shipment from and and wait fuck he just gave a 90-day extension less than a week in, will the factory let me have my money back if i cancel?
This exact thing happens frequently at scale. When countries put export controls in place on shipments to Russia recently, they had a sudden spike in exports to a number of countries known to re-ship products into Russia.
I thought it was highly suspicious when I noticed, like evasion of sanctions on Russia. However, food products aren’t covered by sanctions in Canada and apparently, the Belarus packaging is to make it easier to sell German fish in Russia!
If not, what stops a Vietnamese shell company from sending "Vietnamese" goods through a port in China, or worst case, a port in Vietnam?
https://redarrowlogistics.com/international/dodging-tariffs-...
The discount is from importing/re-exporting to access your market for cheaper than they otherwise would.
As nice as this surge is, I'm more focused on upping my cash reserves and bracing myself for a recession.
The problem remains. Anyone who imports from China - which covers a lot of the economy - is screwed.
And Rest of World no longer trusts anything he says.
This is a fabricated justification. There has been literally zero public reporting of any trade negotiations post-tarifpocalypse. The only people saying there are deals being made are the White House, who have produce zero evidence of deals.
No, Trump was responding[1] to the movement of the market and in particular to the sudden spike in federal bond rates. This was absolutely not a win for Art of the Deal. There was no Deal.
[1] In "good faith", to be sure.
- not lying about tariffs being taxes on other countries that would replace us paying taxes
- not calling trade deficits tariffs and pretending to impose reciprocal tariffs
- negotiating ahead of time like normal people and clearly communicating the path forward
But nobody can predict recessions.
Maybe if you already owned your final house and didn’t need healthcare or education.
Also nearly 100% tariffs on one of the biggest trading partners is unlikely to hold for very long. There's probably a lot of options because of that.
Separate, possibly unrelated question: what was trump’s goal when he created and rug pulled the Trump coin?
They weren't saying that all along. They were saying that tariffs are a tool that will be used to reindustrialize the USA.
Full on grandmas off her meds level nonsense.
It doesn't make sense that the tariff policy can be both leverage in a negotiation with the ultimate goal eliminating trade barriers and also so high and predictable that they can raise something the 10-20% of GDP.
The logical conclusion is that there is no plan here - we're living in a world like England under Henry VIII, where everything is done based on the whim of the king, and the advisors try to justify it ex post facto.
Who cares? Business leaders & the politicians they helped elect are stripping the copper from the country. Whatever's left when they're done is someone else's problem.
Me either. I'm afraid you'll have to ask the people who did elect the copper thieves for an explanation.
All of this chaos is specifically because they have chosen to be complicit instead of opposing the president. If you want the madness to stop, call your representatives. Speak to your family and ask them to do the same.
After overriding a veto, which Trump has already stated he'll use, to block Congress taking back the power of tariffs:
https://bsky.app/profile/sahilkapur.bsky.social/post/3lmak2w...
Theyll need 19 or 20 to get the inevitable veto override. I guess we'll see how these events have shaken congress and if thars enough to take trumps toys away.
So if they can find like 20 R senators who realize that they no longer support a Mad King, they're all set.
We didn't vote for any of this to happen. We voted for the adult. But the reality is that this country held fair elections and the population democratically elected someone that is a somewhat ambiguous melange of amoral, stupid, craven, venal, and selfish.
Many of us knew shit like this was going to happen and that it's going to be a very long 4 years. We are getting exactly what we collectively asked for.
I'll poke my head out for the 2026 elections and see if there's anything worth saving...
[0] https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv
Beyond that, IMO, the public doesn't really care about tariffs. Right now there is a lot of noise because this kind of capricious threat/application of tariffs is something new, but the tariff chaos will become boring background noise in a few months and people will move on to the next thing.
If I don't know if Trump is literal or serious about re-shoring to normalize trade deficits, or its just a revenue gimmick, or if its all going to be delayed, or negotiated away ... am I moving any production back to the US? No.
Plants are cancelling orders as they are uncertain what the tariff might be by the time goods ship.
Etc.
Burn it all down is not a governing philosophy.
It's also unlikely that it would have been split between only two additional parties. In my state we had 5 parties on the ballot. Colorado (to pick one at random) had 12.
