China Imposes 34% Reciprocal Tariffs on Imports of US Goods (cnn.com) 296
China said Friday that it will impose reciprocal 34% tariffs on all imports from the United States from April 10, making good on a promise to strike back after US President Donald Trump escalated a global trade war. CNN: On Wednesday, Trump unveiled an additional 34% tariff on all Chinese goods imported into the US, in a move poised to cause a major reset of relations and worsen trade tensions between the world's two largest economies.
"This practice of the US is not in line with international trade rules, seriously undermines China's legitimate rights and interests, and is a typical unilateral bullying practice," China's State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement announcing its retaliatory tariffs. Since returning to power in January, Trump had already levied two tranches of 10% additional duties on all Chinese imports, which the White House said was necessary to stem the flow of illicit fentanyl from the country to the US. Combined with pre-existing tariffs, that means Chinese goods arriving in the US would be effectively subject to tariffs of well over 54%.
"This practice of the US is not in line with international trade rules, seriously undermines China's legitimate rights and interests, and is a typical unilateral bullying practice," China's State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement announcing its retaliatory tariffs. Since returning to power in January, Trump had already levied two tranches of 10% additional duties on all Chinese imports, which the White House said was necessary to stem the flow of illicit fentanyl from the country to the US. Combined with pre-existing tariffs, that means Chinese goods arriving in the US would be effectively subject to tariffs of well over 54%.
AMexit (Score:4, Interesting)
If Britain pulling out of EU trade was Brexit, this is AMexit - America leaving the whole world.
Escalated?? (Score:5, Insightful)
... after US President Donald Trump escalated a global trade war.
... after US President Donald Trump started a global trade war.
FTFY
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Trump didn't start it. This trade war has been going on since at least 2011.
Here's a congressional hearing about it [govinfo.gov]
so... (Score:4, Informative)
By your reckoning, if somebody is shooting at you with a semi-automatic rifle, nothing is happening... but if you shoot back at them with a pistol, YOU have started a war? Interesting.
Remember: Trump's tariffs, no matter what you think of him, just objectively, are a RESPONSE to long-standing one-sided tariffs. China has a long-standing tariff of 67% on US goods, whereas the US was letting Chinese products into the US essentially without tariffs (The US imposed NO tariffs on goods from China if the individual package coming in was worth less than $800 (the "de minimis exemption") ) which is how things like Temu and Ali were working. This is also part of why everybody in the US gets their short-run circuitboards made in China.
The primary point of the new tariffs is to get people who've been benefitting from decades of high tariffs against the US to lower those tariffs and make the global marketplace more of an ACTUAL free trade thing than it has long been. As long as the traditional free traders dishonestly ranted about "free trade!", but ignored the imbalance, it allowed SOME people (like corporate execs and investors) to make out well, but middle class workers were watching numerous factories shutting down and millions of those jobs disappearing. There are small towns all across America where some factory was THE main employer, but then the company got bought and its new owners moved production to China, or it simply could not compete with China's low wages and manipulated currency and thus shut down. Many such towns have become hopeless places where the standard of living collapsed and substance abuse rose, while the wealthy in DC and NYC ignored it all and watched their stock portfolios swell. This is one reason why Americans can no longer live comfortably on the income of one wage earner - those manufacturing jobs were the backbone of the middle class, providing good wages for people who often had an education of a BA/BS degree or less.
Now, in the case of several countries, like Mexico and china, the tariffs are about more than just a gross trade imbalance from decades of massively unbalanced tariffs but also include things like facilitating illegal immigration and facilitating the flow of drugs (which kill more Americans every year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War) into the country. The tariffs may or may not be a way to deal with these issues but are seen by the administration as leverage to get attention and cooperation on these matters.
The problem these countries have is that many of them have such such trade surpluses with the US that the pain for them is unavoidably worse no matter what they do, short of lowering their own tariffs. China's move, for example, raising its tariffs on US goods imported to China is a joke...there's not much going in there, but it'll automatically cause the new tariffs on Chinese goods to go up further, since they're pegged to China's rate on US goods. One would have thought the Chinese leaders were smart enough to understand that, but apparently not.
