The reality is that there is no tax break large enough to make up the difference in costs for a lot of things. Even with tariffs China is still cheaper.
The goal is not to better the country or the economy. The goal is to make money, for his friends and connections to make money, and leave everything else destroyed while they laugh.
The tariffs not making sense is expected.
Tariff = more money into Fed govt. -> funnel money from Fed govt into his and his friends pocket.
This is a faster way to get money out of the populace and into his accounts.
Look. He had the stupid tariff idea. He liked it because he likes the thought of getting his way by punishing people who defy him. That’s how he sees tariffs. It wasn’t a good idea. People told him that. So, being a stubborn narcissist, he wanted to do it more. Now here we are.
He’s trying to raise revenue in a way he can control.
He’s trying to raise revenue in a way he can
controllaunder.
Of course. Republicans hate paying taxes. you can give back taxes to companies by giving them more money. You can even “reverse tariff” by subsidizing products that you want to be cheaper than the same imported products from China.
Tariffs are one of the worst ways to deal with this type of problem.
A salient question is why Democrats, like Pelosi, wanted reciprocal tariffs a couple decades ago and then changed their mind.
Better that they change their mind on bad policy than stubbornly stick to it
The orange man also could’ve given all the major CEOs a heads up since it takes years to build a factory.
IMO this is the major flaw. Tariffs could work in practice, but you’d have to announce them way ahead of time to give local businesses time to fill in the gap. Otherwise you’ll get what happens now.
The first flaw is not discussing things with the people in charge of tariffs such as the secretary of treasury.
You are more qualified to run the country than our current sitting dictator
Tariffs have been the one major actual policy position rattling around in Trump’s empty skull since at least 1988. He fucking loves the idea of tariffs, for some reason.
Smart, specific targeted tariffs paired with grants/incentives to American companies to foster local production of critical goods (think CHIPS Act) can be a good thing, if they are done in such a way that it doesn’t send an entire industry/market into financial shock.
Like, if you want to onboard silicon wafer manufacturing (as a prime example); you would announce a small tariff to start off with, and a clear road-map of it increasing over time - allowing time for companies to build the necessary infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities onshore.
Once the industry has settled and matured, those tariffs could begin to be slowly pared back to ensure that free-market competition continues to keep prices in check.
But this would only work in an actual free-market economy, and not in the oligopoly-in-a-trenchcoat that currently exists in the states.
Sure, but that reasonable and nuanced idea has nothing to do with what Trump’s position on tariffs has always been. He’s just a dipshit that doesn’t understand the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics, or that the entire economy of of a country that controls its own currency (and especially one that controls the world’s reserve currency) doesn’t work the same way as an individual household or business.
Oh, absolutely!
My morning caffeine clearly hadn’t kicked in because I stupidly forgot to circle back round to that point. 🤦🏻♂️
Ultimately, my biggest worry is that Trump’s absolute piss-poor understanding and implementation of tariffs has very likely ‘poisoned the well’ to the point that they could probably never be successfully implemented in our lifetime by an actual competent Government - assuming the US ever gets another chance to elect one ever again.
Ultimately, my biggest worry is that Trump’s absolute piss-poor understanding and implementation of tariffs has very likely ‘poisoned the well’ to the point that they could probably never be successfully implemented in our lifetime by an actual competent Government
Well, it’s not as if they had much chance of happening anyway, given the neoliberal status quo for decades before that, so… 🤷
And giving more tax breaks to companies that stay and sell in the US?
that’s technically what tariffs do. topologically, it’s the same thing: using policy to give a price advantage to domestic producers.
talk about shopping locally and so forth.
talk gets one only so far. when those numbers start to chomp into the household budget, everyone forsakes the “made in…” label in favour of the price tag.
Are you referring to some kind of “opportunity economy”?
You can either convince people with a carrot to do what you want and hope they will comply or make them comply with a sharp expensive stick 🤷♂️ Orange man doesn’t seem to like carrots
The problem is if you hit everyone with a stick sometimes they just leave and you are left just playing with your carrot by yourself
There’s a thousand better ways to handle both tariffs and free trade. We fucked up the latter with NAFTA (and CAFTA), where the EU got it right. Bringing jobs home with tariffs isn’t something you just snap your fingers and do, shit takes a long time to re-align, it would’ve made a lot more sense to have it go through the legislature and say “hey, we’re starting out at a 10% tariff on this stuff we want to bring home, and we’re going to ratchet it up +2% every year until Congress doesn’t pass the law again.” Instead, we’ve got the most volatile president in history implementing tariffs by fiat:
10% 20% actually none actually 10% actually 125% for real this time. Yeah, in this situation, the best play is to just try and wait dumbass out, because there’s a non-zero chance he wakes up tomorrow and declares tariffs woke.Americans shopping local does help Putin. Full stop.
