r/Economics • u/DomesticErrorist22 • 1d ago
News China Imposes 34% Tariffs on All US Imports as Retaliation
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-04/china-imposes-34-tariffs-on-all-us-imports-as-retaliation475
u/chillinwithabeer29 1d ago
Consider this - there is no plan at the White House. There is just lurching from action to action based on the passing thoughts of its occupant, and promoted by the grifters and yes men surrounding him.
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u/mishap1 1d ago
He's back to golfing already. I expect another shaky cam footage of him in Airforce One proclaiming it'll all be over in a week or two and we'll see freedom like no other.
Dude fucked up COVID crisis so badly he wanted another round to super fuck up the world the second time.
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u/Aggressive_Metal_268 1d ago
He will proclaim things are going even better than he expected. Fox News will agree.
Because of the break between terms, he gets to be the worst TWO presidents in US history.
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u/Juanouo 1d ago
but, but, but... you gotta trust Trump's instincts. If that's not sound economic policy I don't know what is
\s just in case
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u/keepinitloose 1d ago
His instincts are to strong arm his suppliers the way he could in private development because he had 20 other suppliers he could turn to.
But in this case, when the supplier is the world he doesn't have 20 other the worlds.
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u/TreasonTurtle 1d ago
That you know of. He's playing 7D chess, remember? He has worlds in other dimensions from which we will soon be importing.
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u/passing_gas 1d ago
But I thought the guy that bankrupted every business he had would make things better?
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u/NeonYellowShoes 1d ago
There is a plan, its called Project 2025. Everyone was real scared of it during the election cycle but not enough to actually bother voting and now everyone is surprised for some reason. Tariffs were part of the 2025 agenda and thought process although admittedly they were split between tariffs and free trade. Although it was also obvious which direction Trump was going to go with it.
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u/zxc123zxc123 1d ago
Consider this - Trump is a Russian agent.
Everyone got tariffs except Russia.
Even Ukraine, Singapore which has no tariffs on US, or Australia who we run a surplus with.
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u/SparseSpartan 1d ago
Singapore
Singapore also regularly has a trade deficiet with trade to the United States. Which is insane. It's a city-state home to like 7 million poeple. Those 7 million people are buying more from the USA than 340 million people in the United States are buying from Singapore.
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u/lightstormy 1d ago
Is a high income country mainly as a regional commerical hub with not much manufacturing (it is an island for goodness sake). Which.. is going to be the polar opposite of US soon..
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u/Sleww 1d ago
I somewhat disagree. I think there is a plan, but it's one that has incredibly high risk with negative reward (unless you're in the owning class). The problem is also that this plan assumes that other countries and their governments have no agency whatsoever.
They're essentially forcing a second Great Depression, and gambling that those in power survive (or live) long enough to bring us out of the depression with corporate feudalism rather than socialism.
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u/LastNightOsiris 1d ago
that's a hope and dream, not even the concept of a plan. Leaving aside whether it is a desirable outcome (clearly it is not for mostly everyone), there is far too much uncertainty and too many factors outside the control of the Trump administration or the US government as a whole.
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u/Birdy_Cephon_Altera 1d ago
There is a plan. There is a method to the madness. Thing is, CWHO (Current White House Occupant) is not the creator of this plan, and not the person who thought it all up - he's just the "useful idiot" that is being used by his advisors (or rather wormtongues) who have convinced him this is the way to go.
The real forces behind most of what CWHO is doing are the architects of Project 2025 and folks like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who for the most part are more than happy to work in the shadows while CWHO takes all the glory and makes all the announcements. The foundations of what has been happening has been laid out years ago, and refined and refined again waiting for the moment when CWHO would be able to sign executive order after executive order, thinking he's the genius without realizing it's all being fed to him. Project 2025 is a solid blueprint (although often is more of a high-level overview than the details in the actions we are seeing in how it is played out).
It certainly seems like there is no plan at the White House because of the messenger - CWHO trump, who is fickle and difficult to manage, and prone to interjecting his own rashly-thought-out ideas into the implementation of the plan. He's an imperfect tool, but it's all they got to work with.
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u/Firelink_Schreien 1d ago
The plan is to use economic hardship and tariffs to bring our society to heel. He will start granting tariff exemptions to individuals who he deems sufficiently loyal. That could mean buying his shitcoin, or a membership to mar a Lago, or some sort of donation to his PAC. It can take many forms. It could also just be full-throated support of his shit policies in public. The point is that tariffs will be selectively used and applied to reward and punish, and this is a part of a multi-pronged authoritarian takeover attempt.
