Live updates: Trump announces sweeping tariffs

[gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com]

If their cost goes way up, that might make hand-made American items comparatively affordable, maybe for the first time in modern history. It's (potentially) a good thing for a bad reason, I guess.

[Guest]

Oh cool!

[aesthelete@lemmy.world]

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read.

[catloaf@lemm.ee]

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).

[Guest]

.. Bueller? ... Bueller?

[aesthelete@lemmy.world]

And since we haven't moved the needle on the minimum wage in decades, people will be making those low-added value products at starvation wages.

[Guest]

As a my boycott will last a lifetime.

[Guest]

Don't buy American. Make America lose the trade war and crawl away from these tariffs

[woodscientist@sh.itjust.works]

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.

[newthrowaway20@lemmy.world]

Lol, the bitch waited till the markets closed to announce it.

[Guest]

Well, yes, wages tend to decrease on that shift.

[Guest]

Timu: shop like a billionaire because only billionaires can afford the cheap Chinese garbage.

[Guest]

How are they even coming up with the number all these countries supposedly tariff the US?

[Guest]

Play stupid games and win stupid prices.

He is playing Vlad Putin 8D Chess, not Donald Trump 1D Checkers. This was all planned in 2013.

Introduction to the Kremlin media techniques of year 2014

1. Peter Pomerantsev September 9, 2014: Russia and the Menace of Unreality. How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare

2. Adam Curtis, BBC, December 31, 2014: On The "Contradictory Vaudeville" Of Post-Modern Politics - "What this film is going to suggest is that that defeatist response has become a central part of a new system of political control. And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time. Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years, but he has done it in a very new way."

3. Book reading from December 5, 2014 on the subject by Peter Pomerantsev

[bstix@feddit.dk]

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.

[skunkworkz@lemmy.world]

Just saw a news item here in the Netherlands about a bourbon distillery in the US and the owner said that in the long term the tariffs will be good for his business. LOL these magats are delusional. I fucking hope he and his ilk become destitute. Sorry not sorry.

[bstix@feddit.dk]

Maybe Americans should consider not paying taxes in the first place.

[spacenoodle@lemmy.world]

Well, at least I've got that, I guess

[null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Just trying to understand the Australian perspective on this. Maybe others can correct me.

He's using the term "reciprocal" as a way of saying certain practices are unfair.

For example, we refuse to import raw meat products because we don't have mad cow disease here.

We also don't have american style healthcare, so pharmaceuticals can't be advertised and are purchased exclusively through the federal government procurement scheme.

In response, he's applying a 10% tariff on any Imports from Australia. I assume this is in addition to the aluminium and iron ore tariffs but I'm not sure.

We have a federal election coming up so the opinions of both major parties are relevant. Our current progressive PM says it will hurt the US more than us, that we're not going to respond with tariffs on US products, and we do have legal recourse through our existing free trade agreement.

From here it's hard to see this as anything other than a huge self-own by the Trump Administration. We just don't export a lot of stuff to the US, our stock market has responded positively since the announcement. I would be absolutely gutted if the Australian government made any concessions what so ever, and I don't think I'm alone in that. We have our fair share of MAGA idiots down under, but even they are nationalists, with families. No one here has any interest in letting Trump fuck with our health care system just so Americans pay less in tariffs.

[Guest]

Are they just stupid or have they been paid off?

Neither one. they are in a cult. Donald Trump is entertaining / clickbait / meme leadership. The novelty of having a 78 year old man shit-talk on an Apple iPhone they can't resist. They have brain damage from it all.

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985 [email protected]