Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
The stock market was already in a bubble (look at those record high PE ratios) but Trump just popped the bubble with a spear sized pin. The justification of the tariffs is of course bullshit, the underlying belief here is that selling to the US is a privilege not a right and so everyone who is taking that for granted is now screwed. Either the rest of the world will pay for that privilege or they’ll just say fuck it I’ll sell to someone else. There will be painful adjustments regardless. And even if you elect someone else next time, this episode has already made it clear that nothing that the US signs is worth the paper it is written on.
So... yeah. You look like a duck and you quack like a duck. So I think this is you. Essentially the same place Donald Trump is. If I was feeling charitable, I'd put you with Ludwig von Mises instead, but your incessant bad faith stumping for Trump has killed any goodwill I had, so up in the fascist corner your go. But don't worry, you're further to the left than Joe Biden or Keir Starmer according to that random website you used to generate your random graphs, so that's something!
Yeah, I don't know how that test is calibrated, but I've always gotten -1, -1, and yet I've voted for conservative parties all my life except one election where I thought the conservative government had gotten too corrupt and I thought the party needed a reset and retool. (How naive I was at what I was upset at, considering what mad corrupt and unconstitutional things people are willing to defend these days.)
And I've run that test in a number of my history/ political classes over the years and I've found most students who express their parents' fairly conservative views often end up pretty dead centre or a touch left. There's usually one random Left-Libertarian, and usually only one per class that will end up 5,5... usually a highly contrarian and very rigidly conservative student. The last one was I wouldn't even call ideologically conservative so much as he likes Trump's insults and was/is a follower of Andrew Tate.
I've run it with at least 4-5 classes and the results are pretty consistent. And based on the provincial Student mock election results run parallel to the actual election and how our school votes compared to the other schools in our city, our school expresses the more consistent conservative vote.
So... yeah. You look like a duck and you quack like a duck. So I think this is you. Essentially the same place Donald Trump is. If I was feeling charitable, I'd put you with Ludwig von Mises instead, but your incessant bad faith stumping for Trump has killed any goodwill I had, so up in the fascist corner your go. But don't worry, you're further to the left than Joe Biden or Keir Starmer according to that random website you used to generate your random graphs, so that's something!
Magic word "bad faith" aside: the graph is the result when you take the test, not where you "put yourself." I do welcome you to take the test yourself while playing the role of your caricaturized version of me, since you know me better than I do, it would be instructive and/or hilarious to see the results.
On April 08 2025 05:51 oBlade wrote: In addition to the regulatory barriers that you extol because they promote valuable electronics safety like forcing everything to use USB-C, EU has until recently had higher tariffs on US than the reverse. EU are not the third world, tariffs should be 0 and trade deficits should be flat among the West.
It's a game theory thing because Asia is not monolithic. EU is, but that's a different factor. Trump likes the whole Americas. He'll be wanting to expand trade with Mexico, Argentina, Canada eventually (yes even more Canadian trade). Japan and Korea. India. Taiwan's PM JUST came out and said they're up for anything basically.
Can you explain to me how the ending the trade deficit with Canada helps the US? Only way this really happens is if we stop selling our oil to you at massive discounts. We're not a large enough economy to balance it any other realistic way (this is in progress as well because pipelines that were dead to the coasts are back on the table). I can not wrap my head around why buying our raw material at discounts so you can value add to them and sell them at a premium to other customers (including us) is bad for you?
In the long term reducing the deficit by increasing exports is much preferable over reducing imports. Because the problem on balance is while Canadian oil and wood might add value, the US then loses more value by buying at a premium from countries like China with systems that are setup just to protect their industry. I don't personally think the US needs uniform trade - ex. near 0 deficits with every specific country. The US needs to pressure everyone to make up the deficits somewhere. Canada may or may not be the place to earn back a lot of that ground, but on Trump's side also NA was exempt from Liberation Day. Canada does block dairy and alcohol with huge tariffs as far as I know though.
On April 08 2025 05:26 Yurie wrote: The thing is that Europe would lower tariffs if the US did. They just won't do it first since the US started the entire thing. They need to make sure we aren't back here again in 1 month after normalization.
On the legislation side. That is one of the best things the EU is doing overall. Pushing acceptable conduct to other nations by enforcing it with a wide market. The US has historically been doing it as well, less so recently. It is far from perfect but enforcing safety standards on food, electronics... is not a negative as many in the US seem to think of it, it is a positive.
Europe can’t lower tariffs because they’re not really charging tariffs in the first place. Total tariff taxes divided by total imports yields about 0.01 or 1% tariffs. The problem is that Trump is using a made up metric to justify an unprovoked and unilateral first strike is a trade war against the whole world at once. The rest of the world can’t give him what he wants because his demands have no basis in reality. The US has a trade surplus with the UK and so the UK got hit with a “retaliatory” 10% tariff to try to lower the deficit that didn’t exist. Except for the Falklands which is a part of the UK proper in every sense but has a high penguin population and so got a 40% tariff. Under what conditions could the UK avoid Trump’s preemptive retaliation?
