Summary
Global leaders criticized Trump’s new tariffs, which range from 10% to 49%, warning of trade wars and economic fallout.
The UK and Italy urged negotiation, while Brazil passed a reciprocity bill. China and South Korea vowed countermeasures.
Australia and New Zealand rejected Trump’s logic, citing existing trade deals and low tariffs. Norfolk Island was baffled by a 29% duty despite having no exports.
Financial markets dropped, oil and bitcoin sank, and leaders warned of inflation. Analysts say Trump risks fracturing global trade with little to gain economically.
Well just to be fair - and i know people like shitting on Trump but hear me out - the complaints from workers against out-shoring labor to other countries has been very loud for many years.
Everytime the newspaper reports “Company X has moved its factory to China” you can be sure that lots of people are gonna complain about it. But tariffs are the only thing that actually forces companies to put the factories back to the USA. Or do you have a better idea?
You need to have a plan in place before doing this to even think about bringing manufacturing back here. And tariffs need to be like the last part of the plan
I agree that a plan is needed. Still, what would be the other parts of the plan? Tariffs are the only really impactful measure, it seems to me. Tariffs on import and subsidies on export.
Also, maybe Trump is so “on-off” with the tariffs to give companies a warning to bring back manufacturing to the US, and them lifting them again to not cause a recession, giving them a few years to set up the infrastructure, and then re-install the tariffs. One needs to look for the “good outcome”, sothat one steers in that way.
Maybe calculated tariffs on commodities where companies are contemplating outsourcing, but that’s a step you take in advance in order to dissuade their action. This is like making the whole school sit with their heads down through recess because one specific kid was unruly.
Edit: There wasn’t even an unruly kid. The Principal is just vindictive, has a hangover, and hates children.
because one specific kid was unruly
Edit: There wasn’t even an unruly kid.
Well, outsourcing labor was a mass phenomenon in the last 50 years.
You can’t just flip a switch to have manufacturing moved to the United States overnight or even five years. Not to mention that even raw goods needed to even start the process that are being tarriffed like aluminum just doesn’t come out of nowhere. This is a dumb sledgehammer approach that’s going break more things than it fixes
U.S. factories in most cases cannot produce goods that are competitive in a global market. Our labor costs are too high.
This idea that we can revive American traditional manufacturing of basic goods is a complete fantasy. The factories in Vietnam aren’t going anywhere, because they will still be selling to the other 95% of the globe outside the U.S. Even if factories are stood up in the U.S., they will be constrained to producing higher-priced goods exclusively for the domestic market, with all the attendant inflationary impacts from start-up costs and higher labor costs.
Meanwhile, retaliatory tariffs from other countries will cause the collapse of U.S. exports. We’ll lose markets for the sectors where the U.S. is still competitive, like agriculture, advanced manufacturing, and even services.
Trump’s approach is similar to the failed development strategy of import substitution industrialization, except in this case he thinks it will cause the U.S. to reindustrialize. In any case, it will fail for the same reasons ISI failed in Latin America.
I think you’re kind of being unfairly downvoted because it’s definitely underappreciated how much tariffs are used in modern trade deals.
Putting selective import tariffs on certain goods (like say car manufacturing) might be a wise move if you want to encourage the US to develop a manufacturing base. It’s worth noting that the US, and most other countries have been doing this selectively for years.
This is reeeaally far from the tariffs that have actually been anounced though, which are the highest rate the US has had in around 100 years, and applied pretty indescriminately. There are some goods that the US just can’t produce itself (like certain rare earth minerals that aren’t in the USA) but even worse, because of the insane logic of applying them to countries as they have been done, it opens up this type of event:
- A comany like Apple might assemble laptops in the US, but import parts like chips from, say, China.
- They now have around a 40% tariff on all chips, which is really going to drive up cost, and leaves them with two options.
- Option one, they bring all manufacturing into the US, which would take a long time to build up the infrastructure, and still really ramp up the price because wages in the US are so much higher than they are in China
- Option two, they outsource everything to say Mexico or Canada who don’t pay the tariffs on Chinese chips, and just pay the wholesale import tariffs are needed to bring things from Mexico/Canada to the US. They also get to skip out all the reciprocal tariffs that other countries are placing on the US in retaliation for the recently announces ones when they import out to, say, Europe.
Even option one is bad, because Apple might sell laptops internally, but the newly increased price makes them super uncompetitive with rival firms overseas, so it might still lead to a loss in overall jobs for US workers.
I’m not pretending this doesn’t suck - but US based international companies like Apple have a clear incentive to just forgoe the US as much as possible now. This kind of risk is why countries have traditionally been very conservative with changing tariffs.
