Trump put on his big-boy tariff pants and presided over a grotesque spectacle in the former Rose Garden yesterday, surrounded by fellow billionaire/multimillionaire cabinet members with Facebook’s Zuckerberg tagging along and probably Musk lurking somewhere in the crowd.
Team Trump delayed the show by an hour so the markets couldn’t react in real time. Dow futures were down about 1200 points last I looked, and CNBC says a monthly layoffs report released this morning is “exceeded only by when the country shut down in 2020 for the Covid pandemic,” thanks in part to the Musk/DOGE chainsaw effect at federal agencies.
This is all pretty bad. Trump inherited a healthy(ish) economy and could have sat back and taken credit for his predecessor’s effort as he did in 2016. In fact, that’s what I worried he’d do. But because this tariff thing is such a massive self-sabotage, many folks are wondering why Trump is doing this.
Does he hope to replace income taxes with what amounts to a national sales tax that would fall heaviest on working people? Is he just stupid, as foretold by the prophet Fran Lebowitz?
There’s probably some truth to all of that, but Senator Murphy of Connecticut made a compelling case on Bluesky last night to view the tariff regime as an extortion tool that Trump can use to intimidate and control businesses as part of the authoritarian takeover.
Here’s a link to Murphy’s thread; the content is rendered in text form below:
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.
1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.
2/ 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.
3/ 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.
4/ 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.
5/ 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.
6/ 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.
7/ 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.
8/ 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.
9/ 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.
10/ 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.
11/ 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.
One critical point to keep in mind about this issue (and to bring up in real-life discussions) is that tariffs aren’t a magic wand that only the president can wave. Congressional Republicans could stop Trump from ruining the economy right now. Josh Marshall at TPM:
Point one is that we should remember that Presidents have no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. This isn’t like war powers or pardons where these are questions the Constitution assigns to the will of one person. They are entirely delegated by Congress and could be taken back at any moment. They are also explicitly reserved for emergencies. They aren’t meant to be used as to create entirely novel trade regimes. But Congress lets the President decide what constitutes an emergency. The logic of that delegation is based on the flexibility and convenience the delegation creates and the assumption that the president wouldn’t be nuts. The Republican Congress could bring this absurd gambit to a halt tonight. So it’s all on them, every one of them individually.
It wouldn’t even take that many Repubs nor require much political courage. If a dozen or so in swingy districts/states would nut up and vote with Democrats, they could stop Trump from plunging us into a deep recession or worse.
Heck, it would probably even redound to their political benefit and hurt Dems who’ve been doing the right thing all along! Imagine the media hosannahs that would greet Republicans who showed a little independence — a new John McCain to worship.
If a handful broke ranks, one of their number would probably be hyped all the way to the White House in 2028 by a drama-addicted political press that is wired for the GOP. But so far, Repub lawmakers are still frozen in fear of the sundowning orange geezer. It’s beyond pathetic.
Open thread.
Baud
I’m curious to see what the unions will do.
bbleh
Murphy’s comments are getting play in other places too. I think making noise like this is exactly what we need — more please! — but I’m not sure I totally buy it. It’s simply TOO clever for Trump — it’s genuine 3D chess. I definitely believe the bribe potential, and the larger (for him) underlying motive of just looking like the Biggest Baddest Dude who is owed respect!, and I can even see where some of the evil P25 minions might be thinking along more complex lines. But it would require him to take a major hit deliberately — the Trump Recession — and I don’t think his ego would allow for that, even if he could subsequently turn it to his advantage. And it’s a little too complex — too many things would have to work together, and it doesn’t allow for much agency on the part of other countries.
I think the recession part is nearly inevitable at this point (and the Atlanta Fed agrees!). And certainly the bribe thing. But the larger Grand Plan just strikes me as a little too grand. Although as noted, I’m perfectly ok with waving it around, if only to scare some people sufficiently to look up from their damn phones for a minute.
Saturday protests turning out to be well timed!
The Pale Scot
That’s not true, the Crown wanted to recoup the large sums spent on the French Indian War that was conducted to protect the colonists from the Indians. Who were reacting to the refusal by the colonists to obey the Crown’s laws restricting settlement In Indian lands.
By the way, the Tea Party was the reaction by smugglers to the Crown lowing the tea tax, removing their profits. Americans have always been ungrateful gits.
jonas
The tariffs could never be anything else *but* a tool with which to corruptly co-opt American business and cow foreign governments. Come kiss the king’s ass and he’ll exempt your company or country from tariffs and such. So much deal-making!
It’s also possible he thinks crashing the economy for a time will force the Fed to dramatically lower interest rates and devalue the dollar, which will rebound to his advantage politically. We’ll see how a bunch of unemployed voters having to shell out hundreds of dollars a month more for food and clothing feel about that. Hardcore MAGAts will of course thank him and ask for another, sir, but I’m willing to bet a lot of independents and swing voters won’t be as patient.
Melancholy Jaques
I do not normally watch CNBC, but I had to check in for their take on this tariff insanity. And what do I see but Rick Santelli, the guy who launched the tea party movement, talking about how this is a long overdue step & that if Trump had been re-elected in 2020 the pain would already be behind us & we’d be living in a golden age. (They cannot acknowledge that the economy – certainly the stock market – was doing well under Biden.)
Again – Other countries are not taking advantage of Americans by selling stuff here. Americans are taking advantage of those countries’ low paid workers & lack of environmental laws. A few years ago, I read an article in which the author tried to estimate the price of an iPhone if Apple made all of it in the USA. The price cannot be accurately calculated because the cost would be so high that no one would do it.
oldgold
This level of crazy and stupidity is not sustainable. It is not abating. It is intensifying.
Yesterday’s tariff presentation was as bad as it gets. The resulting damage of this cockamamie policy is going to be catastrophic.
Something has to give and soon.
Destroy Oh Boy
Any hope of a GOP Congressperson breaking ranks is slim to none until the mid-terms… if at all. The endgame is for an Orban style autocracy rooted in cult of personality. The United States is vulnerable after nearly decades of assault on education and rule of law. There is little trust in the overall system because many voters elected representatives that helped to erode trust and destroy the system. The concepts of norms and traditions became totemized by the center and the center will not hold. The reason is that the norms and traditions are no longer rooted in Constitutionality but in the rules and procedures of the Senate. The Senate still believes that democracy will hold together so long as they adhere to rules that were largely put in place to defend the Southern Strategy.
The Senate is the prime domain for the norm and tradition totem and democracy has been dying inside that institution for as long as I have been alive (48 in June). I personally do not see a way forward until that particular piece of the government is overhauled… but I do not know how because most of the members can get re-elected by doing as little as possible on purpose.
The fact is that there has been an intense drive for a strong-man demagogic style and method of government that has spread across the country. The only way that can happen is via revolution, and the right wing in this country has effectively and with minimal bloodshed revolutionized government. I hate to be so negative because there are signs of life in protest and a handful of members of government. However, the next two years and the resolution of the mid-terms is going to hold all the marbles. Either there will be accountability or the elections will be a harsh mistress as legislation comes from states that continue to amass power for Trumpism. The worst part is that we are all in thrall to his whims now which is the central animating feature of the cult of personality. The goal is to pray for his mercy.
hrprogressive
Need everyone to stop hoping that lacking “courage” is the reason this country is being destroyed.
The Fascist GOP wants this. They want to burn it down, and subjugate the ashes.
The Dems aren’t willing to do much to stop it because they hope to cling to whatever wealth and power they have as the citizenry suffers.
Will the American people put up with this for long?
Maybe. We’ll see.
Soprano2
@Baud: I am too, because any benefits at all from this are a ways down the road, while the bad consequences will happen soon.
Baud
@Soprano2:
He says he’s doing this for working folks. Maybe they’ll love it and stick with him for the long run.
evodevo
Trumpy is too dumb to understand the nuances of trade agreements, tariffs, or really, any of the fallout that is predicted. This is the biggest extortion racket in history…the Orange Mob Boss has only one goal in mind: extracting under the table payments to drop individual tariffs on industries/countries/etc. The Roberts Court gave him free rein to do whatever criming he wishes with no consequences now or in the future, and you can believe Pam Blondi won’t be looking into anything…
Soprano2
@hrprogressive: I think FFOTUS truly believes that other governments pay the tariffs.
Soprano2
@Baud: I think this might settle once and for all whether the economy was a big issue in the 2024 election. If the people who say they were pissed at Biden over high prices are pissed at FFOTUS about higher prices, then we’ll know it was real.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You mean like this?
Betty Cracker
@bbleh: Yeah, I agree it’s too clever a plan to have been hatched by Trump himself, but one really alarming aspect of Trump 2.0 is how seamlessly the P25 people have rolled out that agenda, which Trump explicitly disavowed during the campaign because it’s UNPOPULAR.
He’s the ceremonial figurehead that an unholy amalgam of MAHA-woo kooks, Yarvinites, white nationalists, god-bothering Orbánites/Putinists, etc., are leveraging to roll out their own unpopular agendas, which have a considerable amount of overlap.
Trump is trivially easy to manipulate with flattery and cash, and it would be easy to convince him that tariffs are HIS brilliant idea because he’s been stuck on that notion for decades.
Belafon
@oldgold: Democracy, probably. Ask GM to choose between democracy and profits.
Hoodie
We talked about this in an earlier thread, but the courts could also rein this in. Congress did not delegate this sweeping power to change the tax system. This is no different from the host of violations of other laws where he’s currently blocked. A permanent 10% tariff base is illegal ab initio unless Congress statutorily creates it. File the lawsuits. Almost anyone would have standing.
Soprano2
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, but it would take a lot more of them to override his veto. It’s more likely that the courts would rule that there is no “emergency” that allows FFOTUS to do this.
Ella in New Mexico
Couple of thoughts/questions:
Wouldn’t the most effective way to bring American manufacturing back home be to help businesses build the factories and infrastructure to take over what is now imported and THEN put a tariff on cheaper foreign goods?