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u/pissfucked 1d ago
i want another name in here: peter thiel. everyone, just go read that man's wiki page to start. he is openly anti-democracy, a huge inspiration of and likely a consultant on project 2025, and he's j.d. vance's benefactor. he's also one of the founders of paypal, so there's the elon connect. he has nearly zero public presence, but his financial footprint is all over the government. his company palantir is already a DoD, CIA, and ICE contractor working on mass surveillance softwares.
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u/peon2 1d ago
Or more likely, consider this - there is a plan to tank the economy and Trump and his cronies are shorting stocks to become rich.
There is nothing a president can do to make the stock market rise 4% on back to back days. But you CAN make it decline 4% in back to back days.
Short stocks, make horrible announcements, let the market tank, buy up a bunch of shares when they are cheap, repeal the tariffs and market bounces back up, profit.
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u/kilgoretrucha 1d ago
They are desperately trying to find new uninhabited Antarctic islands to impose tariffs on. I'm sure that will fix it
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u/moreesq 1d ago
If much of what we export to China is agricultural products, why won’t the monster in the White House simply dole out billions and billions of dollars to farmers under some made up pretext that protects them from the harm? That’s what he did in his previous term, gave more than $25 billion in subsidies to farmers if I recall correctly.
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u/whatfresh_hellisthis 1d ago
They're already talking about bailing out farmers. They will bail them out. Corporate farmers are the biggest welfare queens in the US.
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u/TheVenetianMask 1d ago
High taxes and high subsidies. Classic conservative playbook.
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u/polytique 1d ago
Congress is now discussing raising income tax rates. Recession, inflation, market crash, and more taxes. How fun.
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u/aardw0lf11 1d ago
There won’t be any money left to subsidize the manufacturing industry. They need money to build, hire, and beef up supply. That’ll take trillions over 2 or 3 decades. To add to that, tariff revenue will go down when people cut back on spending. It ain’t a magic bullet.
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u/Antiwhippy 1d ago
But then isn't this whole tariff exercise meant to be a way to pay off the debt? What's the point if it's going to pay for welfare instead?
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u/saynay 1d ago
lol no. It isn’t going to pay off the debt, and I don’t think even the morons in the administration believed that fantasy.
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u/Antiwhippy 1d ago
Oh I'm not saying that it would, but I thought that's the insane theory they were going with.
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u/Sea-Sir2754 1d ago
Once you start getting to anything other than "1+1=2", Trump supporters will always find a way to justify being wrong. Even then I'm sure more than a few have tried to argue their way out of 1+1 being 2.
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u/reddernetter 1d ago
Now you can give welfare to those who are loyal and beg for it. More control and ego stroking!
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u/chronocapybara 1d ago
You're looking for logical consistency when there is none. You can't reason your way out of an argument that is based on emotion and feels. When you look at how he calculated tariffs, it's just trade deficit divided by total imports. So, for countries with a trade surplus, they still got a 10% tariff.... why? If a trade deficit means the country is "ripping off the USA" then if there's a surplus it must mean the opposite, that the USA is ripping them off, so.... why the 10% tariff?
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u/Gvillegator 1d ago
Just wait, that bailout is coming. Some of his rich followers will get bailed out for his bad decisions while the rest of America burns.
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u/bctg1 1d ago edited 1d ago
Something in me hopes that after all this republicans will look back on themselves and realize how incredibly stupid they have been for decades now, but I know that they would rather give themselves a brain tumor with the mental gymnastics required to blame Biden/Obama for this disaster.
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u/Deicide1031 1d ago
No they won’t as most of them actually like this. This is because over the past few cycles the normal republicans have been purged, retired or pushed out by “MAGA” and Christian nationalists.
Mike Johnson (speaker of the house) for example is heavily affiliated with evangelicals who support everything the admin is doing. While the traditional republicans who remain like Mitch McConnell have been crippled over time and have little to no clout.
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u/psk1234 1d ago
TBH Mitch is one of the biggest reasons of where we are today and has caused as much if not more damage than Trump over the years.
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u/CallItDanzig 1d ago edited 1d ago
Beat me to it. Mitch is the architect of where we are today. He is Frankenstein who built the monster and now regrets and fears his creation. He deserves only scorn.
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u/todd_ziki 1d ago
I just want to know what he thought he was going to get out of it. This is so predictable.
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u/mclumber1 1d ago
Mitch also lacked the courage to vote to convict (and push his party to convict) Trump during his second impeachment trial.
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u/Feeling-Yak-5686 1d ago
Yup. This is why we are screwed. The current majority party is made up of True Believers who will never cop to anything.
I take a little solace in the fact that when Trump inevitably dies, they will rip each other apart trying to fill the power vacuum he leaves.