The issue with the discussion around bargaining here is that it assumes a fundamental grievance that can be addressed. One doesn’t exist. If you want to know the tariffs charged by a country on your exports you go to a specialist in the field and they prepare you a paper and maybe some possible outcomes of different policies. What Trump did was had an official policy statement explaining that they don’t really understand tariffs and it’s too complicated for anyone in the White House to explain and so they were going to use the greater of net imports over imports or .1 which isn’t anything.
We need to treat this as if Trump has, without warning or negotiations, launched a military attack against the world demanding the immediate return of the island of Atlantis. Getting into a debate over whether he should have negotiated first or which country Atlantis should belong to is failing to understand the core issue. It’s buying into the madness that has overtaken the White House and assuming a level of reasonableness that could not be further from the reality.
When asked if they really just used net imports over total imports to come up with the number the White House asserts that it was far more complicated than that. They used imports less total exports (net imports) divided by total imports multiplied by 4 divided by 4. And they explained this with a straight face because they completely believed it was different.
I just want to agree with this (though not just because of the tariffs) and point out that a general strike (domestically speaking) is basically the absolute bare minimum way we could be doing this. Anything less is falling into the trap Kwark is describing.
We have a waning window (if any as pmp suggests) before the world (more or less) permanently reorders itself around accepting a reality where the US is demanding, upon threat of military force, the immediate and unconditional return of Atlantis indefinitely/periodically.
I don't know if the US (or world for that matter) can meaningfully survive Trump not being stopped in a way commensurate with the threat he poses (which I should note will persist well after he is gone).
Interesting article on the actual policy wonks' plans and why it could work. It cites the same paper oBlade linked the other day, but seems to decouple the long-term effects from the need for sustaining the tariffs for the same duration. I don't really see how that works, but I'm also not entirely sure how the Volcker effect worked in the 80s, or whether James Meadway is attributing far too much stuff to that effect in the first place. Is this just a load of copium looking to make sense of a profoundly stupid plan? Or did the "Volcker effect" cause (rather than accelerate) the US' shift to a service economy, and could it now be reproduced in some way by these tariffs and basically undo what the original effect caused?
To start with, that article assumes that Trump actually has a long-term plan. So far everything suggests that he is looking for a series of quick deals instead. I bet he is far more of a CEO shaking-down his business partners rather than some grand strategic visionary.
Americans have proven that they think they "can't get ahead anymore" because Migrants eat their cats and dogs, not because the pay for lower skilled work stagnated for ages due to companies using their record earnings for everything but their workforce.
I would be troughoutly entertained, if I didn't had the feeling that europe is doing the same shit but is 20 years behind so the effects aren't as obvious yet.
On April 08 2025 05:51 oBlade wrote: In addition to the regulatory barriers that you extol because they promote valuable electronics safety like forcing everything to use USB-C, EU has until recently had higher tariffs on US than the reverse. EU are not the third world, tariffs should be 0 and trade deficits should be flat among the West.
It's a game theory thing because Asia is not monolithic. EU is, but that's a different factor. Trump likes the whole Americas. He'll be wanting to expand trade with Mexico, Argentina, Canada eventually (yes even more Canadian trade). Japan and Korea. India. Taiwan's PM JUST came out and said they're up for anything basically.
There is a 0 for 0 tariff trade deal on the table for the US. Has been there even before the current tariffs.
However there are some problems.
Americans don't seem to understand the concept of a sales tax. That's the big one.
And they keep trying to push their bullshit on us. We like USB-C chargers as a standard because it means regardless of what device you get you always have a ton of chargers on hand. We like food that has certain standards. We like a lot of our, in Americas eyes, "dumb" regulations. I think this one is probably a minor one but it keeps popping up. It's the same with American companies operating in Europe. Keep trying to cancel shit like maternal leave or workers rights even if it's mandated by law and then get uber pissed when they get slapped down.
I think these are core points. A lot of people in the US simply don't seem to understand why the regulations in the EU are the way they are.
Sales tax being thrown in with tariffs for inexplicable reasons, and the utter confusion about why we don't allow their chlorinated chicken or whatever else insane thing with cancer-causing chemicals they are doing.
Yes, sometimes EU regulations may go overboard. But overall, and as a whole, they are fucking amazing.
We don't want the US (de)regulations and labor laws. If the US tries to push for that, prepare for a trade war, because that shit won't fly here. And sales tax will stay, and no, US products will not be exempt from that, no matter what Trump does.
