Live updates: Trump announces sweeping tariffs
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So is the plan to drive the cost of everyday essentials so high that virtually everyone bankrupts and the billionaires buy all of our assets for pennies on the thousand dollars? That is all I can come up with trying to make a scenario where this has some coherent objective.
He wants to use tariffs (which act like a flat-tax) to lower income tax on the rich. There's speculation he's also doing something like the "Mar-a-Lago Accord," which involves devaluing the dollar (causing inflation). If wages don't rise with the inflation (which they don't want), US labor will be more competitive, so people can work in factory jobs with pay analogous to current Chinese factory workers.
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Oh, I don't mean on an industrial scale. Sorry for any confusion. I was thinking of small-scale artists who have crochet businesses. It might be easier to sell $30 plushies if all of the plushies from Vietnam (and other places known for cheap hand-made products) are now $50.
Ah, gotcha. It'll be interesting (in a bad way, most likely) to see how this will affect those business.
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As a
my boycott will last a lifetime.One of the benefits of having young children is that if I play my cards right "my" boycott could exceed my own lifetime.
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Not even via a trebuchet?
Trebuchets:
A superior siege engine for today's trying times!
If Trump would be killed by a medieval seige weapon, then I will believe in god again.
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Among the reciprocal tariff levels Trump announced:
China: 34%
European Union: 20%
South Korea: 25%
India: 26%
Vietnam: 46%
Taiwan: 32%
Japan: 24%
Thailand: 36%
Switzerland: 31%
Indonesia: 32%
Malaysia: 24%
Cambodia: 49%
United Kingdom: 10%Did he wait until late afternoon Apr 2nd?
He failed to do it "the day l'm elected."
He failed to do it the day he was sworn in.
He failed to do it, like 5 times from Jan - Mar.
He failed to do it Apr 1.
He failed to do business during business hours Apr 2nd.
This little baby just keeps failing and hiding.
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Is he using a random number generator?
The following quote from ChrisO_wiki on bsky
"@chriso-wiki.bsky.social
Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us." Just about sums it up. -
I'm not sure that that's necessarily wrong. Excise taxes, import duties, etc. have been around for millennia. In the US, the income tax has only been around since the Civil War (which it was created to pay for).
Don't forget land sales tax which happened a lot after the Louisiana Purchase and the Gold Rush.
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So is the plan to drive the cost of everyday essentials so high that virtually everyone bankrupts and the billionaires buy all of our assets for pennies on the thousand dollars? That is all I can come up with trying to make a scenario where this has some coherent objective.
Some of the architects who helped win the second American civil war say yes:
Firstly, it is essential to squash the democratic myth that a state âbelongsâ to the citizenry. The point of neo-cameralism is to buy out the real stakeholders in sovereign power, not to perpetuate sentimental lies about mass enfranchisement. Unless ownership of the state is formally transferred into the hands of its actual rulers, the neo-cameral transition will simply not take place, power will remain in the shadows, and the democratic farce will continue.
So, secondly, the ruling class must be plausibly identified. It should be noted immediately, in contradistinction to Marxist principles of social analysis, that this is not the âcapitalist bourgeoisieâ. Logically, it cannot be. The power of the business class is already clearly formalized, in monetary terms, so the identification of capital with political power is perfectly redundant. It is necessary to ask, rather, who do capitalists pay for political favors, how much these favors are potentially worth, and how the authority to grant them is distributed. This requires, with a minimum of moral irritation, that the entire social landscape of political bribery (âlobbyingâ) is exactly mapped, and the administrative, legislative, judicial, media, and academic privileges accessed by such bribes are converted into fungible shares. Insofar as voters are worth bribing, there is no need to entirely exclude them from this calculation, although their portion of sovereignty will be estimated with appropriate derision. The conclusion of this exercise is the mapping of a ruling entity that is the truly dominant instance of the democratic polity. Moldbug calls it the Cathedral.
The formalization of political powers, thirdly, allows for the possibility of effective government. Once the universe of democratic corruption is converted into a (freely transferable) shareholding in gov-corp. the owners of the state can initiate rational corporate governance, beginning with the appointment of a CEO. As with any business, the interests of the state are now precisely formalized as the maximization of long-term shareholder value. There is no longer any need for residents (clients) to take any interest in politics whatsoever. In fact, to do so would be to exhibit semi-criminal proclivities. If gov-corp doesnât deliver acceptable value for its taxes (sovereign rent), they can notify its customer service function, and if necessary take their custom elsewhere. Gov-corp would concentrate upon running an efficient, attractive, vital, clean, and secure country, of a kind that is able to draw customers. No voice, free exit.
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Among the reciprocal tariff levels Trump announced:
China: 34%
European Union: 20%
South Korea: 25%
India: 26%
Vietnam: 46%
Taiwan: 32%
Japan: 24%
Thailand: 36%
Switzerland: 31%
Indonesia: 32%
Malaysia: 24%
Cambodia: 49%
United Kingdom: 10%Cambodia be like
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Never mind the money. Think about this: Is the American lifestyle self-sustainable?
No? Why not?