And didn’t Joe Biden’s legislation actually offer new opportunities to invest in business and infrastructure for that very reason? And didn’t Fart Cloud et.al. shut all of it down?
Also, what does this mean to the bottom line of the bigger corporations when tax time comes? Do they eat the 25% tariffs and then claim them as a way to avoid paying tax on them? Do they pass them on and risk loss of sales?
And how, if their stock prices tank and they don’t have any extra profit do they find the capital to build the factories that will shift their products to being American made?
wenchacha
Does Mike Waltz know this mayor?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/04/02/north-dakota-mayor-video-city-attorney-tom-ross/82785307007/
Steve LaBonne
@oldgold: The presentation was “make sure Grandpa doesn’t wander out of the memory care unit” demented but the media are STILL sanewashing his drivel.
Suzanne
Don’t assume good memories of McCain.
Soprano2
@Steve LaBonne: It’s stunning to me that the press has still not figured out how to deal with his craziness.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: McCain was one of the last national Republicans who was not an outright neo-Confederate.
Today they are ALL exactly that.
Ferd of the Nort
Getting a shirt with:
”Canada flag”
Worse than penguins!
Based on relative tariff rates, we must be.
Steve LaBonne
@Soprano2: Or doesn’t want to.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair
Destroy Oh Boy
@Betty Cracker: Everything is too clever for Trump. You are right that it is the people surrounding Trump that pose the problem. Trump only wants power, adoration, and the headline above the fold in print and on television. He wants to win every day because that is the only way his addictive personality feels the dopamine rush. Policy will have his vibes because he has the ultimate say so, but government will largely take the form of those who can effectively persuade him based on his overarching needs. That’s how fascism operated in Italy and Germany where the leader’s will was the same as the law… and those who were capable of either enforcing or manipulating the leader’s will rose in the ranks and ran the show.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
There’s a 2-part diary at Daily Kos this morning that’s very timely and very much worth your time:
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/4/2/2314212/-/
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/4/3/2314219/-A-Historian-s-Perspective-Trump-has-Absolutely-no-Idea-How-to-Use-a-Tariff-Part-II
Also too, the tariffs are doing a *very* important thing:
Having everybody *not* talk about SignalGate.
bbleh
@Ella in New Mexico: the problem with thinking about these tariffs in the normal, logical sense of being used selectively to protect and advance domestic industry is, for them to be effective in doing so they would have to be maintained for many years. Firms can’t make plans, raise capital, build and equip facilities, hire people, and put in place all the ancillary lines of supply and distribution quickly — it takes years. And the tariffs have to be maintained during all those years, or the incentive for doing all that stuff vanishes — it’s no longer profitable.
Trump has the attention span of a fruit fly (other than for acts of petty revenge). Look at how on-again-off-again tariffs have been over just a few months. Nobody in their right minds is going to invest in anything that requires any kind of consistency — let alone logical thinking — on his part.
trnc
Every congressional republican seems to think they’ll be better off under an authoritarian Trump, and at least 80% of them are dead wrong. Maybe they’ll do something if they start to figure that out.
jonas
What really killed American manufacturing jobs in the 80s and 90s wasn’t overseas competition; it was automation. Cars are mostly built by robots now. Computers, not guys in hardhats, run blast furnaces to make steel or the saws that make lumber. Even if everything we buy that’s imported today were to be made in the US, it wouldn’t come close to restoring the percentage of people employed in manufacturing in say, 1970. The only result would be a massive decline in our standard of living because people could afford to buy only a fraction of the consumer goods they can now. Some people might say that it’s an adjustment our culture could use, and I get that. It would definitely bring our just-toss-it-and-buy-a-new one mentality for most things to an end quickly. But a decline in living standards it would be.
And as other countries re-orient their own trade and supply chains to cut out the US, we won’t be selling as much of our stuff overseas, either.
rusty
Don’t count on the MAGA faithful falling out with Trump anytime soon. I just heard one of conservative colleagues explaining to another the brilliant plan of the tariffs. The right-wing media bubble has already spun out their explanations and they were in folks email boxes and social media feeds this morning. The fever is no way near breaking.
Belafon
@Suzanne: The press loved them some John McCain.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
That assumes a level of self-awareness that Our Failed Corporate Media Establishment hasn’t shown in close to two generations now.
dmsilev
Yes, but. The but is that they’d have to survive an inevitable primary challenge, probably well funded by the likes of Musk. That’s not a trivial threat. There probably would also be actual death threats from the fringe of the cult. Not saying it won’t happen, and indeed there were a few Republican Senators (including Rand Fucking Paul) who did vote to eliminate Trump’s tariff authority pertaining to Canada, but I wouldn’t expect there to be very many.
sixthdoctor
@Melancholy Jaques: Holy Mother of God. That press conference was a combination of The Emperor’s New Clothes and the Russian roulette scenes from the Deer Hunter and CNBC is taking it seriously?
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: Yeah, for sure. McCain was my Senator for decades. He was definitely beloved, or at least respected, in AZ….. but lots of the right-wing is on the Trump train now. Look at how fast Lindsey turned on his friend for the chance to suck up to power. These people are craven AF.
jonas
…and eventually lost the war for that very reason. Authoritarianism is incredibly destructive, but it also always fails because in the end, the only thing that matters is pleasing The Leader, not doing things right. That crucial FO part, however, usually ends in the complete collapse or destruction of the country.
Belafon
@jonas: Yes, but it was also cheaper to build the plant in other countries since we still haven’t automated that. If it were just the automation, we would have built them here.
chemiclord
@Baud: Superficially? They have to “like” the moves, with the caveat that it actually brings a lot of jobs back to the U.S.
I suspect however, that they all know damn well what is going to happen, and most of them (outside of the Teamsters) are going to pivot accordingly as things start to crash.
Sanjeevs
Trump is using the American economy as a hammer to smash the Europeans. A win-win for Putin.
I don’t doubt this is the motivation
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ella in New Mexico:
Yes, emphatically yes on the first question. Not really on the second one. It’s early but big chunks of the legislation that was aimed at bringing/foster/etc certain manufacturing segments back to the US (or expand them, the battery stuff in both bills will be a real game changer if it remains) hasn’t been snuffed…yet.
Destroy Oh Boy
@jonas: The problem with maximalist intentions is that enforcement invariably destroys everything around them. If you want all the candy, you have to steal and destroy.
jonas
@Suzanne:
Yeah, for the last several decades — since the rise of the Gingrich Republicans at least — the Republican party has not attracted conservatives or patriots, but craven little wormtongues for whom there is no principle or value that cannot be shat upon for political gain.
Scout211
@jonas: Speaking of the manufacturing downturn of the 80s:
Reposted from downstairs:
Wired
BritinChicago
On the idea that Congress could just take back the power of imposing tariffs: wouldn’t that take a bill, which needed a presidential signature to become law? So you’d need veto-proof majorities, and that seems unlikely. But isn’t the power that Congress granted the Pres just a power to act for national security reasons? I would have thought that there’s be a legal case against the tariffs, on the grounds that there is no national security issue that they are addressing. Who has the standing to bring such a case? Why has it not happened—or has it?
Ramalama
Yeah I need more Fran Lebowitz and not so much historians or even economists, though Krugman wrote a swear word in his post yesterday (today?). We all know the drill.
Suzanne
@Belafon: That was, like, 17 years ago, and FFOTUS has changed the game since then.
Also, I think it’s important to remember that McCain was, in person, a pretty likeable and gregarious guy. So the press liked him because he was fun. That’s not necessarily transferable.
chemiclord
@hrprogressive: I think the left is fracturing on a handful of lines on this score.
1) The group you are describing, but I would argue that is a very small percentage of the American left. Pretty much everyone who thinks solely in terms of their own wealth and could not care about anything else has already shifted to the GOP.
2) The accelerationists who think this is the step to the Great Revolution they’ve always desired. This group is still small, but it is growing rapidly. The amount of violent rhetoric is rising, and its building fast.
3) Those who see 1789 France, but also know about 1793 France. They understand the anger against tyrants, but have studied this entire “trading tyranny simply for a different form of tyranny” enough times to know that a Great Revolution never ends anywhere good. The problem is that far too many of them seem to think the answer is to be lecturing scolds to turn down the temperature… which shockingly doesn’t actually work.
Soprano2
Wow, the Dow dropped over 1,000 points at the open.
Repatriated
@dmsilev:
But it’s a threat that’s now slightly tempered by the Wisconsin SC contest — sometimes even ludicrous amounts of money can’t buy an election, if the donor is sufficiently disliked.
Destroy Oh Boy
@chemiclord: The left is also fracturing because there is no good policy that can’t be attacked from the left as not good enough.
jonas
@Belafon:
I agree — but my point was that automation was a far bigger driver of aggregate job losses than just companies chasing cheaper overseas labor. By the 2000s, places like China were leading in *both* technological efficiency and labor costs. Reshoring all that now would not produce a lot of new jobs and would just make the products cost a lot more, assuming they didn’t find some way to pay workers the same rates as their Chinese or Vietnamese counterparts. (Which may be part of Trump’s plan as well — “It’s now your MAGA patriotric duty to accept $2.50 an hour to finish assembling toasters at the end of this assembly line! Also, it’s cash under the table so the company doesn’t pay payroll taxes. Also, you get no Social Security or Medicare. Your welcome.”)
Melancholy Jaques
@Soprano2:
I disagree that it will settle it because Democrats are held to different standards on different issues. Democrats are responsible for delivering the good life; Republicans only need to hurt disfavored populations.
2010 is an example. Democrats were punished for failing to revive the crashed economy quickly enough while Republicans were completely forgiven for crashing it in the first place. And Republicans didn’t run that campaign saying they would bring prosperity back, no sir. They ran on austerity, laying off teachers, cutting people off of public assistance, adding work requirements. Cruelty & bigotry.
People know not to say hateful things when they are asked how & why they are voting. So they said “the economy” rather than we want to make immigrants, trans people, people who made us wear masks, & women who think they’re so smart suffer.
p.a.
