941–950 of 1001 posts
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?
they don't have TDS
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Incompetence is way more dangerous than people realize. These tariffs are China's Four Pests campaign. Mao, a very trump like figure, decided to protect Chinese crops by destroying sparrows that were picking at them. Killing sparrows killed a predator of insects which did more damage to crops. This coupled with reality denying policies and ignoring experts led to one of the most devastating famines the world has ever…
Or this is like the long history of American tariffs which gave it world class industry. We are in the midst of a 4th industrial revolution and all this insane manufacturing tech being developed just gets shipped over to china because nobody in the US wants to touch it for fear of failing. For every four pests Mao had 100 successful projects that nobody talks about. Harm reduction is not an optimal strategy for any g…
The Great Chinese Famine was a famine that occurred between 1959 and 1961 in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).
That's 3% to 10% of China's population starved to death at the time.
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I've seen relatively little discussion about these lawsuits, but I do think there is a pretty good chance that SCOTUS will rule these tariffs unconstitutional. (It's certainly more likely than Congress rescinding the powers they've ceded to the presidency.) Constitutionally, the power to set tariffs resides with the Legislative branch, not the Executive branch. Congress has delegated some authority to set tariffs und…
> I do think there is a pretty good chance that SCOTUS will rule these tariffs unconstitutional. Unlikely. SCOTUS is cowed, as shown by the latest batch of rulings ( https://www.npr.org/2025/04/08/nx-s1-5351799/scotus-probatio... ). They want to avoid his ire, and interference. Possibly, they are saving dry powder for a bigger fight.
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> Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky 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 def…
This is all correct, but it's a first principles explanation that doesn't explain why US bonds, and in particular the 10-year note, spiked today . Yes, eventually excessive tariffs would have that result. They literally hadn't even taken effect yet. So this doesn't explain the bond motion today. Someone was dumping, we don't know who or why. But the answer to that question is a lot (a lot ) more important than people…
https://x.com/Nihonpolitics/status/1910096159835594786?t=RWB...
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Except they implemented the decision and are responding to countries’ willingness to negotiate fair trade terms, just like with Mexico. Nobody is saying “just joking”. If people weren’t 1000% dismissive of the leader’s stated intentions they might be able to follow along. It’s been crystal clear to me that the goal has always been to renegotiate trade terms not to live in a world with persistent reciprocal tariffs.
Not sure why this is downvoted, this is absolutely the kind of power play Trump did his entire business career on.
You can get rich this way, but you can't get respect. The fact that half of a respected nation opted for this approach continues to baffle me.
And maybe I should say "formerly respected nation", the global perception of the US goes rapidly down. I guess the question now is will the nation actually profit from that.
"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…
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im not an economist, I have no valid opinion on if this is right or not. BUT, I actually started looking at moving more of the stable bond/treasury holding bit of my portfolio to foreign funds recently (in addition to moving more of the stock/mutual fund balance to international stuff). If I'm thinking about that as an individual private citizen of the US, I can't imagine what actual professionals are thinking about.
Most foreign mutual funds and ETFs are classified as Passive Foreign Investment Companies (PFICs). PFIC investments face complex and often punitive tax treatment. Gains may be taxed at the highest marginal ordinary income tax rate (not the lower capital gains rate). Additional interest charges may apply. Annual filing requirements via Form 8621 for each PFIC
For instance, here are two BlackRock ETFs tracking the MSCI emerging markets index, one US-domiciled and one Ireland-domiciled: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239637/ishares-msci-emer... , https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/251857/ish...
They are for practical purposes the same thing.
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>From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury You're making it seem that there's a plan ... but what if this is just regular incompetence coupled with capricious behavior from a chaos agent? I'm watching various officials give interviews and all of them are non-committal as it pertains to expectations. Why? Because none of them actually know!!!…
I'd like to expand out why I hold this belief. The political cohort behind the president is roughly in two halves. The first half are the original MAGA crowd (looking out for the working class, pro-liberty, anti-woke, etc.). The second half are the billionaire crowd. The second group are active on pod casts, on Twitter/X, and are partly represented in government (directly or as advisors). An easy way to follow up on…
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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
What I don't understand is why other countries didn't make the threat to make any tariffs hold for a year or longer. That would scare Trump away from doing these stupid experiments.
I suppose you could have a kind of tariff equivalent of the doomsday machine from Dr Strangelove, in principle; a set of automatic measures to come into force if the adversary does [whatever]. However, Trump strikes me as a bit of a General Ripper, so it might not be a _great_ idea.