Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

Post by asimpletune » Sun, Apr 13, 2025, 6:50 AM UTC

gscott wrote: post #294

forinti wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most probable outcome is that Trump causes enough trouble to incite the whole country against him. I don't see him completing his term. He's going to be impeached.

The rich have always blamed others for the growing wealth gap. Americans often point to outside forces instead of holding the government accountable. Years of messaging have trained people to support tariffs, spending cuts, and even anti-immigrant policies—despite the need for labor. The real issue isn't spending, it's taxation. And we've let China ignore WTO rules for too long. Trump should've targeted tariffs at Ch…

Post by timeon » Sun, Apr 13, 2025, 6:53 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #511

standardUser wrote: post #445

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No, so far we only see the very public capitulations coming from the Trump administration. We're also seeing a lot of signaling, also very public, from every other major economy that they are prepared to move on without the US.

If we translate this into negotiating at a used car dealership, I don’t think it would look that different. Of course everyone is going to project strength in public communications. Doing otherwise would put them in a worse negotiating position. You have to make your opponent think you’ll do something drastic, or else they won’t budge. So you have everyone yelling about how they’re doing something drastic. Just like…

Post by watwut » Sun, Apr 13, 2025, 6:56 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #562

alextingle wrote: post #551

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A free market requires regulations in order to operate. Regulations require a bureaucracy in order to be effective.

> Regulations require a bureaucracy in order to be effective. That's a very European point of view (though not uniquely European, it's also shared across many other cultures, e.g. in East Asia). The US has done pretty well with private rights of action. In fact, because our culture is so conservative and anti-authoritarian, centralized bureaucracies are rather quickly defanged or grossly underfunded. The most recent…

Post by timeon » Sun, Apr 13, 2025, 6:58 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #342

derefr wrote: post #322

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What about believing that he's a particularly-easily-manipulated patse (esp. when it comes to things he doesn't care about), and so this is someone else playing 4D chess through him? For all the accusations of fascism, nobody seems to remember that a key feature of fascism is a corporate-cabal shadow government that legitimizes its activities/policies by puppeteering the "real" government to both execute and justify…

That's what German industrialists were hoping to achieve through Hitler, but they didn't end up with anything like it.

Post by IOT_Apprentice » Sun, Apr 13, 2025, 7:00 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #495

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #484

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> This is Senator Chris Murphy explaining it’s not economic policy, it’s an attempt to blackmail corporations into submission by making a deal with him in return for sanctions relief. Weirdly the same explanation works if you're being less uncharitable, i.e. Apple agreed to invest $500B in the US but everybody knows new factories aren't going to be built overnight, so they get a reprieve from the tariffs for now prov…

Apple can agree to invest 500B to build a factory, but they don't have to actually do it. Building a factory takes years, and a big chunk of that happens long before you actually start work on site. You gotta find a site, work with local govt to negotiate servicing, environmental report (there's a couple years, and potentially a couple go-arounds right there.) So there can be lots of activity, lots of progress report…