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Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

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Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#571
post #215

Congress could end this in 24 hours with a one paragraph/page bill and regardless who is in power next decade the dems should anyway It's like some blackhat is trying to find every loophole in government and exploiting it, like a fuzzer test

The democrats has the president for 4 years, and plenty of power in congress. If they cared they would have done something.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also not sure why other countries aren't moving to criminalize trading crypto to try to tank him and his cronies since the US has given up on preventing presidential conflict of interest.

uhhhhh if you want bitcoin and etherium to moon the best thing you could do for the crypto-community would be to present it as a tangible threat to your country's political and financial elite due to existing outside the confines of their regulatory powers.

When the IRS left it in the grey zone it wasn't really going to the moon because every financial advisor couldn't say 5% of you retirement should be in an investment we can't sell you. It would take a lot more and richer people with oppositional disorders to make up for some universal retirement "just in case" advice.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#573

Is it just the historical legacy of international trade that tariffs apply only to physical goods, but not to something like software-as-a-service subscriptions, digital media, or intellectual property? As the latter categories are more representative of US exports, it would surely be an interesting escalation if other countries were to start including them in their “retaliatory” tariffs.

I still wonder why this was not done instantly by EU. US has an imbalance on goods that was used to calculate the tariff amount, but it has the opposite imbalance on service from what I've read

It would be a just a hefty fee for most EU companies and not much more. From what I've seen Azure is pretty popular in most bigger companies and smaller shops and websites use often AWS or Google cloud. Microsoft Windows and Office is also everywhere - it would be a tax on European business with little effects on the USA because moving away from big clouds won't happen because there is no realistic alternative.

Last I've looked "Lidl Cloud" from Schwartz-IT that is often mentioned as alternative is basically managed Kubernetes for more than double the price of Azure/AWS before rebates. They have that idiotic meaningless TÜV button on their websites and unfortunately it's not technical excellence but rather a trap for boomer CEOs...

Europe missed that boat unfortunately and I don't see that changing soon. Hetzner/OVH and so on only provide bare metal or virtual machines for little money but there is no European cloud with serious IaC and managed services that are stable and battle tested as far as I know.

Changing taxation rules is the interesting topic but unfortunately EU countries are competing on that and that would destroy the business model of countries like Luxembourg or Ireland - I'm all for changing it and it would be better in the long-term but it's probably impossible to pull off at the moment.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#574

So we're all in for another ride like this in 3 months? How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment? As nice as this surge is, I'm more focused on upping my cash reserves and bracing myself for a recession.

The administration has signaled that they expect to negotiate acceptable balance-of-trade deals with the US's Asian allies over the next few weeks. If that happens, I can see businesses being certain enough to make investments. Until then I'm bracing for a recession too.

Sure. Thr only thing certain with a character like him at the helm is interesting times, so brace yourself.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donald is weak. He was always going to fold. Once China and the EU called his bluff and retaliated, he was done. Lasted less than 24 hours.

The EU actually executed some strategy. First they said they would love 0/0 tariffs, which sounds fair to pretty much anyone. And when that didn't fly they put on selective reciprocal 25% tariffs. What Trump did looks even more like a clown show.

They floated 0/0 tariffs before the reciprocal tariffs (and again after), and their tariffs this morning was in retaliation for the steel and aluminum tariffs, not for the reciprocal tariffs.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment? Who cares? Business leaders & the politicians they helped elect are stripping the copper from the country. Whatever's left when they're done is someone else's problem.

I care?? Much of my family works in trades, have their own small businesses with employees and are very much subject to tariffs for their supplies. They did not vote for any of this.

Maybe not all of them as individuals, but them as a public. It's not just a fluke of the last election, over the past two decades the u.s. has given control of all branches of government to Trump.

Beyond that, IMO, the public doesn't really care about tariffs. Right now there is a lot of noise because this kind of capricious threat/application of tariffs is something new, but the tariff chaos will become boring background noise in a few months and people will move on to the next thing.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The President can only legally set tarrifs in an "emergency". Planning tarrifs 90 days out is really stretching the definition--I'm not holding my breath, but maybe the courts will uphold the constitution on this one?

Normally there are rules regarding how long an emergency can last. This is why, I kid you not, the Republican controlled Congress declared there are no more calendar days in this session of Congress. Every day is March 11. So they'll let him do it as long as he likes.

Notably, not the first time this legal fiction has been used, but I don’t really get what the previous uses were for. E.g., for the 2021–2022 Congress, section 7 of the War Powers Resolution[1], as well as House rules[2] XIII clause 7, XXII clause 7(c)(1), and XV clause 7 (all of which require something to be done within a prespecified number of either calendar or legislative days) were all suspended[3]

  from 2021-01-03 to 2021-01-28 by HR 8 [4],
  from 2021-03-13 to 2021-04-22 by HR 118,
  from 2022-08-01 to 2022-09-30 by HR 1289,
  from 2022-10-03 to 2022-11-11 by HR 1396,
  from 2022-11-21 to 2022-11-28 by HR 1464,
  from 2022-12-22 until the end by HR 1529,
which looks like vacations, campaigning and such? I’m not really sure, but it’s evident the formula had already been out there and was not a momentary fit of insanity and/or legislative genius (the Congress before that one used it too, for example), I’m just not sure what it was used for before.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1546

[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CLERK-RULE-PAMPHLET-...

[3] https://www.congress.gov/quick-search/legislation?wordsPhras...

[4] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolutio... (mutatis mutandis for the others)

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#578
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also china has 125% tarriff but the reason that they couldn't originally give 10% to Vietnam was trans-shipment of Chinese goods. If it wasn't happening before, it certainly will be now. What's actually wrong with them.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the tariffs are a distraction. The 10% across the board appears more like a tax hike without calling it one while the focus on China is just the same old trade war from the first term with louder chest-beating.

But a distraction from what? There doesn't seem to be any kind of obvious other thing they're trying to do with the cover. They're not exactly being secretive with ICE arrests, the mass layoffs from the federal government, or their weird campaign against DEI that the administration seems to have all but forgotten about.

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#579
post #554
post #520

The 10% apparently also apply to Canada and Mexico now, which they didn’t before: > In a strange turn of events, the president seems to have added another 10 percent tariff to Canada and Mexico. Asked earlier if the 10 percent tariff extended to those countries, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said that it did. And a White House official clarified for me just now that that was the case. Previously, Canada and…

Also china has 125% tarriff but the reason that they couldn't originally give 10% to Vietnam was trans-shipment of Chinese goods. If it wasn't happening before, it certainly will be now. What's actually wrong with them.

The reason they have reduced all tariffs back down to 10% even for the countries that were obviously transshipping (Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia) is that they need time to negotiate with those countries, to make sure these countries now put similarly high tariffs (100%+) on China, so that transshipping is reduced to nothing

Re: Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

#580

"It’s the T-bills wot dun it." That’s my read on why the U.S. just paused the global tariff hike to 10%. From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Why? Because Uncle Sam has to refinance a mountain of debt this year, and the cost of that depends heavily on Treasury yields — especially the 10-year. That’s the rate that sets the tone for every…

Yeah... if that was their reasoning then they are as dumb as a sack of rocks. The rates went up further after the tariffs pause today.

> Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky.

No shit. Having an inconsistent policy because of clear incompetence (xx Dimensional chess) is a very bad sign for the world largest economy. At some point this will hit the bonds which is the foundation of this economy.

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