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inbound package (Score:2)
I have a couple of small packages on the way from Aliexpress. Guessing they won't be organized by the time my packages arrive, but half expecting a tax bill for them.
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Tariffs are paid by the consumer. The company passes on all cost increses to you and me. In reality, it's a tax. $6 trillion is the current estimate for how large the tax on consumers will be with all these tariffs in place.
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It actually varies. FedEx sent me an invoice in February for tariffs that they paid on my behalf when Prusa shipped a 3D printer to me.
I'm guessing that places like Temu are going to work something out and pre-pay the tariffs (rolled into the cost of shipping), otherwise they'll lose 99% of their market as people get surprise tariff bills in the mail.
What's the true endgame? (Score:3)
From day one, I believed that Trump's intention is precisely to sow chaos in the global economy, generating an unprecedented economic crisis with the aim of forcing a change of regime from socio-liberal to right-wing authoritarian in as many countries as possible.
This would explain why he took these actions right at the beginning of his government. By the end of these 4 years, many affected countries may have turned their backs, since the population will tend to blame their own leaders for the crisis. And in the US, if inflation stabilizes by then, most Americans will have already gotten used to higher prices and will have forgotten all about it.
This is, of course, just a theory.
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*turned their backs
I meant, turned sides.
Re:What's the true endgame? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't seem surprising when people voted for the guy who bankrupt multiple casinos and would be richer today had be let his initial inheritance just ride in the S&P 500. https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
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It takes a special kind of "business genius" to lose money on both casinos and New York City real estate, that's for sure. I grew up in NYC and knew who he was when I was a child, and I was shocked during the primaries in 2016 that people were actually voting for him based on the premise that he was some kind of financial savant.
With that said, if you actually read the article you're posting, it isn't as simple as you make it out to be. The article claims that, at the time the statement “Had Trump d
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forcing a change of regime from socio-liberal to right-wing authoritarian in as many countries as possible.
Or the complete opposite. The right way to respond to violence is to unite. Given that the US attacks many countries at once, this is also a logical reaction. For example, it has brought Canada and the EU closer together.
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Re:What's the true endgame? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, overall, there's a logic to what they're doing, but I believe it's doomed to fail, because 8,000 million people is much greater than 340 million people. The world can go on without the U.S. and the world has been wanting to break free of the U.S. for a long time. That's the problem with an ultimatum, the status quo of ambiguity allows time for maneuvering and strategizing, while throwing all your cards on the table ends the game and you either win or lose. Trump just doesn't have the cards and he's over played his hand.
Re:What's the true endgame? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be. Because if this was about "bringing manufacturing back to the USA", the tariffs would have been implemented slowly like 1% added every month or something .. so companies have time to build capacity in the US. Instead, it will cause a capital freeze. Hope we're happy with 401k tumbling. Meanwhile the world will polarize against us. The world will advance more into high-tech while our workers will be reassigned from aerospace, robotics, and high-tech to making T-shirts and cheap plastic products. The US unemployment rate is 4%, plus we're deporting or selling into foreign slavery our cheapest workers, so the US workers to manufacture basic products have to come from somewhere.
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Though one thing that makes such theorizing difficult is, well, those dozens of people. Each of them have an endgame, but Trump jumps between them so randomly that nothing is really lining up. Though the most consistent part... Trump is going
Video of the day (Score:3)
If you need a laugh after checking your 401k this morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Withholding Taxes Please! (Score:2)
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey we may be living on the streets and eating cat food but at least we owned the libs in the process!
Anyone taking bets on the stock market triggering a halt today to prevent free fall?