If there was any real movement to get non-voters to vote for a third party, there would likely be even more of them. As it is, each of those parties took a fair bit of effort to get on the ballot, knowing that at best they would "send a message".
If the message is "we don't like you", then the message has been received, for many years. But the reply is "OK, go get people to agree on somebody else", and that's the sticking point.
Yes, but the big problem is that these same business leaders and politicians are going to be the ones who get first bite at the apple. And so how they plan is going to impact what's left for everyone else.
I don't care because they burned the system to the ground, I care because they're gonna salvage what they need and nothing else.
We don't necessarily feel it when it's up though. As seen from 2024.
How does that help? The steel and auto tariffs are still in place. There are plans on tariffs for other industries. You'll be hit 1 way or another.
The end goal would be 0% corporate and income taxes, funded with high tariffs. Over time the US re-industrializes.
Right, because the US doesn't have diamonds, vanilla, coffee beans or the many other things it needs? How do you avoid tariffs like this?
The US still needs fish from the penguins. What's the plan? To tell penguins to stop fishing and come to the US and work in factories?
> The end goal would be 0% corporate and income taxes, funded with high tariffs.
Well you have that right. When there's 0% of the people working no 1 will be paying corporate and income tax. It'll just crash.
> Over time the US re-industrializes.
Like it's gone? You do know the US is the 2nd largest global manufacturer right? That is even today. So do we need to blow that up 1st in order to re-industrialize?
Building a factory is a 3-5 year task, with a decade-long payback time. And at any point, tariffs can be removed, making all that investment futile.
And even then, there's no guarantee that the factory is going to help people. If it's a lights-out facility staffed with robots, then it'll just be producing more expensive goods, with all the profits staying in its owners' pockets.
> Over time the US re-industrializes.
Or just becomes another Argentina.
No part of your plan will happen.
Rides like this have happened regularly for longer than I can remember. The details always change, but there is nothing new.
> How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?
They cannot. This is how you can tell Trump was never a real businessman, but rather a TV host and a celebutante. I'd venture nearly all major American business, public and private, depend on stability in the American government. Trump's actions make it painfully clear he is not, and never was, really part of the "business" or "deal making" world.
Or one that makes people pray that one of those cheeseburgers he's been eating finally does something...
We in Argentina feel for you: it's exactly the same for us, replacing Trump with Milei. And with the added humiliation of Milei being a lapdog to Trump.
This phrase of yours "unless congress grows a sack" is exactly how we feel about our own congress in Argentina.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/07/trum...
This is also how this shambling ghoul gets what any actual citizen of earth would consider a third term. It's already done! This is why he said "you'll won't have to vote again."
The president is only 50 days into his term forever; time is stopped. Hell upon us eternal.
> Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.
Referring to 50 U.S.C. 1622(c) [2]:
> (1) A joint resolution to terminate a national emergency declared by the President shall be referred to the appropriate committee of the House of Representatives or the Senate, as the case may be. One such joint resolution shall be reported out by such committee together with its recommendations within fifteen calendar days after the day on which such resolution is referred to such committee, unless such House shall otherwise determine by the yeas and nays.
> [and so on and so forth with fairly stringent time limits all the way through the legislature]
(As somebody who’s never been to the US—come on, am I the only one who finds legal questions like this to be basically irresistible RTFM bait?)
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio...
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1622#c or https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:50%20section:...
And I mean, both of the houses participated in the first part but only the lower house in the second (AFAICT), so maybe there’s something iffy about that for example. Then of course there are all the suggestions about how the statute these tariffs were ostensibly instituted under (the IEEPA) may not actually authorize tariffs; or that if it does authorize that, then it effectively amounts to the legislature delegating all of its power over tariffs to the executive, which does not entirely sound in tune with the Constitution.
But you see how this starts to look like something you’d want to consult an actual expert on constitutional law about, not dismiss out of hand or listen to random opinions on the Internet on. It’s not immediately clear what even a perfect court would decide here.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1546
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CLERK-RULE-PAMPHLET-...
[3] https://www.congress.gov/quick-search/legislation?wordsPhras...