@Soprano2: So if it finishes the day down 998, Fox: Dow rallies on Trump tariffs!
jonas
@Sanjeevs:
The combined EU is a bigger economy than the US and *way, way* bigger than Russia (which is even further down the shitter right now because of Putin’s war). They have more leverage than Trump or Putin think.
CindyH
@Soprano2: we already know it wasn’t real – at least I do
jonas
@Soprano2:
Ugh. I don’t even want to look. I do remember, though, when a struggling market was a sign of a failed presidency…or so someone once said.
Soprano2
@Repatriated: This is true, as soon as a candidate got a significant contribution from Musk their opponent would start running against Musk.
Soprano2
@Melancholy Jaques: That’s what I mean though, if the same people who turned on Biden over high prices also turn on FFOTUS for the same reason, then we’ll know that at least that part of what they said was real, not faked to cover up other reasons. If they don’t, then we’ll know it was all bullshit to cover up the real reasons they voted for FFOTUS. As we found in 2024, there’s no way to convince people they aren’t paying more for stuff when they are.
As always, I’m talking about the low info voters, not MAGA’s.
Soprano2
@p.a.: Yep, probably. Down almost 1,400 points now.
Soprano2
@CindyH: When it comes to low info voters I’m not so sure it was fake. I’ve heard too much stuff from people who run focus groups to believe it was all made up.
Soprano2
@jonas: Smart investors who can will be buying stocks like Apple.
Barbara
@bbleh: It’s not just too clever — it doesn’t remove the raw uncertainty that hangs like a thick fog over any kind of long term planning. You aren’t going to invest millions of dollars in expanding capacity only to find out that Trump changed his mind. Maybe in Russia things can work like this because Russia has so few economic assets — oil and natural gas being main ones. So Oligarch A gets development rights, until Putin decides he likes Oligarch B better.
I don’t deny that someone might thinking along the lines suggested by Chris Murphy but I disagree that this authoritarian exercise of power will lessen the economic consequences to consumers.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: Polling shows people are still dissatisfied with prices, pessimistic about the economy, etc., which tells me it was real. (I mean among non-MAGA Trump voters, of course — the cult isn’t worth addressing.) Approval of Trump’s handling of the economy has cratered. Someone (here? Bsky? can’t remember) speculated that for the lowest-info voters, voting for Trump was sort of like joining a cargo cult because they remember getting a check with his name on it. People are fucking dumb enough for that to be true, IMO.
Betty Cracker
This is all pretty grim. Anyone want to see a dinosaur hollering in the swamp this morning? Those critters are LOUD!
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: One rarely errs by overestimating the dumbness of FFOTUS voters.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I remain unconvinced that that story was going to do any harm to Trump. The political media don’t care about such things when it’s a Republican.
Belafon
@bbleh: It will work in part for Trump. I mean, look how quickly law firms caved to him. He doesn’t care about the damage, though. Destroy the economy, have the ministers that prayed over him tell their parishioners that this pain is part of God’s plan, and try to go after Democrats who run against him is what I’m sure he’s counting on. Can he make it work?
jonas
@Melancholy Jaques:
Sure, there are some nasty bigots out there who do vote to shit on the libs and immigrants and all that, even when it’s against their economic interests. But there truly are some (actually, quite a few) very ignorant, very low-information voters who actually don’t give a shit about policies about trans people (or know/care which party supports them), but who are pissed about eggs and rent and handed Trump the election in November and are now also truly shocked at the deportations and detentions and tariffs and layoffs and don’t understand why the egg shelves are empty.
We’re dealing with an absolutely unfathomable amount of voter ignorance and apathy around virtually every issue that matters. It used to be seeing political incompetence unfold in real time, or losing one’s job, focused the mind, but that was back when you had a media actually capable of reporting straightforward facts. Here’s CNBC’s take on Trump’s tariff figures from yesterday’s presser:
Doesn’t. Necessarily. Align. I don’t think the writer was trying to be ironic. We are so fucked.
NotMax
The doctrine of Manifest Dunce-ity.
jonas
I tend to agree. The dude completely skated on charges of having stolen Top Secret/SCIF-only intelligence documents and storing them in his bathroom and nobody seems to have given the slightest shit. Republicans displaying massive corruption and/or incompetence is just another dog-bites-man story as far as the beltway media are concerned.
scribbler
@Betty Cracker: Love me some sandhill cranes! So glad it’s springtime and many have returned here to WI for the summer.
TS
@Scout211:
Not difficult to guess which states’ work may longer align with government priorities.
p.a.
@Suzanne: It’s not worth arguing policy or facts with them in their filthy online comments, but correcting their (there they’re) spelling & grammar pisses them off. Also turning their usual mindless insults on them: cuck, snowflake, something something soy. Call them amateur endocrinologists if they trot out the soy bullshit, adding 😂 & 🙄 etc.
Bupalos
I really think folks get too much partisan sustenance from the ridiculous notion that Trump is stupider than the stupidest person you know. It clouds our every judgement, and as Coons is alluding to, puts us at risk.
like many a narcissist sociopath before him, Trump is a mix of underestimated if particular intelligence and badly underestimated dysfunction. The psychic wage all us smarties earn by pointing and laughing at how funny it is that he thinks he can make us all rich through tariffs may ultimately deserve its own “what’s the matter with Kansas” monograph.
Trump has zero interest in any measure of societal success and is unable to even relate personal success to any common project. Everyone knows this, and in the next sentence treats as serious the idea that he is seeking to improve the common economy by tariffs, but is just amazingly stupid.
RaflW
A small but, to those in the defense-industrial complex, not insignificant thing: I would think/hope that what Trump did yesterday will just obliterate any chance that the new F-47 (god, what a f’king ego on that man) has a shot in hell of happening.
New fighter jets have become so insanely expensive to develop, I don’t see the US developing one alone. Countries are already rethinking order sizes for the F-35, so yeah, good luck getting our kicked-in-the-teeth “allies” to bite on the next one.
Doug R
@Baud:
UAW released a statement praising the tariffs. Fucking idiots.
Sandia Blanca
@Betty Cracker: very primordial sounding! What is it hollering about?
Barbara
@Destroy Oh Boy: The problem with using Orban as your benchmark is that Hungary (and all the former Soviet bloc nations) started from a much lower baseline of economic activity such that standards of living were probably still rising even if not at the same rate as in non-Orban style nations. The U.S. has among if not the highest standard of living in the world. It’s going to decline in both absolute and relative terms from this kind of shock. We also don’t have a history of living in absolute tyranny, making Orban look less tyrannical to Hungarians than he looks to us.
There are limits to what economic chaos can achieve politically.
Harrison Wesley
@Scout211: “Some” centers? Like all the ones in blue states?
sixthdoctor
This guy gets it:
VIENNA, April 3 (Reuters) – The European Union’s countermeasures in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s universal tariffs should target Republican-led states and tech firms so as to force him to the negotiating table, Austria’s economy minister said on Thursday.
“We have to hit Republican states and we have to hit Donald Trump’s friends, the tech companies,” Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, a conservative, told a news conference, adding that the EU would have to discuss digital taxation and regulation.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/eus-tariff-response-should-target-republican-led-us-states-tech-firms-austria-2025-04-03/
Betty Cracker
@Sandia Blanca: If they hear one of their kind trumpeting in the distance (and you can literally hear them from a mile away), Sandhills will holler. Sometimes the approaching cranes will fly on by, hollering in return. Sometimes they’ll land and socialize and/or scrap. Fascinating birds!
Barbara
@Doug R: For too many people, Trump and union members among them, it will always be 1976 in their heads. They don’t want the future, they want the past.
RaflW
Oh, also, Sen. Ron Johnson went on NPR this morning and apparently choked at defending Trump’s tariffs. I called his D.C. office shortly after and chewed him out (used my WI cabin town to be a constituent).
I pointed out that fellow Republican Mitch McConnell voted to take Trump’s tariff power away, why did Ron fail to join him?
I’d urge anyone with R senators to make calls today. They’re surely worried about stonks and the economy. Use that to scare ’em some more!
ewrunning
On top of tariffs on penguins and tanking markets, I have no water this morning due to a water main break. Clearly the stupid apocalypse has come. Expecting the four horseman’s immanent arrival in a clown car.
chemiclord
@Betty Cracker: That’s been the core of the problem in this country for so very long. The number of people who not only aren’t informed, but willfully refuse to be informed, and will get mad at you if you try to inform them, is staggering.
This is country that is run entirely on vibes. It doesn’t matter one tenth of one shit what you actually do, as long as you tell the masses what they want to hear.
That is how Fox News became a powerhouse. They didn’t dupe or brainwash or fool anyone. They simply saw a large market of people, and catered to exactly what that group wanted.
RaflW
@sixthdoctor: That’s a fabulous detail, considered Bowl Cut Boy (aka Zuck) was at the “Liberate You From Your Retirement Fund” day hoopla.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Melancholy Jaques:
I was somewhat convinced it would have an impact mainly because all the usual media sources, plus a couple of (R)’s in the House and Senate that are typically quiet about anything concerning Hair Furor, were keeping it front and center, doing pretty deep reporting on it, etc.
When my normie wife reports back how Totebagger Radio was keeping it prominent was my gauge on how the media was looking at it.
And how Dems were, at least initially, messaging on it in a very Rovian-esque way (go at an opponent’s perceived strength).
But, nevermind, we now have tariffs to divert attention away from the Last Bad Thing to the Newest Bad Thing.
Betty Cracker
@chemiclord: Speaking of Fox News, this is straight-up North Korea shit:
Doug R
It’s a shakedown, WSJ breaks down how it even hits the most American vehicle ever, the F-150:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLpUEACVBlE
Princess
As I’ve said on Bluesky, I don’t buy Murphy’s take and I think it’s dangerously myopic and USA focused. I think Trump is sincere with the America First crap and he truly believes that tariffs are the One Weird Trick he can use to bully companies into building in the States, and, at the same time replace the income tax with tariff revenue. Of course, if he’s right about the first part, he’ll be wrong about the second.