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u/pagerussell 1d ago
The root problem is religion, which teaches you to ignore evidence and believe no matter what, and requires an evil villain to maintain the cult.
That mindset leads to very bad things in governance, where evidence, critical thinking, and compromise lead to best results.
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u/LoudMind967 1d ago
The irony is those "traditional republicans" set the stage for this disaster by wiping their collective asses with the "traditional norms". E.g. The (black) president should not be allowed to nominate a new supreme court justice so close to an election (8 months away with almost a year left in his presidency).
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u/TreasonTurtle 1d ago
As someone else had said some time back, they were Constitutional originialists. They thought that Obama should only be allowed to have 3/5ths of a presidency.
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u/Scary_Firefighter181 1d ago edited 1d ago
They like this because they're stupid(so they don't know) and are heartless, which means they're ok with others getting hurt as long as they don't get hurt. Many voted for Trump expressly to hurt others(immigrants) and because they're obsessed with trans people. Many voted because of inflation, not understanding that inflation was a global issue.
What they don't realize is that they will get hurt first.
And its been fascinating and quite disturbing to see how quickly their rhetoric changed. Before the election, it was all "Trump will bring lower prices back!"
Now, its "We need to pay higher prices to fix everything, Trump's a genius visionary!"
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u/hepheuua 1d ago
These people voted for Trump because of inflation. Like polling shows this was literally the primary driving reason.
Someone made the point that everyone who comes near Trump ends up ruined. Look at the litter of destroyed people behind him. Everyone that attaches themselves to him ends up wrecked. Look at Guiliani, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Elon Musk etc. They were all charged as criminals or went insane. Guiliani went from the former hero mayor of New York to a broke babbling mess. Flynn went from a respected luitenant general to speaking at Q-Anon conventions. Musk's whole economic empire is under threat. Everyone who comes close to him gets covered in shit. All the families this guy has broken up, too. The friendships. Over what? He is a vortex of chaos that destroys
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u/rinariana 1d ago
People used inflation as an excuse when they really wanted anti-woke, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, pro-white, christian, man policies. You will never hear them complain about inflation or prices under Trump.
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u/MisselthwaiteGardens 1d ago
They are so swayed and brainwashed. You never heard the word Greenland come out of one republicans mouth, not one. 50% of them couldn’t even point it out on a map. Then Trump says Greenland, and they back him up and all you hear is them saying what Fox News told them. You never heard any Republican (American) talk about having beef with Canada. Except for on South Park lol. But fucking CANADA, and then Trump brought up Canada and now all you hear is negative things from trumpists because Canada is fighting back. Enemies with Canada??? And Greenland??? And you used to see all the time in comments “If you don’t like america then move somewhere like RUSSIA!!!” Now you don’t. You never see them say that anymore. But I did see someone say “move to Ukraine.” It doesn’t matter what he does or says, it doesn’t matter how crazy the lie….they.believe.him. Fox, newsmax, turn it on, have a listen…they straight lie about things and PEOPLE BELIEVE EVERY WORD because “fact checking” is “woke.” They are so hell bent on making the libs cry they can’t see past their own hate tinted goggles. Families were torn apart under Trump unlike with any other past president. I cannot speak to my family about it, though they disrespect my No to the topic so they can spit out their believes lies every so often. Trump followers are similar to trump, they “debate” like him which is yelling and not listening. Own the libs, that’s all that truly matters to them, while they blindly follow Trump and truly ignore the facts and call it a chess game by Trump.
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u/cryptoheh 1d ago edited 1d ago
Mitch is just angry MAGA turned on him otherwise he’d have his pom poms out too
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u/ShockinglyAccurate 1d ago
And the voters? No matter what they might say out loud, almost all of them support Trump. The "normal" Republican is a mostly fictional portrait of a sliver of the party that the rest of them can use as cover while they march toward fascism.
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u/ReddestForman 1d ago
Yeah, when I hear libs talk about "normal" Republicans all I can hear is someone desperate to have someone to appeal to so they can stab the left in the back.
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u/hagamablabla 1d ago
It's ironic how the conservative Republicans who once sidelined the Rockefeller Republicans are now themselves getting sidelined by an even more conservative faction.
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u/Mean-Meringue-1173 1d ago
If r/conservative has taught me anything, it's that they'll never ever ever accept having made a wrong judgement but construct an elaborate conspiracy about how all the other nations are trying to bankrupt USA for trying to fight against unfair trade policies. Even a full scale depression won't change their minds. It's become their religion.
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u/AltoCowboy 1d ago
They would rather the ship sink then admit they were wrong
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u/WickhamAkimbo 1d ago
The trick is to let them sink themselves without sinking anything else. If they only sink themselves, nobody cares they won't admit they're wrong.