[4] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolutio... (mutatis mutandis for the others)
Anything that distracts the president from playing golf is an "emergency".
I'm doing the same because I'm legitimately in fear of both economic troubles and/or losing my job as a result of all this uncertainty.
I have cut my personal spending to nearly zero aside from essentials and have been hoarding my money. It's the only sensible option when planning for one's future becomes impossible.
I have been in the job market since 1996 and had to find a job both last year and the year before. I’m on my 10th job. None of the fundamentals ever change:
Live below your means so you can take a job that pays less than you are making, keep an emergency fund, keep an updated resume and career document. Also keep an active network and always be interview ready.
Also play the political game at your job and be sure to be in profit centers not cost centers. Market yourself both internally and externally.
Plan on relying less on the US market. Grow customers elsewhere.
They're not supposed to. The only people who are planning anything in this scenario are Whitehouse insiders coordinating stock frontrunning from Signal group chats.
https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social/post/3lmf...
Which is perfectly fine, now that we have Executive Order 63, Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement to Further American Economic and National Security. This is no longer something the DOJ looks for or tracks, with AG Pam Bondi having to sign off on any potential investigations after a 180-day pause.
Trump also all but disbanded the DOJ Public Integrity Section, that watches for public corruption. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/justice-...
How did they do it in the past?
Do you believe that, if the environment stays this way, businesses will just cease to exist as a phenomenon?
And exactly there is a recipe for recession. A self fulfilling prophecy.
Not that you are to blame but the reason why politicians usually avoid projecting uncertainty.
Honestly, that's one thing that makes me happy about these tariffs: big business is used to getting its way, and tariffs are very much not what they wanted. I've enjoyed the articles about Wall Street Billionaires getting mad and feeling helpless.
It's a good idea to recognize and internalize this, as it's quite inherent to human nature, and won't be going away during any of our lifetimes.
The thing to recognize and internalize is that the world is a lot more win-win than our psychology has been evolved to recognize. Nationalism, realpolitik, xenophobia - all of these are ideologies that make you poorer and worse off, not giving you some secret insight into the truth of human nature.
I do not care about turning the other cheek, I want him gone. This will not get fixed until Americans understand that fascism only leads to ruins and suffering.
If you want wealth, stay close to where the secret knowledge is.
Remember when presidents used to put their family farm into a blind trust to avoid any accusation of impropriety?
Is it yuppie college grads working in silicon valley startups who have always had a thick abstraction layer between them and the system that gives them their paycheck? Is it trolls? Is it lifelong diehard contrarians (the same thing as trolls really)? Is it something else?
Which makes them fairly uninvestable.
That Alibaba stock you have? No, its a share from a seperate company setup in the Cayman Islands which should track the Alibaba stock. They are circumventing a Chinese law that makes foreign investment in Chinese companies illegal. It's a bad idea to own these.
1. US is decoupling full on from China. Any ally negotiating will have to show that they are not helping china to export, by putting up similar tariffs on China. Basically, declare your allegiance. And so far, no one has unexpectedly sided with China.
2. For the laggards who are waiting until the last seconds to move away from Chinese supply chain, trump is giving them more time but also telling them, hey it’s your last chance
3. Short squeeze for those who dare attack US economy
4. Navarros is the chief architect and his vision is aligned with trump to fully execute his plan. Just go read his book, he lays it all out
The volatility levels are unseen since Covid and GFC.
People’s livelihoods will be at stake soon enough.
US voters disagree.
Some polls would disagree with your assessment:
> A Wall Street Journal poll released Friday[1] found 52 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, compared to 44 percent who approve. The disapproval is 12 points higher than the 40 percent who said in October that they had an unfavorable view of Trump’s economic plans.
> Pollsters found 54 percent said they oppose placing tariffs on imported goods, while the percentage who said tariffs will raise prices on consumer products rose from 68 percent in January to 75 percent in March.
* https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5236712-trump-tariffs-...
[1] "Americans Were Souring on Trump’s Economic Plans Even Before Tariff Bloodbath":
* http://archive.is/https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/americ...
A) This is obviously wrong if you spend even 5 seconds looking it up, unless you misspelled "2024"
B) You can't just ignore that they spent several days telling financial journalists it was just a negotiating tactic and leading them to believe this might be peeled back quickly.