Belafon
@Bupalos: Trump is a mafia boss with the ultimate mob. It really helps to think in terms of him trying to keep that position, and while sometimes mob bosses like to make sure the garbage gets collected on time, they’re also willing to mess things up to stay in power.
Redshift
I think Sen. Murphy’s theory is a fine thing to put out there to encourage business leaders not to comply, but I don’t believe it for a minute. TCFG really is just stupid, and is fixated on crackpot economic ideas that feed his crackpot negotiating ideas that there is always a winner and a loser and he must always be the winner.
He has some people around him trying to build power around his chaos, but a lot of them are Dunning-Kruger cases convinced of their own brilliance too.
Belafon
@Princess: Where are we going to get the rare earth metals needed to build chips?
Princess
And Betty’s point about the Republicans being able to stop this tomorrow if they wanted to, is crucial. Today, even. But everyone relies on the Mommy party to stop Dad from hitting them so the Daddy party gets off scot free.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Doug R:
The actual UAW statement on this:
https://uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autoworkers/
Fain’s somewhat caveating such “support” if ‘Murkin corporations do a laundry list of the right things by labor (hahahahahahahahahahahaha!) plus other pie-in-the-sky things like a strong NRLB.
The UAW’s position isn’t ‘officially onboard’ by any stretch, again, read the actual release. But, all people see is the click bait headline and then opine from that.
Admittedly, the UAW’s position is aimed at bringing about a strategic, manufacturing realignment it’s wanted literally since NAFTA was signed, a position based on unicorns farting rainbows.
When that doesn’t happen, it’s easy to see how they could easily pivot into a very critical view of what Hair Furor’s done.
Belafon
@Redshift: Yes, but he’s also a white supremacist, an amateur eugenicist, and companies will find paying a few hundred million to him and promising to crack down on those “others” to be cheaper than doin the right thing.
Harrison Wesley
@Betty Cracker: Is there an English translation of this?
Scout211
@TS: @Harrison Wesley:
Yep. Blue states have the wrong kind of manufacturing. The “woke”kind.
Princess
@Belafon: *I* don’t think he’s right about either of it. He may get a Hyundai factory or two out of it. But there’s a Stellantis plant closing down in Windsor on Monday because of the tariffs and I’m madder than a wet hen.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: Yes, they certainly are that dumb about voting.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: I agree it’s possible Trump sincerely believes in tariff magic — likely even since apparently he’s been hyping it as the cure to deindustrialization since the 1980s. But isn’t it possible the people within the admin who are implementing an austerity agenda Trump didn’t run on and nobody voted for, the Repubs who’ve been openly advocating for the “soft autocracy” Orbán model, see tariffs as an extortion tool as Murphy says? I don’t know for sure that he’s right, but I’m not clear on why you consider his take myopic.
Soprano2
@jonas: That’s what I mean when I say I can’t believe the press hasn’t figured out how to report on the batshit crazy stuff he does. Financial people know this is crazy, they should say so loudly.
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks for the video! What an amazing amount of wildlife you have right outside your door.
RevRick
@bbleh: Yeah, while Trump may use tariffs as a way of extorting corporations, he has been touting tariffs as a cure-all since the 1980s when it seemed like Japan would clean our clocks and surpass us. He’s convinced that these tariffs will revive US manufacturing and being an exceedingly stupid man will not let go of this belief.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Princess:
And said Hyundai factories will make sure they’re built in the whitest area in a given Old Confederacy state so as to avoid any chance of labor organizing. And more corporate control to screw with it’s workforce.
Melancholy Jaques
@jonas:
Agree in part, except I find the ignorance & apathy fathomable because I have spent way too much time talking to such people. It is like Leno’s Jay Walking.
My sense, from talking to them over the years, is that these very ignorant, very low-information voters make their decision based on their “gut” & on their tribal identities because they are too ignorant & too lacking in information to do it any other way. That is why stoking resentments & fears & culture works for Republicans with these voters, but not for us.
Bupalos
It really isn’t complicated at all, and Trump’s particular genius is an ability and willingness to see past the ethical complications that make the simple seem complicated.
I think back to 2015 when he was taking over the party and refused to commit to supporting the Republican candidate while everyone else did. It’s a perfect game-theory play. In terms of his own heavily psychological goals, this probably is too.
Repatriated
They’re not actually all that rare — just toxically messy to mine and extract, which is the main reason we leave it to other places to do that and deal with the resulting mess.
Bupalos
@RevRick: why would Trump want to revive US manufacturing?
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: And a lot of them don’t want to learn, even the smart ones. I can tell by the reaction when I try to provide evidence.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: Myopic in the sense that Murphy is only looking at effects on the US. Murphy seems to assume that America First is just a cloak for totalitarian rule within the US. I think it is fully sincere and is coming from a man who thinks trade is a zero sum game.
sentient ai from the future
“hey there Taiwan semiconductor, I think your business would do much better over here if, say, your board decided to buy 100,000 shares each of DJT and DJTWW, let’s say at $100 each. Oh, you think that would be market manipulation and boost the flagging stock price? You don’t say. Well, enjoy your tariffs!”
Belafon
@Princess: According to this, https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/03/stellantis-idles-plants-in-mexico-and-canada-due-to-tariffs.html, Stellantis is idling plants in Canada and Mexico because of the tariffs.
pajaro
What happened yesterday was an act of self-harm that makes Brexit look good. And it’s not over–the rest of the world gets to respond to these tariffs, and the idiots in charge are nuts to think their bluster will stop the rest of the world from responding in their self interests.
The idea that we can run a successful economy by dolling out favors, industry-by-industry, is just nuts. Chaos, or relying on a mad king’s whims, does not help businesses when they are planning on their futures. It may increase the President’s power, but it won’t help the rest of us, and when it comes to the health of the economy, the rest of us actually matter.
Deciding to ditch your European allies, cause our largest trading partners in this hemisphere to start looking elsewhere, piss off China, and make your best friend another aging superpower with a corrupt and weak economy, is the craziest geopolitical strategy imaginable. We are goading the rest of the world into trying to figure out how to manage without us. I’m sure it may involve some hardship for them to figure it out, but in the end, this will hurt us a lot more than them.
Baud
Tesla is down more than the market, so I’m happy.
sentient ai from the future
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: rural Georgia. It’s already done. Happens to be next door to the site of what was going to be an additional plant making fire retardants for ev batteries, but the priorities of this admin scuttled that.
YY_Sima Qian
Well, how often do you get to see history in motion happen at visible speed? Decades happening in weeks, then days, soon to be hours?
It was sometimes suggested that since Xi could not match Trump dollar for dollar on tariffs, the PRC government will instead target the massive profits that a lot of US MNCs still make leveraging the PRC (whether selling to the market or using it as a manufacturing platform, or both). However, these latest tariffs will proactively crater the profit margins of US MNCs. So I guess Xi will sit back, “do nothing, win”…
Betty Cracker
@Princess: Got it, thanks for elaborating.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Hooray!
lowtechcyclist
@Belafon:
And they’d just drool over anyone they could at least pretend was a ‘reasonable Republican’.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@sentient ai from the future:
Do you have any links to reports on that?
We’ve been trying to determine what from Biden’s two bills that went into domestic manufacturing of things EV-related might have been canceled, or funding put on hold, etc.
It’s been tough finding out details on that and things like infrastructure projects, good and bad.
JMG
I disagree completely with Murphy’s theory. Trump just isn’t capable of creating or even understanding such a strategy. Remember the hurricane and the Sharpie? That’s his speed. It is a fact he campaigned on tariffs and has supported them since the ’80s, when he was a lot more together than he is now. He thinks this is good policy, because he was stupid to begin with and is now failing mentally. I don’t think the billionaire class that supported him would sign off on a policy that starts off by costing them large sums of money.
Belafon
@JMG: My evidence that the idea has some merit is the law firms that caved. We’ll know for sure when we start hearing about exemptions for certain products.
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I know the part that was going to help build the charging stations around the country has been canceled. That was one of the “Why is Musk helping Trump?” things because it would hurt Tesla.
catclub
Tell the North Koreans, 80 years later, relief is coming …. any day now.
Betty Cracker
Bitcoin and crypto stocks are also getting hammered. Boo-fucking-hoo.
YY_Sima Qian
Instead of looking to the drivel produced by the sycophantic imbeciles of CNBC, Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Galloway at Bloomberg are worth a follow (see Wiesenthal’s initial thoughts on the tariffs through the link):
SW
Democrats need to hang this and the consequences on the Republican Congress. Tariffs taxes and spending are powers of Congress. They can’t escape responsibility. The President doesn’t have the power to control these things unless Congress gives it to him. They are responsible so it all comes down to 2026. If they don’t like the outcome the electorate will punish the party in power in the midterms.
Eural Joiner
@Melancholy Jaques: 100000% on target – sadly took me decades of “good faith” discussions and debates to figure that out. Uuuugh. Such wasted time.
AM in NC
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yesterday I was listening to Preet Bharara’s last 2 podcasts from earlier this week/late last week, and at that time, he was still excited that the Signal NatSec clusterfuck story had legs, but by the time I was listening yesterday the story was just gone.
It is THE issue with Trump and always has been. NOTHING gets purchase because he is constantly doing mind-fuckingly illegal/immoral/dangerous things that need to be covered, but then somehow never seem really bad because they are never covered for long enough to seem really bad (like say Hillary’s email server practices).
Maybe destroying the stock market, economic growth, the US Civil Service, social insurance programs, and essentially full employment will be enough of a “story” to get legs with “average” Americans.
Fair Economist
@Sanjeevs: Europe will be much less affected by Trump’s tariffs than we will. As similar economies with an ocean in between, the US and Europe trade much less than either with China, and much of it is easily replaced (brandy rather than whisky, Airbus rather than Boeing, etc ).
David Collier-Brown
@Soprano2:
“I said it, therefor it must be true. QED!”