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u/NetParking1057 1d ago
I think you’re giving too much credit. The people who post in r/conservative are die hards. They’ll do what the republican media is doing now: call all anguish caused by tariffs “growing pains” and downplay it. A few dissenting voices will speak out and they’ll get banned immediately for it.
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u/NeonYellowShoes 1d ago
They live in a completely made up reality already so its easy for them to just change their own reality to whatever fits their viewpoint on any given day.
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u/eyesmart1776 1d ago
What’s funny is they think that America is the only country in the world.
As if other countries don’t have their own interests and goals
Very sociopathic
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u/Hot_Cheesecake_905 1d ago
Yeah, a lot of cope in r/conservative - it's now "resetting the house of cards" and this justifies the turmoil in the markets. The story keeps changing.
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u/PNWoutdoors 1d ago
I don't expect that. Two things underscore the Republican party:
- They don't understand cause and effect, at all
- They will never admit fault, ever
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u/0023jack 1d ago
YES! as someone who had to suffer through liz truss, THIS is exactly what you want. They need to fail and fail big so that the silly ideas can’t be uttered without mockery for a long long time.
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u/ChrisFromLongIsland 1d ago
The last time the Republicans tried tariffs they lost the house and the senate for 60 years. Thats a lot of mockery for stupid ideas.
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u/usualsuspect45 1d ago
I agree. A friend of mine said, we are going to hit rock bottom before any of the GOP take a stand. Its stupid and will be painful for the majority of folks.
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u/dillanthumous 1d ago
Meanwhile Kemi Badenoch is a complete tool. Conservative party learned nothing.
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u/townshiprebellion24 1d ago
I haven’t met many Republicans capable of self reflection. Admitting you made a mistake is peak emotional intelligence in my opinion. Along with changing view points given new information.
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u/MC_Terry 1d ago
Along with changing view points given new information.
Here's the problem - Trump voters twist this into turning on a dime based on what their propaganda tells them. 1984 shit.
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u/Skurph 1d ago
One of their hallmarks is not being able to understand things unless it’s happening to them, so that’s the straws I’m grasping at.
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u/townshiprebellion24 1d ago
Selfishness and self-centeredness. That would explain the lack of empathy.
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u/The_Blip 1d ago
I think Republican politicians are playing a completely different game. It isn't important what you did or the impact on American people, markets, and society. It's important that you 'won'.
You can weasel your way through anything and cut deals with anyone about anything, as long as you win elections and maintain your position in the party. If that means parroting party lines you know are false or bad, then that's all just part of the game. Inflation, cost of living, employment, education, health; these are all just bargaining chips to keep your position.
Republican politicians don't become politicians to create policy, they create policy to be politicians.
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u/Skurph 1d ago
There is a very dark part of my brain that’s attempting to find a silver lining in just this concept. Like, “Okay, for decades you all have talked about how your policies will be great if unabated despite pretty much every reasonably educated person understanding how fundamentally broken they are. Well here ya go, now you’ve got it”
I know I’ll never get the satisfaction of watching them eat crow because we’re 40 years out of trickle down economics and still fed the same “but this time it will work” bullshit.
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u/SPAMmachin3 1d ago
I had to listen to my coworker cheer this on yesterday because it's destroying the liberal economic system and we will control our own systems now.
These people are stupid. The United States has controlled the world economic system for 80 years. The only thing we are destroying is ourselves. China will gladly step in to fill the void.
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u/akmalhot 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's scary how uninformed so much of America is. Also how many people think white supremacy is still a thing, and that their children aren't getting into schools or internships bc they are white
Also, Dems had what should have been easy opportunities to beat trump twice and couldn't do it because they have their heads so far up their asses they can't put forth a reasonable candidate. And so we're all screwed
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u/hardsoft 1d ago
For decades? Republicans were the free trade party. Trump flipped the script.
I'm hoping if anything positive comes out of this, everyone will see the benefits of trade and the drawbacks to protectionism.
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u/Old-Tumbleweed8555 1d ago
Conservatives think its a good thing. Go read their comments in r/Conservative
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u/DizzyMajor5 1d ago
If two Iraq wars and s great recession didn't convince them I don't know what to tell you
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u/Tyler_45 1d ago
Time to label this as the Republican Recession. Hurt the whole party, not just trump
The world isn't as reliant on the US as Republicans think, they'll just create more trade between each other and the US will lose its competitive advantage
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u/M1nn3sOtaMan 1d ago
It's been amazing watching the right go from "Trump will bring down prices!" to "we need to pay more for awhile. Trump is just correcting everything. This is necessary". It's quite astonishing.
