241–250 of 931 posts
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No. This reads as capitulation by Trump who is now finding out his long held, half-baked economic theories are wrong. Trump got spanked by the bond market and realized how weak his position was. He can't walk it all back overnight without appearing even weaker than he already is. He's going to slowly roll back most consequential tariffs to try to escape blame for damaging the economy.
Trump’s next book: “The Art of the Fold”.
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It's not the furthest thing from the American economy as it stands today, but the inevitable conclusion of the "free-market" capitalism we've been practicing over the past number of decades. Donald Trump is the poster child of American capitalism gone right , he's an aspiration for wealthy capitalists across the nation. Generally people have felt that if only we could get an American businessman like Trump in charge…
> Donald Trump is the poster child of American capitalism gone right This is the same guy who went bankrupt 3 times, including a casino? The same guy who'd be as rich as he is today if he had invested the funds bequeathed by his father? The one who had a TV show based on him that was incredibly manipulated to make him appear richer and wiser than he really is?
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> many Americans will want to take a vacation to Canada to get a deal on their phone. That just doesn’t make sense. If they’re following the law they’d have to declare the purchase when they come home.
Yes, but people don’t always follow the law. CBP reported a spike in people smuggling eggs last month, and the margin on iPhones is a lot more tempting.
This reads to me as "we're doubling-down on 145%+ tariffs for everyone else". This is getting frighteningly close to a Russian-style economy. As in, a handful of powerful, connected "insiders" will be allowed to operate businesses, and will dominate... while everyone else gets wiped out, by acts of government. The furthest system possible from the free-market paradigm that built the American economy as it stands toda…
Exactly. I hope our government can survive the next 4 years for criminal investigations into this era. We can't become Russia.
From an outsider’s perspective, it’s difficult to discern any coherent U.S. strategy—assuming one even exists. One day it’s a 145% tariff on China. The next, it’s “Well, it’s still 145%, but Apple and Nvidia are exempted because their stock prices might take a hit.” Then comes a 90-day pause, adding to the confusion. It’s not clear whether Jamieson Greer is actually steering this, or if any of it was thoroughly thoug…
The strategy is to sow fear and uncertainty to drive capital from stocks to government bonds and drive down the bond yield. Bessant is pretty clear about this. Once they get the bond yields down and refinance a lot of the short term debt into longer term debt they free up operating budget. Combine with Elon’s DOGE cutting costs and Lutnick raising some capital from tariffs, and it is a pretty good strategy. I don’t a…
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Exactly. I hope our government can survive the next 4 years for criminal investigations into this era. We can't become Russia.
What crimes were committed and could be prosecuted under the Supreme Court's immunity ruling?
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/well-timed-options-...
(Besides, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's Russian oligarch friends were among these traders.)
You might think, as the authors of this exemption did, “well then we will exempt computer parts.” Then people will simply import the parts. But if you manufacture those parts in the US, you are suddenly at a massive disadvantage. Your computer parts factory likely runs using a large amount of imported raw materials, imported machines, and imported tooling, and there are no tariff exemptions for those broad categories… so you’re screwed. Oftentimes there is no reasonable domestic substitute. You will go out of business in favor of someone importing the parts, which now happens tariff-free under an exemption. That’s why, generally speaking, tariff exemptions are deadly to domestic manufacturing.
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I thought this is what happened during covid already. We wiped out a large number of small businesses. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
Small businesses die and start all the time. It's unsurprising that more of them would die during a massive recession and a global pandemic. Those numbers are meaningless without a similar count of small businesses opening.
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He won by a single point, when 30% of the population didn’t vote. It’s not good for the future of the country that he got anywhere as many votes as he did but we should remember that an emboldened minority is still a minority.
A large minority is still large. And not voting is a signal of apathy. Not opposition.
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So all anyone has to do to qualify is produce some of the most complicated electronic devices and components in the history of the world at the largest scale possible, without which there is zero chance of being sustainable or competitive, and then they can benefit from the gifts to the established giants? What a gift. What a great idea. That'll surely spur innovation and domestic production and have no effect to fur…
And if you build your tech in US, well, you are disadvantaged because you have to pay the tariffs on every component you import from China. So it’s actually an incentive to build in China.
Electronic imports, no/low tariffs.
Import material to produce electronics, high imports.