(I have a friend who talks that way. Fortunately they don’t control much)
tobie
My experience of the economy under Biden is likely different than others. I got my first significant raise during his tenure. I was also working abroad for 6 months….left Jan 2023 and didn’t return to July 2023. Between when I left and returned my grocery bill went down over 30%. I don’t rent so I don’t know what happened in the housing market but my food and gas bills did fall rather significantly. I wouldn’t have noticed that if I hadn’t been away for half a year. I’m tired of the caveats surrounding economic performance during his tenure. Inflation down, continuous robust job growth, increases in real wages, a 400% increase in factory construction are not things to sneeze at.
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I thought Canadian Auto Workers are typically UAW. Not sure about Mexican ones.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Belafon:
The Dem members of the Senate Committee involved in this sent Hair Furor a Sternly Worded Letter:
https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2025/2/trump-illegally-pulling-ev-infrastructure-money-means-more-pollution-higher-fuel-costs-epw-democrats-demand-answers-funding-reinstatement
I’m actually not being snarky or critical of the “sternly worded letter” crack because, well, that’s about all the minority can do.
What’s scary and sad is that the (R) in control are letting the Executive, once again, usurp part of the Senate’s Constitutional power.
Another good read on this:
https://pluginamerica.org/whats-going-on-with-nevi/
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
piratedan
I just want to say something that gets lost in the weeds here, the issue has zero to do with DJT’s mental accumen, to say it’s “stupid” misses the point. Someone(s) WANT this, DJT is just a stalking horse to take the US off of the global stage as a player and reset the “game board” economically and via soft power. He’s being directed, led to do these things, someone has a game plan and DJT is their tool to make this happen. The fact that he’s an idiot and doesn’t understand just truly how disposable he is doesn’t figure into it when his actions are given the rule of law by both the GOP controlled houses and a SCOTUS.
catclub
@sentient ai from the future: This. The corruption is in plain sight.
brantl
If this is done by only a few Rethugs, then they are getting primaried. This would need to be “We are Sparticus!”, so many of them that they can’t primary them all, all of them telling the same story: “Stumpy’s going to break the economy!” or they’re all going to get trash-canned, which means that they won’t do it. Full Stop
Eolirin
@piratedan: Russia won. At least against the US. TBD whether Europe gets its shit together and wins on that front.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@AM in NC:
Heh heh, your description reminds me of the classic Monty Python bits about the Spanish Inquisition and of course What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?
What will it take to toss Trump into the dustbin of history?
Oh, destroying the stock market. No, wait, that and
Providing war plans to our enemies. No…
Abandoning our allies of 75+ years. Oh, then there’s
Politicizing the entire Executive Branch and US Civil Service…Um…
Wait, I’ll come in again.
catclub
@Soprano2:
I would be looking at European companies. European defense companies.
catclub
How complicated is “They will pay me bribes to selectively lift tariffs on their products?”
tobie
@piratedan: I appreciate the insight. I’ve been wondering who is pulling the strings. Trump is the marionette; his value is that he appeals to the white working class with his grievances, his crudeness, and his cruelty. I suspect Russ Vought is a major playing in crafting these policies.
Suzanne
I keep thinking of that stupid T-shirt that reads FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK. It is #onpoint today.
brantl
@bbleh:
As long as he’s making money on it, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about his reputation..
No One of Consequence
@piratedan: Not lost, and a key, KEY thing to keep in mind. Not a lawyer, but an outraged citizen who wants ADJUDICATION IN FULL. Let the decisions fall where they may, BUT I WANT A FUCKING EVIDENTIARY RECORD GODDAMNIT! Accounting in full for the associated conspiracy members. We didn’t get that for Jan 6, and I still want it. Lots of capos and lieutenants didn’t get their justice yet.
Truth and Reconciliation For the Historical Win.
-NOoC
David Collier-Brown
@dmsilev: In his first term, Mr Trump attracted enough cash-providing supporters to be able to credibly threaten every Republican with being “primaried” unless they quietly kissed the ring. Eg, Liz Cheney.
Arguably, that’s the dominant reason why he’s getting support from Republican lawmakers. Have a look at the Former vs Current lawmakers in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_2024_presidential_campaign
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@catclub:
Not according to Kay. Her son works in a Stallantis plant (UAW) and says that the Canadian union split from the UAW decades ago. The Canadian union merged with another 12 years ago and is now called Unifor.
I’ve been posting the UAW’s statement on tariffs and Unifor’s take on the UAW’s take is, not surprisingly, critical:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/uaw-trump-tariffs-canada-unifor-why-1.7483459
Basically, they call the UAW’s position “naive”. It’s akin to my statement that their position is based entirely on premises akin to unicorns farting rainbows. Tomato/Tohmahto.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: I think Biden handled a super-challenging situation about as well as anyone could have, and he deserves tons of credit for that. But the fact is, lots of people lost ground during Biden’s term. Wages rose, but prices rose higher. The U.S. did better than the rest of the industrialized world, but it’s not surprising that Americans whose paychecks weren’t going as far as they used to didn’t give a shit about that. I mean, it’s no excuse for voting in an addled fascist! I’m not defending their response. But it wasn’t great for a lot of people, and they were pissed. That’s real.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I wish I had thought of that. Look at RNMBY. (Perun pointed this out a couple of weeks ago). Too late now I think.
YY_Sima Qian
@JMG: The Trump Administration is not just Trump himself. There are a number of cynical techno-authoritarians in Trump 47’s circle that want to burn the country & the world down, & realize their vision of a techno-dystopian feudalist future, hence the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution parallels. At the same time, Trump (& people like Navarro) has long believe that every one of the US’ bilateral trading relationships should be in balance, & in their minds tariff is indeed the “one weird trick” to get there. That is indeed unhinged, hence the Great Leap Forward parallels.
The US current account will indeed balance, if the tariffs persist, because imports will crater as overall US demand craters. Why would foreign corporations want to invest in manufacturing in the US if the market is much diminished, & the regulatory environment completely unpredictable. The other side of the coin is that, the US capital account will also balance, as few foreigners will want or need to recycle the USDs earned from their trade surpluses w/ the US by purchasing USD denominated assets (especially treasury notes). w/ a collapsing economy (& thus collapsing tax revenue, tariffs notwithstanding) & difficulty finding buyers for new US debt, the US might just default. It certainly spells the end of the USD hegemony.
In any case, the US is incapable of standing up the required industrial capacity to service the domestic demand, due to the lack of sufficient human capital, & the tariffs will make the inputs into any US based manufacturing & the capital goods that build US industrial capacity prohibitively expensive. An autarkic US becomes more like North Korean, hence the jokes about Juche.
Now, the techno-authoritarian feudalists around Trump, knowing what is coming, can still profit handsomely from the disaster by shorting US stocks, & shifting much of their wealth offshore, while scooping up the valuables from the wreckage for pennies on the dollar.
brendancalling
My mood is black, and so are my wishes for GOP senators.
I just don’t think it’s a good idea to fuck indiscriminately with people’s money—especially when a substantial portion of those people are permanently aggrieved and well-armed. If they’ll hang Mike Pence, they’ll gladly hang anyone.
David Collier-Brown
@Doug R: “Here’s an offer you can’t refuse. Praise the tariffs or I bring down your employers”
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Information! Thanks!
rebelsdad
He has a narcissistic wound from losing in 2020 and is punishing the US for it.
I call it the Trumperdammerung.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Well, Bill “Always Wrong” Kristol is back in the fold:
https://x.com/samhaselby/status/1907515713046327628
The asshole said this:
and was rebutted with this:
Anyway
Yep. They’ve mounted a furious comprehensive assault on decades of slow but steady progress towards a wide array of worthy goals involving health, wealth and liberty of the American people. And it’s only day 70 or whatever …
Mr. Bemused Senior
Agreed. I thought by now the “investors” in $TRUMP coins would be pretty upset.
different-church-lady
Goddamn we have a stupid electorate.
YY_Sima Qian
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: US unions in traditional manufacturing sectors have long support protectionism & economic nationalism, which in their minds offer solutions to the long decline of traditional industries in the US. The service sector unions not so much.
As much as I support strong unions in general to counterbalance the capital owners, US unions in traditional manufacturing sectors have been decidedly mixed in terms of advocating for policies that arrest vs. promote the slide toward nativist & reactionary authoritarianism. They could have made common cause w/ global manufacturing labor to fight against the globally dominant capital, as opposed to viewing them as enemies in a zero sum world fighting over a shrinking pie.
AM in NC
@SW: EVERY comment I make online at any news site about this focuses on REPUBLICANS, not just Trump. We cannot let this be just a Trump issue – NONE of this cruelty/destruction/idiocy is limited to Trump. It’s REPUBLICANS who nurtured this and fed this and raised this evil and set it loose upon us. It’s REPUBLICANS who have the ability to stop him now.
That Sen Tillis isn’t stopping it, means Sen. Tillis supports it all. And everyone in NC should understand the current and coming horrors in that framework.
ExPatExDem
If you start from the premise that Trump is a Russian asset, all of this makes sense.
De-dollarization of the world economy is one of Putin’s greatest goals. What better way to hasten the dollar’s demise than have comrade Krasnov take a wrecking ball to the global economy?
David Collier-Brown
@catclub: CAW broke off from the UAW years ago, so they don’t have much effect on UAW policies
frosty
@SW: I just called my R Rep and told him this – tariffs are not an executive authority and that he has to work with the House to take it back, like the Senate voted to do.
Pie in the sky but I need to do something. I also told him to vote against the SAVE Act.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: This kind of assumes a lack of uprising that leads to a policy reversal. I’m not sure we should assume that.
That is a kind of worst case outcome where these policies persist for the long term. Which isn’t impossible, but other people will get a say here.
Belafon
It’s buying time. The DOW was down as much as 1540, now it’s at 1374.
oldgold
Hard to laugh about this catastrophe, but …
Ariel Edwards-Levy :
“We could discuss the trade policy of the 1930s but that would be a Smoot point.”
frosty
@catclub: European defense companies? I asked about investing in EU stocks and according to our financial advisors, it’s already too late. German defense stocks have boomed as investors bought into them. We’d be buying high if we did it right now.