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u/Darth_Innovader 1d ago
It was never about the economy, was it
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u/MajoraOfTime 1d ago
Nope. They voted for him because they're evil people that are hoping he'll hurt minorities.
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u/Striking-Dentist-181 1d ago
I’m not sure if I’m more impressed by that or the complete 180 they’ve managed on Russia from basically ‘fuck those Ruskies, slava Ukraini!’ to ‘Ukraine started it’.
All moral, ethical, logical arguments aside, it really is something to watch how vulnerable people are to propaganda machine that’s constantly churning out bullshit. Imagine where we’d be if these pricks watched PBS and Sesame Street relentlessly instead of Dear Leader and whatever talking head is on Fox News.
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u/TheStrangestOfKings 1d ago
Talking about 180s, it took like a week post victory to go from “Trump is a peace candidate, he’ll never start any wars!” to “Canada, Greenland and Panama need to be invaded!” The only consistency with them is that they’ll go where Trump goes, and Trump goes to the shiniest object in the room
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u/Rurumo666 1d ago
You're forgetting the Houthis, Iran, ethnically cleansing Gaza to make room for a "luxury resort", etc. Trump has 7 or 8 wars in the making.
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u/Regular-Towel9979 1d ago
I always had a nagging doubt about Republicans' being antiwar; I think they glommed on to that part thinking it would sway blue voters somehow.
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u/Digitalispurpurea2 1d ago
In 2018 there were Trump fans wearing tshirts that read “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat” so this attitude about Russia from these people doesn’t surprise me one bit.
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u/Striking-Dentist-181 1d ago
I’m still flabbergasted they were willing to throw away two generations of deep seated Cold War hatred to turn against their own citizens who… checks notes have a uterus or a different skin tone.
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u/laughingheart66 1d ago
My mother went from bringing in Ukrainian merchandise for her store in support to saying that we need to keep Putin close because keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
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u/IchibanWeeb 1d ago
Actually insane. Reminds me of a certain other leader from history whose name starts with S and rhymes with "ballin'"
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u/dust4ngel 1d ago
Trump is just correcting everything
"it's more correct for me to be unable to feed my family."
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u/font9a 1d ago
This was foxnews radio talking points a couple hours ago. Along with, "he's breaking everything down to build a new world trade order and that could take a few years." I really wonder how they can believe manufacturing is going to move back to the USA when 1) Modern factories will be largely automated 2) Investments in new factories aren't going to start until there is increased demand for new factory products (which is the opposite of recession/stagflation/highly tariffed goods) 3) Building new factories in USA will cost multiple more times than keeping existing factories open.
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u/whatfresh_hellisthis 1d ago
It's a Republican Recession and it's Trumpflation. It's whatever catchy thing you can think of. Don't let them wiggle out of it, it's completely on them and they need to own it for as long as I'm alive. Fuck them. These consequences will destroy lives and have ripple effects for decades.
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u/LoudMind967 1d ago
The US just gave other countries lots room to negotiate as they can compete more easily
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u/Ghost-of-Black-47 1d ago
It absolutely needs to be called the Republican Recession or the Trump Economic Crisis.
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u/Mrhorrendous 1d ago
Republican Recession
You repeat yourself. Has there been a recession in the past 50 years that started under democratic leadership?
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u/Birdy_Cephon_Altera 1d ago
Time to label this as the Republican Recession
You're not wrong. At all. But labels only work if labels stick and people use them. This has been a massive failure of understanding among Democratic operatives, and a massive success for republicans, and especially for trump in particular.
Republicans have been winning the "labels game" for decades now, and are much better at picking out terms that resonate with the public, and in turn drive the discussion in a certain direction, going back to Luntz and his framing of the health care debate, all the way to the present day with controlling how people view "woke" and "DEI" and "Defund the Police".
There's a very good reason you suddenly started hearing the term "reciprocal" when it comes to how trump refers to the tariffs. It frames them as a defensive move against those "evil" countries that are attacking us with their tariffs first (even if that's a rather strained interpretation at best). The average trump supporter now thinks that the US is being treated unfairly and only responding in kind, so the "reciprocal" tariffs make sense to them.
Democrats are TERRIBLE at coming up with labels and terms. I am cynical they will be able to drive the debate this time, just as they have failed time and again my entire adult life, letting republicans adopt and then self-define terms.
"Republican Recession"? Maybe - it is alliterative, but has lots of syllables. I, too, would like to ascribe this to republicans at large (since none of this would be happening without them being enablers). That being said, something short and simple like "Trump Tax" might work, even if it is directed at one person, because it is short and simple and accurate.
