What is the US really trying to achieve with all those tariffs?

[Wilhelm44]

1 minute ago, vibv said:

When the economy tanks the richest will be able to become even more filthy-rich, because they'll be able to buy the dip. But what they don't  fully understand is that they'll be ruling over ruins.

The most important thing to understand about money is that it's completely worthless by itself. It can only have the value of actually valuable things, that exist (workforce included).

But that would require intelligence.

Jesus, so he's destroying the economy on purpose ?

[DocWatts]

Just now, Wilhelm44 said:

Jesus, so he's destroying the economy on purpose ?

Yup - anyone trying to spin this as economic policy is either dangerously naive or intentionally dishonest.

[vibv]

1 minute ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Jesus, so he's destroying the economy on purpose ?

Either that or he just doesn't care. But that's why they let him do it.

[Leo Gura]

16 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

How are tariffs going to make his friends richer ?

You don't think Trump's grifter friends and family shorted the market right before he announced tariffs?

Trump's friends and family can basically make billions just by asking him to issue or revoke tariffs any day of the year.

[enchanted]

1 hour ago, DocWatts said:

It's not 'the US', it's Trump. And they're not economic policy, they're extorsion. 

 

And the US didn't own slaves it was those "evil" slave owners. /S Taking responsibility for your actions is the first step towards better actions. From the Chinese perspective Trump is very much the US. The individual is the society and the society is the individual as Krishnamurti would say. 

Ya Trump sucks but Trump is a product of toxic bipartisanship, and Democrat inaction and poor messaging. He is also democratically elected. If the citizens of a country are stupid enough to elect him then the country is on the same level as Trump and is just as stupid. If they were fooled they're stupid enough to be fooled.

 

Edited April 8 by enchanted

[Wilhelm44]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You don't think Trump's grifter friends and family shorted the market right before he announced tariffs?

Trump's friends and family can basically make billions just by asking him to issue or revoke tariffs any day of the year.

Daylight robbery. And there's nothing anyone can do ?

[PurpleTree]

8 minutes ago, enchanted said:

And the US didn't own slaves it was those "evil" slave owners. Taking responsibility for your actions is the first step towards better actions. From the Chinese perspective Trump is very much the US. The individual is the society and the society is the individual as Krishnamurti would say. 

Ya Trump sucks but Trump is a product of toxic bipartisanship, and Democrat inaction and poor messaging. He is also democratically elected. If the citizens of a country are stupid enough to elect him then the country is on the same level as Trump and is just as stupid. If they were fooled they're stupid enough to be fooled.

 

Mostly agree. That’s kind of the reasoning why i wrote US instead of Trump.

[PurpleTree]

2 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Daylight robbery. And there's nothing anyone can do ?

What about rich powerful people who aren’t his friends and think he’s crook? What about CIA etc.?

[Wilhelm44]

1 minute ago, PurpleTree said:

What about rich powerful people who aren’t his friends and think he’s crook? What about CIA etc.?

Well right now they seem to be letting him get away with it.

[Exystem]

48 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

It's not 'the US', it's Trump. And they're not economic policy, they're extorsion. 

Trump wants to rule America like a mafia boss, not a president.

The Liberation Day Tariffs are a political weapon intentionally designed to create economic hardship - to establish a patronage system where Trump can offer selective relief from the tariffs to companies and individuals who are willing to kiss the ring.

Trump isn't playing twelve dimensional chess here - he's a grifter and a bully who's using tariffs to feel like a big man who can make people grovel at his feet.

________________________________________________

BlueSky post from Senator  Chris Murphy on the Tariffs:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:y77n77kdqzhbg647blkfypyr/post/3lluxkmx7wc2m

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.

This week you will read many confused economists and political pundits who won’t understand how the tariffs make economic sense. That’s because they don’t. They aren’t designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool.

You see, our founders created a President with limited and checked powers. They specifically put the power of spending and taxation in the hands of the legislature. Why? Because they watched how kings and despots used spending and taxes to control their subjects. British kings used taxation to reward loyalty and punish dissent. Our own revolution was spurred by the King’s use of heavy taxation of the colonies to punish our push for self governance. The King’s message was simple: stop protesting and I’ll stop taxing.

Trump knows that he can weaken (and maybe destroy) democracy by using spending and taxation in the same way. He is using access to government funds to bully universities, law firms and state and local governments into loyalty pledges. Healthy democracies rely on an independent legal profession to maintain the rule of law, independent universities to guard objective truth and provide forums for dissent to authority, and independent state/local government to counterbalance a powerful federal government. But the private sector also plays a rule to protect democracy. Independent industry has power.

The tariffs are Trump’s tool to erode that independence. Now, one by one, every industry or company will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief. What could Trump demand as part of a quiet loyalty pledge? Public shows of support from executives for all his economic policy. Contributions to his political efforts. Promises to police employees’ support for his political opposition.

The tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears. And once Trump has the lawyers, colleges and industry under his thumb, it becomes very hard for the opposition to have any viable space to maneuver.

Trump didn’t invent this strategy. It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever. The tariffs aren’t economic policy. They are political weapons. But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs.

The people still have the power.

 

@DocWatts Thank you, that was a good explanation!