David Collier-Brown
@brendancalling: I confess I’m surprised more of his people haven’t tried to assassinate him. If the pay falls and the prices rise, this could change. S-vests, anyone?
AM in NC
@brendancalling: Yep. I just hope THEY feel the heat from OUR side. Republicans have been scared of rightwing billionaires deploying money against them and rightwing MAGA freaks shooting them for being insufficiently MAGA.
They need to be more scared of average Americans coming after them for destroying the possibility of retirement.
I hate to say it, because a world like this is horrible, but I was hopeful that the Luigi moment would have given these assholes pause. It seems only to have accelerated them.
Doug R
@Barbara: TBF, the UAW has unpinned that statement praising tariffs after all the backlash.
bbleh
@Betty Cracker: Wages rose, but prices rose higher. Certainly that’s a widespread perception, but I’m not sure it’s actually the case. Data I saw showed that income rose in real terms (after accounting for price inflation) in ALL quintiles, and in percentage terms rose the most in the lowest quintile.
Doug R
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Their bluesky post:
““We applaud the Trump administration for stepping up to end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades. Ending the race to the bottom in the auto industry starts with fixing our broken trade deals.” -UAW President Fain”
https://bsky.app/profile/uaw.org/post/3llcvtw5lak25
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: Evidence of how unhinged MAGA trade policy is, on any terms (in this case, semiconductors & AI):
bbleh
@Belafon: if you’re a trader who buys and sells daily, perhaps. But imo non-professional individuals are foolish to try to play that game. And if you’re playing the long game (I am), then it’s not at all clear we’ve reached bottom yet. Pretty much everybody is talking now about a recession lasting well into next year, and if that’s the case, I think stocks have considerably further to fall.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I heard about this from Planet Money. https://www.hamiltonproject.org/data/tracking-federal-expenditures-in-real-time/
It tracks government spending. It might help you figure out stuff like that.
Ksmiami
@AM in NC: we are all going to have to go French Revolution on these maniacs. Seriously.
Ksmiami
@bbleh: 20 percent
YY_Sima Qian
Not sure the folks in Zhongnanhai are quite so sanguine, but it is surely part of the thinking. For Putin, absolutely:
ExPatExDem
@Doug R: The perennially low quality, uncompetitive US legacy automakers love tariffs. No surprise there.
sentient ai from the future
@Princess: what does “sincere” even mean in the context of world-beating stupidity?
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: That’s why I wrote “if the tariffs persist”.
Eolirin
@bbleh: Yeah, but people don’t really take their wages into account when it comes to cost increases. The economy is all vibes too, and it’s not like most people are fastidiously budgeting.
Also the expiration of some COVID relief measures, things like the child tax credit expansion and increases to snap (Thanks Manchin) caused a relative decline in incomes over Biden’s term. That matters more than that there was an overall increase from prepandemic numbers for that same group.
Baud
@Eolirin:
That’ll teach us to push for temporary relief.
Mr. Bemused Senior
In my opinion this is just a harbinger, not the big crash. I believe the big crash is coming, but who knows?
[ETA my record on prediction is not something to rely on 😁]
frosty
@Ksmiami: I’m done with you, you murderous wretch. Pie time.
Steve LaBonne
@tobie: It’s hard to guess where Vought stands on the tariff madness. The Project 2025 crew is split between the likes of Navarro on the one hand and gung-ho free traders on the other.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
YY_Sima Qian
A lot of global capital is actually pretty dumb, they just had information asymmetry advantage over the little guys, until they are now at an information asymmetry disadvantage relative the techno-authoritarian feudalists around Trump 47:
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: where is the link or just 🎶?? Lazy bum. If only TBone were here.
sentient ai from the future
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I only know because I was interested in the stock, ASPN, enough to be familiar with their expansion plans and look up Landsat nd street view images of their newer site after that hurricane ripped through nc/ga. While looking at images I saw “oh what’s this” and looked up the company, it’s associated with hyundai. Since I think they announced the plant would be in that town, I put 2+2 together
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
People believe what they want to believe.
Melancholy Jaques
@Betty Cracker:
That may be so, but blaming the president for prices he has no control over is just plain stupid. We’ve been seeing this with gasoline since the 70s. When are people going to realize that in a market economy – which they love or at least claim to love – the president doesn’t set prices.
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: Mao spoke those words when he was leading a revolutionary insurgent movement, & he saw himself as reprising the revolutionary insurgent role against the CPC nomenklatura when he instigated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, so it all tracks.
Steve LaBonne
@ExPatExDem: There is no US auto industry. There is, or was, a tightly integrated US-Mexico-Canada auto industry. Good luck finding a car with anything within a country mile of 100% US content. You’ll find a unicorn first. Shawn Fain fantasizes that this integration can be reversed in some reasonable period of time, which is as dumb as anything Donnie has come up with.
RandomMonster
I just watched my company’s stock drop 14% in just a few hours.
Mr. Bemused Senior
And your point is? /s
Eolirin
@Baud: It was probably the only way to avoid a Republican filibuster. We could have let the economy collapse and refused to help when a Republican was in office, like they would have if the situation was reversed, but the economy still wouldn’t have fully recovered, and there’d be at least a million more dead people.
Governance, when the opposition party is reactionary fascists, becomes a series of impossible decisions. If the mid terms had gone very slightly better maybe we would have been able to navigate to a solution.
But we really needed to have a larger senate majority going into 2021. And the voters didn’t give it to us.
YY_Sima Qian
Perhaps we are witnessing the end of USD hegemony (really is decades in hours):
The RMB Yuan strengthened against the USD slightly, but not nearly as much as most other currencies. This will add to the PRC’s immense advantage in manufacturing. Of course, even w/ the US jumping the shark, the PRC’s trading partners will not just absorb the PRC exports diverted from the US, nor are they capable of doing so. If Beijing wants to consolidate a Sino-centric world economic order, it will have to allow the Yuan to strengthen vis-a-vis other currencies, & allow Chinese consumption to absorb exports from ROW ex-US, or at least absorb more of the PRC’s extraordinary manufacturing output, & export les.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: Even if we course correct soon enough to avoid the worst of this, the dollar is probably done as the global reserve currency. We aren’t going to get that back, so this is a very permanent loss.
gvg
@Belafon: I think they can have both. What I see happening is the big American companies like Ford and GM relocating to Europe. They already have world wide subsidaries, they could probably just realocate. Trump might sieze assets here but he doesn’t know how to run them, and Elon doesn’t either (refuses to learn). Some of them might even make offers to lots of employees, though I don’t know the other countries rules.
I think a few announcements like that might pierce a few bubbles.
glory b
@Betty Cracker: Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”
YY_Sima Qian
MAGA imperiousness & capriciousness will not achieve the outcome that Trump wants:
Soprano2
@YY_Sima Qian: People often vote due to reasons other than their financial interest. Every union person in manufacturing and construction should have voted for Harris based on what the Biden administration and Congress under him did for their industries, but I’d bet the majority voted for FFOTUS because they thought his tariffs would help them even more, or for reasons that have nothing to do with economics.
glory b
@YY_Sima Qian: What do you think the chances are of that happening?
ExPatExDem
@Eolirin: I would guess that for most in the comments here, there has never been a time in their life when the U.S. wasn’t the world’s preeminent economic power.
We’re watching the global economic order of the last 80 years being undone in real time. Who would have thought that the US superpower would be killed from within by a cheesy reality TV personality? Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Scott P.
This is not correct. The British government got itself deep in debt after the Seven Year’s War and was looking to find ways to raise revenue to offset that. They had promised the Colonies to provide the financial backing for the North American theater of that war in exchange for the Colonies providing soldiers. Unfortunately, the British government reneged on that promise. Further, there was a global recession in the 1760s that didn’t help matters.
The only political elements that came into play was Parliament’s desire to demonstrate its authority to collect taxes in the Colonies, but they tried to do that via (what they perceived as) de minimis taxation.
Spanky
Caveat: I was having a nice time in the woods all morning and I just got in and haven’t read the comments. But my take on the why of all this happening is starkly simple: Putin has ordered Trump to do this and Trump knows better than to disobey him. It may be that Putin didn’t specifically call out tariffs, but I bet Project 2025 did, and it’s more than coincidence that there’s alignment between Putin and Project 2025.
Buckle up, folks.
Geminid
There was a lot of joking about penguins last night, on account of the islands included in Trump’s tariffs that are inhabited only by penguins.
So the there’s this Israeli lady, Iris Boker who I follow for her acerbic takes on Israeli politics. She reposted a really funny meme about the tariffs from French journalist journalist Raphael Grably (@GrablyR).
It’s a photoshopped version of the Oval office scene where Trump and Vance are waving their hands as they scold President Zelensky. But instead of Zelensky there’s a penguin standing on the chair and staring back at them. The caption: “Desole.”
catclub
CNN:
Someone needs to ask Trump what the tariff is on the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
glory b
@bbleh: Right, and the highest wages went to the youngest and lowest income Americans.
JML
@AM in NC: absolutely right. We need every single republican anywhere, everywhere taking heat on this because this is their effing party. no more letting people off the hook because they were “concerned”. no blaming the Current Occupant and pretending it’s not your fault. Every elected Republican signed up for exactly this, and they need to own it.
And yet, I’m still certain that there are more on the left who would rather blame Democrats for “not doing enough” than to blame the real culprits: republicans!!! All of them!!!
Ksmiami
@YY_Sima Qian: I see the US as collapsing and then becoming several smaller nations. There will be no recovery in my lifetime
jonas
@JMG: I think two things can be true at once: Trump actually thinks across-the-board tariffs on any country that runs a trade surplus with us (and some that don’t!) is sound economic policy (because he’s a goddamn moron) and also that he’s happy to use it as a cudgel to force world and corporate leaders to grovel and offer their obeisance if they want the tariffs mitigated (because he’s a narcissistic mob boss at heart).
In his mind economics = being treated “fairly”, and “being treated fairly” = kissing up to me and making me feel like a big man.