We need our own Frank Luntz to come along and start focus-testing some terms for us, in preparation of 2026 and 2028. Otherwise we'll end up once again on the defensive, and once you have to start explaining you've already lost 90% of the non-political public.
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u/strangeweather415 1d ago
I keep telling people to call the homeless encampments that are certain to come "Trump Towers."
Trump deserves his very own Hoovervilles
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u/Kdiesiel311 1d ago
It’s not gonna be a recession or a depression, it’ll be a full on economic collapse
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u/Grevillea_banksii 1d ago
Plot twist: They will say that “republican recession” is named after the republic of the US, therefore the solution would be to make the US a monarchy with king Trump.
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u/BeanCheezBeanCheez 1d ago
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents. This will certainly be another recession if not a 2nd republican Great Depression.
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u/Full-Discussion3745 1d ago
The funny thing is they havent even touched services with their tarrifs. I think China is keeping its powder dry.
Trump is gonna jeapordise close to 1 Trillion USD in Services
In 2023, the United States exported approximately $1.03 trillion in services globally.
When considering the European Union (EU) as a single entity, the top purchasers of U.S. services and their respective values were:
European Union: $238.6 billion
United Kingdom: $80.9 billion
Canada: $69.5 billion
Switzerland: $52.4 billion
China: $42.2 billion
Japan: $38.0 billion
Singapore: $29.0 billion
South Korea: $25.0 billion
India: $24.0 billion
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u/BaronVonBearenstein 1d ago
What is included in "services"? What are these countries purchasing for billions of dollars?
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u/ggRavingGamer 1d ago
THis is bigger than the Smoot-Hawley tariffs back in 1930, and at a time where nations are far more interconected than they were in the 1930, by a LOT.
This will cause a recession that will make the 1929 recession look like something we will be soon hoping for, it will be that bad.
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u/BoaTardeNeymar777 1d ago
How exactly is this genius move of irritating the country you import going to benefit your country? Didn't it occur to your president that in addition to retaliating with reciprocal tariffs, this will also weaken American trade and strengthen alternative alliances of the country being provoked?
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u/ggRavingGamer 1d ago
I think that once you start looking at all this from the POV of a Russian asset, it all makes sense. Or Chinese asset, doesn't matter.
It just makes everything make sense. It could be just stupidity, but it could also be the fact that he is a foreign intelligence asset and is just trying to destroy America. Still, even if that is true, why did Americans vote for someone like that? So it doesnt matter if he steps down even, because the hordes of morons that voted for him, will vote soon, for someone like him, so it won't stop.
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u/J0E_Blow 1d ago
still, even if that is true, why did Americans vote for someone like that?
A whole bunch of reasons.. Stupidity, misunderstanding of technology, lack of middle class, lack of belief in American values, emotional manipulation, political divides, etc... Ultimately our national system of and way of life has become too strained to filter for and select competent leaders who predominately have the nation's best interests at heart.
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u/WebHead1287 1d ago
Dipshit has the critical thinking skills of a newborn chihuahua. His only thought was tariffs will stop trade with others countries and bring all the jobs here instantly. Since all the jobs and products are here no one will be able to tariff us and we’ll be super rich. Dude never ever considered how global the economy is and how no one really needs the US. He just put us in a corner and thought everyone would come flocking to our corner and not shun us.
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u/pissfucked 1d ago
he's tanking the economy on purpose so the entire government can be picked apart and sold piecemeal to the highest bidders, which will be billionaires and their companies. he'll keep up the immigration shit because 1. he gets able-bodied slaves from locking them up that he can rent to companies for nearly-free labor, 2. it distracts people during the economic crash, and 3. it'll tank agriculture which will further tank the economy and make the people even more desperate and confused. then, once it's all sold and every dissenter is locked up, dead, or sitting in terrified silence, they'll bring out their "freedom cities," AKA company towns, to turn the entire u.s. into a modern techno-fiefdom wherein we're all living like serfs.
i don't know what each and every action in their foreign policy is designed to do, but pushing away our allies seems to fit in a few ways. perhaps it's further social isolation of the american people, reducing the chances of people from regular countries talking sense into us. perhaps it's a declaration of loyalty to russia and north korea. perhaps its direct purpose is simply to create severe economic upheaval so quickly that no action can be taken to stop it or reverse its effects. perhaps it's incorporating some very niche and specialized rich-people company/money relationship handling, so that billionaires they want to align with don't experience as much upset, or so that rich people who don't want to align with them get worse deals (ex: adding an extra 10% on the top to some country to screw over someone they dislike who does a lot of business there).
frankly, we won't know how deep this goes until they're overthrown and their documents are checked... providing that it happens suddenly enough that they don't have time to delete or burn the evidence.