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I hope they play some Tom Petty when that happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I'm happy to watch it fall. It's time to stop helping Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Where I live, since 2020 almost every industrial business has closed, minus a rock quarry. All of this came at the expense of Chinese products. It's also terrible that so many "American" cars are made in Mexico, again at the expense of American workers. Yes, prices will go up, but so will wages as manufacturers compete for labor. And if you're going to claim that robots will just fill the jobs, that's complete n
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Re:Make America (Score:5, Informative)
... every country or trading block with high tariffs had high tariffs on our goods.
That is a lie.
It's not one you invented - the initial source is the white house, and all of the RWNJ media is echoing it.
But it is a lie.
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Re: Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
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https://www.euronews.com/my-eu... [euronews.com]
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Wrong. Trump's table has nothing to do with tariffs on US goods entering other countries.
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Even with a 100% tariff the US would still have a trade deficit with some countries. Just because there is a trade deficit doesn't mean there are "trade disparities".
Also, Trump put a 10% tariff on any country with whom the US has a trade surplus. By his logic, it's the other country who should have tariff on the USA.
Re: Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should look it up. Some of the number Trump present are a little bit inflated, but no matter how you slice it, they're all significantly larger tariffs, not VAT, than we charged on imports.
The numbers Trump presented have nothing to do with tariffs. They come from this formula [ustr.gov]. The formula is basically US trade deficit with a country divided by said country's exports to the US.
Absolutely *nothing* in that formula has anything to do with "tariffs": the formula penalizes countries which have a trade deficit with the US regardless of which actual tariffs they put in place, if any. The formula makes basically no sense and leads to idiotic results.
As example, some very poor countries are rich in materials that get exported to the US, but have little purchasing power to import goods from the US. Them having a trade deficit is physiological and nothing at all "the US being ripped off" as it was presented.
I'm actually in favour of some tariffs to protect domestic industries, but the tariffs need to be implemented with a scalpel, not with a blunt hatchet as it has been done by the US.
Re: Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
So tell me what "finished American goods" do you think the factory worker in Vietnam making $5 per day for Americans would be able to afford?
Re: Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's just not feasible until every country has a roughly equal economy with similar wage levels and a large base of well paid consumers.
Ethiopia isn't going to import manufactured goods from the US at any high level per-capita because they're too expensive. And if you want to fix that, you're going to have to support that dreaded "globalism" thing you all keep whining about so workers across the world can get decent jobs. That said, I'm well aware that "globalism" only means that at a surface level to th
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Software, streaming services, digital advertising. That's all not counted in the goods deficit calculation, and that's where Europe gives the money back to the US.
The whole trade deficit talk is nonsense.
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Added to this you have VAT exemptions on exports in many cases, which is effectively a subsidy and just the opposite side of the tariff coin; tax breaks for exports.
VAT is a border-adjusted tax, meaning that it exempts exports by design, but due to the way it works it does not actually mean exports are subsidized or imports are penalized. More info here [taxfoundation.org]
VAT is not intuitive to understand, especially if you are not exposed to it because your country does not use it. Many criticism to VAT are due to misunderstanding the way it works more than to it being flawed or unfair.
Re: Make America (Score:4)
Fun fact, when I was providing technical support services to an offshore company I would get a GST(VAT) refund from my government every tax period. Why? Because my income was 100% the export of my labor and my invoice to the offshore company did not have GST on it since it was not a sale to a customer in my country. However I was paying GST locally on stuff my business used, such as power, phone and Internet. I was able to subtract that GST as it was a component of the cost the product I exported and therefor refunded.
If apply the trump 'tariff' calculations to my business alone then it would break his calculator. Since my imports of USA goods was zero his formula would have a divide by zero error and he would, after asking some who understands basic maths, determine my tariff on USA goods was infinite. Yes that is as stupid as it sounds and yes that is what trump has done at the country level for pretty much every country on the planet.
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Sure. Try Madagascar, Heard Island, McDonald Island, to name a few.
The 'reciprocal' claim is based on trade deficits, not tariffs (which is simply insane). They used ChatGPT to generate much of the list.
There's no 4-d chess happening here. It's just Trump doing shit because he can do shit (and he shouldn't be able to do this; the law he is using requires an economic emergency. But Congress won't step in).
