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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

#111

Post by nxobject »

lostlogin wrote: post #78
adamredwoods wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit's r/QuiverQuantitative. follows trades and puts by members of congress. MJ Greene bought stock in Dollar General.

I’m not in the US, what could this mean?

The running joke is that American legislators make "surprisingly" good stock trades for "reasons." Regardless or not of whether these picks actually tend to be good long term investments, it really, really rankles to know that a legislator expects poverty to come, is banking on that, but is otherwise not telling diddly squat to her constituents.

https://www.morningstar.com/funds/2-etfs-that-track-congress...

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

#112

Post by tzs »

hello_computer wrote: post #87

The global economy is a complex system. Far more complex than software. All of the nerds will adjust their pocket protectors and spew their dubious word-salad (for or against), but the fact of the matter is that nobody truly knows what the nth-order effects will be until they happen. AEI is just another church of Austrian economics--still burning incense for the ghost of Milton Friedman. If you told any of them, " Ta…

> All of the nerds will adjust their pocket protectors and spew their dubious word-salad (for or against), but the fact of the matter is that nobody truly knows what the nth-order effects will be until they happen

It doesn't really matter if they analyze the nth-order effects correctly because there is enough wrong with these tariffs that the 1st order effects will be bad enough that the higher order effects won't matter.

Even if Trump is right that the US should not have a trade deficit it only makes sense to apply that to US trade a whole, not to trade with each individual country.

If you apply it to each country independently then you cannot trade with a country that has something you need but doesn't need anything from you. That would exclude circular trade (US buys from A, A buys from B, B buys from the US) for example.

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

#113

Post by vkou »

wraaath wrote: post #101
DarknessFalls wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plan for the tariffs to reverse course once enough political pressure mounts. Calls for say, three months out.

calls for 3 months out only make sense once the stock price is decimated, and there's no certainty that prices will recover given the bumbling antics of this administration.

If they give the Federal Reserve the DOGE treatment next week, negative interest rates could always save stock prices.

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

#115

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #110
abraxas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point he gives no fucks about what anyone thinks because the plan is to consolidate the oligarchic power to its maximum, russia style. Winning the hearts and minds is not and never was a part of his plan. And the sad thing is that they will probably succeed. I have no idea why you Americans are so naive about someone who staged a putsch to give up power voluntarily now that he's got it. You will be a russia s…

I'm just not sure what people mean when they talk about "consolidating power" as something distinct from convincing people that you should have lots of power. "Russia style" consolidation of power under Putin involved quite a lot of winning hearts and minds. Rather than inducing a recession, for example, Putin doubled the Russian GDP over his first 4 years. I'm not naive about the fact that Trump would like to stay i…

Making people rich and powerful wins their hearts and minds pretty fast.

Look up the military leaders of the USA. Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Service Chiefs (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force) ... all appointed by Trump.

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

#116

Post by iJohnDoe »

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 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 article alludes to this without saying so?

3. The administration listed what seemed like inconsequential regions for the purpose of preventing Australia, for this example, of just saying it was exported from Norfolk Islands to dodge tariffs. Although, this is giving the administration way too much credit and if they are reading this don’t steal this as reason. :-)

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

#117

Post by ornornor »

overdrive110 wrote: post #28
user1241320 wrote: post #14

Funny he put like Martinique which is a territory governed by France

First I thought it could make sense considering the territories have some differences in taxes on imports. But in that case, why is Åland missing then?

Because they couldn’t figure out how to type « Å » on the murrican keyboard.

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

#118

Post by vkou »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #110
abraxas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point he gives no fucks about what anyone thinks because the plan is to consolidate the oligarchic power to its maximum, russia style. Winning the hearts and minds is not and never was a part of his plan. And the sad thing is that they will probably succeed. I have no idea why you Americans are so naive about someone who staged a putsch to give up power voluntarily now that he's got it. You will be a russia s…

I'm just not sure what people mean when they talk about "consolidating power" as something distinct from convincing people that you should have lots of power. "Russia style" consolidation of power under Putin involved quite a lot of winning hearts and minds. Rather than inducing a recession, for example, Putin doubled the Russian GDP over his first 4 years. I'm not naive about the fact that Trump would like to stay i…

Putin wasn't who consolidated power in Russia, Yeltsin did, when he successfully carried out his coup. Russia stopped being a semi-functional democracy in ~1993, even if it wasn't yet clear to anyone living there at the time.

Putin just stepped into the nest of ~unlimited executive power that was already made for him.

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

#119

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

vkou wrote: post #118
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just not sure what people mean when they talk about "consolidating power" as something distinct from convincing people that you should have lots of power. "Russia style" consolidation of power under Putin involved quite a lot of winning hearts and minds. Rather than inducing a recession, for example, Putin doubled the Russian GDP over his first 4 years. I'm not naive about the fact that Trump would like to stay i…

Putin wasn't who consolidated power in Russia, Yeltsin did, when he successfully carried out his coup. Russia stopped being a semi-functional democracy in ~1993, even if it wasn't yet clear to anyone living there at the time. Putin just stepped into the nest of ~unlimited executive power that was already made for him.

If you put the end date of Russia's democracy 2 years after its start date, I'm not sure it's right to say it ever had one.

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

#120

Post by hello_computer »

tzs wrote: post #112
hello_computer wrote: post #87

The global economy is a complex system. Far more complex than software. All of the nerds will adjust their pocket protectors and spew their dubious word-salad (for or against), but the fact of the matter is that nobody truly knows what the nth-order effects will be until they happen. AEI is just another church of Austrian economics--still burning incense for the ghost of Milton Friedman. If you told any of them, " Ta…

> All of the nerds will adjust their pocket protectors and spew their dubious word-salad (for or against), but the fact of the matter is that nobody truly knows what the nth-order effects will be until they happen It doesn't really matter if they analyze the nth-order effects correctly because there is enough wrong with these tariffs that the 1st order effects will be bad enough that the higher order effects won't ma…

That is a very long way to say, "That's why I keep a picture to remember her by."
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