Not only stock market. The whole "Project 2025" point is to turn everything from the "rule-based" approach to "unitary-executive's-really-a-King's-whim" approach.
Just today - the export control or lack of it on specific Nvidia chips isn't really result of security needs of US, instead it is just a result of Jensen getting a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Just like in Russia.
Trump 2 isn't Trump 1. These are uncharted waters indeed
Nevertheless, it was still a good time to buy, and also a good time just to ignore it and go about your daily business.
Don't blame the markets.
A lot of people made money today; no, they are not all Trump "buddies"
Which is absolutely catastrophic for all kinds of reasons.
Only people with insider knowledge reliably made money. You either knew Trump would say the thing about the tariffs, or you guessed it and got lucky.
People who get lucky in certain endeavours like to proclaim they have some kind of skill.
There's markets can be irrational angle, of course, but it doesn't apply here.
Again, you're just taking pure luck and rebranding it as common sense, using survivor bias.
If you still insist you had a crystal ball, then I ask you: Did you predict the 125% non-delayed tariffs on China, or did you think he would delay all the tariffs? Are you still predicting the 125% tariffs on China will be delayed?
Ever heard this saying?
Using "common sense" to both divine that Trump is so incredibly stupid as to suggest obviously bad economic policy but simultaneously smart enough to revert it is gambling.
There is no 5D chess going on. There is entropy, Trump is an agent of chaos. He is not stupid, nor is he intelligent, he is destructive.
You have better odds sticking to cartomancy or other forms of divination. I have no issue with gamblers, but I do take issues with gamblers who are so delusional as to think they can see that which is unseen.
Not to mention, with increasing China's tariffs - he STILL hasn't made compelling domestic policy to bring manufacturers here, and has put the cart before the horse by punishing U.S. companies for doing offshoring, before giving them a chance to build domestically. He's only made the super-cheap offshoring approach more expensive (but not more expensive than domestic production). Post-tariff offshoring is STILL a lower expenditure than (A) the investment of domestic infrastructure, (B) the runway of cash it takes before becoming sustainable, and (C) the ongoing wages, maintenance, and taxes to continually maintain it.
If about 30 million people count as a fringe number, yes.
As for the actions themselves, they're pretty much his standard operating procedure:
> I think I can get away with bullying these people, so I will
When he talks about the existing agreements being unfair, he means that we have leverage that we're not using. The proposed tariffs are proportional to the trade deficit because the trade deficit is a reasonable proxy for how invested that country is in its economic relations with the US. You can extort more from somebody who is heavily invested, and less from somebody who is lightly invested. It's a classic protection racket, just on a sliding scale.
He's trying to look ignorant because it's at least a better look than showing the malice that actually drives him.
There is sound reasoning behind the tariffs, and I can at least understand the motivations. However, to execute the vision behind the tariffs would be tantamount to severely contracting the American economy, and the voters would never agree to go hungry in order to militarily independent.
He knows what he's doing, but him and his ilk are openly lying to the American public because no one would ever agree to it.
I'm not saying you owe the person in question better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The EU should do what does best: make things boring.
If retaliatory tariffs is the way to go, maybe do it the boring way: considered bit by bit, no flashy announcement.
Or just make a 10 year deal on LNG so Trump can say we're paying the US money every year.
I'm pretty mad a the US for fucking up the entire world right now, but I also realise that acting on that anger is a bad idea. I appreciate the EU having some long discussions while the emotions fade.
Exactly, the absolute best thing the EU could do right now is project stability
EU already had 10% tariffs on all US autos. (Though tbf most other things were near zero.)
What percentage is VAT in Europe? Typically around 20%? Maybe Trump should enact a 10% sales tax instead of a tariff and then everyone would obviously be completely fine with it, problem solved.
The world wouldn't care if he introduced a federal 10% sales tax (provided it was implemented similar to VAT, ie. non-protectionistic)
The WH repeats this lie constantly. Anytime they get pushed on the absurdity of tariffs they mention VAT like it's in anyway related. The right wing outlets then amplify and we further dumb down America.