Harrison Wesley
“National Seppuku Day (April 2nd) was originally called Liberation Day when it was first celebrated in 2025….”
YY_Sima Qian
@glory b: Which one? The end of USD hegemony or the PRC appreciating the Yuan to consolidate a Sino-centric economic order?
I am not going to hazard a guess on either. There is no predicting the future, given the current tumult. The only thing we can do as bit players is to keep as many options open as possible, & do not prematurely foreclose any.
Eolirin
@Ksmiami: Oh dear God, that would imply a break up of our nuclear arsenal; “We’ll try to stay serene and calm // When Alabama gets the bomb”
catclub
@bbleh:
yep, but what are facts compared with feels?
YY_Sima Qian
For once, CPC propaganda is opportunistic, rather than cringeworthy & tone deaf (propaganda video through the link):
Utterly cynical, but doesn’t take much to clear the bar that Trump has set & come off well in comparison.
Bostondreams
@Scott P.: right. if I recall right, the Tea Act actually lowered thee cost of tea to cheaper than that smuggled in.
Jay
@RaflW:
There are layoffs already at the F-16 plant, whocoodanood that stopping upgrades to the sensor packages and self defense features for political leverage, on the EU supplied F-16’s in Ukraine would have people nopeing out of the Light Fighter for other options.
Spanky
By the way, the Dow hasn’t been this low since, (checks notes) March 13, and it’s bounced a bit since this morning.
Things could be worse, and they may not get there right away.
Trump may need a bigger hammer.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker:
This isn’t true. There was a spike in real wages due to the pandemic throwing low-wage service workers out of a job, but with that excluded, real wages climbed under Biden.
.
Belafon
@YY_Sima Qian: So, destroy the thing Biden’s infrastructure bills were trying to do, which were structured because it will take time to build a chip plant or any other kind of manufacturing plant here.
oldgold
It seems Congress may be waking up to the dangers posed by granting the Tangerine Terror of Tariffs unlimited power concerning tariffs. It is not enough, but it is a start. The word is that Senator Corn Pone is very exercised about Canadian potash being subject to a tariff.
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: I’ve said it before, but 2024’s economic story was really two fold; people don’t like higher prices regardless of wage increases, and, honestly, often don’t seem to evaluate their wages when it comes to economic issues, just common everyday prices that they see all the time, but also things were stable enough that they could afford not to care about politics, and especially economic policy.
That’s a really bad combination for Democratic candidates.
Steve LaBonne
@Fair Economist: Biden’s policies actually made a small but meaningful dent in inequality for the first time in a long time. It’s disheartening that so few even on our side realize this.
Juju
@Hoodie: I’ll join a class action suit with the jackalteriate if need be.
oldgold
It looks like Senator Corn Pone has had enough of The Tangerine Terror of Tariffs mucking up the farm economy (potash).
Belafon
@oldgold: Let’s see if he can get the supermajorities he will need to override the veto.
Steve LaBonne
@Spanky: Remember, the tariffs don’t actually happen for a few more days, and the retaliation hasn’t happened yet either. There are still investors clinging to the hope of a backdown. When it becomes apparent that no such thing will happen… I don’t think I want to finish that sentence.
Deputinize America
@Fair Economist:
For a lot of lower than average wage-earners, COVID supplements provided the ability to take care of legal issues, vehicle repairs debt and deferred home maintenance nightmares that they’d struggled with for years.
Geminid
@Melancholy Jaques: It was the Federal Reserve that screwed up the economy 2021-2022, by keeping rates too low as inflation gathered steam. Then they slammed on the brakes, and Biden was hit with a double whammy: high interest rates and high inflation at the same time.
The legislation passed by the Democratic Congress during Biden’s first two years set the stage for economic growth that would have pushed wages above inflation for the rest of this decade, in my opinion.
But the Infrastructure, CHIPS and IRA bills did not deliver short term, and the Fed’s failure meant Democrats could not benefit politically from a very sound economic program.
Deputinize America
@oldgold: Even if Johnson allows a House version to happen, Trump will veto. Think there are enough GOPers with the nads to override?
Eolirin
@oldgold: That’s good. We may need a discharge petition in the house if this can get through the senate, but these kinds of moves are a signal that there’s some small chance that Congressional republicans and their donors aren’t this suicidal and will break with Trump over this.
And once they break on one thing, it’ll be easier to break on the next. They still won’t ever do the right thing as far as acting in the best interests of the broader american public, but they just might do enough to save the country from complete destruction.
Another Scott
@Spanky: +1
The S&P 500 is still up 4.7% from 12 months ago.
How ’bout dem Cubbies??
Best wishes,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Deputinize America: If it passes in the senate, probably wouldn’t take much to get the numbers in the senate; this will be subject to a filibuster, so they need 60 just to pass it. Getting 6 more might not be impossible.
The house is a bigger question. We need 75 members to break ranks, I think. But if it’s got enough to override, it’ll have enough for a discharge petition
Basically, now we see how much Congressional Republicans start to panic.
Professor Bigfoot
@Scott P.: So we’re going to completely ignore the psychological effects of “Stewart v Somerset 1790” on the colonists, or that the leaders of the revolution were both wealthy slave owners?
tam1MI
I agree. I also did well in the Biden Boom. But apparently people like you and me either don’t count or are the enemy who must be Taught A Lesson.
scav
@Spanky: But then again, the media and the audience have the long-term memory of a midge and are attracted by cheap flash. It’ll likely catch their attention for at least a hot minute.
windpondalaska
@Betty Cracker: Agreed. All trump has to do is sign an EO that’s been prepared over a year ago by P25 and then read to him. He’s not interested in consequences or outcomes.
Ksmiami
@Eolirin: the smart people who maintain the nukes won’t last long in Jesus land. Most likely, they end up blowing up in Tuscaloosa
Emily B.
@ExPatExDem: It seems more and more evident to me that the success of the US economy (over the long haul) has been its own undoing. Same with vaccines and public health, same with the post-WWII global order, same with our civil rights. Americans—not all, but a lot—have taken all these good things for granted. Too many people have forgotten how much hard work went into to achieving all those decades of peace and prosperity.
Like a bunch of trust-fund kids who think it’s fun to wreck their parents’ car….
ArchTeryx
@Betty Cracker: Between you and my Florida friend Melissa/Likeshine posting crane stuff, that’s one of the only cheerful things left in my life.
Steve LaBonne
@Emily B.: @Emily B.: They have never understood or respected the hard work because it was done by the kind of eggheads that Real Americans have always despised.
sentient ai from the future
@Steve LaBonne: as a beneficiary of said dent, I can attest to this. NANCY SMASH helped immeasurably with the $300 topper for unemployment during covid
SW
Most of what Americans believe about history is utter bullshit.
Jay
900 Stellantis workers to be laid off in the US as they shutter some lines.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: Highest labor force participation among Black workers since they started breaking out the comparison. In fact, was higher than for white workers for several quarters.
Bupalos
@Spanky: I think the “Putin is actually in charge” conspiracy theory is mostly a way of dealing with the ugly reality that this is just a perfectly normal thing for the United States to do to itself at this point. Donald Trump is as American as apple pie, inequality, sacrifice zones, and terrible schools.
Betty Cracker
@Fair Economist: I’m dumb as a rock about economics, so I’m hardly in a position to debate a commenter named “Fair Economist!” But I’ve read multiple analysts claiming that inflation outstripped wage gains during Biden’s term. Here are three examples:
I notice the numbers are different, though in the general ballpark. Maybe they’re all lying right-wing hacks. I honestly don’t know.
Professor Bigfoot
@prostratedragon: Yet another reason for conservatives to hate Biden… I suspect one of the biggest.
Eolirin
@prostratedragon: This probably hurt us
PJ
@Bupalos:
I disagree. For all the bigotries and idiocies of the Republican Party over the last 50 years, they have understood that our system of alliances, foreign aid, free trade, etc. was critical to their own wealth and security because it was also often beneficial to the rest of the world as well. Trump has thrown all that in the dumpster, and though Musk and the crypto boys may think otherwise, the biggest beneficiary is Putin.
glory b
@Betty Cracker: Even if those are accurate, I doubt most Americans noticed a 2% or less difference.
WTFGhost
@Bupalos: I don’t think Putin is in charge, but I can hear his words when Trump says “Canada only really makes sense as a state” and “you – er, I mean, “we” – need Greenland for our security.”
The problem is, Trump is dumb as a post. Everyone knows this, but, Republicans wont say it, for fear of violence, and the news media won’t say it, for fear of losing access and offending their MAGA readers.
He’s not doing tariffs because anyone told him to. He thought they were going to magically fix international trade during his first term too. He was stone cold stupid then, he’s stone cold stupid now.
Even if he had the right idea, which he doesn’t, he’s doing tariffs the wrong way to achieve his idea. One problem is, of course, everyone tells him he can’t and shouldn’t to tariffs, and he’s not the kind of man who will decide differently, even when the law, the facts, and all the good money, was on the other side.
He is, in short, the perfect American Imbecile.
Steve LaBonne
@WTFGhost: Mencken should be alive to see the fulfillment of his prophecy about a downright moron in the White House.
Steve LaBonne
@Betty Cracker: It was the lowest paid workers who saw gains in real terms. Which did little to endear Biden to the white middle class.
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker:
It’s called “lying with statistics.” A liar shows you a statistic, and tells you it was higher during Trump, than under Biden. You aren’t sure you agree, but, the numbers pulled out show the calculations are correct.
So what’s the problem? Well, the statistic might not say what it seems to say.
You might say “a statistic says there was no income growth under Biden;” FE is saying “that’s because someone chose the wrong way of reporting the income growth; it sounds legit, but, if you’re interested in the truth, you need to dig in more deeply.”
It doesn’t mean anyone else was wrong in reporting inflation or wage growth. For example, Republican blame Obama for ISIS. Why? Well, he was President in 2014, when US withdrawal from Iraq caused the formation of ISIS.
Those are all true statements, but they kind of ignore how something big was done by Republicans prior to 2014, you see? Something Obama didn’t have any control of.
