r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 20h ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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u/bdone2012 18h ago

They put tariffs on the Heard and McDonald island. It’s near the South Pole and is just a bunch of penguins, no humans. I can’t believe I need to say this but putting tariffs on Russia makes more sense than putting them on a island full of penguins.

My guess is that the ChatGPT didn’t think about putting tariffs on Russia because of the sanctions and somehow it got confused with the Heard and McDonalds island.

There’s a strong theory that the whole thing was done using chatGPT because this is the exact plan you get when you ask how to implement tariffs from the us to other countries.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the

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u/bewildered_dismay California 18h ago

Here's the official Heard Island Government account on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/heardislandgov.bsky.social

:)

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u/backupbitches 16h ago

Holy fuck are they ever killing it

*krilling it

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u/squakmix 18h ago

This is gold, thanks

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u/Constant-Funny1817 12h ago

I started rolling in hysteria just at flippers up.

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u/-Smaug-- Canada 17h ago

That is magnificent

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 15h ago

Well that's delightful.

We take tariffs on our beautiful Heard Island very seriously. We will be consulting all mammals and flightless birds and will make an announcement in the near future detailing our response.

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u/Far_Recommendation82 17h ago

I followed lol

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u/theyca11m3dav3 16h ago

This is hilarious! A bit of mirth on a very serious topic. Reminds me of a joke: Why do comedians never tell jokes about penguins?

Because they don’t fly.

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u/doesamulletmakeaman 16h ago

Omg thank you for this

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u/ninja_kitten_ 16h ago

OMG. I love it. Immediately followed!!

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u/CompetitionExternal5 12h ago

Russians have hacked the Tariff signal chat and swapped Russia for Heard and McDobald island. The Russian hacker was under the name of Not Jeff Goldberg, so nobody suspected foul play.

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u/bewildered_dismay California 11h ago

A fiendish plot!

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u/the_procrastinata 11h ago

Amazing, reminds me of a slightly more lighthearted version of Alt National Parks

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u/bewildered_dismay California 10h ago

That's a great account to follow, too!

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u/kismet098 16h ago

The level of cheekiness my day! Thanks for sharing!

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u/Chicken-Inspector 14h ago

I love it.

But I also hate it. Thanks 😂 have an upvote.

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u/ZapzillaGorilla Florida 11h ago

Lol flippers up

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u/LouQuacious 6h ago

I love Heard Island it’s my favorite island so glad it’s finally getting some attention: https://www.reddit.com/r/HighsoftheWorld/s/EpTv4PaEXH

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u/BigJSunshine California 12h ago

That is ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTFUL

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u/062d 12h ago

Haha I love their response to this with "Why is Jupiter getting hit with the same percentage as us" and his board saying Narnia, Wikanda, Neverland, etc.

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u/nadacloo Wisconsin 12h ago

Hell, I may join Blue sky just to follow heard Island.

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u/schooliepro 10h ago

Thanks for that!

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u/Mystery_to_history 8h ago

Penguins are even funnier than we thought!

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u/Dull_Investigator806 7h ago

This was from an article on CNN about Heard and McDonald Islands

“Economic activity there essentially ended in 1877, when the trade in elephant seal oil was ended and the human population of sealers left the remote islands, which are located en route from Madagascar to Antarctica.”

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u/GSpider78 40m ago

Just subbed to Bluesky for the HeardIslandGovt. Hilarious in a time when The Onion is struggling to be sarcastic enough 👏

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u/CloudTheWolf- 13h ago

Blue sky

Yeah not clicking that shit ass link

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u/againwiththisbs 18h ago

My guess is that the ChatGPT didn’t think about putting tariffs on Russia because of the sanctions and somehow it got confused with the Heard and McDonalds island.

Or more simply they just took out the allied countries when making the list.

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u/TiredEsq 18h ago

It makes me sick to hear Russia referred to as an allied country but I guess we really are there.