The difference between sales tax and tarrifs is it applies to all products within the same category irrespective of its origin.
Same way it reduces the consumption of domestic goods? Seems like fair level?
No, it does not seem fair for Europe to take measures to dramatically reduce European consumption of US exports when the US does not take measures to dramatically reduce consumption of European exports. To be fair, the US would need to do something to dramatically reduce US consumption of European exports.
And I happen to know just the guy to do it.
Seems like fair level?
To simplify,
US product for sale for £100, then VAT would be £20 ( assuming 20% rate)
UK product for sale for £100, then VAT would be £20 ( assuming 20% rate)
same thing with privacy, the US is abusing europe by not having comprehensive privacy standards equivalent to the GDPR. only california is not defrauding the EU
Uhm, it also reduces consumption of locally produced goods, not just something imported into Europe. Its like...a sales tax, the only reason it is treated differently from a sales tax at all is because of its more fair rebate system.
If Trump wants to implement a 10% sales tax on everything purchased in the US that would not be considered a tariff and no one would retaliate.
Just so we're all on the same page, instead of maga talking points.
I believe that Trump is shaking things off, but his goal is to introduce a fixed "tariff" like a soft VAT.
He is just testing (and profiting with $$$$$) what happens when you do things like 30% there, 24% there, etc. But his long term goal is a fixed tax. In that context, who are we to judge them? We also have VAT on imports.
Now, if we were to split VAT in two: 1. tax on imports, 2. tax on whatever goods/services people in that country pay/buy, you could keep just the 2 and have free trade with other countries with zero tax. Or the opposite, do tax on imports and free trade inside your country.
The fact that VAT has always been like that (1 and 2 together), it doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
Not sure why we should care about how a country decides to apply taxation in their own country, especially if that country sets a more or less equal tax for everyone - that's understandable.
This is why tariffs are much more flexible, because they allow you to, let's say, trade oil at a cheaper price, while pasta (widely produced in europe) at a higher price.
Well.. that’s an idea.. I suppose..
Why can't this free trade be done with individual countries for specific products then?
> Why would there a VAT on, say, domestically produced pasta on the grocery shelf, while the Italian import pasta right next to it has none?
You answer (correctly) that that isn't the case, both boxes of pasta have the same VAT applied to it.
In light of this, I think people are really struggling to understand what you're arguing for or against here. The whole subthread started by someone pointing out that the 10%-for-everyone version of trump's tarrifs is very different from European VAT, since European VAT applies to all products sold to consumers, regardless of whether they are imported or not. That is, indeed, a vital difference. You seem to argue that it's not the case, while giving examples of how it is the case, leaving everyone confused.
There are some exceptions. Sudden changes can be painful if you built a factory to service some market and they block the sales all of a sudden. But a 10% across the board tariff may not make it worth retaliating.
Wouldn't you say the same thing about VAT?
HK and Singapore did have low tax and small government which probably helped them.
Why forgive VAT what we can't stand in tariffs?
Is the United States trying to free Europeans from the tyranny of their government? Americans should also stop paying sales tax and income tax.
> Why forgive VAT what we can't stand in tariffs
Now replace VAT in that sentence with incomes tax, alcohol duty, property taxes.. makes no sense.
So it's xx% that goes on top of a rate defined by the type of the item.
And the US has sales tax.
VAT is paid on all products, it doesn't matter if it's domestic or imported!
Maybe you should not repeat these nonsensical talking points?
VAT applies to everything, both imports and domestically produced goods. This reasoning makes even less sense than Trump’s ChatGPT tables…
> but his goal is to introduce a fixed "tariff" like a soft VAT.
You really don’t understand at all what VAT is?
There's actually some confusion about that. They said they paused the global tariffs but didn't mention the Canada and Mexico tariffs.
If the 10% global tariff is in addition to the Canada and Mexico tariffs, the net tariff rate on those countries could be quite high. Combined with 125% tariffs on China and we would have very burdensome tariffs on 3 of our largest trading partners.
The rally is because Trump caved to pressure and is backtracking earlier claims that he wasn't going to change his policy.
What I'd guess most of us are interested in is what you have to say.
I'm here for the people. No AI is going to tell me what you think about something.