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's also keep in mind there was no tariff on Russia with a bs excuse that trade is so low its not working setting a tariff. Meanwhile we set a tariff on Fiji which has even lower levels of trade.
I'll accept that the Russia tariff may be used as a bargaining chip with the war in Ukraine, but it makes very little sense to leave them out. Israel even removed all of their tariffs and we still slapped them with tariffs due to trade deficit which I'm convinced the administration thinks it means something entirely different than it it.
That is some of the major irony of cutting USAID, a lot of those problems were targeted to give U.S. businesses more customers abroad. Given how long they were talking about tariffs they are remarkably not well thought out in their execution. I could have accepted valid arguments for targeted tariffs, but this bs is a whole other level with the largest tax increase in history on American citizens and all to fund tax cuts for the rich.
Re:Make America (Score:5, Informative)
A few examples: the EU has a 20% tariff on US goods. India has a tariff rate of 70%. Vietnam charges 75%. Do I need to keep going?
You're using Trump's numbers, but his numbers aren't measuring tariffs. The White House's formula measures trade deficit as a fraction of imports... the other country's tariffs aren't inputs to the function. For example, Vietnams's actual tariffs on US goods are 8.1% for non-agricultural products and 17.1% for agricultural products, but his formula applies a 46% tariff on their goods because we buy a lot more from them than they buy from us. The administration will argue that trade deficits are a result of tariffs, so the tariffs are implicitly included in the calculation, and this argument isn't entirely wrong, but it is mostly wrong.
As an aside, there's a truly hilarious element of the the White House's formula: They tried to make their formula look fancy by adding a couple of sophisticated economic variables, represented in the formula with the greek letters epsilon and phi, but they picked values for those variables that multiply to 1. That is, they picked values that have no effect whatsoever. ROTFLMAO.
I suspect the epsilon/phi non-effect weirdness is because they actually used the pure balance-of-trade formula and then realized that looked simplistic so they threw in epsilon, which is an estimate how much imports will decline as tariffs increase, and phi, which is an estimate how much of the tariff cost will be passed on to buyers as price increases, to sex it up and make it look like an expression that real economists would use -- but of course had to pick values that would cause epsilon (4) and phi (1/4) to cancel each other out so as not to screw up the already-published tariffs.
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Yes, prices will go up, but so will wages as manufacturers compete for labor.
Hahahahaha.
Wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder...
Re:Make America (Score:5, Interesting)
You think factories and jobs are going to spring up overnight? The US isn't ever moving back to a manufacturing economy. Hell, China is even moving away from that. Why do you think China is investing so heavily in Africa?
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say I am an American company, why would I now be compelled to spend billions to open a factory in the US now when:
Experiencing massive economic uncertainty (businesses love uncertainty right?) , the falling stocks have closed up a lot of capital that would fund that expansion,
said new factory would take 2-5 years to build and open and right now nobody knows what the economy will look like in 3 days much less 3 years. Also consumer spending is expected to plummet in the near future.
These tariffs are done via EO so they can be undone via EO. If Jan 2027 or 2029 everything is rescinded now I am left holding the bag on an expensive factory producing more expensive goods. Kinda risky compared to say, just raising prices as most every other business is going to do and ride it out.
Even in your example thanks to those retaliatory products I would expect BMW to start laying off workers as US exports become less competitive. If BMW was considering opening another plant in the US they are likely reconsidering that now. The US is clearly an economically risky place to invest in currently.
Re:Make America (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in your example thanks to those retaliatory products I would expect BMW to start laying off workers as US exports become less competitive. If BMW was considering opening another plant in the US they are likely reconsidering that now. The US is clearly an economically risky place to invest in currently.,
The more I hear these arguments, they more they sound like Brexit arguments. For example, the UK used to have a Honda plant that exported many cars to the EU. Honda warned that they might have to close the plant if Brexit happened. Brexit happened. Honda closed the plant. Brexit supporters are probably still wondering why that happened.