[Davino]

In short:

 

Full speech:

 

[Terell Kirby]

Question: is it possible for a Trump voter in 2025 to admit they were wrong?

[PurpleTree]

8 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Question: is it possible for a Trump voter in 2025 to admit they were wrong?

Yea i’ve seen a few online.

[Apparition of Jack]

21 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Question: is it possible for a Trump voter in 2025 to admit they were wrong?

This tariff thing cuts to the core of their ideology. Republicans believe in nothing else if not “green line goes up.” Trump so far has been able to get away with some of the worst and most oppressive abuses of power in American history thus far, but so long as the economy had the facade of normalcy his base would support him no matter what.

This changes that. The idea that Trump is some sort of economic demi-god who was divinely sent to bring back 1950s prices has been seriously challenged. And if he can be wrong about this, what else can he be wrong about?

Look at the response by someone like Benny Johnson online. Suddenly going from “Dems are ruining the economy” to “actually we don’t need money after all” as a way to try and cope with these actions. And as economic instability harms more and more people, I imagine his support will continue to erode.

Of course, there will always be those who support him no matter what, and for the time being he still has massive amounts of power, but as he fucks up more and more he’ll paint a bigger and bigger target on his back. Truth eventually cracks through.

Edited April 8 by Apparition of Jack

[Terell Kirby]

9 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

This tariff thing cuts to the core of their ideology. Republicans believe in nothing else if not “green line goes up.” Trump so far has been able to get away with some of the worst and most oppressive abuses of power in American history thus far, but so long as the economy had the facade of normalcy his base would support him no matter what.

This is a good analysis. Outside of neo Nazi sympathizers and white nationalists- there is a segment of stage Orange neo-liberals in the Trump voting block that stubbornly believe in the free market is the solution to our most pressing problems. The tariff issues does strike at the heart of their ideology, as Trump pisses all over the US economy with his narcissism.

I wonder how this will play out in the larger media ecosystem-it certainly starts the fragmentation of the MAGA base, but alas certainly not enough to reverse the erosion of democracy that accelerating under Trump.

[DocWatts]

2 hours ago, enchanted said:

And the US didn't own slaves it was those "evil" slave owners. Taking responsibility for your actions is the first step towards better actions. From the Chinese perspective Trump is very much the US. The individual is the society and the society is the individual as Krishnamurti would say. 

By that metric, are you going to lump in Abolitionists with the slaveowners just because they're within the same borders? Or the French resistance with the Vichy government?

For the record, I do agree that we need to be doing much more to take ownership of collective problems. Civic participation has been declining for a long time in the US, and American democracy has been rotting from within as a result. Moreover, it's been generations since we've had to fight for our freedoms.

But the flip side of this partial truth - that Trump himself is a particularly acute symptom of a larger sickness within America - is that countries are not monoliths, and the US isn't just one culture.

Treating America as a monolith just reinforces Trump's Big Lie that he has a mandate from the American people. When in actuality %32 of the country voted for this - the rest voted for other candidates or stayed home.

5 million people, or about %1.5 of the entire US population, took to the streets to protest Trump over the weekend - the biggest nationwide day of protest in American history. This is in spite of the fact that dissenting could get you abducted and thrown into a gulag in El Salvador.

Edited April 8 by DocWatts

[Willie]

https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-elon-musk-is-the-biggest-loser-in-donald-trump-s-world-war-on-economic-sanity-236779589811

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, Terell Kirby said:

Question: is it possible for a Trump voter in 2025 to admit they were wrong?

For the periphery of swing voters who pushed Trump over the finish line because they thought he was going to lower the price of groceries, I'd say so. Ultimately, these folks are going to end up blaming the economic miseries they're experiencing on whoever's currently in charge. And Trump's insane lies can't fully pave over people's day to day experience as their grocery bill is skyrocketing from what it was six months ago.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for any type of mass exodus from the Cult though - the buyers remorse that they were being conned this entire time is too high. And a sizeable proportion of these voters genuinely want the US to become (or more accurately, return to being) a white, Christian ethnostate.

Edited April 8 by DocWatts

[Apparition of Jack]

1 minute ago, DocWatts said:

For the periphery of swing voters that pushed Trump over the finish line because they thought he was going to lower the price of groceries, I'd say so. Ultimately, these folks are going to end up blame the economic miseries they're experiencing on whoever's in charge, and Trump's insane lies can't fully pave over people's day to day experience as their grocery is skyrocketing from what it was six months ago.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for any type of mass exodus from the Cult though - the buyers remorse that they were being conned this entire time is too high. And a sizeable proportion of these voters genuinely want the US to become (or more accurately, return to being) a white, Christian ethnostate.

Few people willingly admit this but Trump is basically only in power to maintain white supremacy. His cult would accept hellfire in the streets if it meant white people were the ones controlling the ashes. In many ways the battle for the future of America isn’t purely over economics but the battle between ethno-nationalism vs racial plurality.

[integral]

It’s the biggest attention seeking move Trump can do.

Trump needs to continuously make grandiose displays to get attention and give the illusion of action and leadership.

That’s the driving force, I doubt he honestly thinks it will improve anything with the US economy by manufacturing things locally

Edited April 8 by integral