611–620 of 1001 posts
Is anyone sure this is not stock manipulation? Honest question.
i wonder why the rest of the world doesn't just come together for a while and stop trading / providing raw materials to the u.s. for let's say a year or so. isn't this all just a huge pile of bluff poker?
If the country gets rich from tariffs why stop them?
"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…
There's also a more basic answer to why US debt got more expensive. There is no such thing as a "trade deficit". You cannot import something without exporting something else. That something else, in almost 100% of the situations, is dollars. What do you do with dollars, if there's nothing you want to buy? You buy debt. So, every trade deficit ultimately tends to export debt. We have long known that government debt is proportional to trade deficits.
The problem with tariffs, in this context, is that they are being used as a signal that we don't want to sell people dollars anymore, explicitly saying "no more trade deficits". In doing so we are choking off the supply of dollars used to buy debt (rather abruptly), so that US debt is chasing fewer dollars and has to give a bigger yield as a result.
What's worse, is that because we are signalling that the tariffs are meant to be permanent, and we're seeing reciprocal tariffs as a result. When that happens, it means that using dollars in the future will purchase fewer US goods, so the time discount of money has gone up too. Further driving up yields to make bonds attractive enough to sell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congress does have the power (article I, section 8), however it delegated this power to the president for "extraordinary" situations with certain laws.
"Extraordinary", such as a fictional fentanyl emergency at the northern border (despite the fact that a trivial amount of fentanyl enters the U.S. from Canada, and more enters Canada from the U.S.). Of course, you have Congress to keep the President in check that these are real emergencies. Which is why the House will definitely be bringing S.J.Res. 37 to the floor, right? Because it's their sworn duty to act as a ch…
10% is still a lot. Counter tariffs will still happen.
"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…
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…
Seems they reversed course on that. Or, they don’t know what they’re doing. > It's been a confusing day. > As Verity said, it turns out Canada and Mexico are not getting a new 10 per cent tariff after all. > The White House reversed its earlier announcement in a new statement just now. Here's the bottom line: No new developments for Canada and Mexico today. > That means there are still worldwide 25 per cent tariffs o…
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…
>There’s no change to Canada and Mexico tariffs, indicating that their levies aren’t going down to the 10% baseline. Recall that Trump initially threatened a 25% surtax on each of them. That morphed over time to affect non-USMCA compliant goods -- and it’s not crystal-clear exactly what proportion of Canadian and Mexican shipments that then affects. Canadian energy products also got a smaller rate.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2025-04-08/trump-ta...