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So you expect American demand for BMW cars to increase more than the loss of that plant's export market will cost them? Enough increase in BMW sales in the USA to where they will expand production at that plant now? In a time of reduced consumer spending and car prices expected to increase (Does BMW use all USA made parts in those cars?)
A strawman aside about environmentalists isn't really making a strong argument either, if we're gonna be silly like that I can point to every response on /. about shipping e
Re:Make America (Score:4)
Why would you assume the sales remain the same? Prove your positive claim.
What's your problem with people working in food service? Do they not make enough money? If that's the issue focus on that and don't just fetishize "industrial jobs" and expect us to do your mental work for you.
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Why not concentrate on everyone in this country instead of your IRA or investment portfolio
Also, to this, get the fuck outta here. You are ready to sacrifice mine and the quality of life of 300 millions Americans so you can feel better about having more of "what I think are the right kind of jobs" for "what I think are the right type of people". We're all gonna be worse of because you think we should live in some proto 1960's era where we all create widgets on a factory floor and accept becoming poorer for it. It's hippie woo-woo nonsense.
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I know right, globalization is soooo bad that you and are sitting here on our globally sourced electronics on a global website talking about our global issues from our first world developed nations wealthier than any point in human history eating our globally sourced food and enjoying our globally sourced music and entertainment.
And you're selfish.
Every accusation is a confession, you have yet to counter the idea that all you care about is an emotion appeal that "what I find as the right type of people need the type of jobs t
Re:Make America (Score:5, Informative)
Trump's end plan is to auction off exceptions to specific businesses.
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Now they only manufacture a couple of their SUVs there, many of which are exported globally
And who will buy these exported cars now that other countries will impose reciprocal tariffs? Since that plant is mostly producing exported goods, that plant is probably going to close.
And it was costly to build new factories in Mexico, China, etc. Other manufacturers have done it before, they can do it again.
You missed the point. 1) It costs money to build anywhere. Building a factory the US was considerably higher than in those countries. Building cars in those factories in those countries is higher than in the US. 2) Those plants are already built. Building new factories going forward will cost additional money the companies di
Re:Make America (Score:5, Informative)
When it opened, that BMW plant built almost every model of car on their line, minus the M series.
They built some 3s and some Zs there. Mostly they build SUVs. Very far from most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I've owned 4 new BMWs since 2007. I'm Canadian, and when I buy my next car I will specifically be sure it is not made in the US. Just because Trump is a douche. I probably speak for billions of global consumers.
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
The trick to that though is to create the impression the crisis is caused by something out of your control. Unless he thinks everyone is going to be as sycophantic as his MAGA diehards are. Polling seems to suggest otherwise (I hope)
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
America has a trade surplus in services. And much of America has their IRAs invested in Wall Street as well as Labor Union funds. Tariffing goods the way that ignorant git is doing it won't bring factories back to the U.S. It is too haphazard and arbitrary, business won't invest in that environment, especially since America might get some sense and turn the Maggots out in the next election.
And even if they did invest in new factories (that ignorant git included as "factories" 2-3 person companies when he was drooling to the press), those new factories will be modern and produce with a minimum of workers. One of the things that depopulated the working poor to just the poor was automation. So rather than investing in education and training, la Presidenta opts to shoot the messenger. He's not really capable of understanding anything without an immediate effect regardless of how stupid it is.
This is nothing more that la Presidenta making an enormous bet with the entire American economy. He always was a gambler, that's how he ran his "companies" into the ground, always looking for the "big score". He's a bad gambler. Want to bet how this will pan out?
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America has a trade surplus in services.
Build an aircraft carrier with services. Or a jet fighter. And those services? They're, and were anyway, about to get exported as well, as there's no current way to tariff them.
And much of America has their IRAs invested in Wall Street as well as Labor Union funds.
All of which there's no working class anymore to benefit from. Working at a restaurant doesn't give you an IRA. Many Labor Unions were largely destroyed over the last 30 years. As I already pointed out, many manufacturing plants require workers, and it's way more than 2-3 workers.