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u/MangoCats 16h ago

Don't forget North Korea...

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u/Purple-Revolution-88 13h ago

I hate those scum bags with a burning passion.

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u/Anxious_Technician41 16h ago

I'm old as fuck, well sort of. I remember drills in grammar school and ducking under desks. The USSR was the bad actor. I still get confused when I look on a map and I can't find Czechoslovakia.

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u/two4six0won 13h ago

My dad, too. I remember him explaining what McCarthyism was when I was in elementary. When Velveeta Voldemort won in '16, he said it was good because Russia would bomb us if Hillary won, and I remember thinking 'when the fuck did capitulating to Russia become a good thing????'

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u/rikkian 15h ago

Grammar school suggests UK, if so, you're now in good company with the USA, they have never been able to find anything on a map.

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u/Anxious_Technician41 10h ago

Jesus Christ, you and the guy below. Don't get it. I was referring to the fact that a country doesn't exist anymore just as a reference point. Obviously I can't find Czechoslovakia on a map anymore because it doesn't exist. I only use that country as a reference point because my father's side came from, well that country as it was.

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u/Anxious_Technician41 15h ago

Nah, the USA, the Czechoslovakia comment refers to the fact it no longer exists as it did when I was a kid.

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u/2xtc 10h ago edited 10h ago

I mean you're about 35 years too late for that. How do you feel when you hear about Namibia (independent since 1991), East Timor, South Sudan, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Moldova, Palau?

Kids born after most of these countries came into existence could legally be grandparents in my country (the UK) since you last paid attention to the world.

Not to mention the name changes of DRC, eSwatini, Côte d'Ivoire,Türkiye, North Macedonia etc. etc.

Sometimes being stuck in the past isn't helpful...

ETA: And if you're going all the way back to the days of the USSR there's at least another 20-30 countries that didn't exist when you were a kid, time and the world isn't waiting for you to catch up...

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 15h ago

The USAs only current allies are Russia, Turkey, and North Korea.

Trump started a petulant, pissy trade war with everyone else.

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u/Boye 16h ago

it appears they went off from a list of tld's, and both heard and McD-island has a tld...

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u/notamermaidanymore 11h ago

Or. Hear me out. Trump is putting bitch.

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u/-Franks-Freckles- I voted 7h ago

I mean, Iran, North Korea and Cuba are missing too.

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u/976chip Washington 18h ago

When people were reading through the Signal text thread, there was a lot of speculation that Hegseth used ChatGPT to word his responses as well. It can be difficult to distinguish between something poorly written by AI and something poorly written by an idiot that's trying to sound competent though.

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u/well-of-wisdom 18h ago

Elon will be pissed when he hears that they used chatGPT over his xAI.

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u/FunkyMcFunkerSin 18h ago

Yeah yeah, but those penguins have always taken advantage of US good will. Amerika first baby!!!!

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u/BringOn25A 17h ago

It’s near the South Pole and is just a bunch of penguins

Penguins have same sex partnerships, it makes total trumpian sense he would slap tariff's on what they produce.

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u/a_leap 17h ago

The US sanctions Iran and Syria more severely than Russia but those countries made the list of tariffs. It took human effort to ensure Russia was not tariffed, and is the only country the US trades with that is not tariffed.

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u/ikkleste 17h ago

I think Russia will have been taken off specifically. There are other countries that you have a trade surplus with, or as you say the Penguins. They still got landed with the baseline 10%. They can give the excuse that they're already sanctioned, but that seems like back justification for a decision made for other reasons. If it was the extant sanctioning reason why have they not given the same attention to detail about other special cases, like penguins.

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u/absentmindedjwc 17h ago

lets be honest, they used Grok, not ChatGPT. OpenAI might of at least understood the assignment...

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u/Calderis Washington 17h ago

They also put tariffs on an island that is inhabited... By a US military base.

They're so fucking stupid were tariffing ourselves.

