Donald Trump just imposed a 25 percent tariff on virtually all goods produced by America’s two largest trading partners — Canada and Mexico. He simultaneously established a 20 percent across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods.
As a result, America’s average tariff level is now higher than at any time since the 1940s.
Meanwhile, China and Canada immediately retaliated against Trump’s duties, with the former imposing a 15 percent tariff on American agricultural products and the latter putting a 25 percent tariff on $30 billion of US goods. Mexico has vowed to mount retaliatory tariffs of its own.
This trade war could have far-reaching consequences. Trump’s tariffs have already triggered a stock market sell-off and cooling of manufacturing activity. And economists have estimated that the trade policy will cost the typical US household more than $1,200 a year, as the prices of myriad goods rise.
All this raises the question: Why has the US president chosen to upend trade relations on the North American continent? The stakes of this question are high, since it could determine how long Trump’s massive tariffs remain in effect. Unfortunately, the president himself does not seem to know the answer.
In recent weeks, Trump has provided five different — and contradictory — justifications for his tariffs on Mexico and Canada…
…more in the article.
The chaos is the point: make nothing normal, make nothing certain, and he can be free to do anything.
It’s part of their plan to eliminate the IRS and federal taxation, to be replaced by a universal sales tax. However, trump doesn’t have the authority to do that. But he can tariff. And a tariff is a little bit like a sales tax.
Therefore, we get tariffs.
Now, the other problem is that the tariff revenue is going to be like 1/10 that of the IRS tax revenue, which will require a 90% reduction in federal spending. Including defense, research, healthcare, and social security. Can’t collect social security tax if the IRS doesn’t exist either, so social security is getting axed.
It will of course make 56 million seniors homeless, but thats a small price to pay for a 15% pay bump for me!
I don’t think Trump knows very much about anything he’s doing, whether this or anything else.
(Incidentally, this also means I don’t think he’s doing most of the bad things he’s doing out of malice or dictatorial ambitions. He just has no idea about anything he’s doing.)
Either that or Trump is following orders.
I mean, it’s getting harder and harder each day to argue against him deliberately destroying the west.
Yeah that’s the conclusion isn’t it
He’s following orders but he forgot what they were, too.
It’s deeper than that. Putin conditioned the dementia into him, so once the orders are carried out, he forgets
Like a Manchurian Canadiate?
But backwards. A Candidate Manchurian
But backwards again, the nairuhcnaM etadidnaC.
Sure, but instead of individual targets it’s the USA
He had the idea to raise tariffs, and he believes all his ideas are really good, so he followed his own good advice and raised tariffs, dead simple.
Does he know where he is, what time of day, or even which day of the week? ok maybe we should see if he can repeat this: “Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV” he seemed to pride himself in his ability to allegedly be able to do so… …allegedly…
I don’t get the $1200 #… If every component of my purchase goods is 25% higher to the manuf passed to me, shouldn’t it be 25% of my annual spend?
Not every good is imported. Not every country has tariffs leveed against it.
They are tariffing imported raw materials as well, like aluminum and steel.
25% on top of the old price, for goods not produced domestically. Assuming that’s all of them, that’d be 25% of your spend going towards products (Services are part of your spend, but don’t get tariffed), indeed. But some things get produced in the US, so I imagine they factored that in there. For the average household, this seems to amount to about $1200/a
Not arguing with you, just want to point out 25% is the new tax but that doesn’t mean the price is only going up 25%.
Well until you buy a car. So that $40,000 suv is now $50,000
He’s a very smart person /s
Cuz he is a puppet, a Russian asset and generally not an intelligent person nor a good businessman.
Yep, he has no political will of his own, he’s a fucking geriatric reality TV host, he has no energy left, he’s being paraded around to push the talking points of people like Stephen Miller and Putin. He gives zero shits and it shows. He barely bothers trying to articulate his reasoning for anything, and he still has a rabid following of zealots who have turned off all thought and will just invent his justifications for him.
Market manipulation. If you can tank the stock market at a time YOU know well in advance, then you stand to profit “tremendously”.