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America has a trade surplus in services.
Build an aircraft carrier with services. Or a jet fighter.
You can't build a school or a road with an aircraft carrier either. What's your point?
Services are worthy as well, they employ people, contribute to the economy, and yes can be taxed.
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It's not his money, why should he care? When it comes to the Golden Grifter, it's always some else's fault for his failures.
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with that.
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And what materials are you going to use at this new, magical factory that will some how appear out of thin air, to assemble these cars? Steel from China, oil from Canada, chips from Taiwan, batteries from Africa, leather from Europe....? all of which now costs 40% more? and now there's no demand for your product...? Good luck with that.
He assumes all those things will be made in America instead. They will still cost 40% more, and nobody will buy them, but he does not think that far ahead.
Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
How much do you think you're going to make running a sewing machine in a shirt factory or forming fiberglass fenders? Those were minimum wage jobs in the 80s, before that all moved to Mexico.
The plan is not to make you richer, the plan is to make you too desperate to complain. You're responding to a romanticized vision of manly 50s factory work supporting a Leave It To Beaver lifestyle. To the extent that ever existed, that world is gone.
This is a $6 trillion tax on the middle class that will be used to (a) finance permanent tax cuts on the billionaires and (b) subvert democracy by extorting domestic companies begging for exemptions, just like he's extorting Biglaw.
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America was at close to a 100% employment and doing better then almost every other country post-pandemic, even your inflation was lower then most countries. How do you improve on close to 100% employment?
Your real problem is 50+ years of anti labour governments allowing wage suppression for the benefit of the rich and the idea that some billionaires are going to help labour earn a decent wage is, let us say, weird.
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You have a rock quarry in town? Are they hiring??
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Things can not be 'fixed' by leaning into american exceptionalism and belief that the rest of the world will crawl to our doorstep because we are just that awesome. The US has been EXTREMELY expensive for the rest of the world to maintain, and now there is a good chance that wealth will be spent elsewhere.
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It's also terrible that so many "American" cars are made in Mexico, again at the expense of American workers.
What is ironic is that the American car companies gave Americans grief for buying Japanese and not American cars when those Japanese cars were more American than they were. For a long time, most Hondas and Toyotas sold in America were assembled in America. These days all manufacturers have at least one model made in Mexico.
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And don't forget, every country or trading block with high tariffs had high tariffs on our goods.
Citation needed.
If you think tariffs don't work, then why do these countries have them?
Tariffs work when they are specific and targeted for a situation. Blanket tariffs are idiotic. That's like saying if a drug works for a certain illness why doesn't everyone take that drug?
Re:Make America (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I mean, ... there are people dying because they took Ivermectin for prophylactic purposes or just for "everything". I think they listen to the same influencers as the tariff stuff.
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Are you sure? [nih.gov]
Re:Make America (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the problem: hurting the group you hate doesn't necessarily help you. When the stock market collapsed in 1929, sure, there were a couple famous cases of bankers who committed suicide, but most rich people were diversified in their assets and did fine. The bulk of the actual pain fell on working people and the poor, and suicide rates actually went up among those groups, not among the rich.
You can't assume what's bad for Wall Street is good for Main Street. It's not that simple. Shit rolls downhill, so any radical attempt to inflict pain on the wealthy classes will inevitably hurt working people more.
You can seem to want to intervene in the economy to produce a society that's better for the average person -- I applaud that sentiment. But I'm wary of half-baked attempts to turn back the clock, because you *can't*. Contrary to myth, the US actually manufactures more stuff than it did in 1990. What's collapsed is manufacturing employment. Back in 1990 you could, as a semi-illiterate high school drop out, get a job at a factory shoving pieces of metal into a machine, or running a sewing machine, and that job would pay a modest middle class wage. Those jobs are never coming back. If the tariffs ever get high enough to offset Vietnam's lower wages, we'll be buying sportswear made by robots rather than by armies of unskilled Americans running sewing machines.