I think you’re probably right that there might be an argument for countries to be less conservative than they have been, but the US government just cranked up the dial from 0 to 11 and we’re all about to find out what that might look like in real time.
But tariffs are the only thing that actually forces companies to put the factories back to the USA. Or do you have a better idea?
I mean no… And, how about accepting that the US is no longer a manufacturer, and that’s just fine in a global economy
tell that to the workers
I mean we did like 40 years ago…
40 years ago knowledge workers were in high demand, and IT was booming. Now, IT is enshittifying, so what do the workers do next? Where do they go?
no tariffs on russia, only sanctions?
Don’t worry, they are working on removing those as well.
They’re AI generated tariffs. He asked Grok and these are the numbers it spat out.
He’s imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands… what a fucking moron…
There are penguins! 🐧
Give him some credit (not a lot). What if China were to give these penguins cars to resale? Middle men penguins is what they are. They should call the island Midway island, a term invented by his assholness.
These penguins managed to put USA into trade deficit with the island somehow?
McDonald’s fucked up his order recently which is why their island received tariffs.
He’s going to get free hamberders for life when they cave.
True. Those freeloading penguins.
they have it hard enough already without tarrifs. wasn’t it last year or the year before where an entire colony of emperor penguins had every single chick die that breeding season? that’s extremely sad. but sure, hit 'em with tarrifs too, why not
Maybe this is some 5D chess move against the rise of penguins
They’re mostly [Trade deficit]/[Exports to US]
Which is a fucking stupid basis for tariffs.
The depth of stupidity of this Administration will be studied by mathematicians for centuries as a new form of fractal.
It’s possibly the most stupid basis for tariffs. The penalty is directly proportional to U.S. reliance on a country’s imports. The countries that are the most important suppliers to the U.S. are penalized the most. It’s a policy designed to cause maximum reshuffling of production, which maximizes the start-up costs of developing new factories and so on. And those factories are not going to be in the U.S. Import substitution industrialization is a failed policy and it won’t work for reindustrialization either.
The “Empires last 250 years” thing is bad history and not really supported by fact…but…
Someone asked chatGPT how to apply tariffs to give America an equal playing field and it spit it a formula that looks shockingly similar to how trump calculated the tariffs
Try grok and you’ll get an exact match.
“No basis in logic” will be both the title of Trump’s time in office and the reason why the USA collapses
He’s got that dementia infused vindictiveness against the people who want him dead
No basis in logic if he were actually trying to do what he says he is. He’s not. They make perfect sense if the goal is to destabilize the country. We elected a fucking Manchurian candidate twice, and the in-between term was spent on a bunch of business as usual and not setting up protections in case it happened again. This country is fucking done.
Have we forgotten that he has done this each month since he was Inaugurated?
Today the stock market will crash on this news. The wealthy will buy on this massive dip, and in a few days, HitlerPig will announce that the countries on his list have responded to his tariff threats, so he is postponing them for a month or so.
The stock market will recover a bit, and the wealthy will make a fortune. In a month, he’ll do it all over again.
It’s deliberate market manipulation.
I am stealing “HitlerPig”
I’ve been using it ever since i heard thats what the younger staffers in the Biden White House called him. I found it simultaneously hilarious, vicious, and accurate. I encourage you and others to use it often.
Agent Krasnov is an acceptsble alternative.
Other suggestions:
Kapo Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller (my favorite)
Steve “Unwiped Asshole” Bannon
Empty G
Lauren Boobert
Big Boobie Bondi
Couchfucker Vance (not very original, but a good reminder)
Gold Digging Whore (the Propaganda Secretary, I can’t be bothered to learn her name)
Traitor also works for all of them. Nazi, too.
D-bag works well enough for my purposes
Sure, whatever works for you.
And we’ll all be destitute for it. Everyone loses when they do this, yes, even they do in the long run. Once nobody can buy a loaf of bread I’m sure we’ll collectively decide right at that moment that the rich actually do taste good and maybe they should pay more in taxes.
Trump’s government has made the US a village idiot - and if the idiot gets into a fight with the whole village, the idiot will have more bruises.
Why he does that - I don’t pretend to understand.
He’s preparing for an authoritarian takeover.
Almost every dictator in history enacted massive tariffs so they had a way to control the economy. Loyal businesses are given tariff exemptions while all the other ones are suppressed. That’s what Mussolini did, that’s what Putin did and now it’s what trump does.
I’ll wonder if that “we need guns to defend ourselves against an oppressive government” statement was true.
All the guns on the world won’t do any good against a missile. Gun nuts are just waiting for an excuse to shoot their neighbors. Jokes on them because no gun can save them from getting 🗡 In their sleep or getting their food ☠️.
