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Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

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Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#641

Post by amluto »

walterbell wrote: post #584
kristiandupont wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever paper may have "influenced" the policy, here is the official statement and it is very much napkin math and nothing else. https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

That "napkin math" guide is like "enterprise pricing"—a starting point—for negotiation defined by the official White House Executive Order, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regu... (c) Should any trading partner take significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters, I may further modify the HTSU…

This is nonsense. The “non-reciprocal trade arrangements” mentioned don’t obviously exist at all, and, to the extent they exist, they are certainly not measured in any meaningful respect by the formulas going into the tariffs.

Having spent a whopping ten minutes finding official data (and I have no idea how good this data is as a whole — probably mediocre but far better than whatever nonsense the USTR is doing):

(a) The EU seems to thing that they run a trade surplus with us in goods and a deficit in services, and they’re close to balancing out.

(b) The US’s own data shows a net surplus with some countries and a net deficit with others. See here, page 28:

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_p...

If the US was trying to negotiate sensibly and to identify anything remotely non-reciprocal, they would be rewarding the countries with positive numbers in that table! The US should be delighted to trade with Australia, Brazil, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc! By all means, we should buy more widgets and sell more fancy services!

As a silly analogy: if your housemate goes on a wild drunken rampage and starts trashing everything in sight while screaming “you need to reciprocate and wash the dishes more often and I will continue trashing things until you wash the dishes reciprocally,” the situation is not a viable negotiation tactic.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#642

Post by acdha »

heigh wrote: post #618
acdha wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of it is the lost trust in American tech. That’s most prominent in the military debates around whether other countries can rely on their expensive hardware working if they run afoul of American policy, or if the president is looking for leverage to extort a mineral deal, but it’s also highly relevant for the civilian side. For pretty much as long as we’ve had computers, most other countries have truste…

I think since the Snowden revelations it’s pretty clear there is no holds barred in terms of intelligence overreach from practically every angle and state. What’s happening now, with the tariffs, is really wild (but ultra dumb imho) territory…

Snowden showed that they were willing to compromise allies, but there was still some idea that it was at least plausibly legitimate targets.

Now people are worried that economic espionage or even sabotage are possible. For example, if you are the government of Canada, Snowden annoyed you but you weren’t asking whether Microsoft Update would brick every computer in your government right before a military assault. You probably aren’t thinking that’s highly likely now, either, but you have some intelligence officers analyzing it seriously in a way which would have seemed paranoid a decade ago.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#643

Post by pokerface_86 »

csense wrote: post #531
cycomanic wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was bringing this up with a guy yesterday who was genuinely supporting the policies and somebody chimed in that they were not worried at all, because everyone wants to trade with the big boy in town. Trust is not important if they are afraid of you (I'm paraphrasing). Quite a different perspective, but it is consistent with an observation I made about a lot of US comments, people are quite happy for their country/g…

> "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" Doesn't work. We opened trade to China in the '70s. They took advantage of us, stealing IP, manipulating currency, paying their people terrible wages, crapping all over the environment. We let their companies freely in the US, they very severely restricted US business ventures in China. Detroit, a former shining city in the industrial heartland, is now…

[dead]

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#644

Post by gdilla »

thethimble wrote: post #525
nitwit005 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly convinced it's easier feel like there is some plan, even if a bad or sinister one, than things being in a state of genuine chaos. You occasionally see the people jumping between different ideas as to what the underlying plan is, once events no longer support their initial idea.

The plan is crystal clear: 1. When equities crash, market liquidity floods the bond market causing yields to drop 2. Refinance debt at these lower rates massively reducing interest burden 3. Cut government spending to cause rates to drop further 4. Reduced rates with a balanced budget results in non-inflationary borrowing and an economic upswing Along the way, eliminate taxes for those earning below $150k. If all of…

or they could've... taxed wealth. But the broligarchs who control trump wouldn't be ok with that.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#645

Post by whatever1 »

tasuki wrote: post #594
whatever1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can fall 90% slowly. Look at south Europe after 2018

I did, and did not see a 90% fall.

The Greek stock exchange went gradually from ~5,500 in 2007 to ~ 500 in 2011.

The recovery started only after 2020 ish. Today it is around ~1,500.

Edit: Oh now I see. I had a typo. I meant to say the crash happened after 2008 not 2018.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#646

Post by hackly »

breadwinner wrote: post #637
Tadpole9181 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, this is going to have to pass the house. Then, Trump will veto it. Then, the senate will need 16 Republican senators (30% of the party) to vote against it. And it's still a toss-up if Trump will even obey it or if he'll executively order customs to continue the Tariffs. So unless Republicans suddenly grow a spine, which is unlikely given their current strategy is "hide the stock ticket on Fox news" and p…

My assumption is that Trump understands what a mess he has gotten himself into and wants to extricate his head, without losing face. Congressional action will allow him to do that because he can blame congress for undoing his tariffs which was a good idea all along. This is the only way out.

I don’t think that’s a fair assumption.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#647

Post by senordevnyc »

markus_zhang wrote: post #468
owebmaster wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fuck it. I just got a small raise and bonus but feel so insecure. I expect to lose job at any moment. just today 3 people from my network messaged me about losing their job and asking about some opportunity. They worked remotely for American companies (from Brazil).

Yeah, that's the uncertainty we all have to face. I hope they find some local jobs at least. I don't even know what I can do if I can't find an IT job. I don't have any other skills.

I feel similarly, and I actually just got laid off last week.

However, I don’t think tariffs are going to result in no more IT jobs, I’m sure there will be jobs available, they might just not pay as much as they have.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#648

Post by rsynnott »

cycomanic wrote: post #324
toddmorey wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well put. Alliances take years to build but can be broken in just days. I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back towards an interest in global stability, but I think anyone partnering with the US would do so VERY carefully and right now the entire world is plotting how to remove US dependencies.

I was bringing this up with a guy yesterday who was genuinely supporting the policies and somebody chimed in that they were not worried at all, because everyone wants to trade with the big boy in town. Trust is not important if they are afraid of you (I'm paraphrasing). Quite a different perspective, but it is consistent with an observation I made about a lot of US comments, people are quite happy for their country/g…

> Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

I mean, in the specific realm of trade wars, that’s probably more correct, because the game theory of the thing tends to make retaliating against the aggressor nigh-inevitable, particularly in a “country v world” situation.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#649

Post by hackly »

anigbrowl wrote: post #302
inatreecrown2 wrote: post #160

Isn't it obvious that Trump's goal are not these tariffs, but renegotiated trading agreements? But everybody just seems to love to proclaim this the end of US.

Isn't it obvious that you can't negotiate effectively if nobody trusts you?

Trust doesn’t matter if you have the most powerful military force in the world. You think the middle eastern countries surrounding Israel trust Netanyahu? Nope, but they sure fall in line and keep the negotiated peace because let’s face it, all of them combined will crumble before a single Israeli battalion. Might does indeed work in negotiations regardless of trust.

Re: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

#650

Post by joquarky »

tasuki wrote: post #588
lenerdenator wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have people whose jobs it is to even out those troughs, and I don't think you realize just how wealthy the wealthiest wealthy really are. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison each have a net worth that is on par with the total gross economic output of a small American metropolitan area.

> Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison each have a net worth that is on par with the total gross economic output of a small American metropolitan area. You're comparing apples to oranges. Net worth is in dollars, while economic output is dollars per unit of time. The comparison does not make sense. You didn't even say which unit of time! Hell, I have a higher net worth than the total economic output of the U…

This level of pedantry won't play in reality against someone who just lost everything and is seeking revenge on the tech bros who they perceive as enabling all of this.
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