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Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

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Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#171

Post by CottonMcKnight »

anal_reactor wrote: post #106
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #61

Could it be that Trump's main goal is to stay in power? I mean not only for the next 3 years. But beyond. If we look at his actions from this angle, could they make sense?

Step 1: manufacture a crisis Step 2: become an emergency dictator "for the duration of the crisis" Step 3: make sure the crisis never goes away, but it's not so bad that people would revolt It's basically dictatorship 101. In this case the US happens to be the center of global economy, so a crisis in the US also causes a crisis elsewhere, but that's an irrelevant side effect. The only question is whether Americans wi…

People forget that he already tried during Covid, when he tweeted that the election should be postponed.

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#172

Post by mizzao »

Izkata wrote: post #131
seydor wrote: post #85

I believe the idea was "Very High Tarrifs" and the formula was some kid in MS Excel . They are definitely not reciprocal. They don't need to be, since the plan was to use the high tarrifs as negotiating tool to somehow reduce the US national debt

Article links here which explains how they did it, with reasoning and references: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

Gotta love these two sentences in that article:

(when describing the model) Let ε(when implementing the model) The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4.

4 is less than 0, right? Right?!?

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#173

Post by owyn »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #116
nxobject wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put my chips on the formula being $(LLM_OF_CHOICE), given the lack of attention paid to details like, say, uninhabited islands near the Antarctic. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/critics-suspect-...

I think this is really interesting and would be fun to find out what really happened. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/04/revea... I have three theories, based this article. 1. The administration used an LLM on certain data and it incorrectly conflated the countries. 2. Certain companies listed regions of export to avoid customs, duties, or for other reasons and it now indirectly got exposed. The a…

All the "weird" countries on the list have internet domain names .nf .tk .gi .io The "penguin island" has the domain .hm

So the conclusion is that the intern failed geography and did not realize that those aren't countries.

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#175

Post by rsynnott »

hayst4ck wrote: post #70

Trump is only confusing if you think his policies are meant to benefit America. If you don't believe that, then his policies are terrifyingly not confusing. If you believe his policies are primarily meant to benefit American oligarchs or Russia, his policies are even less confusing. Withdrawing support for Ukraine and not putting tariffs on Russia, despite putting tariffs on uninhabited "Heard Island and McDonald Isl…

I mean, Occam’s Razor says he’s just incompetent, honestly. And he’s had a bit of an obsession with tariffs for a _very_ long time. He’s been going on about them since before the fall of the Soviet Union, so unless you’re speculating some sort of secret Putinist rebel cell within the former Soviet Union influencing him 40 years ago, it’s probably just that he’s quite stupid.

Also, this kind of ignores how dependent Russia is on _China_. If this were actually at Russia’s behest, China would hardly even be bothering with mirroring tariffs; it would just call Putin to heel.

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#176

Post by rsynnott »

nprateem wrote: post #165
watwut wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that makes sense as fighting China. Especially not the Greenland thing. He makes China looks good which is quite a feat. > He wants to choke them with tariffs (and now has leverage to get the rest of the world to join in). Like, how? You expect the countries to put tariff on Chine, risk to have tariffs put on them by both China and unpredictable USA? He is loosing leverage here rather then gaining it. > They…

It's all here. This seems to be their playbook: https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese... They'll tie the defence umbrella to tariffs and good behaviour.

I mean, if that were the case, then their previous behaviour on Ukraine seems baffling, as it has made the defence umbrella look, at a minimum, kinda tattered. Like, we are now in a world where Poland is talking to France about hosting French nuclear warheads. If you told someone in 2010 that that would be happening in 2025 they’d think you were completely insane.

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#177

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #138
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've gotten inaccurate information. Only the Secretary of Defense and Navy chief were appointed by Trump, the rest were appointed by Biden. (The incoming chairman will also be a Trump appointee, of course.)

Who do you think the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is and who appointed them?

The seat is formally unfilled, so the vice chairman Christopher Grady (appointed by Biden) is the current acting chairman. You may be thinking of Dan Caine, who Trump nominated for the position but hasn't yet been confirmed.

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#178

Post by EasyMark »

seydor wrote: post #85

I believe the idea was "Very High Tarrifs" and the formula was some kid in MS Excel . They are definitely not reciprocal. They don't need to be, since the plan was to use the high tarrifs as negotiating tool to somehow reduce the US national debt

The only thing that fixes the Budget deficit is higher taxes (likely on the upper middle class and on up, especially the wealthy and corps) and lowered spending. Nothing else will fix it. It's not because of trade deficits. Any moron can see that but that says a lot about Trump and his toadie circle.

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#179

Post by EasyMark »

nxobject wrote: post #92
seydor wrote: post #85

I believe the idea was "Very High Tarrifs" and the formula was some kid in MS Excel . They are definitely not reciprocal. They don't need to be, since the plan was to use the high tarrifs as negotiating tool to somehow reduce the US national debt

I'd put my chips on the formula being $(LLM_OF_CHOICE), given the lack of attention paid to details like, say, uninhabited islands near the Antarctic. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/critics-suspect-...

I don't think it's LLM, not everthing is AI, just because that's the hot topic of the day. This forumla is too simple, it's essentially 0.5 * (their_portion_of_trade_deficit / total_trade_deficit_with_country) % . It's not complex at all and that formula fits all the % calculated by Trump's board of "liberation" too closely to not be essetially what he and his cronies came up with. Likely one of the DOGGie boys

Re: Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error

#180

Post by EasyMark »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #25

It makes plenty of sense if you consider that it wasn't designed to benefit the US, but rather to drive US trade to our competitors.

It's designed to destroy America's position in the world and is almost certainly a dictate from Russia. I mean they didn't even put tariffs on our most antagonistic supposed adversary, and why would they do that other than he has Trump by the short hairs? for god sakes they put tariffs on penguins on a virtually unknown island nation.
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