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u/More-Sprinkles5791 1d ago
Yeah what were people thinking with the ‘don’t retaliate right away’ thing?
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u/Tofudebeast 1d ago
Of course China would retaliate with tariffs of their own. As will other countries. So what will the future look like? Lots of tariffs from and against the US, while the rest of the world continues with relatively free trade among themselves.
The American golden age could well be ending, unless these policies get reversed ASAP. Otherwise we're going to come out of this poor and isolated.
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u/HereticLaserHaggis 1d ago
I think the damage is done.
If you get these tarrifs reversed tomorrow every country in the world is still going to be wary of us trade going forward.
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u/Tofudebeast 1d ago
Yeah, it could take decades to repair this damage. And American will likely never recover.
Obama got a lot of flak from some people over his "apology tour." Well, when this mess is over we're going to need make a huge apology to the world. We'll need to show regret and that we've learned something from all this. Not sure that can happen so long as we cling to the "American Exceptionalism" view.
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u/Zookeeper187 1d ago
I don’t get it tho. He literally said what he is going to do even before elections. And now you prople act surprised he did exactly that. Why?
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u/Aware-Impact-1981 1d ago
Trump has said so much stupid stuff that he doesn't follow through on his voters just pick and choose what is "serious" vs "just talking". People that like tariffs voted for him because he said he'd do them. People that are R but know tariffs are bad said it was "just a negotiation tactic" or "he's just saying that to get the idiots who like tariffs on board". Same for abortion (I talked to some Rs who said Trump would never sign an abortion ban, and some who said he would), deportation, leaving NATO ect. They just pretend he'll do what they want and ignore what he says
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 1d ago
But this was literally all he fucking talked about consistently. I remember listening to his speeches and he was constantly hammering on about tariffs.
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u/bal00 1d ago
There's a very long list of things he literally said he was going to do that didn't happen.
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u/nickkon1 1d ago
He did it significantly more then what economists predicted. The problem is that when Trump said retaliatory tariffs, they calculated some complicated weighted average tariff rate for e.g. the EU. This could have gone way different if Trump landed on that rate or something lower as a starting tariff.
Thats the issue. With Trump its simply a gamble that could go either way. An example are the first tariffs with Canada and Mexico where he threatened the tariffs and both countries simply gave Trump pretty much exactly what they have already decided to do with Biden. Trump was able to sell this as a "win" against his base and was happy.
All is possible. And that makes it easy for people who were correct this time to say "I told you so".
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u/ILoveTheAtomicBomb 1d ago
Oh we’re so utterly fucked hahah.
God damn Trump just set us back so many years and his fanbase is going to love him for it and be too stupid to recognize it’s his fault
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u/guh_mystocks 1d ago
And gas prices are going to plummet, so they're going to be extra smug about it. Until they lose their jobs, that is...
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u/Z0idberg_MD 1d ago
Dear Donald Trump: China and literally every other country is only in a tariff war with United States. The United States is in a tariff war with pretty much every other allied nation. Therefore any sort of escalation will mean our total economic collapse while they were largely be able to absorb the economic impact.
It is the most idiotic economic policy possibly in US history .
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u/ballmermurland 1d ago
We've declared economic war against the entire world while they have the opportunity to ally together against us.
Yeah, this won't end well. This is idiocy of the highest order.
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u/CosmicQuantum42 1d ago
Remember, Congress. If you personally are not doing everything humanly possible every minute of every day to prevent / roll back / stop these tariffs, you are aligned with Trump on this issue.
Regardless of party.
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u/chillinewman 1d ago edited 1d ago
False equivalence even implying. The senate rollback of tariffs is by senate democrats and some republicans.
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u/SparksAndSpyro 1d ago
Tell that to the 30% that voted for him and the 36% that didn’t vote. How about the voters take some goddamn responsibility for once.
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u/Livinincrazytown 1d ago
So today is day 1 after trumps stupid liberation day. If I was a world leader, say of Germany, I would have called up every other country on that list and coordinated a plan to announce a new retaliatory tariff daily every country on trumps list day by day. Make it a spectacle to make Trump stew even more, 7pm eastern every night in the USA, make a big dramatic show of it like a flipping game show. Hit Trump with his own medicine. 1. China 2. Korea 3. Australia 4. Etc
Have people in American offices speculating daily about which one is next to retaliate. When is EU gonna hit back. Inflict maximum pain.
Once people get bored of that, then smack the American service industry… go after banks, tech cos, management consultants.
Fighting a trade war against the whole word at once is asking for this kind of response, they put their finger in the electrical outlet after we told them not to for 10 years now, let them fry.