Same sort of lie, different kinda liar.
gvg
@tam1MI: I did the same ans I talked to a large number of people in the poorer worker class who lost ground a lot. Many of them black. Rents went way up and home ownership dreams went away. They did not know all the ins and outs of political horsetrading about why certain things happened. Wages going up was VERY uneven but prices hit everyone, so numbers wise the bad outweighed the good news. In the long run it could have been different, but it wasn’t.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: Overall, yes. But for lower income workers, they did see their wages rise faster than inflation, so they were able to buy more. As you got higher up the income ladder, that flipped, and so people who had some extra money at the end of a paycheck – not “I can retire” money, but more than those below them – so that shrink. And most of them couldn’t care less that the lower income people were doing better.
gvg
@Steve LaBonne: No, it was really done by real Americans like the founding fathers and generations of hard workers since then. The people they claim to revere but that they won’t even read about and refuse to understand. There were a few eggheads too, but not that many.
Jay
St. Pierre and Miquelon got hit with a 99% tariff.
Pourquoi?
Because they ship about $100K of seafood a year to the US, and buy nothing from the US.
Any US products they buy, they buy from Newfoundland, a few hours by boat away, everything else is shipped from French resellers.
It’s the DJTdiot Razor, there is no 24 dimension chess, he’s just an idiot.
There is no “secret Cabal” behind the throne, puppet mastering the moron, just a like collection of idiots with their own grievances.
While there are believable rumours about Agent Krasnov, there is also the fact that like 40% of Rethugs and MAGgot’s, he consumes ruZZian propaganda like Edolph consumes ketamine.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@PJ:
Yup. It’s an example of how both parties bought into and promoted what you just described, well, not the bigotries and indiocies on our side, but back in my intel officer days, from certain alliance/foreign aid policies, you didn’t see from the inside much change in administrations.
The GOP ain’t the party of that anymore. Nosirreeebob.
NotMax
@Jay
Prohibition begat rumrunners.
Tariffs will beget lobsterrunners.
//
Jay
@NotMax:
Global warming has already beget “lobsterrunners”, they are running north as fast as they can. 68 km/year.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/lobsters-moving-north-to-canadian-waters-1.7471981
cain
@Eolirin:
Well then, let’s see how they react to global tariffs and even higher prices and still no cheap eggs.
TooTallTom
My company imports 90% of our products from Europe & China, where most of the products are not available in USA.
We are so screwed.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Data scientist here. My first observation, and also the way I would choose to lie about it if I were so inclined, is ‘earnings’.
You have ‘earnings’, then ‘nominal average hourly earnings’, then ‘average hourly earnings’. You can probably assume the first one is different from the others (earnings should include salaried, not hourly, and may even include investment income), and the last two are either similar or identical. There’s so many different way to count earnings that you can pick the number that gives the result you want and work backward.
Also, ‘under Biden’. Is that election to election, inauguration to inauguration, first full quarter after inauguration to last full quarter, etc. Again, you can pick your number and work backwards.
Also, what form of inflation. CPI, CPI-U, core, etc. Again, pick your number and work backwards.
This is why government data used to be pretty reliable – they would lay out the various metrics and keep them consistent over long periods of time. You could do reliable apples to apples comparisons. Reporting of that data by media outlets was almost always cherry-picked in various ways. In my work, if we were changing a metric, I would insist on reporting it the old way alongside the new way and having an analysis of the difference, and maintain that over usually 3 years. That’s pretty rare outside of government though.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/thomaswright08/status/1907772145809154497#m
See, it’s Morons all the way down.
Belafon
@Jay: Yeah, I can’t wait for when we run into a rare earth metal issue trying to produce our own chips.
Belafon
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/3/2314283/-People-are-already-losing-their-jobs-because-of-Trump-s-tariffs?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web
NaijaGal
@Belafon:
Tiffany’s father-in-law is on the case, visiting conflict-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, which has tons of rare earth minerals used for EVs, modern electronics, etc.
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: Those dirty foreigners have been ripping us off, sending us useless junk like cars and smartphones in exchange for precious bits in a computer network.
Geminid
An Ool Price headline:
The reportet estimated that OPEC’s announced production increase accounted for the lesser part of the price drop.
Last October Oil Price intetviewed several economists on the potential impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs. They agreed that these tariffs and a resulting trade war would likely push the world economy into recession, and maybe a deep one
Ed. Amazon stock dropped almost 9% today. Investors know what coming.
Jay
@Belafon:
tinybox, a small US Maker of AI interfaces for Industry, ran the numbers.
They are a high cost/low margin MFGR, but affordable (because AI isn’t there yet).
Tariffs will have them shut down their manufacturing in the US, move everything to Hong Kong, where they can get cheaper Chinese chips, and port their software over to that platform.
They are abandoning the US Markets, for China, East Asia and the EU.
Jay
@NaijaGal:
All already locked up by Chinese companies and Putin’s “Afrika Korps”, formerly known as Wagner.
NaijaGal
@Betty Cracker: The interesting thing will be the excuses they make to not care about losing ground economically, etc., during Trump’s term.
Steve LaBonne
@NaijaGal: It’s not worth even thinking about the cult members. But they are not enough to elect Republicans on their own.
David Collier-Brown
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I suspect Mr Trump will get a ton of US companies who use foreign materials lining up to kiss the ring, make a “donation” to something and get relief from that particular tariff.
I speculate he thinks this will happen so very quickly that he can roll back the tariffs before he causes the US a depression.
Steve LaBonne
@David Collier-Brown: He will certainly solicit bribes in return for specific exceptions but tariffs and autarky have been on his feeble brain for decades and he’s not going to give them up. The masters of the universe are going to have to put heavy pressure on their Republican congresscritters to take his toys away.
David Collier-Brown
@Ksmiami: I’ll bet actual money that Canada would accept the whole North-East.
Jay
@Geminid:
That whole “Drill, Baby, Drill” thing is not going well.
David Collier-Brown
@Fair Economist: As you said, the following is false: “lots of people lost ground during Biden’s term. Wages rose, but prices rose higher”
The problem is that only people who changed jobs, were newly hired, or had an amazing employer got a raise. Everyone else had to buy at inflated prices with their existing wages.
For a small minority in the macroeconomic world, they saw what we see in the macroeconomic world. No-one else did, and those folks voted against us.
@Fair Economist:
Jay
@David Collier-Brown:
Kissing the ring, paying cash for the Inaug, funding his Campaigns, did not work out well for the many MOTU who complied in advance.
The tariff’s are on Countries and Territories products, and are collected by the USCBS at point of entry, before release of the product.
I don’t see USCBS having a 150,000 page manual of the who, what and where tariffs are exempt and where they are not. I don’t see the DODGshit interns keeping track of the bribes.
And everybody and their Penguins are putting countervailing tariffs in place plus grudge boycotts. So US manufacturers, farmers and exporters are screwed three ways from Sunday.
David Collier-Brown
@Jay:
Oy! Canada, can we have free trade with them, like this afternoon?
NaijaGal
@Jay: I know, you know, does he know?
Jay
@David Collier-Brown:
We are working on it with the whole EU.
Newf and Saint Pierre and Miquelon have always had a free trade agreement,………………………………. it’s called smuggling.
Goods in, booze out.
Jay
@NaijaGal:
As we are seeing, more and more every day, the things that are “true, facts, etc” that the Trumpist’s don’t know, are filling the entire internet.
David Collier-Brown
@cain: Canada has lots of eggs, because we regulate egg farming (also milk). The term you’ll see is “supply management”, which the Conservatives detest*.
In Canada, you can raise a barn-full or two of chickens. In the US? As many barns as you’d like. So when a Canadian farm gets bird flu, we lose 1-2 barns. An American farmer loses 10 or 20. Surprise: it takes a while to kill and then replace a gazillion birds. Naturally there aren’t any eggs.
[* Non-conservatives merely distrust it (:-)) If the US had something even approaching sane regulation we could safely phase it out. See my friend and MP Martha’s article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/on-supply-management-the-americans-should-be-careful-what-they-wish-for/article36647659/
And https://nfu.ca/fact-check-supply-management-is-a-solid-anchor-in-the-tariff-storm/#:~:text=As%20the%20name%20suggests%2C%20Supply,prevent%20large%20swings%20in%20prices.%5D
Jay
@cain:
The US is begging Denmark, (you know, owners of Greenland) for eggs. I do not think they will be delivered in the manner the US wants.
Martin
@Fair Economist: I think you guys are talking past the real problem.
Inflation only measures goods and services, and not assets. High wealth individuals are growing MUCH faster than inflation. Even with today’s sell-off, I’m up more than 10% for the last 12 months. And on assets, the things that you can build wealth from, the folks at the top are squeezing the bottom out hard. That’s why you see what you see with housing prices.
So even if wages were keeping up with inflation, if they aren’t keeping up with broad asset growth, which is how people like me make money, they can’t even catch up in terms of asset ownership.
This was always the problem with the Democrats assessment of the economy. It focused on the measures that aligned with the well being of the middle/upper middle class, but ignored the measures that aligned with the rich and poor. Had they surfaced those other metrics, they would have seen inequality continuing to grow rapidly, and opportunities diminishing for those at the bottom.
The constant touting of new business starts and the like as though it were still 1990 and they reflected investment into the economy. But it’s 2025, and most of them are gig work, aren’t investments at all and reflect more side hustles, suggesting that conventional wages weren’t keeping up. Growing GDP is great except when half of the nations GDP is due to automation. Robots don’t buy cheeseburgers, and all of the benefits of that GDP growth was going to the investors that owned the robots, and not to workers. That paints a very different economic picture.
David Collier-Brown
@Jay: I’m speculating that the companies affected will come to the White House on bended knee and tell him exactly what product from what country should be removed from the tariff.
And no, I don’t think this will succeed (:-))
Chris T.
@RaflW:
The F47, when it comes out, will be an orange balloon (i.e., gasbag) that doesn’t get off the ground and dribbles fecal matter everywhere.