This is a very salient point, albeit one that confuses me in reality. Not because the EU is perfect in this regulatory regard, but the things most Yanks people complain about online are the actual sensible facets of it
1. Food standards. 2. Vehicles the size of Godzilla with even worse emission output, but considerably less robust in collisions. 3. USB-C standardisation.
I’m that stereotypical dad who keeps at least one of every type of cable for electronics ‘just in case’, but man it really does illustrate how ridiculous power supplies and data cables and their lack of standardisation really was. It was a great change and it doesn’t preclude innovation either. Thunderbolt 4 ports kick arse and they’re using the same form factor.
One minor Brexit point (today’s mention), I did breathe a sigh of relief when the UK decided to align to EU standards in most regards after our exit.
My worst case scenario was us dismantling a lot of that kind of regulation to try to compensate for the asinine decision to pull out of the bloc wholesale and be ‘more attractive to business’. Don’t think I was remotely alone here, but having been served the shit of a self-sabotaging economic folly as a main course, at least we avoided the shit dessert of erosion of worker and consumer protection.
My favourite mathematical YouTube put out a video on the tariffs. I normally don't post videos because in return I never watch videos (unless it's SC-related). However, I couldn't resist. Enjoy Matt Parker saying all the same things everyone else is saying, but with more math!
The Peter Navarro aka Professor Ron Vara Story.. is so wild.
Allgedly, Peter Navarro made Ron Vara up, to have somebody to quote on why his ideas of tariffs are good for economy (because he hasn't found actual studies on that, or didn't understand them).
He also used his made up persona to send his "findings" to people seeking economic advice.
Trump needed a financial advisor, and since Navarro had the most agressive book cover "Death by China" on amazon.com Jared Kushner cold called him and hired him on the spot.
And that's the total depth of the US economic policy at the moment.
On April 08 2025 05:51 oBlade wrote: In addition to the regulatory barriers that you extol because they promote valuable electronics safety like forcing everything to use USB-C, EU has until recently had higher tariffs on US than the reverse. EU are not the third world, tariffs should be 0 and trade deficits should be flat among the West.
It's a game theory thing because Asia is not monolithic. EU is, but that's a different factor. Trump likes the whole Americas. He'll be wanting to expand trade with Mexico, Argentina, Canada eventually (yes even more Canadian trade). Japan and Korea. India. Taiwan's PM JUST came out and said they're up for anything basically.
There is a 0 for 0 tariff trade deal on the table for the US. Has been there even before the current tariffs.
However there are some problems.
Americans don't seem to understand the concept of a sales tax. That's the big one.
And they keep trying to push their bullshit on us. We like USB-C chargers as a standard because it means regardless of what device you get you always have a ton of chargers on hand. We like food that has certain standards. We like a lot of our, in Americas eyes, "dumb" regulations. I think this one is probably a minor one but it keeps popping up. It's the same with American companies operating in Europe. Keep trying to cancel shit like maternal leave or workers rights even if it's mandated by law and then get uber pissed when they get slapped down.
I think these are core points. A lot of people in the US simply don't seem to understand why the regulations in the EU are the way they are.
Sales tax being thrown in with tariffs for inexplicable reasons, and the utter confusion about why we don't allow their chlorinated chicken or whatever else insane thing with cancer-causing chemicals they are doing.
Complaining about USB-C standards is already ridiculous, but the US regime throwing sales tax together with tariffs seems so absurd it's hard to believe it.
On April 08 2025 18:58 KT_Elwood wrote: The Peter Navarro aka Professor Ron Vara Story.. is so wild.
Allgedly, Peter Navarro made Ron Vara up, to have somebody to quote on why his ideas of tariffs are good for economy (because he hasn't found actual studies on that, or didn't understand them).
He also used his made up persona to send his "findings" to people seeking economic advice.
Trump needed a financial advisor, and since Navarro had the most agressive book cover "Death by China" on amazon.com Jared Kushner cold called him and hired him on the spot.
And that's the total depth of the US economic policy at the moment.
WOW.
I think all of us here would have taken him more seriously if he went with Reaver Patron as the anagram
That would have also explained why they want to expand to the Greenland nat and Ukraine to mine minerals
I know those weirdos pushing books on scientific conventions.. like they THINK to have solved everything themselves with a new theory, and they go to places were actual science is presented and book a slot, or take over the question section at a presentation by asking the actual nobel prize winner why their theory of Black Holes is WRONG and to send them a copy of their book which already presents a solution to quantum gravity
I think Navarro is such a guy. Just a deranged selfimportant lunatic who isn't taken serious by peers, and shouldn't be.. but was hired by the guy who bangs the 3rd generation of inherited wealth who did a amazon search for selecting an economic advisor to the United states, after probably doing a line in the restroom.
EPT