In many cases the attempt to address trade "deficits" don't even try to turn the clock back. They're trying to correct trade "deficits". Take Cote d'Ivoire -- the country that supplies about half of our chocolate. Americans now are paying 21% tariffs on that chocolate. Why? Do you think Americans will suddenly find employment growing cacao beans? Do you think Cote d'Ivoirians, who earn on average 144 bucks a week, will start buying American aircraft and pharmaceuticals?
Worrying about the money flowing out of the country in a trade "deficit" is irrational, because goods of equal value are flowing in. The reason more money is going out than goods is that we're rich and can buy more things than our trading partners can. If we raise the price of chocolate, coffee, and bananas to the point where Americans can't afford to buy them anymore, do you really think that makes us better off?
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It won't fall far enough to trigger the halt. There shouldn't be any halts regardless of how far it falls, but it won't happen today. People like me will buy the plunge which will offset some of the losses.
Re:Make America (Score:5, Informative)
The better question is, when do legislative (R)s remember that Congress controls tariffs? The only reason Donnieboy can do this is because they're letting him.
14 Republicans still in possession of spines could reverse this.
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The best part of owning the libs is that you get to do it with leftist policy.
If you govern conservatively, the libs get happy.
But change everything, break things, do the never-before-tried, abandon decades-old (or even centuries-old) solutions, tear down Chesterton's Fence, and the libs cry.
The right is left of the left; the left is right of the right. Congratulations, everyone here today: We live in interesting times!
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there's plenty of crying from the Right, right now.
examples:
Mike Pence - “the largest peacetime tax hike in US history”
Rand Paul - “Our constitution was very specific that taxes – tariffs are a tax – taxes originate in the House, come to the Senate and then go the president,” he told reporters. “They don’t just go to the president and no one else. What kind of system would it be if all of our taxes and laws were passed by one person?”
also, i wasn't aware
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"Anyone taking bets on the stock market triggering a halt today to prevent free fall?"
it would have to drop a LOT abruptly for that to happen.
this could prove to be a golden buying opportunity for those who have the cash & can afford to play the waiting game.
unfortunately, i'm not one of those
Re:Make America (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure these are just the first of many.
What may hurt the US even more though are export controls on things like rare earths and components.
Unfortunately it looks like the rest of us are going down with you. Markets seem to be operating on the basis of there being a global recession.
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What will hurt the U.S. is now countries know they are too heavily invested in trade and other agreements with the U.S. So la Presidenta may get some short term "wins" he can blow his horn about, longer term countries will remove the U.S. from consideration. And there's no turning back. Those countries finally understand how stupid Americans can be to elect an idiot like that. They will never trust Americans to not be so stupid in the future.
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Re:Fuck China... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck China... (Score:5, Insightful)
"USA will continue punching itself in the face until China falls in line".
Here's the thing: China has plenty of other countries it can trade with. China will be fine.
The USA, OTOH, has just alienated all of its trading partners simultaneously. There are no alternative countries for the USA to trade with to make up the shortfall. All US companies that rely on imports or exports in any way are fucked. So "we might have some pain" is a bit of an understatement.
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Re: Fuck China... (Score:2)
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It would be harder to picture a series of move more in line with the needs of Russia and China than what we have been seeing here. Both countries are getting exactly what they want out of the US right now, and the systems have been broken so badly it will take generations to put them back together, which by then someone else will likely have rising as a world power.
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The side of the ship could have a picture of a penguin sliding on ice with the slogan "Smarter than the average world leader"
Re:Fuck China... (Score:5, Interesting)
We might have some pain, but we need to get UN-entangled from china economically and treat them as the aggressive adversary they truly are.
I'll take signs you're in a cult for $100, Alex.
For years I heard how Biden fucked up the economy along with everything else and now your story has changed to this market crash is totally necessary.
Re:Fuck China... (Score:5, Insightful)
We might have some pain, but we need to get UN-entangled from china economically and treat them as the aggressive adversary they truly are.