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u/JonMWilkins 1d ago
I hope they put the smackdown on Tesla at some point in this back and forth trade war, at least then something positive could come from this
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u/stingraycharles 1d ago
I don’t think China really needs to put a smackdown on Tesla at this point, the company is crashing fine on its own.
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u/saynay 1d ago
China especially, since their domestic EVs are better and cheaper than Teslas.
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u/stingraycharles 1d ago
Exactly the point I was implying. Tesla is crashing because of the Chinese competition, China really doesn’t even need a tariff.
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u/Infamous_Employer_85 1d ago
Yep and the Chinese competitors (XPeng and BYD) include excellent advanced driver assist that is actually being shipped in China, and is included for free.
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u/MrRogersAE 1d ago
China builds more teslas than anyone. If they lose the Chinese market the company is done
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u/Infamous_Employer_85 1d ago
The new BYD and XPeng models are out competing Tesla in China in terms of quality and features, and are less expensive, this will soon also be the case in Europe.
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u/Draiko 1d ago
Why is anyone going to do business with the US in the future if we pull these shenanigans?
The best thing for the world is to put up a strong front and kick Trump in the teeth. Americans will suffer but the republicans own this disaster and, the more pain that Americans feel, the more likely it is that the GOP won't win another election for quite some time.
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u/Phx-Jay 1d ago
We wanted cheap stuff in America. We sold our souls for cheap TVs, sunglasses, and Nike apparel. We let ourselves get bent over a barrel for new cars and giant houses with two people living in them and now pointing the finger at other countries and saying “how could you do this to me.” FAFO.
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u/stingraycharles 1d ago
People don’t realize that it’s completely normal for rich economies to import more than they export. They have more money to spend, so they buy more stuff.
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u/Aware-Impact-1981 1d ago
Exactly! Just like a rich man pays more money to people for services (lawn care, maid, nanny) than they get paid by individuals
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u/stingraycharles 1d ago
I actually happen to live in Cambodia for 11 years (originally from EU). The trade deficit of Cambodia vs US is 97%, because the people here are some of the poorest on earth. So they’ve been hit with a very high tariff, I believe something like 49%.
It really sucks, and the people are worried because the US accounts for almost half of all the country’s exports.
It’ll likely be driven towards intensifying trade with China even more than before, which is really something the US should not want to.
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u/partia1pressur3 1d ago
It’s true. I can’t believe America offshored low value add clothing and shoe manufacturing for high value add tech and service work. We’re such morons.
Thankfully the U.S. has such high unemployment now that once we onshore the sunglass manufacturing plant there will be a line out the door for Americans to pour plastic into molds for minimum wage.
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u/Colonel_Gipper 1d ago
But that's the American Dream! To work in a garment factory /s
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u/MisinformedGenius 1d ago
But without all those government-overreach laws about providing proper fire exits and not chaining the doors shut, please... Make American Shirtwaists Again...
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u/Superb_Raccoon 1d ago
We let high tech chip manufacturing go to.
So much so we cannot produce the tech we need for the high paying tech jobs
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u/partia1pressur3 1d ago
I wonder if there was a non-moronic president who signed a bi-partisan bill to work on bringing back tech chip manufacturing in a way that wouldn’t jump start a recession?
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u/Aware-Impact-1981 1d ago
Biden passed the Chips act to solve that. You know, the think Mike Johnson and Trump say they want to tear up? The republicans are the ones trying to do the exact opposite of what you want
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u/NitroLada 1d ago
Yes, Americans and western nations wanted and got a much higher living standards. It wasn't just wanting cheap stuff, it was wanting more purchasing power and higher standards of living.
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u/Bluetooth_Sandwich 1d ago
We wanted cheap stuff in America. We sold our souls for cheap TVs, sunglasses, and Nike apparel.
Nah, don't lump me in with the fools who lack foresight. I didn't vote for the clowns who foamed at the mouth over NAFTA and subsequent policies.
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u/raybanshee 1d ago
Milton Friedman is rolling over in his grave right now. Free market global capitalism has created so much wealth for Americans and the world at large, lifting billions out of poverty in just a few decades. Sure, there's been a loss of domestic manufacturing and unions, but these are relics of a world that no longer exists. Buying USA made, buying local, is a farce.
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u/erichang 1d ago
The protectionism is just a lessor version of communism. It reduces the motivation of smart people/business to compete because you can not win. It is better and easier to seek for protection than innovation. Without protectionism, you have to constantly innovate and keep your edge. Not so when you have 20-30% tax protection.
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u/Curious_Party_4683 1d ago
good! so glad to see other countries stand up to the Dump and put that man in his place.
absolutely ridiculous that nobody in US got a spine to stand up n tell him to shut up. not even the military of all places.
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