And the United States won in Vietnam.
He’s trying to destroy the country. Amassing as many bruises as possible is the point.
The village idiot has more guns than the whole village together. So I’m not sure he will accept the bruises.
Until nukes start flying. I pray every day for the light of a thousand suns. We deserve it.
Trump basically ran his mouth, realized he had to drop something, whipped some crap together, took a dump in the living room and left for the golf field… exactly what MAGAtards wanted, hope you are enjoying it
Art of the deal, folks
Vlad Vexler makes the point that the point of is not at all economics but that it does have a basis in logic: it is about asserting that he can do this, that his political power is above economic rationality. It is a political move, not an economic play.
It’s also chaos.
He’s making it so nobody can even trust their own country or economy.
You just have to listen and trust him and Trump will make it right …
Can we stop winning already? I’m tired of winning so much.
translated some analytics written for Russian audience. from here: https://t.me/s/artjockey
About the Tariffs Today marked the “great day for the USA” previously announced by Trump, as the U.S. has now imposed import tariffs against the entire world. I won’t make predictions about how this will affect the global economy, how much the S&P has dropped, and so on. Instead, I want to draw attention to something that might not be immediately obvious.
The newly introduced tariffs can be divided into three parts: economic, political, and protective.
At the core of these tariffs is a baseline 10% duty on all imports. I’m not sure why there’s so much noise around this—basically, Zoomers invented the reusable shopping bag, and Trump has invented VAT. The U.S. has never had a national-level VAT before, only state-level sales taxes. Now, there will be a federal VAT, but only on imports and only at 10%.
There are also clear protective tariffs, intended to give advantages to domestic manufacturers and to motivate foreign companies that want to sell in the U.S. to move production inside the country, so they can stay competitive against local producers. These are 25% tariffs on all imported cars and computers. It’s all fairly straightforward and not worth overanalyzing. Russia has all of this too: VAT, protection for domestic car makers (e.g., AvtoVAZ), and maybe in the future Trump will even “invent” vehicle recycling fees.
In short, Trump could have quietly pushed a 10% import VAT through Congress without much publicity, and you wouldn’t have even seen the news in any headlines. But in that case, he wouldn’t have been able to kick off a series of trade wars.
The most interesting part of the tariffs is their political nature. I think everyone understands that the 54% tariff on all imports from China (a combination of a previous 20% and today’s 34%) is by no means a reciprocal move—it’s a global trade war that could even precede a real war. This was expected; Trump launched a trade war with China during his first term, and the motivations are clear.
What’s far more intriguing are the tariffs against some of America’s allied countries, which, in my opinion, make up a rather unexpected list:
India: 26%
Japan: 24%
EU: 20%
Taiwan: 32%
South Korea: 25%
Israel: 17%
Philippines: 17% (a country hosting U.S. military bases aimed at China)
Meanwhile, countries that didn’t receive tariff increases and stayed at the base 10%, from a global perspective, include:
South American nations: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay — 10%. Panama also 10%.
Oil-rich Middle Eastern countries: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, plus Turkey.
AUKUS members: UK and Australia — even though Trump criticized Australia in a speech, no extra tariffs were added.
Africa: Though likely of little strategic interest to Trump for now.
From this differentiation of tariffs, you can infer how Trump views the U.S.’s global strategic direction—a vision that will likely be pursued further.
Notice the low tariffs for South America. Remember how Rubio, right after taking office, made a diplomatic tour across Latin America—something that hadn’t happened in a century? It seems Trump is aiming to “pull Latin America out of China’s hands” and form a U.S.–Latin American alliance in the Western Hemisphere.
At the same time, clear preferences are being given to those joining new U.S. military alliances, as alternatives to the increasingly hard-to-control NATO.
On the other hand, traditional U.S. allies are out of luck. The economies of the EU, Japan, and South Korea—countries that have money but are not considered crucial allies by Trump—are being treated as revenue sources.
This is especially evident in the EU’s case. According to the “Trump Doctrine”, the main rival to the U.S. is China, and the EU is useless in the fight against China. They won’t go to war over Taiwan, nor will they support a likely sanctions regime against the PRC. So, in Trump’s view, they should simply start paying America in hard currency now, with the long-term plan being further deindustrialization and relocating manufacturing to the U.S…
The tariffs will go into effect between April 5 and 9. Based on past experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if they never actually take effect—maybe they’ll be repealed, suspended, or something else. But if nothing changes and the 20% tariffs on the EU, Japan, and others remain in place long-term, then the so-called “golden age of universal prosperity” will likely become a thing of the past for those nations.
They should tariff Israel a lot more
