Trump vows to take ‘hundreds of billions’ in tariffs as Australia’s hopes of getting exemption fades

Even if this plan succeeds, it's not like the countries you just tariffed are just going to allow American exports into their markets. It will shrink the whole economy AND cause inflation at the same time. Economics fear this state for a reason.

They forget they don't have the production plants or skilled labor for all this stuff they plan to build. Hell, they won't even have unskilled labor after they finish deporting everyone.

OK, so even if they do build it all and somehow get it working, nobody is going to buy any of it because they pissed the world off.

Those people are, sadly, too shortsighted to realize that they can't have their cake and eat it too. They want domestic manufacturing back, but they turn around and buy cheap Chinese shit from Walmart for a fraction of what it would cost if all manufacturing were here instead. Those two things are pretty much mutually exclusive.

If it came between Trump getting his way or big business getting their way, I'm betting on the big box retailers lobbying to stop Trump from doing anything that might dig into their profits. Rich folk aren't ideologues, they're just greedy assholes.

.. and, he understands that every new tariff threat tanks the US stock market briefly, so he & his masters can sell first, 'buy the dip' a day or so later and make quick profits as the market recovers. Blatant manipulation.

it is a grift, he knows his supporters are pretty stupid, that he has stated in the past. and he will probably be selling them something down the line.

Yup. And they're something he controlls, so when a company or country wants to get an exemption to his tarrifs so they can be more competitive they need to grovel.

It's an extortion racket, mixed with a poor tax, mixed with insider trading. Honestly as far as Trump grifts go, this one is pretty impressive. Just don't know how long he'll get away with it before his followers start to feel the pain.

Bingo, he’s robbing from the poor to give to himself.

I actually think I know how he plans on "legally" stealing the money for himself too.

Remember that sovereign wealth fund? I would bet dollars to donuts that he is going to funnel the tariff money into that. Then he uses that money to buy crypto, which pumps up the whole market including his coin. Then they sell off some of there crypto assets, rinse and repeat.

I don't think he even understands how taxes work in all honesty.

Yeah, I have been reading this over and over. This is what happens when a person is imprisoned in an isolated upper class society. He is sick and has no idea that the majority of his own people are already suffering. People are dying because of this horrible man and it won't stop with those who are deemed others or people across the borders and ocean he absolutely gives zero fucks about. Before too long, it'll be Americans who will die horribly and the country will reap repercussions for decades to come. I didn't think I'd live to see America become the enemy, but here we are.

I mean, people will still trade with the US, but no exporter is going to eat those tariffs out of the goodness of their heart or fear of the Orange Menace, so prices in the US will go up, likely a bit more than the amount of the tariffs as suddenly volumes are lower and administrative overhead is higher. Then the US economy slows in a way that will not rebound quickly, and investment in the US becomes much less attractive due to low customer buying power and the inability to move goods freely. All of this of course reduces the amount actually collected in tariffs. Reduced economic activity may ultimately have positive knock-on effects for many, but the direct economic impact worldwide, distributed, will definitely be negative.

I don't see a single way this is good for anyone, aside from those who can directly benefit from access to the levers of power and/or just want to watch the country burn (or at a minimum, smolder).

he only look what he did the first time with soybeans and china. China found a new source of soybeans elsewhere, american soybean farmers never recovered.

People need to wake up and realise that there isn't going to BE a "next election". At least not a fair one. Trump will win it the same way Putin and Orlov "win".

The sooner American's wake the fuck up to this and deal with it in the inevitable way, the sooner the planet can be done with this nightmare.

Australia can keep their nightmare spiders thankyouverymuch.

But if another country wanted to then I am all for it. Yours Truly the Australian Arachnophobiac.

At least the CCP values education, and is basically the most highly educated regime in all of history.

America is just a religiously mentally ill idiocracy that aggrandizes pure narcissism and individualism. It's a dead end.

Maybe at the higher end of things, in the nice neighborhoods.

Lots of us are wondering by now when that whole "... Against enemies foreign and domestic." clause will kick in for the supposed defenders of the Constitution, seeing as we've got plenty of both in the Casa Blanca right now. Still waiting...

As for the working class: A majority of folks are just constantly bombarded socially and civically by a thousand little dictators. Their bosses, the landlords, the grocery chains, the media, their utility companies, whatever. They keep having to scramble to find the next thing to keep themselves above water. There's so much noise.

They don't know who to trust, or where to start.

And it's structured in such a way that it's so individualized, and difficult to create a rallying banner to do anything meaningful under. When most people are a single missed paycheck from abject poverty, how can you convince them to take up arms, much less go protest, or whatever?

Also the democratic party has poured tons of money into making liberals (not leftists) terrified of gun-like objects, so you'd have to train them on how this whole use of force thing works before arming them. They'd probably still refuse and decide buying matching outfits was solidarity enough for one day. ✊ Lol

That's the real struggle we have right now: Nobody knows each other, and the "radicals" who would organize are sometimes more focused on maintaining absolute ideological purity rather than rallying various viewpoints under the same cause.

Then you gotta figure out what moves would actually hurt the bottom line of the oppressors. And we're back to "Why didn't they just do this to their bosses ages ago then?"

Because it's the same people. Orange Menace / Krasnov / and his puppetmasters want to "run the country like a business." Like (y)our bosses. They want to be petty, and isolate workers, and cut incomes, and demand more than ever. It's just suddenly really bad because the moderately privileged realize "Just get a better job then lol." is even less practical than it was, when you're talking an entire country's economy sliding down the hole.

This is all by design, it's the same tactics that shitty retail work might use to keep employees feeling powerless and miserable, with the stakes and scale multiplied.

We saw some movement with the AntiWork crowd, because they would educate each other on unions, and share their stories of standing up to their bosses, and quitting defiantly. We need that kind of ideological action x20.

If you could defy the fascists in some meaningful way, and know that you'd have people backing you up, that could be powerful. Powerful enough that we wouldn't have to fire a shot. But I don't think we'll be THAT lucky.