And all we have done here is open the door for China to take over as the global hegemon. If the US was doing this trade stuff but from the position of a strong leader to it's allies then maybe you have a point but simultaneously pissing off all our allies in NA and EU and Asia, receding from the world stage, capitulating to Russia, why should China view the US as anything but a nation on the downslope.
From their POV all they have to do is tough it out (which you listed many of the reasons they are well equipped to pull back and regroup, they control their media, they can easily sell any economic hardship as America's fault) and be nice to everyone we've pushed away. The tariffs don't take place in a vacuum this is practically gift wrapped for Xi to capitalize on.
Re:Fuck China... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck China.
As soon as they stop manipulating their currency and other underhanded tricks (requiring US companies coming in over there to become "partners with CCP and share trade into"..etc....then we can talk fair.
More to the point about direct trade and manufacturing, China's MO has been to buy some stuff from the US and Europe, shamelessly copy it, and then sell their own unlicensed versions. The game plan for Beijing has always been to catch up to the West by reverse engineering our stuff, and then subsidize their own industries to the point where Western products are driven out. Examples in China abound, like the COMAC C909, which is an unlicensed ripoff of the DC-9 series of airliners [wikipedia.org], developed using McDonnell Douglas's own tooling seized from their ill-advised "joint venture" in China.
In China's case, trade has mostly been a one-way street, with the US and other nations losing thousands of production jobs for the hollow promise of China buying big ticket items as compensation. We can see that "catch up and cast off" has always been their game plan. There's a book called The China Dream [amazon.com] detailing the West's history of dumping money into China hoping for huge returns and then watching it disappear into a black hole. What's going on in China is a very old story, going back to Marco Polo. So even though they're going to be painful, I'm fin with the Chinese tariffs. Now is as good a time as any get out of China if you're a business. It was always going to happen eventually.
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Honestly, at this point, I don't think Trump in Putin's pocket anymore. I seriously t
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So I'm supposed to be upset that China copied the DC-9? An aircraft designed in the 1960s?
Re: Fuck China... (Score:2)
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The biggest mistake the free world made was when we brought China into the WTO and larger world economic system, thinking doing so might pull them more into democratic leanings and freedom, instead we built up a bully and now allow him to use our freedom and forms of open society against us
Sure.
But how is anything the Republicans are doing fight China?
Seems to me like they are empowering China, while removing the USA as the only competing world power.
Totally slashing our soft-power? That will boost China's influence and access to third-world resources.
Fighting with allies? Weakens our hard-power.
Trade war with almost everyone? We don't make much that other nations can't source from China or Europe.
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This is not the solution for these manipulative, slave-labor-using commie assholes who only care about money. Get rid of the "developing country" subsidy in international shipping THAT WE PAY FOR. Then Temu, Aliexpress, and all their friends and fail simultaneously when you can't get $2.99 shipping on a single item and it costs $20 instead, like it should
I know another group of people who only care about money. The Chinese government subsidizes shipping from Temu, how do you propose we make them stop?
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Re:Better idea (Score:5, Informative)
"...you can buy a one pound package from South Carolina and have it shipped to New York City for approximately $6 whereas the same product shipping from Beijing to New York only costs about $3.66. Sending that same package from NYC to Beijing costs around $50."
"...the UPU charges developing nations considerably less than other fully developed ones – sometimes 40-70 percent less – to ship their postage. Nations like Bosnia, Botswana, or Cuba receive significant subsidies from the United States and others to ship their products and make them affordable. The trouble comes from larger, more developed nations, like China, taking advantage of the situation."
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Re:Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
Eventually wall street is going to complain to the politicians who will then have to decide if they hold loyalty to MAGA or their corporate sponsors.
They are terrible for farmers (Score:4, Interesting)
The tariffs are terrible for farmers.
The tariffs cause the prices of the inputs and equipment to go up, but the price of the crops go down.
During the "Light Tariff Wars" of Trump's first term, farmer lost $27 billion in sales.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/03... [npr.org]
https://www.axios.com/local/ch... [axios.com]