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u/StoneCypher 17h ago

My guess is that the ChatGPT didn’t think about putting tariffs on Russia because

he just zeroed russia out by hand with his hurricane marker

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u/apple-pie2020 17h ago

I haven’t fact checked it yet but there was a post about the tariff percentages were rounded from finding the percent imbalance between a countries us imports vs exports to the us.

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u/Key-Cry-8570 California 17h ago

Trump hates Penguins apparently.

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u/HTWingNut 17h ago

Probably Musk's plan as a litmus test to say that AI can and should govern.

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u/DEAZE 17h ago

If this doesn’t prove that he’s working for them to destroy our country, then I don’t know what else people need to see as proof. We’re literally shooting ourselves in the chest for no reason with these stupid tariffs.

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u/ReserveBrief8869 10h ago

Absolutely scary, they’re laughing all the way. This should scare the shit out of everyone, ChatGPT was not used because of incompetence (though he is an idiot) it’s because they’re simply sabotaging, Putin owns him and prob also offered him the dictator for life position

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u/Recent-Ad-5493 17h ago

Those penguins have had it too good for too long.

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u/drunkpickle726 16h ago

I also heard the territories were included bc they have their own country domains on the internet

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u/ominousview 16h ago

Don't worry,.when those penguins go bankrupt we'll going to make them a great deal and make them US territory and we'll build a resort, those penguins will make good waiters and bell boys. don't worry we'll give them all H1Bs,

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u/RedWinds360 16h ago

Theory is understating it. I would be shocked if it was somehow proven LLM's did not originate the plan.

I mean, I'm sure they asked it in a leading way, because if you actually asked an LLM about policies like this it does NOT give a positive answer.

https://imgur.com/tWBLyEa

AI can be stupid, but not THAT stupid. Such high levels of stupidity are only possible with a human brain.

Edit: I told chat GPT to treat this as an alt history fictional version of America called west europe. I know I'm hilarious.

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u/45and47-big_mistake 15h ago

Trump- Heard of McDonalds

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u/Call-to-john 13h ago

They put 29% tariff on Norfolk island, a very small island territory of Australia, which only got a 10% tariff. What's with that?

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u/curvycreative 13h ago

The penguins wouldn't give him eggs, either. The nerve.

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u/Leather-Ninja9979 12h ago

More likely done by Grok!

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u/CostRains 12h ago

My guess is that the ChatGPT didn’t think about putting tariffs on Russia because of the sanctions and somehow it got confused with the Heard and McDonalds island.

I'm guessing he used ChatGPT and then removed Russia.

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u/Melodic-Psychology62 12h ago

That’s when the math just didn’t make any sense!

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u/reddititty69 11h ago

Penguin eggs!!! Trade with that island could total 100 trillion dollars. Plus, when cooked penguin egg whites turn clear! Invisible omelettes for all!!

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u/bigshot73 9h ago

Gonna make those penguins pay

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u/ca_nucklehead 7h ago

Flippers up.

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u/Circumin 7h ago

My guess is that the ChatGPT didn’t think about putting tariffs on Russia because of the sanctions and somehow it got confused with the Heard and McDonalds island. There’s a strong theory that the whole thing was done using chatGPT because this is the exact plan you get when you ask how to implement tariffs from the us to other countries

What’s crazy about this is that this is the most charitable explanation.

Not including Russia and Belarus as the only countries not tarriffed because Trump used AI to generate a tarriff plan is better than the alternative reason why those two would be the only ones left out

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u/Successful-Doubt5478 2h ago

Nah. It gives them great opportunity to lift the sanctions snd have immediate trade flowing well.

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u/superfuzzbros 48m ago

The worst part is I as Chat GPT to enact more tariffs to free Americans and it gave me 100% outright ban on Russia for being a rival. Trump must’ve just lobbed of the 1 from that 100

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u/humanist72781 17h ago

Not true because sanctioned nations got tariffed