He or people in his stead might have purchased put options ahead of the anouncement of tariffs. -> profits When he then says “it was just a prank brooo!” he can make money by buying the now devalued assets and sell them as soon as they recover. rinse repeat.
I smell market manipulation maybe I am mistaken this smell and it is really the smell of mental instability…
This only works so well. Especially when he’s proven that he flip flops as often as he does, no one will reinvest, because who knows when the next time he does something stupid to tank the market again. The smarter ones will actually catch onto the grift, and see it for what it is, and just pull out altogether so when the recession/depression hits full on, they at least have something instead of nothing.
Idk if anyone will still have anything left after there is an all out market crash, who knows really? it could be going global… our world is more interconnected than it seems. especially economically…
These people that are dismantling your country and robbing the coffers, they are waging a class war. They don’t care about borders. They’re tired that the other classes have any power or wealth at all, they want their last half of a percent
It was really weird when he was telling Zelensky during that meeting that he and Putin had been through hell with the collusion investigation. Like why would putin care?
Also, why should Zelensky care.
Of course he knows. The goal is to crash the economy so the people who still have money when everyone lost theirs, i.e. the oligarchs, can buy up all these assets/companies that went bankrupt. And in the future when the markets recover, they have even more power. Losing a couple billion now is nothing in comparison to the long term gain
Just my opinion as a layman: the tariffs give his corporate backers all the excuse they need to jack up prices even higher.
yup, it forces everyone to raise prices, including competitors.
Agree, inflation can theoretically increase not only prices, but wages to compensate the increased cost of living, therefore appear as a boomed GDP, bringing the debt to GDP ratio lower without actually reducing debt. Eu, china, Russia all have much lower debt to GDP. Of course in reality inflation is hard to manage once it gets out of hand, and the levels of interest rates don’t give enough space for corrections, and the problem of inflation being the reduced consumption leading to a lesser increase of GDP.
GDP is always calculated in nominal and real (inflation adjusted) GDP.
Inflation does not reduce debt to GDP by increasing the perceived GDP, but by devalueing the debt owned, as it is a fixed sum with usually interest rates fixed for a certain time
That, plus it seems very likely that he and friends are just manipulating the market to trade on the predictable moves he’s causing. Ya know, the kinda stuff that earned Musk some mild hand slaps and theatrical pearl clutching (in addition to giant financial benefits) in recent years.
It’s basically how Musk got rich. Intelligent market manipulation.
That’s a weird way to write inheritance.
Musk didn’t inherit billions.
How much was his dads gemstone mining business worth?
Less than a billion dollars.
Do you actually know how much it was worth though?
Intelligent market manipulation.
Not really intelligent, just blatant. He bet on the US and the NYSE enforcement mechanisms not actually working, and he won the bet. Same with Trump, except he bet against the US constitution.
It really feels like the kids of the people who carefully destroyed the checks and balances in the US and created a world order where they can quietly pull strings took over, and the kids don’t understand the value of discretion and are just seeing what they can get away with.
But he was also intelligent. He presumed that the bulk of money out there is comically dumb money, and he played that mass to his benefit. I remember watching 5,6,7 years ago how he would deliberately make Tesla stock look bad in the short term, to lure in suckers to short with high leverage, only to promptly reverse it, destroy the shorts and use their capital to make a new all time high. All while perpetually rewarding those who just hold and trust the man at the helm.
If this method sounds familiar, it was also used by the Tether clan to propel Bitcoin. But with a healthy dose of freshly printed fake money as well.
I really wish people would drop this idea that Trump and Musk are stupid. They say and do stupid things, and I’m not claiming they’re some god-tier intelligence playing 5D chess, but they are just so obviously not dumb, and thinking of them as dumb gives them useful cover for their malice. Trump in particular uses that cover to incredible effect.
It’s not just cover, it’s a downright genius distraction.
And when he takes the tariffs off, the prices never go back to the original starting point.
Because republicans want to fund the country entirely from tariffs instead of taxes.
Which worked out great for every country that has ever tried it.
Tariffs are taxes.
🖐No no. Different word. Totally different 👉🤚👋