Because they use more than they produce? Yes, and where do those things come from?
Imports? Yes.
Trump litteraly put a stop to the American lifestyle.
Yep. In the next few years I expect more Americans to raise pigs on their suburban plots.
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Lol, the bitch waited till the markets closed to announce it.
Iâm not sure thatâs any better, as traders and news have a whole night to digest it now. It mightâve seemed less bad with just an hour (before the next controversy consumes the cycle).
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Does that mean oil is also 10% up?
Probably fucking subsidized instead, though I didnât see specifics about fossil fuels
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The tiny scale artists still have to buy supplies. And eat, and pay rent.
Donât forget, this is a regressive tax, and small craft workers tend to be poor.
Their prices will go up as much. It may even be worse for them, in aggregate, even if selling more of their stuff.
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Tarrifs are a Trump Tax on ordinary Americans so they can give tax breaks to billionaires.
Bingo.
Itâs true in many roundabout ways, but the math adds up to âbreak for billionaires.â
Like, itâs full of nepotism, too. Take the discrete tax on automobiles and auto parts: I'll give you one guess on who that benefits.
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Among the reciprocal tariff levels Trump announced:
China: 34%
European Union: 20%
South Korea: 25%
India: 26%
Vietnam: 46%
Taiwan: 32%
Japan: 24%
Thailand: 36%
Switzerland: 31%
Indonesia: 32%
Malaysia: 24%
Cambodia: 49%
United Kingdom: 10%Smells like Smoot-Hawley up in this bitch.
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Why the fuck is our media so bad that they blindly accept Trump's bullshit line that the tariffs are "reciprocal"? Are they just stupid or have they been paid off? Do they not know the meaning of "reciprocal" or are they just too fucking lazy to question the White House's rhetoric even a little bit?
The state of the United States makes me sick. We're being robbed blind buy the oligarchy in broad daylight while the media gleefully amplifies the administrations lies.
Most headlines I see are going with 10%, which is a big understatement.
Itâs because theyâre run by billionaires. Even liberal, big outlets harp on cultural issues to redirect focus.
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Fewer people in the US are going to want to spend that much on a plushy. Unemployment is going to rise under Trump. There will be increased costs for needs and less cash for wants. But we will probably have continued inequality, so if a small scale artist can sell to rich people, they may do well.
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Honestly, at this point, I think it's time to just call it a day on the very idea of the US as a single unified nation. The Constitution has been demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be utterly incapable of actually doing its job. It's a 200+ year old document written in a different age, by people who didn't have hundreds of examples of modern democracies to draw upon. It was a good attempt, but it's horribly obsolete at this point. And our institutions are equally not up to the task. And it was written by 13 states who each joined willingly. If you gave each state a chance to join the current US today, how many would actually do it?
We need to peacefully dissolve the whole thing. Dissolve the federal government; grant every state full independence. The states can then come together into whatever number of new nations they wish to form.
This clearly isn't working. Half the country has completely given up on the Constitution, and the other half thinks institutions and laws alone will magically fix the problem. We've crossed the Rubicon. Once a president is allowed to get away with this level of flagrant law breaking, once the courts have become this corrupted, once the system has become so sclerotic and fundamentally incapable of meeting the needs of the people? It's time to call it quits. There's no repairing a system like this. Even if free and fair elections happen, electing a Democrat in 2028 will not fix this problem. At best, we'll get 4 more years of useless waffling, and then another fascist will get elected in 2032.
The US is a couple that has reached an impasse of irreconcilable differences. The US had a good run, but at this point it's time to admit that it's run its course, and it is time to move on.
The US isn't even really a nation; it's more of an empire. There are vast regional differences in the country. The cultures and desired governments of the people in the different regions vary substantially. But because we're all locked together in this bloated dying husk of an empire, nobody is happy. There's a reason the oldest countries in the world tend to be smaller ones. Empires are held together by force, not by common culture and shared values. They tend to collapse under their own weight and contradictions eventually. And the US is no exception.
And we shouldn't mourn this. The US had a good run. It did some cool things and made some real advancements on the human story. But governments exist ultimately to serve the people. Can anyone really say with a straight face that the people of the US wouldn't be better served by breaking the US into a series of smaller, more manageable nations that better reflect the will of their people? Would all the nations that border the Mediterranean really be better off if they were still united in the Roman Empire? Would all of Latin America outside of Brazil be better off if it was all still New Spain? Would the people of Asia be happier if they were still united in some post-Mongol empire? I don't think so.
Sometimes you just need to let things die. It's time to put the United States out of its misery. We can do better.
Who gets to keep the nukes?
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Holy shit the post-market drops for SPY and QQQ are insane. I haven't seen a post/pre market move this sharp since Covid
Theyâll try to spin it in tomorrows finance news, so it may be sharp but not as sharp as it should be.
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So is the plan to drive the cost of everyday essentials so high that virtually everyone bankrupts and the billionaires buy all of our assets for pennies on the thousand dollars? That is all I can come up with trying to make a scenario where this has some coherent objective.
A poor America, with no friends in the world suits Vlad Pootang very well. It will be like the world has 2 Russia's....
